Excerpted from my new book of poetry, Shelter of the Sacred, featuring two years of poems written in the early morning Red Thread Cafe sessions.
IMAGINE – Painting for 2017 – Created over a year and a day. Marking the beauties and tragedies in my life and word events. It’s called: You Will Find Me Where Soil Kisses Star
Dear One,
New Year Greetings to you! I love the chance to have a fresh start. To ponder, and to play. To be curious about what I want more of or less of and to see what is revealed.
My word of the year will be ILLUMINATE
and my mantra is – Come as you are…
But more than those which create a contextual framework, my big thing is always the same, time and mind to create. This is time time myself, to my own mind and heart. And to feel as if I am in a creative process that is rich and deep. This is the most essential 15 minutes of my day. Often, like today, this 15 minutes of making form is writing a Red Thread Letter, but it takes often hours to put these together. But it is knowing that 15 minutes is there waiting for me. That 15 minutes that can become hours. Sometimes I am lucky enough to have both the time available and the Muse comes through and off we go on the magic carpet ride of creativity….
My 15 minutes is an etheric altar holding space for the space I will use to make form.
When I was teenager I had enough of a different perspective that my friends had what they called, The Fluffie Book, that housed my sayings/ideas.
My first ‘handle’ was Fluffie, given to me by the mod people because I was neither a punk or a mod and I wore pink, faux fir, rhinestones and was given to smoking clove cigarettes with a fork as the holder. You know. Things like that. Since I never fit in I made a legend out of being the outcast. I also recited poetry and had already begun to point out the woes of the establishment but in different ways than my anarchist friendset.
To keep your Muse happy and fertile promise her your best 15 minutes of form per day. By form I do mean, painting, writing, drawing, movement. Form itself. This does a many things, many wonders. Not the least of which if you are working on a painting you will keep working on it consistently or if you are working on a writing or book, it will eventually get done. But more than that. It is a promise of sorts to your psyche that you will indeed show up for the work at hand of soul discovery. And in this even while sleeping your Muse will know that she will have her way with you upon your rising. This changes things. You will begin to guard this time from children, pets and lovers.
I figure I have about two hours if I am lucky of a certain kind of mind to ‘spend’ luxuriously on the most creative of tasks. For me, it is often curriculum for our programs because that does actually take that kind of mind. Yet also – it is all the poems in my new book, Shelter of the Sacred, that came out of those initial 15 minutes.
I hope you too have a creative ritual in place for your 2018. For me it makes all the difference.
The painting above was indeed created over a year and a day – 12-18 sessions of two hours each broadcast live in our Cosmic Cowgirls course called IMAGINE (it starts again in April) It was truly incredible to practice Intentional Creativity that that degree – every single month live with over 100 women – making marks for life, for death, for love, for loss, for the possible and the impossible. I am so pleased to be able to finally share the finished image with you.
I am writing from bed with my big white pillows. After a big conversation with Jonathan about the future as the first big rain of the season pours down on the vineyard outside my bedroom window. I can see oranges growing and roses, and a hummingbird who is braving the rain. We are at a place where we could settle down a bit, slow down, and have more freedom. But. That isn’t what calls us when it comes down to it – we are restless spirits, driven by adventure as if athletes training for the next big event. We are old enough now to accept this about ourselves, and young enough to pursue it.
Sending love along the red thread of a sweet morning,
“I would rather be ashes than dust!I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.The function of man is to live, not to exist.I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.I shall use my time.” Jack London
