IN FLIGHT

Serendipity! I happened upon this little guy while I was out this evening...

so here is my version of How to Catch a Hummingbird:

HOW TO CATCH A HUMMINGBIRD

...how to catch a hummingbird...

I was unintentionally eaves-dropping when I heard this curious snippet of conversation. There was a noted silence in our own table's conversation and above the background noise I very clearly heard: "...how to catch a hummingbird..."

It's stuck with me for several days now.

I am wondering what the remains of the conversation entailed?!

Why would you want to catch a hummingbird? Seems truly futile - like trying to catch a stray thought mid-conversation.

How exactly would you go about such a thing?
Entice it with food, a succulent flower to trap it in...
Lure it with sticky sweet nectar or honey...
Hire Sylvester - although Tweety was so much slower and look what happened there...

Hummingbirds are so incredibly fast! It seems a bit like trying to capture the Tasmanian devil.

Would captivity be detrimental to the tiny, high-metabolism creature? I read somewhere they must eat constantly to sustain their hyper-active nature.

I've rarely even seen a hummingbird sit still for more than a moment...

What would I want with a hummingbird? Birds are meant to be set free...

My thoughts run away from me like a flock of hummingbirds! Is there such a thing? They seem solitary creatures, destined for speed not idol companionship.

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart
you live in your lips,
And sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.”
Kahlil Gibran , The Prophet

RUN WITH ME

"Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed.
Maybe they just need to run free til they find someone just as wild to run with them."
Sex and the City

I am grateful for a day to play and good friends to run with me!
Looking forward to many more summer days and nights like this one...

Thank you!

xo

RUMORS

“The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” ~Paul Strand

Rumors. Gossip with a nefarious purpose. (Insert wicked smile)

I am starting a rumor...

A talented, charming local artist and her candy-coated artwork will be available for conversation and drinks this Saturday from 7-9pm at Indigo Hillcrest. Pass it on.

Saturday, June 26th 7:00PM-9:00PM
Indigo, 3545 Fourth Ave in Hillcrest 92103

Curious about my work?
Passionate about a good cause?

A silent auction of original artwork, spa services and products will benefit The Race for the Cure.

Original artwork and photographs will also be available for purchase all evening.

John Nelson and his wife are displaying photographs on the first floor at Indigo and I have the whole second floor. Come join us!

And since I have your attention...

A gelato establishment if opening in North Park near the our unofficial restaurant row. Gelato within walking distance on a summer's eve?! It's not quite Italy but it will do.


“Let me ask you something, what is not art?” ~ unknown

A DISCERNING SURRENDER

“I’ve learned to trust what I call the Braille method of living – relinquishing grand plans and schemes in favor of an intuitive approach, feeling my way from tree to tree, relinquishing my attempts to control the world and learning, instead, to trust a discerning surrender.” Stephen Cope

I close my eyes and imagine the textures of my life slowing running beneath my fingertips.

From tree to tree and stone to stone I am enjoying feeling my way today...

How about you?

JABBERWOCKY

A belated Father's Day tribute to my amazing father who was such an incredible source of inspiration, wisdom and wit.

Thank you for your willingness to define every word, read any story, attend countless sports games and write beautiful, hand-written letters - among so many other cherished talents of your that I dearly miss.

I am grateful for my inherited fondness for etymology, mysteries and coining words.

Here's one of our old favorites. ENJOY!





`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"


He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.


And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.


"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Lewis Carroll

SUMMER GIRLS

I am ever-so-grateful for little girls and the approach of summer!







The last few days have been chock-full of...

slumber parties
evenings stretched thin on twilit grass
brilliant youth-inspired fundraising efforts
endless giggles
rambling imaginings
fieldtrips, amusement parks, picnics and parachutes
epic games of hide-and-seek
truth and dare
screams followed by belly laughs
lazy barefoot mornings filled with coffee, long breakfasts and good reads...

What about you? What are you grateful for?

A GOOD LAUGH

"Il faut savoir sourire à la vie." unknown







When true happiness arrives it come with a thunderous smack and there is no question...in these moments body language reveals the smile that emanates from somewhere deep inside and flows out into the world as a smile, a laugh, a touch...

“A smile starts on the lips, A grin spreads to the eyes, A chuckle comes from the belly; but a good laugh bursts forth from the soul, overflows and bubbles all around.” Carolyn Birmingham

When was the last time you laughed like that?!

DELICIOUS TO TOUCH

Smooth...

The obvious springs to mind. Unnecessarily catalogued here. Cluttering the more subtle, delicate connections to my personal archive of experiences, reactions and images.

Smooth...
The oddly smooth quality of fossilized wood.
The feeling of smooth, taught sun-warmed skin under hand.
The slippery contrast of exposed and submerged pool tiles (and the sand-paper like bottom!).
The suddenly-slick realization of algae upon river rock under foot.
The tuft of hair beneath a cat's ear.
The surface of a mirror as I reach out toward my reflection.
The lush under-side of my daughter's favorite blanket.

