************************************Denial covers the pain of the past * A blanket over the world * Lift a corner * Don't be afraid * Your life awaits you*************************************

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Waking

I've been playing with that video software again... this one is inspired by the Conscious Evolution intensive I've been doing for the last four months, and it's a little more creative. I used a combination of drawn images reworked in photoshop and free images (found online,) and added free sound effects (also found online).

I call it    WAKING
           (click the link)

Friday, October 25, 2013

Seeds

I want to become
Who I’m meant to be
But the seed knows not the flower
So I must be open
To new understandings
To all possible notions
And even what I can’t imagine
Without hesitation
Uncertainty
Or distrust

I want to become
All I’m meant to be
But the seed knows not the flower
So I must be willing
To let go of everything
Every truth I think I know
Everything I think I own
Illusions of scarcity
Security
And control

I want to become
The ultimate me
But the seed knows not the flower
So I must be ready
To break free of this tiny shell
To push through life’s heavy burdens
Trusting that beyond their darkness
A life-giving light
With everything I need
Awaits

Friday, October 18, 2013

Have you ever tried to make a movie?

This afternoon I decided to find out what a limited-tech-savvy woman in her fifties could do on her own with only a phone and a laptop. Obviously, I am not a professional videographer! I am also not a professional musician - but the music in the background is my own - a song I'm still working on. I recorded myself playing it (not perfectly - but you get the idea) just by putting my laptop next to the piano. So - simply made, but all mine! It's three minutes long - the song - which I've entitled Ragdoll's Dance - plays through twice.

Here's the link:  Fall in Illinois

Fall in Illinois

Have you ever tried to make a movie?

This afternoon I decided to find out what a limited-tech-savvy woman in her fifties could do on her own with only a phone and a laptop. Obviously, I am not a professional videographer! I am also not a professional musician - but the music in the background is my own - a song I'm still working on. I recorded myself playing it (not perfectly - but you get the idea) just by putting my laptop next to the piano. So - simply made, but all mine! It's three minutes long - the song - which I've entitled Ragdoll's Dance - plays through twice.

Here's the link:  Fall in Illinois
Have you ever tried to make a movie?

This afternoon I decided to find out what a limited-tech-savvy woman in her fifties could do on her own with only a phone and a laptop. Obviously, I am not a professional videographer! I am also not a professional musician - but the music in the background is my own - a song I'm still working on. I recorded myself playing it (not perfectly - but you get the idea) just by putting my laptop next to the piano. So - simply made, but all mine! It's three minutes long - the song - which I've entitled Ragdoll's Dance - plays through twice.

Here's the link:  Fall in Illinois

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Leaves of a Day


First light is winter-empty and bare.
Yawn
Roll over
Look at the clock
Yesterday’s reruns spatter life’s branches.
Stretch
Rise

Morning’s sleepy reflection is older than expected.
An accidental dose of startling honesty
Quick
Pull the veil back in place
Race into another day
Before the first swallow of morning brew—hot, strong, sweet—cover reality in a thousand sprouts of springtime green, soft as a baby’s cheek.
Buds pop
Leaves open
Windswept branches sway

Mid-day is covered with dense, verdant foliage.
A short shopping list
An overdue phone call
A silly Facebook game
Move
Faster
Faster still, if only to hold the madness away. Ignore the tick-tock and the belly’s clench. An intolerable lull could reveal a sting in your eyes or a small, involuntary gasp.
Just
Get
Through
Focus on a fantasy-future as daylight slips by unnoticed.

Russet leaves disguise evening’s passion.  
Connection hides beneath distraction
Sincerity under sarcasm
Authenticity behind repression’s mask
The caress of a warm, damp cloth can’t wipe it clean but still
Softly
Slowly
Lifts intensity from another day.

Night’s branches rustle under a black-satin gown.
Leaves dry
Curl
Drop
Sweep them from the pillow and pull the covers high against night’s chill.
Eyes closed
Breath deep
But the mind holds fast to one last luminous twinkling.
Wasn’t there something?
Yes
Something more
A meant-to-be knowing missed in the flurry. A door hangs ajar, a choice stirring in a restless mind. Turn towards it?
Step in?
Allow that small, innermost child to walk helpless
Vulnerable
Alone
Through grief’s blaze?
Or give in to sleep’s sweet escape as the day’s final leaf falls.  




Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Ripples in a Pond

I heard a splash. Moving closer, pushing aside the tall autumn grasses, I quietly watched the pond. There were ripples where something had disturbed the peaceful, glassy surface but I couldn’t imagine what had made caused them.
And then, there it was. About five inches long, slender and silver, a fish jumped up, wiggled in the air, and then dropped back out of sight.
I have walked this path countless times. I’d first discovered this small protected woods when I was still in my twenties. Having moved to a new town just a few weeks after my first child was born, I was on the look-out for new places to explore. With my daughter in a snuggly—the front-carrier most popular at that time—we’d wander the local parks, walk the malls, or trek along the riverfront. Together we’d take long drives into town or through the corn fields that bordered our neighborhood. She was born in the spring, so we watched the corn grow tall together that whole first summer.
It was a warm autumn day when I came across the little woods. I parked my car and stepped onto the paved path that led around the edge of the trees. Soon the pond, so full of life, appeared on my right behind the cattails. Unseen ducks called out nearby. An egret stood on the far edge of the pond, staring down into the water. I savored the idyllic scene, etching it into memory and revisiting it over and over, often without ever leaving my house.
All four of my children have come to know this place. They’ve gathered leaves and twigs, bits of cottonwood and walnut shells and created collages that hung in the kitchen or were given as gifts to a grandmother or aunt. And as they grew, our passages through the woods became less frequent and much quieter. In the last few years, I’ve been coming alone, more often than not.
Then came last year’s drought. Summer began a month ahead of schedule and lasted longer than ever before. We had less rain than at any other time since they’ve been keeping track of such things. When the heat finally broke, in mid-October, the pond was gone. Completely gone. Tall brown grass covered the low area where the pond should have been. I actually cried. I felt as if a part of me was gone.
The weather channel proclaimed that it would take ten years of above-average rain to bring the water tables back to normal. For all I know, they’re right. Maybe the water is still lower than it was. However, this year, a cold snowy spring gave way to a cool rainy summer. Despite the weather, I could have walked in the woods on many occasions, but I avoided it. The image of that first time—the egret standing at water’s edge—was so much more comforting that the thought of the barren, dry landscape I’d last seen.  
Today, pleasant air was highlighted by sunshine and soft breezes. The only portent of oncoming winter—the date on the calendar—pushed me past my avoidance. I just couldn’t go a whole year without seeing the little woods.
As I drove, two images fought for position in my mind—a pond full of life and a dead, dry divot. I turned onto the narrow road leading into the woods and parked my car. Birds harmonized with the remaining rustling leaves and the soft sound of my footsteps on a path strewn with color.
I was watching the ground, avoiding the hard remnants of nutshells cast aside by squirrels and chipmunks, when I heard the splash. Looking up, I caught sight of a shiny surface between the tall grasses and cattails and my heart pounded with expectation. I pushed the grasses aside and gratitude surged inside me. The pond looked to be as big as ever.
And then, from the ripples, that shiny silver sliver jumped.
How could that be?
How could this place that was dry as death a year ago now be full of life again?
I sat on a bench and watched through a familiar clearing that had returned with the rest of the view, and I fell into a daydream as I tried to imagine how fish had found their way into the new waters. In my fantasy, I imagined a fish carrying fertile eggs. I saw them growing inside her but just before she could move the new life from her body, a bird swooped down and plucked up the fish swallowing her whole. The next day, the bird flew over an empty, lifeless pond and dropped the eggs—still viable—in with her waste.
A silly fantasy. I shook my head as I rose from the bench and headed into the shady woods for the rest of my walk. More likely, I told myself, an underground stream fed the pond and the fish made their way back as the waters rose. Still, within that fantasy I found a bit of significance.
We are all moving through our lives as if we are in control, and as if the surprising and sometimes catastrophic things that occur are random, arbitrary events.
A meal for the bird.
A tragedy for the fish.
New life for the little pond.

Maybe we’re all ripples in a pond. Maybe each one of us and everything we do is part of an exquisite panorama of life—a picture so enormous and so intricate we can’t even fathom its existence. 

Co Creation

Co Creation
We create the life we live

Love your inner child...

...for she holds the key...

...to your personal power.
A lesson is woven into each day.
Together they make up the tapestries of our lives.
~Shen