Homecaring

Thanks to all the wonderful bloggers I read, my creative juices are in hyperdrive. That's a good thing. I love this time of the year...who doesn't? Yesterday was a day of homecaring. I did notice that quite a few things I decorated with from the past, I no longer wanted. Change, always change...refinement. Keep fresh,always be in touch with what you love. Even if it means letting go. Our homes reveal who we are and where we are...I didn't say that, someone else did. 10 years ago, I looked around at my house with this in mind....oh, it was a pitiful thing to acknowledge..no it didn't...but yes it did. I began the journey to put things in my home that I loved being surrounded by..even if my family thought I had lost it. Baskets of rocks,shells,,,bells everywhere,old children's books...books of all kinds....pottery. I began to have an inward shift surrounded by things that I paid attention to-that nurtured me. Now it could be no other way.

 

Barney and Vi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I did yesterday

 

 

Energy to clean the house

A friend told me once,"If you want to clean your house,invite people over, and the job gets done."
Well, Thursday,I'm having my writing friends over. We meet once a month to work on our writing. This past month we were to try our hand at "micro-fiction"-a complete story in 300 words.
So today I'll be busy cleaning and getting ready for my dear friends. I bought some new potpourri (thanks Tania for reminding me) and got out my fall decorations. I even went outside and cut branches from my River birch tree to place around my chandelier...looks cool.
I treasure these two women. B and I have been meeting for 6-7 years,interrupted only by her battle with leukemia. This December will be her 5th anniversary of her umbilical stemcell bone marrow transplant. We are going to party!
That year of her early battle I wrote almost entirely about her and me. I couldn't write about anything else. I took it everywhere,even to Poetry Camp at The Clearing, in Ellison Bay,Wisc. I have enough poems to make a chapbook..but I don't think I will. Last year I showed her some of my poems and we had a good cry...that's what friends do.
Here's one early poem:

The Booth In The Corner

She calls,
so soon after her chemo,
she wants to meet to write.

At the restaurant I see her
in our usual booth,
waiting.
My lips purse inward
as I see her frail form
sitting there shuffling papers,
her head hidden by a red bandana,
her delicate face pale.
She sees me, and we know.

I relax my lips and exhale
the breath I'm holding,
gather my notebooks
closer to my chest.

"Let's write,"she says.

I sit unable to write,
everything seems superficial,
so unimportant,but the love,
and I cannot write about it,
her across from me.

As I tap my pen,
she takes my hand
presses it between hers.

"Write," she says,
tears streaming down her face,
and I do.

I never revised this poem..it just is.
The micro-fiction story I wrote for her and M's critique is titled:
BARBED WIRE AND BLACK POLISH

I'll let you know if they liked it.

Night Leaving

 I found myself fooling around with an old drawing I discovered from years ago. Not having much to censor me early this morning...and Leonard Cohen on in the background..I splashed paint on it..and low and behold..it actually looked like something to me...like night leaving...kinda of spooky...yet thrilling...like a storm! Maybe that's what worked its way out of me...last night's storm!  I was going to go darker with the paint...but I stopped myself in the nick of time...DONE!
Isn't it a thrill when you can thrill yourself!

Windy Evening

After last night's storm, I'm ready for some real weather. Not the wimpy kind we've had this summer...barely hot at all!
Let's have a REAL season I ask speaking up to the clouds... those big gray gauzey lumps in the sky...
Summer clothes look boring and flimsy now...give me some soft wool...and comfy crazy socks to trollop around in while watching dancing with the stars
I can be passionate about Autumn...honest! Give me the wind,orange,yellow,red falling leaves,bowing flowers,skies so brillant blue, my heart aches to look at them...bring it on!
And bonfires and fireplaces....hot cider..and cocoa....Oh I can feel the passion rising in my veins! I can't wait

Good thing I had on my red shoes today. Me and hubby went up north to book our daughter's baby shower. She picked a restaurant on Lincoln avenue...FRENCH!
Wow, what a great place.....Bistro Campagne. We will be having it in the side "cottage"...goosebumps..a darling little building surrounded by an enclosed garden. Inside, murals and mosaics on the walls...and lots of windows. Can't wait. The city there is so vibrant...so many young people.
We drove home with a glow. We couldn't be any happier then we are now. .Our third granchild will be born in December. Yes, a red shoe day!

 

Red Shoes and Ankle bracelet Day

Everyday with me is red shoes day. And you'll rarely catch my ankles without beads or bells or some kind of jingle. I love feeling pretty and sensual. I love my hair blonde and spikey. Top it off with just the right bracelet,ring and hoop earring and I'm ready to go. This is me world...passionate and sexy.
Who do you show the world who you are today by what you are wearing?
Are you feeling beautiful?
Does your body move freely and confidently?
Do people gravitate to you?
Does everything you wear say beautiful?

