I M Perfect lady

Category: Art & Quilts

  • With me.

    In Chapter 8, Recovering a Sense of Strength (in The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron), she writes.

     

    “One of the most difficult tasks an artist must face is the primal one; Artistic Survival. All artist must learn the art of surviving loss; loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self- belief.  In addition to our many gains, we inevitably suffer these losses in an artistic career.  They are the hazards of the road and, in many ways, its signposts.  Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths – but not in the isolation of the beleaguered artist’s brain.”

     

    “ As mental-health experts are quick to point out, in order to move through loss and beyond it, we must acknowledge it and share it.  Because artistic losses are seldom openly acknowledged or mourned, they become artistic scar tissue that blocks artistic growth.  Deemed too painful, too silly, too humiliating, to share and so to heal, they become , instead, secret losses.”

     

    “If artistic creations are our brainchild, artistic losses are our miscarriages. Women often suffer terribly, and privately from losing a child who doesn’t come to full term. And as artist we suffer terrible losses when the book doesn’t sell, the film doesn’t get picked up, the juried show doesn’t take our paintings, the best pot shatters, the poems are not accepted, the ankle injury sidelines us for an entire dance season.”

     

    “We must remember that our artist is a child and that what we can handle intellectually far outstrips what we can handle emotionally.  We must be alert to flag and mourn our losses.”    Julia Cameron

     

    What I love about this first page of the chapter is how we have to learn how to survive loss.

     

    In life it seems we are so focused on other things, no one teaches us how to mourn the little things, so when the huge ones arrive, we too can use the same techniques.

     

    And I love how what we don’t mourn becomes our scar tissue, the bumps and bruises we did not sit with and honor their presence in our lives….don’t really disappear, but ride along gathering a thick skin…scar tissue.

     

    It will literally feel like we are tearing off the scab to now deal with loss from long past. To even sit with a self that was robbed of being so…all the little ways I failed to hold on to me.

     

    I now am gathering to me all the parts that I gave away, and bringing them back to my center, my attention and my awareness.

     

    I love that loss must be acknowledged and shared…for that is how we can not only see our wound but let other see it, so we all can acknowledge it, honor it…and it will then fade away.

     

    Who knew that it was the ‘hiding’ and keeping our hurts secret that we suffer the most?  It seems airing our loss is where our strengths will be found.

     

    I know that this blog has been a great show and tell for me and I am grateful and humbled by those who read and witness it with me.  This sacred place is more healing where two or more are gathered in truth. Thanks for being here with me.

     

  • My Level of Creativity.

    “By Living a Life full of Art, we may achieve an artful life.”  Ellen J. Langer, who also said, “All it takes to become an Artist is to start doing Art.”

     

    As my daughter and I walked around and saw other people’s art, it inspired me to do my own. 

     

    I believe what we do inspires us and where we go and by how we spend our time, for if you don’t consciously attend to your inner passion, your passion will recede into a dormant state.

     

    It literally is true, what we focus on expands.

     

    I have felt the difference in the past few days of feeling the angst of making a point to many who feel it is pointless, in comparison to walking among fabulous art, inspiring fabrics and being immersed in shopping for the right accent for my daughter’s first apartment.

     

    The difference is vast.  One pulls you back into a vortex of manic expression and the other raises my level of creativity.

     

     

     

     

  • To be me…perfectly.

    There seems to be a time in life, where you get off the karmic wheel of your childhood, where you finally come to the end of the road where old beliefs, thoughts and ideas run dry, where you have uncovered, discovered, and recovered all parts of your self.

     

    And you have decided what stays, what goes, what has value or no value, what is something I will use in my future and what is best left in the past.

     

    As each old thought and belief came to surface, I had to replace it with a new one, one more suited for my self and was often less comfortable for the ‘other’.

     

    Most of my replacement ideas, thoughts and beliefs are much more flexible and fit my spirit. They are filled with potential growth and expansion, unlimited space for creation.

     

    The purging of my old self was difficult and painful at times and extremely liberating as well, the dying and rebuilding co-existing, the undoing and the re-doing.  Each loss I mourned came with a new birth.

     

    Just as they flip houses, I flipped myself, changing me from a worn out pattern into a more creative one.

     

    I can’t imagine getting left in the old mind patterns and beliefs, stuck and unable to step out line, locked by fear and unable to shake off the chains of conditioning.

     

    I feel at times I have forgotten from whence I came, and have a hard time remembering the darkness with so much Light, forgetting what it is like to live under the shadows of others, never finding your own spot in the sun…

     

    My thanks all go to the Universe whose wisdom I seen in every lesson, gift and miracle, and who synchronized it all.

