I'm Every Woman

It's International Woman's Day and Chaka Kahn comes to mind.

I created the photo piece above as a commemoration of my then partner's battle with breast cancer ten years ago. It is developed from an advertising photograph I found online a few years back which I manipulated in photoshop and processed as a statement on the strange, psychedelic roller coaster ride that breast cancer took my lover (and all of those in her life) on for over a year. A ride that frankly has never really ended. There's a poem that goes with it, but unfortunately it resides in one of my notebooks back in California while I am sitting here in New Orleans, so to accompany the photo I uploaded "Isn't That What Friends Are For" a Bruce Cockburn song that I find speaks deeply of the same emotion I was, at that time, and still, attempting to express.

Nothing is sure
Nothing is pure
And no matter who we think we are
Everybody gets a chance to be... nothing.

This day moves me in a way that I find hard to explain. Perhaps it's at least partly the way I'm still sort of emotionally raw in the wake of Katrina, but I think it's also the simple fact that my love, appreciation,and general amazement of women in general makes me just enormously grateful for a day that celebrates their existence.

My world of women is not large but it contains a number of them whom I want to mention, like a litany, for the gifts I've been given in the 51 yeaars of my life.

Jen, Mom, Lia, Marsha, Elizabeth, Betty, Opal, Mary, Denise, Mel, Ann, Jean, Dot, Jane, Rachel, Jerene, Linda, Millie, Mary, Mary Jo, Nancy, Abigail, Kat, Judy, Del, Pat, Honey, Maya, Eudora, Annie, Grandmommy... Nanny

As the Goddess folks like to say... Blessed be.

[By the way... a very large, very high res version of the picture above is available for your home or office with the proceeds going to the breast cancer fund. If you're interested email me]