Hip Tranquil Chick Creativity Circle

I am SO excited to be a part of the Hip Tranquil Chick Creativity Circle!

I did some coaching with Kimberly late last year and I really enjoy her fresh and authentic vision. Being part of the Creativity Circle is hard work, though! There are readings to be done, "Omwork" to be completed and I even have a "buddy" to help me on my way. There is a forum to post about our work and special podcasts to listen to.

I have completed this week's reading (almost), having read Chapters 1-3 of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and Chapters 1-2 (still working on the third) of Kimberly's book Hip Tranquil Chick. There is an additional reading, The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women which I read a few months back, but as that one is a library loan I can't lay my hands on it at the moment. That is actually fine as I took copies of all the exercises the author suggested and it is still pretty fresh in my mind.

My next step is to listen to the Podcast that was released on Monday and get my Omwork completed and up in the Forum within the next week or so. So much fun! In the mean time I am working through the exercises in Chapter One of the Artist's Way. Look out for a post about that soon!

Superhero Photo Challenge: Shoot into the sun

A remarkable thing happened to me when I was sitting under a tree in my backyard painting rocks.

I looked up and I saw that through the leaves of a tree, there was a star.


I also learned the downside of getting up to go and get my camera to take a picture of said star.

My sneaky golden retriever stole my rug and my pillow! It also appears that she is reading the newspaper...perhaps that is what she does when I am not around? :)

How to Grow a Dream

This was one of my posts for Just Be Connected and I love it so much I am posting it here too.

They say that every blade of grass has its own angel that bends over it and whispers “grow, grow, grow”. I have discovered that in order to grow your dream, you have to be that angel. You have to gather your dream up in a fluffy blanket and wrap it so it feels warm and secure, just like a baby. Then you hold your dream in your arms, close to your heart, rocking a little from side to side and you whisper, grow, grow, grow.

Your dream will hear you. Like an infant it will respond to the warmth and love in your voice and in your touch. It will know that it is important to you and that you are there to help it grow into your vision.

Perhaps your dream is to decorate canvases with the bright colours of your soul, or perhaps you coax forth form and substance from clay or wood. Perhaps your dream involves scrapbooking and you gently craft the memories of life. Perhaps like me, your dream involves words and stories, the fabric of which can wrap around you and transport you to other times, places, realities. I love words, and I love crafting them so they have meaning to myself and others.
We are all creators with a dream. Once we have accepted our dream and hold it in our arms and whisper for it to grow, grow, grow, we then have to take action. Dreams are like babies – if you wait for them to do all the work of looking after themselves and helping themselves to grow up, you will be waiting a long time!

Make a list of something you can do every day to work towards your dream. It can be as simple and small as looking at colour swatches for your next painting project, or reading a chapter of a business related book. Perhaps you could take one photograph every day, or sign up for a class on scrapbooking. You could start a blog, or start visiting the blogs of people whom you admire and leave comments to encourage them and the community they (and maybe you) are a part of. All of these little tiny steps will help your baby dream to grow. Ask for input from others, join a networking group or take 10 minutes out of your day to set up a workspace.

If you are further along in your progress towards your dream you might have a dream that resembles a screaming toddler! It might be wonderful and fulfilling part of the time and an absolute hectic tear-your-hair-out mess at other times. This is definitely the time to seek outside opinions and assistance. Clarify what your dream is, what you need to do to achieve it and how you can best help it to grow in the direction of your vision.

I hope all of you have dreams that you wrap in those fluffy blankets and nurture. The world needs more dreams and more people like you – people who believe that dreams can come true and are on the way to nurturing their dreams into reality.

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”- Oscar Wilde

The Heart

Sometimes the heart has warnings, saying loudly, "I'm hurting. Don't do that anymore."

Sunday Scribblings: Sleep

Hypnos, God of Sleep

I love to sleep, but at the same time I am fearful of it. Not sleep itself, but the possibility of not sleeping. Sometimes I feel like sleep is going to be snatched away from me, never to be reclaimed, never to be experienced again. Sleep is precious to me, and like most people I don’t cope well without it. I dissolve into tears and taste anxiety. Did you know anxiety has a taste? It is a sort of hot flavour with edges of lime and citrus and it screams inside my body quietly. It feels like I am shaking from the inside, shuddering and rolling and trying to jump out of my skin.

