p-town art :)

yesterday, we drove up to provincetown and dropped off my 3 images for an art show i am in 10/31-11/7.  

it is a thrill to be included in the provincetown art world - a town that, since childhood, felt like the place where artists go to "art".  i am longing to call my mother and tell her. instead, i have to trust that she knows. 

my mother was a fabulous painter and i remember p-town as an artist mecca.  she seemed like a different, more complete, person when we went there.  i remember the artists along the main street in town and remember imagining her sitting in those booths, painting.  

the booths are gone but the galleries and the artists in town remain. 

and the connection to her spirit - the wilder side of her - also remains :)

i am proud to be included in this small way, in this artist community.  :)

and i know she is proud as well.  

i love you, miss you, mom, more than words can say . . .

hellooo november :)

today is my mom's birthday, she would have been 84 yrs old.

she died of lung cancer 11/13/08 and I miss her terribly every day.

when she died, my sisters and I divided up her plants.

I have one of her Christmas cactus plants.

and in honor of my mom's birthday, it has this beautiful flower today

:)

 

this is also the first November since 1979 that I am not overloaded with retail stress.

I am going to see this month and all it's beauty :)

I am going to see the gray stuff,

the temperature drop, the election signs,

the wilting pumpkins,

the rusty dried leaves

and smile...

hellooo November, I hope to enjoy the hell out of you this go round 

:)

one more image to add -

I bought an annual for the front step this spring, and it barely made it through the season.

I brought it inside a couple of weeks ago and it now has a few buds!

it feels like an omen, a message of new life...

:)

so hellooo November :)



where's the line

since 1979, i have written to myself to sort things out.

i had left my ex-husband and needed to figure out who i was, without his influence.

the theme of those years was clearly trying to find my own voice. 

i longed to be confident enough to live, as i called it, inside out. 

to let me be me, and to let go of approval seeking thinking.

did i ever get there? who knows.  but i don't care anymore so i think that's a good sign.  i am going to consider that as progress :)

the writings then seemed to turn to how to find a balance

between work and play, duty and adventure.  these were fun years. 

it wasn't an internal struggle for a voice, it was more of a constant quest for LIFE. 

the overwhelming need to appreciate the moment is evident in all the journals from my forties, into the fifties. i walked in the rain, rolled in the hay and played in the snow.  oh what a time it was.

and then, life moved on. my mother got sick and died.

all of the appreciation of the moment turned to fear of loss, longing for yesterday.

and bigger than all of that, how to go forward and

prepare for the end of my own life.  what would be my legacy? 

how would i live in my older years? would i be able to provide for myself? where would i want to be, who would i want to have been? 

 

these were feelings, not thoughts nor words. i didn't write in my journals.

i didn't read self help books. i didn't garden.

i worked. actually, i over-worked. 

and i took pictures. day and night.

i read blogs, i looked thru magazines, i watched hgtv.

i searched constantly.

for something, anything, everything.

for some reason, that gave me breathing room.  

 

as i think about it now, i think i was running.

running away, running towards...don't know.  

but subconsciously, i realized i needed to do, not think. 

however i'm not sure that i liked all the doing.

work pissed me off, at a level that it hadn't ever reached before. and that's because it felt like work was standing between me and LIFE.

 i wanted time to live my life. i wanted to own all of my minutes,

every freaking one of them. 

i knew at a deeper level that time was marching on.

giving away time - minutes, hours, days, weeks, years -

to work/lifetouch didn't sit well. they stole my minutes. so i stole minutes back.

i took pictures as i drove to work.

i took pictures at work.

i bought prop kits instead of setting goals,

i studied photography instead of sales results.  it worked for a while.

but now, today?  i am thinking no.

 

 

so now my writing, or my thoughts or my feelings, all end up at where's the line.

now i find i need to write about figuring out when is enough truly enough.

enough money in the bank to retire. enough years worked to retire.

enough trust in the future to say enough, and retire.

apparently, the key word is retire.

 

we bought our house at cape cod so we could live out our days there.

we thought it through - enfield had no draw for us except our jobs.

albany was home but it'd been 30 yrs since we lived there and

we weren't sure that it would be a joyful goal to go there. 

 it had a feeling of 'longing for yesterday' instead of living for today.

 

so cape cod was a great choice. it had a lifetime of history which gave it a feeling of 'home' along with a new twist - owning a house.  it did, however, add to list of to-dos. we DO more, instead of relax more. and this adds to the feeling of where is the line. where the hell are my minutes. i need more minutes.

 

i am an artist. i have been an artist since i was a kid.

i see things visually - from gardening, to photography, to hgtv.

i don't want to be a people manager. i don't want to be a sales manager.

i want to be - i AM - an artist.

