IN A CREATIVE WAY

Each year I do a collage journal.  I've read, "Do more of what you liked as a child."  Well, I liked cutting and pasting.  And glitter and warm words and inspirational quotes and writing and coloring and lace and creating.  It all comes together in my collage journal.  So easy.  So calming.  Definitely a flow-state.  We all have these, flow states, where we are satisfyingly present and engaged.  Here are some of the special words I've included in the past months, from all kinds of sources including my own heart.  I hope they resonate.  

Learning to do and think less is an important skill.

What dark did you conquer in your story?

"I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps." Edith Wharton

Enjoy being alone.

Getting lost in a good book is one of life's great pleasures. 

Love stretches your heart and makes you big inside. 

"It's no use going back to yesterday because I was a different person then."  Alice, Lewis Carroll 

Go outside.  It always helps.

The sun and moon rise and set every day.  Don't miss so many of them.

When nobody's home but you, that's your time. 

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." Vincent Van Gogh

You'll find many beautiful wintry sights at dawn, dusk and dark.

Always protect yourself from despair or indifference.  Help others do the same. 

"Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all."   Emily Dickinson

A wounded heart can still sing.  Mine does.

Spend time close to home with the simple pleasures that make up your life.

One thing we can hope for is that the Lord will enter our minds and hearts and help us bear the sinful world in which we live. 

"Do anything but let it produce joy." Walt Whitman

Just keep on going; look ahead to see the blessing around the bend. 

"No need to hurry.  No need to sparkle.  No need to be anybody but oneself."   Virginia Woolf

There are decisions I may not have made if I hadn't taken sadness as a warning.  

The act of documenting my life in a creative way has improved my life. 

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART IV

Still Life with Apples on a Sideboard, 1900-06, Cezanne

After all these months of pandemic fears, even the idea of standing before the great works of art in a museum has been like a Star Wars "galaxy far far away." But we're on our third sojourn in Princeton, New Jersey where my husband is a visiting scholar. And the museums here about have vaccination and mask mandates.  I won't harm or be harmed; it's wonderful!

 

I barely know where to start.  But start we have.  The first week we ferried into New York from Atlantic Highlands, NJ.  That's the place I go to scavenge sea glass from the flotsam of the city ("Hobbies are Wonderful," May 16, 2018; "Candles and Your Best Bone China," Feb 9, 2017). What a thrill to approach New York from the water.  I know, this is ordinary for many, but not for me. 

 

Showing our vaccine cards, masked and elated, we entered the worlds of modern and contemporary art. The MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) had an exhibit on Cezanne sketches.  I could live in those rooms.  We saw one sketch I had bought a copy of long ago from my college bookstore.  Over many moves, this little print survived from our first graduate apartment to our present house-but-one.  I wish I could find another reproduction.  We had never seen the original before.  How is it that seeing this piece became such a special moment?  It makes me believe in art as solace, as transcendent, as in some ways more alive than life.  

 

Olympia, 1875, Paul Cezanne

 

The next week we drove just an hour from where we're staying to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you know, the one with the "Rocky Steps."   We spent the day in French drawing rooms and cafes with Renoir, dance studios with Degas, lovely papered boudoirs with Matisse and Bonnard, at sideboards with Cezanne.  What a wonderful visit!  I could linger and feed my soul forever. 

 

Girl Tatting, 1906, Renoir

 

After the Shower, 1914, Bonnard

This is not an everyday occurrence for me; rather a thirst intermittently quenched.  These days feed my soul, my heart, my mind.  The broad open curated rooms of a museum filled with the works of artists who have labored to record their vision, for me are as profound a place as the canopies of nature.  I wish I could express my gratitude in terms worthy of the gift. But I cannot.  With appreciation, Nina Naomi