time keeps on slippin', slippin'...

slippin', into the future...
- steve miller band

it's frustrating, really. my creative muse has been on an extended leave of absence - we're talking over a year since i've really been productive. as i've whined about before, a lot of that stems from my dissatisfaction with my own ideas (or extreme lack thereof). and suddenly, that fickle little muse is back and raring to go. that's great! isn't it??

the timing is a little off, unfortunately.

in my 'real life' i'm a self-employed occupational therapist working with kiddos, and lately i seem to have acquired a number of more-than-usual 'quirky' little ones on my caseload. now, don't get me wrong...i love them and the challenges to my knowledge that they pose. but it seems that all my free time right now has been spent doing researchon the internet and consulting with mentors and otherwise looking for additional ways to support these sweet guys - leaving me little play time for myself.

the only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- albert einstein

we also put our house on the market this week. our big house. our old house. our six-bedrooms-three-bathrooms-90-year-old-lived-in-for-23-years house. between trying to keep it looking nice and going through ALLLLLLLL the assorted junk that fills every square inch (we're packrats and admit it freely, thank you) in order to get it packed up while also showing it to 4 or 5 potential buyers a day...well...time is a precious commodity right now.

and now my muse wants to come out and play???

to achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.
-leonard bernstein

got the plan....more or less. certainly have the 'not quite enough time'. look out...i'm on my way to achieving greatness!!

peace & light -
m'lis

if there was any justice in this world

cats think they're so sneaky...

bear (the dog) has to go outside. all he thinks about is coming back inside.

kismet (the cat) has to stay inside. all she thinks about is going outside.

kismet thinks she's being such a help:

"look!" she says. "he's ready to come in! open the door!!"

i know what's really going on in that bratcat-brain of hers:

"look! if you open the door, i can slip out while he slips in!"

actually, i think her thoughts are much deeper than that:

"all they (that would be us people-types) do all day long is let that dumb dog (she doesn't hold bear in very high regard) in and out...in and out...in and out. he doesn't want out! i want out! what kind of fool world is this? the only cosmically just thing to do is to keep him in and let me out!

hmmmph. dumb humans. forget it. i'm off to rip up a roll of paper towels."

cats aren't nearly as subtle as they'd like to think.

peace & light -

m'lis

blog as therapy

“it is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”
- seneca, roman philosoper & statesman

funny thing about this blog stuff - it sure keeps your mind busy even when you're not working on it. i've been giving a lot of thought to my own creative processes (or the lack thereof) the last week or so, and that's something i tend to ignore.

but i think i've had something of a break-through. i've admitted to myself that my short attention span is more than just a mildly humorous quip at my own expense (e.g. 'i have the attention span of a gnat'). it's my excuse - my excuse for everything from why i can't stay with a project until completion, to why i can't seem to choose a 'style' of my own to work on and develop further.

it also goes hand-in-hand in some mildly esoteric way with my impatience with my own imperfections. i find that there are many things i don't start or stay with simply because i'm not perfect at it the first time i attempt it. there will be no learning curve for me, thank-you-very-much! but the opportunities i've missed...the regrets i now have...

i took piano lessons as part of my college experience; the instructor used the suzuki method, meaning i played 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' 'til the cows came home. i enrolled my nine-year-old son in lessons with the same instructor, so we would go together. it was a magical time...classes were held in the beautiful adobe home of our instructor, in her living room with the 2 baby grand pianos that sat side-by-side. my son and i even learned a duet of a christmas carol to play together for his recital. at the last minute, though, i insisted that the instructor play with him, and not me...because i wasn't perfect. there was this one little spot at the very end of the song...two notes that i just couldn't get the timing on correctly. so i was a very proud parent, sitting with all the other proud parents in the recital audience, watching my son's two-minute performance with his instructor.

to this day, it breaks my heart that i was a spectator to his accomplishment, and not an accompanist.

twelve years later, i still have a piano in my home. and once or twice a year, i pause in front of the keyboard and dredge up from memory a few bars from one of the songs i played over and over and over again during my lessons. i yearn to play the piano, but i seem to be waiting for the day when i can wake up and pause in front of the keyboard and magically play mozart or bach or beethoven with the best of them.

what this all boils down to is a sort of personal (and abbreviated) twelve-step program for learning new skills. i am admitting that i am powerless over my own need for perfection. i am making a fearless moral inventory of myself and my learning of new skills. i am admitting to myself and others the exact nature of my shortcomings. and i am trying to make amends to those i have harmed. part of making amends is giving myself permission to be imperfect...to learn and grow and accept that imperfections are learning experiences, not judgments on my worthiness as a member of the human race. and part of amending is to talk to my now-adult son about that piano recital. i wonder if he even remembers....i know i do.

“come to the edge.”
“we can't. we're afraid.”
“come to the edge.”
“we can't. we will fall!”
“come to the edge.”
and they came.
and he pushed them.
and they flew.

- guillaume apollinaire,
1880-1918 french poet & philosopher

peace & light -
m'lis

station break

just because they're cool:

these are dragon's blood trees - found them on a travel article from the ny times. to me they look like something from a 60's psychedelic album cover. the author of the article saw umbrellas that had been blown inside-out.

what do you see?

peace & light -

m'lis

the picture of innocence

believe it or not, the post i made before this one is actually a mere ghost of its original self. i had written one much longer, saved it, and ran off to take some pictures. when i returned, my exquisitely crafted post (and who's to say otherwise now??) had become lost in cyberhell, and i was forced to redo the whole shebang. nothing like a little nonconsensual editing to end the day.

but the bratcats have demanded that i publicly state that they had nothing to do with the case of the missing post. and to prove it, they insist i share one of the pictures that i was taking while the evil www monster was greedily munching on my poor post. so here it is:

frankly, i still don't trust them. kismet (the one on the left) just looks too much like the cat that ate the canary.

