LEANN FORD'S "FEEL FREE MAGAZINE" (WONDERFUL!)

In my stash of collage journaling stuff, this morning I found Vol. 3 of "Feel Free Magazine" by Leanne Ford.  It was in a stack with "The Simple Things" from the UK, "Daphne's Diary" from the Netherlands, and a pile of Stampington back issues filled with collage paper.  On a rainy January day, being inspired to find creativity in nature is just what I need. So, I'm going to share some of the words and ideas that seem so true.  I wish I could share all the lovely photos too.  

Aiming for perfection is fruitless.  And ruthless really.  It's a waste of freedom. Time and freedom we might say.  Ruthless is the perfect word:  hard on ourselves, never-ending.  Thank you "Feel Free" for this reminder. 

The garden is a perfect analogy to life and its messes--always imperfect, but always some beauty in it.  The more it is loved, the more vibrant it becomes and the more it spreads that light. 

When we create, it's our job to know that what we create is good.  We just know in our hearts that we our happy creating and happy with what we created.  That feeling, that confidence, that kindness to ourselves, the lack of judgment to ourselves, that is contagious to those around us.  Yes, happiness is contagious.  And if we're not bound to perfect we can be very happy with what we create.  Creating is freedom.  

Love what you do and let people see you loving what you do.  You will inspire others to find the same joy.  

Create freely.  Trust yourself to make a home and life that looks and feels like it belongs to just you.  Don't you feel like your exact home could never belong to someone else?  In the whole world, it doesn't have a double.  Your vision, your touches, large or small.  Your books or music or paintings.  Your favorite textiles.  What you've saved and treasure.  

The unpredictable brings excitement and intrigue. 

Look to Nature.  It's a free and wonderfully rich source of inspiration.

Sometimes we find a place where life is pure, raw beauty.  [Mostly in Iceland I say to myself.  Or the Scottish Hebrides.  Or when a whale breaches.  Or one morning when every bud on the camellia by my door is in bloom.]

Pull inspiration from everywhere.  It's not copying.  You'll create something new.  

"The universe is real, but you can't see it.  You have to imagine it." --American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976).  Well, I don't know what this means.  It sounds like something an astronomer would say.  But Calder was an engineer-trained artist.  Many things are real but we can't see them, maybe the things that mean most to us.  

Every day do some of what you love.  

A Garden is literally a Dream come true.  We always see it before it happens, don't we, gardeners? 

Thank your plants for keeping your space green.  

Be brave and follow your heart.  Just believe wholeheartedly in your ability to create.  With words, with chalk or pencil or paint, with fiber, with trowel, with mixing bowl, with herbs and spices, with hammer and nail, with AutoCAD, with heavy equipment . . . .  

With love, Nina Naomi

 

"TURN SORROW INTO CREATIVITY, BEAUTY AND LOVE"

Bittersweet is a best-selling book by Susan Cain.  Her themes are speaking to me and may to you too. Perhaps you cry in movies, are moved by Shakespearean tragedies, cozy up on rainy days or enjoy melancholy music from Country to classic, Roy Orbison to Mahler (his Symphony No.6 in A minor is called dark and terrifying).   Barber's Adagio for Strings takes the movies The Elephant Man (1980), Platoon (1986) and Lorenzo's Oil (1992) to another level.  I'm listening to Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor as I write. 

In this blog we've discussed the "andness" of life.  Never is it one thing or another.  Always both.  We have survival fears even as we enjoy this greening spring.  We worry for our children even as we admire their growing independence. As threats grow, so does importance.  The shorter one's life, the more precious each day.  The dichotomies are many. 

Cain defines bittersweet as "a tendency to states of longing, poignancy and sorrow, an acute awareness of passing time and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world...and the recognition that light and dark, birth and death--bitter and sweet--are forever paired."   

Many of us respond to sad music.  In "Annie's Song" by John Denver are the words "Let me die in your arms."  Because of something my young son said to his wife during his last weeks as a cancer patient, these are the most poignant words I know.  Sometimes I want to hear the song, sometimes I can't bear it.  

