Visual Journeys

I never know where these things will go when I first start on them. This one ended up with a poem fragment from Instead of Indonesia by Sarah Bein that I gleaned long ago in a workshop somewhere and hoarded with me over the miles. Words that meant something then, when I read them, and something now, reading them anew, different but them same. I marvel at the patterns of life, how inexplicably they repeat themselves, as dependably as the moon and her tidal pulls.

I spent the weekend watching movies and letting myself become overcome by floods of emotion. It’s been exhausting, actually. I’m not sure I’ve gained anything but I did create something, so I suppose that is good.

armful of freesias

Simple joys – an armful of freesias.

They always remind me of my mother, these flowers. They were amongst her favourites, and count among mine as well. I would randomly bring her a bouquet here and there, knowing how the flowers delighted her.

Our relationship was complex and with her passing I have had much time to reflect on so much of it. I at once miss her and feel relief at her passing. And anger, too, for so many things. And larger than life admiration. She was something.

In the end I need help to unravel the ball of wax that was our family dynamics (which ultimately shaped the who I have become).

I am hopeful.

Sometimes it does get better… sometimes it doesn’t

Wow… I haven’t posted in over a half a year…

How have you been? Easter came and went here in the Great Northwest, and we had a four day weekend, which was nice. Glad that Canadians haven’t gone so secular that we don’t get a day off on either end of an Easter weekend. It was even sunny for a chunk of it. I made roast lamb for Easter dinner and it was good.

I decided to take a couple of extra days off to rest up. I’ve been feeling run down and just down in general. Maybe I should go to the head shrinker and take some happy pills.

I spent yesterday watching Torchwood on Netflix and working in an art journal. It’s been so long since I’ve felt moved to work in it that I’m just glad I can still do it. Things are hurting inside… my creative process feels splintered and broken… so odd, really. Like I’m walking on glass in there, barefoot, as I root around inspecting my inner landscape for inspiration.

Someone recently told me (in a fit of spite) that he didn’t like my art work and that it was nightmarish. He had mostly only looked at my art journals, I think, and made his assessment based on that. Truth be told I have never made art for others’ consumption… it has always been an outlet for letting out what creeps in my inner corridors… and if I let you all see what truly creeps in there, “nightmarish” wouldn’t even scratch the surface I reckon. I always look on with envy when I see people make pretty things… pretty paintings using pretty colours, purely focused on aesthetic and looking happy, or being informative and helpful and useful–someone whose blog folks would want to visit weekly just to glean some inspiration from. I was never that person, but I really did try to be.

Our landlord has advised that they may be selling the place, so I guess I will need to start putting out feelers for a new place, still in the vicinity. Close by, so that Gabriel doesn’t have to change schools.

I hate moving. I’ve moved so much over the last two decades that I’m kind of burnt out on moving, but it appears I may not have a choice… and I get to go it alone. Gabriel is parroting his dad’s words about my needing to “get rid of some more of [my] stuff”.  I don’t have that much stuff… I’ve gotten rid of so much already and I’m just not prepared to get rid of more at the moment. Maybe I will once I start packing again and get discouraged by the volume of stuff that needs to get sorted and stored, which in turn will need to be found room for on the other end.

I got news that the ex is coming up in a couple of weekends to pick Gabriel up to head to Seattle for the weekend. He’s coming with divorce papers, something that we’ve been procrastinating on but clearly need to file eventually.

It’s weird… I’ve been a wife and mother for so long I’m not sure how to be anything else, and for the last several years it has been as though I’ve been working on partial programming… like there’s a role that I’m still enacting but without the other player in place… so only part of who I’ve become gets voiced and the other part feels lost.

And even that part is shifting slowly. Eventually Gabriel will move back to California and I will find myself having to start my “life” over from scratch, at 50, because somewhere along the way I’ve lost my way and forgotten my purpose.  I feel like Mr. Smith in the Matrix.

Whatever… I’m sure things will begin to get clearer as I go along… at least that is my hope.

When you’re young you have a drive to “become” something… build toward a satisfying career… let the hormones rage and have lots of sex… find a mate… get married… ranch babies… get the house and picket fence… fit into a dynamic like puzzle pieces. Now I feel like the lost puzzle piece… like somewhere there’s this completed puzzle with a piece missing and it’s me… but I’ll never find it because its time has come and gone. I suppose I’m feeling sorry for myself, just a little bit.

But I’m tired, too. Of being in a wife persona… or a mother one (though I don’t suppose we ever stop being one of those once we pop out a kid). I don’t think Gabriel appreciates me for who I am as an individual. I’m merely a provider of mom-ish stuff like clean laundry and meals and allowance and nagging about homework. He’s too busy with discovering himself to really see me clearly… and maybe I don’t see myself clearly either, so how can he?

So… I’ve successfully managed to alienate myself from any close ties, and have but a handful of friends, most of them also rather impersonal at this point, so not anyone I’d feel comfortable deeply confiding in or asking to borrow money from, in a pinch. It’s all very Howard Hughes-ish but I can’t even be the rich eccentric–I am instead to be the poor one. You know, over the last year and a half or so I’ve had to pawn most of my mother’s jewelry so that I could keep us in groceries when the next pay check was too far away. It’s probably my inability to manage money properly that’s to blame, and a string of unfortunate events that put me in a jam that seems to never find its end.

I’m in midlife and still wondering when I’ll have the wherewithal to equip and prepare myself for the rest of my life. Everyone who really gave any shit about me is gone, and I don’t think there’s anyone left that really cares. (Oh… there’s the pity party raging again.)

And another scary thing… that faith that I’ve carried with me for the longest time… the one I had in a higher power, that I’d turn to for comfort and strength? I’ve lost faith in it. I don’t think there is a god, and religion is all a load of hooey… something humans constructed in order to give their miserable lives meaning, or to give themselves more purpose than there is any right to be.

Random… I think it’s all random… not even luck, just a numbers game without any rhyme or reason to how things fall. Maybe it’s true about that quantum physics stuff… the part about our observing something affecting the outcome. Maybe if we expect shit we’ll get it whereas if we expect gold we’ll get that too. But I don’t think it has anything to do with worthiness or of being deserving or not, or based on good deeds done or undone, or repentance… or our being at the mercy of some benevolent patriarchal megalomaniac.

So… I haven’t been able to create in a while. I guess being disillusioned and feeling hopeless isn’t conducive to a prolific creative output.

So each day I have to remind myself of the things that I am grateful for. Like a sunny day, or some flowers blooming, or a good piece of chocolate, or a hug from my child, or the fact that I don’t have to drive a car to get to work, or that there’s enough food in the fridge until my next pay day and a bit of cash in my pocket to spare, in case of a small emergency. I’m fucked if it’s a big one.

Anyway… thinking of you in between my bouts of cranky… hope you’re holding up well.

Autumn trek to Granville Island

Granville Island market organic veggie bounty

Yesterday was a decidedly sedate autumn day, without any rain and still quite warm, all things considered–perfect for a visit to Granville Island (even though it isn’t really an island).  I love going, though I seldom get over there.

See Maiwa’s blog

One of my favourite stops is Maiwa, a textile and fibre arts bit of heaven. I managed to not succumb to the call of many and sundry whatsits, limiting my purchase to India Flint’s book Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles and a handful of Indian textile stamps.

I also joined the Malaspina Printmakers Society and plan to attend a workshop or two some time in the future. They have quite a variety of classes and workshops available, even on weekends–cool! I’ve always felt that printmaking was an under appreciated art form.

After enjoying a delightful lunch from Curry 2U and Rubina Kitchen at an outside table on the covered patio, I must admit that the highlight of the day was getting to feed about a half dozen starlings with my tandoori chicken scraps directly from my hand. They were tentative at first, but once the first few were satisfied with their score without coming to any harm, they unabashedly sat at arms length along the backs of chairs until the chicken scraps were depleted.

Dessert consisted of an apple struedel from another de rigueur stop, La Baguette & L’échalote Bakery, which also provided this morning’s breakfast of pain au chocolat to accompany my coffee. Besides, it’s one of the few places where I can bust out my French.

Plans for today are to head over to the market to pick up some chicken and beef for roasting, to accompany the root vegetables that I will be roasting as well. With a number of ripe bananas sitting on the counter, if I’m feeling really ambitious, perhaps a batch of espresso banana muffins from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking may be in order.

On hair strands and Indian summer… a poem of sorts…

They stood on the window sill like sentinels,

a pair of bottles, untouched.

“For curly hair” they said, sunlit and resolute.

Never one to heed a label,

I gave one a squeeze, recently,

breaking its shrine-like aura,

washing my uncurly tresses, remembering

the smell of his hair,

how it felt to run my fingers

through their length;

what it felt like from the inside out,

in awe of an emotion I thought

I’d long forgotten how to feel.

The other day,

I found a stray hair of his

resting on the shoulder of a sweater.

It had been a long winter

and I may have worn it

during our last days together,

or the hair may have fallen, unnoticed,

during one of his forays

into the depths of the closet,

migrating of its own accord,

like a lone camel scaling desert dunes.

Strange how something so innocuous

can bring back so many moments,

carefully encapsulated in memory

and not held at it’s edge

for easy access, but deep, until triggered;

then there it is-remembrance,

with all of the good and the bad of it,

its power slowly relinquishing its hold

on my heart and spirit, leaving behind

a sort of dispassionate, clinical registration,

awareness of the passage of time

and emotion, shifting like the sunlight

creeping through my window and across the walls

on this Indian summer day.

Today – free form poem of sorts

Silence broken by

the hushed hum of the fridge,

the shrill whine of a circular saw splitting wood,

the occasional sounding of a car horn.

In French it’s called klaxon

and it makes me giggle a little.

I’m tired and feel slightly off,

like barely curdled milk or overripe fruit

with the pip splitting open from the centre out.

My insides are roiling in protest at the one too many

scoops of hot salsa or the extra glass of rosé I shouldn’t have had,

or something else that I just haven’t quite figured out.

A nondescript bug.

I feel I’ve accomplished much, though, these last few weeks.

Sorting and organizing always cheers me;

it recategorizes possibilities,

resets my creativity button,

invigorates.

I’m finding I have a lot of stuff I don’t use anymore,

things I thought essential to my creative process

which now merely clutter up the pipeline.

I’m plugging away slowly at unplugging.

Seems my body is mirroring the process.

And now to rest,

as the sound of a plane engine

scrapes across the sky.

 

Awakenings… and on preaching to the choir

“I shut my eyes in order to see truth” ~Paul Gauguin

From early adolescence, I was on a mission of sorts. On a deep level, I felt there was more to life than what met my eyes. I read many books on various and sundry esoteric subjects and over the next several decades, while progressively becoming more myopic as the years unfolded, I turned myself inside out, discovering multiple times exactly what was meant by a dark night of the soul.

I received an email newsletter a few days ago professing the virtues of raising your vibration. The light chasers are everywhere. There is a sort of fear in them, one that denies the cycle of darkness and light… and growth.

So many are looking for an answer. A panacea. A magic pill (or in this case, maybe a crystal?). A ticket to heaven’s front row seat. THE answer. I could be flippant and say it’s 42, but… ::smile::

I remember that feeling well, because I was one of those seekers for the longest time, looking outside of myself for an answer that can only be found within. I was seeking with a sense of mounting urgency and desperation, as though I just HAD to find out the answers to the mysteries laying beneath this reality, or else.

For years I’d wished that some great guru would manifest and come and guide me toward nirvana.

For years I expected someone else to tell me what to do with this crystal or that mantra, and expected others to guide me–to show me the way to wisdom, not trusting in my own intuition to discern right action.

