Art Plunge

Finally had a few days to decompress from the State Fair and try to recover. What I thought were allergies... Sinus infection. 🤧 Can we say- FUN?!  NOT. SNOT. Half the stuff from the Fair is still in the car. That's how exhausted I was from a month long ordeal of being a "seller", fighting illness and combating endo that was trying to creep up on me. All while juggling a part time job and trying to keep everything stocked and printed and matted and ordered and stuff shipped out. It kicked my butt proper but it was necessary. I'm now back in the "zone" to create and focus on my business... Which was kinda limping around for awhile honestly.  I've got so many ideas and projects in the works it's not funny. I really can't wait for sinus fun to be evicted from my head so I can start it up. Today I return to part time job with my trusty bottle of DayQuil and get back to the grind of life. Bad health stuff has creeped into my friends lives as well and...

  Appropriate to my mood I guess it's appropriate to be full on in the gloomy mood of Sorrow- as I work daily with Death in the Dia de Los Muertos exhibition.  My hand paints skulls, death grins and the life that springs forth from it. Death is never just death and the absence of life. It is very much alive in many ways. My recent blogs may seem like absolute bummers and they are- to an extent- but know that I have a healthy relationship with death, depression and healing. There is something comforting in knowing that you are feeling.... And feeling deeply. It's a very amazing gift of being human, although it hurts. How very magical! There are times in life where the trauma makes you feel nothing. I remember having no joy in life for anything and feeling like I was on autopilot as a human. Go to work, act normal, nothing made me happy, nothing made me sad. A complete flatline of feelings. Not a real human. I hated it.  All that was after a trauma of a bad breakup once upo...

  Remember to stop and smell the hibiscus... It's Friday and it's been a weird week of pushing emotions to the back burner and front burner all whilst trying to go to work and put on my "public face". Try talking, fielding questions and smiling all day... when all you want to do is lay in a ball all alone in a quiet room and release the floodgate of tears inside you ... It's very exhausting to the spirit.  Today I woke up a little more peaceful about things and am feeling a little more positive.  It helps to think of each death that occurs in our lives as a little seed or cutting- that gets planted in a special garden in our soul. That person now grows in that garden always, it hurts and is hard at first but nurturing it and tending to it helps it grow into a beautiful thing inside you. Forever safe now, no more pain, disease, illness, age... Forever vibrant and safe.  I may sound like a hippie but this is my coping mechanism. I have lots of little spirit plants i...

Oh you know, just having an existential meltdown this week for some reason. Some latent leftover trauma from death and a mind trip to being a teen all over again. I thought this was totally abnormal... But after a few Google searches and enlightening articles I see it is perfectly sane to feel the way I am feeling about a sudden loss of someone I hadn't been connected to for 30 years.  Perfectly normal albeit sad. I'm letting myself be sad and watching all the zen talks on sitting with your grief and emotions. It helps a bit. I know time is going to have to fix this. I'm mourning a lot of things, not just my first romance. Why it is deciding to manifest now? Who knows but there's lots of tears. Lots. I didn't even bother with eyeliner today and there's definitely been tears.  Death as usual is a slap in the face to how you're living and I haven't exactly felt connected to the things I want to be connected to. Roberts death brought that home for me. I fee...

Somehow I managed to take the news well when it came. Oh no!  Him!? I hadn't thought of him in ages. We had parted ways ...what, 30 years ago? It was sad news, my very first boyfriend has passed after a long painful battle with MS... and I immediately regretted not staying in touch but I swallowed the news and put on my "public face" and soldiered through the day. I pushed the news into my back pocket and sat at the Fair, chatting with people and doing business. That night, however, the information came crawling out of my back pocket and planted itself square on my chest. That sorrow. That heaviness. I could see Roberts face as clearly as if I had just talked to him. I hadn't actually seen him in decades though. He had a brilliant funny smile that made him always look as if something sarcastic was about to be said. He looked like he knew a hundred amusing things you did not. His eyes forever mischievous.  I can see him laughing and talking and hear his voice perfectly...