This is soooo fun! The fabulous Leslie turned me on to Wordle and I then proceeded to spend much too much time playing with it. I wish the images above could be larger, but if you click on them, each image will take you to the full sized version. Once there, you can create your own. Here is the intro to the site:
"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. "
I have printed out 6 different copies, and plan on using some of them along side my Vision Board. They're simply magical, and oh so revealing!
Enjoy!
This weekend has been a lot of fun. Jon and I attended our friends 4th of July party on their boat in Redondo Beach, and got to watch 3 fireworks shows occuring along the length of the coast! It was a lovely day, with great food, disco dancing on a boat, and much snuggling for the evening show. One of the fun things about this party was that it was hosted by my Soul Sister and her girlfriend, and was attended by about 20 of their other lesbian friends. My Jon was the only guy there! The joke of the night was that Jon would be awarded the Honorary Lesbian plaque for the evening. My baby held his own very well among all of us women and I love him for it!
Then last night we went to The Mint Night Club to attend a CD release part for the amazing Angie Evans. Here is a bit about her:
Its not often one comes across a young artist with the ability to
create a truly unique sound and mix it with heartfelt, empowering,
insightful and arousing lyrics that leave you groping for more. Angie
Evans combines folk, soul, jazz and funk as if they were meant to be
together. Her poetic lyrics and soulful voice speak of love, sex,
passion, and consciousness.
Born in the suburbs of Northern California, Angie grew up contemplating
the outer realms of society and culture. She started playing guitar at
17 and within a year she had written her first song and began
performing for her friends. Angie attended Cal State University Long
Beach, where she received a degree in Creative Writing with a minor
Womyn's Studies. It was there, after finding the wonders of Womyn's
studies, sociology, race, politics, and the literature of ethnic and
female writers, that she began to believe in the greater good of the
poetic and political word. All while discovering the beauty in
conscious hip hop, soul and funk music, she began to find a voice that
was the perfect fit in content and vibration.
At 21, Angie self-produced and self-released her first 5-song EP. Since
then, she has performed at countless venues ranging from coffee shops
to college campuses in Long Beach and in the greater Los Angeles area.
In June of 2006 Angie booked a six-city, nine-show, west coast tour and
made the journey completely on her own. In addition to this diverse
array of venues, Angie has performed at many events benefiting various
feminist, LGBT and women-centered causes. Angie has been a featured
performer at the San Diego Pride Festival (2006), the Long Beach Pride
Festival (2005/2006), Ladyfest San Diego (2005), Ladyfest Las Vegas
(2006), and this spring she will be performing at the Southern Womyns
Festival in Atlanta.
Angie's music is powerful and so so sexy. I swear, and I say this with
no disrespect intended towards my Beloved, or to hers... Because I'm
not, nor have I ever, but with her...? I. Would. :) Her music is that
passionate, that sensual, that deep down in the depths of your pleasure
heart and that rooted in Truth. And she is just a beautiful soul. She not only sings, but she
serves us the meanest Mexican Hot Chocolate over at our favorite haunt,
Viento y Agua.
We danced until well after midnight in a sea of women loving women and it was such a cool state to be in. I am so grateful to live in an area where people feel relatively free to be and to love as their hearts lead them. Its one of the things that I love most about Long Beach, where I live. And its why I loved our entrance stamp to the bar. Celebrate. This weekend for me was a celebration of friendship, freedom, love and music.
If you are in the market for some great new tunes, check her out. You can purchase her music at the link above, and here is a link to her Myspace.
How did you Celebrate your weekend?
Happy New Moon! I am going to deviate from what I normally do for these posts. Its been a wild ride of a day, and feel more compelled to touch on my energetic experience then what house the moon is landing on, and what a Cancer Moon creates energetically. More then anything, I just believe that we all intrinsically know whats going on with the Moon and how its affecting us, we just don't always know to identify it as such.
Its been a whirlwind of a day. Lots of communication with people, emails flying back and forth at a break neck speed, business phone dates, delicious 2 hour phone call with this amazing lady, creating in a large and visionary way... So much. There are deep shifts wanting to occur. I feel them inching their way towards me. Messages, mirrors, secret whispers heard in my dream time, observances, inklings... all ways in which the Universe is setting the tone, answering my call, and opening the way for me to move through.
So tonight, on this New Moon, rather then do the work of looking at charts, reading up on signs, I am going to do my personal work based on the messages that are coming towards me right now. I found a link to the following on someones blog. Sadly, I can't for the life of me remember what blog I found this on, and if its you, Hi! Thank you for this and please drop me a line.
