Tag: #art

Happy New Year. (I’ve been bad.)

sketch image of hand with words
My first sketch of 2019

Happy 2019.
It′s started off rocky, and my heart is feeling heavy for reasons both external and internal. Familiar questions echo: bouncing from the global to the personal.

Why are our societal systems often so cruel to the most vulnerable, the most innocent?Why do we so often hurt the ones we love?
And me: Why can′t I always be direct, and open?
Why does the past creep up and put its grubby little fingers over my eyes, my mouth, my ears? Why do I often run when I need to face things?

So much is born in seeds of fear. This year I will do what I did last year. My best.
Sometimes good, sometimes, well, not so good.

Focusing on learning, and growing, and cultivating more love, more understanding.
More forgiveness when we fail, as we will. More celebration when we succeed in loving kindness, joy, compassion…let’s do this.
Let′s grow a better world, together.

I am from

drawing in a journal depicting a living room with a cat on a rug

I, too, am from a sift of lost faces
from patterns I can’t untangle
from an endless string of cats purring
from tall pines and the hum of box fans in the window
from Carolina humidity and red dirt
and Spanish moss dripping everywhere
like paint from my sloppy brush, messy

And now, I am from here.

 

(snippet from a writing prompt using the classic George Ella Lyon poem, Where I’m from, a poem that has inspired many, many poems, and is one of my favorites.)

tips for after the apocalypse

sketch in journal of lamp, coffee shop, phone

My drawing prompt: headline in The Guardian: “Five handy tips for survival after apocalypse.” Sometimes I don’t feel like writing in coherent linear form (generally, after reading the news)…when I draw I can return to a centered place.

What helps you feel good? Do it. For five minutes, ten, whatever fits in your life.

sunday sketch

Swedish wooden toy horse on window sill beside daybed

Sunday Morning: a sketch

pillows play on the daybed
housecat swishes her tail
radio paints music chocolate-dark delicious as my espresso

the Swedish horse with the broken leg assesses my mental state
the coffee cup outlines the circle of its base onto the table
my sandals inscribe lines on my feet, a loose sundress erases my figure

my journal sketches my thoughts, lines, lines, line
I fade from the scene
I am just inscribed lines

the gel pen observes the work like a skinny foreman,
rigid, impatient at the pace
dear old patient threadbare linen napkin blots up the drips of minty water

life is messy, observes the old Swedish horse

my gel pen climbs down into
the deep hole with me
helps me dig

while Yo-Yo’s cello deckles the morning sunshine

________
Musical interlude: Yo-yo plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto

————
Notes: this is from a Natalie Goldberg prompt in her wonderful book, Writing Down the Bones;
1. write 10 nouns as a list. (I wrote ten things I could see/hear in the room)
2. write ten active verbs (she suggests thinking of verb relating to an occupation; I used “artist” as the verb-source)—sketches, inscribes, erases, observes, blots, outlines, paints, plays, swishes, deckles…
3. combine the nouns with the verbs and see what emerges
Have fun, see what happens. Why not?