MONIKER

    I have a NEW name.....like a new skin....and a healthier place....and a broader perspective....and a hopeful future....and a deeper resolve....and creative outpouring that I did not hold back....a turn around the corner....open doors.....new....pungent....core-strength....a captive-set-free by One Who Knew.....One Who Saw....One Who Never Will Leave or Forsake.....

                It is marvelous in my eyes.   Delighted.   CERTAIN.   Ready.   FAITHFUL.

                                             Two Words:   Dana Ross

The True Feminine

.........Recently, I was given a gift..... A gift of one week end with two of my children.  We said the time would be to rest, and to relax, and to enjoy one another's company.   All three of us blocked the time, pushing back the many things that want to fill a week-end.  All three of us came weary.  One was holding some secrets....one was heavy with the reality of of a lengthy time of depression....and I was in the "better place" where truth and authenticity had become a challenge and not a foe.
       The week-end was a summit....a gathering of strengths and weakness, words and ideas, confessions and congruities.  There was ROOM for all of it.....a wide place to say, to give voice, to hear oneself speak.   There was freedom to cry....and to wail.....and to receive a hand, but not a solution.  The place was filled with good clean air....honest airways....safe to say....an alcove where no shadows grabbed and stole.  The clock ticked, but we didn't care.  We walked and talked, slept, and then talked some more.  We looked closely at a difficult topic that has been stealing from us as we feared.....but we resolved to fear no more.  We gathered a wholesome approach to our future with the idea that our past will be used to strengthen us....to empower us....to make us more certain, and less timid.  Oppression is no longer welcome...and we all agreed that the smell of its presence is one we each CAN discern......we KNOW it....and we hate it.
       We ate lovely food....and carefully, not thoughtlessly.  Every good gift is seen with more clarity as the gift that it really is.  Wholesome food and wholesome dialogue is life-giving.
       We walked in the canyon, down the path and back up again....talking and talking and looking.

      At one point in the week-end, one of us spoke quite honestly of "nose-rings".  The dialogue was uproarious.....and heart-felt.  There was this moment where we thought we could all go and get a nose-piercing...a jewel....a mark of a strong resolve....better than ink-on-skin.  The dialogue lifted from my ears for just a split second and I could hear my soul whispering , "Dane.....it IS a NEW DAY.....the path ahead is of freedom, and love, and openness....of coming clean...and bringing-out....and being the authentic human beings that we are......THERE IS SO MUCH LOVE LEFT AFTER ALL THE DESTRUCTION ."

  The true-feminine is as old as Eve....you know, the naked lady in the garden.  She was made with walls-in-tact, with grace, with beauty and tenderness.  Eve was KNOWING and had intuition....a groundedness.  Her capacity to compliment, to fill-out, to mutually supply needs with a man was engraved in her soul.  Created without shame, she felt no fear.  She never felt "less than" for she was the completion of UNION.....a very good idea.
      Restoring this "true feminine" is a holy process....a reconciling of something lost, stolen, vanquished.  But the ONE who does the work has precision in every event, every detail of every day.  I am utterly comforted by this thought.  I find myself spinning with real delight as I marvel at the process before my eyes that won't really see clearly til another day.

    Who Has Seen the Wind   

          Who has seen the wind?

                Neither I nor you:

          But when the leaves hang trembling

                The wind is passing through.

           Who has seen the wind?

                 Neither you nor I:

           But when the trees bow down their heads

                 The wind is passing by.

                           ~ Christina Rossetti

THE RED BUNGALOW

   
      I live in a red bungalow on High Street in Auburn.   I live with my daughter Anna, and a cat and a dog.  The windows in our house are old and paned and rattle on windy nights.   The fireplace is made of old, red bricks.  The little kitchen has lots of lovely pink formica and a floral wallpaper that is cheery and clean.  The wooden floors are cold in the winter and perfect in the summer, creaking when we walk about in the early morning.

     In the living room is a wonderful window seat....long and cozy with pillows and throws.  We sit here often, doing our reading or chatting, or checking our e-mails.  We can look down on the street and watch people run by, or ride heir bikes, and walk their dogs.  All the parades in our town pass by our house.

      The gardens at this little house were pretty even before we moved in.  Gray rock in walls and planter boxes, old established vines growing on them, and paths and stairs meander through the grounds.  The trees are large and leafy, providing beautiful shade on the hot afternoons.  We grow flowers in the spring.  Digitalis love the shade here.  The shasta daisies grow all summer long.

      Birds love the large pine in the front yard.  In the the spring, the cedar waxwings come through and eat all the new red berries on the branches of the pyracantha bush.  We have grey squirrels and scrub jays.   Finches flock on the bag feeders of the thistle seed.  In the spring, we have to add more seed every few days.  There is an old gray bird bath where several kinds of birds congregate.

    I truly love the way this dear old house is set up high, above the ground.  It gives a feeling of being in a tree house.  The windows open to the sides and the evening  breezes cool every room on hot summer nights.
   
    Living downtown is friendly, and noisy, and handy.  Anna and I can walk to the bank, or to Tango's for a frozen yogurt.  We can walk down to Old Town events, or uptown to a movie in the town square.  We can hear the clock tower chime, and Fast Friday's cheer.  We can hear the voice of Mr. Burge announcing at the football games, and the buzzer of the heats in the swim meets.  I like the bustle of it all.  And I like people...

FEELING FACES

C. SHOWING HIS WORK

     Working with a large group of children on Friday afternoons, I have made some lovely friends and found tremendous delight in watching them grow as "little people who LOVE to create".

      We use large pieces of newsprint to do most of our work.  The children spread out all over the room....on table and floor.  We use watercolors, pencils, sharpie pens and sometimes a special gold or silver marker.  We listen to music.  We talk and think, wonder and discuss w h i l e we work.

      On Friday, December 21st, we painted 12 faces with different expressions....mad, sleepy, calm, worried, happy and others.   I asked the kids to think about the ways our mouth and eyes change as we emote.  We found that our eyebrows were very important to express the feeling we were depicting.

      The drawings were really fun.   The creative energy was really high.....and the finished product was very pleasing to almost all.  

The P O W E R of Observation

........When we look closely at something during our art class we try to pretend that we are looking at it for the very first time.  We try to forget what we thought we knew about the thing, and then begin to LOOK at it like we would if we had pulled it from a "Time Capsule".
        We have practiced this technique over and over with insects, seed pods, flowers, and birds.  One day this Fall, I wanted to try the technique with an OREO.   THE KIDS WERE THRILLED!  Every child received one oreo cookie to observe, to hold in their own hands, to render with a sparpie pen and contour lines, and then to eat.  We took twenty minutes to look and sketch.....then we took twenty more minutes to LOOK AGAIN.....noting the details that perhaps we had passed over.  When most of the children told me they were "done" I noticed that they had not done their most precise work and I asked them why they felt the need to hurry......the answer was obviously that they could not wait to eat the cookie.