This is long, but so spot on with what it is I'm learning and living right now. I think it will fit for you too. This is a Manifesto for a design company. Their work is innovative, completely outside the box, and the site is worth a browse. So here it is:
Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.
Its been an amazing week. The support and words I received from all of you in my previous post was so beautiful. I am grateful to each of you who left comments, sent emails, and created posts of your own in response to mine.
One of the gifts of wisdom I received this week was from our therapist. She is quite simply amazing, and Jon and I have been so deeply enriched by having her in our lives. She is a Spiritual Therapist and is in such alignment with who we are and where we want our lives to go, I sometimes can't believe how blessed we are to have her. She helped me reframe this duality I have going with being an artist and a business woman. Both require creation, creative approaches, and are a phenomenal opportunity to integrate my left and right brain.
I had never looked at it this way, although it seems obvious. Its all a dance, and I'm the one who gets to paint my approach to it all in whatever brushstrokes and colors I want. What began to be clear to me however, was my pessimism about my abilities to pull off a successful creative life that supports me and flourishes in the world.
Money has always presented a bit of mental/emotional block for me, and this was the topic of discussion between Jon and I on our dinner date the other night. It was one of those conversations where I am needing to revisit and have him repeat his wise and loving offerings over and over again, because I am forgetting already. But in such a loving way, and with such wisdom, he pointed out for me how I speak about money, and my ability to manifest my financial world, from the assumption that I just can't.
So much was said, but what I took with me from that talk was when he reminded me that I can do whatever I set myself out to do. If someone else has done it then so can I. And that I need to get that I have the capacity to find my way to what it is I want to create in my life. This is the assumption I need to operate from in the world. I am paraphrasing a bit here, because again, it was challenging to hear. But there is something magical in having a lover hold your gaze and tell you that you can. And I found myself drinking it in like Moon Nectar for the Soul. He was affirming in many ways that evening. I later received the nicest compliment I have ever gotten. Ever. (Thank you deeply my love.)
I am finding that I am healed by my willingness to open. Open to him, open to myself, and open to the gifts that are continually wanting to come my way and be received by me. I know that when I am in resistance, as I am to approaching my store and income as a business, that I block the universe from gifting me with more. I block myself from playing Big. And more then all that, I miss an opportunity to really be creative in broader ways in my life.
After all this goodness, I went on a date with two of my Soul Sisters. We saw Ani Difranco in concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California. I had never seen her live before even though I have been a fan for over a decade. Here's a little blurb on Ani:
"Ani DiFranco is a singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She started her own record label at the age of eighteen, called Righteous Babe Records. She is known as a prolific artist (having already released seventeen albums) and is seen by many as a women's rights and feminist icon. She received the "Woman of Courage Award" at the National Organization for Women (NOW) Conference and Young Feminist Summit in Albany, NY."
I don't know how to even write about this. This woman rocks. Her path as a Feminist performer in this world... paving her own way, putting out her own music, her political message, her refusal to sell out... the way she kills it with that guitar on stage! Oh my god! My soul was so shaken. So excited, and thrilled. The Righteous Babe in me felt ready to burst out of my body and take flight. You know that swell of tears you get when you watch something so true, so sourced from the deepest wells, so profoundly, artistically, revolutionarily beautiful, that you are no longer watching with your physical eyes or listening with your mere mortal ears, but instead receiving from your own deepest well of soul essence? I had that. Over and over again. She sang to me. Woke me up.
Her stories about birthing her daughter at home, how that reinvented her Feminism, her lyrics, her energy and voice, the unapologetic taking up of her space in the world, her devotion to art, and paving her own way and giving the same opportunity to other artists, her courageousness in writing and reciting this poem:
floor me, and inspire me to be my own brand of courageous, revolutionary, spiritual feminist, with a voice that is compelled to speak out Truth, and the audacity to know that I can do anything I set out to do.
Here is another video. This one is part interview and part music video. I love this song!
And of course this song. Because we are all at minimum 32 flavors, and there is room for all of us at the top.
I set out at the beginning of this year to Play Big In LIfe, and since then, a huge mirror has been held up to my face by the universe showing me all the way in which I don't. Its humbling, daunting at times, and depressing at others. And yet, it has also been an amazing opportunity for magical encounters like the ones I have had this week that are there to show me the Big Me thats available.
Its been a good week.
