stephanie lee - Semiprecious Salvage

a sweet time ~ Roots & Wings Retreat

I don't know if you remember, but a few posts back I mentioned something about pedalling like crazy to light some fires. I don't know how you amazing people who can remain publicly very present while still plotting a deliciously creative adventure, rich with details and minutia, do it. Man, you're awesome.

All the work and focus and semi-presence here has culminated into a few exciting adventures. (I'll share more as the time comes). I tell you what, working alone ALLTHETIME is overrated. It's good - for the soul, for the mind, for the thinking muscles - to find a few kindreds and hold your heads together over a vision you all share until you've worked out how to make it happen. It's one part logistical creativity, one part diving in, and one part allowing the woodwork people to come out and contribute in generous ways.

Just such a collaboration has been a companion to me recently. I want to entangle myself with the most playful of explorers, the most reliable of humans, and the most generous spirits. There are few who embody those qualities more than my dear friends, Katie Kendrick (who wrote a beautiful post just this morning about this offering), Misty Mawn, Judy Wise. We have dream-weaved up a creative gathering this coming August in the jagged and breathtaking Wasatch Mountains just outside of Salt Lake City.  Over a year ago we sat around a table and schemed a big dream. A big dream that each of our hearts bundled up together and set it sailing down the river of possibility. Then we rolled up our sleeves and here we are...all so excited to come together to teach the Roots & Wings Retreat!

I am so thrilled that we are able to create such a full offering while still maintaining an intimate time where connections can me made and nurtured. And to top it all off, the location is stunning, our hostess is an angel, and the menu-in-the making is going to be the perfect combination of creativity-supporting brain food that tastes like comfort food. As we plot and plan and manage the details, our driving desire to generously share in a creative exploration with you is the fuel that burns bright in our hearts.

We'd love to have you join us! Space is limited and you can read all about it on our Roots & Wings Retreat page. We'll have our hugging arms ready. It will be a sweet, sweet time.

 

a different plane

The oaks are finally all leafed out. Their phase of coating everything in sticky, yellow pollen was quick, thankfully, as my allergies are most irriated with that stuff. Not that I'm free to breathe easily yet. The cottonwood fluff is moving in suffocating, migratory clouds across the valley. So there you have it...and I know that if this is my biggest problem, then I'm pretty lucky.

I've been spending the cool mornings doing garden prep work post workout/pre shower. The lower garden is tilled, another row of raspberries added as well as two rows of potatoes. Space is ready for a long row of black plum tomatoes for canning this summer and another row of green beans (also for canning). Maybe beans. Maybe something else. I won't know until I'm actually putting it in the ground. I've learned that my inclinations are unreliable and unpredicatble at best.

The upper garden of raised beds, what Theman calls the "kitchen garden", is getting a fluffing too. The kale and strawberry plants are lush, proud, and vuluptuous. The little potted fig tree is sending out leaves while he waits for a permanent home and one bed is filled with onions while another is being prepared for beets.There is so much still to do for a bountiful late summer harvest.

This is what potential looks like in timelapse.I like to sit in the middle of it and take note of what it sounds like {birds in full nesting flurry}, feels like {warm sun, cool air} and looks like {explosion of color, emerging life}.

I'm reading a book and today I came across a line that said

"On a spiritual plane, you have no competitors"

and my whole body buzzed. Not because this is new information to me, but more so because someone finally put into words what I have felt all along (even though, at times, I have forgotten. Deeply so.) Also because rarely in the world of artists bouncing off artists bouncing off students becoming teachers becoming artist is this idea a modus operendi. An artist who teaches sees herself reemerge in the work of the students (or maybe it's the other way around. Who can be sure except for the arrogance of a mind afraid?). And when the work is beautiful and well executed and fascinating, we forget sometimes that we all benefit from the addition of new beauty to the world. We forget sometimes that someone else's gift of creativity does not one speck take anything away from ours. We're not bodies competing for the top box at the race or the title of "favorite, most beloved, the best". We fool ourselves to think there is one and alone, in our rooms at night, we suffer while the rest of the world goes happily on without an inkling that we feel jipped.

