AIR Artist in Residence at The Garage, SF July 2009.  This is a video with excerpts from an interdisciplinary work in progress with improvisational dance, poetry, and song.

“Sombra”(“Shadow”), is based on a Mexican folk tale about “Lechuza”, an owl who turns into a witch, a typically demonized representation of female power and mystery. Rather than the usually sited bad omen, Lechuza is a representation of nocturnal dreams, the unconscious and the wisdom acquired from experience.  She is only dangerous when we don’t listen to her signals or messages which are presented as feelings, senses or animal visitations from the natural world.   Lechuza invites us to hunt in the darkness, confront our shadow, follow our intuition and integrate all of the parts of ourselves.

Lechuza/Owl Medicine

At dusk
The owl sits in her tree with one eye open and one eye closed…
one side in the light of day,
one side in the dark of night…

she sees both outside and in…
she feels what is bright and what is dim

Night falls and she prepares to fly out into the invisible world of darkness.

Her eyes glow like fierce torch lights in her flight
piercing all that is unknown with her insight.

She sees the unseen

She stands between two worlds

And she will not be deceived.

The dawn…

returns her to her tree, having caught her prey
she digests some truth… and she is nourished by what she found in the shadows.

At Day break
she locks her eyes shut

under hot sheets of sun

And settles into the bright, black soul within her…

Her gaze into the Great Mystery is unwavering.

-Liz Duran Boubion, 2009