Maruca Time

Years ago when I lived near Boulder, Colorado I went to this manufacturing plant there that made purses. These purses were made from designer fabrics that knocked my socks off. I had bins filled with these fabrics when I left Boulder County and moved to Steamboat Springs. By 2010 and living in McKinney, Texas, I used up my very last scrap.

This manufacturer where I bought their scraps made purses from the fabrics they designed. The business is called Maruca. I've bought several of their purses over the years, but have always lusted over their fabrics. And then I began accumulating the scraps from their designs. I filled bins with the remnants. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I would open the bins and sort the scraps. I was in love with the textures, the colors, and the designs. And then I used my last scrap, my very last Maruca particle was sewn into a yoga bag that I had made in the summer of 2010. My life with Maruca was over. Or so I thought until I landed back in Boulder last month with a friend who had bags of Maruca scraps. Oh. My. God. My breathing has yet to go back to normal. I have them spread out in piles on my floor.

I don't pick them up -- ever. I've been sewing with them for days now, doing very little else. I'm not sure how many bags I've made this week, but I've sold almost all my inventory and have had to restock. Here's a few pictures of the latest batches.

I haven't done too much else but sew. I've been watching Christmas movies on Netflix while combining fabrics on the floor, sewing them together, adding zippers, lining, and letting their magic shine through. I am still in love with the fabrics and how the bags have turned out. It's one of the first things I'll do in the morning is go back upstairs where the scraps are laid out, and begin again. I can feel another trip back to Boulder in my future.

It was a French General kind of day.

Today I sewed. I sat on the wooden floor and cut out flowers and leaves. I made journal covers and zipper bags out of several different fabrics, but mostly French General fabrics. They belong to the homeowner where I live. She grew up with the owner of French General. I got to meet her last August while taking her Shibori Indigo dyeing class.

Tunics I made and then Shibori Indigo dyed them. Check them out in my shop.

 Her name is Kaari Meng. She also wrote the book in the picture below.

Her fabrics are the striped cotton and solid colored linen. Those are covers for book journals that I've been working on for the last couple of days.

The flowered fabrics are not from French General, but I loved how well they worked together.




Then off I went to make the zipper bags. The main reason I made the zipper bags instead of cleaning up the space and starting on other orders was because I loved the look of the fabrics together splayed out on the floor. I had to keep working with them instead of folding them and piling them into bins. I just couldn't do it -- not yet. So, here are the zipper bags.

All French General fabrics. Perfect way to create my day.

What good am I willing to accept?

hm... where to start.

I could start with an experience I had back in September 2008 at a workshop I attended in Colorado. We had had five full days of intense Aikido exercises, meditations, magic of conflict resolutions, lots of laughter, and creating a space to speak of John Denver over and over and over. His presence was palpable. We listened to his music and heard many stories about him. There were many, many things that I took away from that experience, but surprisingly what has come up for me almost weekly, if not daily, is a question that the daughter of the facilitator asked me one night.

Does place make you happy? Or, can you be happy in any place?

What was fascinating to me when I returned home to Steamboat Springs I immediately made plans to move from there. I just didn't know where. I just knew that I was done with the massive quantities of snow and needed to move on. I stuck with that decision even after meeting and loving a man there. I still moved.

I've moved several times since then, and still ponder that question especially now when I have the opportunity to move again. Then yesterday there was a dialogue with a friend about how much good were we willing to accept. It came from a discussion we were having about being able to be happy with everything else in our lives but the where. We have been struggling with the where for years.

I would love to be able to say that the where doesn't matter to me, but when she posed the question to me last night about defining the good I'm willing to accept, I felt the struggle arise in my throat.

It was interesting that the first thing I thought of when it comes to defining the good that I'm willing to accept was place. My first vision was one of home, a house where I could grow flowers, fruits, and vegetables in the yard; drink coffee on a covered porch while rain pinged the roof above me; listen to the birds singing in the trees around me; and watch the waves crash against the shore. I saw myself sitting in a cottage surrounded by green vegetation, vines pregnant with blossoms, bees and butterflies creating their own video in front of me. I saw myself sitting peacefully, drinking in the moment one after the other without feeling the need to move. In the evening the same perch would serve me well to watch the sun drop into the ocean.

