red leaves & geese

Monday, September 29, 2014










first photo on the crescent beach is for sweet Marie Cameron / berry time / beach glass / a lobster boat leaving the harbour / from the deck of the newly renovated & restored Lobster factory/ Thinker's Lodge Dining Hall / autumn asters are everywhere / the crescent beach / golden rod / Thinker's Lodge & Dining Hall / selfie in the window's of the former Lobster Factory

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you, As a fish out of water hears the waves ... Come back. Come back. This turning toward what you deeply love saves you. Rumi

Time keeps marching forward, faster almost than I can stand. How is it that it's October this week ? suddenly it seems I'm seeing brilliant red leaves and seeing and hearing the beautifully haunting sight & sound of huge flocks of Canada geese flying in formation high in the sky. I don't feel ready ... ready for what I ask myself. I forgot I only need to be ready for this moment, now.

It's looking like Lunenburg has won the "destination" prize. I may be moving before year's end to an apartment a rental while Doug, Betty & Sam stay behind to finish the second floor painting etc for selling. I could be living in my new home by December 1 ... yikes ! I best do a workback ;-)


beginning again

Saturday, September 27, 2014









my studio/office windowsill garden / Miss Winnie D on our early morning stroll / sunflowers / after heavy rains - puddle magic / pale blue lobelia / alyssum / a very old Anglican tiny cemetery near the crescent beach / red roses in the new Eaton Park Peace Garden

The only real battle in life 
is between hanging on and letting go.
Shannon L. Alder

Hello Saturday. Hello friends. Hello beautiful warm new fall day.

For those of you concerned or worried about me, Thank You ! I am fine ... we are fine.

Busy with lots more of that secret (for now) kind of art/illustration work, commitments & deadlines and finally, finally wrapping my head around moving. I'm beginning to really feel excitement about having this amazing opportunity to make a fresh start & to begin again. To simplify my life as much as possible. To make new friends, to walk new places, to smell the salt air of the Atlantic ocean. To join a new library, to paint new walls, to purge and de-clutter. To organize. To really grow my creative business. To pare down my life to the very basics & to live as sparely as I can manage.

I'm filled with gratitude for the chance to be beginning again.

Recreate your life, always, always. 
Remove the stones, plant rose bushes and make sweets. 
Begin again.

Cora Coralina

magic, grace & power

Tuesday, September 23, 2014









yet another walk through beautiful meadows and onto the crescent beach + requisite studio door high tide(s) chart ;-)

Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

deep thoughts

Monday, September 22, 2014









tiny breaking wave on the crescent beach / the view from the end of Water. St. / morning dew / snapdragon-ish yellow yellow wildflowers / a meadow of Queen Anne's Lace / I heart gulls / from inside a meadow / skinny, shaggalicious Winnie Dixon legs - early morning harbour side boardwalk

What we call the beginning is often the end.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.
T. S. Eliot

Transitions is not simply a manual on how to cope; rather, it is based on the theory of personal development that views transition as the natural process of disorientation and reorientation marking the turning points in the path go growth. Throughout nature, growth involves periodic accelerations and transformations: things go slowly for a time and nothing seems to happen – until suddenly the eggshell cracks, the branch blossoms, the tadpole's tail shrinks away, the leaf falls, the bird jolts, the hibernation begins. With us it is the same. Although the signs are less clear than in the world of feather and leaf, the functions of transition times are the same. They are key times in the natural process of development and self renewal. Without an understanding of such natural times of transition, we are left impossibly hoping that change will bypass us and let us go on with our lives s before. If we have learned on thing, it is that change will happen – that change is the norm and somehow or other we will need to develop ways of dealing productively with it.

William Bridges / Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes / from Chapter 1 - The Need for Change

Not all those who wander are lost
J. R. Tolkien

Considering that we all have to deal with endings all our lives, most of us handle them poorly. This is in part because we misunderstand them and take them too seriously or not seriously enough. We take them too seriously by confusing them with finality – that's it, all over, never more, finished ! We see them as something without sequel, forgetting that they are the first phase of the transition process and a precognition of self-renewal. At the same time, we fail to take them seriously enough. Because they scare us, we try to avoid them.

