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Patterns and Pauses

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Slowly the ice fort that the snow plow and I have built around my car is disappearing. At times, I take my square sharp shovel and chip away. When it warms up, I slide the snow shovel underneath and open up the passage ways. I am creating a path for easier movement.

The resolve to sit and write, to take time to work through the blocks that have arisen is renewed in me lately. Chipping away at a frustration; building my skills without a particular end game in mind will lead me where I need to go.

The enemy is contentment. I have enough money… if I am careful and don’t stretch my neck out into Middle Class acquisitiveness. I have familiar comfort. But the black out curtain of boredom restricts my light.

At times I yearn for a new environment, one in which I cannot anticipate the path. Exploration, adventure, serendipity are somewhere else.

The well worn path I had trodden is the polished stone walkway of discipline. The habits are the groves I have made. I am working now to get myself down in a chair and develop my focus on creating the adventure in my exploration of language. The time, which has for so many years been a burden upon me, the time of “it doesn’t matter” and “there is nothing you have to do” has been marked with no hands, no click movement of minutes.
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I don’t seek struggle but rather just to deepen my commitment to developing myself. And distraction, entertainment, diversion have been the central pond of my day. I have soaked in it for hours.

I tell myself I am learning as I watch movies. I tell myself I am connecting as I lurk a voyeur to friends on face book. I tell myself I am being careful with my money as I go to three stores to buy one item.

But really, what is it that I wish to discover in my life? That is the question. How can I patiently sit and work through my thoughts, honing ideas, reaching out to new possibilities of internal connection? It is by once again connecting to the clock and going back to work.

It is time.

When weather becomes the truth

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Sometimes we live in our heads, or in our past, or are lost in a scripted narrative someone else has penned. But when each of us opens the door and the percussive wall of cold strikes the entire body, all of the accompanying orchestration of violin thoughts stops. There is only the skin taking the temperature.

 

extreme weather

The frozen patterns like faces press against the windows partially imprinted on the car. It isn’t until the extreme falls away after turning on the heater that I go back into the droning, circle patterned of flying thoughts.
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Part of the pleasure of walking the icy sidewalk into the howling wind is the weather itself bringing me into the breathing moment. I hear my lungs at work. I see the air warming and steaming out of me. The cold is slapping me out of it. I am only this step, this foot, this warm boot, this creature moving on the ground.

And when I was in Peru and laid in the hammock, I ran sweat slipping my body surfaces like waterfalls on a sculptured hillside. The walk up the path would begin with the skittling thoughts but as I shoved myself against the moist, hot air I recognized that the trailing end of a narrative had melted and disappeared. With several more steps I would begin again but the line of thought dissolved even earlier on until I was released from any interest except my breath and the wall of opposition the tropics pushed against my progress. At times, I felt I was behind myself trying to catch up with the place my body had now moved into.

Extremes of weather hold some fundamental truth. There is only the body, the skin, the breath, the intention of movement and it leaves us free of the embroidered speculations in the mind. It stops us cold.

February Feeble

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The software on my computer isn’t working. Loading up is not loading up. You Tube videos are apparently not a reference to ‘me’ as the you. The front door lock is gitching. The construction crew finished and walked away when the newly installed fan was put in over the stove and it looked great. It just would not work. Somebody is going to call me about that. Yes, uh huh.

I woke up feeling like a horse had kicked me in the head and I had stupidly kicked it back.

I keep sitting meditation and resetting intention. But inevitably February feels like scuba diving in mud, or clay or quick sand or fresh mountains of dinosaur dung.

The tree heavy with snow.

The tree heavy with snow.

I keep hoping if I get strong enough, when I get strong enough mentally and spiritually, it will just be another season. la la la la.

Using various tactics always alleviates the sense of gulag gray no sky deadended barely hearing a pulse beat season. I am (1) not in a tidal wave (2) not in a hurricane or cyclone (3) not partially down an alligator’s maw (4) not breaking out in pustules that each have an alien baby spawn wriggling out (5) not sitting in a dentist’s chair having a root canal or four.