     

    As I continue forth with my awareness my artist’s prayer is;

    to remain faithful to the wisdom of my body,

    to always pay attention to the gut feelings,

    to stand with the truth no matter the cost,

    to have faith and follow my own feelings,

    to reach towards new experiences fearlessly,

    to be a student of the Universe,

    to accept all lessons with grace,

    to never lose sight of what is,

    to find my purpose,

    to know who I am,

    to be me…perfectly! 

  • From the Cocoon!

    The Artist’s Way, while it is inspiring for Art, it is also bringing forth an artful self.  It is finding the dark spots where we lost the art of living, the art of being, the art of individuality, where we conformed into roles that are in direct competition to being a creation from self.

     

    A self that lives behind the roles.

     

    A self we set aside years ago for a variety of reasons.

     

    This is the self we will find if we continue on The Artist’s Way…the path leads to self.

     

    I have been disrobing from roles that made up most of who I was, and underneath was a girl who I didn’t know.  It is this girl who has been struggling to come alive, against the adverse conditioned mind.

     

    This conditioned mind puts fear, guilt and shame along my pathway, sprinkled with false claims of a gloomy future, IF I dare make a new choice, explore and discover a new way of living.

     

    I have been jousting with this mind for 6 ½ years now, seeing which one of us will win at each turn.  Even having the fight is a great improvement to the capitulations of the past, where I didn’t even to fight.

     

    Now I have two separated ideals/beliefs/thoughts and desires vying for the chance to live as me.

     

    I feel a huge percentage of me is now onboard with the self and just fragments and pieces of me are still tangled up with the mental mind. 

     

    The Artist’s Way is working to unhinge those parts as well as strengthen and ignite the ones already free!

     

    I feel a huge part of me is flowing with the energy from the field of Art and pure potential, unlocked from the constraints of the mind.

     

    Like a butterfly almost cleared from the cocoon!

  • Keep Me Down

    As I did my yoga after work, a frivolous task I labeled it, since I opted to do this instead of a domestic chore or something of a higher priority, I just went ahead and took the liberties of time for my self without thinking too deeply…just quickly changed and started the CD, before a list of other things jostled this idea out of my head.

     

    Even calling it frivolous seemed odd, but yet right, that I was cheating responsibility and jumping into frivolous. 

    While in yoga I pondered this word and what it meant to me and how it was that I called doing something that was good for me frivolous. 

    The yoga that I do is very hard and requires my utmost attention, it is working very hard to restore my body to great health, and I called it frivolous. 

    It then came to me; it wasn’t the yoga that was frivolous, but the usage of time.  I was using time frivolously by taking care of myself. 

     I then felt deep sorrow at a girl who thought it frivolous to care for her self, to be with herself doing something that benefits her greatly, and she feels its frivolous.

     I looked up the meaning of frivolous to make sure that I had it right.

     

    1.                     not worth taking seriously: lacking in intellectual substance and not worth serious consideration.

     

    This is exactly the meaning I had in mind, I was not worth taking seriously or with serious consideration.

    I know that this has been my greatest negative pull that seems to be tied by a rope of great width, that keeps holding me down, a belief that is strung through each of my cells.

    I have claimed that my biggest hurdle is that I am too responsible, and yet what is more true, is that I am not worth taking seriously or using serious consideration.

    I take life and others needs very seriously, but my own are considered frivolous not serious.

    I felt pushed upon the mat by the sorrow of understanding, that it isn’t the things that are frivolous, but that I am not worth having them.

    My world is very short of frivolous, from the time I spend, to the items I pass by, for I can’t drum up a reason to bring them in.

    Flipping frivolous to serious has been a long six years struggle, to upend this belief and get me into serious consideration.

    Even though I have been serving me lots of time, big chunks in a day to be used for just me; from writing, to yoga, to art, and blogging, to unraveling my past.  I have been yanking and pulling on this ‘frivolous’ thread, kinda sorta believing it  was serious work, while not completely sold.

    The tables turned today, I can see that what I have been doing is putting my self on the list for serious consideration going against generations of voices that have been trying to keep me down.

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  • Growing Lifeless.

    It seems that there is a side of change that continues to catch me off guard, while I eagerly lean towards growth and transformation, I fail to see I am outgrowing friends.

     

    My flippant quote that I clung to was, “Birds of a feather flock together…”  I just failed to appreciate that in changing the colors of my feathers, I would no longer feel drawn to being with certain people and then have to seek new feathers that matched the new me.

     

    There should be a warning label on all the self-realization books, that by becoming more aware, more truthful, more in alignment with your soul’s purpose, you may lose friends if they are not on the same journey.

     

    You arrive to the same group or have lunch with an old friend only to find you don’t sway to the same tune, that your music is no longer in sync…you both feel it and perhaps try and not notice, but eventually the ‘meetings’ become less and less attractive.

