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"The Loneliness of Being Ourselves" - oil on plywood, 19 x 29 x .5 inches.  This item is unframed but ready to hang. (click on the image to purchase)

Moments like these jolt us awake from the dream of perfect understanding, stagger us with the realization that no one ever really knows what it is like to be somebody else, that between one consciousness and another there always gapes an abyss black as the inside of a skull, and though we may try to reach each other with love and reason, they twine but a tenuous footbridge across it. The best we can do is hold on to the ropes and hope that they will not fray before we reach the rim of understanding, the outer edge of the other, which is all we can ever touch — and still it is enough, this sliver of salvation from the loneliness of being ourselves, this outstretched hand across the icy blue.  - THE MARGINALIAN 

Have you ever experienced loneliness when you were not actually alone?  As an inward leaning human, I often feel loneliest in large groups of people, far away from the outer edge of the other.  Somewhere in another galaxy, perhaps?

In one-on-one settings,  it is easier for me to hold on to the ropes and to reach for the edges of another person.  But even then, as the quote points out, I can see the abyss between myself and the inner workings of another person.

Now, place all of this into a society becoming more fractured, further apart in values and beliefs and there emerges a wide chasm of misunderstanding and non-understanding between people.  I gaze across that wide canyon and cannot see my way across, find myself leaning more and more in the other direction.  Turning inward, staying safe.

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"Rabbit, Aggrieved" - oil on yupo, 12.5 x 19 inches.  This item is unmounted and unframed.  (click on the image to purchase)

​"Hallo, Rabbit,” he said, “is that you?” "Let’s pretend it isn’t,” said Rabbit, “and see what happens. -  A. A. MILNE

Did I mention the rabbits have taken over the studio?  That rabbits multiply, on land and by paint?  The studio rabbits have determined it is their role to express societal emotions this year.  Aggrieved - feeling resentment at having been unfairly treated - hello, YES!

I'm not very good at feeling anger and its cousins (resentment, bitterness, irritation, frustration) because people have not really felt anger around me during my life - they've done anger.  And anger as an action is pretty shitty.

​So I've been given permission (homework, even!) to go ahead and feel aggrieved.  You mention one word of that to rabbits, and they've already made a banner and started a parade!  

It turns out there are benefits to feeling and expressing anger .  Anger is protective and reveals our boundaries.  Anger heals trauma.  And anger inspires action.

Anger unexpressed creates shame.  And shame resides in all kinds of places in the body.  Are your shoulders tight?  Got headaches?  Belly woes?  Anger wants you to stop leaving yourself.  Oh, oh and OH!

So what does healthy anger look like?  It is kind and firm. Think of it as assertive communication.  Something you pay attention to with kindness and curiosity before taking action.  

Unlike these rabbits, who just left the studio in a rampage and may end up on the evening news.  Sheesh!

If Adam Picked the Apple
There would be a parade,
a celebration,
a holiday to commemorate
the day he sought enlightenment.
We would not speak of
temptation by the devil, rather,
we would laud Adam’s curiosity,
his desire for adventure
and knowing.
We would feast
on apple-inspired fare:
tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.
There would be plays and songs
reenacting his courage.


But it was Eve who grew bored,
weary of her captivity in Eden.
And a woman’s desire
for freedom is rarely a cause
for celebration.  - Danielle Coffyn
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Try as I may, I cannot stop the world at large from encroaching on my peace of mind.  And perhaps that peace should be disturbed given, well, everything.

The number of women (and, honestly, men of reason and knowledge and general humanness) who are raising their voices, eyebrows and hands over the growing marginalizing of females (not just females, no no no!  But women are my focus here today) is a growing cacophony to which I add my own voice and art.  

I have been learning to fully experience and express the grief of my own experiences recently, and serendipitously it is not just my own personal grief now, but the world at large.  And it is more than grief - there is a simmering cauldron of anger.

​We are a seething mass of probability.  And probably I love you.

Stone's words just grab me by the shoulders and beg me to STOP! LOOK! FEEL!  The very thing which I find so challenging to do when the world around is groaning.  But I am doing it, moment by moment.

 "Feeling is to be avoided!" my inner defenses shout.  Feeling will heal you and help others is the whisper from the wiser parts of me.  And so I am sitting in a heavy-bottomed way, a Weeble (remember those?), wobbling in the feelings but I won't fall down.

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​"Remember Everything" - oil on linen-wrapped canvas, 26 x 32 x 1.5 inches.  This is unframed but ready to hang. (click on the image to purchase)


​“I don’t want to lose a single thread
from the intricate brocade of this happiness.  
I want to remember everything.”― Mary Oliver, FELICITY


There are many of us who are leaning toward becoming unraveled right now.  The temptation to lose the thread of our happiness is palpable.  

It's easy to understand.  I confess there are days I watch the metaphorical spool of thread rolling down the sidewalk, twisting and tangling in flotsam and jetsam until I feel discouraged - it is so much work to untangle and rewind the threads of our connections and beliefs.

