With the recent drop in temps, I asked my son if he is working outside this week. “Outside what? My comfort zone?” “Comfort zone? What’s a comfort zone?” I replied. When was the last time you felt comfortable? I don’t mean in your clothes or bed, of course…I mean with your life. To quote one of my favorite artists, life is so life-y right now. We are reminded not to let our guard down daily, at least in these here United States. We know we are teetering on the precipice of hell; too many are already living in it daily. Don’t look down.
My personal hell revolves around my personal grief right now. I must do the last few chores to prepare the house and yard for winter. Everything was put on hold when the cat became ill. The deck still has its’ outdoor rugs and umbrella. The outdoor iron furniture scoots around in the wind like plastic toys. As the leaves fall the wind becomes a screaming locomotive on top of this sand dune. Bring it on. I’m so angry. I just want to scream back.
For over a decade now I have harped on about how it will ultimately be the artists who save us. They warn us, then they fight for us, then they lead us through our redemption. That’s their job. That and creating beauty from nothing. In case you thought they had a comfort zone, think again.
Unknowingly, but not coincidentally, Florence Welsh wrote me a song. She is the voice of our times. Comfort zone this.
“Here I don’t have to be quiet. Here I don’t have to be kind, extraordinary and normal all at the same time.” – Florence Welsh
Please bear with me; I can’t talk right now. I’m silenced by grief. But I can listen to the mystic Carolyn Myss, because she speaks truth. Truth to power: meaning, to you and me. I’ve had some extraordinary awarenesses come to me as I sit vigil with my dying cat. I cannot articulate them yet.
I cannot yet explain what a powerful influence this little being has bought to my life. It would not make sense to you. None of this makes sense. But my animal body knows the truth of it. I know what I know. I know the enormous, unlimited love he has served my life with, the truth he carried here to bless me with. The healing he facilitated daily. When he could not protect me he called a black bear to patrol in his stead. We have lost his body and by no means his spirit.
What I can share at this time is the truth school of Carolyn Myss. Carolyn Myss is The Hanged Man. The Hanged Man archetype is the embodiment of God knowledge, to the degree that the human body can tolerate it’s force without dis-integrating. Think Dr. Ellie Arroway in the movie Contact – she did not disintegrate traveling through space and time. She returned changed, with knowledge that would serve all of mankind. No one believes her. She must find a way to communicate her knowing. Carolyn Myss is that person – she found a way to get the information across to us “mere mortals.” I don’t where I would be without her, or without the feline revolutionary I knew as Chewy.
Today, because there isn’t much else I can do, I am going to keep listening to this on a loop, praying to God that I just might grok some of it. That maybe, just maybe, I can become better at distinguishing between the lies of tribal conditioning and the Truth of God, of Life. Join me, and just for today, let your credibility be stretched beyond belief. Be honest about what you know, even if you sound crazy to most. Because you can no longer deny truth. Your body recognizes it. And turning honest limits your choices.
Bitch, please…I grew up in Detroit. For those of you who are not familiar, or accept the cultural collective’s jokes and voodoo euphemisms of Detroit, you’re missing out. Detroit is the heart and soul of America. It is fu@king awesome. Go. Stay in the New Center area and spend a couple days at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Drive around and take in some of the most spectacular historical architecture in the United States. You won’t see it all in that time, but enough to enjoy yourself enormously and appreciate it’s beauty and world-class culture.
Then take yourself “up north.” This is where I have lived the past 40 years. Let me tell you a bit about how I came here, and why I stay.
My father grew up on a farm outside of Traverse City, where my Irish ancestors had immigrated and settled during the potato famine. About to enter high school, his father moved the family to Detroit during the automobile boom. And so I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and often visited my great-grandparents and aunts and uncles on Long Lake, west of Traverse City, in the summer months. By the time I was in my early twenties I would spend as much time as possible here, staying with my great Aunt Edith, my grandfather’s sister, in the old farmhouse out on Cedar Run Road. My young son had baths in the big iron sink after I pumped water from the well and heated it – on the stove I’d built a fire in. I would put on one of my great grandmother’s old house dresses, crank up the Victrola, and dance around the living room…romantically imagining I lived in a simpler time…way back when. Until Aunt Edith became impatient with my immature fantasies and reminded me that we had no trash pick up or mail delivery – and I needed to get my arse in gear. Those errands were not going to do themselves.
I have about a million and thirty stories I could tell that depend on the geography of both places, and all around the Great Lakes. There is nowhere else like Michigan on earth. And while it is great, not all of my childhood was great. I came from a big dysfunctional family that often settled differences with fist fights and spent years stubbornly not speaking to one another, depending on the current offensive issue. This blog is full of many – by no means all, of those stories, from day one, back in 2012. That was when I began to write as though my life depended on it, not knowing how true that was.
The move from Detroit to Traverse City was purposefully to get my child away from my family, and their drug and alcohol-induced violence. To be safe. To start over. It was the naive plan of a young woman suffering from PTSD, not yet aware of her ADHD, her mental and emotional limitations. It didn’t work. Not only did I not escape my own demons, but my family members were inspired by my new life and followed me. Over the course of the next few years they all moved north, too.
We live here now. Now I actually live about 50 miles west of Traverse, near the shore of Lake Michigan. My son grew up here. We have both traveled some; enough to know this is home. But home has come to mean an internal space for me as I age. It’s funny, the name of this blog…a painterly home. I thought it would be about interior design. Little did I know it would be about interior design – as in, my spiritual interior. There are so many more stories to unpack and share. I’m grateful beyond words for this journal and your readership. It continues to save my life on a weekly basis.
