Gratitude
I am grateful for family, the light that casts beauty across shadows, music that lifts emotions, a little house and garden filled with colour and love, friends and inspirations, the beauty of nature, the ocean’s cold spray, the soft barnacle skin of the grey whale and the possibilities that exist in life.
Category Archives: wishes and dreams
where dreams live
So, I went to Paris. And it was even more beautiful than I imagined it to be.
I know. I know. I write and have been writing for a long time now and have written scripts that were performed on stage and poems that were published and non fiction pieces that I’ve even been paid for, not to mention all the writing I do at work, the sort of writing that identifies my name as draft. I have taken writing workshops and heck, there is that english degree and all. but. Even within all that context of being a writer, the thought of actually writing a novel has always caused my heart to pound, my hands to shake and it has actually felt like something that I could never do. I have critically analzed great works of fiction, weeped at words that struck a chord in my heart and read more books than I could stack in my the rooms of my house. I have to tell you that coming here and proclaiming that I was going to write a fiction book this winter felt like one of the most scary statements I have ever made in public even if to only a handful of people who stop by on there way to somewhere else.
I first told a group of open hearted women last March on the California sands of Pacific Grove that my dream was to write a fiction book. They didn’t laugh or look at me like I had grown two heads. They actually believed I could do it. Hmmm. I wasn’t convinced. I told a few more close friends and they weren’t the least bit surprised by my declaration. It started feeling sort of good to say the words, to let them float out into the air like that. I mean, its not like I haven’t said it a hundred billion times when I was in highschool, when I was drugged out on something in those lost years of losing myself while finding myself, when i was in university but. but. the older I got, the farther away this dream seemed and I stopped talking about it, stopped even believing in it. And then when I found myself on the shores of manzanita in June with a relative group of beautiful strangers who became instant friends, I said it again. Tentatively. They didn’t think I was crazy either. Out there in space of open hearts, an expansive sky and a beach that stretched out like a blank canvas teaming with life, I wrote a mission statement.
“meditate in love, surrender to the vastness of the universe and write with all the joy of my being”
And then, I told my boys and they were all yes, of course you are, finally. And then I wrote out my intention here and a dear friend, said. Nanowrimo. And I thought, yes that is the perfect way to do it. And so I did.
i never realized i
possessed this kind of discipline. i have managed to surprise myself. what
a gift that feels like.
i have learned so much about myself, where i belong in the world, what it is that truly brings me joy. not the hot flame fire of excitment though there is that but a calmer, sustainable happiness that creates a calm in the deep core of my centre. writing calms me as much as it excites me. every single part of my life has benefited by this practice of writing, creating worlds of my imagination, finding my way through the blank page. i have learned that discipline brings out the muse dance waves in a way i never could have imagined. and even if most of what i write is dumb and badly formed shit, the gems are spectacular and make me weep. i wish i had known this years ago but i suppose i wasn’t ready yet. i am grateful to be ready now. i have walked a lot of different paths and i am grateful for each and every one of them because in walking them, i found my way here. home.
when i wrote the words “the end”, i felt like that was the most beautiful beginning.
i have a circle
and am forever grateful
for the way you teach, the
way you cry and dream and hope,
for the real and the imaginary and
all the words and pieces that you share
and the spaces in between
where you hold back because that is what you need
in that moment.
I honestly don’t think I would have gotten to this point of trusting myself enough to try if it hadn’t been for you, for the circle that is.
and, i have to say, i am proud of me for this:
Also posted in art and writing, nanowrimo
5 Comments
change
Its all changing. Of course it is but I sometimes need to remind myself because it is important. I can get caught up in continuing to do the same things even though the world around me has altered so much that when I see it, my breathe catches in that gasp of realization.
A long long time ago, I met a boy and we talked about our dreams, the big ones, the ones that you almost have to whisper because they feel that sacred when you are pushing through the novelty of newness that comes with taking big chances in your twenties. When you are running so hard to escape from a life that seems to want to chain you in its dark grip that you don’t even realize that it is far to easy to chain yourself.
Do you want to know a secret? I am a contrary sort of soul and I try hard not to be and I wonder where it comes from. I was always this way and used to argue black was white just for the sake of examining the content. Then I spend time with my mom* (hi mom!) and I see it because it seems that no matter what is said, she will disagree with it even if it doesn’t matter (sorry mom but it is sort of true). I don’t want to be contrary but I feel it deep in my bones sometimes. So the blogs that I read will talk about dreaming big and following your dreams and a part of me starts to gag and push back, it is an impulse I have that I can’t seem to shake. If everyone starts talking about how much they love blueberries (and I love me some blueberries and remind me to tell you how as a child I would toddle along behind my grandfather and pull blueberries out of his bucket and pop them into my mouth because it was easier to pick out of his bucket than to pull them from the swampy muskeg of a ground), I will suddenly out of nowhere say how much I can’t stand blueberries and how they stain your fingers that red blue colour (remind me to tell you about my favourite white shirt that got an ugly stain from the fingers dipped in blueberry juice). So yeah. Fuck dreams man. Says my contrary soul.
