i trust in this...

if you cant find god go to the trees...if you cant feel love touch a flower...if you dont know yourself look in a lake...if you are lost turn towards the sun...if you arent peaceful stand by the ocean...if you suffer sit with the moon...if you are lonely then howl with great feeling and know you are part of everything...you are the perfection of nature...the revolutionary act of creation...the abundance of life...the ever unfolding lotus of yes...

you are the change...

bewitched thoughts wield a gentle slope of wonder through my mind as i sit sipping my morning coffee...i chant lovingly to you brother...i chant lovingly to you sister...this dawn i have drummed for healing and meditated on peace...i have prayed for myself and all sentient beings to navigate the world in a state of grace...i sit now and give myself over to the lifting sun...blur of watermelon light...crickets singing...crow preaching...cars swooshing by...workers making their way to box stores, schools and cubicles...this artist sitting firmly in her body will soon arrange her day and have at it...but now her soul will shift in journey...to a lake...to meet guides...to ask a question...to understand...to accept...to do as i am guided to do...embracing the unseen in the folds of this mystery called life...

i struggle with understanding lately...it is the fatigue of changes with my body and life...so i am the wave riding to shore...this is what i accept...i am the wave...i am comforted by the rocking motion of other gentle waves around me...surrendering...the land growing closer...

when landing on shore my body will empty out...as all waves let go of form...then i will slip back into the great ocean of creation to be reformed again...but i hope to have a longer stretch of earthly time before this occurs...for now the land is far enough away i feel no crowding and simply enjoy the ride...

bless your day...bless mine...bless the earth...and all this beauty struggling to live between the push and pull of confusion around us in these tremendous times of great and profound change..

.

quick words

so much to write about yet so little time to write...off to maine for a few days...lake, drumming, circle of women, rest, trees to hug, photos to take, workshops, paintings to show...so much has happened...i got vry sick and landed in the hospital...so much time to lay in bed and think and feel and witness and expand my compassion for myself...kindness was given to me...attention was given which i struggle with accepting still...yet i am learning to let down my guard and trust...

i stumbled...i stepped off the path of compassion for a moment and it felt awful...but i stepped back on...and i have met two wonderful people...who flew into my heart and now nest there...i learn from them and find peace with them...it comes so easily...i am grateful...

paintings coming easier as well and i am happy to paint any chance i get...i am blessed...though still weak some i am rebuilding my health and taking each day as the precious gift it is...

 

 

maine here i come!

the wildfire before the rain

illness is a vehicle for greater insight...fevers burn away the debris of negative influences...you can pull up righteous anger and do battle with your illness...it is the shield in which you use to approach your illness...it keeps it from taking that fatal venomous bite...you get close...find the spot in you...the epicenter of your wounding and then the shield is removed and you blast it with light...you are doing laser surgery on it...cutting it out of you...whatever emotional pain has twisted inside of you...you created it...it became physical...now you control its destruction..now you are not ignorant or deny yourself healing...use western medicine or eastern...it is all the same...it will not work if you dont work with yourself first...

i had a high fever last night...it burned through me like a wildfire...i stood at the sink and gulped tons of water...i stood in the shower and cried and cooled off...head throbbing...body so weak i had to sit and let the shower pour down on me...and then everything emptied out of my body...i threw up and also the other...empty, exhausted, as weak and vulnerable as a baby...i wrapped myself up in a blanket and curled up on the bathroom floor...rain came...flying through the open window...grey and wild and wonderful...


this year has been a wild ride of emotions and battles to endure...to transition...to transform...i am nearing the other side now...good timing because i am stepping into my 50s now..i am loving my art again and feeling good about it...i am accepting my path as a shamanic artist...i am nature centered and live differently but in a way that doesnt contribute to the killing of this planet and the life on it...i am reclaiming my confidence and trusting my instincts...