In the end, the journey is our own. No one else can show you which path to take because your feet are the first ones to lay foot on the journey to the center of yourself. You are unique–none will be like you after you have gone, nor has there been anyone quite like you before.

As one of the lessons that has been particularly succinct in this lifetime for me, I am learning to take personal responsibility for all aspects of my Self, from my material parts to my immaterial ones. What I do always remains my choice.

In many ways that is the most difficult thing of all, this understanding that I am embodied with all of the wisdom I will ever need to become Conscious. It is understanding that the duality that we must acknowledge in this physical manifestation is not to be rued but to be used as the source of our growth… and to embrace its potency.

And so… there is no one alive (or disembodied) who can wave away your pains with a wand, or banish your sorrows or your miseries with a spell. That task is yours, and yours alone. You are embodied with the same god stuff that flows through the highest of the high. You, at your most still centre know this to be true. You also must allow it to manifest in your life or none of the wand waving and well-intended wishing will ever bring it into being. At least not so that it sticks.

Several years ago, as my own vision became foggier due to cataracts, especially one of a very rapidly developing sort in my right eye, within three months I had gone from being merely myopic to being besieged with a soupy haze so thick that I’m sure it rivaled the worst London fog. Though my vision was, through surgery, restored, I chose to look upon this particular experience through mystical lens, noting the parallels of my vision challenges to those in myth, others whose eyesight had been lost and then restored, or simply imbued with an altogether different sort of Sight. Odin. Horus. Erebus. Tiresias. Tyche. Ploutos. Themis.

So I humbly entreaty you to learn. To read. To shake a stick and dance the watoosie. To receive good vibes and build protective egg shields… if that is what will being you closer to the centre of your Self.

And when you find it, don’t be frightened of your greatness or your callowness.

Embrace all of who You are.

Accept your humanity even as it is inexorably interwoven with your divinity.

See it in yourself.

See ALL of yourself.

See it in others.

Be patient, all around.

Be fearless in the opening of your inner eye, because it will lead you true.

It will show you things you may not want to see; drag your sorry ass through your own personal hell (multiple times, even). But in the end it will lead you to your own, personal, Jesus… your Christ Self that has always been, and will always be, within you.

Empty and full… a poem of sorts

Out of emptiness

When will you find your way home, beloved?
You’ve been wandering the shores of distant lands,
while I have been waiting for your return,
brimming with news of your travels
and stories of what you’ve seen,
waiting for you to tire of the journey,
aching to moor yourself in my slip.
I feel you when I dream.
Through nocturnal threads of sleep,
our hair and limbs tangle and wend
like the branches of a willow tree,
our mingled breath the whisper
of a breeze through its leaves, catching
in soft gasps of recognition,
of joy and surprise.
Of pleasure.
Out of the emptiness comes the moment of purity – śūnyatā.
The word is like a sigh, soft and patient,
ancient, like the void of which it speaks.

Natural alchemy…

photo courtesy Linda Treger (c) 2011

Oh how I love the ocean. It is a place, on a sunny day, when all four elements unite, with me at its locus, a nexus of spirit holding it all inside, woven into each other and indivisible.

Many years ago, during a most challenging time –though truthfully, they all feel strung together, these times, like a very long necklace strand of beads, with only the size of the beads varying– I would escape from the office I worked at near Del Mar and head to the beach. It was only ten minutes away and I could get in a good half hour walk.

Sometimes I would start with my feet firmly planted in the sand, right on the edge of earth and sea, and with eyes closed focused on the solidity of the earth, the tendrils of the sun reaching out to touch my shoulders and upturned face, the wind stirring against my skin and the waves of the ocean rhythmically washing over my feet.

In those moments I would find a sense of peace and balance that mostly eluded me otherwise.

P.S. Lynda–I miss you, you beautiful soul…

Mundane contemplation; the sacred and the profane

I feel tired. Yes, I’ll take my iron.

My car wouldn’t start this morning. I think it’s my battery. I need jumper cables. Or a new car. Or an overhaul.

I received news of Jack Layton’s passing this morning. I am lighting a candle for him this evening, though it may have to be before 9; that’s almost way past my bedtime.

Fine humans come and go all the time. Our job is to remember and honour their memory, and live our own lives fully and mindfully, to be kind and generous as we are able. A smile is free.

With photos of Jon Bacon emblazoned all over the news since last week, I will light a candle for him, too. May it light his way to a better place than the one he was anchored to in this life. May his loved ones find peace and their mourning be soothed, because losing a loved one hurts no less whether the soul of the one lost is blemished or blemish free.

I’ve forgotten my cell phone on my desk at the office and feel like I’m missing an appendage.

I took transit today, and liked it.

The Mexican food place I got my taco salad at lunch today refries the black beans too. Even though I’m not a huge fan of Mexican food, I miss Baja Fresh, Chipotle, Jardine’s de San Juan Bautista and Don Jose’s, not necessarily in that order.

It’s raining again, and feels like it’s settling in (like a guest that was coming for a weekend stay but ends up hanging around, grazing his way through the contents of your pantry while you are away at work), though they promise that it will stop by tomorrow. I don’t believe them.

I live in a rainforest. It’s beautiful. It’s wet. Sometimes the two are not mutually exclusive, but mostly they are.

I have renegade ferns lining the stairs along the side of the house that lead down to my front door. I wanted to take a photo of them but my camera battery is out of juice. So depending upon whether it recharges by the time I am done composing this post, the top of the page may or may not have a pretty picture of a fern on it.

Everything is green outside, but don’t let that fool you; leaves have begun yellowing and are falling out like hanks of hair. And then I remember that summer has begun waning since June 21st, even though it feels as though it only just arrived. I miss it already.

Just now my neighbours upstairs sound like a horde of pygmies engaged in dancing a jig. It must be in thanks for the Wilton cake decorating books I unloaded on them this weekend, which I’d decided had done their job (and long ago outgrown their usefulness, seeing that Gabriel no longer wishes for cakes festooned with Godzilla upending tall buildings or cakes shaped like a Nascar with bright red icing).

Most other times what I hear is a trail of thunderous steps pound across the ceiling. I must remind myself, again, why it is that I choose to live on a bottom floor beneath people who have (clearly) previously never lived on a bottom floor.

I love fall. I love the woodsy pungent smell of wet leaves, and how they feel when, dry, they crunch underfoot. I love how the air is crisp like a freshly picked apple, and the darkness holds promises of things that can’t be reached during any other time, and the veil feels so thin that I can almost reach over and pull it aside… almost.

The scent of pumpkins and cloves and cinnamon make me happy.

I walked in through the door this evening and was greeted by the sound of lovely flute and sitar music; I’d left the music playing when I left this morning so that the peace that reigned yesterday during my very long meditation would endure. It has.

My left trap and sub-scapular muscles hurt. I have fantasies about acupuncture needles, envisioning becoming a human pincushion. This is a way to anticipate the relief from the pain that has yet to come.

I am contemplating dinner; a protein shake is about all the effort I wish to exert in the way of food preparation. Which means I must wash the blender out first. I wish I had a dishwasher; human or mechanical, any kind will do.

I am looking forward to reading some more of The Pagan Christ by Tom Harpur, a book I recently picked up and have begun to read.

The scent of frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, gopal, sage, cedar, benzoin, dragon’s blood and palo santo lingers. I wonder if anyone else has ever concocted such a satisfying and cross-cultural combination to represent the air element.

The words of Gavriel Navarro have the power to move me and I am grateful; at the end of my soul’s movement, hope stirs.

 

Breaking down to make whole

As I sit here this morning, sipping my coffee and staring down at my hot stone massage rocks, I’m thinking one of those would be most welcome. I’ve torn apart the living area and now have piles of things everywhere (though it really is much better than it was when I first started, as I’ve reshelved many books already).

This all started with my wanting to get rid of some magazines, progressed to having the shelving put up in the art closet, to of course culminate in the moving around of furniture and a massive reorganization of all of my currently visible possessions. The good news is that I now know (for the most part) which books are living in these three bookshelves.

Well… back to the coffee and the longing for a massage. As I unloaded shelves and pushed furniture around (because each time I’d try to budge it with books still in it, it would merely creak and sway-I could almost hear a “yeah right, lady”), I believe I’ve had my own little all day workout session. Moving can do that.

Well the point of all of this is not to share the physical challenges of my under muscled self, or of the supposed lack of space, but rather of the process through which order is created from chaos. It parallels the healing process, and healing is an ongoing process, is it not?

When I was younger (and sparser of possessions, no doubt) I would clear and organize my belongings regularly. Ordering them makes them useful, because without order you don’t know what tools and implements and RESOURCES you have to work with. You know… like buying the same jam each time you go to the grocery store because you like it so much but can’t remember whether you have any left only to get home to find (after digging through the cupboards) that you’d already gone through that exercise twice and now have three jars.

So I am happily going through and organizing… everything from the cupboard contents to my inner ones. I know that this doesn’t mean I won’t have to unload the bookshelves again in the future in order to move furniture around (in fact I am quite certain I will do so in the near future) but until then I know what I have to work with.

And with that I leave you with an interesting and inspiring video from Angi Sullins, who shares thoughts on the richness of the creative product that arises from ash. In the end we are our own burnt offerings, to our better and more arable future selves, and the cycle repeats itself like the balls going round and round in a perpetual motion machine.

Small choices… another essay

It’s 6:20 and I’m in bed, hunkered down under my cotton throw with a belly full of protein shake. It beats the chips and banana cream pie slices I’ve been indulging in for dinner all week, and I had two other “sensible” meals today. I guess you gotta start somewhere… or maybe it’s sometime.

Steve says I’ll make an awful empty nester. Maybe so, judging by these summer training sessions. Maybe by the time it happens for real I’ll have gotten the hang of it, gotten a life pulled together that revolves around no one but myself.

But I’ve always been a communal sort. Odd, really, as this is juxtaposed right next to my natural tendency at introverted solitude, and quiet withdrawal. So much so that people mistake my quietude for snobbery and attitude. Until I smile.

Yet communal interaction doesn’t require a constant thread of communication. Sometimes more can be said by sitting silently together and sharing a meal. Giving up the mouth as the primary tool for communication to the task of biting and chewing, it is the hair and the eyes and the shoulders that speak, carrying on their secret conversations. Arm hairs bristling like morse code.

But I like quiet. I like sitting, side-by-side on a comfy couch, legs outstretched and intertwined, feet turned toward the fireplace, like sunflowers to the sun.

So as the day wanes, I’ll read a bit, until my eyelids droop as though they weigh their weight in gold and resolutely refuse to lift until the day starts anew.

On breaking down… a personal essay

I break down, randomly and with great regularity. I wonder when the tears will stop flowing, and the pain will transform into something else, something useful, like resolve or definitive action.

I wonder why I feel so broken this time, why a relationship that lasted but a year is capable of dissolving me into the putrid mess I have become. I wonder if it was simply the tipping point, the drop that made the bucket overflow, bringing with it all of the water that I had thought to be of the under the bridge kind.

I am mourning a loss but don’t understand why this man, who didn’t care about me deeply enough to be honest with his intentions (though I don’t think he was honest with himself, either), is worthy of my sorrow.

Why is it bothering me so much this time? Because I am older, and sometimes not wiser, and certainly faded in all of my physical attributes, the ones I had relied upon growing up and prior to marrying, imagining that if I picked carefully, I would only have to do it once?

Self-worth has always been an issue, but moreso now, as I look at what it is that I can offer to the world-not much, in my estimation, but I know on a deeper level that that is wrong, that is my inner critic speaking.

