When the colors touch and dash upward and outward
I feel alive
When the words don’t quite stand alone but bounce and jiggle their own meaning in the middle of mine, that’s where I breathe
When the breezes come strong, and fresh, and sudden, I finally calm into time
I slide out of the four walls and ceiling that hold so lightly
Your softness, it’s your fire
can’t you see?
The way you cry with the weight of a day,
the way you wonder if you’re brave enough for tomorrow,
the way all the questions pile with no answers
You walk a fragile line without knowing the way of it,
do you know this is courage?
I see you dripping with questions
yet gasping at the color of the redbud in spring,
do you know this is bravery?
You scratch at paper and wonder where you belong,
but certainty is not the only way home,
there is also mystery
I see you cry as time tears gaping holes right through your heart,
but you keep growing tall, and fragrant, and wild with magic.
Look how you shine now!
You and your velvet soft eyes looking at the day,
this is courage too
Tell me
Do you know the way to love all the way through
without cracking wide open?
Can you show me the way a life does its best looking?
Which eyes do I use?
And how in the world does one stand wide enough to feel ones
soul without also feeling the howling wilderness it carries?
But this too, is ok
The deep wild, and the deep quiet living in the same meadow
The birth and rebirth of a heart
Of a day
Of a deep longing
I can stand quiet in the middle, and listen
It’s perhaps the quietly wild ways of you that I love the most
The way the hackberry bark has mountains and valleys of its own
The way the small doe in the meadow looks right at and through me
with soft, ebony eyes
The way the bluebird flashes heaven with impossible blue
The way the tulip poplar leaves breathe in waves and quivers,
while maple’s rise and fall
Your ways are never exactly the same and finally my own wild is fed
with full doses of your own
You are intoxicating with your impossibly possible ways
I've decided to begin writing thoughts, ideas, processes, and just general creative thoughts here. I used to do this quite a bit in years past and I've missed the habit greatly! I do a bit of sharing on Instagram, but it is more a place for mini thoughts and I find I have bulging piles of ideas and thoughts which clammer inside my head. Sharing them makes us all (me, the ideas, and everyone around me) happier!
...
So, I dove into art more seriously about 9 months ago simply as a place to run off feelings, do something I enjoy on a regular basis, and process our move. In April 2017, Michael and I moved our little family of four from eastern Pennsylvania, to middle Tennessee... and honestly, I still can't find words to fully describe my feelings on the topic. I hope, looking back I'll find the story beautiful... in fact so many parts of it are beautiful already, but walking through it still feels strangely foggy, and jarring... and somehow like grief and joy at the same time.
When we moved there were questions that had no answers, and feelings that could not be laid out neatly... or even explained. Holding all of this made me feel wild and numb at the same time, so, I turned to art (a mixture of painting & writing) and have been walking this path since. This, thankfully has helped soothe some of the fear in me. Art has somehow helped me sit in the middle of the questions and simply move color and shape onto paper without needing to have answers. It allowed me to hold mystery, and see it simply as it is - mystery. I can't stuff things into mystery, or force answers out of it, all I can do is trust that the process I'm in is valuable, and beautiful... and that's it.
So, somehow I keep twisting in this great mystery, and love (light?) keeps seeping in, and things keep dripping out in the form of color, words, shapes, and stories. I can't connect all the dots, I'll never know all the answers to all the questions (the maple tree outside my window keeps telling me that's ok). Slowly I’m learning that it's ok not to know all the things, in fact knowing all the things isn't the point, listening is.
So, as unsettling as moving has felt, art has felt like a quiet coming home... to tea, and firelight, and books, to friendships that reach over time and space, to ideas that help me see beyond my ordinary vision.
I am thankful.
...
Oh, and if you're reading this, you are probably one of the magic callers (as I like to call you). You have impacted my life because you have seen something special, your sparkling eyes have told me so! Keep picking up your pen, your trowel, your words and ideas... keep giving us a glimpse into what you see. I'm looking too.