Green & White: Calm

 

This week in my Creative Spark class we have been studying color.  I tend to be drawn to blues and greens but the mixture of green and white stood out to me this week as a calming mixture.  For me, the life and vivacity of green coupled with the blank possibility of white create a balance of peace and calm. This painting was inspired by contemplation through our color exercises designed by Tara, a bar of soap, the lovely script text of a package at Trader Joe's, and the quote by writer Joan Didion included in the painting.

 

Below is the original painting before I cropped it to correct the wonky composition.

 

 

Jim Harrison, Poet and Novelist

Yadkin River from a "walk in the woods" day

"In a life properly lived, you’re a river. You touch things lightly or deeply; you move along because life herself moves, and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan applicable to all situations; you just have to go with the “beingness” of life, as Rilke would have it."  ~Jim Harrison

This quote comes from a wonderful interview with Jim Harrison, written in 1986 and published in the Paris Review. If you have some time available, grab a cup of hot tea or your favorite cozy beverage of choice and curl into this interview on writing, art, and above all living.

Here are a few of his  poems as well...so gracious to have stumbled upon his work today.

Dan’s Bugs

I felt a little bad about the nasty earwig
that drowned in my nighttime glass of water,
lying prone at the bottom like a shipwrecked mariner.
There was guilt about the moth who died
when she showered with me, possibly a female.
They communicate through wing vibrations.
I was careful when sticking a letter
in our rural mailbox, waiting for a fly to escape,
not wanting her to be trapped there in the darkness.
Out here in the country many insects invade our lives
and many die in my nightcap, floating and deranged.
On the way to town to buy wine and a chicken
I stopped from 70 mph to pick up
a wounded dragonfly fluttering on the yellow line.
I’ve read that some insects live only for minutes,
as we do in our implacable geologic time.

Sunlight

After days of darkness I didn’t understand
a second of yellow sunlight
here and gone through a hole in clouds
as quickly as a flashbulb, an immense
memory of a moment of grace withdrawn.
It is said that we are here but seconds in cosmic
time, twelve and a half billion years,
but who is saying this and why?
In the Salt Lake City airport eight out of ten
were fiddling relentlessly with cell phones.
The world is too grand to reshape with babble.
Outside the hot sun beat down on clumsy metal
birds and an actual ten million year old
crow flew by squawking in bemusement.
We’re doubtless as old as our mothers, thousand
of generations waiting for the sunlight.

Broom

To remember you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, and return to the cemetery
in evening and wind through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

Debtors

They used to say we're living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I'm alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

This One Wild and Precious Life

 

I finally got around to adding one of my most favorite lines of poetry (from Mary Oliver's The Summer Day) to canvas and know that this will be one of many works I add for inspiration in my home.  I love poetry and quotes and special strings of words that arouse my spirit and find that all too often I keep them hidden in the pages of my journal where there are not reflected upon as often as I would like.  Now I can take my favorite ones and rotate them and even give them away as they feel called to be with someone else that needs them.

This morning after a long walk with Miss Butters I sat down with a cup of heavily creamed but still quite strong coffee and Susannah Conways workbook,UNRAVELLING THE YEAR AHEAD 2013 (which also spends time reflecting upon the current year).  Please check out this link for yourself and make time for this wonderful exercise...I promise you will find all kinds of secrets within your soul just waiting to be written upon the page:   http://www.susannahconway.com/2012/12/2013-workbook/

I needed this reflection after the past 3 weeks of packing and moving and travelling back and forth between homes.  A new family has moved into our old home and I have fingers crossed that in the new year this will be their new home, full of their new dreams.  It is another chapter in my life, and a huge one in my married life, that is now over.  Alan built the home for us right after we were married and we had many dreams of the life that would be lived there, some of which came to be and some that are still to be realized and written. 

Writing about the year and gently reflecting upon it helped me to seek closure and celebration for this beautiful and messy life. This afternoon feels lighter somehow and there is the taste of possibility and a vision of a new path forming in my mind for our future.  I dream of a bungalow near the sea with an herb garden and a vegetable garden in lieu of a lawn.  There is an idea of community involvement and community gardens and paintings hung in cafes. There are renewed dreams of a child and morning walks and evening lullaby's.  There is a sense of hope that I will find the truest sense of love and belonging within myself and there is a vision of a book being written on the same table shared with paints and bobbles of other creations. 

