Source energies curl and furl in my palms. They remain there until I start working on something. Sometimes they churn and make my hands tingle. As soon as I begin to focus, the energy passes through to my fingers. Way back in the 60s when I was a potter living in Hawaii, my logo was […]
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Tag: consciousness
Be A Fierce Bear about Your Art
You have to know the value of what you create. To me, whether it’s my visual art or my writing, it is the Divine Voice speaking with my voice and hands. Its value is incalculable. Never let anyone dissuade you from regarding your art as valuable. When my kids were little, they’d join me in […]
Reading Time
My buddies love it when I read to them! We gather together and sit on my bed with piles of snacks, and they help me choose which books to read. We love the Mysterious Island, and all of Nathan Lowell’s sci-fi stories. I have to be careful of Kitty, though — she likes to lean […]
Practice
I discovered that practice meant giving up trying to achieve perfection. What it really gave me was a calm, quiet belly. Many long years ago, I practiced Tai Chi Sword, and Naginata, a women’s sword-fighting art, where the sword is bound to a six-foot bamboo pole that extends the reach of the sword. There was […]
Bully
David came up behind me, grabbed my pail of fish, and before I could stop him, dumped it right on top of my head. He and his buddies squealed with laughter and ran off down the dock. The fishes slid down my back, into my shirt, down onto my lap. I was soaked, head to […]
Fishies and Buddies at the Bottom of the ...
I always think of my underwater scenes as reflective of our human life above the water. . How, at the very same time, life is so full of kindness and compassion, even as it is fraught with rampant killing and imminent danger, with safe and neutral territories and scary streets you’d avoid if you could. […]
Feed the Lot (A Dream that I wish was rea...
In a dream, I’m the manager of a catering company. We get an order to cater The Cattleman’s Association Annual Stockman Gathering. 800 people. I’m thinking, wow, 800 people! That’s a lot of people — I didn’t even know there was a group called that, much less that there were so many of them! So […]
Kitties Love Us, but Would Never Admit It
I love looking out at the squirrels who hop around on my neighbor, Joy’s roof, along with the jays and other birdies. . . Her cat chases them endlessly, but never catches a thing. I think he must be de-clawed, poor thing. . There’s a hummingbird feeder out there, too – it’s always jam-packed with […]
Kitties Don’t Give Up!
I used to watch my cat sit still for hours watching the birdies – he never, ever gave up. It made me wonder why I often gave up easily. . So I stopped doing that. Now I’m like a ravenous tiger with a fresh steak – get away! Mine! I’m going to get this done! […]
You Know I Love Cats . . .
A long, long time ago, I had a black cat named Oedipuss. . He used to strut into the room where we were sitting, come stand by our feet, look around, and then oh-so-casually reach up and swat the dangling foot of the one with crossed legs. He’d then shrug like he’d done his dirty […]
“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”
Have you ever wondered where an artist gets ideas from? I’m asked all the time where my designs, illustrations, paintings and sculpture come from. Well, here’s your answer! The simple answer would be, The Dream World. The more complex answer would be: dreams, flashes of insights, phrases I hear in conversation or on the radio […]
I Lost My Temper, and Lost Everything
Freya. Little Freya. Five feet nothing, thin as a rail. Powerhouse. Strides in from the outside deck, leaving the door wide open to the frigid, whirling snow and cutting wind. Which wasted no time rushing in and wrapping itself around me, doing its best to freeze my tropical butt off. I’d just gotten home, settling […]
How Peace Bringer Brought Spring Back
Isn’t it just like life! You have to brave going through the shit in order to finally get to the gold – which has so much more value, the more trouble it was to get it. TRIGGERS: If you are sensitive to mentions of violence or harm, you may not be brave enough to read […]
I Had A Tantrum Yesterday, and It Wasn’t
Finding out I had zero choice set me on fire. I can usually put up with automated customer service, whether on the phone, or online chat. But this time? Oh my. We bought a new mattress/box-spring set from a company we found online. It was delivered, unpacked and set up; the delivery guys left; I […]
Caught by A Monster Outgoing Tide
(Published in Small Craft Advisor Magazine) My friend Jana and I decided to take the little blue skiff out — we’d row across the harbor to the tiny crescent-shaped beach right under the old Tiffany mansion, and have a lazy picnic. But we never got there. We were bored. It was a hot July noon […]
What’s Your Destiny? Mine Is Scary.