Or perhaps it is my mother at her most cynical, in her moments when she would scream at me at the top of her voice, letting me know that I was a choice, that she could have had me scratched out, like the several before me, how she suffered to bring me into the world and how I was an awful, awful child, always misbehaving. Fortunately, I was oblivious of these things as a young child, this being brought to my attention only as a young adult.

And fear grips me. The fear of being obsolete and useless. The fear of not being able to better myself or my situation. The fear of not being able to figure out how to fill out an application to resume my long-abandoned education and the fear of not being able to absorb the material or even qualify for entrance.

Why an application to college fills me with dread and befuddles me to the point of paralysis is beyond me, but it does.

I wish for a hand. One to hold, that will guide me through the process, slowly and methodically, never faltering in its support or wavering in its faith. One that knows something I don’t, has done something I haven’t yet but aim to do, and has triumphed. One who knows that I will triumph too.

Mostly, I wish for kindness. Kindness and the kind of love that is deep and compassionate. One that will not threaten to scratch me out.

Places we’ve been – a poem of sorts

We haven’t seen each other in almost twenty years

but we agree to meet for dinner.

Conversation flows from the outside in,

starting at the skin and moving inward

through epidermal layers and blood vessels

and muscle and bone, finally finding viscera,

the deep truths of who we are and what we’ve become.

We walk each other through the journey

to our present selves, feeling no need to embellish

or hide; we’ve seen each other naked and we know

where we’ve been and where we came from.

It’s good to know that we were right about something,

about each other and parts of ourselves;

that my flailing ability to accurately assess character

was at least right part of the time.

Donning earth – a poem of sorts

Light flickers on my closed eyelids

as I ride the train to work.

I’ve just read a poem from e.e. cummings and smile

at how appropriate it is for my now,

for the ebullient gratitude I feel for this moment,

this glorious summer Friday,

for the women’s wisdom I am reading daily

on eyes that have not yet failed me,

for the landscape that I can shroud myself in

like a blanket, the blues, greens and browns of the earth

draped on my shoulders like a mantle, protector and protecting,

at last one despite our division.

Makin’ my own sunshine

Well… not much of a summer we’re having. I can count the number of sunny days we’ve had on hands, and I won’t bother with counting the rainy ones. It’s spitting outside (again) and I’ve finally decided to pull out my HappyLight and make my own sunlight. I’ve resorted to this for various reasons.

One is that my sleep patterns are messed up. I wake during the night, multiple times, and I’m exhausted by day’s end, which currently means around 8PM. I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I would consider following the “carpe diem” adage. Which really is my second reason… attempting to squeeze out maximum enjoyment from a 24-hour chunk of time.

So they say that a half hour sitting in front of this lamp will essentially do me, its 10,000 lux touted to shower me with just the right amount of sunny goodness to pull me out of my lackluster slump and slapping my cymbals like that pink bunny in the battery commercials… here’s hoping.

Sunday softness

Oh the softness of Sundays.

Summer is here. It’s got the scent and feel of alpine air, fresh and cool with a slight breeze and an echo.

The birds are squawking, the crows with their nasal caw, and others, tittering a staccato rejoinder.

The sound of a lawnmower is accompanied by the occasional shushing of cars and the tinny growl of small engine planes.

If my blind was pulled open, I could tell you whether the sun, which has been bashfully covering itself with clouds, was making an appearance today.

But I’m still laying here, wrapped in warm blankets and feeling the cool air stream over my arms as I write, not quite ready to rouse myself from this warm little haven, but considering it seriously, since breakfast must be made and served, and another day greeted with gratitude.

And the dishes await washing.

Finding solace in peonies… and other thoughts

I’ve been tired lately. I always worry about how far I can push this anemia bit before I keel over, my body finally giving up in defeat. The urge to chew on ice cubes coupled with the fatigue always signals iron deficiency. I am almost out of iron tabs, and I’m tired of popping them regularly, truth be told. There’s got to be a better way, especially since the absorbency rate of the iron tabs is not very good. A couple of years ago, when I went to have cataract surgery in the US, they made me do a pre-op general physical and found that I was “extremely” anemic.

That’s nothing new, since I’ve been having this issue for a little over a decade now (at least that was when it was diagnosed). Late last summer I had some blood work done and the levels were so low that I’m sure in the US they would have hooked me up and transfused me… but not here. Maybe I’m going to the wrong clinic. I think it’s time to go elsewhere and get some real help. I would like to get to the cause and eliminate it, not patch it up with supplements. It’s hard to believe that my menstrual cycle would be capable of draining me to the point of anemia. But who knows? I don’t need the plumbing anymore, so maybe it should be removed. Maybe it’s a good time to remodel.

So along with the anemia usually comes the melancholy. Combine the fatigue with the lack of nutrients and blood oxygenation, and the result is a rather sorry-ass Adriane. I started reading a book yesterday morning (The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen) and read some more at lunch, and then on the train ride home. By the time the evening folded itself into night, I was well engrossed, despite my initial doubts. I finished it this afternoon, but last night as I read into the meaty middle of the book, there were several passages that made me weep. They, of course, had to do with relationships between the characters.

I keep thinking that I’m done with the longing bit… with the whole wanting to be with someone. And then when I read a sappy part in a book I realize that I wish I had that too, and that despite where I am now, and where I have been, there is a part of me that is hopeful to some day feel that sense of belonging… that feeling of being “home” with someone. Is that possible? Or does it only exist in fairy tales? I’d like to believe that it’s true, that people can find each other and “see” each other, in that Avatar-ish way. See past the flaws and embrace the soul beneath the hubris and detritus, or in spite of them. That’s what I thought I’d found. I can’t really fully explain this sense of being at a loss that I am still feeling now. I keep thinking that I’m doing fine, going about and minding my own business, and then suddenly I realize that I am hurting again. Hurting and mourning the loss of what I thought was… or could have been… if only.

Yet… if only I hadn’t been such an idiot. If only I had let go before getting sucked into the depths of something that truly, had I been marginally honest with myself and honoured my gut instincts, was clearly not going to go anywhere but south, and would have clearly seen it resulting in the world of hurt that it ended up resulting in. I suppose, on some level, I’m feeling like Sally (from the movie When Harry Met Sally) when her ex, with whom she had a relatively amicable parting, ends up marrying someone and starting a family and she realizes that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to marry, he just didn’t want to marry HER. And it rips into you in a way that only it can. And you wonder why. You wonder what makes them so special and you so UNspecial that you lacked that quality that made you “it.”

I’ve yet to feel that I’m “it” in my life. I wonder if I ever will. Not that I feel that I need to be validated… it’s not about that. It’s about really being seen, and loved, deeply. It’s about acceptance. It’s about sharing on the deepest of levels. It’s about friendship. It’s about belonging… not to another, but with someone… or rather, perhaps it’s somewhere, like a boat finding its’ mooring.

It’s perhaps about worship… mutual worship. What’s wrong with that? I think sometimes the highest form of spirituality is the one experienced between two people who are truly and genuinely in love. Beloveds… like the ones Rumi writes about, not in a mythical or abstract sense, but really and truly experiencing that with another human being. I think, if there is a Creator, and that Creator is living vicariously through each of us, multitudinously, that the point of this exercise is to experience each other in that way. But maybe the Creator is feeling a mite anemic too, because I don’t think it’s the norm. Or maybe I am somehow deficient and it’s experienced by more people than I could ever imagine, just not me.

The other day, while in the lunch room at work, I picked up one of the magazines littering the tables and found an awesome excerpt from a book by Abigail Thomas entitled In The Fullness of Time. What a fantastic little bit of prose that was. It’s now on my wish list. She writes about how she is beyond feeling the need for a relationship… that the thought, or the theory of it, is appealing… enticing… even titillating, but when push comes to shove, it’s better off left to the realm of fantasy, where it doesn’t interfere with the sweet freedom of doing whatever one wants whenever one wants to. It’s a matter of priority. Being selfish becomes the way of being, when you’re alone. Perhaps we lose the ability to compromise–like an unused muscle, it atrophies from neglect.

I feel that way, oftentimes. That’s the part that thinks it’s hardly worth the effort at this point in my life, to try to weave mine with another’s. Too much water under the bridge, to many peculiarities developed, habits formed and inflexibilities worn like calluses. I wonder how we even think to try, when we’re young. What makes us imagine that we’ll succeed. So many don’t. Any yet, hope springs eternal… at least until somewhere in mid-life where we say “fuck it” (at least figuratively).

Anyway… I’m sounding more and more morose… despite cheering myself up yesterday with a bouquet of peonies. They’re so beautiful… delicate and yet their scent is so bold and pervasive… no getting around the smell if they’re in a room. I can smell them as I’m laying in bed, and they’re sitting in a vase around two corners and down a hall on the window sill in the kitchen. They’re so beautiful, too… the different colours, palettes changing even as they unfurl and spread open like big fluffy powder puffs.

Well… time to head to sleep. Put myself out of my misery. Perhaps I’ll feel more like myself tomorrow, whatever “myself” is supposed to feel like on a good day. I feel only partially mended, like I’m still walking around and the chunk in my middle has a big hole in it, the sides pulled together with thread in an effort to sew up the gap, but it’s not fused back, flesh to flesh. And I wonder how long it will take to get to right again. This mourning is different from the ones I’ve had before.

When my mom passed on, I dove into my art for solace. I created a LOT of stuff during that time. It helped me heal. And I wrote, too. For whatever reason, I can’t seem to find my creative mojo on the tail end of this one. Even with my break up of my decade and a half long marriage, as slow and prolonged as it was, I was able to do a lot of self-care… self-preservation and nurturing… not to say that I didn’t hurt and need time to heal, but I was proactive in the process, and seemed to be able to get to a higher vibrational level, by virtue of the loads of meditation and spirit work I was doing at the time. I can’t even find solace in that now. NOthing moves me. Except, perhaps, loosing myself in movies… and lately the odd book.

The only thing that is making me happy is the fact that I have a new job that is exactly the kind of job that I need at the moment. A sort of routine driven, and relatively non-demanding daily grind with some good egg people and a dependable and respectable salary and benefits.

And this is all the writing that I can muster these days. Short story length letters that end up somehow morphing into blog posts. It seems that the only story that I am capable of writing at the moment is the telling of my own.

Mud pie adventures

Eureka! A vessel!

I decided that I was going to make a cup today, come hell or high water. I’m a stubborn git, sometimes, which can work in my favour, but mostly it gets me into trouble. Except in this case, I managed to achieve what I wanted to… a vessel of some sort, thrown on the wheel.

So after multiple trials and errors, and a growing pile of near successes, I finally managed to figure out what each hand and associated fingers are supposed to do at each interval (with the very generous tutelage of some other studio peeps). I had a eureka moment, and once that happened I finally managed to pull a vessel.

It.Was.Awesome.

Can’t wait until I have some more wheel time. This Thursday, Vin, our esteemed instructor, promises to demo (and have me make) at least one slab dish, imprinted with some doilies (will post pix shortly of the doilies I found at an antique store for a song). Stay tuned…

On Mud Pies & Near Vessels and Wannabe Knitting Skills

So I just got back from my pottery class at Place Des Arts. I spent another evening throwing little mudpies onto the wheel in hopes that at some point I’d actually manage to make a go of something resembling a vessel.

I’ve watched countless YouTube videos of people throwing and it LOOKS easy… but ha! surprise! it sure as hell isn’t.

So tonight (my third evening of throwing) I actually had two near successes. One was just about pulled and I managed to tweak the edge and thrown it off centre. The other was actually pulled and I was attempting to lift off the wheel with the lifters, but I made the bottom too thin and it ripped while I was trying to transfer it. OH well.