or the post, as the case may be.

i'm watching you, girls.

peace & light -

m'lis

another one bites the dust (or: what i did with my weekend)

several weeks ago i made a yellow-to-blue skinner blend for a project that didn't work out (more on that in another post). that blend has been sitting on my desk calling to me, which is unusual in itself, as i gravitate normally to the metallics. but there it was, reminding me of places tropical in nature (also unusual - i'm not a beachy person - too sandy). the bug hit me yesterday, so after playing with the blend and some transluscent clay and some silver leaf, a new jewelry project was born. i started stringing today, adding little silver beads to pick up the silver leaf in the beads and the focal starfish...and hated it. decided i needed a silver starfish, instead.

i love silver. love it, love it, love it. so much so that i almost peed my pants when silver metal clay burst on the scene. a clay i could manipulate like polymer, but when finished, was a beautiful piece of fine silver? what more could a girl ask for? so for christmas, my thoughtful partner bought me one of those start-up silver clay kits. i was in jewelry-making heaven!

did i mention it was a christmas gift? did i mention it was from two christmases ago? what, you may ask, have i made during all this time? nothing. zip, zilch, nada. the 'perfection' bug bit, and that poor kit has been patiently waiting for me ever since.

but what could be so hard about getting a little silver clay, texturing it with one of my gazzilion stamps, and cutting out a simple starfish shape? since this morning i've been reading and rereading everything i have on silver clay, and now i've decided its too late in the day to start an undertaking of this magnitude. this is definitely a first-thing-in-the-morning project, which means it'll have to wait 'til next weekend. what's been my excuse all those other 447 mornings since i received my christmas present? hmmmmm....give me some time. i'm sure i'll think of something.

where are those mantras i wrote about earlier? that's what i should be reading. and rereading. and reading again.

peace & light -
m'lis

treat your spirit

For what are we without Inspiration? Without the Hope to Dream and the Daring to Believe? We are mortal coils. But with Inspiration, and the Art that births from it, we are Eternal. We are Spirit. We are ALIVE AND WE ARE ONE.
- Angi Sullins (from Duirwaigh Gallery)

artwork by Linda Ravenscroft

Have you seen this mini-film yet? It is a ravishingly beautiful and haunting message of creativity and inspiration that speaks something new to my heart every time I watch it.

Scroll to the bottom of the page for the link to watch the film. Since I was there last, they've announced that they have created a book and DVD of the film (with a portion of the proceeds going to the Make A Wish Foundation). If you'll excuse me now, I'm off to purchase a gift for my spirit.

peace & light -
m'lis

coincidence or...????

Remember when (like it was sooooo long ago) I mentioned in this post about my overly-full 'favorites' list? Well, in case you were wondering, I had 2500 links stored there. That's right. Two-thousand-five-hundred. And how, you might ask, did I know that? Did I count each and every one?? No, friend, I did not (I'm not quite that obsessive). I discovered this little fact when I went to save a new 'favorite', and was politely informed that I had reached my limit of 2500 links. I spent some time deleting entire folders of favorites - favorites that had fallen out of favor, so to speak. After all, I am now blissfully self-employed, so why did I still need a folder dedicated to job-finding links for my occupation? I bought my car a year ago, so I decided I could give up the 20+ links I had for my car-buying research. Etc., etc., etc. I feel so light! So free! So up-to-date! And think of all the new places I can now bookmark!

Oh - and what was the sight I was trying to store? The one that pushed me over the 'favorite' edge?

This - my own blog site.

I'm sure there must be something cosmically significant about that. If I figure it out, I'll let you know.

peace & light -
m'lis

bratcats 101

The other passion in my life (or the only other one I'm going to admit to in front of strangers) is our Bengal cats, Kismet and Destiny (catchy, huh?).

Destiny is a feline athlete extraordinaire, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! OK - maybe she only can jump straight up 6 feet, but that's still a lot in cat-distance. A weird one, is my Destiny. She's been known to use potatoes as toys, with one particularly favorite spud finding itself knocked off the kitchen counter, across the kitchen and dining room floors, down the stairs, past the landing, through the basement library, around 2 corners and down the long hallway to come to rest outside my bedroom door. Was she hoping I'd get up at 2AM and mash that puppy for her? And I'm not talking small potatoes here - that thing weighed nearly as much as she does. I shouldn't complain, I guess; at least it didn't wind up in the toilet, where all of her other toys eventually meet their demise.

And then there's Kismet. Excuse me...that should read 'Kismet - Queen of All She Sees And Then Some'. She doesn't really care for the paparazzi, so my photos of her are limited. This photo was taken when she was just a wee little thing, before she got all snobby. I had to flip my keyboard up to keep her from editing what I was typing - which effectively stopped whatever typing I was doing anyway. Kismet likes to bring her toys to me so that I can throw them for her to catch. My dog would define this as a rousing game of fetch, but we would never be so crass as to suggest that Kismet would 'fetch' anything for anyone. And woe to my ankles should I fail to notice that Kismet has gifted me with the presence of one of her toys - although even I will admit that ankle-biting is a very effective means of getting someone's attention.

When I am playing with my cat, who knows if I am not a pasttime to her more than she is to me?
- Montaigne

(Oh, believe me - I have no illusions about this.)

The trouble with sharing one's bed with cats is that
they would rather sleep on you than beside you.
- Pam Brown

(I used to worry about disturbing the little dears at
night, until I realized that at 18+ hours a day, they sleep way more than I do. Besides, they just roll in the opposite direction from me, and never lose their place.)

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats
to pull a sled.
- Jeff Valdez

(Kismet made me add this one. She knows the dog can't read.)

peace & light -

m'lis