Corvus Rising

Today is Halloween. Samhain. The Day of the Dead. A time of endings, of death, remembrance. A time to think back upon those we have lost, and a time to let go of things that need letting go of.

For me, it is also the end of the old year, and the beginning of the new. I've always had a deep connection to this day, even before I knew the various spiritual, religious, what-have you sorts of meanings to it. I love the way the seasons change, overnight, from the riotously golden days of a New England autumn when the trees seem to burn with fire to the bare-branched days of November. Things always seem more alive, more real, more Here at this time of year than any other. Winter is coming, bringing death to the unprepared, and all of Nature knows it. Beneath the last of the warm breezes, you can almost hear the razor-edged winds of Winter scraping, warning you to keep your loved ones close, to check your food stores, and your fires. Winter in New England is not kind or loving or gentle, no matter how beautiful it may be. It is also the time when we begin to gather together to tell stories, and remind ourselves of all we hold dear. I love this time with every fiber of my being.

I also realize that I'm a little odd for loving something that signifies death, but it is through the awareness of mortality that we truly know what it means to live. (I am also a raging Scorpio, so, well...yeah. As a fellow Scorpio friend of mine once remarked about our sign "Sex and Death, baby, all the way..." Life and Death are intricately intertwined, and Scorpios tend to be drawn to this dichotomy like moths to flames.)

In keeping with the season, I've spent some time giving thought to what I've lost over the year, and what I need to let go of. What do I need to shed, like a snake sheds it's skin? In doing so, I was reminded of a poem I wrote a little over a year or so ago, when I was in a very, very bad place, and realized that it is time to let that die, so that, like the phoenix who is also an important symbol to me, I can be reborn. And it brought another poem to mind. I'll share both. The first is the old one, the second is the new.

Broken Bird

You ask me how I'm doing, and I smile

And tell you the pretty lie you want to hear

"I'm fine", I say, and you smile

You don't see the drops of blood dripping from my soul

A trail of shining rubies and rose petals behind me

You see the ghostshadow of my wings

And believe the illusion

But my wings are broken, torn off

A slow-seeping wound that will not heal

Desperate to convince myself it’s true

I almost believe the lie myself sometimes

That I’m not this damaged shell

That someday summer will return to me again

That I’ll fly the skies once more on the warm winds that I loved

I feel them in my dreams at night still

And awake to tears again

A broken-winged bird, lost and scared

Terrified that this is all I’ve left

Corvus Rising

Broken and bleeding, long the nights I lay

Torn open, damaged, dying of unhealed wounds

“I’m fine”, I said, and they smiled

As ruby blood seeped down my back and from my soul

The fires of a lifetime stolen, the burning pyre

A blazing beacon screamed to Heaven

All that I was turned lies.

The world unseeing, uncaring

A broken-winged bird, dying of shame.

The Wheel of Seasons spins around, around

Fires becomes ashes, ashes become dust

Funerary pyres die

Far off in the distance the winds begin rising

A red-robed baen-sidhe cry - howling, wailing, screaming, chaoining

A firey raven, madly laughing

Riding the winds, rejoicing

Corvus Rising from her pyre

Life reclaimed, a blazing soul reborn

Now, I'm going to help hand out candy to trick-or-treaters.

Play-time!

Today was a non-productive day, in terms of art or any great realizations or anything. Today, the boy and I drove into Southie for dinner with his family, and we got back later than planned. I was reminded that I really want to spend a day just wandering around Boston with my camera, though. There is some truly gorgeous architecture and some very interesting things to look at. There was even the hilarious moment as we drove past Emmanuel College and what I had at first taken to be a bunch of college kids playing lacrosse turned out to be, in fact, a game of Quidditch. Yes. Actual Quidditch (minus the whole flying part and animated balls, but yeah...) I whipped out the camera and snapped a picture just as the light turned green, so it's not the best shot it could be, but you can at least see the brooms and the goals off to the left side.

This amused me greatly. It's awesome to see a group of late teens/early 20's kids actually "riding" around on broomsticks, pretending to fly, throwing the usual overly-touchy sense of dignity inherent in the age to the wind, and playing. Apparently (according to the interwebs) there are actually Quidditch leagues, and this is not an uncommon thing in the college crowd. This makes me very happy.

More people need to throw "dignity" to the wind, get out, and just PLAY. It's good for the soul. :D

Good on those kids!

Ruminations, Rearrangings, and Red Jewels...

