some things I admire

a volcano (Nature's power), Frida, a circle of women, Mary Oliver

"I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is the travel of the planet around the sun ... The ancient people understood that our world is a circle... Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes." --Eustace Conway

regrets

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
-Alexander Graham Bell

patience

A new moon teaches gradualness and deliberation,
and how one gives birth to oneself slowly.
Patience with small details makes perfect a large work, like the universe.
What nine months of attention does for an embryo
forty early mornings alone
will do for your gradually growing wholeness.
--Rumi

to make art is to be filled

What was said to the rose
that made it open
was said to me
here in my chest

What was told to the cypress
that made it strong and straight

What was whispered to the jasmine

So it is what it is
whatever made sugarcane sweet
whatever was said
to the inhabitants of the town of Chugill in Turkistan
that makes them so handsome

Whatever lets the pomegranate flower
blush like a human face
that is being said to me now

I blush
whatever put eloquence in language
that's happening here

The great warehouse doors open
I fill with gratitude
chewing a piece of sugarcane
in love with the one
to whom every "that" belongs

What was said to the rose
that made it open
was said to me
here in my chest.

RUMI

reverent owl

"The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it."   --Joseph Campbell

a new fun tool

For my birthday, I received a magnificent set of Derwent Inktense pencils from my Mother-in-law. They really are fun, you draw a simple pencil drawing, but then when you add water, and the colors just jump right out. Having fun tools really makes art easier to be happy with. I can scan this fish, print a bunch, then use it in a multi-fish collage in my journal. (Repeating fish makes sense, since they hang out in bunches, ya know?)

and also, noticing how very beautiful life is, it's fun to try to get those colors to be as lively as they are in real life. Livelier, perhaps.

"We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again." --Rumi