     

    We are attracted to similar energies and if our energies rise and theirs remain the same, the growing apart naturally takes place, you don’t have to orchestrate it, facilitate it, you just have to honor it.

     

    What I have failed to consider each time I get a great hit of new insights and understandings, when I burst forth in a new way, that I leave behind my old energy patterns which match my friends.

     

    I also believe that many are stopped on the journey towards living a full spiritual soulful life, is that it may mean leaving behind relationships of long standing.

     

    What I also have great confidence in is that many friendships are like a curvy path; we meet and go away only to meet again, for we are all heading in the same direction, but at our own pace.

     

    So I don’t see the leaving as in forever, but that our journeys are set at a different speed.

     

    What I need most is to pay attention to what I need, what excites me and makes me come alive…it serves no one to sit and idle growing lifeless.

     

  • She was Me

    I had the opportunity to be on web radio, but more importantly the pleasure of speaking with a kindred spirit about my journey, to feel the ease and flow of conversation minus the struggle of explaining.

     

    She got me…and I her.  We looked at life through the same lens…from the inside out. 

     

    Usually it seems I am the odd man out, I am seeing things from a unique angle compared to others in a room, but this time I felt her looking with me in total understanding.

     

    I was also able to see me in a broader way, to realize how far I have come, how my art has led the way, how intuitively I have walked forward and the distance I have traveled.

     

    I have been so intent on this step here that I didn’t see how far I walked, how much I have changed and how deep within I had gone, or even how I now appear.

     

    It is like working on a piece of art, but not stepping back from it…to remain close and perfecting each tiny stroke, not realizing what you have created.

     

    I knew that I had changed drastically, but I don’t believe I saw the beauty in the changes or even the wisdom. 

     

    And I was truly able to see the art in me.

     

    To see my transformation from patterns and dark colors and rigid lines to being the Lady of my quilts.

     

    I am the lady…I can see how we are merging, I am catching up to my lady.  The distance is not such a future dream and far away hope and desire, but that I am living her life today.

     

    I am free, I have self-expression, I am empowered, and passionate, I am truth, I am me.

     

    In the interview I saw my Lady speaking, and she was me.

     

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    Love her confidence and attitude…and I love that it is within me, has been…waiting for me to embrace it.

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    This is how my quilts hang in a quilt show…they never seemed to match.  The first time I seen this, I cried, for they fit in like me…not the same as the rest. 

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    I eventually was able to recognize that not fitting in was okay…but I still chuckle at

    how different my quilts appear next to others…just like me we are in a league of our own. 

  • The soul that lies beneath.

    Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way…

     

    ”Conditioned as we are to accept other people’s definition of us, this emerging individuality can seem to us like a self-will run riot.  It is not. The snowflake pattern of your soul is emerging. Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep – many and varied forms of junk food for the soul…”

     

    I have never thought of overeating or any of the above as being junk food for the soul. That most of the things that are bad for the body is also bad for our souls.

     

    They blur our uniqueness, keep us living in with a fuzzy image of who we are, what we want, what we feel and where we heading, and above all, make it hard for the soul to shine through.

     

    In fact all the bad habits keep the soul from shining through and yet we believe we need these habits, we literally crave them, and what they are is a black out curtain for the soul.

     

    It is odd to me that we crave what keeps us from being our whole soulful self, and that we want the stuff that darkens who we are.

     

    Perhaps we want to darken our reality.

     

    We want to shut the shades on what is in order to survive…instead of taking actions to remove ourselves from situations in real life, we drape a curtain so we don’t have to see.

     

    It is amazing to me that we become so accustomed to living a life with a darkened drape, that we have no idea how to live a life without them.

     

    Julia Cameron is gently telling us what stands in the way from being you. What items we do to not be alive, aware and unique.

     

    By removing the junk food from our lives we can see what they were covering up.  The more we crave and hold on to things that are not good for our souls, the more chances there is big stuff we are not wanting to see, feel or respond to.

     

    For me, my big mess was revealed first.  I saw a whole life that I had no clue was going on underneath my dark curtain of denial, of self-numbing or fuzzy blurring of reality, and I then had to start eliminating things that contributed to the blanket of dysfunction.

     

    This blanket of dysfunction lived my life for 46 years, a thick layer of stuff that my soul was unable to shine forth through.

     

    It is surprising the difference between living as the dark curtain or the soul that lies beneath. 

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    This is one of my first quilts after the revealation of my big mess….and you can see the sliver of gold, which is the soul trying to emerge.  I called this the Soul Lost.  I now have a better understanding of this quilt 6 years or more later!

  • When I am 80.

    My writing assignment was to write a letter from my eight-year-old self to my adult self, and I sat there blank.  I could not figure out what the little girl needed to tell me.