Even tragedy can be bittersweet.  It means that we have been blessed by something immeasurable that is now lost.  We loved and were loved, when the loss is greatest. We are not, as a character of Henry James discovers to his heartbreak in "The Beast in the Jungle," a person to whom nothing was destined to happen.  

No one avoids sorrow. In accepting it we learn that the place in which we suffer is the same place from which we care.  As we suffer our compassion grows and we do not dismiss the sorrow of others.  We scorn no one's tears, not least our own. Sorrow is a useful antidote to the oft-overdone advice to be tough, optimistic, and assertive.  And while we can't rid ourselves of pain, we can turn it into something else. We can take whatever it is that we do--write, act, study, dance, compose, innovate, teach, parent, design, plant, help, listen, give--and make it a creative offering.  The next time sorrow is my lot, I'm going to try.  

                                         In peace, Nina Naomi

"PUT YOUR EAR DOWN TO YOUR SOUL AND LISTEN HARD"

I know you've noticed.  The ebb and flow of the tides, the appearance and disappearance of the sun, the rising and waning of the moon . . . the cycle of the seasons, our menstrual cycle, the nine months of gestation, the movement from infancy to adulthood, from adulthood to old age . . . the change from health to sickness (and sometimes sickness to health).  All of life is rhythm.  

Like overlapping stories, there is rising action, a climax, falling action and dénouement happening in different spheres all the day long.  

We sleep and wake, we walk and settle, we race into space and hunker under the stairs.  We find comfort in repetition.  In our bed, we sleep like spoons every night; turn to the left, turn to the right until daylight parts darkness and enters the room.  

I know you've noticed.  The more we listen, the more we create.   We hear bird song and hum a tune.  We hear leaves rustle and with acorns and foliage make a tablescape.   We see, hear and feel the whole color spectrum and we mix, swirl, dab and drip paint.  We hear a story and retell it to everyone's delight.  Or create a ballet or an opera.  We listen to strangers arguing and it becomes a play; or to family dynamics and out comes a novel; or to our own inner dialogue and we write a memoir.  We listen to our hearts and journal.  We hear the rain and cry.  The poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974) says, "Put your ear down to your soul and listen hard."

I know you've noticed.  Abundance and lack are parallel realities.  Every day we make a choice which one to inhabit.  When we treat the present moment sacramentally, we live abundantly.  If we accept God as our silent companion, we live abundantly.  As we learn to pause and live in the adagio, we live abundantly.  

I'm sure you've noticed.  God owns the heavens, but He gives us the earth.  If the only prayer we say in our lifetime is "Thank you," that would be enough.  "Gratitude," says a French proverb, "is the heart's memory." No matter how deep our misery, we love the earth, and it loves us back.  Nothing is more abundant:  over and over 365 new mornings and starlit evenings; 52 promising weeks; 12 months of possibilities; and 4 resplendent seasons.  A tapestry.  

Soon outside winter's darkness will spread and we must search for the light inside.  Let us find it in daily rhythm, in listening and in our beloved earth, for which we give naught but thanks.  

                                                In peace, Nina Naomi

TURN ON YOUR CREATIVE BRAIN

Lately I've been loving making word collages.  Bloggers love words, that's fair to say isn't it?  So do readers.  We love to read and to write.  Somewhere I read that crafting used to be considered trivial.  Not sure who felt that way, but those kinds of judgments are long past.  Now we know how healthy hobbies are and if you can make a living with your hobby, so much the better.   

This word collage is in a 10"x12" old frame that I painted.  I collaged over a quote by Maya Angelou:  "You can't use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have."  I like seeing her words left exposed, you & creativity, and knowing what the rest of the phrase is.  The words I chose were: 

sunset, dance, darling, the meaning of life, 

lies you've told, Outside hours, hate small talk.

"An ordinary life can be extraordinary and that magic can be found in the everyday."  

speak emotion, life goes by too quickly, warm tea,

Quiet, like people with depth.    

