Monthly Archives: January 2024

Jan12

A conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know…

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“…on the page you’re exploring a part of yourself that you wouldn’t really let out, and things start happening on the page which you can never get to in your logical brain.” You are my witness, here, but I still write “morning pages.” Morning pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling as recommended by Julia Cameron is her series The Artist’s Way. It is no exaggeration that this practice has saved my life. More than once.

There are websites dedicated to this practice. Two I use are Write Honey (free) and 750 Words (nominal fee) but Cameron suggests we write longhand in a notebook if possible. I use them all. I purchase composition books in bulk and a box of inexpensive pens that I like, and I’m set, internet service or not. Small price to pay for sanity. I paint sometimes, less consistently than I care to admit. If I run out of tubes of artists colors I use leftover house paint. If I run out of canvas I use cardboard or walls. Don’t stand still around me too long lest I decorate you.

Over the decades I’ve had to learn to let go of the finished outcome. It truly is the process that does the healing. “And then you have a conversation with what you don’t know you don’t know about your own anxiety,” she reports. So find yourself old magazines to tear apart and glue together differently, bake, sew, knit, SING, dance, rhyme your sentences for a day, follow a bird through the woods, skip rocks on water…laugh.

“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong,” my Mother said. It’s never wrong coming from your true heart. Trust yourself.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Hp0KoXh6Rnc%3Fsi%3DgTn5_XhJjMN6xtu3

“…in time you will move mountains, and it will come through your hands.” – John Hiatt

Jan10

Let’s Talk About Communication

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This week I want to continue this theme of communication – and the library. Few of us have a room we can dedicate as a library, but some of us have a den, or perhaps a bookshelf. Let’s all incorporate the sense of a library into our interior spaces as best we can. Again, if it can be done on a minuscule budget, I will find a way. There is a direct correlation between books and language, of course. The more you read the better you know yourself, and the better you will communicate. Who can separate the value of that process out from their mental health? Not me.

A healthy mind builds a trusted imagination – an intuitive imagination. I’ve talked about this in some of my videos teaching the tarot and psychic development through my other blog and YouTube channel, Crow Quill Tarot. I cannot separate any of these elements out of my life; each informs and enriches the other.

Decades ago a therapist challenged me to improve my communication skills. She told me “your ability to communicate directly affects the quality of your life.” I told her she had lived in California too long. And have since spent forty-odd years or so trying to disprove her statement – unsuccessfully, I might add.

Designer Thomas O’Brien has built his dream home AS a library. I’ve written about this video before, having been inspired by the garden, and specifically the willow trees (see blog post of December 3rd, 2018,) but I can’t address the concept of library without referring to it. He seems to have mastered this idea of a completely integrated work and home life.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=yMzSVEaWq5c%3Fsi%3Dc6bRZErRQWNlj9D9

“There is no such thing as working from home. But you can live at work.” – unknown

Jan8

The Library

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“Adding the strength and power of the natural world to what we play with…” Barry Dixon describes. Where does inspiration come from? Here, it comes from the woods, the flora of the region, the solar system, his own cutting garden, men who work all night in their libraries and women who have influenced horticulture and design. Notice how these elements complement each other beautifully. The children’s books live on the lower shelves within their reach. Every attention to detail has been thoughtfully considered. Listen to Barry speak so eloquently and precisely. We will continue to discuss how language impacts our lives profoundly, how essential it is to develop a vocabulary that can support your personal expression, and we will also look at how changing your relationship to language improves the quality of your life. I could listen to him speak all day.

Here is exemplary evidence of why developing your imagination and intuition is important. This is a great example of why good design matters, and more specifically design with intention: because WE LIVE HERE.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=y2qGqlyGtAs%3Fsi%3DRGi93NktJgBBLNYS

“Home is heaven for beginners.” – unknown

Jan6

Maximize That Weirdo Space…

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Several posts ago now I promised you help with decluttering. I’m reneging…I cannot get interested in this topic here. Buuuuhhh-lah. So here is a weekend bonus: Caroline Winkler has got us covered. There are a few tips here, and I will also offer this thought: don’t think about organization. In my experience this takes care of itself when you declutter. Now I happen to love clutter. CONTAINED clutter. This is how you visually calm your interior: you contain the clutter in, you know, containers. Trays are my friend; never too many trays…and baskets, and when all else fails, decorative boxes. Hooks everywhere. Wrangle all the tiny little detritus of life into some semblance of order by categorizing it, like with like.

