CALENDAR FOR JUNE

This is the calendar I drew for 2013.  I plan to make one for next year and have started gathering ideas and poetry for it.  It was a fun project to do. 

I made some bracelets today in grays, pinks and white.  I haven't photographed them yet but will do so.

WILDNESS

It's almost five months since I last posted,  where does the time go?  I have been taking some classes in watercolours and acrylics and am enjoying learning some new techniques.  I do something creative pretty much every day, keeping up my date art journal.  Today I got out my beads because I feel like making some bracelets.

When I was journaling this morning I was thinking about the feeling of the loss of wildness.  I live in the middle of a city and am surrounded by concrete and glass and look out on a marina with many boats (most of them never leave their moorings).   I feel that my soul is starving for some nature - not plantings contrived by humans but real nature.  Wild grasses and weeds and ferns and moss and all those lovely things we find in the woods. 

This led me to thinking about my own wildness and how I am feeling separated from it and how I might reconnect with it.  I remembered I had a copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  I haven't looked at it for years but it was still on my bookshelf.  I picked up the book and opened it and, as so often happens, it opened to the perfect page - The Feral Woman.

"The feral woman is one who was once in a natural psychic state - that is, in her rightful wild mind - then later was captured by whatever turn of events, thereby becoming overly domesticated and deadened in proper instincts.  When she has opportunity to return to her original wildish nature, she too easily steps into all manner of traps and poisons. because her cycles and protective systems have been tampered with she is at risk in what used to be her natural wild state.  No longer wary and alert, she easily becomes prey."

"There is a specific pattern to the loss of instinct.  it is essential to study this pattern, to actually memorize it, so that we can guard the treasures of our basic natures and those of our daughters as well.  In the psychic woods there are many leg traps made of rusted iron that lie just below the leafy green of the forest floor.  Psychologically, the same is true of the greater world.  There are various lures to which we are susceptible: relationships, people, and ventures that are tempting, but inside that good-looking bait is something sharpened to a point, something that kills our spirit as soon as we bite into it."

Feral women of all ages, and especially the young, have a tremendous drive to compensate for long famines and exile.  They are endangered by excessive and mindless striving toward people and goals that are not nurturant, substantive, or enduring.  No matter where they live or in what time, there are cages waiting always; too-small lives into which women can be lured or pushed."

"If you have ever been captured, if you have ever endured a starvation of the soul, if you have ever been trapped and especially if you have a drive to create, it is likely that you have been or are a feral woman.  The feral woman is usually extremely hungry for something soulful, and often will take any poison disguised on a pointed stick, believing it to be the thing for which her soul hungers."

At this point in my life, I find that the most difficult traps and snares are the limitations I put on myself.  Limitations that come from fear and lack of confidence in my own abilities and instincts.  SELF-TRUST AND SELF CONFIDENCE MUST BE RELEARNED.  Once you have lost it it can take a long time to find it again.  I am making progress and the tattoo on my left arm reminds me that I truly am a FREE SPIRIT. 

EMBRACE YOUR WILDNESS AND BE A FREE SPIRIT!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Every New Years I intend to start new things on New Years Day - every year I forget that I have to spend a few days clearing up the past year.  Things like taking down decorations, writing appointments on calendars, reviewing and putting away last years journals, preparing new journals and choosing words and intentions for the New Year.  I have usually chosen my words by the New Year and this year I have chosen HARMONY and four supportive words: PATIENCE, FORGIVENESS, FAITH AND ACCEPTANCE.

I have spent the past two days putting decorations away and replacing them with everyday decor and sorting out my journaling.  I have bought a scrapbook and am going to get some insert pages on Saturday with a 50% off coupon at Michael's.  I want to save cards and different ephemera and thought this would be the best way to do it.  I can also add some of my art and poems and quotes that I find.

On November 1st, I started making a calendar and finished it on December 11th.  I am so happy with it as it is the first project I have done that includes watercolours and lettering.  This is the cover and January.  The background for January is darker and has snowflakes on it.  I have sold five of them so that is very exciting for me.

I hope to blog more frequently as well.  All good intentions, I hope I can follow through.

I would like to share a poem by David Whyte called Faith:

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,

faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.

But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.

Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

from Where Many Rivers Meet.