The Gentle Rebel

Earlier:   

I am struck with such an excitement I can hardly put my finger on, its an excitement like a firefly that darts here and there pulsing with brightness. I feel so creative it is almost too much.... but not.
The art seems to come at me from all angles and many perspectives, but what can I do about it? I only have so much time.
Again, my preoccupation with a sense of limitation with time.
Being a single parent or any parent for that matter, your primary job at hand is always smiling at you in the face ready for your love and a hand to hold, all else is secondary If I try to switch that natural selection around, it simply never works for me.

My smiler is tucked up in bed now and I am here a wondering. Which do I do, get cracking on some little crowns that have been ordered or draw to my heart's content. Ach.. its Valentine's day, I shall draw and let my drawings fall off the page with enthusiasm as they seem to will these days. My heart seems set on drawing right now, and the crowns( though I do love to make these and imagine the little and big heads that will grace them, shall wait till Wednesday when I will have a work day)

A few blogs ago, I had a little knock at some of my older paths in the way that I worked, thinking I was all about the traditional and the handwork I have been so enjoying. As I sit here all I can breath in, in this energetic air is Art in all its forms, billowing, blossoming, brandishing and beckoning, calling me in a great call for self expression. My drawings are begging me to go further and find form with them, I have no idea yet how to do that. But it seems I am so very happy with yarn and wool that somehow they will combine.

Its early days yet !

Early Spring,
Stream flows
towards my door

Issa

Later:

I have been perusing my two little books of Haiku again these days. I came about Haiku in the throws of utter grief about three years ago now. A friend lent me some books of the great Persian poet Rumi and also some zen poetry( thanks again Sinead), not so much haiku but they led me there. I found that my mind was only about capable of reading a few lines of anything, but at the same time I was crying out for inspiration. I found most of what I needed in Rumi's depth. His love and understanding of being human in all its wonderment. And in Haiku, to remind me of the indescribable magic and humor that I remembered once of the present moment, of trees and grasses moving, summer morning birdsong, sun light just one way or another, or a bright face passing me by, a tea that tasted just right and even simpler still, the words the sounds, the ups and the downs of day to day mixed with my own awareness of being here and the loss of those who seemed not to be.

When one is caught in the almost indescribable shock of loosing your loved one, its as if blinkers are on to the world in this way. In saying that, there is the profound and in fact inner fortitude, a connectedness to life and death, the most valuable experience of all. A closeness to death brings such pain and understanding simultaneously. I imagine the grieving 'process', has reached some kind of completeness when you stop carrying the pain and the acute sense of loss each moment of the day. When you start to play again in abandonment of the past but with respect to what has gone by, but more like an awareness of fragility and life's strength. Each and everything has a shadow, an opposite or maybe a partner. Life and death coexist. Balance is everything. And not hanging on to either end sets you free.

I have become particularly fond now, though in my limited experience, of Issa and Basho, both japanese haiku poets. Issa is from the mid 18th century and Basho the 17th. Both write with such apparent ease and graceful understanding of this coexistence, this balance of dark and light and the impermanent nature of both. I feel quite restored by there candid clarity and sometimes humor filled three liners. I go from the richness of the persian poets like Rumi and Hafiz and some early Christian poets, to the pure simple life and if the very nucleus of a moment of life could be recorded, Haiku.

Here are some favorites

3 haiku of Issa first

softly folded fawn
shivers, shaking off the butterfly
and sleeps again

Moon, plum blossoms
this, that,
and the day goes

"The Peony was as big as this"
says the little girl
opening her arms

Now great Basho


I like to wash the
the dust of this world
In droplets of dew

The moon:
I wondered around the pond
All night long

Butterflies flit....
that is all
in the field of sunlight

And here is one of my extra special favorites, that has been surprisingly comforting!!!

Since my house burned down
 I now own a better view
 of the moon rising

Thank you dear reader : )

xx