reverb10 - wisdom

Hi Beautiful,
This is an inspiring on-line project I've decided to jump in to! "Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." Every day in December there is a new prompt for writing and reflection.

December 10 – Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out? (Author: Susannah Conway)

I love this photo, I think I look like I'm in the midst of making a wise decision right in that moment!  All the elements that support wise decision making are there: solitude, perspective, a wide-open and supportive environment, relaxation, space, and self-contentment. Personally I find Dog & Ocean to be very important elements to support my spirit too!
I'm proud to say that 2010 has been a year of good decisions for me. I've made strong decisions, hard decisions, smart decisions, good decisions. I really like the path on which I have set myself  by making these decisions. But this prompt is about wise decisions.

Smart and strong can come from our minds, our experience, and our discernment. Wise, I believe, has to come from all that as well as from Heart, Spirit, and a sense of larger purpose.

As I reflected on this, I realized that all my smart and stong decisions of this year  (and I made some big, life-changing, good ones around health, career, and life-focus) all these decisions about my outer circumstances came from a deep, wise, internal decision I made early in the year. That decision was to push out of my comfort zone and engage much more profoundly with the world. And by World, I mean the Outer World of commerce, community, people, and culture.

Essentially, after years of artistic introversion and working alone, I wisely decided it was time to shine my light outwards. Not because this is a better way to be, but because I knew on some deep level that it was my time to grow in this direction. I also knew that it would require courage, discomfort, and a new way of conducting my daily life.

This one moment of deep knowing, this decision which was really a commitment to myself, has been the catalyst for all kinds of positive change in my life, and I have found that by checking all of my practical decisions against this one wise decision, I am keeping on a path that feels true. With each new turn in the path, I ask "Is this supporting my decision to shine my Light into the World?" If the answer is "Yes," then I know it will be worthwhile to push through the inevitable discomfort and rawness of a new way of being in the world.

reverb10 - party

Hi Beautiful,
This is an inspiring on-line project I've decided to jump in to! "Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." Every day in December there is a new prompt for writing and reflection. 

December 9 – Party Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans. 

As you may know by now, I live in a small, relatively isolated  island community. We have no pubs, cinemas, nightclubs. We have one really great restaurant, but they serve dinner only once a week (once every two weeks in Winter.) What we do have is a community of lively, creative souls who have become expert at creating our own entertainment. Parties tend to be pretty great around here. It was hard to pick just one highlight of 2010, so I'll tell you about the last party I went to - it was pretty wonderful.

The Full Moon Supper Club was founded this year. A group of 10 or so couples meet monthly to eat and drink, hosting rotates. The November supper club was exquisite. We travelled to our sister island Hornby, to the vineyard home of Suzie and Steve. A beautiful fresh snow was falling as we made our way up the bamboo lined path to the door. You know that special feeling of standing on a doorstep in the dark, smelling fresh snow, and then suddenly being drawn in to the warmth, light, conviviality, hugs, and delicious smells of a friend's festive home? Ahhh. Timber rafters, earth coloured walls adorned with beautiful land and oceanscapes by  local painters, smells of something roasting, woodsmoke, hints of perfume. Soon there is a glass of very good red wine in my hands, and I'm drawn in to circles of conversation. A long table, beautifully dressed, and the food! Wild mushroom crostini, with chantarelles picked that day in the woods. Beef carpaccio, tuna tartare. Then the main course, the best lambchops (I was craving more for a week afterwards) gorgeously plated. Excellent wines. Creme brulee. The perfect dinner party.

reverb10 - beautifully different

Hi Beautiful,
This is an inspiring on-line project I've decided to jump in to! "Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what's happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead." Every day in December there is a new prompt for writing and reflection. 




December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful. (Author: Karen Walrond)

Mercurial. Sensual. Transparent. I argue with these qualities in myself. Do you notice how we often fight, minimize, or denigrate the very qualities that make us beautifully different?

Something that has frustrated me about myself is this mercurial thing - I am always shifting and changing and trying on new hats and trying out new careers and wandering down new paths, and it drives me crazy to have to answer the question "what do you do?" or to have to fill in that little short line marked "Occupation" on forms. Seriously? It never says "Attach a separate sheet if necessary."  I went to four different colleges in four different disciplines before finally graduating (from a multidisciplinary program! ha!) I've started five businesses, all of them in creative fields. I've lived in 24 houses in 12 cities in three countries. I've been married three times. As for art forms, I have studied and pursued painting, printmaking, photography, ceramics, metalsmithing, bookbinding, quilting. Amongst many others, I've had the jobs fortune-teller, bellydancer, mural painter, and activist. Funny thing is, I'm not actually fickle or shallow. I form strong attachments and deep devotions. I don't throw anything away, I just keep adding. I'm a collage. I think this makes me beautifully different.

I feel like a throwback to another age and place when it comes to sensuality. For one thing, I  think of sexuality as a facet of, not separate from, the full richness of the life of the body - it's all one thing, it's all about the awakened and sacred body, and there aren't all these different boxes "sex" "food" "nature" "art" "dancing" "mothering" "love" "pain" "prayer" "garden" "sleep", no, it's all one glorious complete multifaceted jewel of awakened, sacred sensual experience. Yeesh, listen to me, new age enough? But I really believe and live this.  I hate things like pornography and bad pop culture not for the usual reasons, but because these things rob us of our experience of the awakened sensual body - I don't just mean sex, I mean the body as it moves through the world, the pure joy of embodiment. This belief I have about sensuality is so beautifully different it's very hard to articulate. And it makes me beautifully, sensually different.

I wear my heart on my sleeve. I have one of those faces that's soft and quirky and broadcasts the state of my emotions very clearly to the rest of the world. I'm trying to learn to love this about myself. I hate lying, but even if I really wanted to lie, I couldn't. So I don't. Ever. And apparently my face can't lie either. If you're boring me, you'll know it. If I have a crush on you, you'll know it. If I feel threatened by you, you'll know it. if I love you, you'll know it. I think this makes me beautifully different.