Today started off with ponderations of Life, the Universe, and Everything. A friend sent me a text message after last night's post that there is a book that should be written called "How To Get Lost: A Traveller's Guide" and that I should write it. It is sort of the story of my life, in a way. I was considering this, and realized some interesting things and connections. I have always needed to be moving, travelling, wandering or I fall apart. I'm the girl who can't be indoors all day, and needs to be getting out and doing something almost every single day or I start to climb the walls and gnaw on the furniture. In order to think my way through things, I need to walk, ride a bike, drive a car, do something that involves travelling. My personal blog title is "Someplace to Be Flying" from Charles De Lint's book of the same title. In it, one of the characters states that Raven created the world to have someplace to be flying, and this strikes a chord with me.

As I was considering these things, it occurred to me that my need to be moving always is very similar to the human body (Anatomy geek alert! My favorite class in massage school was Anatomy and Kinesiology...shocking...the study of the body and it's movements). In the body, motion is what keeps us healthy. Walking is the mechanism that pumps the blood back up from our legs to our heart. Moving around enables lymph to flow, synovial fluid to bathe our joints and keep us limber. When we stop moving, we start to atrophy. Our health declines as our body slowly starts to fall apart, all from lack of motion. My own life does this. When I cease moving and changing, my personal life decays, my ability to do my job diminishes, everything just starts to fall apart on me in so many little ways. I need to be constantly moving, changing, learning, doing something. It occurred to me that in order for me to get lost, to try and find some new way of being and getting myself out of the rather unproductive spiral I've been riding for way too long, I need to change my state (in a figurative and literal way). To get out of the rut, I need to try something completely different and unrelated to anything I've done before (which, I suppose is kinda what I'm doing here).

Next week I'm going to take a day, fill up the gas tank, and go to Vermont for the day. I've never actually been there. Maybe I'll find an answer there.

My other project for today was to get my work space set up and functional, and actually make something. It took a couple of hours, because I had to completely rearrange half a room, unpack and sort several boxes, and put a lot of things away first. (I also got distracted by sorting through books and reminding myself that I can't unpack them, they're going back to storage tomorrow.) I now have a nice little work space, though, with a nice view of the yard.

I also have the promised bit of jewelry. In my diggings, I found a few pieces of mother-of-pearl, some delicious garnet, and silver spacer beads. I was also reminded that not only have I not worked with these tools in a rather long time, I also have no callouses whatsoever as a result of practicing massage therapy. Ow! *pouts*

I do have a lovely 19" necklace now, though. *beams proudly*

I will be taking better pictures and putting it up on Etsy within the next few days (the light indoors is terrible at night, and I still need to build the light-box). And figure out a price tag. What do folks think? What would you consider a reasonable price for something like this?

Navigation by D6 (or, for the non-gamers in the crowded, 6-sided dice.)

Today was a gorgeous day, and one not to be spent indoors. It was a day for sunshine, and exploration, and so I decided to run an experiment I've been wanting to do for a Very Long Time. I hadn't done it before because, you see, I have the directional sense of a rock. Or possibly a deranged gerbil. As a teenager, I managed to get lost in my back yard. Twice. (Alright, so the back yard consisted of several hundred acres of woodland, but still! It was the back yard!)

I digress. For quite a long time I've wanted to conduct an experiment in navigation that involved a piece of paper numbered 1-30, a die, and my car. The die would determine which way I would turn when I got to a stop sign: Odds, right; Evens, left; or if it was a 3-way 1-2, R; 3-4, L; 5-6 Straight. Well, I have this handy GPS now, which means no matter what, I can always get home. Today seemed like the perfect day to do this.

(Really, how gorgeous is this view?!)

As I started, I was happy to feel a sort of breathless anticipation and anxiousness. What would the day hold? Where would I find myself? What beautiful things would I see along the way? I drove along, consulting my paper at each stop sign and following as one follows a treasure map. Finding myself turning in occasional circles and loops amused me. I was delighted to see a trio of girls walking home from school spontaneously pause, scoop up a handful of brightly colored leaves, and throw them up in the air, giggling. They reminded me very much of the picture of the Three of Cups from the Tarot deck, which represents joy, delight, sharing in wonder.

