Failures

It is not our failures that keep us from progressing. It is our fear of making them.

Everything in my life has been by trial and error. Even photography has been a hit and miss endeavor. I went into it without any previous knowledge. I started out not understanding the process but I kept doing it - making huge mistakes. It was my failed attempts that held the most lessons. It was the hands on experience, mixed with perseverance, hard work and pure grit, that crept deep inside of me. My Etsy shop is the same way (as is blogging! I'm not a writer but I try to form words that lead into sentences that hopefully form a thought). I haven't taken classes. I don't own a book on the subject. But I do keep doing my own research, trying, failing, trying, crying, wanting to give up, and trying again. I can't say I really KNOW what I am doing in any area of my life. Not even parenting. I simply do my best - taking internal notes of what works for me and what doesn't. I wing it. I work it. I hope it. I do it. There might be a right way. There may be an easier way. I don't know. All I do know is failures are not failures if they teach us to see in different perspectives and we don't allow them to stop us from trying.

I do not go out of my way to fail. But in my old age I am less afraid of making mistakes than I ever have been. Sure, some are messier. Some are harder. But they hold their own kind of beauty. One that shouldn't be feared. Failures remind us of our humanity. That we are all with them and we are all made from them. That we all can rise above them as we embrace their gifts.

"By seeing the seed of failure in every success, we remain humble. By seeing the seed of success in every failure we remain hopeful." ~Unknown Author

I have a desire to sew but also a fear of sewing. Why? No clue! Is it the fact that my hands are clumsy? Is it because holding small and sharp objects normally doesn't end well with me. Homer Simpson is my middle name, in the fingers department. D'oh! My best friend Rachelle (sunclover on Etsy), keeps telling me to start small. I am thinking now is the time to give it a go. Sew what if I prick myself and blow through thrifted material. Making mistakes hasn't stopped me from trying other artistic experiments. I bake like I cook. Which I am told is virtually impossible. Baking is a precise art, unlike cooking. Me, I throw caution to the wind and simply mix in what I fancy. Not saying everything turns out but I keep baking that way and I have come up with some awesome results. Guess, it is time I finally jump in and give the material world a hand. Ha! I will let you know how it goes in the future.

What is it that you have been wanting to do but fear starting? Maybe we all can trying something new. Either we will bleed, have a good cry or laugh. Or maybe, just maybe, we will find something else to fall in love with through trial and error. We won't know unless we try.

ox

Light Painting

Last night I painted. Not anything fancy. Not with anything other than my digital camera and Christmas lights. The beauty of it, though, is my boys laughed as I did a fancy dance - wiggling and giggling. It was magical in its own right. The way creating anything from the heart is. Though it wasn't created, painstakingly, over the course of months or with paper and paints - it was fun and heartwarming and fun. There was a sense of peace as I stopped thinking about my headache and heartache. All there was was me, the lights, my camera and my audience (my boys). Art doesn't have to be labor intensive. It doesn't even have to have anything to say - other than I am here, now, present in this moment - lost almost - aware of nothing other than light, form and laughter.

So, what did you create today? What ten minute endeavor did you lose and find yourself in? It can come in the form of art outside, the kind where it doesn't last but ten minutes and no one but yourself ever witnesses it or it could be a meal or a doodle or whatnot. It is up to you. The point is to create something for yourself. To be present in such an expression is a gift to your own soul.

Keep staying true to yourself. Keep loving what you are unfolding into. Keep reaching for the stars. Keep reaching deep inside. Keep breathing. Keep dancing. Keep following your bliss. Because a happy you is what the world needs. Well, that is what I keep telling myself.

Be _______. You fill in the blank.

ox

Book of My Life

The Book of My Life

Let me watch by the fire and remember my days
And it may be a trick of the firelight
But the flickering pages that trouble my sight
Is a book I'm afraid to write

It's the book of my days, it's the book of my life
And it's cut like a fruit on the blade of a knife
And it's all there to see as the section reveals
There's some sorrow in every life

If it reads like a puzzle, a wandering maze
Then I won't understand 'til the end of my days
I'm still forced to remember,
Remember the words of my life

There are promises broken and promises kept
Angry words that were spoken, when I should have wept
There's a chapter of secrets, and words to confess
If I lose everything that I possess
There's a chapter on loss and a ghost who won't die
There's a chapter on love where the ink's never dry
There are sentences served in a prison I built out of lies.

Though the pages are numbered
I can't see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life

There's a chapter on fathers a chapter on sons
There are pages of conflicts that nobody won
And the battles you lost and your bitter defeat,
There's a page where we fail to meet

There are tales of good fortune that couldn't be planned
There's a chapter on god that I don't understand
There's a promise of Heaven and Hell but I'm damned if I see

Though the pages are numbered
I can't see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life

Now the daylight's returning
And if one sentence is true
All these pages are burning
And all that's left is you

Though the pages are numbered
I can't see where they lead
For the end is a mystery no-one can read
In the book of my life

endless

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery

Something Meaningful

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating. - Pearl Buck

It is the heART in everyday living I long to express. My touch. My hugs. The little mundane necessities. The extraordinary in the ordinary. Sack lunches. I love yous. My hands. My feet. My body. My heart. My soul. My eyes ===== Seeing beauty and art everywhere I look. Sometimes all I have is a moment to snap a picture, a reminder of how the light was that day. Maybe a visual documentation of something or one I want to remember. I love forcing myself, though forcing is the wrong word, to see beyond what is facing me and seeing what is beyond. Even everyday objects hold echoes. It is such echoes I find that add a sort of vibration to my step. When I forget to do so I forget who I am. And forgetting who I am is when joy seems to take a vacation.

