Hollow World

My name is Rayla Dawn. I am an explorer, artist, poet, bookworm, and gothic romantic to the core. When I was a little girl, my grandmother, who was also very into metaphysical studies, and freakishly clairvoyant, was convinced that I was a reincarnate, and that I was often speaking about past life experiences. I know I am a very old soul. I feel like I am simultaneously still 17, and also about 2000 years old.
I view the universe as a playground so I know that I'll never run out of inspiration. Over the last year the "playground" invited me to further define myself spiritually and artistically. An invitation which I gladly accepted. I realized that there is no ceiling. I'm still forming.

The more I continue to explore from a place of innocent curiosity, and create from an open heart, the more in alignment with divinity I know that I am. I know this because of the amount of love and support I receive, and because of the beautiful opportunities and experiences that open up to me when I am transparent and genuine. Thank you so much to my friends and family for loving me, and nurturing both my light side, and my shadow side. Play on players and happy shopping!

I brainstormed names for this love-child-passion project of a business for a while, but nothing really felt right, until, as so many good stories begin, I was on a camping trip with my friend Sarah Flowers. We had spent the day harvesting resin and juniper, and hiking through lava caves in Lassen National Park, with her then 9 month old daughter Pearl, and "my shadow" dog, Roo. The term "hollow worlds" was used on one of the plaques to describe the cave system we had just explored. I think we both knew that it was perfect as soon as we read it out loud!
It reminds me of one of my favorite movie quotes of all time, spoken by Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice, "My whole life is a dark room. One, big, dark room." It sounds dark until considered in context. She's a photographer, so what she's really expressing, is that her whole life is her creation! SAME! In context, the world is hollow because it is what you put into it. Smile.

-Brave Bunny-

It's a rabbit hole
I know this
I can't stop now
An echoless chamber
My pulse blurs
Whoa
I'm in deep now
I won't go back to the basics
Let's face it
It's overrated
I know this, I know this, I know this
I'm faded

-The Offering-

Summer Shandy and my faith's all blind
I can't imagine that flame goes out
Although I saw the tower fall
Flight and Fancy in light and shadow
And so I'm bound to this I know
Another summer sees me back under the same sky
On the wings of birds that sing to me while the lights melt down

-Too Much Light In-

I am soft and I am open
Heart and Throat and Blood and Bone
Go ahead and shine the lights on

-Divinity-

I want to chew through shadows and play in fragments of light
In the mirror on the other side
Some fuckery other than mine
Some finery and wine and dine
Wrapped in lace
and crushed like velvet
Every sunrise
Leaves the paint melting from the bedroom walls
I am for real
I am hopeless
Forever lost in deeper waters
I can't tread light
The God's know I've tried
That world's not mine
I am the ocean on the other side
Further out to find but it takes so long
I'm watching the paint peel off of my bedroom walls

-Half Angel-

All of the simple pleasures I've cultivated
That I channel at my altar
And confess to in the silence
Spanning open fields and pale blue skies
A sea of diamonds
Sweetly seeking solace in flipping pages
Softly calling angels

-Death Card-

Death card on the solstice
My last walk through town the day after Christmas
Trust
Trust
Trust
The process
Guinness on draught
The longest commute, but my shadow remains
Twisted in alchemy
So what's a little pain if it's in my rising?
Nothing good coming easy until it does
So I release myself from anything and everything that is preventing me from manifesting the sum of my desires
x Signed Rayla Dawn- Daughter of Light
Amen


Inanna/ Full Angel

I'm sleeping next to stacks of books
and making remediations with the Sun and Jupiter
After so much to discern during the retrogrades
I'm filling my soul up to the brim
Bones to skin stretch
In the coming days
While I work with the spirits of the moon from the clouds of Venus
So close that you can't see the sky between us
I am made of ether and earth
That's always ran in my blood the deepest
I'm making amends