i still want a family but refuse to settle...i want a partner who isnt homophobic and includes me in their life...who risks it along side me...who isnt a coward when it comes to love...i want someone who will lean on me and allow me to lean on them...i want respect...i have self respect now and wont go back to feeling like crap about myself when someone takes a cheap shot...i wont allow myself to doubt my abilities or listen to critics...i want a gentle woman who loves animals but doesnt use them to replace human affection...i want a kind woman who smiles at me when i walk in the room and lets me sit beside her...i want to be able to be loving towards her and to gentle myself...i want monogamy...i want compassion as well as passion...i want days at the beach and nights under the stars...i want friendship...i want hand holding...i want to plant seeds together and grow flowers taller than we are...i want to travel together and see amazing parts of nature together...i want to grow young with someone as our bodies grow old...i not only want this...but i deserve it...i have most certainly earned it if it had to be earned...and i have the strength to give as well as the strength to accept great levels of love...

i finally slept if not for long after my fever broke last night/this morning...i woke up knowing my body was emptied out of alot of toxins...i wrote myself a prescription for wellness last night...

to feed my body organic, clean food prepared by kind hearts as often as i can

to drink more water

to sleep in a better and more regular way

to feed my spirit with the company of good folks

to be in nature...even when i am sick...especially...to sit outside more...and to most certainly go to the beach more...it hasnt happened enough this summer...to not wait for company but go alone or to brave it and ask another directly instead of waiting to be asked...

to keep rebuilding my art career...to actually take it to heart now and not waste time on useless misdirection...

to love myself and accept myself without doubt...to be myself and not care about those who are tough on me...and for me to not be tough on others...but expand my compassion and deepen my spiritual practice...

i am glad i got sick...i am glad my spirit and body met up last night and decided i needed a huge cleansing...i am grateful...the pain is less today and for this i am profoundly grateful...

i walked into my studio soon to be a bedroom and loved the simple words...go with grace...i am going with grace today...

sharpie wisdom

took this pic in galway ireland a couple of years ago...knew it would come in handy...

reminds me of the shakespeare line "the smallest worm will turn...being trodden on"...cant

 remember what play...doesnt matter...the point is the worm...the mushroom...has turned...

i knew it would happen...the warrior in me is finally rising up...the sleeping dragon is waking...

i forgot who i was for so long...actually i didnt forget...i just didnt trust myself to be myself...wanting to please everyone and be liked until i realized it doesnt matter...had this epiphany a few minutes ago...IT doesnt matter...none of it matters...in a good way...in a very comforting and positive way...i matter to myself...i like myself....the rest of it?...lol...it doesnt matter...the mushroom has so @$%#ing turned...i still love those i love...i have permission to dislike how i am treated and can stand up for myself...i can work and play and be...i dont have to concern myself with trusting others or being vulnerable...an open heart truly can never break...it is the tension of a closed heart that shatters...

my heart is like a cloud...my mind is like the sun....my hands are flowers...my eyes are stars...my lips are wine berries...my feet the red clay mud...my belly bowl is the ocean...my ears are filled with whale song...my body is poetry...my soul is love...my spirit is forever...

the mushroom has turned

swimming lessons

no sleep coming...so i write and paint and think and scheme...

i think about moving back home to west virginia...maybe i would fit nicely up a dirt road in a small patch of "almost heaven"...keep to my own kind...but then i dont fit there much any more either...

leap frogging thoughts now...about the journey i had earlier...a dolphin guide telling me to let go...see where it all takes me...i shapeshifted and became a dolphin...it felt good...to not be weighed down by the silly angst of human love...to swim with the moment and be one with the ocean...it felt so free...i didnt want to return...i just wanted to be free...and the dolphin said laugh at it all colleenie (she called me colleenie which is cute)...it is silly...and tedious and all so predictably human...the "all of it" i know but am not going to bore what readers i might have tonight...there is so much in the all of it...knowing what others think of me...reading between the lines...getting it and still trying not to swallow it...they think of me one way but do they ever take the time to get to know the inside of me...i go invisible though and make it easy on them...they dont have to bother with me then...and if i move i will really go invisible...

i fantasize about it tonight...just packing up and heading out...letting go...no more struggle...just climb into the woods and be still...off the grid...painting and making things...growing food...living off the land...goodbye to the ocean...goodbye to it all...live til i dont...it feels like a relief almost...to leave here...to stop trying to fit in...

