Monday monday

It's been one of those weekends, you know the kind of weekend you should be cleaning, or at least doing something productive, since you'll have a house full of people next weekend and the 6 kids, pets and farm animals are a lot to keep up after... but instead curled up in a ball and slept the panic off...  sometimes it's all I can do.

oh well...    the Harpie is back...

Don't know who let her out??  I had her silenced for a while...

Just thought I'd give you a little glimpse into my Art Journal of late.  A picture is worth a thousand words, right?? 

 It's all I have to say right now...

Why blog?

Sometimes I think, why blog, why even speak?  It's all been done before, it's all been said before.   Sometimes I think why paint? It's all been done before more than a million times... and by those much better than me... but then I have days like today.  Today was a good day.  Twice today because of speaking I recieved huge, and I mean huge compliments.  That doesn't happen very often from strangers.  You just never know do you?

Yesterday sitting in a drive through waiting for our drinks my bitties (what I call my twin pre-schoolers) commented that the girl in the window was very pretty.  So I made a point of looking right at her, to see what they thought was beautiful.  The young girl was pretty.   She looked heavy, and I wondered about that, because she looked a strange kind of heavy, and she was really young looking.  Then I realized she was pregnant.  How tiring that job must be standing for so long, serving with that extra weight and the growth processes going on inside her.  She handed me my drinks, and I passed on the compliment from the bitties.  She got the biggest smile.  I hope it made her day.  I know the two compliments I received today made mine.

I saw this quote the other day and it really says it all here it is



"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." 
             Dalai Lama

I was reminded today of my sweet Gramsy.  She would run into homeless people in LA asking for change, and she would buy them shoes, or lunch, or shoes and lunch.  She didn't have much, but she could not turn a hungry person away, ever. She said they could always use shoes.

One day I was shopping by the San Juan Capistrano Mission, actually I was done shopping and in a hurry to get home.  An elderly gentleman approached me and said
"Excuse me ma'am..."
 I was in a parking lot, alone, but it was daytime.  I stopped, looked him in the eye and said "Yes?"
His next words startled me...  "Aren't you afraid?" He asked me.  This caused me to wonder for a moment if I should be,  and I answered  "no, should I be?"  Waiting to see what would happen next.  This elderly gentleman, who happened to be a person of color and in need of some cash, then said "Are you from here?" Now this question was slightly unnerving because I could not see where this conversation was going?  "Yes."  I said.  "Why?"  "You are the first person in this city who has even stopped to look at me today when I spoke to them.  Everyone else was afraid."  I was stunned.  Since the economy took its turn there have been more and more homeless people asking for help here and there.   This particular shopping center I was walking through was full of economically well off people.  People with much more resources than I, and can you imagine?  No really, can you imagine??  In this day and age being treated so poorly.  I was shocked and saddened.

Some people might think me naiive, or just plain gullible for helping someone who may or may not need help.  Who may or may not take that money and do drugs, or drink.  But you know what?  Maybe that one kindness that person recieves that day will be the catalyst they need for change.  Maybe it will be that one ray of hope in a dark and scary world.  Maybe they are not what they seem at all, who knows?  I surely don't.  The way I see it if they are asking me, it is my choice to be loving, or unloving.  I choose loving.
That reminds me of another quote I love.  In the movie (A great movie) called The Kingdom of Heaven  

the king of Jerusalem has a conversations with the main character Balien who believes he has been abandoned by God.


The King speaking to him about the uncertainties of life says this  " When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that."


Yes, remember that...

Love is the Movement

Life is not a fairytale.  There is no 'happily ever after' I'm learning.  I have learned this, the hard way.  There are always ups and downs.  Sometimes there are even bottom places where we land and have to look for help.  For me words help, art helps, music helps. I think these are true for a lot of people.

I think I have always known the struggle and the pain with which many suffer.  I thought it was just that I was a melancholy person.  I tried everything I could think of to get out of the pit I was in. Looking for help out from a bottom place once I stumbled upon Renee's story.  Her story touched me so deeply. This was the first time I'd heard of such love. From mere mortals. I was convinced this did not exist.   To Write Love On Her Arms is a group, or a movement I found one day graffitied on a college bench where I sat with my son and a friend from Art class- The name intrigued me and I had to know what it meant.  To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.   I read Renee's story and was so moved by it, by the fact that there were such loving, caring people out there.   People who would give everything to help a total stranger who was suffering.  It touched me so much I had Love tattooed on my arm by a great guy named Turbo at Goodfellas tattoo.  A daily reminder that there is hope, there is love, there are people who care, and I am not alone.

This is a group that has been very near and dear to my heart.  A cause I gladly support.  There are many people in this world suffering with depression and loneliness.  It breaks my heart to hear of children taking their own lives because they had reached their end, and felt there was no hope.  I know that place well.

I'm not sure what inspired me to write about this, this day.  I can only imagine someone needed to read this.  If you are suffering I am here.  You are not alone.  I have found that love helps, and caring friends help.  I know they are hard to come by.  But this group reminds me that they do exist.

photo credit ©2009-2010 ~Siluriformes

Please love.  There is enough pain in this world.  Here is one of my all time favorite quotes



"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
Philo

and be kind to you.  It's a tough lesson to learn sometimes, but a necessary one.  It all starts with love.











Love is the Movement!

