I Think a Muse Has Come For a Visit

Finding myself solitary, just the dog and me, iPod and the window by the bed with the lights off -- i realize, is bliss. 

How often do we get to savor such moments with nary a distraction except the occasional pause to listen to some music? Hmmm...Life is as we take it. One friend is teaching me to embrace the light and dark parts of myself. So in silence and in a kind of disengagement i lose myself in thought. I can almost even smell what silence is like. Even as a young girl i would climb our rooftop in the late afternoon to catch the breeze           and take in the view of the nearby fields. It was my ritual detaching from the world below. 

View from Padi's Point, Antipolo

A Reflection

A Thousand Lanterns
by LaurenAnn

Hollow is the heart never broken;
Like the lonely space inside the drum;

With pangs and crushing comes fullness;
Just like the soil must be turned in preparation
for planting;

So our tender hearts must be tilled;
And our souls
Soggy with tears;

Will soon explode with a blinding light;
As if a star, a glittering speck amongst a million others;
Chose to leave its home in the sky;
And captivate us with its supernatural brilliance.

So what was once dark now shines
With the glow of a thousand lanterns.

Japanese Lantern Flower

(Physalis alkekengi)

You. Me. -- Artist

"Most of us are uncomfortable thinking of ourselves as artists...But each of us is an artist...With every choice, every day, you are creating a unique work of art. Something that only you can do...The reason you were born was to live your own indelible mark on the world. This is your own authenticity...Respect your creative urges...step out in faith...you will discover your choices are as authentic as you are. What is more, you will discover that your life is all that it was meant to be: a joyous sonnet of thanksgiving."

                        ~Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance

So encouraged after reading the passage from Simple Abundance. I am often teased by my sons about my being an artist --- not because of any form of art i create but because of their perceived moodiness in me. I do have it in my veins --- the painful urge to make something one may call art. Sometimes i dabble in sewing crafts, put together some collages as cards for encouragement, and at times -- i dream of being able to make leather or fabric-covered journals.  On some days, i wish i could paint.

I realize that i have not given the respect due these urges. They have only been suspended in the hazy cloud of mere ideas. Long have they been wanting to be given birth to, i suspect. 

Yet art or no art --- my daily living is a showcase of how i enflesh the possibilities offered me by my Creator, the Great Artist.  I choose to live purposefully, vibrantly, with courage and  faith to get me going. 

A joyous sonnet of thanksgiving --- that's my kind of life.

Quilt-ridden

Our lives are like quilts - bits and pieces, joy and sorrow, stitched with love.

I feel that i am about to embark on a journey within --- see where it leads me. I have started on a new kind of fast to cleanse myself internally and spiritually. It is an attempt to do better, to emerge from self-imposed deprivations with a new take on life.

As of the moment, i still have to nail down a lot of stuff: my skewered thoughts, my lack of joie de vivre, and a lot of unnecessary baggage that has become too heavy to lug around. Almost like the show Hoarders. It is revolting to accumulate too much stuff thought of as important only to be buried in it. All the clutter sucks the life out.

So painstakingly, i will sort what goes, and what stays. I will see what pieces need to be put together, and what needs to be snipped off. Who says i can't reorder my life?

Flower Fix

Thank you, Creator of Flowers. 

You are so gracious, gentle, 

loving and kind for allowing us 

to enjoy the exquisite work of your hands. 

May we bloom wherever we are planted 

that we may be pleasing in your eyes.

Amen.

Letting the Dust Settle

Trying my best to keep a good attitude. The house is topsy-turvy with all sorts of containers, dishes, and kitchen cabinet contents strewn outside. Drilling of holes, dust galore. Major repairs going on with our water pipes after a discovered leak which happens to emanate from a punctured pipe buried underneath concrete. After much breaking up of floor tile and some part of the wall, the darn pipe could not be found. The solution --- ugly. A bypass of the water system has to be done with pipes exposed running from the main source to the second floor baths, with pipes out in the open for all to see. The prospect of the blue pvc pipes detracting big from aesthetics, the pipes as dust magnets and keepers, is just too much. Forgive the rant.

As i pound away on the keyboard i breathe in dust which has made an ugly haze inside the house. I must wait for about three more days for everything to be back to normal. Patience is required. I can start the clean-up when the dust has settled.

Isn't that the way we need to deal with inconvenient scrapes in our lives. We can't just make any counter attack, er, solution when things are all too hazy, all too muddled --- including our thoughts.

Waiting for the dust to settle...

Still Life

Fleur de printemps, pommes et poires. 1866

Henri Fantin-Latour

Inanimate. Unperturbed. Grounded. Still.

Such is a state when we are at peace with ourselves, with others, with life.


"But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me."  - Psalm 131: 2

Trompe L'oeil

I love the trompe l'oeil technique in art. This "deceive the eye" style is a crossover to reality. When one is faced with such a painting, the urge to touch it is strong. "Is this for real?" A validation or confirmation is in order. Such is what happened to the painting of Adriaen van der Spelt (1630-1673) and Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) called Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain in a Dutch gallery.

When life nips us in the butt, or when we are harshly jolted by circumstances, as a cushion to the blow --- the first reaction is one of disbelief. Somehow, somewhere that circumstance must not be happening. We heave and ho. We struggle.

Postmortem, what matters is what is left of us. What we have become. Or what we have learned.

Most of the time, problems are actually gifts that are wrapped quite differently. "You seek the problems because you need their gifts." --- Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Things are not always as they seem.

Getting Lost

When i was a little girl, i used to hide on the highest branch (which my courage can take) of a tall acacia tree in our backyard to escape... get some time off. It was my way of diffusing any tension felt. Because i was feeling a lot, the fear of falling from that high branch could not enter my consciousness. Reclining atop a thick branch was comforting amid the calls from below as to my whereabouts.

That's just my style. My way of coping. Up to this day.

When things get rough, i check out for a while --- through my books, among the racks of clothes in thrift shops, or a destination-less short trip to wherever. Or when whimsy catches up with me --- be incognito among the flowers --- in my mind.

How about you?