Okay, I tried that tactic and I am still not sitting elevated in the emotional parkhouse suite with a view of all the lower energy below me.

I was briefly amused by the twitter storm over Scalia’s death because, well, you don’t mess with liberal, educated, intellectuals without expecting a beautifully crafted celtic designed sword in your back. The posts were witty, nuanced, and full of the joy of new hope for a more humane society.

But then I wake up after spending time in some dream world barn where in a horse kicked me in the head.

The road

The road

The difficulty is that my putting off solutions does not seem to be, ultimately, that effective. I have been carefully filling a teaspoon with cod liver oil then moving up to a tablespoon full and finally in this last desperate week just picking the jar up and swigging it until I feel coated in slimy optimism all down my throat.

The kitchen was to be renovated on January 6th, the crew showed up February 8th worked a bit and then disappeared with no call or notice. Now with the job “done” except the fan does not work, I sit here no longer expectant. They did say 2016 so I know that part of the agreement will be fulfilled.
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I took my car into get the oil changed and the guy at the counter came out and sat next to me.

I said,” Oh No! Just tell me the amount not the story.”

He looked at me kindly and suggested some three step process so that I would not have too much out lay at a time.

I just looked him in the eyes and said, “I am paying for a kitchen renovation with not real money so go ahead and do the entire operation to save ‘her’ with not real money. Makes no difference at this point.”

And then I came to understand where I can find a perverted sense of joy and a lighter heart. I will embrace victim mode during the month of February. I will sigh and moan and bitch and compare myself to every other person who, of course, has a better life than I do. If a branch falls from my Maple tree during a storm I will heighten the drama.

I will think to myself, “Even the tree is failing to hold up to its contract to stand against the sky in February. I can’t depend on anything.”

 

Just be a whiney bitch and get it over with

Just be a whiney bitch and get it over with

The problem lies in the tension between what I feel I should be experiencing and what the emotional reality of February is for me. I walk celibate, repeating patterns of responsibility, my life churning like the spinning wheel thing on my computer which isn’t even really turning but just trying to make me think it is turning but the colors all stay in the same damned place lying to me.

Maybe, I should just give in and go out the door with the broken twigs from my tree stuck in my hair; the partially painted fingernails flaking off garishly celebratory color; wearing two different I can’t be bothered socks poking up out of my unpolished ankle boots and drive myself everywhere so I don’t have to expend an ounce of my precious energy for WHAT!

Nevermind. I will take some more acidopholus, gulp down an untold amount of cod liver oil and order a S.A.D. light and delude myself that next February I will have learned something, or grown, or become less human. And I don’t have leprosy, so that is pretty wonderful.

Can Confusion Be Delightful?

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I like a paper map. I like holding it in my hands. I like folding it up and putting it away when I have achieved the arrival. When it is open and I admit I am lost, I can get my bearings from all possible surrounding landforms, highways, rivers and adjacent topographies.

When I travel, I am frequently lost and it is challenging. To a person who decided in grade 9 what career she would pursue the fluky unforseen is a source of anxiety.

On Monday I sit and create my weekly calendar. I lay out what I think are necessary social interactions because I take them like my cod liver oil, as a preventative measure. I assess what days are best for working out with my weights. Walking is penciled in for aerobics. I establish what the major project is that I need to focus upon and carefully allot time for that goal.

At the present time, it is the book I am writing about my Alternate Reality trip to Europe. I am thinking of calling it Blood on the Street. Walking in my ancestor’s steps and experiencing the death of 90 people in Paris was not a vacation.

The difficulty I experience when things seem chaotic is that I sink down into a sense that I am, somehow, not up to the challenge. I know it is an old story. I know it is a left over narrative.

My new life since I have grown up, does not include being late, shuffling along in an unprepared state, showing up with no idea of what I am meant to do.

However, I sabotage my intentions. The walk never happens. It is too cold, or too wet, or too hot, or too gray or without purpose. I have learned that simply to walk somewhere without a purpose is as unlikely to happen as me suddenly liking sports. That is just a giant fail.

The concept of using up my resources keeps me in a tight little spinning circle. I become a spinning top… around and around.