I need room to breathe, room to be alone with my own thoughts, visions, and ideas. I am willing to accept the good of this space to be filled with all that makes me smile: comfy furniture to put my feet upon while writing my creative flow on paper or reading someone else's. I am willing to accept the good of friendships being developed in  this peaceful, warm space where wine is poured and home-cooked meals are shared.

Music is played. Dancing is enjoyed. Dreams are exposed. Transparency is rewarded. All in this space where nature is nurtured, where creativity abounds, and where love fills the air. You feel it when you enter the front door. The door is purple. You have to walk through a canopy of wisteria to get to the porch where baskets hang from the ceiling dripping sweet potato vines. Antique troughs serve as homes for vining geraniums and white allyssum.

There's a porch swing swaying in the breeze, a quilt folded on the back of it. Friends move the pillows to the side to make room for themselves as they settle in with their wine glasses. They sing with the others leaning against the porch rail as another friend sits on the porch step playing a guitar. The waves pound the shore as the sun drops into the water. Candles are lit, more wine is poured, and the singing and laughing increase.

There's a studio with my name on it where even more magic is made. The flooring is hardwood. The windows are large with sun shining across the table of fabrics, glinting on the scissors. In the corner of the studio is a small love seat where guests/friends sit and chat while I pin, cut, and stitch. There's a small refrigerator filled with beer, cheese, and grapes. Works in progress are pinned to one of the walls to create a cacophony of eclectic ideas coming to life. A lacy collar, a painted cotton background for a wall hanging, stitched words on vintage handkerchiefs, strands of beads, picture cut outs of inspiration -- the ever-changing wall that creates a locomotive desire within me to keep breathing and keep dreaming.

While typing the above paragraph I kept thinking about my studio in Steamboat, and I don't want that one again. It was too "industrial" for me. I couldn't cozy it up no matter how hard I tried. I want a studio with warm tones -- wood, lace curtains, beaded lampshades, shelves with recycled fabrics, laces, beads, and buttons. It would be a place where people wanted to come and sit, imbibe and explore, a place where creative juices always flowed, a place that just thinking about it when I awake each morning would make me want to jump out of bed because I am ecstatic to be able to go there again. It would be a place where I had plenty of room to cut, sew, make a mess, and teach classes. It would be a place of community where people wanted to gather, where people felt welcomed and nurtured, where people came for respite. It would be a place where I could feel rejuvenated and relaxed, where every day would be a vacation.

I have just described what good I am willing to accept. This or something better, is what another friend of mine would always add. This is my place that I see when I think of whatever that thing is that I call home. This is my place wherever it may be.

And, maybe one day I'll be able to say that place doesn't matter for me to be happy, but right here right now, I long for a place that I just described, and I am willing to accept that good into my life.

the path within

Last night my daughter and I were on Skype together, and I got to witness one of the most exhilarating experiences that as her mother I got to witness. She described to me a session she had with a client who had been in pain most if not all of his life. She showed me the energy waves she felt and how it had affected both of them. She had to stop talking several times because she was so moved to tears. Her face altered as she spoke and as she cried. She became right in front of me the angel being that she truly is. She opened her heart so freely and lovingly to another soul who blended his energy with hers to create this healing of great magnitude. I saw in her every difficulty, every tragedy, every remorse, and every painful experience morph into this light being that shone brighter than I ever thought possible. I watched this transformation, and it gave me not only hope that I could do this for myself, but it also gave me direction on how to do it.

She has been a master teacher for me from the first time I held her. I knew we were going to be on a ride of our lives back in 1980, but I had no idea that it would turn out like it has so far. She teaches me over and over how to let go and to trust in the moment, to trust in who I really am, and to allow that being to show up. I've allowed others to define my life and how I live it. I have been a people-pleaser, and let others determine for me my own living conditions and my work. I have watched my daughter meander through her own life, test-driving different personas until discovering the one that is truly hers. I watch in awe and gratitude for having a model from which I can learn. I see how the Universe bends over backwards to open doors for her when she's so presently in the moment and happy there. I see the doors slam shut that do not serve her, and I watch how she adjusts her own sails with expertise and grace. I watch her flow through the choices presented to her, following the signs that show up. She sifts through the feelings of wonderment and lets the detritus fall away.