Smooth...
an appealing characteristic, delightful to touch, the opposite of rough.

Have you ever discovered the texture of something and been surprised? With my eyes I had clearly seen the object and in my mind I had created a feeling, an understanding of what it would be like to touch and to hold...

Once upon an island in Lake Maggiore I found something delightfully surprising and yet somehow ordinary.

Flower petals.

In my mind they felt cold, clammy, damp, like wet paper or perhaps even scaly like a lizard's skin.

Instead they were ever-so-soft! Like the feeling of running your fingers across butter - but without the sticky, greasy aftermath. I simply wanted to slide my fingertips across these thin slices of heaven!

I imagined being covered in a fabric that felt this delicious upon my skin!

This is a photograph I took at the time of my daughter's handful of heaven. Her smooth, childish fingers tenderly holding the treasure that is their unexpectedly precious smoothness.

I tucked several in my pocket. My own delicate secret. So light I was surprised to find them there throughout the day. My fingertips never seemed to lose their novel sense of wonder at these tiny, smooth gems in my pocket. My own variety of worry-stones.

The magic is perhaps pronounced because it is fleeting. By only the next day, my fingertips met with a tattered, brittle spectre. Left with only a memory of the previous day's delicious touch.

In college I once had an art project. It simply stated: Create something gratifying to hold.

When was the last time you felt this way about something when you held it?

What was it?!

EMPTY CAGE

This is my sketch for today's challenge...it's entitled Empty Cage.


As part of today’s exercise I created a visual timeline of my life. How incredible to witness the string of seemingly insignificant events that have filled my lifetime and intersected like some extravagant connect-the-dots, to form my uniquely significant path. These serendipitous, often baffling, sometimes humorous adventures that have brought me directly here (Yes, please do imagine a large, red “You are here” sign).

Exactly where I need to be.

Today’s Creativity Challenge word is HUSH…

My mind tends to run immediately to the opposite of a suggested condition. Is this out of sheer rebellion? Or perhaps for contrast? The clarity that comes with opposites and contrast. In order to clearly define one condition it is necessary to build a foundation of understanding upon knowledge of its opposite.

I feel, rather than know, that I somehow must understand what ISN’T in order to know what truly IS.

Therefore if I am attempting to gain further understanding of the word hush, when in my lifetime have I experienced cacophony?

Noise of an impossible decibel and intensity.

I remember…the proximity of exhilarated fans as Brazil triumphed in the 1994 world cup.

…the indescribable loudness of metal crumpling upon impact.

…the incredible intensity of a forest full of birds rising in symphony with the Costa Rican sun.

…the rowdy raucous of laughter as delighted and surprised children toss water balloons on a chilly June afternoon.

…the contagious exuberance of violinist Lucia Micarelli as her notes encourage the individual cells in my body seem respond to her spirited connection with her music.
Hush…
An unnatural absence of sound.

Hush implies an imposed stillness and quiet. Like raising a fingertip to your lips, encouraging someone to be quiet, to be still. The word hush precludes an uncomfortable and awkward silence. Expectant. The noise may return and the word may need repeating.

Hush…
…the unexpectedly utter emptiness of my father’s cold hand shortly after he had passed

…the hauntingly warm yet completely limp body of my beloved cat impossibly draped in my arms…filled only moments before with his comfortably familiar breath and life.

Hush…
A presence that was previously there and is now uncomfortably, noticeably absent.
When that final elaborate silence arrives there is no longer any need for words like hush. That which one corrupted silence has all but fled. With the bird released, the cage sits empty, vacant, waiting. Leaving a stillness, a space that is thick, stifling.

I am grateful for the perspective gained in the present. And the ability to feel grateful and content with where I am right this moment.

THERE COMES A YES

"After the final no, there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends."

Wallace Stevens

Anyone else feeling as though there has been a steady flow of recent and unfortunate news?

I won't bother to catalogue the details here.

Instead I'd prefer to use this space to send some much-needed happy thoughts out to those of my dear friends who could use a little extra right about now:

rainbows (but no butterflies)
resounding vibrations of OM circle energy
deliciously long, warm hugs
singing ABBA songs out loud while dancing in the kitchen
trying to play catch with balloons
warm brownies and vanilla gelato
first cup of coffee on a cold day
climbing into a freshly made bed
lying on grass watching clouds
warm sand and warm waves
sunset on water (waiting for the green flash!)
singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
scratching a loved one's back
painting toenails
warm stone under bare feet
pine needles baking in the sun
maple syrup on fingertips
fresh-cut flowers on the table
fuzzy tomato leaves
a purring cat stretched out on its back
sound of rain against the roof
cartwheels - anywhere
the tooth fairy antics
finger painting
witty sarcasm...

