i wish i were kidding...
you know those posts i kept putting up in december, about keeping things in perspective, staying mindful, trying to destress amidst the high intensity season... about finding beauty and goodness and love? i did do some of that... but there was a lot of stress... and i must have felt it building because those posts were affirmations for myself as well...
as i started to take the ornaments off of the tree - all of the needles dropped off... and i said 'thank you' to the tree, my giving tree, for shedding its needles, absorbing my stress and allowing my hair to stay put... i felt badly that it had to do it... and i vowed 'never again'...
it was so symbolic to me... now you might tell me that i should have watered it more or it was the dry heat... but, honestly, it isn't often that you see a tree look like a pile of kindling at the curbside... and i had to take that as a sign...
while i was on stephanie lee's blog, i saw that she has a journaling class... and i knew it could be considered 'frivolous' to sign up (not by me), but it called to me... and the inner voice said, 'no time like the present.' (let me here explain how keeping a diary and journaling differs for me... in the past, keeping a diary was more like a recording of events and thoughts around them... this is writing for a certain amount of time with prompts...)
'let the gentle bush dig its roots deep
and spread upward to split the boulder.'
~ carl sandburg
just a few months ago, i started keeping a journal that i draw in... so i can put down those ideas that swirl around my head at bedtime and capture them on paper... so i can get to sleep... so come morning i can remember what exactly i got so excited about the night before!
having experienced such a rapid rate of creative growth in the past year, i feel a bit unbalanced... i realized that while i am expanding in many ways, i need to go deep and search the self... because only then can my work have the intention i wish for it to carry... it will always be authentic, but it just feels like the right time... for all of it... for me to really get in touch with my 44 year old self... my word for the year was 'nascent'... funny how things happen, isn't it?
in the aftermath of the tragic earthquake in haiti, people are wondering what they can do to help... deryn mentock is holding an auction to raise money to donate to hope for haiti...
take a look, won't you? her necklace is absolutely sublime...