What I most want to acknowledge in this post is the joy I felt as she described the natural process of bringing her gift forth and showering it with great love for another soul who had come to her bearing his pain and sorrow. She opened herself up and allowed that light we all have within us to merge with another's light and it raised them both up to a place they'd never been before.

The only way I see to uncovering that magic within is to be still and to excavate until I get down to that very core that is my true-ness, my connection to all that is, that light spark that shines every time I feel tremendous joy. It is in that moment that I recognize myself and every doubt disintegrates. It is that instant that my own light can shine, and it is my desire to allow those instants become how I live my life. Those joy-filled, over-the-top exciting moments allow me the expansive imaginings to create a life of creativity in which I can grow. I drop the pretenses of who you think I am because it's a road that dead ends, and it is so damn desolate there. I choose the path that leads to fulfillment, and that path lies within.

relish happy

Guidance from Eileen Caddy

Enter Into The Secret Place of The Most High

There is so much going on in the outer that these times of withdrawal for you are most important, these times of entering into the ‘secret place of the Most High’. There in the peace and silence you can readjust your whole being, draw on the source of all power and so return refreshed and revitalised, ready to cope with all that lies ahead of you. Every soul needs these times of readjusting. Some realise it but others don’t and busy themselves in great activities, which exhaust them and they become like a rundown clock that needs rewinding. Unless they go into the silence for rewinding, they become ineffective and eventually stop ticking. That is why every now and again I have to remind you how vitally important these times of withdrawal are. The hours spent alone with Me are vital for the work you are doing for Me, are vital for your spiritual advancement. These times alone with Me mean more to you than anything. They are your meat and drink, they are the food of the Spirit which enables you to do what you know has to be done with courage and without hesitation.

7 March 2014

I just read the above paragraph right after making my coffee and bagel this morning, after settling down on the couch, after letting the dog out and then back in, and after questioning (as I too often do) what I'm doing with my life.

I have been a working maniac most of my life, if not all, until recently, and there are more than just a few moments that I find myself critical of my present inactivity. I'm in a place right now of re-inventing my life by re-directing my thoughts, and I am finding this not the easiest task I've ever encountered. 

I don't want to work just to keep busy and "feel" productive anymore. After three years of being a machine that rarely turned off, I find myself in a peculiar situation for me. Time stretching out before me, unraveling endlessly, and me sitting here at my laptop with a hot cup of coffee beside me wondering just what in the hell do I do with myself today?

My thoughts meander around all kinds of possibilities that create a bit of angst in my soul because I question how I ended up here, and more importantly why I ended up here. I question my own heart sometimes too. My intuition seems to have led me astray. Or, are all of these questions just unfocused meanderings in my head that serve absolutely no purpose but to help me feel my way back into the vibrations I enjoy dancing with?

I have always awakened with a full to-do list. Years have been spent with those to-do lists growing longer and never being completed. I don't make those lists anymore. I've turned off that machine. I'm learning to quiet my mind without activity. I'm learning what it means to just be still and find that happy place within. I'm not playing by the rules I was raised with anymore, and now I'm standing at a precipice wondering how I live in a world without the rules I had internalized years ago. 

A friend told me last night to focus on what I want, to write it down, proclaim it to the world, and let it go. Apparently right now is a major vortex of dreams coming true, or so I was told. The matrix is losing its dominance over those awakened, and now is the time of our lives to allow those dreams to be fulfilled.

Hm, the difficulty with that, declaring what I want, is that I don't have great clarity on what it is I really want besides living off-grid with an amazing garden, animals and like-minded souls. I have not discovered that here in upstate NY, and I want a longer growing season and milder temperatures than what's offered here. (Hm... sounding like I do know the basics of what I want.)