My intention this week was to work on my book and I did well for four days and then…. I got sick.

Now my focus shifted to the battle between blame/resistance and selfcare/ submission. My mind always goes to the same questions. “Why did you get sick? When did you lower your energy and allow viruses to get in? What is wrong with your body, your spirit, your immune system, your habits?”

It is an interrogation but does not shift from good cop to bad cop. It is all bad cop.

A weak voice will be saying as background to the sound track , “You are building immunity to a new virus. That is good. You are working with your immune system to grow stronger.”

But it is a hardly discernible voice.
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The project that I agreed to do entailed learning software and a new site. I spend over twelve hours trying to to navigate various software tools without success. I attempted for over 10 hours to load a video onto a new site without success. I was clenched. The failures piled upon one another as the deadline got closer. But I kept at it.

It is as if I am sailing along in a boat and think it is fine… then the wind shifts and I see there are gigantic tears in the sail.

And so I became frustrated and bent over and focused on all of the areas that I had no skill. My time line fell apart. My good intention calendar dropped its pages like a 1930’s movie graphic.

Godzilla had walked through my beautifully architected city and flattened it. And then I got sick.

I am confused as to why so many things did not work. I am confused as to why I can set up a beautifully designed calendar map unfolded to plot out the road of my week and yet I end up somewhere else.

There is so much destruction and reformation in life.

 

Growth: Keep Page Open

Growth: Keep Page Open

But one gift that has been brought to me after what I interpret as an abysmally unsuccessful week, is that I see exactly which signs I was not reading. I understand where I am going off the road. And that what my confusion is about.

Setting intention is only partially effective. Sometimes going up the wrong road all the way to the flat landing place that shows you the entire stretch of the landscape means chaos and acknowledging that you were on or took the wrong road.

The delight in the confusion is the light in the chaos. The seduction of side projects, working to pick up small checks, moving my focus from one thing to another is not working for me now nor has it ever worked. What is it I am passionately headed toward?

That is all that needs to happen now. Leave the flirtations behind.

There is so much that I hide from myself. Perhaps, this week of chaos is just an opportunity to truly get the party started. That is my story and I am sticking to it.

January: Stop Dicking Around

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The snow fell. Fat fluffy flakes like a kid’s Gif. The trees were outlined white against a white/gray sky. The hills were draped in tulle clouds. It was quiet. The world was insulated against sound.

For three days a “snow on eyelashes” kind of magic surrounded us. And then it began to melt.

Because I lived in the North for nine years, I felt the urgency of changing the armature. I knew the melt and freeze was inevitable. I did not want to have an ice fort blocking in my car. I did not want to have a slide trough of ice leading to my front door.

So for every day I shovelled for an hour.

It is such an opening up when it snows. Like having a wet cloth on the face, the colder temperatures. And the neighbours reappear from their hot air caves. As I cleared the sidewalk, my neighbour came over and helped me. I went on to clear the next sidewalk where the couple is busy managing four children and, frankly, life.

The tree heavy with snow.

The tree heavy with snow.

The guy next door and I then went on to clear the walkway of my sister/friend (24 years and counting) who had put something out in the backish, hippish, thighish region. Usually she is so alert that she shovels the snow while it is still in the air.

Usually she is so thorough that not one patch of ice is ever found on her sidewalk.

And so I waved at the woman across the street with a little boy. I saw them getting out of the car and he is bigger. Since this summer he has entered another stage with another name to it: Baby to Toddler.

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And the mind asks, “What now?”

Now is shovelling snow. Now is watching squirrels run along the tree branch highway. Now is seeing the stark outlines of the nest the crows built this summer in my 50 year old Maple tree.

It is time to establish new habits. It is time to align with new intentions. It is time to stop distracting, soothing, repeating unsuccessful habits.

As I stand in my front yard with my daffodil yellow snow shovel in my hand I say to myself, “It is time to stop dicking around at life.”

 

Stop Dicking Around

Stop Dicking Around

What is now is whatever you did in the past to bring it in.
Breathe and create. Clear the path. Make sure your vehicle can move. Don’t allow yourself to be blocked in, captured by the past.
Keep asking, “What now.”

