So Much Joy

There is so very much joy welling up in my heart today. It has something to do with living vision, and celebrating this moment of life. This gift from God. It is about thinking "differently." I've been accused of that so many times in my life. The hope that arises from the suggestion that it not only is ok to be different, but that it is the preferred way to be - truly just being who I am that uplifts joy in my heart.

Labels: totally being yourself, video

Tomorrow evening I am facilitating the Equinox celebration at a beautiful place called Picollo Pastures down in Elk Grove. Before that, tomorrow morning, I am hosting the "Grandmothers" - the women that get together consistantly many times each month to plan, support, and hold space for the circle of women - at my house for final planning and breakfast.

I decided to fix a really nice vegetable, potato and egg thing. I worked for a good hour putting all the components together, put it in the oven and was carefully timing it, when my husband called me into the other room to look at something. One of the not-so-efficient things of being completely in the now is the tendency to get totally involved in whatever you are doing. Well...

Tomorrow I will be joyfully serving the brownest egg dish I've ever seen! It smells good. I so thoroughly enjoy fixing food for those I love. And I get great joy from playing with food.

The picture here is at the Agro Art Festival up in Lincoln California, which is put on by the Arts Council of Placer County. They have me (aka Ruby Grapefruit Pearl) come up there and teach children how to play with their food. It's right up my alley! The kids and the kid in many adults create all kinds of creatures and other things out of raw vegetables and fruits in the Play Garden while sculptors and teams of artists work on more involved agro-art pieces. It is great fun.

Labels: Agro Art, Art of Food

My friends and I enjoy doing High Tea up in the mountains every year. One of my best friends has a cabin at a private lake with a clubhouse. It has been in her family for generations. I have many great memories of going up there in the alpine forest, camping, hiking, sunning, visiting and having High Tea, with all the ladies.

One year we invited men too. Husbands and boyfriends dressed up and hung towels on their arms. They waited on us, serenaded us, and generally treated us like queens. It was an exciting year.

I have not got to attend for a time or two, and I have missed it. So, today, Oh Joy, I am headed up for the annual Ladies High Tea. We will have little fancy scones and things, fruits and treats. We will have at least half a dozen different fancy teapots with different flavors of tea. Mostly, we will have some time away from the hustle and bustle of our lives, separated by time and space from all the daily concerns. Time to visit in peace, time to sit joyfully by the peaceful lake and reconnect.

And, time to play! Big hats and feathers, dressed up or down as much as each decides, we will fill up our hearts with the camraderie and sisterhood. It is time to fill my creative coffers, renewing the connection to the artesian well of Joy in my heart. Off to tea!

Labels: creative coffers, joyous camraderie, Tea time

I am still going through boxes from storage, even though I moved in here over 4.5 years ago. Every box of papers that I bring in has to be gone through and filed (Most of it goes in the big round file marked "recycle"). It's a bit of a stretch to find the Joy in that job. A big piece of Joy that does stem from that job, though, is mining for images.

I have been doing art all of my life. I have lots and lots of old sketchbooks, paintings, ideas and photos. Years ago I took yet another photography class so that I could figure out how to create my big .5mm pencil drawings using photographs and darkroom magic instead, in a sort of chemical montage process that I was inventing. I had to back away from the project when I got pregnant as there was no way I would risk my babies health with exposure to a toxic chemical soup.

When computers came to be more available, I kept imagining that there would be a way to create my vision with them. Years later now with a scanner, a digital camera, Illustrator and Photoshop and Painter, the tools available for my palette are so far more sophisticated than anything I could have imagined back then. I am so grateful for programmers and technology! YES!

So I mine the files for images, redraw or repaint them, add pieces, cut out pieces, scan or photograph them, pull them into Photoshop or Painter and have at it, emerging in a short while from the instantaneous creative flow with another jewel to add to the treasure of images I have available for my work. What a joy!

Labels: art, images