How lovely it is then, to meet the creativity of another with the open spirit of total invitation. Let the conversation be one of connection.

I should stop there before I start talking like a new age hippy. Too late? Oh well. The thoughts just come how they come and I would be a fool to think I am in control of them.

Before I go I want to show you these poppies. They are the brightest of oranges. So bright my iPhone doesn't know how to read it. They were once on the end of an attempt of a flower bed of the previous house owner that included hens and chicks, dirt clods, and these. They are downhill now as the seeds have been washed a bit by winter rains and they appear as an explosion of color right smack in the middle of the path between the house and the garden. We adore them. I'll be collecting their seeds this year to relocate them permanently (though I'm sure some will still reappear in the path next spring).

In other randomness, another book I just finished which I highly recommend to any person who is living and breathing, started with the dedication to a friend that said "without whose presence my life would be irreparably impoverished". What a deeply moving sentiment and one which I hope to resemble at some point in my life to my beloveds.

So, today is the day to attempt to be for someone something that, if gone, would leave someone irreparably impoverished. How narcissistic and emboldened of me. (I dare you to join me in the effort!)

 

this scares me more than anything else

So. This blog. This here blog is where I write about my most current goings on...when I DO write. You may want to thank me for being a bit quiet around here because, truth be told, a whole lotta my goings on these days is about one thing:

Navigating being a mom to teenagers.

I seek no sympathy. I'm fully aware that "this too shall pass". And yes, I will most definitely hang in there. It's sink or swim.

I just have to get this out..this whole obstacle course of this version of parenting. I have to preface it all by saying, unabashadly, that I have really great girls. Amazing girls. No question. They are intelligent, witty, extremely hardworking, polite, considerate, patient, aware of the beauty of nature around them (Just the other day pony #1 said "mom, have you noticed that little line of muscari along the fence down the road?" Seriously! What teenager notices...let alone knows the name of MUSCARI?!?!). I have never heard them utter the words "I hate you" to anyone. Not even me. The worst the name calling gets is "you're acting like a brat!". They have wonderful bedside manners, have no qualms about cleaning the birthing sac off a new born pig, will dig packed manure out of a horse hoof with bare hands if no tools are handy, and are pretty darn good at saving their money. They gravitate towards food grown in a garden, know the difference between the smell of rain and the smell of freshly cut grass, and often look on in astonishment when some peer is acting like she's "all that". They have refreshing sense of style and wear makeup and hair do's like pros, can organize a junk drawer more sensibly than most adults, and know when to use a flat nose shovel or when a square nose shovel would be more suited for the job at hand. They do well in school, want the best for their friends, are tenderhearted and any living creature gets their utmost respect and always a moment of their attention (to a spider: "Hi little guy! where you going?").

Yes. I am their mom. I'm supposed to think all these things. But I'm largely informed by their worlds outside of me. I'm informed by what others tell me about my girls. The feedback is always positive.

So what's the problem? The problem is that there is so much out there specifially designed to win the attention and adoration of their age bracket that gives messages that, in my opinion, are contradictory to their most honorable selves. Damaging, in fact. And I can't shield them from that. At best I can put a big ol' scratch in my record and put on repeat the effects on them, as an individual, of what they are seeing. At best I can try to help them see that what they see in an advertisment is not what the world will see in them if they try to BE that advertisement. They see a perfectly spray tanned bikini model on the poster but if they were to dress in that same get up and parade around the public pool, most sensible folks will see a girl who needs to get a better fitting swim suit. Or worse.

There is a well established company that originally marketed their underwear to married women. Now, they have a line of clothing for teenagers. Fine enough...except for the fact that to purchase that clothing in a live store or online, those teenagers must squeeze through the tightly packed aisled of lace and strings and life sized eye level photos of barely covered ahems to get to the perfectly acceptable hoodie. This, in my opinion, is no accident.

