Sunny bright winter days look warm through the window, but it’s so cold today! Cheerful orange flowers and the beach scene on my shower curtains (hiding craft supply shelves) create an illusion of summer days in my sunny imaginarium. I truly love every season, as well as the cycles within seasons, the ongoing ebb & flow of creating my days. But today I am cold. I’ve not experienced a midwest winter for 10 years! I guess I’ve acclimated to the much more mild Pacific Northwest climate. I am ready for my comfortable temperatures back (19 degrees this morning!) and longer daylight. I’m getting restless for spring.
Seed catalogs, crocuses, and shifted products at the grocery store all assure me spring is nearly here! The Vernal Equinox is just three-ish weeks away. Dates on the calendar are closer than they appear!
Suddenly, I realize I am glad it’s cold outside. I need the feeling of plenty of time for puttering, imagining, reading, snuggling, crafting & dreaming before the warm sunny days pull me out into yardwork, gardening, and lengthier explores.
Bright sunny winter days like today remind me that the wanting is part of the fun. The approach of spring, the urge to be out in the sunshine, and not be cold is tempered with an appreciation for the gifts of winter too. Every season has gifts in proportion to our attention spans.
It’s my attention to the moment, over and over again, that needs a bit of practice. Presence in the moment actually expands my experience of time and energy. If I can bring the patience and presence I feel this sunny winter day into spring and summer, perhaps they won’t fly by so quickly. If I can enjoy the wanting feeling as part of the fun of anything I dream about, perhaps I won’t get so restless!
Whether you are present to your winter moments or experiencing spring fever, may you feel something bright and sunny in your days. Perhaps some orange flowers or a cat. Maybe a random musing from someone just saying hello.
Hello from the gulf coast! Yes, we are in winter coats and hats and our baby is naked, but believe me, she wouldn’t have it any other way! We headed south in our camper van, Cricket, after the holidays to explore winter in northern Florida.
The beach is soft and white and in the right light you can’t tell if it’s sand or snow. I love the textures that form from the play of light and shadow.
We are chasing birds, finding feathers, smiling at strangers, and savoring waves, sunshine, and sunsets. Lots of walks, naps with a view, new words and adventures in potty training fill our days.
Balancing family life with the endless inspiration that comes from having a community of creatives keeps my heart overflowing with gratitude. It’s truly a blessing to have our extended family in the Hollow to share, grow, and create with.
I’m panning for gold today. I’ve got my Dreamoire (journal), some images I printed last week, and my mug (from my niece for Christmas) filled with soy latte and dusted with cardamom and cinnamon. I’ve got this treasure of a dedicated space — my Imaginarium — and my beloved desk, a gift from my husband sooooo many years ago. It has scratches in it from my cats that annoyed me at their occurrence, but I treasure them now. The gold in those scratches is instantaneous time travel to… Holly sitting on my Desk, demanding my attention.
I miss her. We lost her just before Christmas to cancer – we had no idea she was even sick until the end, such a shock. Life’s shocks are the best places to pan for gold. The tragedies that crack me open reveal hidden treasure over time, but only if I allow myself the full experience of grieving. After Holly died, my sadness was so overwhelming, I had lost hope that I might ever feel happiness again. My logic knew from too many grief experiences in my 50 years that this was not true, but my heart’s heaviness saw no relief. I tried collaging and ended up tossing it out — I did save a few bits of ephemera I wanted to reuse. I carefully pulled them off and laid them sticky side up in a compartment in my desk out in my Imaginarium. Weeks later, I tried to collage again. I knew one bit of ephemera had gone missing – a little word that had been cut out of a Christmas card. I had no memory of what the word was, just that I originally had two and now only one. The next day I was in my house (not my Imaginarium shed where my desk is!) and saw a little bit of white on the hearth. I picked it up and read “Hope” and laughed out loud. I had quite literally lost then found my hope!
Holly is with my sister now, and so many others, like my friend Holly & her cat who died in an apartment fire in 2006. (I didn’t name my cat after her, they both came to me already named.) Like Michelle, my friend who introduced me to grief. She died when we were in 2nd grade. So many beautiful souls whose lives helped to shape me…. mentally bringing them each to mind now… I miss them all, and carry them all in my heart. I feel them — the essence of who they were in my life — so deeply.
