Express your self...

Life is just so much fun.

"We can know nothing about what is outside us if we overlook ourselves," he thinks now. "The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves"

~Italo Calvino's Mr. Palomar

Even the fear of death is nothing compared to
the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.

~Frances Moore Lappe,

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience"

~ Emily Dickinson

I'm silently restless

because unfortunately

no words feel comfortable

being captured

between thought and revelation.

The best part of my

crazy busy,
task filled,
responsibility saturated
day
was finding this written
on a scrap piece of paper in the kitchen tonight...
I want a mango tree...

"Out of clutter, find simplicity."
--Albert Einstein

A home is not a mere transient shelter:

its essence lies in the personalities of the people who live in it.

~H. L. Mencken

LIFE IS...
SO MUCH MORE THAN WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE....SO MUCH LESS THAN WE THOUGHT IT WOULD BE...
SO INTENSE...YET MUNDANE...YET OCCASIONALLY INTOXICATING AND EXCITING ...YET DEMANDING AND DEAFENING..
ITS JUST SOMETIMES SO SO MUCH....

Some days I have EVERYTHING under control

and then some days I feel like this...

As an artist running a business I feel as though I am often teetering on an edge of potential unreliability. I live in a relatively small but constant state of fear that my left brain will not always show up for work on time to get done what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Most days its there early—planning, thinking and responding to emails and phone calls with such a fervour of dedication that you wouldn't even think to question that it would EVER be negligent or absent. And then, well...right brain takes over and convinces lefty that it would be just fine for it to take that long bubble bath or that plane to Prague—we will be able to hold down the fort perfectly fine without it.

Then all hell breaks loose...painting, writing, drawing, no sleep, and a constant feeling that there are things everywhere being forgotten or left undone, all of it totally beyond my control. I would love to know how to handle this better than the constant scrambling I do...any suggestions?

We did not change as we grew older; we just became more clearly ourselves.

~Lynn Hall

Piper received this skirt as a present at her "Princess"
birthday party yesterday and it actually
plays the song "the Hokey Pokey""...you put your whole body in
...you take your whole body out
...you put your whole body in and you shake it all about
...you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around
...THAT'S what its all about!"

...come to think of it,
I agree, that IS what its all about"

When something moves you,
you need to pay attention.
Sit down there.
Be there with what moves you,
no matter what it is or
how it moves you;
in anger, in passion, in sadness, or in thought.

Grab your shovel and pail
and dig right there in that sand.
There are answers there to the questions you seek.
Make a sandcastle, make a tunnel, find the clay underneath...
that is where you will find yourself.

...everyone should live with a little sand in their shoes.

A couple weeks ago I began attending my regular critique group at Sutton Art again. I have been going on and off for about 13 years to Eileen Raucher Sutton's group, and I am still constantly amazed at how much I learn about painting (and life) from looking at and discussing art.

A fellow artist, Iris, brought a painting that she was working on and as soon as she put it up you could sense that everyone felt there was something wrong in it. Before anyone said anything she pulled out some brown painted paper and stuck it to the canvas in a place that she figured would "fix" the problem...and it did. We discussed why the change made the painting work and we were all quick to agree that she should just do that right on the painting.

But then Eileen told Iris to take the brown paper off the painting and let us look at what the problem really was. You see, there was an area under the paper that had yellow and purple touching each other and was causing a very exciting energy in the painting. The problem was this area was not the actual focus of the painting so it was distracting. However, it was also the most interesting part of the painting. We talked for about 10 minutes about how she could create another intense colour dynamic somewhere else and perhaps balance out the painting that way. We spent another 5 minutes playing with some other bits of paper and visualizing what it might look like that way.

Then, Eileen told Iris to put the original brown paper back on the painting, once again covering the yellow/purple dynamic. This time when she did it, we all were amazed at how the vibrant energy of the painting was instantly gone. Yes, her initial "solution" would solve the problem, but we could easily see now that it would also take away the most exciting part of the painting.

Now her painting looked fine, but it was very safe and quite uninteresting.

Life is so much like that painting. Exciting and sometimes disruptive elements do occasionally arise in our lives and are distracting, especially if a lot of the elements in our lives are safe, routine and appear to be working on the surface. These distractions aren't part of the "plan" but they are exciting, interesting and quite possibly are telling us something important about what we want from life.

The question comes down to how you solve your painting. I wonder if Iris will choose to challenge herself and try to find a way to balance that exciting colour dynamic with something as equally exciting or just paint the brown over the yellow/purple?

What would you do?

another new journal...because...well...I can't just have only one...

Pipes, Piperonie, Pippi, Pip the hip, The Pipester...
I love how you vibrate and squeal with excitement at least 10 times a day.

I love how one of your favourite games is
to "pretend" that I am your "Mom" and that you are my "daughter".

I love how you giggle in your sleep.

I love how you call your grandma and grandpa everyday to make sure they know when Little Bear and Franklin are on because you are sure they watch it even when you aren't with them.

I love how you taped a song for me every night to listen to when I got home from drawing at the Fringe, just in case I missed hearing your voice.

I love the "invisible" friends that visit everyday —Buja and Girl to name a few.

I love how much you like to cuddle and how you assure me that you will ALWAYS want to cuddle with me that much

I love you
Piper Kensington!
Happy 5th birthday!

~love, mom