Summer Bright

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The thing about summer is I always wait for it during all the long, gray preceding months and then one day while I am bending over the spring flowers, putting in new seeds and weeding the snake like vines slithering between the strawberries, it hits.

 

bare foot gardening

Living in the Okanagan means that it hits at 38 degrees celsius. Living in the Okanagan means it explodes through the windows after days of over cast semi-light and flirtatious temperatures. “Hi, there,” the day says, with its 20 degrees followed by a manic wind storm, bolting off the sky with dark clouds and monsoons.

It toys and coys and ploys with us, the weather. And then it blasts us stupid. It was 42 on my deck today. I spent most of it with my face turned side ways on my bed, dog sweating from my tongue. I think I either slept or hallucinated for a good two hours. There is an entirely separate brain wave patterning for that heat zapped coma.

 

Turning the fan on is just an annoyance because that entails readjusting the stream over several hours.

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I identify with this response to heat

I identify with this response to heat

My friend and I decided to go for a walk at 5 pm because surely by all that is rational it would have cooled down by then. The cement buildings and sidewalks were just beginning to off gas stored up heat. It was rather like being dropped onto an Urban barbeque. I turned to her as she said, “Maybe we could just walk up a few blocks to a coffee shop?” Her forehead was a glistening water fall of sweat. Her eyes looked a bit dazed and she was leaning to the right away from the building’s blast as she walked.

The day that I decide I can’t take it any more is when I turn on the Paddle Wheel sound of the wall shaker air conditioner. The room throbs a bit but if I turn my body just right, a cool stream of air blows the sweat off of me into the room somewhere. That is a good feeling. It is the season I have so longed for.

 

Georgia O Keefe Rose1

And then the beauty of blossoms begins again.

To Learn by Going Where We Have to Go.

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The crows have built a magnificent nest in the long arms high up in my Maple tree. They have instinct, skill and whatever evolutionary magic is on their side.

As I struggle with the sticks of new skills, the structure I am building called “marketing” and “presence” is so much less compact and architectural. At times, I feel as if my head empties out. I learn how to record on Garage Band, change the file to an MP4, load it into IMovie and then… and then…

The next time I attempt it, my voice has so much reverb I am an opera diva soloist. The track sounds like I have a 500 pound barrel body with words careening off of intestines and ribs.

What also fell out of my head or perhaps is just not aligned electronically is the method of paying my PST for my art work. Then there is getting insurance on my art hanging in a local bnb. So far it is two days and multiple phone calls.

I think to myself that it must be some Zen Koan life. When I am dealing with electronics or institutional authority, I must first fall to my knees in humility and work through waves of frustration. Eventually, it will work. Eventually, I will learn it.

Maybe, one day the path will arise to meet my feet instead of being hidden in dense under brush.

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My Maple tree in winter wrapped around my legs

My Maple tree in winter wrapped around my legs

At the present time, I have a list of nine things that I am trying to learn. They are in a scrawled and numbered column on my neon orange index card.

I look like the crow when it sits watching me from its perch. I have my head to the side, blinking my eyes black with ignorance. I can feel the sharp beak of curiosity trying to figure out the way in, the way out, the best way to grasp that shining bit of knowledge and fly away. I can take it back to my nest of a mind where I now “own it.”

It is a process. It is all process.

#The Deals I Make with Myself

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I am a hustler, a con woman, a sting expert. I am here to confess.

In my heart, burned into my soul is the desire to be in a position whereby I can help many, many people. How do I do that? My spirit keeps telling me to ,”Go big or go home.”

Poetry performance breaks the barriers of self to connect beyond.

Poetry performance breaks the barriers of self to connect beyond.

So I go home. I clean up. I give away unused things. I repair that which is not working. I sharpen all of my eyebrow pencils. I lay flat under the bed on my belly like some rifle sniping expert lining up a shot to make sure I got all of the dust.

