Ok. Day 5. The Finch. Bright cheery happy little birds. All over the garden this time of year. ‘bless…
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The Artist’s Little Helper
26 Aug
A rare glimpse into the secret undertakings over at Triskele Moon Studios. Leanne is preparing for a big show tonight at The Starline Gallery. So my drawing for today, Day 4, is in honor of the trusty little minions that help us do what we do. Those clever little helpers- seen and unseen- that guide our hands to just the right gemstone, the perfect word, or the snappiest color. Never resting, always waiting on our call for help and guidance. Of course they can be angels. Yet in the work space of a master jeweler? I somehow think a crow to be much more appropriate. What’s his name Leanne?
The Milky Way
25 Aug
The Milky Way. A sight that has vanished from most of our skies, but was an ever present source of awe, wonder and inspiration for our ancestors. We exist in a world full of magic, just as they did. The joy of a child’s smile, a lover’s glance, a job well done, and the marvel that is life itself – these and infinite other causes for gratitude have stayed the same across the millennia. In order to see this incredible celestial light show, we have to be surrounded by the utter darkness of night. And so it goes for us too, the darkest conditions often reveal our most extraordinary light.
The Tiny Cairn
24 Aug
Cairns are markers of an ancient sort. Over the millennia they have marked roads, burials, buried supplies, boundaries and countless other things. Here is a cairn to mark today as a special day – a marker for whatever needs celebrating, honoring or just a plain old mini monument to elegantly proclaim ‘I was here!’ Which you are. You are alive. Full of possibilities. Mischief. Life. What kind of mark will you make?!
How to change your experience
23 Aug
The key is to anticipate, to be in a state of thanks, a state of being called grace. Expectant, fired up about what the day will bring. When you are being ‘excited expectancy’, you will attract experiences equal to the vibration of these tessellating, radiating thoughts. This is the way to do it. Choose your state of mind; change your experience.
The other way is to flat-line, to sit in the stagnant waters of same old same old, literally dying for something new, something real, some experience of being alive. Addicted to the habits of our daily life, repeating the same choices, we insanely hope that something really BIG will grab us from the outside and make a difference. When it doesn’t, ever desperate, we grasp at things and experiences, aching for an encounter with something other than what we’ve become. We are bloated, fear-filled and sick, clinging to our sinking life raft of comfort and security.
Comfort and security when grasped from outside us do not predispose us to bliss. They are experiences already spent; last year’s harvest. They can’t feed us. They are attempts at control, ways of saying, ‘no, life must be like this’. You, the limitless, have limited the surge of life, closed off new possibilities, kept the magic at bay. Not understanding true power.
Close your eyes and feel the terror of losing control of who you think you are. With the delight of a child, spin round and round in circles until you collapse in ecstatic dizziness on the ground, letting the universe flow with you, swirling around you and in you. The center will hold. It is you. Home.
If you want to experience the extraordinary, then you must become open to the extraordinary. You must be present at the very edge of your awareness, willing to expand beyond all beliefs and welcome the unknown as a beautiful, mysterious lover who gathers you to her with wide arms full of comfort and receives your open breaking heart in exchange for the security of boundless joy.
Your willingness to walk in grace, to embrace the unknown, creates a space for life to surge into with all the beauty and exuberance of a newly formed universe. This is the power that longs to dance with you. The power of creation. Expression. What will you experience from a place of belonging, healing and potential? As always, the choice is yours.
Light your path. In ten minutes.
23 May
Think about your time and how you spend it.
How much time do you allow for doing those things which you really value?
My bet is its far less time than you would like.
How much time can you allow for doing those things which you really value?
My answer is ten minutes the night before. I’ll explain.
Most of your time is spent taking care of urgent matters, especially if you have other people who depend on you to get it done.
Are all the urgent things you are doing giving you joy and inspiring you? Probably not. So why do you continue giving them top priority? Doing only the urgent leaves you drained and feeling powerless.
The key to right use of your time is to replace urgent demands with the essential accomplishments that fulfill and restore you.
Here’s the secret: Begin to include one thing a day that excites you. Anything that excites you will energize you. Go for something that makes you feel great.
