Creating with Love

We're talking daily about transitioning. We are creating lives that are sustainable. We are bartering, recycling, riding our bicycles, walking, trying to be attuned to earth and life. We volunteer, donate and help others when we can. But we also need to eat, pay the phone bill, go to the dentist, repair our vehicles and survive best way. What is bread labor and what is heart labor? Are skills I have marketable, or am I deluded? I'm over 60. It's not time to start a new career: it's time to contribute. While we are sorting out this big life stuff, we need to live in the now too. I create. My bread job is illustration - that's how I get paid. But I'm giving away more work than I'm being paid for. I want to create for entrepreneurs I want to support and grow, but those businesses are in the same shape I am financially. I need to create my own work. How to balance that and still live is the key. I am happiest when I'm creating. Dinner, illustrations, writing, friendships, jewelry, my lifestory. I am immersed in the journey when I disappear into art: I live in joyicity. That's my bliss. And if I'm creating something for a friend, then creating is nirvana. This necklace I made for Geri's birthday. I thought about who she is, as I know her; what I love about her. She is thoughtful, generous, intelligent, funny, gifted. She wears elegant clothes, has gorgeous red hair, extraordinary eyes, and her skin shines like new butter. I wanted jewelry for her that reflects her inner and outer beauty. The amber, translucent glass beads, capped with oxidized silver - I could not believe how fine they looked together! I would never have paired these, but I was immersed in Geri's essence, and these wanted to share the space on her neck. And the few bronze pearls, the dusky Swarovski crystals, the vintage toggle clasp, and the Celtic knot squares came together like a dream. Like Geri. Like Beckie, whose findings these are; and whom finding changed me. Like living with gratitude in the moment. Joyicity. The luxury of enough. Bliss.

Hysteria, Presence, Early Morning and a Heron

Awake at 4:42 is never a good plan. Unless you're packing for a vacation to the Italian Riveria, Lanzarote or, heck, anywhere. But I'm not. I'm just awake before light. Awake before light is not good for reading the news either. Today there's a book review on npr of Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth Century Paris. I bookmarked it for some other day, in folder Women because I don't have a WTF folder. J-M Charcot (what is it with French weirdness this month?) took photographs of, and drew, his patients in Saltpetriere Hospital in the 1870s. The excerpt heightens the macabre combination of mentally ill (or warehoused) women patients as art subjects and public sideshow exhibits; and a PhD in French literature wanting to write about this to put her work in context, and then lumping fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and a bundle of other maladies in modern day hysteria equivalency status. I'm too tired to sort that stuff out, so here it is and I unbookmarked the review. I also made a WTF folder. Then an article about Presence Approach to caregiving dementia. Ah, geez. After I've done three loads of laundry, scrubbed upholstery, grocery shopped, prepared and served meals, cleaned, chauffeured, problem solved, searched for missing items, created the art due, all on 4 hours of sleep, I can form and train a Mindfulness Support Group to help me cope. Okay. Right after I....zzzzzzzz. The trick to living in the now is to actually have some now you're present in to live. This walking diary drawing is the now moment from this week. I was pretending I can identify birds at a distance by flight pattern. That's a goose. No, seagull. It squawked at me. Crow. That's a crow. No, seagull. It swung in a wide arc and flew directly overhead. Profile glimpse of the S'ed neck. A heron. A beautiful heron. I watched it until it flew out of sight, wings flapping like an Olympic rower. That heron is now the facilitator of my mindfulness support group.

Living in the Now

Aware of my reptile brain staging a coup d'etat, I remembered to relax. I was hungry and found a pear. I love pears - the shape, color, the subtle fragrance, the singular texture. Draped from the ceiling tiles in my bathroom sanctuary is a holiday garland from years ago; the paint is peeling off the pears hanging from the vine. The walls are painted with my favorite riverbank plants. Jewelweed, Chicory, Queen Anne's Lace, Crown Vetch, wild Bergamot, Trillium, Bird's-foot Trefoil, tall waving grasses. The floor is a painted river. I shut off my computer and ate my pear. I drew the pear. And I write about the experience here. Joy is living in the now.