I may head over there this weekend during open studio and give it another go. I am getting really, really good at wedging clay though. And I should have shot a photo of my near success but thought of it only after I’d already rendered it into the hunk o’ clay pile.

This photo hasn’t a thing to do with clay or pottery. It’s yet another wannabe skill I wish to some day acquire because if I could make something like this incredible thing of light and fluffy beauty some day, I think I might faint. But it requires counting and keeping track of stitches and even some (gasp!) math, so unless someone walks me through the process visually as I’m going along, I’ll never retain it.

At the moment my knitting skills consist of being able to make a veeeery long scarf. But I’ll look at the magazine racks and occasionally the Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine will sing it’s siren sing to me and I’ll have it tucked under my armpit and heading to the checkout counter with it before I realize how it insidiously just invited itself into my bag.

If nothing else, maybe if I place it under my pillow, perhaps I’ll somehow miraculously acquire ninja knitting skills overnight by osmosis. Well, it was a thought.

Alright… time to call it a day. I can sink into slumber dreaming of petal pink lacy knits while the faint smell of fresh clay still lingers on my cheeks. Good night…

Ordinary Sparkling Moments

A special package arrived in the mail today. A little over a year ago, I volunteered to be a “Book Fairy” for Christine Mason Miller’s project to spread the message of “Ordinary Sparkling Moments: Reflections on Success and Contentment.” I write about my Book Fairy experience in this post (click HERE).

Anyway… back to now. A year has elapsed and I find myself struggling to find the sparkle in most everything. Or rather, it’s a daily chore for me to find the sparkle in the ordinary moments of my life. A relationship that I’d invested a year of my time in recently fizzled out like old ginger ale. What is left of my “professional life” is equally lifeless, and the fact of the matter is, it never had much life to it in the first place.

You see, it’s because like Christine, I’ve always wanted to be an artist. I didn’t make any other contingency plans, and after my plan A fell through (through no other fault by my own), and so many other plans that followed never amounted to anything, I continue to want to be something I still feel I am not… not quite. I certainly make art, in some form or other, but I have never made a living at it. Instead I drift, much like a gypsy, from one job to the next, never finding a niche in anything because the truth of the matter is I just don’t fit anywhere, really, especially an office.

I’m quiet, and thoughtful, and slow, and reserved, mostly, but wild and brash in ways that might surprise those who have not seen that side of me. And I have a temper, too, and as I age, it is getting more difficult to reign in. And I get bored really quickly if I am not fully occupied, and have further come to discover that an eight hour work day is just too long of a time to spend sitting at a desk, in front of a computer.

So where does that leave me? I don’t know. I am still searching for some sort of balance between my extremely active mind, creative spirit and insatiable curiosity. Why… WHY was I born this way? It’s excruciating.

While I ought to be busy working out the details of what kind of data to input into a spreadsheet, my mind drifts to a million things…

It was sunny today, so I could smell the spring in the air. In my mind, I spent a portion of the day wandering the streets of Vancouver, feeling the sun on my skin and smelling the thickening pollen in the air. Amidst meetings and email replies and spreadsheet tweaking, my mind juggled several story ideas, alternately fleshing out both of them, watching my characters become more animated and alive as the day progressed. I envisioned myself tending to bee hives and harvesting honey. I saw myself straddling a potter’s wheel and throwing perfectly proportioned mugs, and carving faces and bees into clay to later become beads and embellishments. There were molded bath bombs made and ceramic boxes in which to store them, and the inkling of a logo developed, as well as an etsy shop. My mind never stops…

And yet… by the time the evenings arrive, after an hour long drive and preparing dinner, I am usually too bushed to start on anything. So the wonderful ideas that I’ve harboured all day become stored in my memory banks (or my iPhone notes) for when my energy levels catch back up with the rest of me. Some days I forgo the cooking (or slap something together very quickly) and decide that I must do something. So this evening, with the arrival of the book, and the fact that it was such a beautiful sparkling sunny day, I’ve decided to write a blog post. Long neglected blog that it has been.

Unlike Christine, and her desire to be an artist, I have never felt the need to inspire others in a tangible way. I have no need to encourage or cajole others into being their best selves. I can barely manage to do that myself, so how can I deliver such a message convincingly? I thought, for a while, that I ought to be a creativity coach, and do just that. But the fact of the matter is, my mind wanders far too much. I read five books at once. I have multiple ongoing projects (many unfinished), and flit from one thing to the next like the bees I so wish to care for. I frankly don’t want the responsibility.

On the other hand, if what I write manages to inspire someone else, simply by sharing my own experience or by telling a story, then I can certainly do THAT sort of thing. I don’t know what inspires others… what makes them tick. We are all so similar in so many fundamental ways, and yet so different.

A friend of mine posted something to her Facebook page today, this widget thing that shows you how rich you are compared to everyone else in the world, based upon your annual income. I was the 231,544,348th richest person in the world, based on my earnings last year. Well, that’s nowhere near the top, to say the least, but even though $73 could buy a new mobile health clinic for AIDS orphans in Uganda, my grocery bill for two runs me about $200 a week, not counting incidentals (like toilet paper, etc.). It’s all relative, isn’t it?

So anyway… back to the sparkling moments. Life has been so much something other than smooth sailing for so long. If life was a bed, I definitely woke up on the wrong side of it. Not that it hasn’t been good at all. No… some incredibly awesome things have transpired. My son, for instance, is a treasure. Some of my friends are the most amazing and awesome people I have ever had the honour to journey with. At times when I was the most disheartened, complete strangers have materialized to reinforce my lagging faith in humanity. And I’ve seen beautiful things -natural or otherwise- and lived in amazing places.

The funny part is that we always think someone else has it better than we do, and that our lot is by far worse than everyone else’s. We’re always the most hard done by, in our minds, in comparison to everyone else. The truth is, though, that we all carry burdens of one sort or another, and they are equally weighty in the end. And those sparkling moments? They’re hard to see, from all of the detritus that litters our lives, sometimes, but if we dig a little bit, we can usually find the gems shining through the rubble, no matter how much crap they’re buried under.

So… in gratitude of the gems… and the sparkling moments, one of which, on this day, happens to be the arrival of this most excellent book.

Silent night

It’s snowing tonight, white speckles sifting through the skies to alight gently upon the ground. There is a gentle – almost imperceptible – rustle to snowfall, and an insulative quality to the resulting covering that blankets the world. There is a glow, too, that is incomparable to anything else.

In this white noise of shushtering silence I find calm – peace – if only for a moment.

Lily Pond

acrylic on 6″x6″ cradled wood panels

Winter mornings…

the inexplicable comfort

of sitting in a darkened room

peering out onto a snow covered landscape

awash in a purplish glaze

tungsten dabbing windows with its glow

filigree tree branches delicate against gray sky

A State of Grace

I’ve been (albeit as-slow-as-molasses-in-winter slowly) plugging away at writing a novel this month for nanowrimo (see nanowrimo.org if you’re curious and have never heard of this month of crazy literary abandon).  I’ve also been working on several pieces that I want to enter into the North Vancouver Arts Council’s Annual Anonymous Art Show (my first time was last year–what great fun it is to see hundreds of 8×8 pieces of art work in all varieties of styles side-by-side in groupings on four walls!).

However, I’m distracted this morning by something that “bubbled up” and won’t let me rest.  Literally.  I tried to get back to sleep this morning, thinking that getting up before the alarm clock (which was set to buzz me awake at 6 a.m.) was just wrong and I turned over and attempted to fall back asleep but couldn’t.  And I couldn’t focus on either my novel or my paintings this morning, so here I am, with my tall mug o’ coffee, writing this instead.

The last several weeks I’ve been listening to Gregg Braden’s CDs (I have four of his books on CD) and yesterday I finished the final one, entitled The Spontaneous Healing of Belief.  Much of the material in these books is repetitive (to each other) and also not anything ground shatteringly new, per se.  However, coupled with the telling of his own stories and personal experiences related in them, they are such a powerful source of inspiration for me.  I listen to them and feel the field.. the interconnectedness of all things.  It puts me into a state of grace, which is, what I think, what we all strive for in our lives.

I read a Facebook post the other day in which one of my Facebook friends was discussing love… the different variants of love and which was better or worse.  He spoke of a man who had been a prisoner and was regularly tortured by his captor but who, under these horrible conditions, came to transform the hatred and resentment that he may have held toward his captor into love.  His captor’s relationship to the victim was also transformed by virtue of this love, and he was eventually released.  Now I’m not saying that we need to form unhealthy relationships with people just so that we can experience this dynamic (unless it is your soul’s will to do so) but that learning and understanding how to sink into grace is the key to happiness, and even love, perhaps.

This sinking into grace doesn’t mean giving up on any dreams or aspirations.  In fact, I think it enhances their potential.  It doesn’t mean that we are “settling” for something which is unsatisfactory for us.  It means that we are in deep gratitude for what is in this moment and we continue to move toward what brings our heart and soul contentment even as we give thanks for all of the things which are present right now, regardless of whether they are exactly as we might wish them to be.  As the Rolling Stones song says… you can’t always get want you want… but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

The one thing that every “enlightened” soul seems to embody is a sense of immeasurable joy… it is a constant state with them.  They have tapped into this state of grace and are able to keep the line open and flowing, regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves.  Sometimes we get in our own way.  I have been trying, ever so slowly, to get out of mine.

We are between Canadian Thanksgiving and U.S. Thanksgiving and so in this moment I am giving thanks for all of the things, sometimes perceived as good, sometimes not so much, which are manifesting in my life – now… yesterday… tomorrow… always.  I wish that each and every one of you discover your state of grace.

How many lovers does it take to screw in a lightbulb… and other musings…

What a crazy week it’s been. After being in the body shop for a little over a month, my car was ready on Friday. They called me on Friday morning to let me know, and of course I had to figure out some way to scrape together the $1,000 deductible. So it will be a very meager next several weeks indeed, until two pay cheques from now, as the next one will be gobbled up by the rent. Anyway… enough of my financial woes…

The good news is… I have a car again, with a half tank of gas.

I’ve been trying to work on some painting (without much success). And some writing (and aside from this here blog post, and a number of emails, those efforts have been largely unproductive). I’ve also been not particularly muse-infused lately. I’ve also decided not to beat myself up about it all.

I’ve been feeling really – tired – tired is the right word. Tired of many things, but mostly of my flailing about. I feel like a drowning man, thrashing around in oceanic murk, trying to avoid the inevitable pull of the deep, only to finally give in anyway, watching the last stream of my little air bubbles float upward as I sink to the bottom despite my best efforts.

I’m so tired of being broke.

I’m tired of investing so much time into things that bring me little (or no) pleasure or improvement.

I’m tired of feeling like I have no direction, or rather, of having lost my way (and question whether I ever had a way to begin with).

I’m tired of wanting something better but not being able to get to better by way of my own resources.

And I’m tired of wondering what better is, in the end.

I’m tired of thinking, even.

So… how to go about remedying the sources of all of this fatigue. Helpful suggestions are welcome.

My leg/groin strain is finally starting to feel better. I went to see the doctor on Wednesday and was given a prescription for Naproxen. Perhaps the healing was delayed because of muscles spasming and now that the pain cycle is broken, things are finally starting to right themselves.

I’ve recently read (and have previously ruminated on, via my own) blog posts that speak about how we as humans have become separate from nature and the natural world’s cycle of birth-life-death, decay and renewal. That we fear change and hold on to things long past their usefulness or for our better good. That the concept of long-term relationships is an unnatural adherence, requiring a prodigious (yet perhaps futile, by these accounts) amount of effort to hold on to things that are ever-changing. How monogamy goes against the very grain of the laws of nature.

