Athena Dreams Design

At Ease in the Body .:. Lessons from a Friend

People talk a lot about animals teaching us life lessons: Important things about patience and unconditional love, but they also have a knack for teaching us more simple things. Here, a list of things I have learned this week:

Play till you feel a nap coming on, and then just lay down right where you were playing.

Know that you are beautiful (and fluffy) and everyone should want to pet you and hug you till you wiggle.

Feel confident in your gracefulness and poise, even when you miss a jump and land on your face (I meant to do that).

Know that you are deeply loved even if you claw the furniture and puke on the rug instead of the floor.

Carry no stockpiles of regret around with you, just shake it off and move on to the next adventure.

Hold no grudges: So she acted like an ass yesterday, but she'll do better today, I know she will.

So many things yet to learn, to take into muscle memory: to feel unconditionally confident, loved, and certain in all things play and work; to fell comfy and wonderful in any and all groups of people; to feel like rolling around on a chair, slide off onto the floor, land on my head and know I am graceful and lovely, and always sure of who I am.

A New Moment on an Ordinary Wednesday Morning

On a wednesday morning, early in the studio, I take a look around to see what my world is made up of these days. I notice many things in process, unfinished, being contemplated, in flux, in planning stages, sketches. 

And instead of seeing things not done, not finished, I am trying on some new eyes, just for size, and looking at all these pieces as possibilities, things that will be, ideas that are being born.

It is all a matter of perspective I think, all a matter of looking at the positive, at the process, the flow.

Twyla Tharp in her book The Creative Habit talks about ritual, pattern and repetitive memory to tame and quiet the fears and the self-doubts and the ugly, awful voices in [my] head. And so this is a change in ritual for me. To see the unfinished as potential instead of seeing it as things I have not finished, plans I have fallen short of, ideas that have not bloomed with the fruition I had hoped for, projects that have [gulp] failed.

"When you have selected the environment that works for you, developed the start-up ritual that impels you forward every day, face down your fears, and put your distractions in their proper place, you have cleared the first hurdle. You have begun to prepare to begin." -Twyla Tharp

And so, I begin with developing a new Start the Day Ritual: looking at what is ready to burst forth, what is wanting to lay still, and thus, prepare to begin, and see my days, my work, and my life with these new eyes of mine: looking for the positives, stepping up to take my place at my painting table and begin this new day, this new ritual of creation.

Wish me luck, as I wander down this new and alternate path, with a new faith and these brand new eyes with which to see: the water feels great over here, and I am jumping in.

The New and the Everyday

There is a long list of Things that Make Me Happy, and one of those, I must admit, are new clothes. New colours to blend into the clothes already in the closet, new patterns and textures to touch and look at, and an all around new feeling inside my person when putting on and wearing the new clothes.

There is a part of me that feels like I should be less in love with buying new clothes, that there is something a bit... shallow, a bit crass, but, then I think: since it is more accepted to be out in public dressed, rather than, undressed (at least in my zip code), I may as well buy some things that will make me smile inside when wearing them. 

Buying new clothes always, always, always sends me back to that shop for new school clothes which happened in our family every August. All the new clothes, carefully chosen, and the new pair of nice shoes, to put away in the closet: All the clothes that I had outgrown removed from the closet and either claimed by my younger sister or put in a pile for Goodwill. Such a ritual, just like the new notebooks and book covers (ah but paper supplies, that's a different entry on the List of Things that Make Me Happy) that were purchased every year. 

The new clothes all put away so lovingly, so carefully, even organised by colour, and outfit; and, for the first few weeks of school, returned to the closet or folded carefully after laundry day, eventually became familiar, ordinary even, and more often than not, never made it off the floor of my bedroom in between washings (and, truthfully, that hasn't much changed).

There is a different smell about new clothes, even after washing them, they have an aura of specialness, a feeling of rarity, even a sense of daring. Perhaps wearing these clothes will make me walk differently, perhaps I will fall a little in love with the feeling of the new linen skirt brushing against my calves, perhaps I will see a new and different aspect of the person that lives deep inside of me, perhaps wearing these new clothes will shift something in my perspective. Or, more likely, they will just make me ever so happy, way deep inside, the first few times I wear them, and then they will blend in with all the other colours and textures in my closet, and become more ordinary, and special in their everyday familiarity: Friends.

Finding My Conundrum

It has now been 3 weeks since making some changes in my life, in my work, and in my schedule, and Ifind I am wandering around, wondering what I should be doing. I have all this time to paint, and now, wander away from my painting table.

It's a funny thing, making positive changes, and putting them into practice, and then, finding myself at a loss as to why I am still not on a crazy work/create/life schedule like I have been for the last 10 years. The peace makes me feel antsy, not relaxed, not creative, not focused. The quiet, well it does the same thing.

I have cleaned, I have purged, I have lined up ideas and sketches, and I just wander in and wander right back out. Can't force the moment, I tell myself. Can't force myself to focus on the painting, it's a conundrum.

Aah, a conundrum. Such a funny word, it makes me think of when I was a little kid: my brothers and sister and I spent lots and lots of time (in fact, as much as we could) with my grandparents. My grandfather was a cabinet maker/woodworker on weekends and holidays as he used to say, and we always begged to be able to be his assistants in his wood shop. There were rules, rules that were strictly enforced. You had to be a certain height to come within 3 feet of the table saw, and your hands had to be a certain size to turn the handle of the big clamp he used to hold 2 pieces that were gluing, and so on and so on. The important rule though, was a new word.

We had to learn the meaning and spelling of one, long, multi-syllabic word each time we were shop assistants. [I realise even now that there are quite a few words I might never have been acquiainted with if it had not been for this rule] On one occasion it was the word Conundrum:

[kuh-nuhn-druhm] 

–noun

1.	a riddle, the answer to which involves a pun or play on words, as What is black and white and read all over? A newspaper.

2.	anything that puzzles.

Gramp's conumdrum was: Do you walk to school or carry a lunch? We spent days, weeks even, trying to figure out what the riddle was, what we were missing, what the trick was. And when I went back to him weeks or months later to tell him we had not figured out the riddle in his conundrum, he laughed and hugged me and told me that that was mostly how life went. It takes awhile to find the riddle, and occasionally there is nothing to find, but we keep looking.

So, these days, a bit of a conundrum, where I am not sure whether I walk to school or carry a a lunch, but things are turning, moving, rearranging molecules are settling, and something new will arrive any day now. In the meanwhile I am wandering a curvy path, thinking curvy thoughts, and readjusting to a new schedule in this conundrum of life.