Sometimes, the words

Sometimes, the words don’t come.

Sometimes, the words seem frozen behind an impermeable layer of uncertainty and hesitation.  You can see them staring out at you, waiting for you to step forward to claim them, to write them out, to give voice to them.  You feel them at the back of your mind where you have placed them, hoping to be freed from their persistent calling.  You hear them whispering to you in your waking dreams and you shove them away from you in favour of easier pursuits.  You move further into the morass of your own making, where movement occurs in slow motion and limbo is your reality.  You deny, deny, deny.

Sometimes, the words flow out of you like honeyed poetry, dripping down and off the page in a glorious sweet mess, golden and sticky with inspiration.  You roll around in the joy of the words and emerge sated and stuffed full of sugared goodness.  You come back to the words again and again, drawn to their nectar and feverish in your need for more.

Sometimes, the words are not enough for you to be able to overcome the fear that clutches at your heart.

Sometimes, the words are your only and greatest salvation.

Sometimes, the words fail you and you are left blank and grasping, gasping for meaning.

Sometimes, the words are your everything and you are simply their holy vessel.

Sometimes, the words.

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The exquisite and the extraordinary

When you open your heart to unicorns and dragons and magic, you leave yourself vulnerable and exposed. This means that you are in a perfect place to experience the extraordinary beauty of this life, but also to suffer the exquisiteness of its pain as well.

You can’t have one without the other, it seems. Two sides of the one coin. To move through both beauty and pain can be as excruciating in their own ways as the other. The thing is to draw upon the internal resources that we squirrel away for the good and the bad times, to allow the emotions to flow through us and to retain our sense of self at all cost.

Even though it might seem like the hardest thing in the world.

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Sunday reflections #75

Only in complete silence, will you hear the desert.

Anonymous Bedouin

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Starbursts

I miss this place, and I miss you guys. Life right now is about snatching precious starburst moments with beloved friends and family, as well as listening to my body and what it needs from me right now. Apparently what I need is a lot of sleep and plenty of caffeine. Yes, you’re correct – they do seem to be mutually incompatible.

I hope you are all well, and happy. I’m thinking of you.

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Sunday reflections #70

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.

Patrick Henry
1736-1799

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Sunday reflections #69

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.

Coco Chanel

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Sunday reflections #65

Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.

Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte

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Sunday reflections #64

Life is your art.  An open, aware heart is your camera.  A oneness with your world is your film.  Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.

Ansel Adams

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Sunday reflections #63

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton

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Where do you want to be?

So, sometimes life is super tough. Right now I feel like I’m failing all over the place – work, friends, loves, families, habits, photography, images, words, friends, work, friends, family, creativity, loves, travels, courage, and did I mention work?

This week has been calmer than previous weeks, for which I am extremely grateful. It has still been as stressful as previous weeks, which is apparently par for the course right now.

Where do you want to be right now? And what do you want to be doing? If you didn’t have to worry about cost or implications or impressions or reactions, what would your heart be telling you to do right now? I keep asking myself these questions over and over, and I wait and listen and strain to hear the answer. Sometimes I think that I hear the answer, and other times I’m sure that I can’t hear and that I will never hear it. The most that I can promise is that I will keep straining and trying to hear it in the hope that somehow and somewhere I will work out what my heart wants and how I get to what my heart wants.

What does your heart want? Here is what I know: NYC calls to me. I want to create words and images that capture your imagination and inspire you. Images and words that capture my imagination and inspire me. Perhaps that place is somewhere different from where I am right now, but I am ready (or nearly ready) to embrace any change that comes my way. I am ready to open my arms and my spirit and see what happens. I promise to embrace everything that I feel in my bones and that calls to me. I promise to reach out for new experiences and words and images and loves and

I miss this place and I miss all of you – and I feel like I am letting each and every one of you down by not posting more regularly. I am so grateful to everyone who has continued to follow this small place despite its inactivity. More grateful than you can know.

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