Yes, today is red shoes day.

 
I feel like this horsechestnut leaf I painted yesterday..hanging on to summer...but it's getting harder. I must learn to let go..over and over again. There's that word.. again...ooh!
Changing my life was really harder in the letting go then the going forward. It's where I rested myself for too many years..in the land of not of me. I had to learn to let go of regret. Regret that I had wasted so much of my life as a dead creative. I had to mourn that I never went on and figured out who I was as a woman.
I was a wife,mom,sister,daughter,friend. But that wasn't me. That's who I was to someone else. My history came through their eyes. I had to see me through my own eyes... and I didn't see woman...that sensual,sexual being I was created to be.
It was painful to let go of regret.
It was hard work to connect the dots to how I got that way
I had to empty to fill
Like the horsechestnut leaf holding onto the branch..not seeing the buds that had already set,
I finally let go and surrendered to a new season.

Isn't it a beauty?

 
Too bad this picture was taken last year...yep...that's right..last Fall. I still haven't been on it. What will it take to get me out of my comfort zone...of not thinking I can't ride a bike anymore...would look silly in one of those helmets (it would mess my coif!)..afraid to ride alone on the bike path? I don't know. But I am thinking about it. Thinking about what is it that is truly stopping me. It's not the bike.

"Tree" frog

 

There is much to be done today if I wanted.
But it is a day of self care.... I declare thus.
I never connected to this concept while raising my family...who does...but everyone must,
or they will have arrested development
...which makes for a very void woman.
you stop being and start doing...
even doing it with a happy heart and love...
but who is the woman you have quieted?
I am fortunate that I revived her just in time to save her
and she lives fully
and today she is getting a massage
a reward for showing up and taking care of her body
Lower body workout was a killer...

maybe success

just trying to figure out how to load pictures

Am I an artist?

I never spent anytime asking myself that question...I guess...there in lies the answer. I have always loved to draw,but it was only when I had to take an elective in highschool,that I discovered art. That year, Mr. D's artclass, should have changed my life,but it didn't. I made some of the most incredible things that year...dabbled in watercolor,clay,charcoal,pastels,linoleum prints,india ink,figure drawing. I excelled. But I didn't know it...I only enjoyed it. I was known as the messy one in class....a piggy in mud. For our final grade we had to hand in our year long sketchbook..wish I had kept it....Of course, I got an "A". Then it was over.

Why I bothered with all that math,science,english and history.....I never went on to college, I got a job, and when I was 20,married. Life set in and I didn't nourish my creative soul, because I didn't know I had one. That is incredible to me now.

It was when my kids were off on their own and a friend asked me to come to a book review,that I began to feel the stirrings of "something was missing in my life."

The book was Simple Abundance, by Sarah Ban Breathnache.

It is a book of discovery...and I was ready....don't you always have to be?

Oh, and did I mention, that I always wrote stories and poems..no?...I didn't mention it to myself..I just did it. In 4th grade, I captivated my classmates at lunchhour with my mystery series! I had forgotten that! And most of my adult life I saw people as charcters with stories. Imagine that disconnect!

Anyway, at age 48, I took my first poetry class and drawing class. Slowly I awakenend the beast.

I call it the beast, because within years, it had taken over my life. I couldn't get enough, and I especially loved being in the company of creative women. The journey had begun.

But little did I know what journey it would be.

OOPS!

I've added my blog list, but somehow deleted my followers! So, please sign on again.

Autumnal equinox

The Old Couple's Walk

Under a canopy of yellow maple leaves
translucent in the bright autumn sun
they stroll on a gravel path
No destination,only desire
to take in the beauty as it wanes
to breathe crisp air
to hold each other's hand
as they walk toward winter.

Sorry my posts are backwards.

Oh foo! backwards again....will I ever get it right? Try try again....There's that word again...and there it is again....oooooooh! stop! again!
Well, anyway,one of our treats this past weekend was being stopped by cows on a road in Hanover. They would not move. So my husband steered them with the car back to their own land. We stopped to tell the farmer, but he was nowhere to be found. It was fun. Too bad this doesn't have sound...moo moo moooooo.

Back home

Art maneuvered them off the road....he was really feeling like a cowboy.

"I don't know Besse...I can't read either,but I think this is the place."

They thought we wouldn't see them behind the bushes!

Round up in Hanover

On one of our drives, we were greeted by an escaped herd of cows. Art went into his John Wayne mod...I cheered them on....go for it!

Art's Big decision at Iowa Farmstand

We had so much stuff in the car...from cruising the countryside...we couldn't take home the biggest one.....but we squeezed in a pretty big one and a bag of apples...which I had to hold in the front seat.