Let go of any illusions of who you think you are.  Be
not afraid:  allow your delusions and confusions to be burned away in
the fire of emotion, and allow yourself to emerge from the ashes
renewed and with a new understanding of who you really are.

Journeys come in many, many flavors.  They can be little snippets of your everyday routines, something new and out of the ordinary dropping into place, or something larger...a cataclysmic event that defines you for the ages.

I am journey bound.  Eternally it seems.  Always have been.  Looking for more, searching, finding, wondering.  My friend Meg tells me I am a seeker.  Always looking beyond.  She says she loves that about me.  I say it wears on me more than I let on most of the time and that I find on the most intense seeking journeys, I lose myself in the quest to find.

This week I'm at my father's home in Pennsylvania.  A trip I honestly dreaded.  I feared what I would feel and how I would react.  He has advanced Parkinson's Disease.  I don't even really know him well, and those two factors alone are enough to begin to spin me into seeker mode.  

I decided though, to look at this trip as a journey of sorts.  A way to link with this man.  This man from whom I originate and with whom I seemingly have much in common.  I decided to look at this trip through a lens of love and discovery instead of fear, questioning and sorrow; though they may have been easier to fall into.  

This week I've found that we have a similar cadence to our voice.  He trails off at the end of sentences much as I do.  The richness in his voice reminds me of my own when I'm intoxicated with fatigue.  His laughter is joyful and full.  He repeats his stories multiple times, but never loses his zeal for telling them.  It reminds me of my inability to tell a joke.  He looks at me with eyes that are my own reflected back.  Blue and full, soft and welcoming.  He's frustrated and sad, wary and confused.  I am all of these things in my own ways and in my own time.  His is just focused on a pin point of being.  On a little path laden world of safety around his home.  Schedule on schedule on schedule...that too is me.  

I helped him get his sweater on this morning, guiding his hand like a child into the sleeves that eluded his own control.  We shared that.  We marveled at a French romance movie last night, side by side...discussing contrast and beauty.  I downloaded the soundtrack onto my iPhone, he called me a show off.  His humor is mine, his loves, mine.

The ashes of a missing father from my childhood seem blown away this week.  Gone with the passing of time.  The clarity of his gentle soul and his vulnerability have replaced them and I'm understanding myself a little more though this time with him.  It may well be my final time with him.  My final time to find pieces of myself in his presence.  What a sweet, sweet gift that is.

Your curiosity may get the best of you today. You are driven to delve beneath the obvious appearances and seek the hidden component of what's going on. But this isn't just an idle wandering; it's more about a search to establish a healthier balance in your life. Thankfully, you should be able to positively impact your world if you can discover what causes are at play. Increasing your awareness may be all that's needed.

Curiosity.  Today?  JUST today?  Ha...um, no.  I'm the constant curious soul.  Always have been.  Lately though it has channeled itself in some interesting ways.  Challenging my creativity and forcing me to be realistic (which is never one of my favorite pastimes) seems to be the goal.  Maybe it's this wretched month, maybe it's the winding down school year, or the impatience that plagues me more than it is curiosity.  But these are my top 5 wonderings today:

1. Why do my children fight the entire time they do the dishes.  They both have to do them, why not compliment one another through the process.  Seems more productive and overall much nicer.
2. Why don't I have the willpower to resist Impossible Film?  I have yet to actually take many shots with my SX-70 that I like, and now they go and debut a GOLD film?!  You're killing me Impossible!
3. Why does the Alaskan landscape look like a matted hairball this time of year.  What the hell is it that coats everything?  Someone said snow mold?  Eww!  I hate mold.
4. What was I thinking taking a photo from the floor, up?  That is not nose flattering.
5. Why don't I just go ahead and bite the bullet and get the tattoo I keep thinking about and pretending not to want.  Because I'm too damn fickle.  That's why.

Calling it a Life

Look at the earth crowded with growth, new and old bursting from their strong roots hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed according to its own kind...each one knowing what to do, each one demanding its own rights onthe earth... So, artist, you too from the deeps of your soul... let your roots creep forth, gaining strength. - Emily Carr

I had this sense of strength yesterday.  A glorious sense of letting go.  It's a powerful choice when you begin to define your own self by the gifts you have, the feelings that course through your own self, and the ways in which you find your world beautiful.  April is notoriously my least favorite month.  I've often wished it were wiped from the calendar.  It is the gray time, the melting, the brown time...sadness for me.  It has been acutely so for the past five years now, but not anymore.