I participated in a biannual faire last weekend. It was quite a bit of fun and work. Loads of work! I feel in some ways that I am still recovering from it. I sold journals and goodies that I still have from my trip to India. The lanterns in the picture are from India and they danced overhead in my tent from every corner and in between! They add such a sense of the magical as they swayed and twirled all day. We were definitely the most colorful booth there!
I've sold at this faire may times in the past. Its equal parts sales oppurtunity and social gathering as I know so many people from different aspects of my world that attend. This year sales were ok. Better then last time, but not by much. And this is where things begin to get challenging for me.
I am really struggling with this dual role of artist and business woman. In a perfect world I would spend my days creating whatever it was that wanted to be created, and lose myself in the process. I wouldn't have to train my brain to think in terms of profit margins, weekly budget, and marketing strategies. Trying to figure out if something like the fair is cost effective and profitable in many ways takes away from the experience for me. It also changes how I create.
Recently, I met a man who owns a store in Big Bear, California. He loves my journals and would like to have about 25 of them along with a story board display to sell in his store. He loves them so much he will pay retail prices for the whole thing! I am floored by his confidence and overwhelmed by such volume. Its a great opportunity.
There is a time factor of course, along with the set amount. I am aware that even through my excitement, there is a bit of hesitancy, even a sensation of being a bit stifled. Rather then create out of whatever impulse is wanting expression within me, I now have to create that 25 times! Am I making this more complicated for myself then it has to be? I wonder if this is really just an "upper limits" block I have and not an artists' sensibility and commitment to the authentic spontaneous creative process?
I dont' know. But this really came up for me at with the fair. I found myself calculating how many journals and art pieces I had to sell, compared to the time spent preparing, and money invested in participating with what needed to be sold in order to not only cover my time and invested money, but also create a profit. :/
Taking all these things into consideration... I did not make a profit. And I am trying to really learn that making a profit is just as important as the experience, and the fun, and the socializing. I am finding this to be a challenge, particularly on how it colors my creative process. I don't know how to create with free abandon while having all these considerations and calculations in my head.
Are any of you creatives hitting up against this? How do you work with it? I would love to get feedback and hear how you are all doing with this.
I haven't done a Be Brave! entry in quite some time. I haven't done much here in quite some time actually. :) Its been such a busy year so far and for the last month I have been furiously getting ready for an art fair that I will be participating in next week. (I will post information on this in a later post.)
But for now, for this moment there is this. After 12 years of studying Tarot and reading for myself and friends via emails and the occasional late night card reading, I have decided to make my services available to those wanting to use it as a tool for growth! I feel the butterflies fluttering furiously as I type this. Its a big step, but one that has been coming for a while and I am excited to see where it leads me.
For now I will be doing it via email so others will have a hard copy for themselves to use in their personal work. I have quite a ritualized approach to reading, and as yet don't feel comfortable doing it in real time with the querant in front of me. Perhaps that will be my next Be Brave! step!
This is the beginning. I look forward to being of service to whomever seeks it. Here is what I wrote as a description on Etsy:
The Tarot has been a potent divination tool for many generations in a
wide variety of cultures. Jung described them as being mirrors to the
deeper unconscious. When things seem jumbled by the emotions and over
stimulation of our daily lives, the cards serve as a mirror and map of
what is truly happening on the spiritual plain underneath all the
noise.
My readings serve to illuminate the underlying dynamics
of the circumstances in your life, and pull through the questions that
want to be asked by you. Deeper then fortune telling, the cards reveal
the things that you can't see or are unaware of, and that are keeping
you from living your truest, freest, fullest potential.
An
Inner Revealings reading is a tool to empower you in your own personal
work of healing and evolution. These readings are intended for you to
take into your journaling, your meditations, your altars... that
clarity may be sought and that a path may be paved for you to explore
yourself deeper. For this reason, I find that having a typed copy of a
reading works well when wanting to go back and reread what was revealed
by the cards.
With purchase, please submit a summary of what is
going on for you at this time, and what you are seeking to gain further
insight from. An email will be sent to you within 3
days.
Disclaimer: The intent of these readings is to offer
insight into a situation that will aid you in your personal work. These
readings are a tool. Your life and your choices are your own and I as
your reader do not assume responsibility for your actions. I do however
make every conscious effort to read your cards responsibly. Tarot
readings are not intended to replace the help of a professional when
needed, and serves best those who have an established practice of self
facing and inner work.
Its been so so long since I have paid any attention to my poor lonely blog! I have been in all sorts of projects. I can't seem to sufficiently compartmentalize my different tasks in a way that allows for everything to get equal attention. This is a story I either need to embrace or find a way to shift. Not sure which quite yet...