What helps you to forget your worries and sadness?

OUR INCORRIGIBLE SENSES

Our incorrigible senses have the ability to exhume from the vaults of our minds strikingly vivid, seemingly full-bodied memories and images. Retelling stories ancient within the timeline of our lifetime.

These stories are so old that they no longer have the flesh of their own words.

Yet these memories quickly rise to the surface with the merest scent, the slightest texture, the faintest song. Murky are these moments when we are caught unawares by the persuasive embrace of the past.

For today's creativity challenge I created a layered, textured, collage...I'd like to accompany my collage with a soundtrack and scents...so here are a few. ENJOY!

The subtle scent of lavender and echinacea reminds me of a 13-year-old boy who lent me his scarf one rainy May day in Yellowstone…

Sunlight mixed with fresh-cut grass and skin lathered with Dove soap stir images of long hot summer showers…

Dust, sweat and pine needles baked under the sun return me to lazy afternoons on Devil’s Head…

Taste of vine ripened tomatoes and damp creek-scented breeze tinged with dog woods recall evenings plucking vegetables from our childhood garden and the surprise of Alice-in-Wonderland-style surreal-sized tomato worms...

Garden roses still remind me of holiday breakfasts with my grandparents alongside their rose garden…decades ago and scraped knees from climbing jagged, sun-drenched lava rocks to play beneath the pines...

The rustle of breeze through summer-lush, cottonwoods, their fecund fluff filling the sky and blanketing the fields like an early snowfall…

The contrast of daily textures so often overlooked…scratchy garden twine against velveteen tomato leaves and their smooth-as-a-baby’s-bottom fruits. Bare feet moving across the warm, deep pile of our area rug onto the cool, warn slats of our hardwood floors…

Curious mixture of raven’s caw-caw, mingled with a grackle’s tweet-tweet and the rhythmic trance of Hearing Damage, resonating within me like a tuning fork…

Have you noticed? Even in the silence the persistent thrum of technology continues to fill the void…we’re never truly without some sense being artificially stimulated, encouraged, triggered…

Our senses conjure from memory the most fragile of images with merely the faintest of hinted scents wafting upon the breeze. Awakening long-quiet parts of ourselves. Simultaneously wild,translucent, sacred and delicate.

What might happen if we could silence all of our senses? Just for one minute? What might we feel?

Clarity? Or simply a quenching emptiness and silence?

STEADY DRIZZLE

Apparently I needed this...

I am an indestructible romantic. How can it be? I suppose it's not something that can be reasoned. And here in the poem I've written for today's challenge my softer side is revealed.

I've signed on for a creativity challenge. Creativity Boot Camp.

Didn't I just finish telling someone I didn't need a kick in the $%! Well, I suppose this is of a different variety. While I'm a motivated, self-achiever, this boot camp is pushing me explore other mediums, inspiring me to step beyond my comfortable forms of expression and encouraging daily creative outbursts.

Today's assignment was to explore a medium that originally inspired us. Way back when. And to work with the word "drizzle."

Oooh! Such a deliciously descriptive word! Reminds me of messy afternoons, cooking and licking fingertips. Honey, maple and chocolate syrup. Butter cream frosting...

Or the steady drizzle of a rainy Northwest day...coating eyelashes and tree branches.

We were also given this quote: “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” ~Leonardo da Vinci

I was reminded of my need to add words, to speak to the art and clearly explain it for my audience. My words tend to accompany my pieces, arm-in-arm.

Today my piece combines my original photograph and poem...

If you remember back to when it all began, what originally inspired you? Is it possible to reconnect to that feeling, that medium, that moment of inspiration?

Are you willing to give it a try?!

Will what started as a drizzle develop into a deluge?

WISER

"Take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening."
(Бери мысли спать с тобою, ибо утро вечера мудренее. Beri mysli spatʹ s toboyu, ibo utro vechera mudrenyee.)
Russian Proverb

LAYERS

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.”
Julia Cameron

I am grateful for spontaneous reconnections today! I just spent the morning catching up with a dear friend and discussing creativity on a deadline....

Is the term working artist a contradiction? John Cleese was once quoted as saying something along the lines of if you want creativity from your workers you must also allow time for play. Sometimes being creative under pressure and on a timeline is soooo hard! It's like walking into a bookstore with excitement and no list and then all of a sudden every book you have ever wanted to read evaporates from your mind! Why is that?

When nothing is due I am inspired by simplicity, honesty, process, destruction, scribbles, a crumpled napkin, swirls of gasoline in a puddle of water, patterns of leaves on the ground, tire tracks in mud, patterns of shoelaces...for me the courage and work comes from finding(or perhaps more accurately surrendering to) the creativity and inspiration when a piece is due, when a show is in its final stages, when expectations are set and schedules are on.