Desensitize is the name of the game. Walk them past the ribbons-disquised-as-underwear enough times and eventually they will seem normal. Bland even. Perfectly acceptable. When just a month or two earlier those same girls felt awkward just looking at them - they would avert their eyes. Now, not only do they look...but they pick up and hold up and have no clue that some guy shopping with his girlfriend (not wife) is there taking a gander at the young girls as well. He may not have any bad intentions. Even he is caught in the trap.

I have nothing against sexy. You will not find a pair of granny underwear in my drawers (aren't you so glad to know). I like trendy fashion and feminine cuts as much as the next girl. Chances are, when I am better proportioned, I will likely even rock a fitted pencil skirt and figure flattering top. But you wont see my upper thighs and will not have the priveldge of being able to take a gander at my cleavage without having have walked through fire for me, given me your vulnerabilities and your loyalty...and given me two amazing children.

When I am rocking that skirt and that top, you will see confidence and comfort. You will see someone who can stand up and sit down a dozen times without having to worry if anything that should be covered isn't. I will not tell the world my whole story by showing it my whole body. It is not the world's story to know. I will not try to capture the world's attention with my flesh but with my femininity. I will intrigue the world not with lust, but with art. Not with appetite but with my capabilities. Not with carnality but with compassion.

And this is what I want for my girls and if I were their only influence, it might be possible. But they go to the mall and they watch tv and they have peers who's family values are fine enough but don't seem to include any standards around modesty. I'm not talking about puritanism or long sleeve-high neck dowdiness. Not at all. I'm merely refering to a standard of dress that promotes barely-there "its' the style" clothing over the sanctity of the feminine figure. The cost of standing my ground on this matter is high. I temporarily loose friends within my own home but the alternative comes at much too high a price for my conscience. I am willing to be a stranger in my own home for a time if necessary.

Somewhere in all of this comes the essential transition of remembering that my daughters have their own agency independent of my values and that there is a phase of this transition that may very well include the influences that are not me, seeming to have a greater effect than I do.

Which brings me to now.

It's torture. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I kept waiting for the time to come for my girls to see my point of view, to emphatically profess a devotion to presenting a version of themselves to the world that says "I value myself, my body, and my mind and the way I dress reflects that. You're going to have to prove yourself a valiant and worthy man to be able to see more." I've realized that day may never come and if it does, it will likely be when I am the grandmother to a sixteen year old girl and my daughter is in the tender and treacherous role of mother.

In a world where the man gets blamed for objectifying the woman, the woman needs to make damn sure she's not objectifying herself or the blame is half misplaced. I saw a singer once, on stage with he breasts and crotch barely covered by her skin tight dress ranting about the objectification of women. I wondered if I was the only one who saw the contradiction. Teenage boys are fighting their own intense battles of hormones, identy, and what integrity and honor mean for them. It would be amazing if every young lady could honor both the boy and herself by honoring her body and not making the road they both travel doubly hard by confusing true beauty with premature sexuality. Winning his desire is not the same as winning his honorable adoration.

I see the choices of clothing in stores and I feel the angst of being a mother with what seems like everything stacked against you in the efforts of modesty. Even with mad sewing and alteration skills, I am tempted at times to just give up the fight. Not only the fight with my daughter about what is appropriate but also the fight with the world about what is available. I let them try on anything they want. I know they are mostly innocent in all this (the market is doing it's job well). But I won't pay for anything that doesn't support my values. They are earning their own money, however, and want to spend it how they want...and the transition hits turbulence. I have one foot in the traditional "you are not setting foot out of this house in that" and "you are a free agent capable of making your own choices that I may or may not agree with".