But everything is changing. Last night my son drove me to dairy queen in the truck that was once his grandfather’s. The truck that now sported a fancy new windshield and a new starter along with other assorted bits. The truck that broke down out of the city earlier this week but was completely handled in a much more mature way than I could have handled at my advanced years of temper tantrum throwing. Last night my son drove me to dairy queen and as I ate a small dipped cone, I admired the way he drove and tried to forget that I once tickled his toes and wiped away his tears among other things. He starts grade 12 in just a few days and in a blink he will be graduating, turning 18 and suddenly I am reminded of those early days of realizing that I once had a shit load of wasted time and now I was slave to the needs of a baby, a toddler, a kid who needed rides from here to there and everywhere. I finished my degrees with soaking pads of milk and a backpack filled with diapers and I worked hard to make a life, to be a mother, to forget about certain dreams that I no longer had the energy for.
But. Its all changing and I wonder how I seemed to miss the fact that while yes indeed it is all changing, it has actually already changed. Even with a demanding full time job, I seem to have a new abundance of time on my hands and I realize that as time started opening up, I managed to fill it with more and more stuff like blogging, like social media, like working on other people’s creative dreams, like creating a business, like taking online courses that I never actually finished and then there were the voice lessons, the yoga classes, hula hooping, learning to garden … but over the past year, I have pulled back into the groundedness of my life. I have cleaned out the cobwebs and have gotten a pretty good system of taking care of the business of life going, I am developing some good routines and as I crunched the last bit of that ice cream cone I realized that I raised this capable manchild and maybe, just maybe I sort of raised myself in the process.
And so. That whispered dream. Well. It is starting to sing deep down in my gut. There is a roar that is taking over and I remember the dream so well and how it has always guided the way I dive into life, the way I ran towards experiencing everything I could possibly experience, the way I leaned into the optimism of it all, even the painful parts.
And so, I tell you in a quiet but intense whisper. This winter I am going to write a book. A fiction book. I have no idea what it looks like but the pull to write it is so strong and the more I thought about it and the more people I told in a leap of bravery, the louder the roar and the deeper the pull.
I am going to write a beautiful book. Or a not so beautiful book but even that will be beautiful to me.
and
I am going to play the guitar and practice daily and turn my poetry into song while continuing my hooping practice and I might even swim once or twice a week because these are all things I love. But mostly, I am going to write my book.
I have time again. Time for me. It really is my turn to truly live within the dreams that live in my soul.
peace.
*I don’t blame my mom for my contrary soul but it was interesting to me to note that we are more alike in some ways than I would have admitted to even a year ago.
Also posted in art and writing, life and creativity
8 Comments
“integrity”
i didn’t do a word last year but a word found me nonetheless. i’ve said it before 2010 was a difficult year for me personally but i am so grateful to 2010 because it was a year of incredible growth and so i give ‘gratitude’ to 2010. i pushed through the dirt and today i feel a lightness even though i am aware of how much work i have in the year ahead. i am ready for it with my head open to the sky and my feet firmly pushed into the grounded earth.
my word for 2011. integrity.
from wikiipedia, “The word “integrity” stems from the Latin adjective integer (whole, complete).[2] In this context, integrity is the inner sense of “wholeness” deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others “have integrity” to the extent that one judges whether they behave according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold.
In ethics, integrity is regarded as the quality of having an intuitive sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one’s actions .”
****
i drank quite a bit of champagne last night and enjoyed playing ‘risk’ with my boys until the wee hours. i was up well past 3 in the morning which is crazytown. so i am keeping this short so i can go back to couch snuggling with the glow of candles and twinkle lights, large glasses of water and movies on the telly.
happy new year … sending you all peace and love and hope for a light filled year. xo
e-course
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” (Anais Nin)
(polaroid spectra, image 1200 film ~ taken during a beautiful summer like day in may)
Pssst. I have been keeping a secret.
I have been madly working on creating an e-course on photography that mixes technique and exercises while teaching how to achieve the results you want without all the technical professional jargon. The beautiful basics of photography from an intuitive easy to follow perspective.