I wish you the warmest of holidays snuggled up with your favorite loves and the bright possibility of an abundantly wild and precious New Year.  xoxo

Days Thirteen And Fourteen: Favorite Things-Painting and Poetry

A Few of My Paintings and Books of Poetry

Even though I disappeared for a few days and this is technically day 17, I wanted to finish this series with two more of my favorite things, Poetry and Painting.  By the way, day 13 was spent  perusing aisle after aisle of books on fiction, poetry, geography, field guides, crafts, and cooking at a local used book store.  My neck hurt a little after over two hours of craning it to the left and right to read all of the book spines.  I left empty handed but with a head full of ideas and headed to a craft store to pick up a few tubes of paint and a new canvas.  On my way to the check out (after fighting the "I want's" for new journals and more paint I didn't need but wanted) I spotted two books on painting and stopped to check these out.  I had heard of both of these books (Brave Intuitive Painting by Flora S. Bowley and Daring Adventures in Paint by Mati Rose McDonough) and have been eager to check them out.  After flipping through both books, I decided I would get Flora Bowley's book since I had taken an online painting class with Mati already but was new to Flora's work. I had a 20% coupon that made the purchase even more attractive and decided this would be my birthday gift to myself.  Day 14 (my birthday) was spent enjoying the gift of time with my family over a shared meal at my mother and dad's house.  We had lasagna, a huge fresh salad and chocolate cake with chocolate icing topped with roasted hazelnuts.

Both the reading and the writing of poetry have long been a favorite of mine.  After years of dormancy I began writing poetry again after attending a retreat and taking a workshop with the most wondrous Susan Wooldridge.  What a gift she gave me in finding this lost piece of myself!  Reading poetry is a balm to my soul and a reminder that I am not alone no matter how wretched I may feel at times. I initially fell in love with Whitman and then Rumi through the translations of Coleman Barks.  These days I find joy and solace in the works of Mary Oliver and John O'Donohue. It is hard to explain how a poem can move you and change you, but it can, and will.  This poem by Mary Oliver is one that stays always near the surface of my thoughts, the last two lines a question worth answering again and again :

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

 

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I began painting about 2 years ago when I signed up to take an online painting course, Get Your Paint On, taught by Lisa Congdon and Mati Rose McDonough.  With the exception of a few items (a mannequin face and wooden boxes) that I painted for a friends store years ago, I had not painted since high school.  I loved the techniques taught in this class and the images that began to appear in my work.  While my work is not purely intuitive (I generally go in with an idea) I still see in retrospect how the subjects I painted were reflective of what I was feeling at the time. Two of my favorite paintings, the Seahorses, were reflective of our struggle with fertility.  The dragonfly that I painted around the same time symbolized not only how these creatures were appearing everywhere I went but also served as a totem of sorts for the change and deeper thinking that was taking place in my life.  The painter that has long inspired me for his brilliant color, texture, and emotion is Vincent Van Gogh.

These days I have been contemplating combining words and paint on canvas because there are quotes and lines from poems that I want to have in front of me as a reminder and prompt.  The last two lines of The Summer Day poem will be my first combination. 

I would love it if you shared your favorite poets and poems and painters and paintings too.

Day Eight: Favorite Things-Awareness

It is not what you look at that matters, it is what you see.  Henry David Thoreau

Morning Run:  Fall Light flooding the Earth

This life goes by so fast and it is easy to get so caught up in to do lists and in tomorrow and next week and even yesterdays that we miss what is right in front of us.

A wild flower pushing up out of the cracked concrete sidewalk teaching us lessons of resilience and determination and beauty in unexpected places.  A shimmer of light higher in the trees indicating fall is here.  The look from a pet, child, lover or friend as they stare at us in longing that goes unnoticed. 

And it can be just as much what we don't feel as it can be what we don't see.  We don't feel gratitude because we feel scarcity because everything is  moving so fast.  We don't feel love from the pet, child, lover or friend because we are so busy getting from one thing to the next until we fall into bed and get up and start all over again.

I did this for years.  Oh every once in a while I would catch a glimpse of what seemed to be a still life all around me, a parallel universe of sorts and when I saw it I was often filled with a longing that scared me.  At times (even still)I have an all or nothing personality so I had a hard time incorporating down time and rest and awareness in my old routine.  It is now a part of everyday and it too helps ground me in the present and be thankful for this very moment.  I take daily walks and runs and purposefully listen, look, smell and hear all that I can about my surroundings. 