 

so here i sit on a sunday morning, in late october.

ahead of me lies the crazy season at work when a 24 hr work day does not get the job done. and word is, this might be the busiest season ever.  yay.  just what i need.

but truth is, maybe this IS exactly what i need. 

a year that defines where that elusive line is.

where the commitment to work/lifetouch

clearly becomes more than i am willing to give.

the tug-of-war for my minutes and the confusion on where to draw the line is already taking a toll. i think that there's a break-through on the horizon.

and that makes me smile

 

so, come on santa claus, do your thing.

bring it on.

i think you might have a gift for me this Christmas.

and i just may be ready for it :)

 

 

sweet sisters of stone...

i am in love with statues that i find in cemeteries...

 

 

 

 

i see vulnerability and strength...sweetness and sadness...

every time i find one,

i wonder about who they represent,

and about the  family

who's loss is soothed by these beautiful statues...

 

To the sweet sisters of stone -

may you always stand strong,

and may you forever rest in peace...

 

each image has been enhanced with kim klassen's textures



six word memoir

this week's assignment in Beyond Layers class is to write your 6 word memoir. 

 i believe it's gonna take more than 6 words but the first thing that came to mind was...

the truth is,

i find i look for outside approval more than i should.

my whole life i have tried to curb the impulse to check with others,

my first instinct is to look to them for reassurance...

but as i get older,

 i am learning to measure my growth against me.

not others. 

so when i ultimately grow up,

i grow into ME...

my mother was my first measuring stick.  especially when it came to anything artistic or creative. 

she was my biggest cheerleader, to the point that no piece of artwork or craft item was complete until she oooh'd and aaah'd over it.  she nurtured creativity in a big way.

at work, i look to my boss for the same reassurance, and cheerleading. 

 i always have. 

and when that support is there, i flourish.  when its not, i flounder.

over the years, i came to realize it is a weakness.   i want to be more sure of myself.  

but more than that, i want to develop my own voice, my own vision. 

so i have put myself out there, with my best attempts, knowing the biggest stretch for me is in the reveal.  and the goal, for me, is to watch myself grow.

 i may be a small tree out there among the taller trees, but i am out there. 

 and i am growing :)

picture enhanced with kim klassen's textures - providence and not-too-shabby

six word memoir   www.smithmag.net/

day of the bloom....

work is always busy at this time of year and it starts to take over every waking moment... wednesday it all came to a head.

as bad as the day got, i think of it now as one of the best years of 2010 because i now know that i do not want to go through it again. and primarily, it was a result of my own choices...

on monday, i had found a bud on my mother's Christmas cactus, decided i was going to shoot it as it bloomed but then let work take over my life and lost the plan... then today, i went to shoot it and it already had bloomed, i almost missed it.

LESSONS - every day matters and when you check out for a day, you may miss a lot...don't let busyness get in the way of living...sometimes little things are really big things...

a day to remember...

it's been so long since i posted here, i'm not sure i remember how...
happy birthday to mom, missed and loved and remembered forever... we missed your smile and dancing at the wedding, but knew you were on the dance floor with us during the twist and we are family :), heard you seeing blue bayou today, and felt your love and prayers lifting kelly and butch up in their fight against cancer...wish you were here, i miss you every day but most of all in november, come back and visit please, it helps :)

a new life...

T
h
u
r
s
d
a
y'
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word of the day was BABY.
nature is a powerful force and today's word was a reminder of the cycle of life.
it was a day to celebrate a new beginning.

from the buds on the trees, to the shoots poking up through the ground, to the foals on the hillside grazing in the sunset... mother nature is forever giving us new life. i ended the day with a much needed attitude adjustment.

my mother's smile

she was diagnosed with incurable cancer on march 5 2008 and our family was changed forever on that day. she lost the fight on november 13, 2008 but we lost much of her on that early spring day.
when i published my very first blog this week, i wanted to tell her so i could see her big, bright, shining smile - the one she gave each one of us when she was proud. nothing ever seemed real until she knew about it. so not being able to tell her i had taken what felt like such a big step was taking some of the excitement out of the moment. i closed the computer and jumped in the shower, hoping she knew somehow. before i headed out to work, i thought i would google myself and see if it took me to my new blog. as i was scanning the list of options, i found my name but it wasn't my blog, it was a stranger's. confused, i clicked on it and there on the screen was a poem i had written 30 years earlier. it had been published in two books and my mother had kept both of those books in a place of honor in her home. the poem had not been published again in all those years and i have no idea how the stranger had found it. but i do know that my mother showed it to me on google that day. i felt like she had smiled that big bright smile right in my face by showing me that poem. and i will treasure the contact from the other side, knowing my mother is proud. i love you, mommy and miss you terribly. stay in touch :)