Recently, I repaired the seat belt on the driver’s side which protects me after I made a challenging road trip. That belt has never, ever worked since I bought the car five years ago. It pretended to work. It latched. But it would not flex/snap back into place.

I repainted the wall behind the bathtub which is being eaten away by water a bit. And then I made lists. The shirts in the drawers hold a rave in the darkness and when I open to the light, they fall into a tangle of confusion. They must be disciplined.

I must be disciplined.

I must be focused. Working out four to five days a week; keeping the house clean and zen-like; maintaining meditation practice are the central support for holding my place in the world.

But I always fall short. My dissatisfied ego monster is continually disappointed with me. The yearning for a love, a mate, a partner comes up in my center meridian spilling into my throat like choked off air and ends with tears filling my eyes.

Today as I was sitting meditation, I received a knowing that I have been alone many, many lifetimes. I have been valiant, independent, withdrawn unless called upon to fight for others. The pain is not new.

Within the time I dwell in; in the silence I sit in; in the stillness I participate in, I have had a few things revealed to me this new month in this new year in this new phase of who I am.

I made deals. It is very like a child who does not want to go to visit the kissy crushing aunt. I cling to my threshold and barter. Yes, I want to go out and stand on a stage and speak out. I want my voice to move others to look within, to open the dark attic or cellar door and have the courage to see what truths are trapped there disguised as monsters.

But I have tee shirts to roll into tidy forms, lined up by color and length of sleeve. I have computer files that are scattered, unlabeled and clogging up my Mac. I have toe nails to clip, teeth to floss, white trim around the door to repaint.

See, if I stay home and if I am a very, very good girl I am accomplishing something.

I recently read in the book The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot that a chair is just a vortex of neurosis. The particles are locked into a pattern of movement that creates what appears to be a chair. My body hair stood up, yep all of it at once. So my repeated, circling behaviors are simply a vortex of neurosis which formulates Cherie Hanson? I repeat this limitations ritually, circling tight the patterns predictable.

How do I get wise to the trickster self? How do I break out of the template’s designs which have kept me camoflaged and unseen? I have been hidden even from self so that I could maintain the momentum of the past self.

Grounding in order to grow

Grounding in order to grow

Watching the mind, comes back as the answer. When am I refusing to do that which would break me out of old patterns out of the fear that I may become something else? When do I set out on the ocean in my kayak, knowing I will discover new lands? Is it now? Or do I need to push back my cuticles.

What tightens habit’s hold on me is the memory of two parents who were out of control. The chaos, mental illness and unpredictable violence coupled with unethical behavior were constant elements of my childhood environment. Yes some of my attention to my environment is based on that history. However, I also know that my inborn personality, my welcoming in of that which feels right and correct has lead me to “cleaning up” my home, my life and my habits. It is a natural predilection.

So balance is the answer. The question that can unlock more freedom for me in the future is : “Why do you want to do this?” Sometimes I cannot answer. Sometimes my OCD is so strong that the action or lack of action becomes a compulsion. Hold that thought in your mind for a moment. Lack of action can become a compulsion.

As I awaken to the shell game I play with myself, I also find reasons to celebrate. The central question of identifying with a construct postulated from past experience and past protective choices is being unearthed. I feel like I am on an archeological dig and the bones I am unearthing are those of self, the shape of self, the history of self. From my perspective, this includes past lives, my soul identity and my potential.
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Before Christmas I attempted to purchase a Greyhound ticket for the 18 to 22 hour ride to see my daughter’s family in Houston, B.C. “Sold out,” the Greyhound screen informed me. So I sat with it. First I could choose not to go. But that hurt me. I could feel that the choice to not connect to my grand daughters, my daughter and her husband would send me reeling into pain over the holidays. Okay, so that choice does not protect me. Secondly, I could drive.

Strangely far away, I heard that fear-flailing voice telling me I was “too old”. Then I thought of my experience of driving across the flaming flatlands in Montana, Wyoming and into the wind torrented hills of Colorado two years ago. I drove four thousand kilometers alone on a road I did not know through hazardous conditions. I was up to that task.