I'm learning things. Continuting to slowing get comfortable with a digital SLR, and exploring my visions while wielding such an amazing tool. And Photoshop! I love Photoshop! Everyday its a new discovery. I long for those days in my early 20s when I could stay up all night completely immersed in some project or another. These days, I'm immersed until sleep demands my presence, or another responsibility yanks me away. My head swirls quite a bit these days though. I find myself making lists not to keep track of what needs to be done, but to remind myself of what it is I am actually in the process of working on. Does that make sense? Its as if my brain can't hold it all.
Just typing this makes me want to create a list again. Its like an itch on my brain. Is it age, do you think?
Ok... here goes:
Sacred Pregnancy Book Project
Preparation for WomanSpirit Faire
Is It In My Eye Art Exhibition
Summer Zine Issue
Photo Transfer Project
3 Custom made journals
Learn everything there is to know about InDesign!
This list isn't helping me. I was talking to a friend today and she mentioned getting a huge white erase board that I can outline every project on so that I would have a visual of it all as each project progresses. I like the idea but have absolutely no room for something like this on any of my walls. We are at capacity here!
I need to practice the balance. And still savor the many details of my life and options right now. I miss my blog. I miss all of you, and I miss visiting your beautiful corners of this wonderful Web we have woven. I am dancing about... and will continue to poke my head in as often as I can!
The lovely Leah from Creative Everyday featured one of my journals on Rare Bird Finds! Go check it out and support fellow artistes!
I have a massage I'm running off to in a few minutes. And just before I took a moment to sit down at my computer to check for any last minute emails before leaving, I realized just how much I was running off to a massage in a few minutes.
I actually ran this morning, and yet long after I went for my run, my head, the voices, the lists, the habit continued to run even though there was a stretch of 45 minutes where I sat down to watch last nights episode of Grey's Anatomy. I was sitting, watching, doing nothing, and yet, the whole of me was running lists, sensations of pressure, and the anxious "oh... I have to get up and do something" mode.
So, I'm sitting here. With intention. With some long deep breaths. To stop for a few minutes and slow it all down, turn it off, reconnect with conscious intention and approach my hour of healing massage with a restful mind. I'm not beating myself up this time. Its just a habit I trip over every now and again. I lose track of the momentum building up around me, and let myself get whisked away and in the letting go, sometimes the noise that has been such a habitual friend gets trip on again.
I am off to get a massage. And rather then run off, I'm going to skip, stroll, dance my way there.
Last night, after my grump fest, Jon and I went to a Flow Temple Party. Dan, the organizer is a friend of Jon's from Thailand. It was such an amazing experience. Essentially, anyone who is an artist is invited to come and participate in the creative Flow. Dancers, musicians, painters, sculptors, fire spinners, acrobats, photographers... The purpose is to come together and allow the energy to move us all in creating. It was fabulous, and last night was especially wonderful because some of the best Poi Spinners in the world came by. The video you see below is of a fire dancer named Yuta, who hails from Japan, and has quite a following. I am trying to find videos of last night on Youtube to share with others, and this one is the best so far. You can actually see me in the background in the first half of this video! The last half of the video is at the end of the evening with the musicians left their instruments, and just let loose vocally. So much fun!
I must say that this evening was the perfect remedy for how cranky I was feeling early in that day. It was such an inspiration and energy rush to be in a room full of creative people celebrating each others art. Most were performance artists, but there is room for all, as there are tables set up around the parameter of the space so artists can paint, sculpt, draw, etc while the music and the dancing is being performed. I also got a chance to see Jon spin fire for the first time and it was quite frankly the sexiest thing I have ever seen. No words... :) I will be posting some of the photos I took last night on my Flickr stream in the upcoming days. Stay tuned!
Update: Here is another fabulous video!
I'm so cranky today. I can feel it under my skin... Have any of you ever had that? It seems as if my flow is blocked at every turn. Had some plans, expectations, needs for how I would work, be, organize and relax and for some reason... not going to happen. The vision? Kicked to the side.
And I wonder if its hormonal. I mean really, intellectually I get that I can go with the flow wherever it wants to lead me. Its not like anything that is presenting itself is a big deal, some of it actually fun. But its the inconvenience of letting go of the plan. Ugh. This is my stuff. And sometimes I'm good at going with what spontaneously wants to happen... today? Not so much.
Oi... you have no idea how cranky I am. I hope the rest of you are starting your weekend off in a much better mood!