Here’s the power: When you begin to include one thing a day that excites you, you will find that you have more energy that will equate to more hours in your day. You will have a sense of positive purpose and direction. You’ll actually accomplish more because you’ll have the desire and attention to stay focused. You’ll treat those around you with respect because you are practicing self-respect. It’s a win-win.
Here’s the ten minute job that will get it done.
Light your path.
What you’ll need:
A journal or a day planner.
Ten minutes of quiet.
Take three deep breaths and let go of the day. Take time to reconnect with your beautiful, highly intelligent body. Notice your arms and legs, gently shake out any stress. Do some shoulder rolls and rock your head from shoulder to shoulder. Let your thoughts quiet down. Recognize that you have the power to decide to care for yourself. Feel the floor, or the chair supporting your body. Know that you are always supported, no matter what. Breathe.
When you are in a relaxed and opened state of mind, write down one thing that you would like to accomplish. Something that is of value to you, something that has been whispering to you for awhile. Be specific. Is it something you can accomplish within a day? Or several months? Either way, be as clear as possible and get it on paper. Limit yourself to one or two sentences. Writing will focus your thoughts and let your powerful subconscious know that you’re beginning to get serious about this thing.
When you have finished writing, take a couple of minutes to close your eyes and lightly think about the possibility of what you have written. Don’t get serious, just play with it. Express gratitude for the unique and powerful being that you are. Expect that you will receive help.
Before you go to bed, read what you’ve written. Sweet dreams.
You’ve created a well- lit path for your subconscious to follow. Your subconscious will work as you sleep, as is often evidenced by the ideas and events that occur during the following days regarding your intention. Pay attention to opportunities and synchronicities that happen around you. When you are inspired to act–ACT. Each day take one action towards your goal, no matter how small the step may seem. Take immediate action whenever possible, it’s like letting your subconscious know that you appreciate the help. When you appreciate it, the help keeps coming.
Once you’re in the habit of spending ten minutes lighting your path intentionally, you’ll find that more and more meaningful opportunities will appear in your life. You’ll be accomplishing things that really matter to you and the astonishing part is that a lot of the urgent stuff will just take care of itself. This short exercise really does have the power to change you. For ten minutes a day, it’s time well spent.
All those pretty, pretty colors…
24 Mar
While I have been an artist all my life, I have only recently come to terms with being OK with not necessarily fitting into the ‘real’ world I
walk out into every day.
I have always resided primarily in the magical world of my inner life. And these two worlds are not overly compatible. The trick has been, to use a biblical phrase, ‘to be in, but not of, this world’. Far easier said than done. It is something we all have to figure out for ourselves anyway, which is why, I suppose, Jesus wasn’t overly busy handing out instruction manuals.
In weaving, it is the warp threads that give the foundation, the anchors over and under which the weaving will happen. What are the warp threads of your life? What anchors you and holds you? What is your foundation? Your comfort?
For me, it is my experience of the unity, the oneness and the sacredness of everything on our planet. While not an overly unique or unusual perspective, it allows me a powerful foundation from which to create. Warp threads are not typically sexy or exciting. But they allow the pattern; the beauty to be.
Most of the time I would much rather focus on the weft, those horizontal threads which make the beautiful patterns, colors and designs. This is where most creatives hang out. In the beautiful colors, often to the exclusion of everything else.
I am slowly learning to appreciate the stability and strength of my foundation threads. I am learning that being strongly rooted in the everyday, ordinary world where money, food, shelter, time and schedules are necessary and essential is actually complementary to my creative process.
The bringing together of these two very different but necessary worlds has been my most difficult lesson. And I am by no means done doing it.
So now that I have reconciled myself to not being ‘normal’, and not ‘fitting in’, paradoxically, I have an extraordinary feeling of arrival. Of finally fitting into my groove. And I know that while I had very little to do with my fortunate arrival here, in this space of belonging, I also know that it could not have occurred without me.
Such is life.
(This is my obnoxiously long response to the prompt: ‘Write a bit about yourself ‘ for my Etsy Shop)
Drift, wait and obey
26 Jan
Today is one of those days. I feel a shadowy presence roaming along the borders of my consciousness. I sense it there, unformed; a half-life seeking birth and expression. Its lack of definition offers me unrest and dis-ease. I understand. I used to let these vague feelings of non-being permeate my entire day, my entire being – I identified with it. Now I realize that I am (rather considerately) being warned that the ground is about to shift under my feet and that I must pay attention. Knowing this, I will happily go about my business without the depression and ennui that once took my days. I am waiting for the birthing of…something.