Here is Caroline Winkler to let you know what you’re doing wrong…hahhaaaaaaaa….and yes, I love my Magic Eraser. It’s probably full of chemicals and not environmentally friendly – but it’s MENTALLY friendly. You will have to pry the Magic Eraser out of my cold, dead hands.

Once again for the people in the back:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=xRGXi1aTh1w%3Fsi%3D7wJJblBcCzHRhe8v
Jan5

Meet Tubby and Glad,

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the chairs she named after her Grandmother’s sisters. We wish they could talk, too, Monique. In this exuberant home we see fearless use of color. Again, a theme I call “follow your heart” decorating. Buy what you love – unapologetically. Your home IS your altar, the proclamation of your tenacity and of true faith – in life. Was it Picasso who said “artists live out loud?” Live like you mean it.

I was as glad for a new year as anyone. But I experienced a weird phenomenon: there was a deep sadness, too. I felt like I was leaving someone behind. My younger brother died unexpectedly in his sleep eight months ago. Somehow acknowledging the passing of the year felt as though I was abandoning him. I had to say goodbye all over again. Yet I had not thought of that or felt that way on the new year following either of my parents deaths; had not felt like I was leaving them…what was that? I dreamt of Ward on New Years eve, we said goodbye with love and affection, and some type of awareness that this was it for us. I don’t feel his spirit around me anymore.

I have come to appreciate the gift of grief, not to recoil from it. I appreciate my anger. Surely any healing requires acceptance of the full range of our emotion. Gratitude waits on the other side of allowing for it all. I’m so grateful he was my brother.

What has this got to do with decoration? If you haven’t gleaned a theme in this blog yet, it is the fact that I do not know how to separate interior design from interior experience…it’s all the same for me, as within, so without…I FEEL colors. I feel everything. I absolutely GIVE UP trying not to. Because at nearly 70 years of age, I utterly and completely give up trying to be anything other than who I am.

AND – here’s the thing: I just want to grow up. I want to mature spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I want to heal this year, finally, from a lifetime in survival mode. From multi-generational abuse and mental illness, and from living defensively. I’m finally willing to be vulnerable. And the fact is, probably much like you, I have been on a lifelong search for truth, for the cure for this human condition, for “enlightenment” (deliver me.) I want nothing to do with that quest any longer. It holds no value. We both know it’s an INTERIOR issue.

Instead I will seek joy. In every little nook and cranny. I will sing at the top of my lungs off key! I will paint anything that stands still long enough – any color I feel. I might even name my furniture. I want to be warm and cozy and fat and sassy (so far, so good…) I will not abide beige.

My sweet brother never had a chance at any quality of life or happiness. But that’s a story for another time and place. Meanwhile I will not back down from living my life as an artist, in full living color.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mzs4fqP4fvg%3Fsi%3DXVXITYm5IfCJfgHu

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” – May Sarton

Jan3

What the Muck?!

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Okay you – yes, you. Here’s a bandwagon I can jump on! Wendy Knox is on a campaign to re-brand aging. She’s turning muck into magic. Let’s support her any way we can. For starters, let’s subscribe to her YouTube channel and like her videos and let her know we are listening:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=UZdwqtcN1dE%3Fsi%3DfhDgiPo0p2yFhYVA
Jan1

“Imagination is the Language of the Divine…”

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…is a quote often credited to Einstein. He was on to something. Neuroscience has now been able to map the brain and observe the neurons firing, the brain lighting up, when certain functions occur. Thanks to this we now know that intuition and imagination are the same neurological function. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t manifest it (the old red car theory.) What if earth is God’s playground?

Take the issue of intuition, then. Without it, we literally would not have survived as a species. Your gut tightens and your thoughts prompt you in a different direction: don’t take off when the light turns green, that kind of thing. I’ll bet we don’t know how many times our intuition has saved our life. I can think of a few that I know of, but how many more am I not so aware of?

As it happens the way to develop a strong trust in our intuition is to play with our imagination. To play at creativity. That does not necessarily require making art – baking bread for a neighbor is creative. Have you ever read to a child and made up voices? How do we literally “come unto him as little children?” Open-hearted, empty-minded, both sides of the brain engaged? The answer is: WE PLAY.

The woman in this film actually looks a lot like the younger me. Oh how I miss her. She’s still inside of the wrinkled old me and I’m going to let her play today. I will simply follow her lead. Won’t you join me?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=DrsFz7ysqoo%3Fsi%3DhrFdZyydtKb0tXSr