It's hard. Really hard. And not for the reasons you may think. I'm not afraid of my girls getting dragged into some dark alley and raped by a stranger who's lust has displaced goodwill. I'm not afraid of some big city rave where a drink might get laced with some drug. Those big news horror stories don't quite fit in this picture. What scares me most is what this small town will think of my girls if they prance around in skin tight shirts that they call dresses. I'm afraid that other parents will think I don't care, will think I'm letting the tail wag the dog. I'm afraid that the wrong impressions that will be made. I'm afraid that the message of "I'm dressed like a slut" will overpower who they REALLY are. And this...this scares me more than anything else in my world right now. I have noticed that my most crippling fear in all this is not just that others will be blind to the amazing human beings my girls are if they dressed imodestly in the name of trend, but even more by the reality that my girls may be blind to their own real beauty if they start identifying themselves with clothes that don't honor their sacred mystery, feminity, and divine beauty.

I hope to find peace with all of this soon. But I'm no fool. I know it will likely come after the fact.

Until then, I'm peddling like mad to make sure I fall in love with every joke my girls tell me, every act of service around the house they offer, and every thought they are thinking for themselves - even if it's not the same as mine. I want them to feel so beloved that they are less inclined to look to the confusing parts of the world for adoration. I'll mess it up regularly. But I've got to keep trying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is all this REALLY necessary?

You know that moment when you're mid air, leaping from Pluto to Mars and you wonder if S(capitol S)pace will hold you up this time? And then you forget about that because you wonder why you even jumped in the first place - is all this REALLY necessary???

Then you realized you were PUSHED!!??!!??

Yeah?

I just passed a space sign that said "Deep Space Motherhood."

And it all makes sense. I'll consider myself lucky if I only break my legs when I land because certainly there will be some alien banshees in Miss Me jeans to usher me in with screams of how lame my jump was and I'll be all "DUDE!! You pushed me!!!" and they'll just huff and storm off, like, totally irritated.

 

 

set it all on a ship for the moon

April. I welcome you with wide open arms. You and your shaggy, green velvet carpet with the calico print blooms.

Somehow we have acquired more creatures. 7 new chicks, one new pig, and another one on the way. Things like this happen when you have a propensity for animal collecting have kids.

The littlest chicks are frizzled cochin bantams. Just the name alone is like a sour apple life saver rattling around in your teeth. They're cuter than cute right now but before you know it they'll look like they dun walked backwards into a strong wind...all fluffed and curled and, well, frizzled. Meanwhile, they're Road Island Red and Auracana cousins are practicing they're parts as the lead dinosaurs. Long necked, pin featherd and beady eyed. I've grown endeared to this awkward dino phase of a chick's life. Last weekend the tide pulled us coastal. We stuffed two adults, two dogs, and four teenagers and enough food to feed them in the rig and tossed the winch line west. Part of what makes where we go on the coast so delicious is the drive through the Redwoods to get there. We all talk in whispers and hang our heads out the windows. The towering gods and goddesses sprinkle blessings on us as we pass beneath. Seems like they remember us from another life or something.

Theman named this place Easter Bend. We stop and skip rocks and let the dogs get a drink. It's in a sleepy little moss and fern covered ravine and once when the girls were little, they found a loot of chocolate stuffed eggs along the trail there. SOMEBODY hid them...and as far as they are concerened, it was not somebody in our family. Certainly not some peanut eating man who dashed ahead on the trail without being noticed while I stalled the girls tying shoes and pretending I was having trouble getting their seatbelts unbuckled and asking if they wanted a snack to take with them. Poof. He was back and they were (none the wiser) free to forge ahead. Fastest egg hiding expedition EVER! You should have SEEN the surprise in their eyes!!