Oddly enough, despite what we think (citing the notion that we feel we are unable to focus our affections on only one person) we naturally tend to behave in such a way, and the superfluous “others” tend to fall off by the wayside; shed themselves like so much dead skin from the snake’s back. Until a new fancy surfaces and our interest wanes. I muse (and amuse myself immensely) that we have the notion that we are able to sustain multiple intimate relationships when even one requires fairly gargantuan effort to keep things running smoothly. I mean… I barely have enough time and energy to get through my work week, figure out new and creative (and cheap) ways to relax during my time off, be emotionally and physically available to my son in a caretaker/mom capacity, and still have a bit of “me” time. Maybe others are better at multi-tasking than I am.

But this life is a great experiment, and I long ago earned the title of Absent-minded Professor (coined as such by my mother), so I’ll go on experimenting, regardless. She was also the one who used to tell me not to ride two horses with one ass (when I was spreading myself too thinly, and not accomplishing any task with any great measure of success). And I have always mostly done what my dad always told me not to do, and did things the stupid way (as opposed to the smart way), learning best from my own mistakes (rather than those of others). But I digress.

Are humans basically fear-based creatures, having separated (perhaps even elevated) ourselves from the “natural world” and its impermanence–its cycles of birth-death-renewal? I think, perhaps, that if we run on the premise that all is meant to end or change, and that whatever we are experiencing in This Moment is doomed, then we don’t live fully. We live with the notion that this moment is not worth investing in fully, because it will be replaced by another one, shortly, and it may be better, or it may be worse, but it will definitely be different. It’s the ADHD phenomena afflicting humanity on a grand, emotional, scale. It smacks of nihilism and hedonism. It’s the epitome of blasé. And if it works for you, great. But does it, really?

I think, personally, viewing life in this way does a great disservice to the process of watching (or experiencing) the evolution of something (a relationship, for example). The evolution is never given a chance to develop because the focus is only on the now (the new?), not much effort is invested into it, certainly not much thought is given to how to make a joint collaboration unfold into something of greater potential over a period of time. I’ll use a big word here: trust. It’s short, really, but weighs on many of us.

It seems to me that there is always a sense of self-preservation present–an unwillingness to remove the governor–to really take the risk of something being good, despite the perceived cost, because there is an underlying notion that it will all go to pot, eventually. Better get it while the getting’s good. It seems to me that the same fear that plays on one human’s need to cling also plays on another human’s need to not cling. Same fear, different coping mechanism. It is the inability to relax into trust. It is my struggle, and many others’ as well, it seems.

This striving for something greater than the sum of its parts is what pushed humanity onward to reach great heights. It’s what has kept the species alive and has made us thrive. Evolution happens (in nature) over the course of a very, very long time. Small, tiny little incremental changes occur, so that they are almost imperceptible unless looked at with a keen and knowing eye, in retrospect (mostly). It seems to me that perhaps we ought to heed the natural laws in their entirety, and embrace the very things that have elevated us above the rest of the animal kingdom–our ability to discern and measure and hope and build and work together coherently and collectively–for the betterment of a greater whole. It is our compassionate nature, and our ability to link our hearts with our minds (and each other’s), that elevates us to the top of the animal kingdom.

I find it laugh-out-loud-funny that, in our misguided sense of spirituality, we can in one breath claim that we are all One and yet also claim that we are all Alone in the end. I am guilty of having made both of these postulations, sometimes in the same discussion. Others have as well. So how do we reconcile this sense of duality, this separation and yet Oneness that we all experience to varying degrees, at varying times? Is this the tug-of-war between ego and soul? Why should there be a war at all? If we can’t get our own parts to reach a sustainable state of peace, how can we hope for the Rest Of The World to follow suit?

This idea of being “alone” has led to most of the environmental and socio-economic issues that plague humanity. Perhaps it is because of our short life spans. This allows us to unconscionably shit in our own backyards because who cares what happens in a century (or on the other side of the same globe upon which we live)? We’ll be lucky if our kids will be around to see it come around. Besides, in the meantime, a very large meteor can hit us (or a mega-volcano could erupt) at any time, and send us into the next ice age or perhaps to our fiery demise. Or maybe beings from another galaxy, universe or dimension will want to take over this cesspool we’ve created and finish the job if we haven’t done it ourselves.

In the meantime, I need to find a ladder so I can reach that lightbulb…

Simplicity

What if…?

We are the stories that we tell ourselves?

What if we changed our story?

I was going to speak collectively, but I’ve decided that I can only speak for myself (and even that, at times, is dubious at best). So…

There is a part of me which longs for meaning–it grasps at making sense of, and desires to transcend, my mortality; to get a glimpse of the part of myself which is larger than I am; to see that Divine and everlasting part that is filled with grace and self-knowledge, the part that both knows and understands Its Great Purpose, despite the clamouring din that my little self creates. I know It exists, this part, because I have felt It at times, and I’ve felt Its connection to something larger than Itself, yet have simultaneously felt the part of myself that anchors me to this world.

This other part, this little self–part genetic predisposition, animal instinct and product of my life experience–has been whittled down over time into what it has become. Rife with social conditioning, carrying at times shrewd and at times skewed perceptions of itself and others; influenced by norms and moral codes and ingrained values (governed, of course, by its own perceptions of same); filled with all manner of delusions and superstitions. The part of myself that helps me function in this world in tangible and visceral ways.

I’ve been reading Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s The Call, a book in which she speaks to these parts ourselves; she speaks to them through her own parts, which she shares in unabashed detail that makes me smile at her human-ness and revel in her bravery. The parts that want to know and be and do, and the parts that are happy to just see and delight in being, because knowing is inherent–we need only to be still for long enough to hear our own wisdom.

There are all kinds of ways in which to find that stillness. I’ve been reveling in movement. Movement of my limbs as I step, one foot in front of the other, treading a path that is by now getting well worn in its trajectory. My daily walk home from the train station has been glorious. Lately it has been a little cool, my walk sun dappled during what has been referred to as “the golden hour”–when everything looks sun-kissed and pulsing with a glow. It has been a long while since I’ve stepped on a trail littered with copious piles of dry leaves.

Someone recently asked me how I was doing. I’m thinking that I’ve been doing too much thinking. And you know what? I don’t fucking have any answers, despite spending half my life in search of them… and you know what else? I don’t think I care any more… about the answers. Because, really, even when you figure out (even some of) the answers, it doesn’t make the journey any different, other than maybe missing it altogether because of obsessing over all this shit that in the end won’t matter, you know? It’s that life happens when you’re busy making plans thing. Something like that, anyway.

A beautiful young girl in Delta was killed over the weekend–beaten to death with a bat. An announcement was sent out at the office the other day from the congregation she belonged to, telling us when the funeral would be. No amount of mind crunching can help me reconcile how someone at the very pinnacle of potential should have their life snapped away from them in such a brutal way, at the hands of another human being. And life, in general, seems equally senseless and without any order. I know there is beauty in it–I’ve seen it!–despite the chaos and the senseless, pointless things that happen every day all over as part of this existence.

This morning I was listening to a video series by a woman shaman in which she reinforces –for the umpteenthbillionth time, to a rapt audience– that in order to make a change in the world, we are to turn our noses up at the negative stuff and not feed into “its” power by giving it our energy. Somewhere along the way we have been led to believe that by sticking our heads in the ground like ostriches, we will be able to alter our existence and even the very nature of humanity.

I find that way of thinking offensive on so many levels. In one breath it expounds on the virtues of taking responsibility (by being the change we wish to see in the world) while in the other it says that in order to perpetuate love, light and higher vibration we are to turn off the news telling us of the horrors occurring in our world. I’ll be the first to admit that I tend not to follow the news all that much, because I find it difficult to bear, but somehow things seep through anyway, and I am at once appalled and also surprised at how little progress we’ve made in our shift from animalhood, or so it seems. Like that old Don Henley song, only bad news is news worthy, yet there is much good that happens in this world, perhaps even moreso, which doesn’t get pumped out into mass media (see The Good News Network). And to make an informed decision about what sort of change needs to occur, we must know what is and isn’t working, and to educate ourselves on how to effect the best change possible. To be proactive instead of reactive.

I think, maybe, there is a middle way out of this mess. Complacency won’t change the world, and yes, focusing on negativity is not the way to do it, but certainly they would be good cues which could point us toward a better way of being (or perhaps not being). And despite our wish to not have shadow aspects, we all, each and every one of us, have them, and the sooner we acknowledge their presence and learn to work with them in a positive way, the better off we will all be collectively.

In the meantime, I’m relearning to take the time to savor my chunk of organic milk chocolate with almonds as it melts in my mouth… to hug and kiss my boy and tell him I love him every chance I get… to crunch leaves underfoot and smell the earthy scent of autumn… to delight in the feel of the drizzle of rain on my face and sunshine on my back… relish the feel of freshly laundered sheets and the comfort of a hot towel against my skin.

And I think of the wonderful things I’ve felt, even recently, and have been able to share… the feel of my lips in the crease of my lover’s spine as I kissed him while he slept… the smell and texture of his hair, as I wound my fingers in its wooly depths, my face nestled against his neck. Those things are enduring, despite all the other stuff going down around me, and I cherish and value those above everything else, perhaps especially because of their impermanence.

Death changes so many things. Until you experience the loss of a loved one (parent, child) you can’t imagine what it feels like. I remember trying to imagine how I would feel when my parents died (years before they did) and thinking about how I’d feel and react. There are no words to describe what it feels like, the permanent and irrevocable removal of someone from your life. It’s not like you can call them up again on the phone after a hiatus and say “hey.” There’s a finality that is difficult to reconcile. Some will recite glib quotes from whatever scripture they ascribe to about seeing them again, that they aren’t ever really gone, they’ve just been transformed (to something/someplace better, of course). But the truth of the matter is, in the here and now of this existence, I can’t pick up the phone and ask my mother to refresh my memory on the intricacies of her bean soup recipe, nor can I go snuggle up to my dad while he’s dozing off in front of the television set, watching the news at six.

There is a gap, and no amount of wishing it to not be there will make it other than what it is–the absence of someone who has been an integral and vital part of your life. So you attempt to process this absence by figuring out ways in which to cope–grieving their loss and finding a way to rejoice in their memory and the lasting impression they have left behind on your soul, for better or worse. And during this reconciliation process, there is so much that is put to question; nothing is the same; everything is scrutinized with new eyes. But then time irons out the wrinkles in the fabric of life, and we start to forget how to live purposefully… how to only look at the things that really matter and we start sweating the small stuff… and forgetting about the substantive stuff.

I’m tired. Tired of sweating the small stuff and really just want to be able to share with those I choose to be close to the poignancy of the substantive stuff… the fleeting stuff that can be missed if you blink… the stuff that you’d miss if you couldn’t do or be anymore. Like that. Well… that’s how I’m doing.

Magickal chocolate technicolor heart bandaids

I don’t know what it is that we find compelling about another.  Is it a smile?  The color of their eyes?  Is it what they say, or how they think?  Is it the twinkle in their eyes or the curve of their lips?  Passionate discourse or sharpness of mind?  Maybe it’s all of these things.

