Art Journal Page
Speak often the words of your heart.

This is one of those fast and flurry-filled posts.

After spending some time in the studio last night, I joined C.C. to watch one of ‘our’ programs on TV. And then, I got caught in another. After the second, I slipped into the office to catch up on some emails and work I had to get done for both my upcoming art show, and the concert for Christmas at The Madison. (Yes, it is coming soon for the third year! Sunday, November 30th, 7pm. St. Stephen’s Anglican Church – watch this space for more information soon!)

And then, I got distracted. Lost track of time and didn’t realize how late it was until the midnight hour was upon me!

Needless to say, I slept in. On purpose.

Actually set my alarm for 6:30am and slept until it went off!

Now that’s unusual for me.

To actually heed an alarm and not wake up before its ring.

And out of all that, what I’m saying is…

I’m late.

Or am I?

I have a choice.

To allow my sense of being late to hurry me up and leave me feeling breathless and out of time, or, to breathe into my sense of being late and allow myself the grace of being present in the moment, where I’m, at without judging the time or tardiness of my awakening.

What I choose will determine the tempo and the essence of my day.

And my voice of reason whispers, “Choose wisely.”

I am choosing to accept the hour of my awakening as what it is, the hour of my awakening.

And now, I must rewind.

Earlier, thinking I was late and had limited time to begin my day, I chose to skip my meditation. It’s my all or nothing thinking. If I don’t have at least 20 minutes to meditate, what’s the point?

The point is, there’s nothing wrong with just 10 minutes, or even 5. What’s important is that I take the time to center myself, to ground my day in quiet. So, rather than spend half an hour to forty-five minutes here, I’ll make this short and give myself the gift of time for quiet reflection where I can set the intention for my day and live into its wide-eyed awakening with awe-inspired breathing.

So often, in my ‘all or nothing’ thinking, I convince myself that there is only one way to do something when, in fact, the choice is always mine and in that choice, there are many roads and many options.

My option this morning is to surrender judgment and  fall effortlessly into being present in my day knowing, how I live it is my choice. When I choose to honour myself, I give myself the gift of all the time I need to experience each moment as a wonderful, joyful awakening.

There is no time like the present and time isn’t going too fast, it’s simply moving. How I experience the speed of its passing is up to me.

Chicken Little

Standing in front of my easel, staring at a blank canvas, or one I’ve decided to keep painting into, can be daunting. In fact, it can be downright scary!

I come to the canvas with an idea, a thought, a visual expression I want to make manifest, and always, my critter mind gets going like crazy!  Forget it. Stop it. Don’t bother. Nope, too scary. Nope, you aren’t an artist.

To move through the critter’s nattering I must take action. Get into action. Get going. I must make the first mark of paint, and then the second, and third and keep putting paint onto the canvas without letting the critter’s voice take hold.

And, with each stroke of paint, with each breath I take, the fear subsides as I move into the sacred space of creating for the sake of creating.

Tamara joined me in the studio last night and at one point she commented how much she loves to create with no agenda.

The underpainting
A landscape I didn’t like

It is in that space, that limitless and liminal space of creating without an agenda that magic happens, wonder awakens, awe invades. In that space, there is no critter’s voice telling me to Stop it. Or yammering about my limitations. There is only me and the muse. Me and the process of being present in all my senses, without judgement.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the critic has a role to play in the creative process. The original painting that forms the underpainting for Chicken Little was not pleasing me. The photo I shared is phase one. I don’t have a photo of phase two because it was quite ugly. I’d added a whole bunch of dark green trees in the foreground and the mass of them was disappointing! I was undecided as to where to go with it, what to do when I came upon a technique of painting random designs onto a background, and then, blocking out what was not needed and leaving the ‘desired’ elements exposed.

Letting go of fear, I decided to try it. What did I have to lose? A painting I wasn’t too happy with anyway?

And that’s where the magic, and the fun, happened.

In painting over, in fearlessly letting myself be one with the canvas, I found a new and fun way to work, and a piece I really like.