I am an artist, sensitive beyond measure. I might not be creating anything noteworthy currently. Okay, I am not. BUT the artist is waking up from her long and painful sleep. She is wiping the eye crust off. Brushing her teeth. Greeting herself in the mirror as she begins to greet me. I say hello and welcome back, sleeping beauty. It has been far too long.

Blog Love and Words That Hit Home

I want to read Daybook: The Journey of an Artist - By Anne Truitt. Actually, I want to buy it or borrow it. My interest was grabbed while reading a blog I have fallen deeply in love with: The Noisy Plume. If you read her blog, you will understand why I love her without even knowing her. She lives in Idaho. Maybe one day I will grow wings and meet her.

She is reading Anne Truitt's book. The Noisy Plume put this in her blog, I think for me without knowing it (kidding but it feels like it because I needed to read it like I need to breath air):

“Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon. We claim autonomy for ourselves and forget that in so doing we can fall into the tyranny of defining other people as we would like them to be. By focusing on what we choose to acknowledge in them, we impose an insidious control on them. I notice that I have to pay careful attention in order to listen to others with an openness that allows them to be as they are, or as they think themselves to be. The shutters of my mind habitually flip open and click shut, and these little snaps form into patterns I arrange for myself. The opposite of this inattention is love, is the honoring of others in a way that grants them the grace of their own autonomy and allows mutual discovery.“

changing mood

love builds up the broken wall

and straightens the crooked path.

love keeps the stars in the firmament

and imposes rhythm on the ocean tides

each of us created of it

and i suspect

each of us was created for it.

~Maya Angelou

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. ~Antoine Rivarol

Within all of us is a varying amount of space lint and star dust, the residue from our creation. Most are too busy to notice it, and it is stronger in some than others. It is strongest in those of us who fly and is responsible for an unconscious, subtle desire to slip into some wings and try for the elusive boundaries of our origin.

~K.O. Eckland, "Footprints On Clouds"

*****

My mood shifts, as the clouds do on a windy day. They shift like the currents running steady in the oceans. Today, my heart feels heavier. My arms ache to hold my sweetheart. Ache. It feels like forever since we were a WE physically in each other's presence. I look at my boys and sob. I see my husband in them. I see what he cannot see in them, their changes. I held Gabe today. I held him for two. I can't imagine not being able to hug any of my boys. Their fits of brotherly bickering is almost music to my ears now. Funny how perception really is a huge part of our existence. Bothersome becomes heartwarming. Things that had meaning can sometime reveal themselves as unimportant. I would give up everything I own, my beloved cameras even, if I could trade it all for my husband's return. To lose every material item, even a roof over our heads for the return of Jody no longer takes even a second to process. There is no comparison. None.

I feel blessed and yet cursed. You cannot see the bars I am trapped behind. Neither can I. But they are there, daily, no matter how hard I try to escape them. I have learned a lesson I never thought I would learn, one about prison, prisons, prisoners and prison wives. None of which crossed my mind before this, I am sorry to say. I lived a life where I didn't have to. I lived a life I thought I would never have to. But never sometimes becomes reality. The pain I feel is bearable by the fact that I am giving birth to lessons and growth. My fuzzy peace only comes from the knowledge that all pain connected to giving birth will one day give birth to something greater. A life force of love. Today, it has felt as if this pain and sorrow will never end. But I know better. I am grateful for days where hope floats right on past me because I suppose hope wouldn't be as sweet if I didn't have these days of bitter tears.

I miss my husband. I have cried behind closed doors more than a dozen times today, away from our boys. Like a little child hiding their tears. Five years more of this. It feels as if it has already been five years.

Deep breath.

Our oldest asked me why my own mother would do this, like this. I didn't have an answer. Not a clue. To have witnessed such bitterness and out right lies from the person who gave to me is something I cannot fully explain how deeply the knife traveled. Saying I don't know is all we can say sometimes.

My life, with its twists and turns, has taught me one thing, that no matter how low I get I keep getting back up. I cry. I bitch. I moan. I hide under covers and sob. I feel like giving up but whatever it is inside of me that pulls me upward does it without any explanation.

So, I say to anyone reading this, reach out and show your love to everyone around you while you can. Do it for the simple fact that tomorrow is uncertain. Enjoy the simple pleasures in life. Look softly at yourself. Wrap a kind word into your present moment. Live. Laugh. Love. Be.

Oh. And I love YOU.