I’m watching “Practical Magic” once again.  My cure-all, along with a bar of organic chocolate, for heartbreak (you know, Professor Lupin knows a thing or two about the curative powers of chocolate–good man, that Remus).  It is inspiring me to cast a spell, one which will keep my heart safely encased so that it never gets hurt again.  The bulletproof vest for the heart spell.  Is there such a spell?  Time to do some research…

They say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  I’m not so sure about that.  The one who said that must have been the one who was loved, who felt the wonder of another’s love in all its fierceness and loved back in kind.  My whole life I’ve been waiting for this kind of love, but the timing has never been right it seems.  Mostly I’ve loved when it was not returned in kind.  A few times I’ve garnered some unwarranted attention, but I never dragged it along like a catnip laden toy, until I tired of the game or the person, or to where the proverbial cat got too close for comfort.  There was only one time when I felt like there was a crazy kind of mutual love–my first love, and we were so young we had no idea how to love in a healthy way, so we never made it out of its labyrinthine trials.

Here I am, in this space of hurt and loss… again.  What to do here?  What to do with myself?  No matter how many times I find myself here, it still doesn’t feel any different, nor I any wiser or better at doing this, whatever it is that this is.  The things that I took refuge in –found solace in– have all but abandoned me.  So I sit here and wonder what to do with myself, with the physical manifestation of loving gone awry.  I wonder how long it will stay, this discomfort, and where it will go when it leaves.  I wonder how it will transform itself from pain into something else, when for the moment all I can do is breathe through its jagged sharpness, poking me each time I try to shift into a more comfortable place.

And I roll my eyes at my melodrama.  How is it that I can’t seem to escape it?  I try to rationalize my behavior, negotiate with my emotions.  It works only until another wave of emotion roils to mock my attempts at self-control, at controlling things that are outside of my control.  My emotions are, despite my wish for them not to be.  In fact, I was hoping they wouldn’t surface at all, even from the start.  But they did, despite my wishes, refusing to be subtle or even remotely sensible.  All I was hoping for was a nice way to pass some time, in some good company, with a like-minded individual of the opposite sex who I found remotely sexually appealing.  Damn.

There is this longing for honesty, to be comfortable enough with another human being that you are able share your inner self, in whichever way that it manifests.  So, it seemed to me a natural thing to have shared this growing sense of love.  It was amazing to feel it again, after such a long while, growing like a flower at the center of my chest, blossoming and unfurling its petals.  But instead of taking joy in it, the one for whom this love was strengthening found it to be a burden; an unwanted thing.  So out went the baby along with the bath water.

And again, I return to my emotions, to sit with them a while.  Of being wanted but only so much.  Of my clumsy attempt to shift from being a lover to being a friend to someone who I never really got to be either to before both ways of being were fully entangled.  Of trying to reconcile the loss of the friend along with the lover.  Of trying to understand what is so fearsome about being loved.  Of trying to figure out what sort of friendship is completely devoid of any sort of expectation.  Of wondering whether I’ve completely lost my mind as well as my sense of self, and am asking who this stranger is in my body.

There is so much talk these days about forgiveness, of letting go, of acceptance (of self and whatever else is going on in one’s life), of staying in the moment and with your emotions, of visualizing in Technicolor® detail what it is that you want and where you want to go, of integrating all of the past crap you’ve been carrying along so that you can deal with the now, of letting go of all of the old crap because it doesn’t matter anyway because it’s NOW goddamn it not THEN so wake up and smell the coffee… but wait, you’re not supposed to be consuming caffeine because it’s bad for you, but hang on… chocolate, even though it contains caffeine, is GOOD because it contains anandamide which will make you feel happy even though you aren’t but for godsakes don’t give it to the dog.

No wonder all I feel like doing is going for a fucking long walk.

Did I say I didn’t hurt anymore? I was wrong.

Did I say I didn’t hurt anymore?  I was wrong.

For a little while the wound had healed, the pain replaced with a sort of numbness, like the kind that comes when nerve endings have been severed with a scalpel.

It took me by surprise this new onslaught, sharp and bright;

it caught in my throat and made my eyes hot with tears.

I was shuffling along the sidewalk, my back and shoulders laden with shopping bags, a back pack and a heart heavy with the pain of recurring loss.

Wave upon wave of desertion and reclamation finally unfurled the reknitting my heart had managed to do.

I surrendered to a monolith of a boulder that had beckoned to me as I was making my way home.

I thought I was done with the tears.  In this, too, I was mistaken.

So I let them come.

Flowing in rivulets from the outer corners of my eyes, they mingled with the rain drops that sprinkled my face.

For a moment I wondered whether the cars driving by noticed the lump of a woman spread out like an offering.

The rock was solid and smooth and warm despite the overcast sky.

Solidly it bore me with a strength that I seemed incapable of sustaining myself.

My sorrow settled, seeping from my body to deep within the stone.

I stood up after a while to resume my walk.

One foot in front of the other, step by step, I wove my way back home.

Presence… presents… on being present…

“Now or never!  You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.” ~Henry David Thoreau

I remember the sweet fuzziness of life from when I was a child. Time was an abstract concept, something I had to learn to understand and to mind. While immersed in the throes of the moment, all of my moments flowed together like a river, and I was like a leaf, riding the waves. I remember wistfully noticing, soon after I had become cognizant of the passage of time, how I missed that sense of complete absorption and the utter freedom that it allowed.

In a practical sense, that sense of complete immersion into the moment is only possible in snippets, my time being framed by weeks, and the weeks by days, the days governed by routines that manage the hours that I have in them. The blissful sense of being lost (and free of care) in my moments are now broken down into smaller increments.

So much of our present time is spent thinking of the past or looking to the future. Each time I lose my sense of the now, I catch myself in the act of doing these things. I’ve made it my daily practice to engage in this mindfulness… to gently re-steer my focus back to the moment, simply because the future doesn’t matter, and in many respects, neither does the past.

We become characters in our own plays, remembering what we think is the script of who we are, performing by rote the roles we think have been set into place. Really, we are changing, moment-by-moment. This is good. All things change. All things shift and evolve. It is a natural cycle. Sometimes we come full circle, back to where we started, but the previous journey’s insights will have been incorporated into our make-up, and standing back in a place where we have already been, after the journey, brings about a new beginning. Though the journey follows along the same route we have previously trodden upon, the experience alters.

I have found that it is a challenge to balance being in the moment and quieting the mind when it begins to feel the need to project forward, or look backward at past experience. Logic would dictate that drawing upon past experience is a rational act, one that is wise to consult when making choices in the present moment. There are times when I feel compelled to scrutinize current situations and determine that they are very similar in “look and feel” to what I’ve experienced in the past, recall how they made me feel then, and subsequently move me to make a judgement about my current experience. The struggle is in surrendering to the moment, regardless of the outcome, and reveling in it as it is, without the weight of past experience or future expectation. This is a tall order for this human, who naturally desires something to cling to, some sort of stability, some sort of guarantee of outcome, despite also having a full understanding that very little of what unfolds in the future is controllable.

Yesterday I read a blog post by Osho, speaking about his awakening. He speaks of the “it doesn’t matter” moment, the one where he realizes the futility of seeking. I’ve skirted this experience many times recently, in many facets of my life, and though I’ve not come to achieve the sort of awakening that Osho did, I sense I am getting closer to it each time I take notice of my wandering mind, each time I take notice of the futility of seeking for something outside of –and separate from– myself.

mothers’ day

Another mother’s day post, you say, throwing accolades at the worthy women of our lives. Well… no, not really. I’m sure you would expect nothing less from this blog than to hear something different, right?

My mother has been deceased since 2003, and I still miss her. There are many things about my mother that I don’t miss, but certainly the connection we had with each other, severed with her passing, is something that will always leave a gap in the place that she held, in my heart and in my life.

I learned from her as much how not to parent as I did how to. In between the mess of doing our worst and our best, our children take away exactly what it is that they need to know. I’m sure that somewhere down the line my son will think along similar lines… assimilate the stuff that works and reject the stuff that doesn’t.

Becoming a mother was one of the most transformational experiences of my life. Until then I could only guess at what one feels when one gives life to another human being. Until then my only point of reference to motherly love was what I felt coming from my mother, and what I in turn felt toward her.

Her love was wildly fierce, but it came mixed with so many other things, the detritus of her past that molded and shaped her into who she became. She of uncommon independence before there was a such a thing as a women’s movement. She who kicked a soviet soldier in the ass (after chasing him down, for grabbing her older sister’s breast while he and a buddy walked by on the sidewalk beside them) and cussing him out in Russian. She who, at the age of 38, with nary a suitcase of “stuff,” left her mother land and crossed a militarized border to pursue the ideal of freedom. Amazing cook… fastidious homemaker… talented clothing designer and seamstress.

She was also an unbending disciplinarian; the wooden spoon ruled in our home until I was old enough to grab it out of her hand and ask her if she’d like me to whack her with it to see if she liked how it felt. And while she may have taken care of many of my physical needs, she was inept at building my self esteem; in fact, she routinely went about tearing down the things that were meaningful to me, the things that I was vested in emotionally, based solely on the fact that they were “unrealistic.” What I remember hearing many times was “stop floating around with your head in the ether and get back down to earth.” Embittered by her own experiences, she felt that life was a pointless exercise in disappointment, rife with trials and tribulations. Cynicism hardened her to most everything, except her love for me… and then I left her as she was growing frail and elderly, to start my own life three thousand miles away.

My time away from her and the rest of my family was bittersweet. While my mother and I kept in touch long distance, it isn’t the same as having someone close by. You miss out on the day to day interactions that can be wonderful times, though in many ways the distance was a blessing, at least for me. It allowed me to grow as a human, to transcend the sort of suffocating control that my mother, my family and others who knew me from when I was a child would manage to impose on me. I broke out of the mold. I learned to breathe… and to fly.

Watercolor Moleskine revisited

I drew this sketch last Valentine’s day (2009) and as I was foraging around my place today, antsy to DO something artsy and visual, but not feeling like starting a whole new project from scratch, or wanting to rack my brain on thinking of something original, I looked over and saw my watercolor Moleskine sitting on the shelf and I went “hmmmmm…” I flipped through some of the pages and came across the initial pencil sketch and I thought… “yep, I’m going to add color to this.” So I did. I added it with regular and watersoluble graphite pencils and then swirled water around on it, but I resketched the heart first (since initially it was a Valentine day type heart).

My heart has been “fluttering” lately, and so I have an appointment set up for May 3rd with a cardiologist for a check up, but aside from the obviously physical heart “issues” I have also been pulling attention and intention to my heart. I find that the more I am in my heart space, as opposed to my head space, the better choices I make in relation to all of my actions.

I just finished listening to Gary Zukav’s podcast from the Healing With The Masters website (though they update the podcasts to the most recent speakers, so it may not be Gary’s interview you will encounter at the link). It was an awesome interview, in which he discusses the concepts written about in his new book Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power (being released later this month) and the guidelines to follow in order to establish them.

There is always an intricate synchronicity to our journeys, and when we pay attention we get to notice them. This interview resonated with me on several levels: firstly, it called my attention to personal responsibility… that I am responsible for myself, how I express myself and how I choose to react to external stimuli. The thought here was not to disengage from feeling, nor to sink into the emotional wave that rises, but to notice it, feel it and choose my course of action. Essentially, it is an exercise in self-mastery. It also pointed to how we also can choose to manipulate (self and others), by imposing our own ideals and judgements upon others, or allowing others to do the same. This too was enlightening. The whole (new age) Lightbearer concept is based upon convincing others that you have the best magic carpet ride to enlightenment, and to come onboard for the ride because their soul will thank you for it later. This model simply leads by example, focusing on our beautiful (and unceremoniously flawed) humanity, acknowledging and working with our limitations so that we may transcend them by using more than our five senses. Now that I can chew on.

