Now is all there is.

Now is all there is.

Yesterday is no longer, and tomorrow only exists as a concept in my mind. The only place where I can have any influence is in the present moment. This moment brings forth the next. The quality of this moment determines the quality of the next. I can dream about the future, but there is no short cut. The only access is through the present moment. If I spend most of my time either in the past or in the future, I will miss most of my life.

Creative rhythms.

Sometimes I find myself not having made any art in a while, as in, going through a dry spell. And I'm okay with that. I'm beginning to accept that life has a certain rhythm.

The definition of rhythm is, "the pattern of regular and irregular pulses caused in music by the recurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats."

Sometimes my creative beats are weak, and other times very strong. One day my artistic pulse is regular, and the next day curiously irregular....and it's all good, because it is what creates the melodic, harmonious rhythm of my life.

Sometimes old things have to break.

Sometimes old things have to break for new things to come. There's just no way around it.

When things fall apart or break we have to remind ourselves of how all sorts of beauty come from broken things, like eggs, cocoons and other outgrown spaces.

All that mattered to her now....

All that mattered to her now was getting the fish back into the water,

Just as the fish needs to be in its own element to "breathe" water, we need to honor our own need
to be where we belong, which is among kindred souls, in an environment that will support and
nourish us, and where we too, can breathe freely and be ourselves

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Remember who you are.

Sometimes we need to stop and take stock of ourselves, and to reconnect with who we are. We need to re-acquaint ourselves with ourselves every once in a while. What do we dream about? What angers us? What are we hungry for? What do we regret? We should read our journals from long ago. What has changed? What stayed the same? Who do we love, what is important? Of what can we let go? What no longer serves us? What do we want to keep? We slowly remember who we are.

Art that surprises us with having a mind of its own.

I almost didn't bring this one to Matter! gallery (where I have had my art on display now for a few years), because I couldn't think of a caption for it. I drew and painted the figure first, but it took me a while to "hear" her. Finally she just said "I'm longing". That was it. She didn't care to elaborate on it. I kept asking what...or who she was longing for, but apparently it was just one of those moments when she was just longing....for something, anything and everything.

Interestingly enough, the one picture that almost didn't make it to public display, was the one my friend liked the best. Goes to show how much I know ha ha....

                                   Click on the picture and you can see the word "longing".

Deep knowing.

I was thinking about how the heart just knows things that can't even be put into words. It's a wordless knowing. A deep, deep knowing. The I came across this article:

"The relationship between the heart and brain has often been studied as a one way conversation, with the heart responding to the brain's commands. Yet the idea of the heart as an intelligent, perceptual organ dates back to ancient times, and some say heart intelligence is more than a metaphor. Based on their studies, researchers at the Institute of HeartMath propose that the heart and brain are in 'a dynamic, two way dialogue, with each organ continuously influencing the other's function.' Amazingly, the heart seems to be physically involved in processing intuitive information and communicating it to the brain.

You can read the rest of the article here:

http://organicauthority.com/health/can-your-heart-think-for-itself.html 

About breathing and the inner wild.

Breathe deeply

Wild Horses

After being distracted by daily life, such as working, chauffeuring kids around, doing dishes and laundry, I finally got into the creative groove again. I found some captions and words from the dictionary, that I had saved a while ago, that now prompted me to create these pictures.






The first one is about the importance of breathing. That may seem obvious, but more often than not, we don't breathe consciously, only by default sort of...The woman in this picture reminds us to, every once in a while, throughout our busy day, stop, close our eyes and take a deep, deep breath, relax and feel the wind in our face, and allow it to bring us back into the present moment.

The second picture, "Wild Horses, by definition can never be tamed", speaks of mustering up the courage to be authentic and to be ourselves. As women we often forget that we are not only someone's mother, or wife but we are also someone in our own right. We bend and twist to be there for everybody but ourselves, Nurturing and caring is in our nature, but it must never be at the expense of nurturing and caring for ourselves. We must never sacrifice our own inner wildness.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her book Women Who Run With The Wolves, says, "the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning "out of control", but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura , creature,  has innate integrity and healthy boundaries."

She continues, "The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghosty with neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her; we know she belongs to us and we to her."

Have a wonderful week everyone. Breathe deeply, be true to yourself and find your inner wild.

Seasons, a poem by Ann Vargas

There, there
Ride the throbbing wave
Breathe in rhythm with it
Follow the pulse
Of stretching and contracting
Hold gently
The pain of a breaking bud
Rock it slowly
Until suddenly
Shedding of spaces
That have become too small
Then
Be awed by spring blossoms.

Celebrate abundance
Splurge
Drink in summer and dance wildly
In a circle of plenty
Drunk from too much
Gather the harvest gratefully
Indulge in ripened, sweet fruit
Receive shamelessly
Until your cup runneth over
Then, give it all away
Like there's no tomorrow
And melt
In the heat of the sun.

Allow change
Loosen your attachments
And fall with the leaves
In the autumn wind
Flowers wilt as they go to seed
Honor their death
Attend their burial in silent respect
Surrender control
And fall with the seeds
Into earth's dark womb
Only made richer
By the decay of last season's glory.

Winter, like a pregnant woman
Holds a promise
Anticipate patiently
Descend into the stillness
Under a blanket of snow
Be with the nothing
It is where you will find All
Give life time to incubate
Despite the absence
Of visible signs
Trust the process.