We--all of us--think in words, in our native languages.  Even our word-less emotions we try to give names to.  "I'm sad," no, "I'm downright miserable."  "I feel empty." No, "bereft." Words give us distance from the bad times. Or "I feel loved."  Saying those words slows our breath, releases any tightness. See the phrase "speak emotion?"  Those two words are fraught with memories for me, a kind of therapy almost.  Being loved creates a physical feeling of calmness.  Being absorbed in creating a word collage can do the same, like the other things we do just because we want to. 

This word collage is in a 3"x4" frame:  

Write more, Living, flow, ONE DAY AT A TIME,
Today, all these years later, Don't be afraid,  
Tiny Pleasures Sticky Notes, a blessing, to enjoy each day.  

The pleasure is not only in choosing the words and phrases for what they bring to you, but also deciding on a background, choosing the fonts, and arranging the sentiments.  I have old frames of faded snaps just waiting for reuse, but our consignment shops are also filled with them.  

This one is in an antique brass oval frame, also 3"x4".  It covers a picture of a person in our family no longer known to anyone living.  I enjoyed picking the leafy green background and the words and phrases in alternating white-on-black, white-on-taupe, and black-on-white: 

because, Focus your attention, What makes you think, 
Close some doors today, what counts most, you, 
 discovering your options,  Make a plan,  lead,  
 what can you do to change, simply

My husband asked why I would choose "Close some doors today."  "Because some doors lead to nowhere," I said.  He said the word he liked best was "simply."  Maybe I do too. Making a word collage is definitely a simple pleasure.  One more:  

This is in a 5'x7' frame.  My granddaughter likes to illustrate and drew the background wallpaper. These words just collected themselves, different fonts, sizes, colors all amassed and waiting for the right matting which also appeared.  I hope you like it as much as I do.  The words? 

 Insight, FLOW, KIND, beautifully, POETRY, 

TAKING PHOTOS, THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING ABOUT LOVE,

BODY BEAUTIFUL,  TAKING TIME AND LOOKING CLOSELY

Why do we like this sort of thing?  Because focus is calming, isn't it.  So many people make creating something, even the smallest thing, part of their recipe for wholeness.  Maybe doing nothing for a bit is even healthier, but I'm not there yet, maybe never will be.  In the meantime, let's turn on our creative brains and make something.  I'm committed to enjoying every single thing I make!

26 NEW MANTRAS

Mantras can be statements, phrases or words that we repeat frequently as an incantation or invocation.  They can be helpful, insightful words and statements, phrases or sentences that bring us to ourselves and inspire thought or creativity.  These are helping me as summer moves to fall. I bet you have some favorites too.   Nina Naomi

"No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world." N.H. Kleinbaum Dead Poets Society (b.1948), American author

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English Romantic poet

Doing something usually brings people together; buying something does not.

"Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art."  Albrecht Durer (1471-1528), German painter and printmaker 

Bloom Where You Are

"Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase," Van Gogh, 1890

"Creativity takes Courage." Henri Matisse (1869-1954), French artist

Infinite wonder is around the corner. 

Love your home inside and out. 

"When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think."  N.H. Kleinbaum Dead Poets Society (b.1948), American author

You are exactly where you need to be. . .

"So if you are too tired to speak, sit next to me, because I, too, am fluent in silence."  unknown

"This is my life.  It is my one time to be me."  Maya Angelou (1928-2014) American poet, memoirist, singer, activist  



"Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

"Writing is a way of thinking - not just feeling but thinking. . . ." Toni Morrison (1931-2019), American author

"I love getting older. . . . Things simply become more and more fascinating." Victoria Erickson (b.?), American writer and writing teacher

Make your life a little easier, especially in your head.

Accept the challenge. 

Be kind to yourself.

Expect a miracle.


"Remorse is memory awake. . ." Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

Desiring little brings more riches than acquiring much. 

"To find yourself, think for yourself." Socrates (470-399 BC), Greek philosopher

"Creativity is magic.  Don't examine it too closely."  Edward Albee (1928-2016), American playwright 

Create every day.


The magic is in you.

"What a Wonderful Life I've Had!  I only wish I'd realized it sooner." Colette (1873-1954), French novelist