And finally, as if the aforementioned was not already enough, there was a portion of the interview that brought up an example of an executive who becomes unemployed and how someone with whom he is in a Spiritual Partnership (as opposed to just merely a friendship) asks him these incredible questions… questions that resonated with me on so many levels because they addressed the very things that I have been grappling with since being let go from my most recent job, as well as the previous one. I thought… “wow!” I thought “I really needed to hear this, now, and feel what these questions feel like in my body, and find the source of the things that I am feeling so that I can move past this because otherwise the situation will present itself again.” So… I’m feeling… and thinking… and processing. And that is a good thing.

Art journal play

Still a work-in-progress, but it started as a Sharpie sketch on card stock that I cut out and pasted down into a journal I made in a Kelly Kilmer class with a ready background (which was basically a print pulled off from the paint saturated journal cover).  Not done with it yet, but it’s a start.  She smacks of flowery faced Blodeuwedd.

Illustration Friday – “dip”

A day or so late… but at least I finally finished a Friday prompt… LOL!!  A composite of multiple graphite drawings, scanned and imported into Photoshop, manipulated and printed on inkjet printer and then colorized using water soluble graphite pencils.

On being a Book Fairy…

Well… I have a confession to make. Several weeks ago, Christine Mason Miller‘s book, Ordinary Sparkling Moments arrived beautifully wrapped in turquoise blue tissue paper. You see, I’d volunteered to be a Book Fairy on her behalf, to help spread the wisdom contained within the pages of her book… a project which she calls the 100 books project.

The paper wrapped book sat on my kitchen table for quite some time as I plotted where to leave the book, considering weather patterns (rainy… so not outside), and contemplating on where finding such a book would provide the highest good. While it sat on my table I crashed to an incredible low. We all have them, sometimes. We are wallowing in (perhaps rightly felt) self-pity. Suddenly it occurred to me that I needed some wisdom… some kind words from a kindred spirit.

So I did the unthinkable: carefully peeled up the tape where the bag was sealed, opened it and pulled out the book, not having any idea what to expect. I started reading, getting through half of the book and saving the rest for the following day. What I found was a kind voice, speaking to me exactly the things that I needed to hear at this very moment. How is it that this lovely woman (who is at least a decade younger than I am) had come upon this wisdom so much sooner than I had? It isn’t that I am unaware of these truths, because we all carry this wisdom within the seat of our souls, but certainly to have someone tell it to us when we need to hear it most… that is truly a gift.

After reading through the book, I replaced it into the bag and sealed it back up. This morning I had a doctor’s appointment at the local clinic and I brought the book with me. I figured if you were feeling poorly physically, your spirit could most certainly also use some medicine.

I laid it atop the stack of magazines in the waiting room. It was still there when I went in to be seen, and when I came out I couldn’t tell whether it had merely been shifted deeper into the stack, or whether someone had indeed taken heed of the writing on the bag and accepted the book as the gift that it so rightly is.

voices… I hear voices…

In my head the voice is waiting…
waiting for me, to set it free
I locked it inside my imagination
but I’m the one who’s got the combination
Some people didn’t like what the voice did say
so I took the voice and I locked it away
I got the key, I got the key
[Russ Ballard, Voices]

Remember that song?

Oh… how do I not get in touch with my own voice? Though, to be truthful, there are many voices… each important aspects of who I am as a whole, and yet each quite individual. Getting them to all sit down at the thanksgiving dinner table together and not get into an argument about who should be partaking of the white meat or the dark meat, or ANY meat for that matter, is quite a feat at times, but they manage, somehow to get to the end and all agree that the pumpkin pie with whipping cream is just the *best* thing since sliced bread.

All funning aside… finding your voice — your authentic voice — takes some work… courage… compassion toward Self… because there are parts of ourselves that we would rather not acknowledge (forget about inviting them to thanksgiving dinner). Yet each part is an important aspect of the whole of who we are, and by understanding the individual roles each part plays in who we are is how we can become integrated… always noting that the parts change as we move through life… Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” comes to mind, and our collective parts evolve as our story shifts and changes.

Of course the question has more to do with voicing WHO we are to the rest of the world. In essence, every action we take, word we share, motion we make during our daily lives is sharing our essence… how we choose to show our different parts is up to each of us. And, I reserve the right to change my mind as I’m going along by the seat of my pants.

Actually, I wanted to add to this. I was speaking from the place that I am now, and not of the journey that led me to here.

The journey of finding my voice has been a long -sometimes joyous, sometimes filled with agony- road. It is not that I didn’t have a voice… any one of the thanksgiving feast attendees have certainly been voices throughout this journey.

Sometimes my voice has felt like a canary in a coal mine, wildly chirping out a last song, before it ran out of air and dropped to the bottom of the cage, lifeless.

Sometimes the voice was hurtful, lacerating everyone within its vicinity, including myself. Bloodied and spent, I’d start over, requesting forgiveness from myself and others… at times it was granted and other times not. Still… letting go and moving on is the important thing.

Sometimes the voice is filled with wisdom, and nurtures and awakens my Self and those of others around me.

Sometimes it is but a whisper, wishing on a star, or telling its dreams to a piece of parchment with a quill and dragon’s blood.

These are some of my many voices, that have come and have gone… we each of us have many voices, and they all have a desire to be heard… they merely need to find the right ears and open hearts.

Blessings my lovelies… to each and every part of you…
Adriane

on beauty…

I thought I’d share this most recent life experience I’ve had with you all.  It has to do with self-image, and how society feeds into what we ultimately view as ‘beautiful.’

In January I started dating this fellow.  Now, I’m far from young (46) and recently single, so after being with the same person for almost two decades, there are a lot of things I simply didn’t think much of anymore, including my appearance.  On our wedding day I was beautiful.  Slim and fit… radiant.  Within half a year I packed on forty pounds, and after getting pregnant put on about fifty more.  I lost a mere ten or so pounds after Gabriel’s birth, and it took several years to even get close to the 200lb mark.  I was self-conscious about how I looked, but my husband found me to be sexy anyway, despite the fact that we were slowly and methodically falling out of love.

So, last June we separated for good, after being together for 16+ years.  I’m still somewhere between 40-50 pounds overweight, depending upon whose “ideal” scale you go by, but I’ve come to love my body despite its imperfections.  I look womanly, with buxom breasts and a belly that one can readily observe as having housed a (relatively large) child.  It took me a long time to feel comfortable with the way I look… the way I look today (which will change going forward… as I age… as I become more active… as I change my dietary habits… as I become more settled and happy in my “new” life).

Recently I began thinking of dating again, wondering how that would go, never having liked doing it in the first place.  But how else was I to meet anyone?  So after the first of the year, my ex-husband urged me to join an online dating community.  Soon enough I connected with someone… we met… and we began to date.  It appeared that we were compatible on many levels but immediately seemed to have some problems jiving physically.  He had problems maintaining an erection, which he attributed to being nervous.  Fine… that was understandable.

Eventually, after many more visits, and varied degrees of success on the physical front, and continued issues on others as well, we finally decided to take a hiatus from each other.  During this time we exchanged several emails, speaking to our wants and hopes and what not… and at some point he shared that he found my “breasts” and my “cheeks” appealing, and would perhaps “learn to love the rest of” me as well over time… that perhaps sketching me (because he is an artist) might help.

I was floored.  How could you cherry pick parts out of an individual?  The rest of me is a package deal… I don’t come with snap on parts, and the parts I have are not interchangeable.  I kept thinking “I am more than the sum of my parts.”

Let me move forward with this thought… I think the human body is beautiful.  I am an artist too, and I love to render the human form the best.  It’s wonderful in its diversity.  Tall… skinny… short… plump… muscled… sinewy… soft… voluptuous… all shades of flesh tones… freckled or smooth… hairy or not… it amazes me.  Not just the container, so to speak, but how each spirit within its confines emotes.  It is what makes each of us unique… and beautiful, despite perhaps not being “conventionally” beautiful.

Whose convention, anyway?  The ideal for what is considered beautiful has changed every couple of decades or so, although the skinny coat hanger look (which leads to so many eating disorders in our young women today) has been around since the late sixties, thanks to the fashion industry.  When I studied art history, I fell in love with the impressionists, particularly Renoir.  I was definitely a Renoir “gal”… round and red-cheeked, soft and buxom. I thought I was born in the wrong era, at a time when I had to somehow cultivate a six-pack (and we aren’t talking beer). Even when I was “in my youth” I had trouble doing that. Compound that with a busy lifestyle, not much of an inkling for physical activity, parenting, etc., and that is just not a reasonable goal to shoot for at this point in my life.

Still, though… I think that I am sexy, and I love having an intimate relationship with someone.  It’s fulfilling on many levels, and I have never had to work at it… ever.  It’s something that comes naturally.  So when I’m made to feel “less than” I am by someone who is supposed to be raising me up to a higher potential, perhaps it’s just time to get off the bus and wait for the next one.

on lists, doing… and finding my place in the world…

I had fallen out of the habit of making lists. Formerly, I had been a habitual list-maker, my life regimented by to-do’s and to-pay’s. All of that slowly faded from my daily existence over the years of co-habiting with someone whose lists never coincided with my own (if there were any made at all), and spent most of my time flying by the seat of my pants. At first I had tried to run the household by virtue of my lists, attempting to make everyone fit into neat little compartments of ‘responsibility’… but that only works if all of the people are on the same page, and there is a willingness to participate. Mostly, I ended up taking it all on, and burnt out in the process. Epic fail.

In the aftermath of that particular debacle, I just let everything slip. I had resorted to the fire extinguisher method… putting out fires as they cropped up, but not planning for anything past the immediate future (and what that window consisted of was mostly determined by my short term memory bank, whatever it was at any given moment). In many ways it was liberating… no plans meant being open to whatever presented itself… but it also meant not accomplishing anything that took longer than minutes (maybe hours, sometimes days) to plan.

So here I am, once again facing yet another debacle of sorts. Relocated. Separated. Unemployed. In many ways I feel dislocated. Like all parts of my existence have been moved to somewhere else, and I just haven’t figured out where yet.

I keep coming back to the idea of having acquired a skill set, during my years of being human, encompassing technical, emotional and intellectual knowledge that can somehow be capitalized upon. Does life-training account for anything these days? I find the lack of an academic degree problematic. I don’t have those little initials after my name, which seem to be a prerequisite for folks to take me seriously.

So… I am at this place… this awkward, weird potential of a place… where I am muddling through figuring out what it is that I have to offer to the world that is unique… exceptional… useful… that only I can provide (in my very own way) and will make you want me to provide and pay me for.

What do I have to offer? Well… I’m mostly always cheerful. Cheerful most of the time with most of everyone, even when the crap gets so deep that most people loose it. Someone even called me a ‘fucking pollyanna’ once. Hard to imagine, I know, based on my writing. I have a dry wit and while I am a cheerful optimist, I do spend a lot of time over-thinking. Eventually I find my way out of the labyrinthine meanderings of my mind, usually punctuated with one of those eureka! moments, and move on to the next step. I am quick-witted and quietly witty. I am shy until I feel comfortable with you, but will always be courteous (unless you piss me off; then I’ll just be quiet, because if I have nothing nice to say, I won’t say anything at all… or I’ll tell you have have nice shoes).

I have many and varied technical skills, by which I mean that I have learned long ago that there is always the ‘undo’ keyboard command that can fix stuff I’ve screwed up (as long as I don’t get too compulsive with the ‘save’ command) and unless the program crashes, I can’t break the file. Which gives me confidence to try stuff (even though I may never have tried it before) until I get the result I want. That goes for just about everything, even non-computer-related things. What’s the worst that can happen? It doesn’t work out the way you want… but sometimes the unexpected results are better, and if you hadn’t tried, how would you have known that?

