Always Maira. She will show us the way to the absurd and glorious in life. She reminds us to revel in our inconsistencies. She is my pastor this Sunday morning. Welcome to my church:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Dec31
Category Archives: courage
Dec29
No way to the future now…
“What actually happens is this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you.” He is hilarious here. What a treasure he is. Here he takes us to Finisterre and beyond…Happy New Life.
“Who would not go on a while longer were it given them to know, the way is short, and Heaven is the goal…?” – ACIM
Dec27
“The World Was Made to Be Free In…
…give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong…ANYTHING or ANYONE that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” Happy New Year!
Dec25
NOW you are FREE
Jenny Jackson is my superhero. She is “four years away from ninety.” She has a red refrigerator. She is an expert at making wrong moves in life. She sews buttons on her shoes. She lives on the edge of terror. And she is grateful. I love her. I love you, too. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
“I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
Dec18
Big, Beautiful Questions…
Ahhhhh….the wisdom of not knowing, yes…perhaps the greatest gift of age. “Very little makes sense to me these days…” she says. The world is crazier and crazier than I ever could have imagined. How will we navigate these atrocities to our collective soul? The only way I know to be is curious.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse reminds me to change my inner language, to think like a child again. The Lakota language does not contain nouns. There are no words to define us, only verbs. We are all in a state of becoming. I require constant reminding of this. I do know how to live intuitively. Fifty-five years of working with the tarot has helped with that; I hate to think where I’d be without it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Simple, not easy.
Intuition is the only thing that ever saved me. It is intregal to the creative process. I’ve said for decades that “ultimately, it is the artists who will save us.” It is. The writers, the painters, the musicians, those who live intuitively. Einstein knew it. The stoics knew it. Toni Morrison knew it: “Your life is already artful – waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.”
It’s not too late and I am not too old. Bonnie Garmus published her first novel at the age of sixty-five. After 98 rejections. She knew something and didn’t back away from what she didn’t know. Julia Cameron teaches the wisdom of not knowing in her series The Artist’s Way. It’s a system for creative recovery – not a how to on being an artist. It’s not about producing a thing, a product, a finished piece! It’s about learning to live like a child again. Vulnerable. Curious. Open-hearted. Available to intuition – to hearing the divine speaking within you.
“…forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in…” Leonard Cohen wrote in his brilliant Anthem.
“…the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” – Indigo Girls
Dec10
SHE LET GO
Good Sunday Morning. Let’s have church, shall we? How sacred is this precious life we are sharing on this precious planet? One of my former husbands (don’t judge) used to say, “life is not for the faint of heart…” Can I get an Amen?!
Only recently back to this form of expression, I want to share with you, my revered friends, who have patiently stuck it out with me through years of grief – and anger (phew!) – and, more importantly, humor and insights and love. Just love. We always come back around to opening our hearts. It’s a PRACTICE. It’s a practice of letting go. Of learning to shed our conditioned defenses, of healing.
Turns out healing is a lifelong process (who knew?) and I’m so grateful to have lived to almost seventy now; to find out that I am never going to figure this all out. It’s not figure-out-able. It wasn’t meant to be. As I’ve said since my 20’s, “on the road to enlightenment, I’m taking the local.”
“Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places…” – May Sarton
“Anything I have ever let go of has claw marks.” – unk
SHE LET GO by Safire Rose
Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear, she let go of the judgements. She let go of the opinions swarming around in her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go…
No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.
There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was and it is just that. In the space of letting go, she let it all be.
A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forever more.
Dec9
Be Very Afraid…
She’s afraid of beige…I so get that. Beige is a euphemism for mediocrity. Mediocrity scares me. It has frightened me away from writing, here and elsewhere. It has frightened me away from painting. But ya know what? Screw that…I will turn 70 in a few months. I’m tired of being afraid – of anything. I’ve lost people that I don’t know how to live without. I’ve lost beloved pets – some of my best life companions, shitloads of money, my sanity more than once…
When I began this blog many years ago I was grieving heavily. I still am. I’ve come to understand that grief is part of my everyday life, and I am so good with that. It’s a portal to an open heart and a remarkable way to live more fully.
Since you have wandered here today, please come back soon. I’m going to explore this world again and I would relish your company, and your input. I plan to write and share ideas, music, books, and most importantly, inspiration. I need more of it, and don’t we all?
