Sunrise Song

As morning breaks
the baby sparrow
calls for his mama,
flapping like a sigh against the window pane.
My breath tight as a fist, I pull back the blind to see him
and there he is
Like a miracle,
a small downy earth heart
fluttering beside the cracked plaster.
He turns one eye toward me
Black as a river stone
And into that infinity I pour my hope.
Trusting one day
with him
It will burst from the nest
And fly.

CED Check in

I think I might be doing this backwards. I'm posting for what I did last week (August 2-August 9). I just started CED this month and I'm already excited about the many opportunities to be mindfully creative.


Like many people I do morning pages a la Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Over the past several weeks my pages have gone from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Each day I play around with paints, pens, markers and colored pencils and make pages to write my morning pages on the next day. I have many more I'd love to show you but they're filled with pretty personal thoughts so I'll have to wait until I figure out a way to obscure the words a little bit.

As I've been experimenting with painting my morning pages, I frequently wind up with extra paint and it seems such a shame to waste it. One day I noticed a small blank journal on the table and I started to smear the extra paint there. Now playing with the extra paint in my blank book has also become part of my daily ritual.

I've been thoroughly enjoying these practices because I feel no pressure. I'm not making art. In one case, I'm just going to write over the pages anyway and in the other case I'm just using up the extra paint.

In addition to doing these pages each day, I've been up to a couple of other things. On Tuesday and Saturday I helped out some friends who are participating in Project Twenty1. They have 21 days to write, shoot and edit a 10 minute film. I was "the opera ghost" which basically meant I got to wear liquid latex to make me look like a ghoulish creature and pretend to be a ghost. They'd say things like, "Um, what kind of opera would you sing" and I'd make up some operatic sounding song. Or they'd say, "What would you do if someone shined a light on you" and I'd invent some wacky appropriate ghost behaviour. I gotta say, it was fun, mostly because I got to just make stuff up.

On Wednesday I made a full moon dreamboard. I've made vision boards before but this was my first time making one for the full moon and the first time participating in the amazing Jamie Ridler's circle. It's a lovely group and it feels very nurturing to have other women lend support to my intentions and it's also inspiring to witness the aspirations of so many powerfully creative women.

Thursday evening after I finished teaching I sat down and tried to mine a poem that's been sitting at the edge of my consciousness. I sat peacefully and just played with the words. I still don't have a poem but I was very much in the moment as I worked so I really didn't mind. I can't wait to get started on this week.

5 Things

1. I'm inspired by Lawendula's One-tribe-one(he)art Collaboration Bag Project.

2. Check out this post at Dirty Footprints Studio. I love the simplicity of this philosophy. Is it Juicy or isn't it? I've applied it all day today and it was JUICY!

3. Coraline. Finally saw it - loved it. So much fun to be sitting in my own Living Room with my 3-D glasses and a big bowl of popcorn!

4. Here's to Life - Shirley Horn - 'nuff said!

5. Looking at the full moon and fireflies and listening to the crickets - no link - you have to leave the computer and go outside to enjoy it. Happy Full Moon!

Full Moon Dreamboard

Full Moon Blessings to all!! I am a relative newcomer to Jamie Ridler's wonderful website having just completed (or rather almost completed) Kerri Smith's Wreck this Journal at The Next Chapter. I love the idea of an online community sharing their full moon dream boards and supporting each other's intentions.

In the future I will have to alter how I do this. Normally, I keep my visionboards to myself so I use borrowed images. I photographed my dreamboard so hopefully it's clear that it is in my journal and is meant as a tool and nothing more.

My life is wonderfully abundant, rich with laughter, family, friends, music, art, poetry, and quiet simple joyful moments. All of the elements are there. But, I find I frequently don't do the things I really want to do. So, I am clearing away inertia so that I can welcome in action. I want to fully participate in all of my wonderful blessings and to do so with joy!

Mindfully Creative

Sometimes I have difficulty jump starting my creativity but almost just as often I have a hard time turning it off. I become a women possessed spending every waking moment (and many of the moments I SHOULD be sleeping) on my latest project. Soon, I don't even feel "creative" anymore and my life deteriorates to the place where I am eating peanut butter out of the jar for dinner. While it sounds wildly passionate and romantic, it feels awful and out of balance. So, in an effort to live a more fulfilling life I have joined Leah Piken Kolidas's Creative Everyday Challenge. I'm a late comer to the project and I'm only mentally committing to the month of August for the time being.

I think perhaps I will be using the challenge a little bit differently than most. I am going to try to use it to bring more balance into my life. First of all, I will be travelling a great deal during the month of August and that is frequently when my creative path gets derailed. So, I'm hoping that the challenge will inspire me to look for ways to be creative while I'm on the road thus keeping the spark alive. Also, I am going to be selective about what I will label "creative." Vocalzing for an hour won't count, singing from my heart for five minutes will. Blogging until my shoulders are up to my neck won't count, writing a haiku while sitting quietly on my back deck will. Researching poetry for an upcoming project until 3:00am won't count, setting a beautiful table will. I love being absorbed by a project - consumed by the passion. But, I have to admit that sometimes, it exhausts me and the rest of my life crumbles around me. So, I'm going to try this experiment for the month of August and see if I can more mindful about the whole process and invite it into every aspect of my life.

Elizabeth Gilbert

This video of Elizabeth Gilbert at Ted Talks has been making the blog rounds. It really speaks to me and since at this point I'm mostly writing to myself I thought I would put it on my blog. Also, that way I know where to find it because I get so caught up in linking from blog to blog to blog that I don't always remember where I've seen things. It's still a relatively new world to me.

I Am An Artist

I'm planning to visit my campers next week to see how they're doing with their journals. I'm going to offer a couple of more prompts to help keep them inspired. One of the things I plan to do with them is to invite them to leave a message to themselves in their journal that says "I am an artist." Knowing how hard that is for people to say to themselves I thought I would suggest that it could be a secret message, hidden in the journal, in a sealed envelope, written in code or even a picture or a doodle that when they look at it says to them "I am an artist." I want them to know that being artist isn't about how well you draw a picture or sing a song. Being an artist is an approach to life, it's about the way you see the world, it's about expressing your own unique self. You don't have to wait for someone else to validate you to claim the title - you must claim it for yourself. So, taking my own advice, I've written myself a message.