I'm not quite sure when, but someday not long ago I decided to stop letting the sadness April holds for me define who I am.  I moved on.  Not in a brash and selfish way, but in a way that just felt right and a way that I just knew was right.  I'm certain I'll never forget the events that led to April being an even darker month for me that it always has been.  I'm also certain that I've stopped allowing those events to infiltrate quite so severely, instead I've begun to allow my eyes to open more meaningfully and to breathe with my whole self again.  I read a line yesterday.  Stumbled across it really (which I believe is never really a stumble, and more of a meaningful path).  Mary Oliver, a favorite poet of mine, wrote in her poem, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Branches, Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?  And I paused on the page, fingers on the line of the poem, thinking...yeah...sometimes I am.

Five years ago I would have fought with all my being.  I would have been angry and filled with sorrow.  I would have pushed and gnashed my teeth at reading a line like that.  Not anymore though.  Somehow, my roots have crept forward, gaining strength and I've just moved on.  Five years is a long, long time to document sadness and tragedy.  I know sometimes it has to be done.  I've lived there too.  It's just that now, today...I'm choosing to breathe more deeply.

Full Moon Push

I plan things out in advance.  I sketch the ideas, pull the mental notes, run the plays in my head.  I'm a planner.  I think I've always been one.  Organizing, pulling together, adding touches of me to the mix.  As an adult this planning things has manifested itself into some pretty ugly outcomes.  I was manic about my kids' schedules when they were babies.  Obviously it didn't hurt them, but it wouldn't have hurt me to relax a bit either.  I've pulled many an 'all nighter' to get the details done for projects, presentations and meetings only to have them brushed over as 'oh that's just organized Vanessa'.  This part of my personality is one I embrace and loathe.  But it came with the package.  With me.  I could no sooner let it go than any of my other personality quirks.

So this week, when I talked to my dad about his desire to see my kids this summer, and to have us travel to Pennsylvania to do so, it was no surprise to me that I was tossed into a little flurry of unsure fervor.  Searching for tickets, weighing options, thinking through and considering feelings.  All the while, being weighed down with obligation and uncertainty.  Two days of trying to make airline plans and trying to mentally wrap my brain around changing everything about how I'd planned my summer.  Ugh.  Damn planner.

As I often do, when things are overwhelming me, I shut everyone out.  Tried to do it myself, tried to find a way to make it all work out just the way I wanted.  Without a plan even.  That rarely works for me.  And also as I often do I stopped mid-freakout, and took a breath.  I read a book I've just started, went to bed a little earlier, grounded myself.  I found a little focus, asked for a little help (thank you Diane, travel agent extraordinaire!), and I'm going to survive. Duh. The outcome won't be what I'd planned.  And I'm okay with that.  I think.  Instead I'll be doing what someone else needs me to do for a while.  I'll be changing up my own ideas and reorganizing them to be all jumbled up again later.  And I'll drag the kids along with me for the ride.  Maybe someday when I'm gone they'll reminisce about their nutty mom who tried to organize the world to fit her vision.  I can only hope.

Heather reminded me this week, through our weekly photo collaboration (which I plan to be more on top of), that more often than not, it's not about my own desires, but about being what others need me to be so I can more easily find some truth for myself.  Too often in hindsight I've felt the pressure of the blinders I put on for the sake of my 'plan', and it's only then that I can see what I've missed.  I'm trying very hard not to let this happen so much anymore.

how messy and uncertain

Shades of gray.  Sometimes being an educator is like wading through shades of gray.  Earlier this week, my job thrilled me.  It made me laugh aloud.  It made me proud to be witness to creativity and learning.  It fulfilled.  Not tonight.  Tonight it feels like a hazy gray fog that I can't shake.  It feels like sadness and lingering.

Sometimes, this job is about more than standards and testing.  It's about far more than graded papers piled up neatly and desks in tidy groups.  It's about kids.  About being their only constant.  About feeling through hunches and working on your gut feelings.  It's about asking where the bruises came from, and how the scratches came to be.  It's about my hand, covering my eyes because looking at the situation is just so damn hard sometimes.  It's seeing through the lies, through the shades of gray and finding a way to bring light into the life of a child who has absolutely none.  It's messy.  It's uncertain.  It breaks my heart.

Vulnerability

Your emotions are not likely to be light or breezy right now, dear Libra, but neither are they burdensome. Vulnerability that you may be feeling these days can open the door to more compassion and understanding, not only with others but with your own emotions, which has the effect of building a more protective and nurturing environment for yourself. 

As an artist and a creative I'm often finding myself at a crossroads.  Too many ideas, not enough, too many opinions or too many critiques.  I've ventured out a lot lately.  I have tried new experiences with my photography, attempted ideas I'd never dreamed of attempting, and collaborated with people I've wanted to collaborate with for a long time.  Have I made mistakes in there?  Sure.  I'm sure I've made some along the way.  Maybe a shot was over exposed or I missed a clip on the back of a dress in editing...maybe I missed THE shot because I was busy fiddling with my settings. 