Theman likes his peanuts. If you had a magnifying glass you'd see his shirt pocket stuffed with enough to keep him occupied on the trail. This dog of ours...man, she's a handful. She listens to him inspite of his reserved affection for her. It's not that he's not affectionate, it's just that he gives it so generously to me and the ponies so the dog gets the scraps. But, like most dogs, scraps are plenty good enough. All she really wants is to know who's in charge and if she can relax knowing we've go it.
Affection, however, wasn't exactly the chanted mantra of the ponies when they had to dig holes and set posts for the pigs THEY want. They did the work well, though. They're no dummies...they know that snarky attitude will tip the scales in favor of the person(s) who have the power to say "no". As in "no pigs". 'Sides, it's not like theman didn't do the bulk of the heavy lifting anyway. That's what dad's do. They give thier girls enough load to make them a little stronger and then pick up the slack without a peep of complaint.
I think if I had won the three hundred million powerball, I would only look half as excited as pony #1 did on the morning piggy came home. She has a name. It's Miranda HAMbert. For reals.

And this one. How did she get so grown up? I love her and her book worm ways to the moon and back and just when I thought I was filled with all the love my heart could possibly handle, a new ventricle appears and expands even more when baby Edissen is around. That is one happy baby, that girl. And she takes us all with her into that magic place of happyjusttobealive.

Even with an exciting and swelling to-do list and enough plans and schemes to make me a single woman if I'm not careful, I'd set it all on a ship for the moon if it meant I could just swim in the ocean of the love of my family.

You all know what I mean.

San Miguel calls

Spring. I welcome you with wide open arms!

The past two months have been the beautiful wind up. I'm on a stationary bicycle pedalling like mad to get the lightbulbs to come on. It's happy work and one by one the bulbs are coming into full blaze. There are many and they will light my path for the rest of the year. The pedalling has been so worth the effort.

When one is busy trying to get the lights on, one doesn't have much breath to tell you what she is busy doing. But with every rotation I think of you and me and the fun we will have together. I only have five more birthdays until I'm forty and it's high time that I decided to fill those years up with all of my favorite things. (more to come. more to come.)

I had a dream last night that i was in Mexico walking down an alley narrow enough that I was reaching the walls on each side and running my fingers on the stucco as I walked. I came to a courtyard and saw my father's father, his back turned to me, building a windmill - parts all laid out on a table like a hospital patient being stitched back together. He died the winter before I was born but in my dream he turned to me and said "I remember you. Come help me." He looked just like a younger version of my dad and so I went. The shroud of mystery he's always held in my mind's eye was not there. Then my dad was there too. As he is now and he (with two pairs of glasses - one perched in front of other for maximum magnification effect) stood side by side to his father there at the table and they figured out where to put a bolt. Dad asked me what I thought of the trumpet vine along the courtyard wall that he had been so lovingly tending. I asked for a cutting and he gave me an armful.

My father was born in Mexico where he and  his family lived off the land and raised goats and ate pig potatoes. We went there once when I was three and found the hollow tree that they used to hide in. My dad and his siblings and their budding families connected trunk to tail in a CB powered caravan from desert to desert. I had these awesome green and white striped stockings that I pulled above my knee and my brother and cousins caught horned toads and held them for us girlie cousins to gawk at. That was the same trip when my brother and a two or three cousins fell asleep in the back of an uncle's pick up truck en route and Aunt Bonnie had a funny feeling to pull over. Like as if they were lost or something. They found the boys possibly minutes from death from carbon monoxide poisoning. Considering that is similar to how my father's father died, I can imagine that the reality of what could have been was heart-stopping for all the adults. I was probably just running around in the sage brush gathering branches to line the dashboard.

So you see, Mexico holds a part of my family legacy. Somehow I have bloodline in that land. I always have thought I would go back again and I'm so happy to say that this coming October 26 - November 3rd I will be there with two of my most treasured friends and beloved mentors. At the most generous invitation from Rebecca Brooks, Katie Kendrick and Judy Wise and I will be teaching a week long workshop, Pilgrimage In Paint.