I sat with it and asked to feel if there were any blocks. Like a blind person feeling around in an unknown room, I have a practice of sitting quietly and feeling “it” out. No messages came. No blocks appeared. Safety was all I felt. And so I set out.

The fact that I had taken a “risk” two years ago laid the ground work for my driving 18 hours up and 16 continuous hours back from Houston, B.C. The blizzardous whiteouts; the sight of a rig and a logging truck violently hurled off of the highway; the realization that the line of rigs coming at me were in my lane and the lane I should have been in was filled with the white eyes of cars almost obstructed from vision did not frighten me. I was calm because I had the experience of driving alone in a challenging manner to act as the foundation. I was calm because I had felt no doubt. The thought that I could die did not scare me. I resided.

To shine with the gits we are given

To shine with the gits we are given

My expedition was to connect with loved ones and to connect with my larger self.

The point I have reached in my journey, my adventure of life, on the unmapped road is that I see where my “navigator” has taken me. The realization that I make deals with myself to stay small and safe has been so brightly illuminating that it makes my eyes sparkle.

On New Years Eve I went out to a local casino where my choir directors were singing. The people in the space were very, very gray. Their skin was gray, their clothing was gray. Two were on oxygen tanks. Their bone mass was a problem as their backbones formed question marks about where they fit into life. They wanted to win but had sidelined themselves.

One woman came up to me and said, “Look in your purse. Look in your purse. Look in your purse.”

I said to the three friends I had chanced upon (sorry for the play on words), “Oh someone has given me a gift.”
Feeling around in my purse for the surprise, the unlooked for treasure, was futile.

Bending forward and narrowing her eyes, the woman said, “They took it out of your purse.” She gestured with her head towards the beautiful, vibrant women surrounding me.

Her life script was that of competition and loss. At that moment she projected on to me her victimhood. There were winners and losers. There were thieves and patsies. She had made a deal with herself that she would keep on the know, well-worn path of conflict.

I understood. I saw the entire contract that she had authored, signed and intended to keep until her ceasing to exist.

But who was I? In that place of loss and sadness; in that place of quelling pain with alcohol and gambling; in that place of restricted movement, tethered to an oxygen tank or a trance inducting machine or to alcohol, I got up alone and I danced. I danced through my fear. I danced through the sense that others might judge me. I danced through the anxiety that people would think me “out of control, crazy, weird.” I stayed in the music, drank water only and smiled at other women beckoning them up to join me. Come celebrate having a body, being incorporate, hearing beautiful music, and moving as God moves through us. Come celebrate the energy of expression. Release the tight game of “I am”. Release the tight patterns of circling neurosis of “this is all I can be.”

And so I drove through blizzards in which people died. And so I danced alone within a circle of ashen, frightened people. And so I stand on stage and perform my poetry.

Sitting meditation I watch myself, I watch the deals I make with myself to avoid passion and growth. But I trust that all will be well.

I will have a tidy house, floss my teeth, drink enough water and remain always, always kind. I can be more, bigger, allowing the power of the gifts to flow through me without loosing my core.

The frightened child must be comforted and lead into the blizzard obscured road, if I am to move beyond the vortex of repeated neurotic patterns. Maybe I am not a chair, maybe I am a giant fifty year old Maple tree that can stand in every wind, branches twisting and know the roots are safely in the earth which holds me in love.

Cultural Community

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Tonight I went to two events. The first was a group of people interested in working on their presence in the world through retreats, conferences and reading. The second was a group gathered together by UBC-O’s creative studies department to learn which individuals were to be awarded the top three places by guest judge Annabell Lyons. http://annabellyon.blogspot.com/
It was a joyous, relaxed evening.
At the first event, I met three people formally that I had passed in my life. We shared many experiences. One used to own a book store where I was selling art work on commission. Another taught dance in the building where I had my studio. A third was a close friend of a friend. It is interesting to see where connections can lead. It is why my daughter keeps telling me to go out the door. Staying home in my diaphanous Emily Dickens reclusiveness is not moving me on from this stuck place in my life.