Some things just aren’t included on a resumé. Things like your level of emotional intelligence. How you cope with stressful situations, or difficult people (though they do screen for these things during the interview process, sometimes). I think this particular asset is of greater importance than any other, overpowering academic knowledge, and even technical and practical experience. Because (oh… there’s a grammatical no-no) how you react and interact on a social level will affect your ability to draw upon all of those other skills, to make (or fail to make) use of them appropriately.

Now what? You have a highly skilled person in a key role that has no idea how to play well with others, so the extraction of their skills is limited. The interplay between the extractor and the extractee is also important. Determining chemistry between employees is important as well. Is oil and water good for what is needing to be accomplished? Or will water, salt and vinegar be better? Blending is important, and a factor which has been overlooked for a very, very long time by very, very many people hiring.

I subscribe to Don Miquel Ruiz’ four agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

1. Be impeccable with your word. This one’s tough… I have a fluid sense of time, or how much time I have to do something… so when I agree to do something in a specific window of time, well, uh, I don’t always get it done in that window, but I do try, and I eventually come through. If you can bear with me, your socks will be knocked off. And I am honest… or noncommittal, depending… but either way you will know what I am thinking, whether I’ve said anything or not. I am also very respectful, and expect the same treatment in return.

2. Don’t take anything personally. Nothing anyone ever does is ever about anything else but them… including me. I have learned this. I occasionally still have to be reminded of this, but it is never too far away from my awareness. All the world’s a stage… and it’s my play (or yours… or his… or hers… depending). Shifting POV (or the ability to shift paradigms) is essential to really get every little bit of juice squeezed out of life.

3. Don’t make assumptions. Remember the saying that says making assumptions makes an ASS out of U and ME. Sooo applicable. If you take #2 to heart, assuming anything about another person’s actions/behaviour is like trying to drive a bus blindfolded. Good luck with that.

4. Always do your best. In Ruiz’ book when he discusses this particular agreement, he states that your best will vary from day-to-day, depending on internal and external factors. Expecting perfection from yourself (or others, even… maybe even especially) all the time is a self-defeating exercise.

I always do my best, and my best varies daily. Sometimes I’ll knock your socks off hour upon hour and other times it will take me a week to come up with something that will knock your socks off, but I take pride in my work. I also (after many years of therapy… just kidding) can take (respectful) constructive criticism so that while I am working on something that will eventually knock your socks off, I don’t get lost meandering down the wrong path.

After all this jabbering, I find it difficult to quantify a person’s worth on paper (or screen, as the case may be). You kind of have to try them on for size, like a new pair of shoes, and give them challenges that are a) possible to achieve, and b) enough of a stretch that they will exercise their creative skills in order to keep things interesting (both for them and for you). You know… enough rope so that they can venture out into new pastures but not so much that they hang themselves. Seems counter-productive, that… why would an employer want an employee to fail?

And finally, I have also found that how you deal with others (while in a managerial role) largely reflects how you deal with your children and/or pets.

Visual journal entry

(Click on image for larger view in separate window…)

on worrying…

I’d like to think that I am mature enough to know that expending energy on worrying is a self-defeating activity, that I am evolved enough as a human being to know that indulging in the activity of “worrying” will result in nothing positive… may in fact result in attracting more negative energy toward me… as in the self-realizing prophesy, perpetuating exactly what it is that I am worried about… but sometimes I am just human and can do nothing more than be hostage to my emotions… and sketch about it.  Art does indeed Save…

un-winter bounty

I feel so fortunate to be able to partake of wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables at any time of year, pictured here in their colourful splendor…

Port Moody spring…

Spring has sprung… apart from tweaking on Markus’ website today, I finally did get out of the house for a walk around the inlet, toting my camera. Click on the image above and you’ll be taken to a photo gallery of the photos I took today. It’s the first time I’ve been down that way and it’s really beautiful. There’s a fish hatchery over there that is currently dormant, so to speak, but I’m sure they will be spawning when the time comes, and it will be quite cool to go check out. The neighbourhood is in bloom too… witness the beautiful white magnolias (smelling faintly sweet, to boot) and the burgeoning leaves on the trees.

Alice in color…

A napping Alice & Cheshire Cat

Oh, now she went and done it… Monica posted something on her blog about an Alice in Wonderland challenge and I immediately had this impression of what I wanted to do… much to the detriment of my other projects this afternoon.  Ahhh well, tomorrow is another day.

Bucket List deco – Santiago de Compostela

Just finished the front/back cover for my first bucket list deco… now just need to do some writing. I sketched the layout and scanned it in, and then dropped and manipulated photos of the various components on Photoshop. Almost ready to finish it up and move on to my next burning project… the Darika collages. More on that later.

Nooks ‘n crannies…

On sketches & bucket lists…

Haven’t been doing much in the way of focused art sessions, but have been managing to “doodle” on odd bits of paper here and there. This was a self-portrait I sketched onto the page of one of my notebooks into which I put down my story ideas… or actually start to write and develop them, as the case may be.

I’ve been seeing someone who is a wonderful compliment to my usual modus operandi… while we’re both creative types, he actually accomplishes things, in that he will not let an idea sit but he’ll actually develop things into bigger things… things you can actually do something with… like get published or whatever. We each have strengths and they play off of each other. This may be a perfect alchemical match yet. And he cooks and does dishes… how cool is that?

I’ve signed up for (at least one) deco collaboration with a ‘bucket list’ theme. The concept, while not a new one, was popularized by a movie of the same name with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nickelson (did I spell that right?).  So I’ve been putting together my own bucket list… a list of to-do’s before I kick the bucket. It’s an odd way to think, really. I’ve always had this impression, despite the fact that it’s been proven erroneous several times (I’ve had my share of funeral attendances), that life is infinite… that there will always be time to do tomorrow what we didn’t get to do today. In any case, I finally settled on my first pick of the 19 items (of an ever expanding, though slowly creeping) list of things I really want to do before I expire from this world.

Ever since I read Shirley Maclaine’s The Camino, I’ve wanted to walk it myself, the Santiago de Compostela. The how and when of it eludes me, but I have to trust that someday it will come to pass. It’s a long trek, but I expect I would discover things about myself that I haven’t yet… crucial things… things that will make me emerge and merge into more of who I am. Of course I am sure there are other ways of accomplishing this~I’m open to suggestions.

Soul Mates ~ I have something to say (you aren’t surprised, are you?)

So much talk about soul mates in the mainstream, and how “everybody” is looking for theirs. This morning I was reading a journal post on a dating website that I’d joined (and unjoined)*** by someone lamenting on how so many are looking for theirs, and is there really such a thing possible.

I think the interpretation of this concept, if you will, is inherently faulty. I think what we as humans mean by a soul mate is really a mating of the soul. Ahhh… interesting to consider, right?

Okay, I’ll go there… The last decade and a half of my life has been spent with someone who was a decent human being. We all have quirks~tell me you aren’t surprised to hear that I have some too. So it isn’t surprising that some differences are bound to be uncomfortable to live with, but do they constitute reasons to discard a relationship entirely? I don’t think so, but that’s just me. It seems it all depends upon your level of tolerance and what your expectations are of a partner. Fair enough.

If two people are engaged on a soul level, you function from a different place. Wouldn’t every aspect of your exchanges of energy be of an entirely different vibration? Love making be that much more … ecstatic? Wouldn’t every thing you do for each other, for the Whole, be set upon with a different mindset than the “what have you done for me lately?” viewpoint? Engaged. Both (or however many are involved in the dynamic of your relationship) partners, if practicing mindful engagement would feel validated. “I see you” ~ past the fluff of physicality right down to the core of who you are ~ and I honor who you are, in your perfect imperfection.

The other thing the board members were commenting about in regard to soul mates was the expectation of longevity… the “this is THE one” expectation. I would like to propose that every relationship (regardless of the level of intimacy), if approached with that expectation, can only be richer and more meaningful. Whether for one day, one month, one year or one lifetime, if your focus was on exploring the depths of another human being in a reciprocal exchange, wouldn’t the journey be worth the trip, regardless of its length? Is this so hard to grasp?

There, I’m done. Plunge in…

*** okay, I feel the need to correct… I joined (again) and after I stopped stressing about the whole process am meeting some pretty awesome folks, virtually and not-so-virtually.

Retrospectives… and looking forward

This has been a busy, though largely unproductive, time for me. Today is my last day off before I head back to work and I feel ambivalent about that. My work situation has been … bizarre … no other way to put it, and probably not worth going into in detail anyway.

This past year has been such a year of change for me. I’ve separated after 15+ years of marriage, lost a job, was unemployed for a time, got a job but feel oddly useless in it, moved over a thousand miles away from where I’ve been living and back to my country of origin. I miss the familiarity that I thought I didn’t have at the old place; I’m excited about the new place; I miss having sex (it’s been a while… a year and a half… okay, maybe a bit less, but it feels like an eternity); I miss having a lover (our marriage was on shaky ground for a while before it petered out completely~intimacy was part of the problem). I’ve not been feeling very creative this past year, and only managed to pump out a few pieces of art, wrote a bit of poetry and one short story. It feels like it’s all just festering inside of me, in a state of chaos but not substantiated into anything solid. I’m tired. I miss being loved (by someone other than my child).

I’ve been “the caretaker” and while I used to do a really bitchin’ job in the beginning, my lack of energy mirrors my caretaking these days. Sporadic laundry doing… dishes done so-very-not-daily… cooking sometimes more elaborate things but mostly stuff I don’t have to work too hard at… and the inner chaos I feel reflects my surroundings as well… still not enough furniture to store the boxes of “stuff” I have littering my walkways, piled high against walls. The two, obviously, correlate… I believe in feng shui… but the funds needed for new furniture purchases are slow in coming… something else that is more pressing always seems to take priority.

I always thought that I’d have it “together” by midlife. Funny that by the time I pulled my Self together, everything else around me has disintegrated. Ugh. I’d love to make a career change, but can’t figure how the numbers would add up, seeing that I am the sole supporter of myself and my child now (though his dad does help… it’s still expensive to live on the west coast, regardless of which side of the border you live on).

My ex has moved on, and then some. He’s been dating for months, meeting (and obviously bedding, because that is what he does) women. We’re on friendly terms and talk about these things, and so he’s recently shared news of his successful dates, and encouraged me to visit some dating sites. Oh my… mostly they are frightening, and the whole prospect of dating is frightening to me. I’m not skinny, or even “athletic”… I’m not horribly obese, but I suppose the first thing one notices about me are potentially my pendulous breasts and that my jawline isn’t exactly chiseled. I’m not a breathtaking beauty. But mostly, I’m concerned about meeting someone who will on a fundamental level understand who I am and who I will be able to do the same with. And… I still like having sex and don’t feel like dealing with a partner that I would have to draw a roadmap for… in fact, it would be so awfully nice to find someone who will explore the sacredness of sexuality with me.

All of this is probably TMI…

Looking forward… I’m planning a trip this year with a friend of mine from California. She asked where I’d like to go to, and said she would do the research necessary. I want to go to Italy… Tuscany, maybe, or other parts too, but definitely Tuscany. I want to bring my small Moleskine and watercolors with me and sketch and paint as I go along. I want to see for myself the beauty of that land. I have up to three weeks of vacation time to work with. Now that I have a valid passport, I plan on traveling a lot more. Screw the furniture. ;^P

I find that the start and end to things like calendar years, seasons, Celtic years, Chinese years, school years, birth years… are arbitrary and provide an opportunity to review, integrate and start afresh. I hope you have all had a good year, whichever span you choose to measure it by, and that the next one will be even better.

Blessings to you all…
Adriane

‘new life’

sold(!) at the North Vancouver Arts Council’s Anonymous Art Auction