You Are Not Alone

Quack, quack, quack, quack!  This is what I hear as I sit here contemplating what to post today.  So much going on in the last week or so.  The ducks have grown into their 'quack' now, which I find a lot more pleasant than the loud peeping they did before.  The chicks are almost chickens now, with the exception of Brownie who is just small still.  I didn't mention this in my last post, but I believe Brownie was younger than the others when we got her, and she is the one who has not grown much yet.  She still needs lots of warmth.   We have taken to putting the chickens out with the ducks every day and as I mentioned they all stick together.  What I didn't tell you is how they all huddle around Brownie when she needs warmth.  They protect her, and watch after her.  They have since the beginning.  It's like they instinctively know she needs warmth, and they surround her.  

This is how they sleep.  Surrounding Brownie.

Last year I started Art Journaling.  I found it very healing to do this daily.  It also served as a proving ground for new techniques.  These last few months I have not had the inclination to art journal either.  So I carried it around with me daily, and hoped the muse would visit once again.  But nothing.  Over the last couple of weeks; possibly because I once again feel in need of comfort and healing; I have started art journaling again daily.  Sometimes more than once a day.  And with all the things going on in my head lately- sometimes even in the middle of the night.  I still write in my traditional journal.  I actually do a lot of writing as I find that a source of healing as well, but when I distill my days, or my thoughts, my state of mind into a picture, a thing of beauty that I can look back on and remember, it is very satisfying.  And honestly beauty, color, and sparkles make me happy.  

It's hard to see the sparkles here, but they are there.
Bad lighting, sorry.

My kids tease me, as I am very much like my Gramsy in that I love anything sparkly or cute.  "Oooh Shiny" they often say as I am distracted from whatever task by something.  It's their way of reminding me to focus.  I struggle with that.  I would much rather be in a dreamland than focus on the facts, which is interesting since I have always thought myself a realist, and I love the truth.  Sometimes I find things just too frightening, or too big to contemplate  in the moment, so I am easily distracted.  Especially by shiny things.  Just like my Gramsy.  My sister and I once cleaned her dresser for her.  There must have been hundreds of teeny little boxes of jewelry and little sparkly things.  Bought and placed neatly in her drawer, or jewelry box, but probably never worn.  

This is where my head has been.   I have come out of solitary, and am finding ways to focus on what I need to  focus on to find some peace.  It is not an easy thing.  The truth sometimes is not.  But I know it's what I need and that it will get easier.  Remembering to create something beautiful everyday, even if it's just beautiful to me, helps.  Words  help.  Another post on that later.  Here are some images from my art journal lately. 

 I have to keep reminding myself that I am not alone.  My many peeps remind me of that visually, and daily.  This is my reminder to you.  You are not alone. 

My peeps

Solitary

It's been a while since I've been here.  I've been in a sort of self-imposed solitary confinement.  I guess old habits die hard as they say.  The good thing is I have taken to drawing again.  Just drawing, and drawing.  Enough feeling down, and feeling sorry for myself.  Enough lamenting my issues, and my lack of real life friends.  Enough!  This depression will not win.  

I joined Suzi Blu's Le Petite Academy about a year ago when  I was super depressed and doing nothing but sleeping and surfing the internet.  I happened upon this girl Suzi Blu who made videos for Youtube (Suzi blutube) and fell in love.  Loved her, loved what she was doing, loved her message and what she stood for.  Here was someone really living.  Someone being true to herself and creating her own little world where everyone was welcome.   She changed my life, really.  She gave me the courage to paint again.  To learn something new.  To enjoy what I was doing.  To live.  I painted.  I wrote.  And then....

...I'm not sure what really.   Sometimes I get the feeling that none of it matters.  None of it.  And I isolate.  I stopped painting.  I stopped going to my 12 step meetings.   I stopped wanting to do anything.  Then I found myself  'hiding' from people I know who actually care about me.  Even on the internet.  

So, it's a funny thing but I started raising chickens, and two ducks.  They make me laugh.  They make me smile, everyday.    They get me out of bed and into the sunshine every morning with their peeping for food. 

 When we first got them they were all tiny and in one container.   We noticed then that the smallest chick 'Brownie' (the brown one)  would stick to the ducks like glue.  She would sleep with them, try to climb  under their teeny wings.  It was sweet, and a little sad.  But alas the ducks grew too big for the even larger dog crate we now had them in, and they were entirely too messy, so we had to move them out.   They are old enough and it has been warm enough that we can keep them outside now, but only the ducks. They sit at the door and peep, or kind of squawk very loudly until they fall asleep.  They sleep pressed up against the sliding glass door where they can see the chicks.  

 First thing in the morning when they hear me moving around inside they again begin to squawk very loudly until I put the chicks out with them.  All day long they follow the chicks.  Wherever the chicks are the ducks are, and vice-a-versa.  It's kinda sweet.  So last night we left the screen door open a bit in the evening after we'd brought the chicks in.  The chicks are next to my studio so at some point I needed something and as I passed the chicks the ducks startled me.  There they were, they had come in and were sleeping alongside the chick cage.   It was so sweet, I was sad when my husband shoo'd the ducks out again for the evening.   I think there is something I can learn from these chicks and ducks.  

I have attempted to come out of solitary- it's not easy.  There are many obstacles to face.  I have taken to watching Suzi Blutubes again.  They make me smile, they inspire me, they give me hope.  And hope is not something I come by easily.