Word of the Week - 151

Art by Rebecca Dautremer.

Rebecca Dautremer illustration, JULES VERNE, 2016.

Word of the Week:  ATTEND

Multiple decades of living have schooled me.  They have enlightened and confused and guided me, taught me to recognize the urgings from which my truth emerges.  I have learned, I continue to learn, to attend my soul's guidance. 

My mother once told me that when I tried to lie I lit up like a tilt sign.  While I knew in the moment she intended to discourage further attempts at dishonesty, I also believed her.  While the blaring of a flashing tilt sign may be more internal now than it was then, it is no less present, certainly no less emphatic.

While we find companionship and support in numbers, in reality we always ride alone.  In certain respects each of us is an army of one, directed on a unique assignment.  Adhering to my own truth while legions would have me join and follow can be isolating.  Worse, it may cause me to doubt what I have come to know as my path.  It seems part of what we are here to be is misunderstood, for it is impossible, not to mention onerous, trying to explain a state so clear when viewed within and so limp and inadequate-appearing when held to the light of day and critical eyes.  We want those who care for us to understand, to trust our self-knowing, realizing they may not.

What any of us is best equipped to do is be ourself.  To be that we must first know just what that means.  Arriving at that information is a lengthy, possibly lifelong process.  Such awareness is hard-won, its value unquestionable.  We navigate our days amid the noise of many voices.  Know the one that speaks to and for you with the greatest honesty and attend to that.   

Red

That red will never love me back causes me no loss of sleep, no ache which one might seek to fill with paler substitutes. Pink, there are days when yours is the soft touch, the sweet voice for which I hanker. But red, red, it is enough for me that you are in the world. You make everything groovy.

Artist: Troy Brooks.

Four works by Rebecca Dautremer.

More on red another day. I haven't even begun.

Other voices from other rooms

It has been several days since I've had the luxury to follow links, to discover.  On a twitchy morning, which is how this began but not how it continues, the sight of the extraordinary and labor-intensive prods me to mutter insults like "slacker" to myself.  How mean, how unpleasant.  Who would spend time in the company of someone just like the library supervisor who used to glare from her desk, mouth pinched in disapproval, at too much hilarity.  Clearly, any two people who could find something to laugh about during the typing of catalog file cards were at best to be frowned upon and at worst to be reprimanded.  It is much too early in the day for criticism.  I'll replace it with admiration for soaring imagination and skill and use it, not as a cudgel, but as a springboard for my own elevated thoughts du jour.

Take your fresh and eager young hearts to see this work at Jay Anderson's blog.  A brief, intricate and magic-affirming video awaits.   Books by the featured artist, Rebecca Dautremer, may be found here.

 

Author, artist Rebecca Dautremer, I highly recommend "The Secret Lives of Princesses."

For today's post, Jay interviews Viv Sliwka of Hen's Teeth Art, an example of whose envelope art follows. (The link no longer takes us to the Hen's Teeth story but here is a link to Viv's etsy shop, just in time for, well, whatever you want it to be in time for.)

Art from Hen's Teeth, Viv Sliwka.

My personal bridges over troubled water require color, humor, simple joy, a deft hand and a facile mind.  An envelope from Hens Teeth meets all my needs.  And apropos of a Simon and Garfunkel hit,  last month on her blog 37 Paddington, Angella offered those of us of a certain age the chance to rekindle our collective passion for the pair and the soundtrack they gave us.  A post worth visiting.