The Artful Life ~ Finding the Beauty in Every Day

Sunday morning = Goddess Time! Here's what it's all about: I've been engaging in this practice for a while now, but listening to this podcast gave me a name for it... goddess time. Yes! This is a practice for busy women with lots of responsibilities and demands on their time and person. (That's pretty much all of us, right?) Here's how it works for me. On Sunday morning, my time is my own. No one else (including my internal taskmaster) can tell me what do, or even make requests. No phone. No e-mail. It could be a walk, or yoga, or blogging, or a wander in the garden, but usually it's bed, tea, scented candle, journal, pens, huge stack of books and magazines, plus the little dog who thoroughly approves of mornings in bed. I've worked to make my bedroom feel like a little sanctuary, so I relish this *free* time I get to spend there. It makes the whole week easier. Where can you fit some goddess time into your life?

*********************************

Friday afternoon was fun. A trip off the island and 40 minutes down the coast brings us to one of our favourite little towns, which also has my favourite thrift store, favourite natural foods market, best ceramic supply warehouse, and favourite sushi place. So that was the agenda. Actually, my sweetie dropped me off at the thrift store while he went to the ceramic supply. This works better for both of us. After a quick cruise for buttons (there weren't any) I went straight to the book section, and then straight to the back corner, where all the atlases, dictionaries, and encyclopedias are kept. I collect old dictionaries for mixed media play, and I can usually find a good one here for about 75 cents. I bent down to grab an old atlas off a lower shelf, and saw a dusty box pushed far back under the shelves. My pulse started racing a bit. I pulled the heavy box out into the open, to reveal a full 16 volume set of The Book of Knowledge, first copyright 1916, republished in 1946. The first page I opened to was a full colour plate beautifully painted common eggs of wild birds. I snapped the book closed and looked around, fearing that I might be suddenly mobbed by others who could see that I had found a real treasure. There was only one other woman in the vicinity, and she was thoroughly involved in a coffee table book about the Irish countryside. I quietly turned my body so as to block her view of the prize: 16 volumes, brimming with gorgeous colour plates, interspersed with hundreds of quaint black and white illustrations on every subject from astronomy to architecture to nursery rhymes. My head was spinning. I was thinking about creating gorgeous collage sheets, about pulling things out and framing them, about making all kinds of art, and mostly about how I just had to own these gorgeous books. I looked for the price, and found nothing on any of the books, nothing on the box. Just then, an announcement came, letting us know the store was closing in five minutes. Yikes! I tried to pick up the box, but it was much too heavy, and I already had a basket full of old atlases, which was weighing me down a bit, and I was loathe to let go of. What to do? Clutching the volume with the egg illustration (if nothing else, I wasn't leaving without this!) I went in search of someone to help me, reluctantly leaving the heavy box under the shelves. 10 minutes, $20, and a bit of sweaty dusty wrangling later, I was sitting on a bench outside the thrift store, a huge, heavy, dusty box beside me, looking, I'm sure, like the cat who swallowed the canary. My husband pulled up, smiling, then took in the box, his smile fading... So for my Goddess Time today? I'll be sitting down with these beautiful new books!