I know now that ‘The Daemon’ is in charge. The daemon is the ancient Greek concept of our genius- that outer entity that is half responsible for our creative work. As Elizabeth Gilbert shares so brilliantly in her TED talk on ‘your elusive creative genius’, we are not solely responsible for our creativity- our job is to just show up at the desk, in the studio, wherever we do our work. The Genius’ job is to provide, well, the genius. We must put the work in, we must ask the questions, we must agonize over the problem at hand. And once we come to that frustratingly terrible impasse, that point at which we often give up in frustration- that is the moment the call goes out. My yoga instructor told me last week that you are not really ‘in the pose’ until you are ready to come out of it. Right? The Genius is just like that. It’s when we are calling it a day that the real work has been done.
I once heard a lovely story about Monet. It was said that he had a spot in his garden where his neighbor would often see him sitting in the sunshine, doing nothing. ‘Ah, the life of a painter- all work!’ joked the neighbor. ‘Indeed’ said Monet, ‘when I sit here, you are watching me work. When I paint- that is the easy part.’ When we are inspired- filled with the spirit of the thing- it takes us over and it moves us. There is no thinking, just doing, and we rarely have doubt concerning what is to be done. Beautiful clarity, flow and fitting of things together.
When your daemon is doing its thing, however; offering no resistance is the key to one’s sanity. It is best to just ‘drift, wait and obey’. This was Rudyard Kipling’s mantra and was also successfully used by Harold Arlen, the famous Hollywood composer, who seemed to have brilliant song lyrics just fall into his lap. How did he do it? ‘I drift, wait and obey.’ Like Monet, and all creatives, he had agonized over the problem at hand, tried to come up with his own brand of amazing, but just couldn’t get it. Then…he let it go. Went for a drive with his wife as the story goes. Suddenly he was scribbling away like a maniac in the car, the words for Somewhere Over the Rainbow appearing in dazzling perfection for The Wizard of Oz.
Allow for this drifting. Be patient with waiting. It’s hard for me today, I want to be busy. I want to feel ‘productive’. However, I know better than to fight it. I know better than to help the butterfly out of the cocoon. This birth must happen on its own terms, in its own time. Will it be stunning? Amazing? Fireworks of brilliance? Who knows? Far more likely scenario: a subtle revelation of something incredibly obvious that has finally moved from my head to my heart – a slow burning thing that will change my life from the inside out.
I put my pens and paper away today. I will do as Kipling did- take a walk in the lush Sussex countryside snow covered suburbs – and be at peace with the process. My process. I welcome the help; glad the Muse has shown up as anticipated. I call, she comes. That’s the job of a genius after all. It is helpful to know this now, to know that I must watch and wait. Many times over the years, I have given up in frustration, only to stay closed as the many signs appeared that were to guide me to my next adventure. I called, The Genius showed up- and I missed it, cursing her lack of attention.
But she is my other half, for better or for worse, in sickness, and health; my ancient partner in creativity and life. Maybe I’ll light a candle to honor her coming – or burn some incense. I think she’d appreciate this more than a plate of cookies with milk, the typical offering for quasi-real people who magically enter the house bearing gifts. It’s comforting to know my work is done and I can have open mind rather than obsessive mind. I can allow time to work on my breathing and create the necessary inner space for transformation.
David Bohm on art
14 JanThe eternally amazing David Bohm
As a kid/young adult, one of my favorite radio programs was New Dimensions Radio – with Michael and Justine Toms. Michael interviewed physicist David Bohm and I feel the resonances of that talk rippling across the years of my life. The New Dimensions site is temporarily down today, but it’s well worth checking out their archives and interviews when they’re back up and running. I can’t think of many people in the 80’s and 90’s that Michael Toms didn’t interview. Fabulous resource about who and what influences our world.
David Bohm on the Word ‘Art’
” Considering the word art: The original meaning of this word is ‘to fit’. This meaning survives in articulate, article, artisan, artifact and so on. Of course, in modern times the word art has come to mean mainly ‘to fit, in an aesthetic and emotional sense’. However, the other words listed above show that art can also call attention to fitting in a functional sense.