This evening, or tomorrow morning, or on your your way to work, or to the coffee shop, or lunch please take the moment to see life differently by doing life differently. Make a conscious effort to put away the cell phone or book or radio or i-pod or whatever it is that is distracting you (pacifying you), and just breathe and listen.  Listen to the hum of life around you.  What do you hear?  Are those crickets?  Can you hear the rustle of fall leaves through the trees?

What do you smell? Could it be the earthy and dusty crispness that comes from cooler weather and the leaves changing from green to gold? Is it bacon wafting out to the street from the open windows of your neighbor during a morning walk? Or is it your own cup of coffee you are savoring quietly and with intent on a little corner of carpet with your legs crossed indian style as you wake up to today and all its possibilities? 

What do your eyes notice today that you have overlooked before?  Is the light flooding into the room at a certain tilt that always fills you with a particular happiness that you have not recognized until this very moment? What colors are filling the earth these days; what color are the leaves, what flowers are blooming, is the sky a particular shade of blue?    

Take a different route to work or leave at a different time.  If you work from home, then work from a coffee shop, café, or park for the day.  Or maybe you can get up just 15 minutes earlier and arise with the thought that today is a new beginning, a brand new day and all yours for the taking.  Smile at each person you come into contact with today and really notice them.  Get out of your head (I know it is so hard to do) and look all around you.  

I don’t guarantee this will change your life, just that you will be more aware of your life and present to it and that with practice a more active participant in it.

What do you do in your own life to practice awareness?

Day Three: Favorite Things-Running

Sun climbing through the trees on an early morning run

First let me say I am new at running.  I began walking at a beautiful heavily wooded park two years ago when I quit smoking.  The walking, stretching my legs and lungs, and connecting with the outside world helped me make it through this change.

Six months later I began going to a local greenway with my husbands sister.  She was recovering from a speed skating accident and began walking with me and encouraging me to run between certain marked positions and to walk through others ultimately helping me to build my endurance and confidence. 

After we moved to Charlotte, I began running in the cemetery near our condo.  The cemetery met my needs for tranquility and for nature as it is a large green space.  I was also still shy about running in front of others and was not confident to run on the streets and sidewalks around town. On average I ran 1-2 miles 3-4 times a week.

In March of this year I started running everyday with my brother who decided to take up the sport again.  Then my sister let me know that she and my other siblings had signed up for a 5k and so we signed up too.  After several 5K's and one 8K my brother challenged me to a 1/2 marathon. 

I am now just 4 weeks away from my first 1/2 marathon, the Savannah GA Rock and Roll Marathon and 1/2 Marathon and am now running 25-30 miles per week, 5 days a week.

Why do I love running?  Well for one thing it quiets my avid monkey mind.  Don't get me wrong it is still at work but on new subject matter such as bargaining how to cut out a few miles or at what landmark would make a good breaking point.  I also love how it has made my city and other cities I have ran in seem so much smaller.    If you really want to get to know your community, go run (or walk) it.  You will see all the beauty and nuances that are missed by driving.  Hidden alleyways and gardens are stumbled upon, architectural details are seen up close, and I get to see the people that make up my city and neighborhood as well.  One of the greatest parts of running is being out doors; seeing, feeling and smelling the seasons change, hearing and watching the birds (city hawks and the tam-like finches), looking for feathers and little snail shells and four leaf clovers....being in touch with my environment. 

On my thirtieth birthday by best friend Vila said something to me that I took as a challenge.  She didn't mean it that way but it startled me and make me think of the brevity of this life and the choices I made.  She said that whatever choices and behaviors you had developed by 30 you would likely have for the rest of your life.  On the eve of my fortieth birthday I truly feel stronger in body and in spirit than I did 10 years ago and I thank Vila for being a catalyst for that...and for her love and friendship and support no matter what habits or behaviors I have had over the years.

"There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be." - George Sheehan

Day Two: Favorite Things-Meditation



My Sister's Buddha

 "Tranquility hides in small places ,and when found must  be treasured, because you know it's a phantom that will slip away again." Diane Ackerman

 

I practice meditation.  Not often enough to receive the full benefit I believe is possible but often enough to know it can have a profound and instant effect on my mood and overall physical well being.  I don't subscribe to a lot of rules about it either, believing that there are different ways to do it and right ways and wrong ways for the individual but no one set universal way.  But that is just my take on it.  I meditate to relax, to release, to reconnect, and to calm.  Meditation raises my energy level which may seem to contradict calmness, but it is more a release of energetic endorphins I suppose, a feeling of glowing. 