After a while, though, I noticed an annoying thing. I knew where I was. I'd been driving for 45 minutes, and was very near home, on a named minor highway. The next stop sign wasn't going to be for miles. I knew where I was going, and that was in direct opposition to my goal. So I changed the parameters mid-stream and veered off the chart for a while. I wandered off onto a side road (from where the above picture comes) and followed it for a time. I came to two more intersections and consulted the chart. I followed it.

I was back on a main road again, and as before, I knew where I was. I was on the same road again. I changed course again. Twice more I did this. Eventually I was nearing the end of my set time for wandering and it was time to go home. I never had to use the GPS. I never got lost.

I am grumpy about this. I had plans for photographs of unknown places. Ideas to write poems or haiku. Sadly, I only have the one photo and a sad little haiku (and a metaphor for my life...no matter how many times I try to get myself off the road I'm on, I always end up back where I started):

A comforting truth

and a terrifying one:

All roads lead back home.

Tomorrow I'm playing with my beads. Maybe I'll try this again next week, with a different set of parameters, weather permitting.

Welcome to my little experiment in Art, Life, and the following of the idea of a dream. What am I doing? Buggered if I know. ;) I’m making this up as I go along. I’m throwing wisdom and caution to the wind and seeing what happens. I can best describe this by sharing a piece I wrote recently elsewhere, which some folks may have already read:

An artist without a medium

(almost exactly unlike the man without a country, or the horse with no name)

I have a confession to make. I am an artist without a medium. Or really, I’m an artist with the misfortunate problem that my medium is “Ooh! Shiny!” I’ve spent the last 32-odd years of my life (34 if you count the pre-verbal years) desperately trying to find a medium and stick with it. Sadly, I seem to have a.) abysmal luck, and b.) the attention span of a fruit fly that fell into a Red Bull can. I write, I draw, I play piano (sort of), I take the occasional lovely photograph, I make jewelry, I invent alcoholic baked goods, the list goes on… The only real consistency is a neurotic compulsion to share every new shiny thing I find with people. Any people, really. Even strangers who tend to look at me pityingly, very much like one would look at someone who’s a little slow or possibly has a head injury, and then look around hoping to see if my keepers are coming to save them from me. This is usually after I’ve just pointed out the gorgeous pattern the leaves left on the concrete after it rained, or something along those lines, but well they did ask! Probably. Maybe. Anyway…

A lack of medium is also unfortunate when one is having a conversation, and it comes out that you are an artist, and the immediate (and most dreaded) question is “Oh, really? What do you do?”, and you know that if you tell them that the answer is “Yes”, they’re going to look at you very much like the strangers do, as everyone knows that only people with specific mediums that required decades of training and practice are really artists. You are merely a dabbler with delusions of grandeur.

Generally speaking, this isn’t really a big deal, so long as one has no intention of ever making a living as an artist. If one does, though, conventional wisdom demands that you pick a medium, spend years perfecting your art, and then, maybe if you are really lucky and the moon is in the correct phase and the stars are right, maybe you get to be a real, living, functional artist. Heaven forbid you don’t have one, or you do, but it’s not one, it’s several. Everyone tries to tell you all the reasons you can’t do it the way you want to, and to put you in the little box you know to the marrow of your bones is lined with arsenic and the ashes of old, dead gods and is death to touch.

So you see, I have decided to try a little experiment. I’m going to take my little mediums, and a camera, and a notebook, and for the next month I’m going to do whatever it is that we want to do every day. If we want to drive around and take pictures of rusty old bridges, we’re going to. If we want to tell people about the really neat little café in town that has the best croissant sandwiches (with apple slices, ham, salad greens, and dripping with honey Dijon), we will. If we want to spend the day making a necklace out of deliciously carved cinnabar and amber or creating a shrine to Persephone out of a dried pomegranate, gold leaf, and dollhouse sized Canopic jars, we will. Then I’m going to put it onto the Internet, put a donation button on it (the entry, not the piece…that’ll cost extra), and pimp the hell out of it. Reader participation welcomed and encouraged.

I will point out to people that there is no such thing as a minimum donation. If 4 people donate 50 cents, that’s a cup of coffee. If 20 people donate a dollar, that’s a tank of gas and 300 miles of driving (my car is geriatric and doesn’t get as good mileage as she used to…don’t judge her) and a lot of pictures, stories, reviews and what-all. If I can get enough people to support me, not only are you supporting me in doing something that I love doing, but you are also supporting all the other multi-medium artists out there who don’t think they are really artists because they can’t do just one thing.

What do you think? Wanna come out and play?