it would be nice to be in the woods and taste the green of each morning and the smell the damp earth beneath my feet in the fall...the crisp air of winter snatching at my cheeks and the thaw of spring's rebirth...

i miss the honeysuckle thick in the air and the deer stepping out of the cornfields on a quiet sunday morning...i miss the bob whites and the black bears...i miss the cow ponds and minnow filled creeks...i miss the red clay stuck on my boots and the soft flannel shirts...i miss how i could walk into a diner and see a whole family say grace before eating their fried eggs and grits...i miss my brothers grave...i miss the the broken sidewalks and the courthouse lawn...i miss the big holly tree in town where the red birds gathered...i miss the church bells...i can hear the train snaking along the valley...the whistle sounding like a wounded animal...i see the bass jumping in the lake and the blue butterfly lapping up minerals in the dirt where the shore receded and deposited her feast...i long to rest my head on a mound of moss and watch a mushroom come to life in the span of hours...

and yet here i am in an apartment on the third floor in cranston ri...surrounded by paintings and the songs of crickets reaching up from below...cars gliding by and the darkness cut open by streetlights and a gas station sign...here i am trying to connect to others with all this vulnerability and struggle i have going on...each day hoping the doctor's office grants me an appointment...each day hopeful i will wake up and feel better...

what would i miss about here? a handful of folks who i occasionally see, who have enough friends and family...the ocean...i would miss the ocean, a few trees i have grown close to...i try to have a long list for here but there isnt one...this is a tough little state and a hard region to connect with...i want more...and i am not even sure what more is anymore...just that missing something...and less struggle...

and i feel like being quiet and letting this dolphins advice sink to the bone...let go...laugh at it all...

and when i sleep tonight i will swim...in emerald waters...deep...with the mermaids...steering clear of the shallow parts where the humans play...taking swimming lessons from a dolphin who calls me colleenie...

C{0~~~(

  

unearthing my anger

this painting is called "the pearl of truth"...my truth is i have been a very angry person inside often...tantruming inside at times...

i had days in a hospital bed to think...i had signs and messages come to me...and in the endless hours of painting last night anger came...so much of it cloaked in red...red screams of pain coursing through my gut...angry sorrow at not having a family...the brutal reality that i am alone because this is all i create for myself...anger at others for how they have treated me...anger...and so i used the blues of the ocean to soothe my suffering...

i push people away at the same time i long to be with them...i annoy them...i frustrate them...i dont let down my guard...i dont ask for help because this feels to vulnerable to me...and they lack patience in my learning curve...

i take so little for myself...those endless feelings of unworthiness...i make it hard on people to be around me at times because i "martyr" myself...and oh that word pisses me off when people use it on me...it touches my most damaged place within me...yet i do it to myself...i deny myself so much...and ask so little...and expect only the leftovers from others...and they give me the leftovers...i get the rejections...i am left out...because it is all i think i am worth...

i struggle even to be hugged...touch is too much at times...i miss the days of hurtful sex and physical abuse...they felt normal...that was at least an intimacy in a way...it was attention i could tolerate...i didnt have to let anyone in...i just went through the motions...and that is all they wanted from me anyway...until they even stopped wanting me...more rejection...more affirmation i am unlovable...

i choose women who just wanted me to be there in no special way...just be there...when they wanted company or attention...when they wanted intimacy...when they needed something...so i got use to being a lapdog...yet there was this small speck of me which rebelled...

and my rebellion was wrong...full to the brim with passive aggressive wrong behavior towards the other person...i caused them suffering and this is shameful...i got them to reject me to feed those places in me which needed reaffirmed i was unlovable...

i long for the day when intimacy is a hand holding mine and a long afternoon of just cuddling...that i could allow my body to relax into this...rather than find relief in sex and someone's anger towards me...i long for this and yet it doesnt come because i have not created peace within myself for it to come...

i expected to be loved and cherished while i didnt love and cherish myself...i was seeking acceptance from another while creating myself as a person who was easy to reject...