Today I am grieving as my sweet familiar, Chewy, is dying. I’m not ready to lose him. Many of you know that I had two elderly dogs I cherished when Chewbacca the cat came to live with us. I was asked if I could please help out a friend and foster him for a couple of months about 8 years ago. What a blessing he has been. He fit right in with the dogs, becoming immediately inseparable from my little beagle, Odie. I’ve written other posts about them, of course (see Sept. 9, 2025, Chew de Monk). I never would have chosen these silly names for these magnificent beings. But they were already displaced and going through enough adjustment to impose any others unnecessarily. For starters, Chewy became known as a catdog. He did not know that he wasn’t a dog. Since we lost Odie in 2020, Chewy has seldom left my side. Like the dogs, he feels it is his duty to be constantly underfoot. He follows me from room to room. He insists on touching while we sleep, just as he did with Odie; he extends one of his back legs and pushes it against my thigh. I will aver that he understands English perfectly. All of it. Only an hour or so ago I mentioned out loud that I would give him a bit more liquid and medicine in the syringe again, hoping he can rally. He begrudgingly pulled himself up and walked the few steps to his water fountain and took the first drink he has had in two or three days.
Yesterday doesn’t count. We spent the day at the emergency clinic while he got IV liquids, a warm enema, pain and diabetes meds, in an attempt to save him. We came home last night exhausted. He has barely moved and still isn’t eating. I haven’t given up. I keep telling him that I won’t ever give up on him, and that if he can pull through this I will do everything in my power to improve the quality of his life. I’ve promised new toys. I also told him that if he is too tired he is free to go. I will miss him every day for the rest of my life, and I will remember daily all the joy he brought. Rejoice at the thought of he and Odie together again. Still in a magnificently beautiful place, with all the loves that I don’t know how to live without.
“I’m restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” – Anais Nin
If you would please be patient, I’ve been a bit manic this week. Got a bee buzzin’ in my bonnet. Change is afoot, and I’m not sure what it’s about yet…it’s a feeling, a sense. When I’m not busy painting the house and all the furniture in it, I’ve been reading and working through the exercises in The Prism, just out from Laura Day. It is changing me; it couldn’t not. And my world is beginning to shift like a glitch in the matrix. Reality is a little wobbly. I have had these experiences every so often throughout my life – enough to trust that I’m in exactly the right place at the right time. I’m safe, protected. Spirit has got my attention.
Awake in the early morning hours as usual, I was sitting up in bed reading just before dawn. A strange woman walked right through my dimly lit kitchen, clearly visible through my bedroom door. I looked straight at her, knowing she wasn’t “real,” or at least solid (I’d have heard her come in.) I must have startled her. She saw me, stopped, and backed up. Like, “oops, she can see me…” I laughed out loud. I have no idea who she was or why she was there. Just passin’ through, I guess. She certainly got my attention.
At the moment I’m not so solid either. My body feels a bit like it’s being pulled in two directions at once. You know the feeling…vertigo comes and goes, you don’t sleep soundly. Heavy foods don’t appeal, but you need some extra protein. So pay attention to self care, be mindful of your diet; keep it clean. No sugar. And do activities that are grounding. Health is a priority right now.
The weird phenomena I’m noticing may be the position of the planets, the effect of 3I/ATLAS, or something in bloom in my garden. I don’t need to understand it. I need to use it to redirect my life, which is obviously going through an adjustment. Don’t resist the adjustment, rather make it a healing. Pay attention – pay attention to intuition. Laura Day is right about it; it is a superpower.
Have you also noticed how differently the wild animals are behaving lately? They are trying to communicate with us. They’re asking for help. They’re also offering. The birds and squirrels are leaving me gifts outside this fall. And trying to get in. Are they offering rent?! One squirrel keeps trying to leap in the window, bouncing off the screen. I’m tempted to rent her a room. Perhaps she came to tell me that Jane Goodall has passed away. A crow came and perched two feet outside my window, looked straight in at me, and talked right at me moments after my friend and neighbor Hal died. I knew exactly what it was saying. He was their friend, too. They know when something has shifted in our world.
And I keep waking with song worms playing in my head. They’re often songs I have not heard in half a century. I’d completely forgotten them. I suddenly smell cigarettes; I’ve never smoked. I hear faint crying when no one is around. A breeze gently rustles the trees outside and my grandmother’s plate falls off the wall at that same instant. I can’t explain any of this; again, I don’t really care to. I do trust it. Let’s just summarize by saying the veil is thin. I’m not quite sure what that means either.
I’m going to look at a house for sale today. I’m in no position to move. But I noticed the little house last week AFTER having dreamt about it. No idea what that is about. But I do know enough about intuition and how it works to ACT ON IT when you get it, because you never know where it will lead.
My dear Mother used to play the guitar and sing. This was one of her favorite songs; it woke me this morning. What is she trying to tell me? What is this song about? Well, it’s time for a change. It’s about equity. Remember equity? Justice? Compassion? These are all values my Mother taught me. They are certainly being pressed into use these days. At any rate, she’s singing to me. She’s reminding me that I have a hammer, I have a bell, and I have a song to sing. I DO clearly know what that means. It means I am a powerful, creative being. I have agency. Everything I think and everything I do effects my life and the world around me.
Remember, you heard it here first: Ultimately, it will be the artists who save us. It always has been. It always will be.
A Painterly Home 