If you could only be a fly on the wall in our planning sessions. Man oh man. The excitement is palpable. Judy has immersed herself in San Miguel enough times that she is a wealth of information, the stories and history and colors pour from her spirit when we talk. There is no place and no person that I know of that has seen Mexico the way Judy sees Mexico and you will be expanded beyond any thing you think you know about what it's like to immerse yourself in such a colorful and generous culture. Dia de Los Muertos will vibrate with a whole new level of beauty.

Rebecca has arranged the lovliest of accommodations for us all. Students and teachers alike will commune in a lovely abode with full classroom access, meals, and plenty of time to explore the city. There will even be a full day dedicated to just that - perfectly situated mid week to allow for our creative surges to find center.

I hope to bring my family with me. I hope, I hope, I hope. And I hope you will come too.

Pilgrimage in Paint

three treasured artists

three visions

a holy trinity of creativity

 

San Miguel de Allende

October 26 - Nov.3 2013

a week to reside in a

charming cloistered setting

just a few blocks from the jardin.

camaraderie, delicious meals, an art room available round the clock,

inspiring days in the studio with the incomparable

judy wise , stephanie lee and katie kendrick

tucking us safely under their wings

and excursions into the always delightful 

san miguel de allende.

 

Judy Wise

 the art of seeing

armed with journals, sketching tools, cameras and curiosity

we will step outside the courtyard and into the jardin,

the heart and pulse of san miguel.

judy will be our guide as we strengthen the lens of present moment seeing

capturing the world around us,

instilling ease and enjoyment in the powerful and reflective

art of drawing.

back in the art room judy will help us marry our renderings with 

a strong collection of her personal favorite techniques 

employing collage, acrylics, hot and cold wax, and mysterious layering.

connecting us to the world we inhabit through the ultimate joy of creating.

 

Stephanie Lee

Legacy In Texture

stephanie will guide us in the inquiry of texture and surface patterns

as we draw on the legacy of ancient and modern carpenters and abode builders of Mexico

to recreate the energy of San Miguel in plaster and wax.

we will look to light and shadow,

sky and vegetation, buildings and people,

to create studies in texture and color that we will finish

with luminous layers of wax.

with simple tools in hand,

we will create conversations in mark making within the layers of our mediums

to honor and represent all the layers of legacy that guide us.

using some of our creations we will create a tiled portfolio

to contain all our works from this beautiful week.

 

Katie Kendrick

Awakening Inner Visions

katie will lead us on an interior journey within the contours of our hearts.

together we will explore our inner creative world

fueled by the inspiration of san miguel,

with a nod to the divine, 

creating a  retablo dedicated to the sacred feminine within us all.

with cardboard, acrylics, graphite, collage and love

katie will unleash our passion, awakening

our inner muse with wild abandon.

 

On our final class,

Judy, Katie, and Stephanie will converge to collaboratively guide us

through the final stages of completion of our works

as well as the construction of a painted pouch that,

up to that point, will have been a working surface that we will transform into

a narrative closing chapter to our shared pilgrimage in paint

 

judy, stephanie and katie

all wrapped up in the arms of exotic san miguel!

To learn more, visit the "Pligrimage in Paint" info page.

I'm ready for a little warmth

I love winter. And i love when it's almost getting over. I tire of the seasons right about the time they hint at shifting. Good thing Earth and I have our clocks synced (mostly).

I'm just popping in here real quick. Lots to do still today.

In a little over a week I'll be in Southern California and Jenny Doh's Studio Crescendoh teaching a two day class. There are only two spots left so I thought I'd let you know in case you were on the fence. We're going to have all sorts of fun with plaster and wax and paint and the like. I'll make sure of it.

And since the temperatures are still on the cold side for many of us US-ers, I've added a few more boot cuffs in my etsy shop. (The first batch sold out licket split...before I could blog about them! Thank you!!) I've been working some new stitch patterns and playing with some sewn ones too. The prototypes make me giddy. I'll share them when I'm done. I have no business messing with sewing when I've pigeon holed myself into the plaster-metal niche. I always was one to squirm most when someone told me to sit still.