Just like life. when I’m stuck in thinking there’s only one way to do it, one thing to do, I am limiting my focus to the known, to the visible.

When I let go and relax, breathe into each moment and allow myself the grace of experimentation, of simply being present, miracles happen!

Death knocked at 5am, September 17th. It was not unexpected. It had been hovering for weeks, waiting for the quiet time, just before the dawn to slip in and steal her last breath away.

It came for three others that morning at the hospice. My youngest daughter will laugh nervously when she tells me this. “I told Grammy it was okay to let go. Perhaps I whispered too loud,” she adds.

I do not know the ages of the other 3 who slipped across the threshold from life to death. I do not know if they were alone, or surrounded by family, or if they cried out in regret or clung to the final threads of a breath filling their body in the hopes of one more.

Jill was 94. Her son, (my daughters’ father) and his wife, their aunt and her husband along with my youngest daughter, were by her side the night before she passed away. She didn’t want a fuss. She didn’t want a lot of hoopla as she called it. She was uncomfortable with tears and any sign of emotion. “Stop your blubbering,” she would say at the first sign of waterworks flowing from the eyes of anyone present. And the blubberer would obey.

She was not eager to stay longer she told me one Saturday morning when I went to visit her at the hospice and asked if she was afraid of death’s impending arrival. She was still coherent then. Lucid, even though the cancer had already prevented her from eating for weeks. “Why should I be?” she answered in her practical way. “It’s time. I’ve lived long enough.”

Long enough. To know love. To know the loss of love, the fearful scrambling for more and to know the sometimes painful truth of thinking love is limited to only those we think of as deserving.

It is not love that is limited. It is our capacity to let it in, to see and know and feel its boundless joy. To see and know and feel its infinite wisdom.

I first met Jill, my daughters’ paternal grandmother, when her son and I began dating in 1979. Never one to gush or fuss, she told me on the day her son and I announced our engagement a year after our first meeting that marriage was a trap, an institution that served only to strangle a woman’s voice.

I laughed and reassured her marriage would not do that to me and she said, “We’ll see.”

She was filled with contradictions. A woman who was once a Vogue model, who earned significant monies in the stock market, who fiercely held onto her independence while also believing it was her responsibility to cook and clean and keep house for her husband, she could not understand how I could make her son vacuum . “That’s women’s work,” she told me one day when she discovered the errors of my way. I laughed and told her that it was necessary work that didn’t have a gender. She harrumphed in response and I never again let her know if her son was engaged in ‘women’s work’.

Sometimes, it was easier with Jill to just not let her know. I also think she just liked to test people to see if she could get a reaction.

When my daughters were born, it was Jill I counted on to be there, to support me, guide me and to love our little girls like no other. And she did.

The very first night I got home from the hospital with my eldest, it was Jill I trusted to be with her while her son and went to the theatre to see Evita. I knew she was in good hands. I knew she was with a loving heart.

She was always there. Supporting. Loving. Guiding. Caring.

For all her acerbic and sometimes gruff ways, she loved her granddaughters completely, always, passionately.

She was a constant role model for them, showing them what it meant to age with dignity, and pizzazz! She danced with them. Laughed with them. Cried with them. Took them to the beach, searched for pieces of blue glass (you have enough green, she told them), overturning rocks to watch crabs scurry away, sitting for hours watching the girls play along the water’s edge below the cliff of her beautiful home that she loved so much. She taught them the wonders of watching an eagle soar above, the beauty of sitting still and doing little other than to watch a feather float upon the water’s surface or a deer traipse through the forest. She taught them what it means to be human in every way.

In the final years of her life, family matters got in the way of Jill and I having much contact. There are so many things I never told her about how much I valued her presence in our lives. So many words of gratitude that went unexpressed.

In her passing, the words remain unspoken, yet, I know that in her passing, there is no need for words. In the space that was once filled with her life, there is only one thing that remains. That very same thing that carried her into this world and carried her out. The thing she struggled most to express. Love.

And it is Love I pick up today and wrap around her memory in a warm, soft blanket of gratitude. Thank you Jill. You touched my heart and my life. Safe journey.