I have been blessed with beautifully talented friends who have watered this seed as they have watched me with my cameras and taken my little tips and used them to create their own magic. They have encouraged me and supported me to move forward with this dream of teaching again in this way, using this online medium and I love the idea of being able to provide this course to those who may not otherwise have access to a class like this.
I had such a hard time grasping the concepts of f-stop, aperture, depth of field, long exposure when all I really wanted to know was … how do I get all that beautiful blur in the background? How do I shoot successfully in the full on harsh light of midday? How can I create a studio look in the middle of a busy street? How do you shoot in low lighting? At night? How do I know what kinds of lenses are good for the things I want to shoot? How can I use the light to my advantage?
I know that I am not alone in this and so I want to teach practical empowering techniques (yes you can shoot successfully in manual with your SLR camera!) and ways to use your camera that doesn’t feel intimidating or super technical in that way that makes your eyes glaze over (or is that just me?). I really want to empower women to take the photos that they see in their mind without having to shoot off 50 or so photos because sometimes you only have one chance to capture that moment. I will share that I always shoot in manual. Always. I cut my teeth on photography using film cameras and experimented with all kinds of different film and film speeds and I believe that learning the basics made it easier for me to get creative with my photography. I also know that it doesn’t have to be intimidating or scary or confusing like a chalkboard filled with equations (sorry to all the math geeks out there!)
I have been getting all geeky over here writing up lesson plans and making story boards for video tutorials which I hope to shoot in August. I forgot how much fun it was to create lesson plans and how much I miss teaching. I am also feeling incredibly grateful to have purchased the 5D Mark II back when I was shooting weddings because it shoots video and I have figured out how to use it as a visual tool and am really excited because I think it will be a great learning tool for anyone who takes my class.
I will share with you that I am feeling some fear as I share this with you. I am unsure what it is that scares me. I already know that I love teaching and feel fairly secure in that regard as my second degree was an education degree and I also have experience teaching in a classroom setting. I really believe in what I am teaching and really want to empower other women* to shoot with confidence and learn how to create the photos that they see in their hearts. Perhaps the fear comes from taking the chance to blossom in this way, of allowing myself to feel intimidated as I attempt something new … beginning down a new path can be scary but I am going to smile and lean into this fear knowing that it will guide me towards something beautiful.
I am opening up the comments as I would love to hear from you and what you think about all this. Is this something that would appeal to you? Do you have any questions? Is there anything you would like to see in a course like this? I would totally love to hear your thoughts as I move forward.
peace and light
*************
*I say women because most men that I know love to get down into all the tech talk whereas most women I know tend to approach photography from a more emotional place. That said, I think that men would also get something out of the approach I am using so, of course, I am not limiting the class to only women.
star light, star bright
(polaroid sx-70 / 600 film)
Star light star bright
The first star I see tonight,
Wish I may, wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight.
It’s 09-09-09. It’s a day for wishing … {before i list out my wishes, i want to direct you to the lovely susannah from whom i stole this whole blog post idea from, i even scoured my flickr archives to find a similar photo, tee hee … i’m a big ol’ copycat, its true!!}
i wish to finally finish my book and for a publishing company to whisk it away to the printers. i wish to lose the twin and grief weight once and for all as well as that 20 pesky pounds of weight i gained when i quit smoking. i wish to be healthy and strong well into my nineties because i have always known that i would live a long long life. i wish happiness and a full beautiful life filled with dreams and joy and love for my son. i wish to travel all around the world with my cameras and notebooks close at hand. i wish for health and strength and continued creative magic for my husband. i wish to finish an ironman triathlon and do so without my normal klutzy ways but rather in a graceful pool of sweat. i wish for a beautiful spacious cabin by the ocean with windows vast view but will settle for a cabin by the lake of my childhood with windows vast view. i wish to walk the white beaches of greece with my closest girlfriends, you know who you are. i wish for a winter of creative energy filled with words and paint and photographic adventures. i wish to find a way to make enough money with my art that i could realistically quit my day job. i wish to obtain a grant for a canadian photographic idea that i have which includes a whole lot of film and the craggy faces of my fellow countryfolk. i wish for less anger and more smiles. i wish for more compassion and less judgement. i wish for whirled peas (thanks jenica) and perfectly imperfect days filled with the beauty of a chipped tooth and crooked walls. i wish to finish all the renovations in my house both inside and outside. i wish for a new studio garage in my backyard so that my husband has a place to record music and rehearse and we both have a place to create art. i wish for the continued feeling of contentment and bliss which is finding its way into my heart. i wish for all of your wishes to come true as well.
instagram addiction