​And yet...underneath this roiling maelstrom of dystopian events is a growing undercurrent of connectedness, compassion, feisty rebellion and hutzpah.  The intricate brocade of this happiness​ will not be so easily unraveled!  There is Kelly with her blue bracelets of safety, Helaine with her megaphone of DANGER WILL ROBINSON and Thea with her bottomless well of encouragement.  There's Liz with her community of rebellious artists, Erica the queen of crow memes, Sara of the tender heart and also my own husband's optimism and intellectual parsing that keeps my inner Calamity Jane at bay.  Dotty who asks "what if" and keeps her own blog readers curious and asking questions, Carl whose Herculean work ethic reminds us there are things to be done - no time for wallowing!  All of these and so many more who are glimmering, sparkling and glowing in the world, lighting up the exits and pointing the way forward.

I have the feeling my ball of twine is no longer at risk of unraveling completely.  Thank you, dear readers!

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"A Certain Interior Expansion" - oil on paper, 14 x 21 inches.  This item is unmounted and unframed.  (click on the image to purchase)


The venture into space is meaningless unless it coincides with a certain interior expansion, an ever growing universe within, to correspond with the far flight of the galaxies our telescopes follow from without… That inward world… can be more volatile and mobile, more terrible and impoverished, yet withal more ennobling in its self-consciousness, than the universe that gave it birth. - LOREN EISELEY

Eiseley's words grabbed me by both shoulders, shook me, looked me in the eye and said SEE? YOUR INWARD WORLD IS JUST LIKE A SCI-FI ADVENTURE!  Whoa!  Where's my spacesuit?  Let's gear up and GO!

​I don't know about you, dear reader, but as an anxious and introverted creative being I spend a lot of time looking inward.  It's not like I choose that particular adventure, it is just where my moon boots go.  They have a mind of their own.  And that inner world can, indeed, be volatile, mobile, terrible and impoverished.  But it can also be beautiful, vast, surprising and adventure-filled.  

Maybe that's what we're doing here, sharing paintings and words and things that inspire interior expansion.  Because it is quite challenging to share an interior view with those on the outside.  Yet art and words (and music and dance and photos and theater and and and!) allow us to get a glimpse of that galaxy of wonder in another that we may never otherwise see.  And once in a while, that glimpse informs and expands our own inner landscape and propels us to venture further.  Oh!!!

Ask much?

Oh HO!  How the inner being quivers and shies away from the very thought of it.  

WANT MORE!  

How could I possibly?  

And yet...those of us who have experienced perhaps a less functional upbringing, a bit (or a lot) of trauma, the silencing of our asking, the muffling of our wants and needs - we need to ask much and want more.  Makes me shake in my very boots (​I startled...like the trembling of a horse)​

Hirshfield's "voice"  suggests a bucketful - so now I am thinking cargo tankers and blimps filled with my heart's desire.  Dare I?  Oh yes, I do.

The JUNE READER GIVEAWAY is here! 

This month I'm wondering -  what YOU do to refill your inspiration tank?
Leave a comment below.  One (or more) readers will win a piece of art - FREE!  

​"Turning Within and Blossoming Without" - oil on cradled wood panel, 18 x 24 x 1.5 inches.  Ready to hang.  (click on the image to purchase)

Continuing our exploration of Maureen Seaton's Fiddleheads: 
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​Similarly, when you hurt me, I curled like a mouse behind my third eye. I realize what an
odd thing it is to believe as I do in my third eye and the mouse behind it that furls like a fern

and whimpers like a fern being boiled on a monster stove beside its brothers and sisters.
Poor mouse. The things that make a person odd are odd themselves. Think of DNA,

"The Realization of Her Own Oddness" - oil on cradled wood panel, 12 x 24 x 1.75 inches.  Ready to hang.  (click on the image to purchase)

The first time I saw hundreds of fiddlehead ferns boiling in an enormous pot I realized
what an odd person I must be to hear tiny cries from the mouths of cooking vegetables.
- FROM FIDDLEHEADS BY MAUREEN SEATON

Around this time last year, a poem (Sometimes A Wild God, by Tom Hiron) inspired me to create a body of work.  (See The Wild God)
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The poem informed the work, which informed my understanding of the poem.  I don't know how poetry works for you, dear reader, but for me the best way to really "get" one is to spend a little time each day with it. 

​When I first read Seaton's Fiddleheads, I had the same visceral response as I experienced with ​Sometimes A Wild God - ​Oh!  THIS!  

​So off we go, a little piece at a time. 
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Seaton's opening sentences in this poem give us the opportunity to play fill in the blank in our own lives: 

​what an odd person I must be to__________

• feel the sighing melancholy in the tilt of a robot's head 
• delight in the madness of big storms and thunder and raging wind, hail and rain​
• wonder what goes on in the minds of ants and spiders and what their eyes see

And so on.  But in asking (and answering) the question, there is a slight lift of the spirit - I am odd, but so are all people, really​.  We're connected that way.  

Embracing each other's oddness is a lovely thought for a Monday.