Mari Crvz

The Mari Crvz project is born of three rather simultaneous catalysts:

I. 

In 2019, I began spending lots of time reading new and old books of different genres, learning more about histories, cultures, the roots of religion and my own heritage. 

I'd felt like what makes people different is always exploited more than celebrated. 

And I wanted to research for a remedy. 

What I couldn't anticipate was all of this exploration to be further indulged during the proximate pandemic, just a year later. 

Plenty of that pandemic-sponsored family time during "the first wave" featured stories I'd never heard before. Stories of my father’s father who learned morse code during the War and his love for the cinema. And in tracking down my maternal lineage, memories of my great grandmother, Mama Mary, and her house in the Texas countryside wafted over me. Her crass laugh and the smell of dried patchouli in her bathroom; the blonde doll with a knitted dress base for legs that exuded a Cinderella-in-Wonderland peculiarity and the even more peculiar blonde in the picture frame down the hall.  

II.

A couple years, later, while cruising down a familiar route on Santa Monica Boulevard, I just happened to glance up at an old salon called Mari Cruz... 

I couldn't help but let it muse the persona of what is now the Mari Crvz brand. 

Cruz, Cross, Crown, Coronavirus? Call me corny, I don't care. 

I thought about all the spiritual viruses I'd downloaded onto my own software. 

Just like any virus, the symptoms can show long after contact with the contagion. 

When was the last time I really gave my ego, my ideas, my identities, my perceptions, my concepts, my Corona a good, professional spiritual shampooing? 

The process of uninstalling and unlearning unneeded or harmful "malware" after a network virus crash is just that, a process. 

Nonetheless, I still feel there're a lot of themes we, as a Collective, experienced during the Pandemic that are worth remembering. There's a lot of strife in life, it's part of the deal of being alive. But we can always make it better. 

Just like wounds need air to heal, when there is room to breathe and receive, we respond better, we heal better. And, like a language, like  a code, the answers to our needs are hidden both in plain sight and the unknown.

III.

Being the research worm that I am, I found that Mary of the Cross (Mari Cruz) is not just Magdalene but Australia’s first Saint, Mary Mackillop. 

And, not just that, she's the Miss Mary Mack. 

Both Mary Magdalene and Mary Mackillop 

suffered the full spectrum of misinterpretation right down to slander. 

St. Mary Mackillop, much like the first followers of The Way, as influenced by Mary Magdalene [John 20:11-18], rebelled against the hindrances of convention, spoke out on abuse and trademarked her presence and work through symbolism and code. 

Excommunicated for a time, she was later vindicated and venerated as a saint. 

In this respect, but emphasized playfully and experimentally, everything M.C. focuses on only this: what causes and values are worth being crucified for?