Stripping the walls of colour - getting real

30 October 2010

"Being There"

A lovely soul from Oregon is taking over my sanctuary. Godspeed. I'm stripping down my walls....as the colourful textures of my paintings descend to reveal the pristine whiteness behind, I'm feeling a little blue. The excitement of the journey is not yet. Though, the emptiness of the life I am collapsing into a singularity is becoming apparent.

I was never a pro at "goodbyes." But this time around, it is much more global - it is to everything here, in the U.S. It is to the way of life that has been home to me for nearly 1/2 of my life. I have spent so many tumultuous, fruitful and insightful years here, and I do not feel "met" here any longer. My heart and spirit do not feel met. I I will not miss it - I know in my gut. It feels like I've squozen every drop from that marrow [who says I can't mix metaphors ;O)!] - tasting the highest of the high and the lowest of the low sides.... There is completeness and sadness and a budding excitement for what can be all melted into one potent bitter-sweet elixir.

There is also a desire for healthy love...and a knowledge that I need this journey to learn how to do that from scratch. Of all the areas of my life that I have looked at with a magnifying glass and a flash-light, this is one of the areas still in the Shadow. I feel like the kaleidoscope of cultures and landscapes and the very process of budding off from the familiar just may provide the illumination to that young side of me that wants to bond, but knows not how to go about it from a place of center yet.

In a strange way, I'm honoring a need for a hermitage from the familiar, although, it hardly shall be a hermitage in itself. There's something elusively magical about surrendering habitual ways in one broad swoop and plunging head-first into the new. There's something in it of Richard Bach's piloting lifestyle [that has captivated me as a child - I thought, I'd grow up to be a wandering pilot].....Free, unpredictable...connected on a primal human level - beyond the Tower of Babel. In some ways, I feel more at home with the unknown than with the known...

Questions are teeming in my mind....and the heart is still and open. I have little plan aside from the air-ride critical points for the journey, and a huge part of me wants to keep it that way. Being completely given to the Greater Currents....and trusting that what needs to happen will. I am consciously abstaining from projections onto the journey - expectations, intentions or predictions. The only intention is to follow my heart with integrity.

I spoke with my dear friend John yesterday over tea....and he too has taken a journey akin to mine at a similar point in his life. He asked me to above all write with authenticity and to give way to the raw emotions [of which I seem to have no shortage lately ;O)] behind the scenery and cultures. That rang true with my intent. So that is my commitment - FULL AUTHENTICITY.

"Chalice and Blade"