I have spent my life going after what I wanted with such a strong will that nothing was going to hold me back. I don't have that strong desire right now. I don't know where it went, but I got nothing right now. I have always known where I wanted to live, where I wanted to move to and how I wanted to be once I got there. Well, not now. I feel emptied out. It's been a time of seclusion without constant productivity. I was secluded for three years in my last relationship, but I was so damn busy that when I did stop to view my life, where I lived, how I lived, and what I was doing, I would get depressed. The solution? Stop being still. There was no time with my mind being emptied out. If my hands weren't busy, I was reading. I read everything in sight. I had four library cards, and almost all my outings consisted of collecting more and more books. Don't get me wrong. I am NOT complaining about my life at all. I am sifting through the memories to decide what I want to bring forward now. 

And what are those things I want to carry with me? The knowledge and skills I acquired. I was more creative in those three years than in all my years combined. I drew things. I've never drawn in my life, at least nothing I wanted to show anyone. My drawings were screen-printed onto t-shirts, and some of those shirts I made into dresses. 

I triumphed in my dress-making business. For the first time in my life I was making enough money doing what I loved to support myself. I was stretching my creative muscles beyond what I had ever done before. I filled notebooks with new designs, classes to teach,  and website updates. There were no moments of contemplation or meditation, no self-reflections, and now upon looking back, I see that I arranged my time like that because I didn't want to see where I had landed. Because when those moments would sneak up on me, those moments of quiet solitude where I had the chance to open my eyes to the environment in which I had placed myself, I became immeasurably depressed. I would sink into such a hole of blackness that I couldn't get myself out for days on end. I was willing to live a lifetime with those black days until I just couldn't do it anymore.

I went through an experience with my daughter last fall that brought me closer to her father and allowed such beautiful space for me to love him and his wife. I realized then with the four of us together what a family we had created. I knew then that my partner of three years was not part of that. He chose not to join me, and I was perfectly happy to not have him with me. I was able to view my life without him in it, and I could see intense love and gratitude with and for people I now had in my life. I saw that I was not alone. I realized that I could suffer great helplessness, despair, and fear and come out on the other side with an army of warriors beside me. That recognition deepened my love for all involved, and showed me not only how strong I am, but also how secure my footing is no matter what's going on around me.

Months later I propelled myself into a new environment, one more conducive to who I have become, a life of respite with a furry friend and like-minded housemate. I am breathing easier and more deeply for the first time since I've moved to New York. I have made the time for self-reflection, meditation, and indeed more creativity, and now I get to choose the next step. Ha! Something I thought I always wanted, and now it has come to pass. The difficulty for me is that all possibilities lay before me. Nothing is written in stone. I can go anywhere at this point in my life. For the first time I don't have an agenda, no one waiting for me, no desires that compel me. I have offers that I am weighing, and yet I am still just as undecided as before the offers came in. So, right now all I can do is be happy in each moment. That's my job right now. No matter what, sink into the now and relish the happy there.

revelation

REVELATION MUST BE TERRIBLE

Revelation must be
    terrible with no time left
to say goodbye.

Imagine that moment,
   staring at the still waters,
with only the brief tremor

of your body to say
   you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard, but you know,
   at least we are all exiled together.
When you open your eyes to the world

you are on your own for
   the first time. No one is
even interested in saving you now

and the world steps in
   to test the calm fluidity of your body
from moment to moment,

as if it believed you could join
   its vibrant dance
of fire and calmness and final stillness.

As if you were meant to be exactly
   where you are, as if,
like the dark branch of a desert river

you could flow on without a speck
   of guilt and everything
everywhere would still be just as it should be.

As if your place in the world mattered
   and the world could
neither speak nor hear the fullness of

its own bitter and beautiful cry
   without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo.

Knowing that it takes only
   that first, terrible
word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible
   knowing you can
 never hide your voice again.

-- David Whyte

When I got into bed tonight I pulled my David Whyte River Flow book of poetry into my lap. I held it in my hands, breathing deeply and just feeling the warmth of the pages between my fingers. I absorbed David's words through my hands and slowly rested upon a poem. Opening my eyes and looking at the pages, I read the words, and then I read them again, as I do with all of his works. This one resonated with me so much that I felt pulled to the keyboard to not only type his words, but then to write from my heart what those sentiments mean to me in the moment.