I’m assuming that I’m going to live to be 100. So I’ve been thinking about what I want to see happen in my life in my last 22 years. On the one hand, most of me just wants to disappear to a small hideout on the beach somewhere. I want to putter in a thriving […]
Why Should I Bother Making Art in Times o...
I got a call from an artist friend who was all upset about the way the world seems to be inside out and utterly falling apart. She said, “When I look at how the world has gotten, I think why bother making art anymore? People say they are either too worried about rent to buy […]
Excruciating Pain and Horror to Unending,...
The emergency room intake attendant side-eyed me in disbelief from under frowning grizzled brows. Holding my pulse with one hand, with the other he was hurriedly filling in my chart with cryptic slashes and numbers. He looked back down at it on his lap, and glanced at me again. Not really seeing me. “How is […]
My Dad Thought It Was Sooo Funny When He ...
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, looking back up at me, actual tears in his eyes. “I’m so sorry.” My dad used to burst into my bedroom, at dawn:30, throwing the door back with a thunderous bang. He’d roughly yank all the covers completely off me and my bed, tossing it all aside, and cheerily spout, […]
Get Your Audience Settled, whether Live o...
You’re about to lead a workshop or presentation. You want to begin, but your audience comes into the space full of energy, busy-busy chatting, walking around, chaotic. This is for you. What I’m about to show you works for in-person, online, and zoom events. The first thing I do is bang on my podium. Or […]
Happy, Happy Birthday to Meeeeeee!
Yesterday was my birthday! I never thought of myself as a writer . . . I woke up to grey skies and freezing cold air — I’d forgotten to close my window to only an inch like I usually do. It was wide open, and all the cold night air was hurricaning around in my […]
That Damn Cat!
How my mother was attacked by an enormous rasty-looking tabby cat…. (You can watch/listen to this story in a video at the bottom of this page!) My family used to live in a wonderful old 1880s farmhouse. Upstairs, my folks’ bedroom had a dutch door that opened onto a wide, sunny deck. My mother liked […]
Signals that There’s Something Going on U
Speaking with my business coach about a plan we were creating for my own coaching, I started to get really sleepy. If I didn’t lie down right now, I’d simply collapse on the floor in a puddle… (Watch/listen to me reading this story to you here!) I had been blazing wide awake the moment before, […]
God Rays Under the Water
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part IV Each day, just as evening began to shade the sky, an enormous, rippling line across the horizon in front of us appeared, darkly ominous, growing bigger and bigger. The first time I saw it I about wet my pants! In no time at all, it was […]
Sailing with Giants
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part III As we began to plod our way through the Doldrums, I started having a recurring dream when I settled down in my bunk to sleep after my night watch was over. My habit was to lie in my bunk fully dressed, because I didn’t trust James. […]
I Was Tossed Around Like A Rag Doll; My A...
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part II One moment, sunny sweet skies — the next, the Mother Hulk of a demon storm with hideous, grotesque grey-green and black clouds pelting us square on with sheets of ice-cold rain. We were hard-put to keep our footing, being tossed around by gigantic heaving swells. I […]
Almost Raped 400 Miles from Land; How One...
27 Days Sailing from KAUA’I to CALIFORNIA, Part I I struggled to sit up, holding my head on with both hands. I couldn’t seem to stand, so I slid off the bunk, and inch by inch slowly creeped on my hands and knees over to the box…. It was a hot mid-August, 1984, just a […]
I Was A Disaster As A Mother
My now-grown kids have told me they loved it that I was an artist and showed them by example about being creative. However, my personal opinion is that I might have felt more successful as a nurturing, loving mama if I had not been so completely focused on my artwork all the time. But I […]
Dreams of Devastation Morph into … Pickle
I keep having dreams where I’m standing in a dried up, deserted field. In the distance, I see the crumbling husks of hundreds and hundreds of houses, and the blackened, burnt skeletons of the once-magnificent trees that used to shade them. The cracked mud on the bottom of the creek is rock-hard, bereft of even […]
How the Voice of Dreaming Saved My Life
Isn’t it funny how, even though a period of time was one of the most painful ones of your life, later on you can look at it as one of the most fortunate? It’s January, 1999. After returning from visiting a friend back east, I’ve been homeless for months because I can’t afford to rent […]