I was talking to a new friend today about challenges and crossroads and how important it is to embrace those stepping stones of growth.  It is my belief that these experiences, be they failures or successes, are critical to moving further.  Actually critical.  So why then, when doubt creeps in, and fear starts to slide into the picture do I resist the urge to learn and embrace the safety of what I know.  Human nature.  Yeah.  Security, fear...all of that. 

Spring is coming.  It's this time of year that I struggle most.  The nasty weather becomes all encompassing for weeks.  Mud, slush, and grimy wet puddles find me glaring out the window and wishing that the sun would swing around already and bring summer, full of bounty and opportunities to trip along the creative stepping stones that might otherwise become stumbling blocks for my creativity.  Crossroads, yes.  Not a stop sign though.  Spring still holds a bit of promise yet.

the will is the weaver

I feel like so much sort of came together this week.  Not in a great way, but in a way it was supposed to; accomplishing just what it was supposed to accomplish (if you believe in that sort of thing).  I got an adult dose of reality.  I got some news I didn't like.  Something that probably should have been reality to me well before it actually was too...it stings worse that way.

My quote with Heather last week and this week had to do with will.  They had to do with finding a way to guide yourself when faced with the constant pull of guiding others.  Perfection for me given the realities that set in this week, and my personality in general (though I'm pretty sure not everyone in my life would agree).  


I thought about our quotes, this one in particular, "The signs of the zodiac are karmic patterns; the planets are the looms; the will is the weaver." when I took yet another shot of myself that I just didn't like.  It set me off.  Set me on this sort of spiral, maybe the universe's way of telling me to prepare myself for what was coming. I didn't really like it.  I didn't seem to like a whole lot of what I was doing.  I still don't.  I didn't love how I felt about my work, or how my work felt about me.  

So, weave in, weave out (invoking Mr. Miyagi here) and learn from it.  It's in my will.  I am the weaver and I'm thinking that a dose of reality is likely what I needed in the first place and more than just likely what I should have seen before it smacked me and laughed at the shocked look on my face. 


This too shall pass, and I know it's the dramatic artist in me that just bathes in this and allows it to swallow her up until she can learn from it.  I'll resurface.  I know.  Until then I'll keep weaving, keep sounding off, keep ignoring realities and keep my head in the clouds and behind the lens (sometimes in front too) because even when it's not fun, it's meant to be.  And...this photo looks horrible on blogger but that's poetic justice too somehow.  I'll take it.

The Threesome I Can't Remember

Astrology can clear up or mix up a person as much as any other psychological, philosophical or religious mirror, a looking glass in the endless mirror hall of life.  ~Markku Siivola

Flashing moments of clarity hit me this week.  Like a stop action film, they came, they went.  I'm in a flurry of activity lately.  Busy, full, bountiful and exhausting.  Being one who overdoes as a rule, and hates being behind on anything is, well, exhausting. 

One stop action moment came this week while talking with my goddess, Heather.  She's my massage therapist, friend, confidant, soul sister and inspiration on much of who I am NOT.  We laugh till we cry sometimes, share stories, discuss issues, share victories and vent.  Truly goddess material here. 

I was sharing with her this odd moment in my past that I hadn't thought about in a long time.  Not that long ago, though sometimes it feels like ages, I was a very lost person.  Looking everywhere for direction and floundering around trying on everyone else's identities in an effort to find my own.  I took far too many suggestions, listened far too little, shut out far too many people, ate far too much food and consumed far too much beer.  I was a mess.  One day I found myself at a local chiropractic clinic.  This particular clinic is alternative in nature and based on some Eastern medicine that is still mysterious to me.  I made my way through session after session though.  Sitting there.  Answering questions.  Wanting so much to be part of something; to get answers I couldn't even understand yet let alone find.  Sigh...hindsight. 

During one session I was required to see an 'emotional specialist' who would help me to uncover the mental blocks to my physiological issues.  I sat with her in this tiny office, silent but for the trickle of the fountain, rows and rows of books around us.  She held my hands, looked into my eyes, talked to me meaningfully and with purpose.  Her conclusion...I was one of three.  I was a triplet.  The only survivor of the three.  Um...what?  Seriously lady? 

Now, I'm not here to judge.  I promise that.  But I guess my recollection of this moment with Heather this week, well, it just struck me as such a load of BS.  Who does that to people?  Who tells someone who is already lost and wandering around, who has just opened their soul up on the table, that they are one of three?  How is that helpful?  "It's the reason you're always searching." she said.  Huh.  Okay.  "It's why you always feel like something is missing.  Because it is.  They are."  Good lord lady...