If I can begin to think of time and schedules like artistic processes...layers...I love knowing something is beneath something else in a piece - there's a quality of something hinted at and mysterious and almost secret...very inspiring! What happens if I allow what has already inspired me to rise to the surface, to reveal itself or its shadows in these times of creative ebb?

"To be productive, any level of work requires the willingness to empty ourselves of what we think we want and know, and a corresponding willingness to open ourselves to what emerges as important and needful."

Grace Unfolding, Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz

What might have space to arrive if we dare to empty ourselves of expectations?

SACRED AND INEXPLICABLE

“Too often it is we who won't let life be simple.

Why must we squeeze it and bite it and slam it against what we've convinced ourselves are our great powers of reason? We violate the innocence of things in the name of rationality so we can wander about, uninterrupted, in our search for passion and sentiment.

Let the inexplicable sit sacred.”

Marlena De Blasi , A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance

In this moment I am loving the vivid imagery of these words.

There are times when my knowing inhibits feeling. Times when my need to understand prevents the subtle truth from just being.

We are such bullies at times...to life, to truth, to others, to ourselves...

Like silly-putty in rough, child-like hands I've shaped and battered many an issue within my own head. Repeatedly forcing reason onto the most unreasonable situations and people. Like trying to extract juice from a pear. Some things are just not meant to be...

Fascinating that I still attempt to attach meaning and method to these events and circumstances.

I have been chronically struggling with the daily realization that several prominent individuals in my life have completely disparate core values and operating systems from my own.

Yes, simply acknowledging the difference was a step. But I couldn't leave it there. I wanted to UNDERSTAND. I needed to find some explanation or reason that would somehow make it all clear, acceptable, excused. Perhaps I finally battered these ideas around until there was nothing left. No reason. None. Zero. No way to rationally explain them. And no reason to...

Wait?! I don't need to understand or accept for them to exist?!

In recognizing these differences as inexplicable and sacred I somehow shifted behind the struggle, into a gap. A space that allows me to find peace beyond the conflict. It's as though the world has suddenly, miraculously, flipped upside down into a playful somersault. Everything looks changed...

What are you struggling against that is inexplicable and perhaps, nonetheless sacred?

THE WAY WE SEE

“The way that we see things today does not have to be the way we saw them yesterday. That is because the situations, our relationships to them, and we ourselves have changed in the interim. This notion of constant change suggests that we do not have to be discouraged.” T.K.V. Desikachar

How does my perspective affect how I see the world?

My attitude most definitely filters and transforms the events and my subsequent reactions. Distance and time shift my viewpoint...extending, expanding, distorting the edges like a fish eye lens.

Erasing the details and substituting generalizations, washes of feeling in their place. Like a familiar, well-worn chair our memories begin to conform to the frequent silent repetition of our story. Our internal dialogue creates its own mental pathway.

Straying perhaps slightly or at times grossly from the truth of the experience. A navigation system gone awry.

At times wishing I could simply remove this lens and swap out for another...is it that simple?!
And you? How do you shift your perspective or change your point of view?

SMILE

"...and I love it when, in the middle of our kiss, I can feel you smiling." unknown


Now that's a thought that makes me smile.

Unrestrained happiness.

Joy so full to the top that it can't help but overflow and spill out. Overflowing...to the point you glow and feel lighter.

I am grateful...
that I have felt this love.
to have of memories of such moments.
and more to look forward to.

ENJOY this day!

SPARKS

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” Ayn Rand

I am grateful for these words today. I will hold tightly to each of my "irreplaceable sparks!"

What are you grateful for?

WATER NOT BOAT

Flow on, flow on! Surrender to that which already is...

"In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not by strength but by perseverance." - H. Jackson Brown

The winding, graceful and persistent stream ever flowing on...what a lovely image.

I often find the serendipitous "little things" arrive as the universe's messengers.

...the perfect timing of reading a certain book, spotting a photo, catching a particular song.

Words and images that speak directly to where I am and what I need at that precise moment.

A mirror.

It's true that these words reflect back upon us that which already resides within us.

What a brilliant reminder!

"The calm river of your life approaches the rocky chute of the rapids - flow on through. You are the same water. The rocks cannot hurt you. Remember, now and then, that you are the water and not the boat. Flow on!” unknown

IN ITS BSENCE

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.” Sylvia Plath

Do you ever get that feeling - whether in art, work, pleasure or a recipe...

a phantom limb of sorts...

Something you can't quite put your finger on. It is none-the-less present in its definable absence.

What's missing?

Must you have experienced a condition in order to truly recognize its opposite?

When is it appropriate to actively identify, seek out and find this missing piece? Or will it naturally present itself when the time is ripe?

“Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking.” William E. Simon