     

    So, I went and did my morning yoga session. And it came to me that if I look at her sitting within a family of dysfunction and her seeing her older self having escaped, that perhaps then there would be lots to say.

     

    My little self would look upon this adult woman and admire the strength it took for her to walk the walk needed to walk the walk to get her out of the situation of her childhood and to now be working on becoming more artful self.

     

    She at 8 could look upon me where I stand today and be so grateful that I was able to circle back and regain the ownership and awareness of her soul. 

     

    That I was able to traverse the wild churning waters of abuse and arrive seemingly unscathed and actually prospering as an adult woman, she would be amazed at my ability to withstand the truth and then to make new choices based upon it.

     

    She would be so grateful that I am no longer in abusive relationships or that I am still being victimized, that I have learned how to do self care, to speak for my self and have the strength to follow through.

     

    She would breath a sigh of relief to know that we survived and are now heading into an even brighter future, where I am honing my self-awareness with yoga and The Artist’s Way, that we are on the pathway of self-loving.

    At times I too find it hard to see the distance I traveled and the depth and breath of change that my life has withstood…I stand with my little girl in awe of where we have been and sit in gratitude we not only survived but also are thriving.

     

    What brings me the most peace is that I can look straight into my little girl’s eyes and feel proud and wise and strong, and not have to look away in shame and guilt.

     

    I feel so strongly confident that we are on the right path, and that when I am 80; I will look upon this 52-year-old self the same way.

     

    And in fact there is a writing assignment to write a letter from your 80-year-old self to your 50-year-old self.

     

    I found that much easier, for I was telling me what the Artist’s Way is teaching me, to be more artful, more daring, more wild in learning new things and experimenting, to go out and grasp all the delights the world has to offer, to change your routine, to add some spice and thrill, to toss in colorful experiences…

     

    I want to be at 80, what I am today, but more of it. 

     

    I want to look backwards at the next 30 years and be breathless at what I did!

     

    Each Artist’s date is adding to the list of things that will blow my mind as I look back when I am 80.

     

     

     

     

  • Everything as it is.

    There is this thing called ‘something’ that keeps you from being totally happy, at peace…something precedes your every step and lives out in front of you stealing your peace, and when you can dismantle the something making machine, you will find life a friendly place to be.

     

    It wasn’t until I lost ‘something’ that I found it had stood between life and me.

     

    Perhaps it was the absence of desiring, wanting, being disappointed or stressed that felt odd, or the lack of plans or having to reach a certain place, that I realized it was gone.

     

    This elusive something changes and ties strings to all your destinations and gatherings, it runs ahead and creates images for you to reach for and scurries off before you arrive, is always one step ahead of you.

     

    In my mind it wasn’t crystal clear, what the something was, but I searched for it like a hidden treasure in each place when I arrived.

     

    I had an image, a feeling or a desire to be fulfilled when I arrived.  I sought it and when it wasn’t found, I left disappointed.

     

    This future something rode ahead of my life planting little seeds of desire for me to harvest when I came behind it, sprinkling my world with what I thought were dreams, when in fact they were moment wreckers.

     

    These moment wreckers became larger than reality, like an overlay, I sought them more than I appreciated what was actually there.

     

    On my latest mini vacation, I was pleasantly surprised I had arrived ahead of something.

     

    I arrived minus a preplanned or arranged idea in my head.

     

    Usually, I had a something plan set in my head that a place had to match.

     

    Whether it was a mood or experience I had to find a certain thing to make me happy.   I didn’t arrive happy, but had to find something to make me so.

     

    I may be unable to articulate this, but to travel with zero expectations, and instead see how you feel when you arrive is totally the opposite of my old traveling/living days.

     

    Before a romantic getaway had to deliver a certain number of things to make it so, perhaps the right sunset, the perfect dinner, the right clothing, the awesome motel, the right weather, the right vehicle, the temperature…you get the picture.

     

    In fact I painted a picture in my mind and then IF reality didn’t match most of it, I wasn’t fully satisfied.

     

    And it can happen in the smallest of situations or on a weekend getaway or two week vacation.  Prior to going your mind sets in motion a something trail that you have to follow and depending upon how many things you match, your trip will be a success.

     

    Imagine the insanity of your trip having to measure up to a trip in your head, a desire or fantasy list?

     

    This last little getaway I forgot to pack the list of something.

     

    I had no preset emotions, feelings, desires and things to capture in order for it to be completed.

     

    In its place instead was arriving…like a free motion painting.

     

    Creating an artful vacation by being inspired in each moment, not knowing what you need until you see it, and bringing it in to your vacation instead of hunting for the right thing, the right thing came to you.

     

    Giving up something you can greet everything as it is.

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    We came around a corner and this guy caught my attention…he was standing in front of an Art Gallery…he beckoned me inside.