So I told Heather all of this on the massage table on Monday night.  She stopped the massage several times throughout to listen more intently and to ask questions, to laugh with me, to examine the situation and, after assuring herself that I was not completely warped, to crack some of the funniest one liners I've heard in a LONG time.  Ohhh lord did we laugh.  And when we did...time stopped, for a moment, for a snapshot.  Her head back in pure joy, laughing till she could barely breathe, and me, tears rolling down my cheeks and hands over my eyes giggling there on the massage table. 

So Wednesday rolls around and here I am writing on my blog about what my other goddess, my other Heather, the beautiful and inspirational Libra sister chose as our focus for our weekly collaboration and I'm thinking how strange it is that I conjured up this memory THIS week.  That it is related to our collaborative focus for the week in many, many ways and how while I still don't buy it...maybe, just maybe...the intended message is somehow being heard.  Years later, through experience, hell, love, fighting my own survival and finally some self discovery, I'm finding out that being lost in a stop action world of busy and creative and hellishly behind is what it's like to be me.  Hell yeah.

Allow Yourself To Imagine

Make time for playful endeavors, even if only as a practice to connect with your inner child.

Every moment to myself feels like stealing.  Every single one.  So many parts of my life belong to the agendas of others, virtual or concrete.  I am independent by nature and being penciled in on someone's schedule has never, not ever, been a huge dream of mine.  I lack patience.  I fear for moments lost to menial tasks.  I have very little sense of the here and now and every ounce of my being calls to do more.  It has always been thus.  

Connecting with my inner child?  No sweat.  Laugh, splurge, color the front of a notebook, doodle, eat the whole box of Junior Mints, wonder, skip, twirl, swing, digress.  It's all part of my dance of pretend adulthood.  Playful endeavors are what draw me to the window to watch the sunrise.  They are what keeps me up at 3 in the morning, dreaming of turquoise frosted cupcakes piled high on milky white plates, and what helps me to hear the music of a rustling in the leaves.

I fear losing those moods.  That's one reason photography is so critical a creative outlet for me.  It cracks open my creativity...my inner child.  It lets me find a way to show what I feel, or at least close to what I feel.  It shows the world as I see it.  Murky, sexy, sublime, shy, moody, filled with laughter...without adult obligations.  Just whimsy, and love and light.  

There Aren't That Many R's in the Box

I had one of 'those weeks' before Monday was even half way over.  If I'd paid attention I'd have known it was coming.  The cold snap broke, the air started to clear, the moon was low and beautiful in the sky, and I'd just come off a kick-ass weekend...I should have known something was coming.  It was one of those moments when all the wrong things were said in all the wrong ways and I was in the midst of it all.  Naturally.

For the most part, I spend my days with my students and with myself.  I don't eat lunch outside of my classroom.  I eat alone.  I find it's not a horrible way to spend the time...in silence.  I guess.  But sometimes the Libra in me pops to the surface.  I want conversation, laughter, a face to talk to besides the Rango poster on my classroom wall.  Unfortunately this week I just couldn't find it, or I just didn't go searching because sometimes when I do venture out...like on Monday, I'm just met with disappointment in the end anyway.

Changes are on the horizon though.  Of that I am certain, as certain as I am that I should have known a rough patch was coming on, and as certain as I am that there may have been only one R in that entire box of Scrabble Cheez-Its. 

The Power of the Kick

Allow your added responsibilities to forge even greater power and self-assurance. Ironically, much of your inner strength may be cultivated by facing and overcoming frustrations and obstacles. So tackle challenges as if they are tailor made to teach you something valuable.

January is a tough time for me.  Almost as tough as April...ugh, April.  The longer shadows start to make it easier to bear the cold, and if I get a chance to see them, the sunsets enchant me.  The tough part is the responsibilities that crop up this time of year in my 'regular' job.  Retesting, recommitment, reexamination...it's all there again...rules, regulations and guidelines all to be revisited and reevaluated. 

For most of the country, January is a time of new discovery.  It's a time to find a quest to pull through the year.  A time to begin something anew.  For me though, this January has been about going back and doing over.  It's frustrating.  It's also realistic and needed though and since that is my reality, I need to find more ways to buck the system in little ways.  More ways to begin anew. 

A stolen self portrait on a frigid -11 degree winter afternoon between appointments...that's my way of bucking the system for today.  Connecting with a friend who lives far to far a distance from me...that's my way of bucking the system.  It's not the size of the buck, it's the power of the kick.  Right? 