“…the insidious, evil, creeping taupe…” – Alexandra Stoddard
“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong.” – my Mom, Doris
Oct29
Full Circle
What seems like a lifetime ago now, I was suffering terrible illness, depression and anxiety. My life was falling apart. Without the support I needed or the means to get away, I began to think of how I could help myself through these dark days…and I remembered a book that had inspired me years prior: The Artist’s Way. I knew I had it somewhere, maybe in a box in the basement. It had not been unpacked since the last move. Perhaps this could help me. It was a good place to start, and I certainly had nothing to lose.
It was the holiday season and life was all busyness. So I set a goal to begin the first of the year. I went to the basement, brushed the construction sawdust off the boxes and found the book, inscribed by the friend who had gifted it to me in 1997. It was now December of 2012. Reverently I carried it up the stairs and set it on my nightstand where I could surely find it after all the hubbub and the visiting family had waned.
Within hours I received an email from another old friend, now a psychologist, who was asking if I would be interested in attending a group study she was about to facilitate – based on the book The Artist’s Way. When “coincidences” happen like that – which they often do for me – I feel heard, and led, by God. I could hardly wait to go; but more importantly, I knew in that moment I would be alright. In retrospect I must report that I believe this class, and the extraordinary women I would meet there, literally saved my life.
Immediately I began the practice of writing “Morning Pages”, the commitment asked of her students in the book – to journal, first thing upon waking, at least 3 pages a day. One of my favorite diversions from the stress of everyday life at the time was my addiction to interior design magazines, and their new format online: BLOGS! And I decided to write a blog. Not necessarily for sharing, but for the cathartic writing that would pull me out of the darkness.
Well. Here I sit years later, still inept at the technology needed to do this efficiently! But late in 2012 I accidentally learned how to post a video from YouTube to WordPress. And for reasons I cannot fathom today, I posted a video on January 1, 2013, of Tina Turner chanting with children.
Yesterday a Tina Turner video showed up for some weird reason as recommendation after a design video – which I’m STILL addicted to! The dominos of time and space were falling…and so I watched. And became so inspired. I have read news reports lately of her continuing struggle with cancer and poor health. NOTHING keeps this woman down. I learned that she has had a kidney transplant, battled cancer more than once, and lost her beloved son to suicide not long ago. She has overcome more adversity than most of us will ever know, and still she rises. I am in awe. On May 16th, 2018 she was interviewed by Oprah and talks of how, at 73, she is happier than she ever could have imagined. There is hope for us all.
Oct3
Chien Lunatique
This house has been one of my “all-time favs” also…this artist has got it goin’ on. You know she’s living life to the fullest. Susanne gets it: it’s deeply personal. Not being a drinker, I don’t know what much of this stuff is that she’s talking about – but I DO drink Limeade…and am a coffee-holic. I’ve always made coffee ice cubes so my iced coffee doesn’t get diluted. I’m serious.
Anyway, I maintain that all “true beings” love color, Lulu, and that we make far too many compromises in our own love homes. My home is a love home – I love my home, my land, my pets, my bed, my memories, my time here , my sweet, sweet life…
“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
Sep5
Eat, Pray, Crib…
Elizabeth Gilbert is an American icon, of course, and certainly one of my heroes. As an aspiring memoirist, I have followed her career since Eat, Pray, Love made her a household name. Here she takes us on a silly tour of the house she was selling in 2012. Gorgeous house! (Great artwork, too.) Damn. Missed it, or as Maxwell Smart would say, “missed it by that much…”
For some reason she is uncharacteristically giggly here, but nonetheless, stick with it to see the magical details built in to the “SKY-BRARY”, and the gardens. Not yet in bloom, I can only imagine how glorious they are in the summer.
We know much heartbreak would visit Liz in the years to follow, and yet still somehow the writing that would inspire us all to keep going. I only wish her well, and that her recent living spaces have proven worthy shelters for such a magnificent spirit.
It’s a humid, hot day in northwestern Michigan, but there is a wind, and so I must have the windows open. I love my home; I love my hills…could I ever leave? Oh, sure. Like Liz, I have always moved often. There is something inherently cleansing for your soul about paring down; always editing. Homemaking is so completely, consumptively, creative. So I do understand her selling…maybe…I guess.
A Painterly Home 