i am so very sorry to my friends for being that person you dont want to be around now...i feel the loss...i feel the sorrow of what i have done...i am a miserable and ill person...i cave in and go it alone when all i want is some simple company...to watch a movie or sit on the beach...but summer goes by and i have spent so much of it alone...days and days of being alone...it has taken an incredible toll...but i did this...

last night i wanted to pick up the phone and call someone i love very much but i couldnt...i couldnt reach out...too vulnerable...so i wait for manna to drop from heaven...i wait for a phone call...or an email or any crumb tossed my way...because that is all i think i deserve...and i think noone really wants to be around me...they just pity me and have me around them when they can tolerate it...

and in this self devaluing spin cycle of years...decades!...there was still that small part...an irritation of another way...the pearl of truth...growing bigger...pushing against the shell i created around my vulnerability...

and there it is...the pain in my body...the last bit of my reproductive mechanics...an ovary...growing bigger...reminding me of all i missed out on...of my great failures...it is there and i cant even get in to see a doctor...it is the place in me where my anger sits...i want to rip it out and yet i have to sit with it and know it and feel it and forgive myself...forgive all of it...all the lies i told myself...all the times i let women touch me because i pretended they loved me when they really didnt...all the times i pushed loving women away because they werent willing to punish me...sick twisted thinking? we do it to ourselves all the time...all the times i sought approval from my parents but got rejection...never able to do enough...

all those lonely and painful years i have spent starving for love and yet choosing those who would not offer me a seat at the feast...and i still have...i still have done this to myself...

we do what we do because it was done to us as children and it became our belief too...not good enough...not pretty enough...not smart enough...not...until we enter adulthood and seek out others who then shore up the falsehood placed into us as children...

the sweet and loving nest of my being got buried...and over it a shell...but the spirit is wise...a pearl was placed...a spec of truth...a simple phrase...i am worthy...and this spec grew...

and in my painting last night the pearl came...the pearl of truth...i am lovable...i am worthy...i deserve a good woman's arms around me...i dont need to settle...i dont have to fall in love with women who will deny me love...i can be comfortable around friends...i can be vulnerable and let others in...i can ask for more than crumbs and leftovers...

if someone says they are going to take me to the beach or spend time with me and they dont follow through i can let them know it hurts...if i am treated with disrespect i can speak up...if i am told a negative view of myself i dont have to accept it  if it is not my view...i can feel what i feel...i can do things my own way...i can walk away... 

anger is a tool for learning...but when you deny anger it takes root and twists up inside you...taking up room where good can grow and root instead...

i leaned this painting against the wall at 4:30 this morning...after painting it for hours...i put healing and love into this painting...it is not a great work but it is good...and i hope it speaks to others as well...

as i followed the curves and connected with the layers...as i saw the pearl hovering in a cave on an island...domed by the healing energy of water...fish symbolizing rebirth...i let the anger in me wash away...in tears...in the salty ocean tears...

and i promised myself i would not be the same when i woke up...i havent slept since saturday...though i have done the corpse pose a friend showed me to relax my body...i have painted and thought through so much...all nights painting jag turned into an all day thinking one...working on what i need to change about myself so folks can enjoy me...so i can enjoy my own life...because basically i am a good person...i have just made myself sick again...and punished myself again...so tonight i will go to sleep...and let my body rest in the nest of my spirit...and there i will let love in...and finally allow my heart to mend...deeply and for good...

there is so much love in me and so much i can contribute to the world and to my friends and family...there is a good life i can create for myself...there is hope as i lay my head down to finally rest tonight...there is great hope my shell will break and this pearl of truth will crack open and all the fears will float away...

my prayer tonight as i get ready to turn in is one i humbly ask...that angels and guides stand by me and protect me...the grace of the unseen come...the christ of love and healing enter my most sacred place...the wisdom of buddha's compassion expand my knowing...the loved ones who have gone on return their essence and hold me...as i drift on the ocean of forgiveness and let go...surrender...