 

My first experience with meditation of any form came in college in a Human Behaviors course.  Our instructor talked about time management and about carving time out for ourselves.  In retrospect I see that I had a ton to learn here had I just paid more attention to the lesson instead of the grade.  Being hard headed means that I have come to some of life's gifts much later than others. He was trying to teach us to seek out quiet moments for ourselves, so we could reconnect with the core essence of who we are, so we could recalibrate and restore.  I remember laying on the carpeted floor in his class room, lights out & limbs sprawling, as he talked us through relaxing starting at our toes and wiggling up to our eye balls as we relaxed every fiber of our being. I fell asleep at some point, just briefly, and jarringly woke up from that falling feeling where you "catch yourself" that feels like jumping out of your skin. It was amazing!

 

When I first began taking yoga I lived for the very end of class when we would gather in a circle, each of us sitting cross legged on the edge of our cushions.  Slowly we would breath in and as we released the breath we would release the tension with it gentling rolling our neck from side to side and releasing our shoulders.  And then came the OM.  In unison we would begin to OM, our teachers voice deep and powerful, vibrating outward to our own little OM's rattling in our chests until eventually it was one golden OM, no one's voice recognizable from another.

 

Sometimes I use meditation like a prayer to send out positive energy to those on my mind, visualizing healing and lightness of being for them.  Sometimes I look up You-Tube meditations that are guided and follow along. 

 

Right now I am really enjoying Toning. Toning is the creation of extended vocal sounds on a single vowel in order to experience the sound and its effects in other parts of the body.  I consider it meditation because it creates for me a profound amount of peace and energy, and I do it intentionally as a recalibration and cleansing...it feels like the vibrations from the sounds create space within me and release negative energy and feelings.  

The first time I heard of toning was in Diane Ackerman's One Hundred Names for Love:  A Stroke, A Marriage, and the Language of Healing.  She described how she made these noises upon rising in the morning.  I was reading the book on a semi-deserted beach and decided to give it a try.  I immediately began smiling.  In part because I felt so silly, and also because I felt like a whale or dolphin calling out to her sisters in the sea.  It was the setting most likely.  I did some research on what I was doing after we returned from our trip and learned those sounds are called Toning.

 

Below are some tips on Specific Toning Exercises.  I typically just go through the vowels A-E-I-O-U as this is easy for me to remember without referring to any materials, but the intent behind the vowels is energy specific  and can help with specific needs. 

 

Vowels and Energy

There are many vowel sounds in the human language.

For toning we begin by focusing on several principal sounds. Remember, this is not a list of universal truths, just some traditional suggestions for you to begin with.

Vowel	Possible Attributes or Related Perceptions
UU ("who")	grounding, calming, relaxing, awareness of physicality, gives sensation of depth, base of spine
OH ("go")	conscious self-image, identity issues, solar plexus self-confidence, individuality
AH ("car")	centering, expanding, pleasant heartfelt emotions, gives sensation of breadth, heart area
EY ("pray")	self-expression, communication, listening throat and neck
EE ("knee")	energizing, awakening, mental and physical stamina, gives sensation of length, head
MM (humming, lips closed)	balancing, harmonizing and integrating, the subtlest and most powerful sound
Examples of vowel combinations for balancing and centering (to be vocalized as one continuous full-breath tone exhalation): "UU-AH-EE-MM" Balance and energize. Morning wakeup. "MM-EE-AH-UU" Balance and relax. Before bedtime.

Note: this is a list of just a few traditional suggestions to begin with. Your own awareness may be quite different; that's fine! These are just starting points. There is no "normal" toning experience, only "your" experience! With practice, your inner wisdom will guide you and tell you what vowels you need.

 

Do you practice any form of meditation? 

 

 

 

On Journal Keeping

 

 The above picture captures the books and journals that I am currently reading, re-reading, generally refering to and/or writing in.  I often choose books just for their titles and the  The Elegance of the Hedgehog intrigued me for that very reason.  Choosing books like this is similiar to choosing a wine for the beauty of the bottle which I have also been known to do.  One thing for sure with this method is you never know what you might get.

While reading this book I have come across so many words and lines that I have circled or underlined that had an eloquence to them that I wanted to remember.  While reading last week I came across these words and they reminded me of this post that I had done earlier:

The lines gradually become their their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know.  The painless birth, like an unsolicited proof, gives me untold pleasure, and with neither toil nor certaintiy but the joy of frank astonishment I follow the pen that is guiding and supporting me.
~The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

I have not kept to journaling as much these past few weeks and this was a nice reminder of what I am missing.