William Bridges / Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes / from Chapter 5 - Endings

not wandering x stuck x lost = very stuck + very lost

I realize that I have been afraid to wander, afraid to wander ahead into my future, especially my future with a different address, without 29 Black Street (not the blog the home) and it's taken me a long time to solidify these thoughts (as is par for my course). By not allowing myself to really go to that place in my mind (& desires) where I do live somewhere else, walk somewhere else, do different things, see different people and live a much simpler, potentially easier, more stimulating life ...
& one that most likely will be without two senior pets (Bleet & Winnie) I have made myself feel incredibly stuck and incredibly lost. Desperate even. Despair. Saying goodbye to Bleet Thursday was a push, or a slap ... a reminder that change is happening with or without me so I best get with the program.

I used to have a copy of William Bridges book Transitions bought back at that other time, nearly 5 years ago to the day when I was also trying to wrap my mind around leaving 29 Black Street. I couldn't find the book so I bought another copy that and a copy of Gay Hendrick's book The Big Leap.

here's to new adventures, much more wandering & some very big leaping ;-)

nessieness

Friday, September 19, 2014









eight photos of our dear, much loved by all (especially Winnie & Sam) black velvet chiclet - Bleet

What greater gift than the love of a cat.
Charles Dickens

We said goodbye to our Bleet (Bleetito, BleetNess, Ness, NessieNess), our Black Velvet Chiclet yesterday - it was sudden, serious and there was no question or doubt that it was time. He will be dearly missed by all, especially by Sam. Bleet remember was reared by Retrievers and I've always been convinced that he saw himself as a dog - not a cat. He had a great summer lounging in his pillow topped wicker chair on the front porch + lazing about with Itty Bitty Betty on & in the catnip bed I planted in my haphazard wee garden.

Love you NessieNess xoxo

NessieNess  February 1999 - September 2014

lost & found

Thursday, September 18, 2014






a really important 2 hour Skype chat and wanted to doody up my background - with best loved pet & creative director

Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living. Alysha Speer

so sorry for my longer than normal absence - I feel like I am lost a bit. At a transition point in my life & it's a big one - a very big leap is about to happen. Two things I want to say today:

The first is that I know with all my being that you must feel lost to feel found, and that said lost is a constant state of being, of growth & development & change & ultimately really good things.

The second is I love that cat Oliver, that dog, cat, comforting little furry Buddha creature that he is, way more than words could ever, ever say. I am so blessed to have him on my team ;-)

* this bouquet picked/cut from my wee haphazard gardens

participation

Friday, September 12, 2014












from the crescent beach / cosmos bright lights part of a mixed bouquet from the garden & Oliver hard at work in the background - he's conceptualizing / the Prince high up on the ladder painting trim & getting 29 Black ready to sell / heavy dew - devil's paintbrush gone to seed (from the dandelion family) / seaside greens / an especially big ship and the ramp down onto dingy beach / oh my ! my sunflowers - they are spectacular / that big ship leaving port taken from my studio window + spectacular sunflowers / morning glory love / I must always live beside the sea / my poplars at the end of Water Street in summer they create the most wonderful canopy of green, rustling leaves

You have to participate relentlessly in 
the manifestation of your own blessings. 
Elizabeth Gilbert

In an ongoing, but recently cranked up, effort to make having a fit mind, body & especially spirit part of my daily routine every early morning I have a bit of a power walk (with my camera Canon G12 in tow of course). After I've had my stroll with Miss D and before I have my breakfast. It's the secret to successful exercise - do it as early in the day as possible. At low tide, a good  8 months of the year (maybe less) I'm able to walk laps up & down the crescent beach, listening to gentle waves and seagulls - my absolute favourite I usually walk for 40 mins to an hour.

Girlfriend's of mine, Deb & Carol, have been going to free fitness classes offered here in the village each Wed & Fri mornings, Zumba (yes I did say Zumba) highly choreographed* aerobics to music and Pilates (also to music) to great music! In an effort to leave my bubble house more often and to participate in activities with actual human beings I decided to join them. This week I had my first 2 classes and I think it's going to be a very good thing - two of my fav songs from each of those classes below, from the cool down portion of each class, also a favourite part ;-) 2 Canadian gals Feist & Jan Arden.

* me and choreographed anything is hilarious but it's OK also to flail & jump & dance which is mostly what I do at Zumba ;-)