Embracing Pluto

One of my current favorite songs is by You Got Your Way by Alicia Lemke.  At first it was her Alicia's angelic voice.  Then it was the lyrics, romantic and magical, finally it was an identification with what she had to say.  She may have been talking about love, about surrender...about art.  To me art is surrender.  In its many forms and morphs, the callings late at night that find me waking with a fierce need to DO, the trance of paint on my fingers and chalk beneath my nails, the click of a shutter, the waving of a Polaroid.  It's love.  True love.  It truly makes me tick.
It's through art that I've met many of the people in my life who not only fuel my love with their support and friendship, but who push me to try, to DO, to BE the artist I feel inside.  Those same people are the listeners who hear that same song late at night, and who know just what it means to create with your soul and feel the full sense of being when you've listened to the urge and done even a smidge of what you dreamed.
Heather is one of those people for me.  She and I first connected on Flickr.  Both going through 365 projects, kidding around and finding out who we were, what we wanted to say, and how we wanted to say it.  Her open personality, love of all that is natural and all that is reflection and light drew me to her immediately.  I've seldom had the fortune of recognizing the feeling of gratitude for listening to my own heart.  But I feel that with Heather.  She is a dear friend now and when I thought about collaboration again...though there isn't time and I don't need more and blah, blah, blah...I thought immediately of Heather.
Once a week, together, we'll find a way to connect.  We'll have common inspirations, common words to build on.  Each of us will do what we've always done.  We'll find ways to hold each other's hands from a distance...push a little, pull a little, roll things over, and sift through experience to render down the visual.


Embracing Pluto Week #1
Libra is the only zodiac symbol that's neither animal nor human -- but surely that doesn't make you any less human.  Artistically, Libra tries to balance form, content, colors and elements, and for this reason can be drawn toward creative endeavors.

Indeed...balance.  A Neskowin stone, a palette of paints, stolen moments in a busy day of fifth grade madness, an uncomfortable place on the other side of the lens, and a Libra...

Fences and Jumping

I was venting a little bit earlier today.  I said something about needing to start getting myself together because I'm a flurry of go-go-go.  I told him that sometimes I fear 'the other side of the fence' more than I do trying to do it all.  That's not actually true.  I don't fear the other side of the fence much at all.  Those around me do.  Seems like most people I know do, but I don't.

I've never been afraid to jump.  It's in my nature.  I jump into the pool and hope it fills before I hit the bottom.  It's how I learned not to put aluminum in the microwave, how I learned that staples really can go through skin, and the reason I am as stubborn as the day is long; because when I jump, I also commit. 

So where is this new fear of letting go come from?  Maybe I listen too hard to those around me; making their thoughts mine.  Maybe I'm actually becoming an adult.  Maybe, maybe, maybe...sigh...too many maybes.

I just need to get my butt off the fence and slip onto the other side.  Someday.

I am a girl of many inspirations.  Many sources, wells, finds, inspirations and influences.  They pelt me; and try as I may to organize and weed through them I just find too many things that draw my artistic eye.  Too much beauty.  Excess information.  Bountiful love.  This is so true of me in all aspects of my life.  If you know me, this is old news to you.

So of course this idea of blogging is not new to me.  I've started no less than seven blogs in the past two years.  I use the word 'started' with a smirk because truly, I never really started.  I just pretended to start.  I agonized over backgrounds and headers, fonts and colors and craftily avoided the meat and potatoes part (I am not fond of meat and potatoes anyway).  Again, if you know me, this is old news to you.

So why should this blog be different?  Well, other than the presence of writing (which is an oddity amongst my previous attempts), it's coming at the right time.  The right time for me.  The time when I deem it to be 'blog time'.  The time when I have finally decided I'm tired of not hearing myself think aloud, and I'm ready to speak a little louder.

A gazillion inspirational words could begin this year of blogful wonder.  I chose one set though (hallelujah!) to support my thinking.  From Scoutie Girl's Sara Gentile: 

Creativity really isn't about things.  It's about expansion.  It's about being on the edge of the known world, feeling for the boundaries and giving them a nice solid nudge.

And I'll do just that.  Push myself a little, reflect on what I adore, what I hate, my fears, my pride, annoyances, kids, wonder, business, teaching, living and love.  It's about damn time I gave myself this small gift.  Here's to a new year of boundary nudges.

Regard your self-loathing/fear/doubt the way you might pick up a piece of glassware in an antique shop. Turn it over in your hands, hold it up to the light for scrutiny. It once belonged to someone else and then went into general circulation. Now put it down. Move on.

~ Deb Schanilec, Connected and Committed