Sleep is the opposite – it is a gift. A break from myself. I get so sick of myself and my thoughts sometimes and sleep gives me respite away from who I am. Not that I don’t like myself – I do. It’s just too much of a good thing! My mind whirs, chugs, spits, screams, recoils, examines, analyses and cuts from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep. I think a LOT. I would rather think less.

I have read The Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg just recently, and I agree with her – sleep is the underbelly of life and it isn’t really treated with respect. Without sleep you can go crazy. Our mind needs that rest, needs to process, needs that break from us perhaps. Without sleep our judgement becomes impaired, we can’t process information and we become sluggish and slow.

I love to dream. I am usually fairly good at remembering my dreams. They are usually fairly exotic – they rarely include things I’ve actually seen or done. I live a whole other life in my dreams and sometimes I like that life better than the waking one, and who is to say which is more important?

Back to my fear of having sleep snatched away from me – I don’t even like to think about this fear, let alone write about it because I am afraid of making it come true. I remember reading Stephen King’s Insomnia when I was in highschool. The main character finds it hard to sleep beyond 4:30am so he tries to stay up later and go to bed at 1:00am instead of 10:00pm. He still wakes up t 4:30am leading him to state that he should have been grateful for the sleep he was receiving, and not tried to push it for more. I believe Stephen King himself is a chronic insomniac and has been for years.

My dogs sleep a lot. I suppose dogs have limited entertainment. They can’t go and put a DVD on, or take themselves to a friend’s house for dinner. Their whole life is me, playing and sleeping. I know they dream. Their paws twitch like they are running and they make little muted woofs.

I often want to incorporate sleep or the lack there of into my story ideas. A man who sleeps all day and lives his life in the grey moon-washed shadows and far off star illumination of the night (and is NOT a vampire). A woman whose dreaming life is her extraordinary “real” life and who for all intents and purposes leads a very ordinary waking life.

Ideas, ideas everywhere and not a drop to drink!

Shades of Nose

Miss Mollie - who could ever leave this face by the side of the road forever?

Good Golly Miss Molly went to the vet yesterday to be sterilised. As I adopted her from an animal shelter several months ago, she was sterilised for "free". I use inverted commas around "free" because I paid $120 when I adopted her, which in part would have gone towards sterilisation. Everything seemed okay, until I got a phone call from the vet telling me that Miss Molly had started bleeding internally. They gave her a transfusion and monitored her carefully overnight, telling me not to panic and she would be okay.

And she is. Mollie was SO happy to see me when I picked her up. She cried a little and made some whining sounds, telling me all about the experience. Poor sweetie. She must be so confused! She has to be kept quiet for a few days so she is currently asleep all by herself in her usual sleeping spot. Hopie the Wonder Dog is a little unsure why Mollie can't play games, but she seemed glad to see Mollie, which is progress as Miss Hopie Baby Dog was initially none too enthused about Mollie's addition to our little family. She is adjusting though.

Funny. Without Mollie last night the house was quiet and a bit too still, which reminded me why I was so keen to get a second dog. Hoper is only 3.5 years old but she is a "pipe and slippers" dog for the most part - quiet and serene with the occasional madcap maneuver and barking-woofing-whining episode. Mollie fills up the house, and my heart.

Love. Her.

Now for the nose cam part of the post - see below for two photos I call "Shades of Nose". Ha ha.

Hopie's nose in the summer afternoon light

Mollie's nose (and part of her face!) in the shadowy morning light - note how long her eyelashes are!

You want me to stick my nose where? In your camera? Sure thing!

And finally, just because Mollie opened this post, we must finish it with some Hopie cuteness:

Mondo Beyondo 2008: Part One

Me and the fabulous Lucy Cavendish: Learning to Let Go

Okay, I am a little bit late with this post. The fabulous Andrea suggested this exercise at the beginning of the year and I am only just getting around to it! Andrea suggested that we answer four questions and then declare 2007 complete, and decide what your focus for 2008 is. So...here we go with the first part:

1. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for in regard to 2007?

• I want to acknowledge my bravery in moving overseas and living, working, breathing, exploring and making friends in Texas for the first few months of 2007 and the last few months of 2006.

• I want to acknowledge my bravery in taking a huge chance and flying to Guatemala and attending the Writing and Yoga Retreat. I didn't want to go and was horribly worried about the logistics of getting myself to Lake Atilan, but it turned out to be one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.
  
