July 19th 2009


I finally got signed up for The Artist's Way and then I signed up for The Decorated Page. I have the book already so I thought I may as well and I can combine the two. Hope I haven't taken on too much but I will give it a try.


I read up to the first week today in the Artist's Way and it reminded of so many things I need to remember about our creative spirit. I am reading it in a different way than I did sixteen years ago. I started on August 2nd, 1993 the first time I did it at the beginning of what I called my Vision Quest. The first time I did it I juggled around with God, Great Creator, Universe, this time I am more comfortable with Flow it is the Creative Energy that I sometimes feel myself in. I have written some poetry that was effortless, several pages at a time and it just flowed through me, needed no thought and no correction. It was an amazing feeling. It would be wonderful to connect to that more often.


I really like Julia Cameron's statement, "I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature, that blocks are an unnatural thwarting of a process at once as normal and as miraculous as the blossoming of a flower at the end of a slender green stem." Such a beautiful, visual analogy. I also like "we are creative beings, our lives become our work of art," and "we hunger for what might be called creative living." I will post these quotes around my home.


I also like what she says about the Censor - "we feel we never do enough and what we do isn't righ. We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often diguised as the truth."


As a result of reading the beginning of the AW and the Decorated Page this morning, I decided I need to begin looking at the world in a different way. You have probably gathered that the city is not where I would live given a choice. I feel like I am starving to death sometimes because of the lack of nature and being surrounded by noise, concrete and glass. So, as I was saying, I need to look at the city in a different way and with this in mind I documented some things with my camera through out the day.








I sat on my patio to eat my breakfast this morning with my lodger Jasmine by my side. Suddenly, there was a ruckus of crows squaking , I got up to look and there were two crows that looked like either a mother and baby or two babies squawking over a muscle. What a carry-on!





There are also a lot of dogs going by and I loved this guy trotting along carrying his toy. It dropped it every now and again, played with it, picked it up and carried on. Dogs and cats are such a good example of living in the flow and I love to watch the dogs play at the dog park. They are so free and full of joy.









I went downtown to buy some new sheets and had to take a picture of the sign outside of the Candy Isle, it always makes me smile.


And and the close of day a picture of the sunset. Not very spectacular tonight but all of them are beautiful. The reflections in the water are always move me. Even though there is no plowman or lowing herd, the sunset makes me think of Gray's Elegy:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea

The plowman homeward plods his weary way


And leaves the world to darkness and to me



















A final quote from JC: "Our focused attention is critical to filling th well. We need to encounter our life experiences, not ignore them. Many of us read compulsively to screen our awareness. On a crowded (interesting train), (or bus in my case) we train our attention on a newspaper (book, in my case), losing the sights and sounds around us -- all images for the well." So, I have decided to read less on the bus. I would love to take photos of people on the bus, some of them are so interesting.

I have been getting up earlier in the mornings - seven or eight instead of eleven or twelve - and that is proving to be much better for me in terms of getting things done. This was done naturally not because I decided to. Lots of positive changes, moving forward to an alignment with the kind of life I would like to live - a creative life.

Another change that has occurred is a shift in consciousness. After we had our yard sales last weekend we put all the leftover items in a hallway leading to the locker room, within 24 hours most of it had been stolen. Normally, I would have been very angry and resentful of this and had a difficult time letting go of it but I realized when different people were being targeted as the ones who stole the stuff, I realized that it didn't matter who had taken it, it was gone and we had to move on.

Among the things that were stolen was a set of miniatur paintings that someone had bought and I had neglected to put in her bag. I felt really bad about it and was very pleased when she found me and I left a message telling her I we could arrange to meet and I would give them to her. I went to get them and that was when I discovered the theft. She came yesterday to get them and I had to tell her they had been stolen. She said, "I don't believe you." I tried to explain and apologized several times, she was very angry and said she just wanted her paintings. I gave her one of my photo cards with an apology and we returned almost all of the money she spent of several items. She was only charged $3 for the pics and we gave her $15. Normally, I would have got angry and said something nasty back to her and probably not given her the card and money but for some reason, I didn't get angry. I was a little hurt that she had basically accused me of being a liar and a theif but soon got past it and realized that she must be a very unhappy person. She had been in Calgary all week visiting her Grandmother so may the Grandmother was ill. Anyway, the point is that I seem to have reached a place where I can see things from a different perspective and this makes me very happy. I don't need to been angry and everyone and everything and carry resentment for days and weeks over small hurts. It's the kind of person I want to be. It feels good!