Twelve Principals of Regeneration

Mark Scisenti, a friend and chocolate maker, posted the following on his instagram page ->

"Are you worried about climate doom?"

Paul Hawkins has one word for you REGENERATION.

The Basket

Monday through Friday I pack up perfume and art orders, or if things are really busy,  I make perfume and have an assistant pack up the orders. All the packages, unless they are larger boxes, get put into one of several woven baskets that get carried into the post office.

If I am the one making the post office drop, from there I will often head over to the market and pick up items that we may need that were not obtained at the farmers market on Saturday. This is what occurred today, the market was our local Trader Joes and instead of taking in reusable canvas bags I took the basket. I was only purchasing a few things so it was much more convenient to have my basket instead of using one of the stores or a shopping cart.

The gal at the register commented on how smart I was to use the basket and also that it looked really "chic." She also asked if I had lived in Europe. I answered that I hadn't lived in Europe but that I was from Buenos Aires and often went shopping with my grandmother to all the different food shops: bakery, butcher, cheese, etc.

As I walked back to the car I began to wonder if it was my Argentine background, having been a parent of a child who attended a Waldorf school (baskets are really popular) or was it an aesthetic thing weaved with environmental awareness? Most likely it's all of the above with the Waldorf quotient having the most weight.

I hope each of you is mindful when you shop, its now so easy to be conscious of avoiding plastic and paper, even though they are recyclable.

Photo: Rebecca Fishman

Hello?

I saw this via a tweet by Grist and feel impelled to share with everyone I know. Intending others will share and we can finally have a massive wake up on the planet. I'm visualizing wild fires of the mind.

Bee Inspired

Yesterday I was reading about propolis, spurred on by a conversation with my neighbor regarding honey bees. I learned that the bee gathers propolis from tree resin and that all propolis is unique depending on where it is gathered, the time of year, etc. Some propolis will be high in one chemical component while the sticky resinous substance gathered from the same location at a different time of the year will vary in its chemical blueprint.

If the resin is collected from conifer trees the propolis may have upwards of fifty chemical components derived from waxes, balsam, pollen and even essential oils. Propolis in the hive is used to seal cracks and even mummify unwanted substances and artifacts.

This led me to believe that the Egyptian mummification process began by their observations of the honey bee. After all the bee was revered in ancient Egyptian culture.

All this speculation was going on in my brain when early this morning fellow Backwards Beekeeper Max Wong posted this article from the Guardian titled Honeybees 'entomb' hive to protect from pesticides say scientists. The honey bee is so smart, meanwhile fellow humans continue to use harmful pesticides which are the plague of Mother Earth.

I hold tight to the intention that one day soon the two legged homosapien will wake up in a graceful manner. In the meantime I'll infuse extra doses of awareness into my natural botanical perfumes to facilitate the process and continue to support the honey bee in all her magnificence.

Earth Day occurs on April 22nd, learn about events happening worldwide at the Earth Day Network.

Image: Honeybee college ©Roxana Villa

Planet Green

Almost one year ago a dialogue between Blythe of Planet Green and I began about the natural perfume. The yield of this synergy produced a slide show with some notations of what goes into an illuminated perfume.

Natural, World Changing Scents from Illuminated Perfume

Image: Q Natural History ©RoxanaVilla

A Wake Up Story

A Wake-Up Story from Healthy Child Healthy World on Vimeo.

Suck the Marrow

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." ~ Thoreau

We watched the film "The Dead Poets Society" last weekend. My daughter Eve is studying poetry in one of her classes right now and I thought it would be fun for the three of us to watch the film together. This film has all those key components that form great art, that "trinity" that Greg discusses.

The trinity:
* Mind; the idea and/or concept.
* Body; representing the materials.
* Spirit; the love, passion, integrity and/or soul nature.

All these components working together
at a high level of sophistication and awareness
create a synergy, creating art that becomes
more than the sum of its parts.

These components translate to all art forms, read more about how I use this concept in my perfumes, specifically Chaparral™, on the Perfume Critic website.

Image top: "Grow with Us", at right "Chaparral". ©Greg Spalenka The Chaparral image was originally for created for a book cover, I was the model for this piece.

Roxana Illuminated Perfume™

5x5x5x5x5

I'm off to yoga and have so many things to share, most importantly Andys visit here the other day. First, though...tell five friends because we have the right to do that!
5 Friends

Roxana Illuminated Perfume™

Image: ©Greg Spalenka

A dance

My very old and worn out Merriam-Webster Pocket Dictionary defines the word evolution as:

A movement forming one of a series of related movements, as in a dance.

So then, let's take a new perspective on our current environmental challenges as a dance. For example, this morning I received an e-mail from one of the visionaries in my local community which has been instrumental in protecting our native oaks and the land. It is a very short video about plastic bags. I knew most of this, but, not all. Click here to watch it, it's very short and has the potential to evolve each of us a little. Interested in evolving?

I've been using canvas shopping bags at the market for over a decade. Recently I've been keeping one in my purse whenever I do any type of shopping where bags might be needed. The shop keepers in some cases look at me a little weird, but hey I'm an artist, I've always been thought of as a little weird. After so many years on the planet I've come to accept weird as a positive term.

Choosing to take eco-measures in our daily lives can be challenging, sometimes they feel inconvenient because we have become so accustomed to doing things one way. Seeing change as a dance, a chance to evolve makes things a little easier.

More people in LA are riding bikes...they have been forced to because of the fuel prices, this is a good thing. Now, if LA could restore the transit system they had back in the 1940's...wow, we would all be dancing in the streets.

Image above ©Greg Spalenka www.spalenka.com

Blessed Unrest

Blessed Unrest tells the story of a worldwide movement that is largely unseen by politicians or the media. Hawken, an environmentalist and author, has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofit organizations to single-person causes, these organizations collectively comprise the largest movement on earth. This is a movement that has no name, leader, or location, but it is in every city, town, and culture. It is organizing from the bottom up and is emerging as an extraordinary and creative expression of people's needs worldwide.

Blessed Unrest Video

Paul says, "It is up to us to decide how will we be, who will we be?" What will you do?



Illuminated Perfume
The painting above was originally created for "The World of Aromatherapy" Conference, since then it has been re-used for magazine covers, articles and Journals. Lotus ©RoxanaVilla.

Naked Evidence

In August 2007 artist Spencer Tunick created an installation with Greenpeace to bring attention to the vanishing Aletsch glaciers in Switzerland. As a fellow artist, I have tremendous respect for the beauty of natural forms, both in nature and the human body. The pairing of both is exquisite in Tunicks work.

Spencer Tunick
Spencer Tunick & Greenpeace
Greenpeace

More on Tunick:
NudistDay.com
Environmental Graffiti.com
Naked World
Biography of the Artist