~~O~~ 

sweetly at peace...

dang i am feeling it tonight...all looping around to the 70's and all that innocent fire in the belly way i had of living life...back at it today...yet my body is not doing well...ankles ballooned up, side is on fire it hurts so much...everything hurts...yet...yet i had such a very good day...a very peaceful day...got the sense folks liked me today...lately i think i have annoyed folks...i am not very tame-able...lol...and i know i talk too much...but today i let down my guard all the way...vulnerable and yet felt totally save to be myself...around such kind and generous people...i didnt have to try or anything...i just was me...and me seemed good enough...how i loved to relax into that thought...how wonderful...to not feel judged or measured...to just be...what a gift i was given...and it made me feel young again...even though my body was trying to convince me otherwise...so i wind down playing music i grew up with and i sip on a ginger ale and am so grateful for all the love i feel within myself....this flow...this wide wide flow of love...from my heart to yours...

wordspill

you are the angry martyr...you are the dancer at the fire arent you?...pure and burning...devoured by the lust of air...devoured...you are the offering?...i saw you...i saw right through you...familiar knows familiar...i saw your hands and i knew...you shadow puppet your dark thoughts...you die in quiet and resurrect in lies you tell yourself...you live in fear...in the isolated sanctuary you have erected...only now?...now you cant hide any more...even when you hide out...because someone looked in and saw you...i saw your beautiful soul...and it frightened you...you are terror filled...so you burned it all away?...the tongues of fire cant erase it all but then your safe in your cozy little cave...you have your pretty little cave...dark and damp and you sit in it all alone...shadows dancing...you dance those shadows...that is what you control...as you hide away and the fire reaches out for you...i see in...i always see in...and smile...and send you light...and love...because i know...this is not the real you...even as i know what you have called me...those biting little bat nipping names?...those names you have called me in your gossipping jags?...those names?...well i know you are those names too...and so you hide away and fight your own way and deny your ways...afraid of love...afraid of touch...afraid of starlight...afraid of happiness...you dance away...into the dark and fires leap and reach for you...and there you burn and there you cry...and there you numb out and there you die...to the truth...to the light...to the love...you are lost inside...and yet you drum and chant and sing...and walk in silence and meditate...

there was a rose with many thorns because it could never stand to be touched...are you the rose?...have you self adorned?...do you find it so superior to be a rose who has built her own cage?...how selfish to never be adored...the bees stay away and so does the butterfly...you are a jagged little creature...complicating your days...and yet here i am watching you...willing to take on flames and thorns...it is madness...but i am crazy didnt you say?...funny how i am crazy and you are sane...i open my heart and take the hurt...you play it safe...and i will not sleep tonight and you will sleep...and i will feel your heartbeat against my ear...a memory only but it is my heartbeat now as well...and yes these words spill from me...messy and unprepared...they climb across the white buzz of silence and reach your higher self...they climb in and shake you and scream wake up...wake up...you are being eaten alive by the flames...cry damn it...shout...escape your fears...love...love wildly...love with the nectar thickened rapture of a flower bursting open...love in my direction...i am the starving bee...love me...

sorrow couples with regret

countless counted on times counted up to nothing...the ceremony of days coming and going...empty...grey...blurring years...as if hearts saw half-blind...creating nothing but tear stains on pages left blank and longing for words...earth air water and fire...winter spring summer and fall...north south east and west...sun rising up to only walk away again...moon never staying long enough...stars so distant and often shrouded...time passing like the cold fingers of ice reaching across a window glass...you there and me here...more than places apart...silence settling in when words got left behind...and then the dull thud of disappointed...the pantamime of friendship...the decay and then the dust...i will weep into that dust and fashion a clay figure...i will set it on a shelf...a keepsake...a rememberance...of lost chances and the letting go...

the little bird who flew into my heart...

open my soul with your fine tuned song...the love comes in...each note carressing my heart...

draw close to this tired warrior...sing to me a gentle lullaby...

sleep will not reach for me...wrap me in your love and rock me into sleep...

i am weary...my head has no soft place to rest...i am in this darkness doing battle with my mind...it will not calm itself...

sing into me your good and true words...sing to me and i will know my way again...for i am lost and night has so many false roads to take...

open my soul up and pour into me...fill me up...spill me over...

i wish on stars...i wish for you...give this tired warrior a place now and then to rest her head...and a song to fall into...

oh songbird...sing me a lullaby...