The fact that we are hardly aware of the syllable art in words such as articulate or artifact is an indication of an implicit but very deeply penetrating fragmentation in our thought between the aesthetic, emotional aspects of life and its practical functioning aspects. This fragmentation tends to operate also in the meaning of the word beauty, which is ‘to fit in every sense’. Nevertheless, this word also tends mainly to emphasize aesthetic and emotional fitting.
It can be seen that, in a very profound sense, all these activities are concerned with fitting, i.e. with art. All that man does is a kind of art, and this implies skill in doing things, as well as perception of how things fit or do not fit. This is indeed self-evident for the visual or musical artist as well as for the artisan. It is true also for the scientist and the mathematician, but less evident.
It is clear, then, that reasoning is to be regarded as an art. And thus, in a deep sense, the artist, the scientist, and the mathematician, are concerned with art in its most general significance, that is, with fitting.” — David Bohm; The David Bohm Society
Bohm also saw artists as people who were fundamentally trying to change the meaning of life by challenging the conventions of the past. His fascination with linguistics led him to all sorts of crazy interesting speculations and perspectives. In his interview with Toms, he touched on the idea of beliefs. He pointed out that our word ‘belief’ comes from the German ‘Glauben‘: meaning “to hold dear, esteem, trust’. Our beliefs therefore, are quite literally, our beloveds and we have a hard time of it when they are challenged.
Artists, being primarily concerned with art; with the way things fit together, are prone to challenge our beliefs, our beloveds, continually. This is part of the blessing and curse of living the creative life. I am finding as I get older that more and more of my beliefs/beloveds do not fit. Emotionally, I have outgrown them, aesthetically they hang about me like a shroud and as for functionality – not so much.
For today, I am not going to try on a new set of beliefs for size – I am merely trying not to pick up all the out-dated wrappings that I cover myself in every day, without fail. It is uncomfortable- I feel myself grasping for the structure these beliefs provide, the known security I often hide behind – and yet, as an artist, constantly challenging myself to discover and incorporate the new- whether technique, concept or tool – I find this clinging conceptually odd. Beliefs are good. But they are they beloveds? If I am an artist; concerned with how things fit, then I must be aware when things do not fit. Ah yes. The beliefs that no longer fit are not who-I-really-am anyway; they are artifacts; things of historical interest. Today I will leave them on the shelf in my imaginary room of curiosities…
…and I will change the meaning of my life; doing what the artist does best.
good books
13 Jan
One of my favorite books. If I get stuck, it becomes the voice of my muse- a quick way to connect myself back to that inner place where things are not always as they seem.
p.231 – He’s been talking of women, in their traditional/ancient roles of courtesan (proficient in arts, literature and talk) housewife and the lovely, astonishing “Amazon” as he calls her:
‘There is a story about the daughter of the King of France, who’s been kidnapped by the Muslims. After she and a Muslim fall infinitely in love, she is rescued by her family and brought back from Islam. Her Muslim lover follows, recaptures her, and now, as they are running to escape from this military group of brothers who are trying to take her back, she says to him, ‘How good are you with your sword?’ He says, ‘No good. I’m just good in bed.’ ‘Well, she replies, ‘you go on then, and I will take care of this bunch.’ It’s a wonderful story, one of the best in the world, and it’s worth looking for in the Arabian Nights’
Crazy goodness. We are so smart, so bright, so capable. I’m thankful to live in a time where we are able to be educated, heard and treated as human beings rather than property…women have a vast, collective, repressed shit ton of wisdom to discover consciously. We have a lot to get out, and put into the collective. Joseph Campbell certainly recognized this. His sister was a sculptor and he hung out with a lot of artists over his life time. Teaching at Sarah Lawrence College allowed him to explain to hundreds of women how to have their own adventure, come to terms with their own wisdom:
Women will have their families, marriage, daily chores, work, and then, when they are fifty, and their families have been launched, there they’ll be. And it was my intention to give them this spiritual message of how to read the world in the second half of life’s journey.’
This book does just that. Not for the faint-hearted or close-minded. Only for the adventurous, who aren’t afraid of picking up that sword now and again.
Taken from my Tumblr post this morning: janetbalboa.tumblr.com
The Journey 