Hey, how have you been? I’ve gone through a weird-ass journey lately without leaving my house. I’ve felt so many feelings–I could win the feeling olympics. I’d be on the top step, gold medal Laura-Marie, crying, deeply solid in my grief and joy.
I put up some new art. Feels good to invite it into my soul. I’m letting it tell me something.
I wrote something about art also, on facebook. It meant a lot to me, to talk about aspects of artmaking I think about all the time but don’t usually discuss.
how I make art
art is making a thing I need to make, flawed and weird, even if it hurts, then showing it to other people, even if that hurts. and doing that over and over again, hoping some people like it. Ming always likes it, so that’s cool.
I think a lot about being a translator from the Chaos into the Sense, or the boring Sense into the wonderfully vivid multicolored Chaos.
dipping reality in chaos and seeing if that’s pretty. moving ideas from the other world where art comes from, pulling it into this world, making the conditions right. kind of like a seance, but with less holding hands.
I think about loving art into existence, sitting with the paint, sharpie, or words and seeing what they want to be today. facilitating art out of my being, past, thoughts, voices. drawing the shapes that are there and not there.
nature plus the experience of my own body, plus other art I’ve been hearing, seeing, reading. helping myself be the right mood and style to let it form, coming together like a magical ball of bread dough or pastry, to then form into another shape and bake and see if it’s yummy.
it’s super spiritual, like everything is, for me. hearing whispers from the other world, paying the right amount of half-attention, and trusting so much intuition. doing what comes naturally and watching it get weirder and lovelier.
oracle deck
Another important thing is I started my garden-themed oracle deck finally. I had been nervous I guess, like I didn’t want to mess it up because it felt so vital! Then I was telling myself–if I mess up, it’s ok. Lots of cereal box pressboard in this world. I can start over, no problem.
So I drew my first card last night, depicting tree collard, and then my second card an hour ago, depicting bumblebee. I feel happy with them. Feels like what I need to do.
I want to blog pictures of the cards, but I feel protective. I’l ponder that and post another time, probably.
My friend Dawn taught me about oracle decks–grateful to her.
journey
Something had been bothering me for months that I couldn’t talk about, and then yesterday suddenly I could talk about it. Cried a lot, txted the main ideas to a friend, talked to Ming about it. I guess I needed time just to hurt, and then I was ok expressing it.
Hopefully I can move forward now. It relates to old family pain. Nothing I can or should take action on–just understand and learn from. What not to do–how not to behave toward other people. But I already knew that part.
The journey of a thousand miles can begin with an inner step. I feel mostly good about my life this morning, and sweet Ming sleeping in bed, what we’ll do today when the sun comes up.
Ming took this tree collard pic for me, to draw from, with the last light of the day, yesterday. I love that loopy part of the stem. Bit sparse, but they leaf more in cooler months.