So. Off I go to cheer on a pony at a basketball game. They won 51-27 last night. She came home tired and proud. Just like me. Tired and proud (but usually for different reasons).

Oh, and one more thing. Thanks for coming here, for sticking with me even when my appearance is sporadic, at best. You keep me tethered to all the best parts of the internets. ox

filters and overlays

The adage "looking at the world through rose colored glasses" needs a little updating. It's 2013, for crying out loud. How about "looking at pictures of the world through multiple photo filters and cross-processed lens effects".

Yeah.

We crop and edit and overlay and blur and color adjust to create a mood, a feeling, a certain impression on those with whom we share these pictures from our lives.

I got to thinking...this means I can take all the boring, mundane, and un-picturesque and in the matter of a few seconds + finger flicks, I have a dreamy representation of what my life is in that moment. I can make you think that I take afternoon tea in front of a large window daily to rejuvinate my chi. I don't. And even on this day, at the very moment I was taking this picture, the dog was leaving me a present in the hallway. I left my tea unfinished. It's cold now, still on the table next to the empty bowl that once held marginally tasty apples.

Not that it's a bad thing. I guess I'm just noticing it these days.

See, all I have to do is take a drive down my road, take a picture, crop the trashy mobile home off to the right out, the "herb" garden off to the left, tweak the coloring so that it looks a little more, say, dreamy, overlay a tiny bit of texture and for all you know I live in the most picturesque rural valley that Sunday drives and fingerless gloves were invented for. It could be a kind of false pretense but only if I'm hoping to dupe you by making things look better than they really are. Only if I'm hoping to give you an impression of things only half right.
Then again, there is a reason I stopped to take that picture. The way the sun was cutting in through the frozen, heavy air. The way my eyes zeroed in on that one swath of light. Mostly I just wanted to show you the parts that I thought were most beautiful. I don't want to bother you with the rest. I wanted you to see it how my mind and heart saw it for those few seconds.

This is the land that's been up for sale since forever. It's beautiful but nobody seems to want (to afford) it. I have a filter that says "open. alive. peace." and I slapped that baby right over the empty, devalued piece of earth. There was a miserable cold that bit at my fingers that morning. That cold that means the winter return of the ever present black ice streak on the road behind the frost line. A girl rolled her car on that piece of road last year. Had to walk a mile to her boyfriend's house in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold. She's right as rain now, if not still a little shaken up with each pass of that part of the road. I don't know how to add that layer to the picture and probably it's not really my layer to add. I just add my own "I love that this land is still open and that I can see the shape of the trees" filter over it and it seems so much more in tune with how I want to keep seeing it.

We can even add things that aren't really there, by golly. We can say "this is my normal life and I want it to be seen as beautiful. I want it too look like I dream for it to look". Nothing wrong with that as long as you're doing it for you. But I kinda think that you have to be willing to look at the unedited version of the picture for just as long and with as much affection as you do the edited version. All that tweaking and fudging ought to bring the focus in on what you saw was beautiful before it was edited. It still ought to tell the truth...unless you're trying to make up a story, of course...in which case I hope you...WE...know the difference and own it.

Oh yeah. One more thing. Try to avoid holding your unedited pictures up against others' edited pictures. It'll make you start questioning the exquisite beauty of our own {unedited} life.

Just sayin'.

more awake

I've been paying very close attention to the world of rhetoric. It’s like the folk art of our time because so many of us are clumsily wading through all the muddy colors the rhetoric brings to the surface. It's stronger than ever and guess what? It's not completely useless and it is not in need of elimination. Just honest inquiry.

What is some of the current trendy rhetoric?

Dream Big.
Be Authentic.
Fly.
Live Bravely.
Find your Voice.
Own your Passion.

Those are simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, inspiring and shame inducing.