Original photograph of a piece of string on the floor

At the short story competition announcement, I got to hear readings from four writer’s works. It was varied, skilled and interesting work. I had the audacity to take flyers of my poetry anthology which is for sale on LuLu and handed them out to four people. It took guts. I felt very hesitant but know that I have to start getting behind my talent if I want to make money from the work I am doing. My anthology is 36 pages of poetry written over the last year and posted to facebook.

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/facing-it-2010-to-2011-poetry-posted-on-facebook/15105587
My hopes are that the process of advertising my work becomes easier and more natural for me. Finding a gallery, an agent, a way to run the work I have been doing for thirty years up to a point where it begins to create it’s own energy is what will happen if I keep working to that goal.
I am going to a retreat in Victoria for the last week in March and really happy about having some time away. Life has been very lonely and quiet. Shows are coming up: Myths and Legends opens Saturday night at 273 Bernard; Digital Art show in Vernon t.b.a.; Sopa Under 8 in April. Currently, I have a show at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall which is a wonderful space to show art.
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Plans to attend the Permaculture group meeting for tomorrow night are flying around in my head. I also feel like getting out to see a movie or go to Chapters. I have been disciplined this week working on art, cleaning the house, feeding my blog. Tomorrow, I need to prepare for my course at UBC-O Continuing Studies teaching Grammar Lite. Being back in the classroom is always a rush for me. I love to react to what it is my students need. Teaching, for me, is not about feeding a baby. Open the door. Here it comes. Neither is it like teaching steps in a dance routine. People need to know what they are ready to learn. I guess the really challenging aspect of teaching is being able to deal with four or five levels at the same time. It is a challenge; however, it is a thrill to walk out of a room knowing that you have awakened confidence and curiosity in your students. I love it.

I am thinking that it is time to go through all of the boxes of ballast I have in the shed. Clothing, books and fabrics can be freed, reorganized and utilized to create some revue for me. What I am not wearing, I must sell. The separation settlement left me in a position whereby I must start doing things to dig myself out. Listening to Tony Robbins was inspiring yesterday. Tomorrow I will sit down and brain storm 200 methods of bringing in prosperity to deal with the giant debt I had to take on to be free. Now I will find a way to be free of the weight of this debt.

Recently, I created two book jackets for a client who is a poet. I also created a banner for his web site. I worked images as far as I could in Gimp then I finally broke down and downloaded a free trial of Photoshop. Some of the images I created from playing with photoshop were interesting. I am missing my Flaming Pear, Eye Candy and Painter filters that went bye bye with the multiple crashes on my computer during my dark and disheveled days this last year. My creativity is coming back and the feeling of anticipation for what will be is like the pink shoots in my flower bed. Promising.

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http://www.ilovekelowna.com/around-the-valley/find-arts-3/

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I came out of the gate of life like a racehorse. At the age of 17 I was attending university where I earned a B.A in arts and a B.Ed. in secondary education from Western Washington University in Bellingham. I minored in Philosophy, Modern Dance and Art. I began studies for an M.FA in creative writing and stopped just short of a full degree. Moving to Vancouver, B.C. I completed a M.A. in Contemporary Poetry under the well-known Warren Tallman. I taught as a T.A. at both Western Washington and at UBC.
Now, after over twenty years as an English high school teacher and as a Acting teacher, I am a working visual artist and writer.
My background connects me to all forms of art in the Okanagan for the 30 plus years I have lived here. I was a founding member of the Vernon Dance School, the City of Kelowna Arts Foundation, the Okanagan Film Festival Society. I wrote, produced and directed plays and was on the executive of Theatre Kelowna. As a columnist for B.C. Musician Magazine I wrote the jazz column for over three years. My husband, Cameron, is an accomplished jazz musician in the valley. So my roots in the art community run deep and wide. Visual art, poetry, non-fiction writing, theatre, dance, and jazz have all enriched my life. My goal is to help other artists in Kelowna to bring joy to the public. I will happily give publicity to any artist with no prejudice…as long as “no animals are hurt in the production.” Tell me about it and I will spread the good news.
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Show I was in in Ferrar Italy

Show I was in in Ferrar Italy