monday

jenny lewis says:

if i run up hill, i'm out of breath.

if i spend all my money, then i've got no money left.

if i put all my chips on only one bet, then i'm all in....

[I've been running up the hill ourside my parent's house with Riva lately and keep thinking about that!]

we've made it thru our first weekend of shows. both were a big success-- many friends and much art passed along!

I've finally realized that I have indeed made a lot of work, enough for this coming weekend too. I'm also realizing that this new one-class-a-quarter plan means TRUE slowing down, TRUE leaving the rat race, TRUE living + feeling + being. I feel absolutely renewed, in the sense of "give me a clean heart. give me a clean heart. give me a clean heart, may i be born a new"

i have a million letters to send, emails to write up and bills to pay, but today is one of those fabulous specimins of a day when I know in my heart that everything will be okay.

there is another jenny lewis song that says : if you want better things, than i want you to have them.

I think that at a certain point we must say this to ourselves, and then commit to figuring out how to have those better things.... you do, in the end, have to look for your life.

my good friend Betsy played my her favorite jump little children song, a few years back now. the most stunning part of it goes: in the cathedrals of new york and rome, there is a feeling that you should just go home + spend a lifetime figuring out just where that is.

so here we go, n'est-ce pas?

Slowing Down

my oh my. I have been running around for the past week and finally, after tomorrow morning's class it's all going to settle down a bit. The project that I'm handing in tomorrow is a process study concerning the diverse behaviors of dye when mixed with or painted on different mediums. We all had to pick an illustration to "color-in" with the different kinds of dye. I picked this design that I made up a while back, which illustrates a song that my dear friend Sarah Pirtle wrote:

Oh, I bless this seed, so full of life.
Oh, I bless this seed, so full of life.
And I plant it, and I plant it in my heart.
And it flowers, forever more.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the slowing that I've been waiting for. It's getting really beautiful around here, sunny and almost seventy for a few days in a row! I am ging to just take some time to sit still tomorrow and feel the blooming. I hope you do too.