the girl 
shadow girl/2008 August 31, 1966 7:20am under a full moon the earth shook, the sky rumbled and a spirit so precious came into the world. A girl.
Not many understood her early on. Artists painted her unusual green eyes blue in portraits. Adults dismissed her. She did not know what to do with all the information she was given. Her most important teachers couldn’t be seen or heard by those around her.
She learned to survive.
Then came the day when she could breathe relief. It started with a tree and ended with her wise woman, Laveta. She had to make up for lost time. Expansion. Contraction.
When she turned 40 everything began to reorganize itself within her. She had loved and lost and now it was time to stop hiding. She dared to open her eyes and her heart. She stumbled, fell, felt like a fool, was unsure and scared.
Forgiveness and healing rule this year. She would liberate herself after ten years time served. She was free. There were new teachers. There was an awakening. There’s not a moment to waste. She must find her voice, continue her education and serve in everyway she knows. Finally, she is here on purpose with a mighty heart and a life uncommon. and what she's up to now shadow girl2/2008 | the muse bluecanvas1/2008
In art as in love, instinct is enough.
-Anatole France
The muse position isn’t one you can apply or interview for. As an artist I’ve never sought out a muse, they have just presented themselves. They have been people and places. For years San Francisco was my muse. I wrote two screenplays listening to Justin Timberlake. I’ve been a muse to a sculptor of little fame and a painter of some notoriety. It is an intimate agreement- even if you never meet. My muses are a gateway to the divine and the more mature I get the more I realize that all expression is an opportunity to experience the divine right here in this human form.
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
Michelangelo
In cooking, painting, making love, nurturing a loved one, writing, listening to music, exercising my body and mind or connecting with all forms of nature there is a choice to make. Is this a higher octave or a lower one? The chance to experience the sacred is available at every moment. I always suspected this, but my early education and experience seemed to contradict this notion for the most part. Now I know better. Now I can choose each moment.
I don't paint things.
I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse
You are my new muse. To call it a job is to reduce its value and contribution. It’s more chemistry than biology. It’s unpredictable and intense and precious. It brings risk to the equation. It calls for a way of being that has little use for a victim or a whore. A new tier has been revealed. Where I was stopped, I am now soaring. Where I was intimidated, I now have courage. Where I forgot, now I remember. -from a letter to the muse January 2008
| art.poetry.photography 
gash/2008 One Summer Night
Dark moon.
Cotton sheets.
Breeze on our bodies.
Warm skin.
Port wine.
Knowing glance.
Content smile.
Not a sound.
Ice melts into a stream
down my spine.
melissa b. zeligman 2008©
the rest of them
mybed/2008 other photos If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin 
bluemuse3/2008 Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
Auguste Rodin |