While my own voice feels a bit weak and strained lately (both literally and metaphorically), I have become more and more intrigued with language, with words that are so eloquently and delicately strung together in such a way that it prompts me to slow my pace and savor each literary morsel, sentence by sentence, word by word. I am swept away by the opportunity language allows us to define our innermost emotions…
to attempt to make sense of our world…
The best we can do, then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally–no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Lovegain perspective on our journey through life…
explore our relationships…
We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity–in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern…
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Seacelebrate the beauty of ordinary moments…
and embrace life…
True happiness is not to be found outside life… It does not brood above as the sky broods over the Earth. It is in life, it is life itself… Full life with all its heroic struggles and sublime joys. Jeanne de Vietinghoff
These words, and so many more that are sprinkled throughout my days, take my heart and twirl it around. They give me a feeling I do not have the talent to articulate with words. How wonderful to be witness to those who have the gift of language, the amazing ability to turn words into poetic gifts to the soul.
I have so much I want to let out, so much to express, so many unspoken truths in the this little soul of mine just begging to be spoken, but I keep coming up voiceless, plagued with laryngitis of the soul. The thoughts, ideas and emotions are there deep inside, but I struggle to let them out. I mouth the words, sweep the paintbrush against the canvas, snap the shutter of my camera, but the truth does not come out. It’s a hoarse whisper no one can hear, a faint line of color no one can see, a blurred image out of focus and at an awkward angle. I question my ability as an artist, all the while contemplating the concept of commitment.
What makes us commit? What pushes us to make a pledge, a vow, a promise to a certain someone or cause or thing? Why are some commitments so easy and others such a struggle? I think about the ease at which I made the commitment to spend the rest of my life with one single man. And the commitment I graciously and whole-heartedly made to motherhood, to taking on the enormous task of forever being responsible for two little beings, their health, their values, their upbringing. Why is it that those tremendously life-altering commitments were far more easier for me to than my commitment as an artist?
Could it be that I have yet to find the right medium for my self-expression, that I still need to seek out the tools necessary to build a bridge way to my heart? Could it be that I am more able and willing to commit to others than I am to myself? Or could it possibly be that I am not truly an artist, that if it is this complicated and difficult it’s not really meant to be?
Today I have no answers. I am content to let the questions linger for now. I know the answers, simple and profound, lie within me. I have faith that I have a grand potential lying dormant inside me, like a candle waiting to be lit, and that I will soon heal my voice, speak my soul, and let my own simple truths be a small flicker of hope and goodness in this world.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.Rainer Maria Rilke
Just a few of the good-for-the-soul things that filled my week:
♥ A gathering of friends, then a night camping in the woods this past weekend. Once upon a time, before kids and marriage and the mortgage, my hubby and I spent many a night pitching a tent and roughing it in the woods with friends, but this was a first for our daughters. They loved it.