I am now at the precipice of that revelation, that knowing that my voice cannot be hidden or silenced again. I opened my heart to what I breathed in as the truth for me, the angelic wings of knowingness after a long blackened cocooned lifetime. The revelation of seeing the light once that cocoon was broken open turned my world, and continues to do so, upside down. I am discovering moment by moment that what I had once deemed true, so true that I would have bet my life on it, is not what I thought all along. The revelations keep showing up. They are terrible in the sense that I must learn to fly with my new wings, but first I have to figure out how to pull this new body out of the small hole I managed to make for my emergence.

I am on my own again with less stuff weighing me down. I carry less inhibitions, less expectations, less certainty, and less rigidness. My calm is fluid. I stare as if I have for the first time opened my eyes and seen the world anew. I poke my head out and wonder what's before me. Is there anything to tether me? To silence me? I test my new voice. It echoes in the stillness. A tear meanders down my cheek. I lift myself free from the darkness within, struggling with the tightness of the familiar, but yet yearning for the adventure of the unknown. I look about me, around me, and above me. The colors sustain me. I am clothed in beauty I have just now only grasped. I breathe in the blue, the green, the purple, and do not recognize their scents, but I am willing to step forward and smell the unfamiliar, to take it in with each breath, and awaken to the magic of stepping a foot forward on shaky ground knowing that if my foot slips I will be carried safely by my wings.

This

SWEET DARKNESS
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
© David Whyte: Excerpted from SWEET DARKNESS
In THE HOUSE OF BELONGING: Many Rivers Press

I am discovering several times over those things that are "too small" for me. I call them course corrections. I am a deliberate and conscious sifter of my own experiences, and I am sifting through those things that don't "sift" well with me. I could write on and on about them, but that just doesn't feel good to me to dwell on what I don't want in my life. Instead, I'm discovering those things that do feel good, and when I see them or experience them they feel better than I could have ever imagined.

One thing is my reconnection with nature. Right now that reconnection is more in my mind and on the computer than being outside as I am not one who loves being frostbitten again.

I found a house built in its natural surroundings in Thailand. It took six weeks and $8,000 to build. It is built in nature and with nature, and I have revisited the website over and over again because it feels good to watch the video where the front door opens and I can see myself walking right through. I can see myself living in that house, coffee brewing in the "kitchen", showering in the bathroom, sitting in the bedroom window, relaxing in the hammock outside, meditating by the pond, wandering through the vegetation, and on and on and on.

I realize how disconnected from the earth I have been especially since leaving Colorado in 2008. I loved hiking in the mountains and walking along the Yampa river. My next stop was Texas where I immersed myself in a concrete jungle, and my earthly connection diminished. The walking I did there was between buildings on paved streets and concrete sidewalks. The summers were too hot to be outside, and my only solace was inside air-conditioned rooms. On the flip side has been the harsh winters I've endured farther northeast where being outside in blizzards has been treacherous and soul-numbing.

I had felt my inner strength grow while planting my garden last year. I loved sticking my hands in the dirt, plopping in seeds, and tapping down dirt. I would sit amongst my crops and read in the mornings with a hot cup of coffee. I watched bees sit on my snap pea blossoms. I read little while gazing at the butterflies lighting on the pole beans. I made myself a home out there with vines growing up the fence, and sunflowers shading me from the sun. I ate my meals of mesclun leaves, snap peas, pole beans, carrots, cherry tomatoes, and green peppers while weeding and thinning. Birds provided me with easy listening, and baby rabbits entertained me immensely.

I remembered the wealth of growing my own food, the experience it provided me of self-sustenance. I was rich in my garden. I had plenty. I had untainted vegetables. I had longed-for sunshine on my shoulders. I had it all.

Now, I'm creating a life of utter fulfillment. I'm going next where the growing season is longer, where I can get my hands in the dirt more often, and where I can be around others who understand that need for earth connection. I am going where sunshine is revered and not admonished with long sleeves, caps, and lathering of sunscreen. The sun is not my enemy. It never has been.

I'm going where I can live with pets, where I can live with those who love animals in their lives. These conditions are important to me. Do I have to have them to be happy? No, but I want animals and growing my own food in my life. These things fill me. I want to be surrounded by people who cherish the same things, who love our Mother, who appreciate the sacred in what She has to offer us.

This brings me alive. Anything less is too small.