life promises us nothing, 

not the length of our stay

nor the complexity of our path.

life promises us nothing

except 

that there will be opportunity to learn everything we need to know.

tragedy?

count on it.

but count also upon joy.

joy - mjd 2013

and if 

you stay open

and if 

you grow still,

and if you 

can strip away everything you thought was important,

you will be left with the love

you began with.

your open heart was earned with bravery,

and persistence

and tears.

awaken - mjd 2013

now that you walk the world

with an inner smile

you can do what we were meant to do -

share it.


share your story

share your smile

share your love.


there is an unknowable future

that you can touch.

how you touch it 

is up to you. 

synchronicity

as i was finishing stamping the word 'effect' today while thinking on karma, my stool began to rock... 300 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake in virginia, i thought i was losing my mind... in the basement looking through the window, things seemed to be moving - or more accurately, i was moving... i ran upstairs to check the news on the internet and found nothing... called my dad - nope, he felt nothing... 'great,' i thought... 'i've imagined it.'


then my 13 yr. old called me - he was at a friend's house... 'mom, did you get out of the house? there was an earthquake... we went outside and took the dog.' 


really? my son knew to react... and his dopey mom sat in a basement over thinking...


cause - an earthquake/something unknown... not for us a life endangering event by any means (i am not comparing this to natural disasters that have taken many lives), just one i had never experienced...  


effect - the lesson being taught again to listen to your gut... i knew something was wrong... but we tend to reason it all away as adults... and in all seriousness, i was physically nauseous from it... 


i have to be honest, living very close to nyc and knowing people who were there on 9/11 i have thought many times on how i would have responded... we heard of how people in the towers were told to stay where they were after the first plane hit... some didn't listen to what they were told to do, they heeded instinct... and because of that they lived... 


funny how lessons come your way... 

on being born

the word i chose for myself this year was 'nascent' - defined as coming or having recently come into existence...


for sure i have been here more than 4 decades - and they have all provided experiences and challenges that brought me to this moment... BUT, i feel as though i am just getting my feet... learning things in the personal and artistic realm that are culminating in a 'me'...

'you never find yourself unless 

you face the truth.'

~ pearl bailey

in infancy truth to self occurs by indicating when one is hungry, tired, uncomfortable, happy... and those needs are usually met fairly quickly... as we grow older, we are taught different rules... our culture teaches us to listen to reason instead of our gut, to wait, to monitor ourselves... and while these lessons can serve us well at times, they can also fail us miserably... so truth to self is critical for healthy development throughout our entire life... and we will get caught up and forget, but we must come back to it...

'to the artist there is never anything 

ugly in nature.'

~ august rodin

another early life lesson comes in learning about things... how often does one say to a child - 'look at this!' ... listen, touch, taste, smell, experience... finding beauty in all things... finding an appreciation... being aware... do you notice how the air smells different before it rains or snows? did you see the lady bug that landed on your sleeve? did you hear the cardinal (do you know its call?)? 

by tea staining and tearing the wet paper, shaping the paddles just so with my thumb, selecting the appropriate lengths of hand-dyed yarn, i feel very much a part of the pieces... learning by doing, not just in craft but in living... tangible affirmations for myself and for you... as i mentioned to a friend last night, i seem to be turning into my own art therapist... 

when i first exhaled

lillia frantin - mid to late 1980s

'don't forget to love yourself.'
- soren kierkegaard

while i was walking, my mind wandered to people who had helped me to grow & to words spoken that had caused me to see life differently and redirect my path... i am a libra... but thru my early college years, in an attempt to validate myself to myself, i became a borderline type A personality... i was very detail - oriented... for example, as a kid i would build houses from shoeboxes - but with smaller rooms, levels, furniture, phones, etc... but often missed the bigger picture... in high school i couldn't figure out what to do as i did well in all subjects - i didn't consider how i liked them, just how i performed in them... so i went off to college to prove myself... first engineering, then economics, doing well, but not happy... i had a surgery that required me to come home and be home for a year... so i attended my community college...

i signed up for an art history class because i just felt like i wanted to take something i might enjoy... sit down in the auditorium, very earthy woman walks in with silver earrings dangling and she begins to talk... she makes note of a new development that was going up and the irony of how they usually choose names for the communities that reflect what was torn down - like green meadow, etc... and then came the art... it was a lightbulb moment's worth of excitement combined with the release of an exhale held for 20 years... i was done, it was over... this is a major? something i love can be something i can do for my life's work?... i was floored... lillia frantin freed me... i took money i had saved and money i made at work and bought an oil painting of hers at a gallery... i love the van gogh/matisse-like feel it has, the way line roams around the painting keeping the eye moving... and to my serious mind now beginning to relax, the color was exquisite...

when i returned to rutgers, it was to the art history department, where i absorbed every art history class i could... still there was that rigidly detail-oriented person who lingered... it was priscilla, the ph.d. student, who unlocked that door for me... she was explaining how to take the tests when slides are placed side by side for comparison... my way was usually to be very specific... and then she said, "what is the point of the comparison?" ... it sounds so simple now, but hearing someone say "what is the point?" what is the big picture? i felt myself stepping back and seeing everything differently... it is a lesson i count as one of my greatest...

i then met matthew baigell, the american art professor who i did my year long honors thesis with... he was very interested in revised history... i studied the difference in how the westward movement was painted vs. how it was diaried by women who actually made the trip... i went to him one time and asked a question... he replied, "i don't know, but let me find out."... again, this was momentous... i had always felt like i had to know and here was this man i respected so much telling me he didn't know... i had put so much pressure on myself... and he blew the door off the hinges...

i wasn't hard on others, only on myself... holding myself to a near impossible standard that was pulling me apart... the world of art and academic art has been good to me, and i began to heal - but that is the process of a lifetime...

this blog was not meant to be purely self-indulgent, but rather to trigger the memories of lessons learned that free us... sometimes we get so busy we forget them, and need only to be reminded...

lillia's painting is one of my treasures, for it represents a key shift in who i became...

don't forget to love yourself...