• I want to acknowledge my boldness in quitting a horrible job where I worked for a controlling and mean woman, and doing so when I had no one where else to go.
• Additionally, I want to acknowledge myself for sticking out the first few months of my current position which I initially hated with the fire of a thousand suns.
  
• I want to acknowledge my journey with Marian and where I am at with exploring who I am and what I am capable of.
  
• I want to acknowledge my adoption of Good Golly Miss Mollie and applaud how I worked through the initial anxiety and upset associated with her arrival. I am still not quite as attached to Mollie as I am to Hopie the Wonder Puppy, but we are getting there and really, how can I not be attached to someone as sweet as her and her happy feet? I
• want to acknowledge paying off some of my debt and being hardcore and down the line about it. May it continue until all the debt is gone!
  
• I want to acknowledge my Christmas Craft project and how much fun that was. I want to acknowledge making my way through The Artists Way which was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. So wonderful that I plan to re-explore it this year in my Online Creativity Circle.
  
• I am proud that I have begun to write, to move further towards my creative dream. That fills me with excitement.

2. What is there to grieve about 2007?

It was disappointing to be in the position where I let someone treat me badly for longer than I should have. That experience is over now and I have let it go. It will never happen to me again.

Lots of things were scary! Too many to list. Traveling, starting my new job, writing, my credit card statements, getting a second dog. But I'm proud to say that even though these experiences were scary, I didn't let that stop me from doing them and trying to enjoy them. Sometimes it was hard, very hard.

I forgive myself for not being perfect. I forgive myself for not being kind to myself. I forgive myself for being selfish with my creative time and dreams.

3. What else do you need to say about the year to declare it complete?

I think I've said what needs to be said. I declare 2007 complete. Bring on 2008!

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

I just went looking for a copy of Maya Angelou's beautiful but sad poem "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". I found it, but underneath was another of Maya's beautiful poems entitled "Still I Stand":

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame - I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain - I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear - I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear - I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

I had the honour of being in the Oprah audience when Maya Angelou was a guest and what an amazing woman she is! I remember they interviewed her son and he said "My mother's faith is like a rock - you can stand on it" and that will forever stay with me. Imagine faith so strong you can stand on it. It seems almost impossible to me. I remember reading an interview with Maya's son a few weeks back where the interviewer asked "What was it like growing up in your mother's shadow?" to which her son replied "I always thought I was her light". Again, remarkable.

The final part of the Q&A session with Maya and Oprah (also known as 'After the Show') saw a very pregnant woman ask Maya ad Oprah for words to put in her child's baby book. Oprah didn't have an answer - she told the woman to buy one of Maya's books. But Maya insisted on answering. It was almost six years ago but I remember her saying "This could be the child to put an end to racism. This could be the child to bring equality to this country and peace to the world. This could be the child who changes the world because this is possible and this will happen in your child's lifetime".

I feel crushed today. Like I have nothing left to give and I am beaten down, almost ready to give in...because if no one else believes, if no one else cares, why should I?

But now I will think of Maya and I. Will. Rise.

Sunday Scribblings - Foul

One of my favourite movies is Labyrinth. I remember watching it endlessly as a child and wanting to be Sarah, who while making the mistake of wishing the goblins would come and steal away her annoying half brother Toby, went above and beyond to get him back. I remember Jareth - King of the Goblins - who was played by David Bowie. I remember memorising the words as Sarah memorised them - You have no power over me. Years later I still remember Jareth pleading with Sarah - "Fear me, love me, do as I say...and I will be your slave". There are layers of meaning in that sentence and I think of it often, and how it can apply to relationships in my life, and the lives of others.



Something else I remember - and this is the part where I get to the prompt of "foul" - is Hoggle, the dirty little dwarf who tells Sarah the story of the "Bog of Eternal Stench". The story goes that if you get the tiniest amount of the bog on your skin, its foul stench will be with you for the rest of your life and can never ever be washed off. Or as Ludo, the big hairy friend of few words put it "SMEEELLLLLLL!"


I wonder if some actions and choices in life are similar to the Bog of Eternal Stench. Once done, they can never be undone and the memory of them follows you for the rest of your life. Some will be joyful - falling in love, standing alone in a cloud on a mountain, laughing so hard you almost wet your pants. Others are not so joyful - the way he just stopped breathing, the coffin, hateful words spoken, hearts broken. I worry about doing things that are so life changing that nothing will ever be the same. But really, what is there to lose?