Vali girl

Vali Myers. I met her and I fell a little bit in love.

In her 60's, she was like a dear sweet child beneath her black kohl rimmed eyes, with a world of cool under her belt. I was in my twenties, she was a charmer and I was charmed.

My boyfriend was equally swayed and being a singer, gave her the gift of filling her studio with a deeply lovely song. His voice was a thing of beauty reverberating through the space.  She was kind and grateful. It was one of those rare moments you where you feel blessed for just being alive and in the right place at the right time.

She took me under her wing in those moments and told me about her Maori moko, we compared tattoos and she was kind. I loved her. She was the bohemian artist, painter, dancer... She had lived her life on the streets of Paris, in the Chelsea Hotel New York, with her animals in Italy, all larger than life and more romantic than you could ever dream up. Her art was like seeing into her fantastic, magical soul.

Her gift to me is now I can't see a fox without thinking of her dear Foxy, in her arms and in her art. When I get a tattoo I think of her, so unafraid of what people thought of how she looked, how she delighted in decorating herself for herself. When I am troubled by that difficult relationship that the artist has with art, I think of her- Vali was her own work of art first and foremost.  I conjure her in my memory, she is my Muse.

In her dying days in Melbourne she was as much a part of the nature of things as her years surrounded by her beasties in Italy, as the Witch of Positano.

In the month before her death she said in an article "I've had 72 absolutely flaming years. It [the illness] doesn't bother me at all, because, you know, love, when you've lived like I have, you've done it all. I put all my effort into living; any dope can drop dead. I'm in the hospital now, and I guess I'll kick the bucket here. Every beetle does it, every bird, everybody. You come into the world and then you go".

So you do.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.


Deep in the heart of my existential angst I look up, breaking out of my own thoughts, and experience Sonder. Thank you John Koenig.

People-watching is one of life's little joys. To practice seeing people, really seeing them. It is almost impossible I know. You can't see anything outside of yourself. Everything is one big reflection of your own mind or "I'll be your mirror" as Nico said. Still, to watch people and to enjoy that moment of being outside of it all, looking in. Not participating or being distracted, not checking your phone- seeing the little details. Humans playing out their freewill in the myriad of ways that they do.
It just amazes me endlessly. You have to turn off the endless stream of judgement to really enjoy it. To feel beneath the skin and sense what lies beneath. Quietly letting your mirror neurons do the work, activating empathy, vicariously enjoying the moment. Breathe it in...

And then you feel it all looking back at you.
You, the extra in their scene. The girl at the next table sipping coffee and taking notes.