To be or not to be.......

I read this poem several times this morning.

Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver

What do I want? That's a hard question to answer.
Recently, I've been trying my hand at goal setting....again. Not sure that I've been any good at it (or maybe the follow-thru part). I just don't know what I want --exactly. What do I want to do, to be, to have? With as many failures to meet set goals as I've had, I guess I'm a little afraid to dream...much less write them down with a target date. Maybe it doesn't have to do with the haves and dos as much as be. Being. Being content with what you have. Being real--being authentic. Being there for other people. We all come from such diverse places. A little kindness, caring, touch, a listening ear, doesn't that matter more than what I have or where I go? If I concentrate more on being, will I eventually cross paths with what I'm meant to do? I'd like to think that that's true. I'm not the same person I was yesterday, and not yet who I will be tomorrow. We are shaped by our dailyness and how we react to it. I think there's a much bigger picture. "Feel myself beloved on the earth".

follow the arrows

Look what I saw on my way out the door to work!




My wonderful neighbor Marci made my day.

"The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can't get there by bus, only by hard work and risk, and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful. What you discover will be yourself" Alan Alda

Sometimes I struggle so to make art. I feel dry as dust and empty. I always think I've reached the point of never creating again. My friend Marcia says not to wait for inspiration, or you will never get anything done. True indeed. The road is not paved, the inner critic has an arsenal of condemnation. Risk....isn't that a scary word? Intuition--how long has it been trying to tell us things and instead we listen to the critic? We need to muster up the chutzpah to roll up our sleeves and work, be willing to make mistakes (are there any, really?), silence the negative nellies and pay attention when intuition tells us something. Anyone can follow a recipe, or a pattern. What really matters is to be authentic.

New digs

My new digs.....the construction and remodeling are nearly finished. It has been a long haul.....and too long without a place to work. The move started last weekend--umpteen trips up and down 2 flights of stairs to the basement. I'm so excited to get it all setup and ready to go that I have to remember to take breaks and not over do it.
The house is a cape cod, a dormer shed was added to the back.

Cathedral ceilings (well, as much as you can get out of the small house), and another window add so much more light. It's so open and bright. Paul didn't want me messing up

the new bathroom with paint and ink, so he put in a slop sink.
How cool is that!

This bookcase is a piece Paul's folks bought

long ago from an attorney. It has wonderful

detail. Glass doors, metal trim and funky

label pasted to the back of one of the shelves.

There are 5 shelves, the top and the base.

It smells old and musty and looks worn and comfortable.

Looking forward to getting settled in.

(Surely at some point I will look back on this

first post with multiple pictures and laugh,

but right now, I'm spending waaaay too much

time and it's not doing what I would like it to

arrrrrgh!)