I’m panning for gold in Memorial River today…today marks 17 years since my sister died (at the age of 38) in a snowmobile accident. We were best friends who decided to live like the old TV show “Full House” and we bought a duplex together right before she died. Her kids were just 13 & 14. My husband and I were not sure we could conceive – we’d been married 9 years then. That sadness from not having children of my own at the time became relief that all my parenting energy focused on them. As life tends to go, we did finally conceive when the kiddos were 16 & 17. Our daily lives in those years contained so much gold that simply wouldn’t have happened any other way.
Tina & Stephie
Never would I wish for my sister to be gone, but never could I imagine my life any different than it has been. There is pure gold in how her passing shaped me. That entire experience of the deepest grief brought out every part of me, taught me exquisite self-care, mastery in the art of living, of being gentle with myself, of faith in connectedness beyond physicality.
Here in the heart of winter, just beginning to notice more light, slightly longer daylight each day, I honor the wintering experiences life provides. I honor my sister, the two Hollys and so many others… with a river of memories… I’ll dig into my Dreamoire, list those names I mentally brought to mind while writing this, and collage. Practicing exquisite self care, I gently tend to my grief by panning for gold in Memorial River.
Have you ever created, knowing it’s soon going to be destroyed? If you spend time with kids you probably have. Luna is currently enjoying watching me draw, and then likes to scribble over it with a crayon. As a creative, with a case of perfectionism currently in remission, it’s a valuable exercise to draw or create with speed, flippancy and detachment. Lately, its taken the form of symbols and glyphs in the sand. Sand art is intrinsically impermanent, fun to create for the sake of creating. I love how Luna watches and encourages me to keep carving lines into our sprawling canvas with a piece of shell. To draw without thinking, just moving my hand in bold strokes as a sort of meditative practice. Standing back to pretend it is a secret language of glyphs and characters that was channeled. Laughing together as Finn runs through barking and spraying sand on us, wiping the canvas clean.
Embracing these days of unexpected creation—of finding the whimsey, wonder and wisdom woven throughout.
Will you create some sort of impermanent art today?
In Autumn, surrounded by death and decay, I am reminded that there are gifts in everything. There’s gold everywhere. Falls, losses, grief, and life’s difficulties build trust in our resilience as we practice gold-finding. We don’t always trust our own resilience, nor do we always know how to spot the gold. Autumn and Samhain are here to remind us. The cycle of life includes death. The light casts shadows. There is beauty in darkness. The resilience of human nature is a mirror of the resilience of nature.
Knowing the grief of losing people and pets, two of which were so shocking that I completely lost all strength in my body, then fell limply to the floor! The act of breathing felt impossible and the sensation was of having no bones in my body. Grief is a strange and awful landscape, the perfect place to hide gold. Loss is part of life. Trees know this.
Autumn is a role model of trust, release, beauty and acceptance, showing us mastery in finding the gold in decay as well as trusting resilience through the cycle of life–the seasons & cycles of nature. Tragedy and trauma are a part of life. When the level of trauma is too much for the level of trust you have in your own resilience, you lose trust. When you trust your resilience, the trust grows, and we cycle back into hope and enjoyment once again. The seasons & cycles of living go on and on.
May this season of mist & magic conjure gold from within its shadows.
One of our moon names this cycle is La Luna de Calaveras y Calabazas and it has gotten me musing on skulls lately! This is a painting I used to teach back in my “painting on vinyl records” days! How do you feel about the aesthetic of the Day of the Dead sugar skulls? In general do you find skulls and bones interesting or gross?
Creating my moon rock reminded me just how fun it is to paint sugar skulls – the color, swirls and patterns! Especially this simplified version!
I’ve found myself fascinated with bones over the years and incorporated them into some art pieces. I love finding antlers in the woods. My previous 4-H leader/best friend’s mom knew I was on the lookout for some bones to use in my art, and called me when she heard about a farmer who had lost a cow over the winter and there was a perfectly clean skeleton we could forage. That was the most extreme experience of gathering bags of bones, with humble appreciation for the cow. Below is one of my 3D pieces using her skull (it’s very heavy!)
I’ve definitely been inspired by Georgia O’Keefe as an artist and for her renditions of bones. She has a softness to her style that captures the beauty of bones.
I would love to hear if you have every used the subject of skulls or bones in any art or creations! Or, are you inspired to now? I’d also love to hear your musings on bones and what they bring up for you.
