The love list

Here's what I loved in November

It’s the last day of November, and this is the LOVE LIST, where I share the things I loved this month and give you a bit of a life & studio update.

Well. Here we are. The end of November finds us in a limbo state, unsure about what might happen, unsure of what we might be called to do or how our lives might change, drastically and suddenly. But no matter what happens in December or January or next year or the next - no matter what happens - that which is beautiful and true will remain beautiful true. The human heart, the creative spirit, is alive and resilient.

The intuitive in me, the big part of me that lives mostly in energy, wants to tell you that things right now are not what they seem. Buckle up, that part of me wants to say. But the rational part of me wants to stay quiet, because this is a free will universe and who knows what is to come in the next ten minutes or the next ten years?

As much as we crave to know, we can never know. We only ever have this moment.

What I do know is this:

Our natural state as creative beings has never been more important. Art saves us every time- the art we make and the art that speaks to us.

We can be realistic without feeding the vortex of worst case scenarios.

We can imagine peaceful solutions and work to bring them into being.

We can prepare for things we hope don’t come to pass while remaining grounded in the present moment where they haven’t yet come to pass.

We can turn off broadcast news and yet remain informed.

We can be mindful about where we put our money.

We can decide who we are, what we have to give, and how we can protect the most vulnerable among us.

We can pour our energy into our communities, our relationships, our creative work, our dreams.

We can remind ourselves that miracles do happen all the time. Our hearts beat, for instance. We go to sleep then wake up.

We can’t control other people’s actions, but we can control our own selves and what goes on inside of us. We can listen to the guidance within our hearts. We can live our values. We can keep going.

These are good words from Andrea Gibson.

And this is worth a listen - If you yearn for peace and harmony you have to learn to work with chaos and conflict.

I took some beautiful walks this month. I watched the leaves erupt into orange and gold and and fall from the trees. I noticed which flowers continue to bloom even when the air turns cold.

I read somewhere that we turn to nostalgia when the present moment is painful and I’ve certainly been turning to nostalgia a lot lately, but it’s not a desire to return to an earlier time, or a belief that the past was better, because some things were better, but most things weren’t. It feels more like gazing back into a reality that no longer exists as a way of orienting myself to the reality in which I now reside. Nostalgia and grief are so closely linked, especially this time of year, so perhaps engaging with nostalgia is also a way to walk with grief.

For whatever reason, or perhaps a complexity of reasons, I’m still watching, and loving Family. I’m in season four, which aired 1978-79. Tracy and I also watched Singles and Reality Bites when I learned he’d never seen them and remembered what it was like to be in our twenties during the nineties. And I’ve been revisiting some things that I always like to revisit in November like Hannah and Her Sisters and Grey Gardens.

I happened upon the movie Safe one night and watched it for the first time. I’m not sure how I missed it in 1995, but it’s excellent.

The Thanksgiving episode of Somebody, Somewhere was some of the best, most beautiful, true, human television I’ve ever watched.

I also watched some good documentaries this month - Martha, Whitney, Breath of Fire and Buy Now!

I started reading (my mom’s favorite philosopher) Mary Midgley’s The Myths We Live By.

In a sudden burst of clarity, I deactivated my facebook account and deleted all of my content from my studio Instagram account. I have no plans to return to facebook, but I did start posting digital drawings to my Insta. I’m just drawing and posting when I feel like it. I realize a lot of people followed me there for paintings and aren’t so much interested in these digital drawings but that’s just the way it goes. We flow. We change. And this is what I’m making at the moment.

In other news, I’ve struggled with foot pain for over a year, but this month, I was improved enough to be able to start up my daily workout again. I added QiGong into my morning practice and I can not even tell you the difference it has made in how I feel. Ten out of ten stars.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. I made pies.

Thanksgiving night we watched My Old Ass, which is one of the best if not the best things I’ve seen this year. I highly recommend you watch it but understand that you will cry. A lot.

The week before, Tracy and his sister and sister-in-law and myself had a little impromptu dance party to the album Tracy and his brother recorded in 1986.

I’ve been writing a lot. Everything I write, even fiction, is close to my lived experience, and I think a lot about how my writing is going to be received by people who know me or may see or imagine they see themselves in it, so I loved how to (not) talk to your family about your writing.

I published the fourth installment of Cosmic Heart. (You can read more about that and decide if you’d like to subscribe here.)

Thank you for reading. Truly, I am so grateful for you. I’ve always wanted to be a full-time writer. That is still my dream, and you make that dream seem possible. I can’t be a writer without readers. I mean, I can, but it’s so much better with you. I wish you peace and love and a calm nervous system and an energy body that glows in the darkness - meridians open and flowing, your heart as wide as the ocean and your boundaries set. I love you.