Life draining distractions and whims. That's what the rhetoric can be a lot of the time. More accurately is that's what getting hung up on the rhetoric can be. Know this - when you feel the overwhelm of the rhetoric, you have the ability in that moment to check in with yourself to find out where you might be giving your power away. It's not all just garbage born from the Information Age. It is a response to our collective desire to be more awake. It's just that we have the dirty task of how to make it personal and real in effective ways because none of us want to feel powerless.

{{This post is an excerpt from You, On Purpose: Rhetoric Recovery}}

some things I'm learning about gratitude

My parents could have named me Polyanna. It would have fit my personality. Mostly, at least as a kid. I skipped my lanky legs around a lot and sang in perky children's choirs and even danced with a group called "The Sunshine Generation" where we wore orange and yellow dresses that were miniature versions of old-people square dancing get ups.

I've held to a sunny-side-of-the-street persona like an armless cowboy clinging the the side of a runaway train.

Somehow in all of the bottom-falling-outs of life, I've always been willing - wanted even - to see truth. Not just the parts that explain away bad things bringing momentary relief or justify feeling sad/angry/lonely. I wanted the real truth even if it meant seeing my own gaping flaws because I knew I didn't want to cling to that train if a real paradise existed in letting go.

There is something about being grateful that keeps the truth coming. I've found nothing even close that can replace it. It makes truth vibrate with freedom even if it doesn't always carry joy with it. I've noticed that when I feel a hard truth coming to a head - which it often does slowly and laboriously - I often revert to a super-positive-look-on-the-bright-side-I'm-totally-okay-see-me-huge-smile?!?! way of being. But something I'm learning about gratitude is that it is not the same as positive thinking and that stepping into positive thinking too fast and furious too soon before the truth has become clear, actually keeps real gratitude at bay.

We've had our younger pup for exactly a year now. Giving her what she needs has been way harder than I thought it would be and I even thought I knew exactly what I was getting in to. Her arrival into our family coincided with a particularly intense shift in my relationship with my oldest beatuiful wild pony. At 15 she's a lot of bark and protest and even more sweet doe eyes and whining. Elsie, the pup, was a holy terror. She was snotty and rebellious and determined to not comply. No matter how much I tried to convince her that I knew what was best for her - to please just not run off to figure things out herself - she seemed to bolt that much more quickly. And much more intensly.

There was a point at which I was very tempted to just keep thinking positive in our progress with Elsie. I watched enough Dog Whisperer to know that she'd totally pick up on my hopelessness and that my job was to be super positive and trusting.

But for the grace of all that is good and merciful in my life, I realized that there was way more too it than just acting positive. There were two very intense relationships in my life with shockingly similarities. From both sides.

I was standing out in the lower pasture on the verge of tears one late summer day trying to get my dog to just come home from terrorizing the horse next door. I was struck with the realization that I felt lost to myself. All my capabilities felt pointless. I had no idea who I was in this situation and I wanted...needed...to know who I was - who I was going to choose to be in the face of loosing adoration from someone/thing I cared for as they simply grew into themselves. I saw that what it was going to take to feel at peace with this pup was exactly what it was going to take to feel at peace with my pony.

Patience. Non reactive clarity. Firm boundaries = fewer than I initially thought. I had to choose my battles. I had to make being with me way more appealing than pushing against me. I had to be the loving leader, not the boundry-less playmate and I had to figure out how to be the playful leader too. It was a big job and I didn't know if I was capable of doing it well in either my relationship with my pup or my pony.

I've spent many a contemplative moment since then overwhelmed with gratitude for seeing that connection. It took the struggle with my pup to help me see how to improve on the struggle with my precious pony. Even though both still kick and run and buck and poop and stir up trouble when I'm not looking, the tension is far less, the affection dolled out more freely, and there is a lot more laughter going on.

It feels so much better and it was absolutely, with no question, a result of shifting into gratitude for what the experience, as challenging as it was, had to teach me. This is what gratitude can do.

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{{I've created a journey through gratitude in my ebook produced by Jess Greene at Seek Your Course. You can find out more here.}}