“The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.”
―Josiyah Martin
Words to live by in 2020. Happy New Year everyone!
Creativity and wellness message for today: Allow serendipity to guide your way.
Inspiration for 2020
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Allowing Hope to Enter
(c) Adair W. Heitmann
“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.”
– Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton OCSO was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion.
Creativity and wellness message for today: Be like the spring crocuses pushing through the damp soil — reach for the light and allow nature’s balance to unfold.
Hope
Shell by Adair Heitmann
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
-Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things
Creativity and wellness message for today: Delight in hidden messages and the blessings of small things.
Sharing Your Stories
Jubilate @ UVA
The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. So when stories come to you, you must take good care of them, as well. Learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs your story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put our stories in each other’s memories. This is how people care for themselves.
-Barry Lopez
Creativity and wellness message for today: SYS
Transformation and Adventure
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it, you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you can do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
– William Stafford
Creativity and wellness message for today: Let change purify you.
Happy Valentine’s Day
Photograph by Adair Heitmann (c)
Keep close to Nature’s heart . . . and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.
– John Muir
The Power of Hope
One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver writes:
“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.”
For myself, as an exhibiting artist with a full-time communications job, and as a devoted mother and (fabulous) wife, plus as a writer and daughter and volunteer, my wonderful and full life currently doesn’t provide the time I seek, yet I deeply crave the power of privacy to create!
Santa, if you are listening . . . delight me with more private time to create in 2017!
Creativity and wellness message for today: Ask and ye shall receive.
Glimpsing a Possibility
“We must live in the radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales. For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it, the simplest glimpse of that possibility of goodness. That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.”
-Ishmael Beah
Finally, Someone Who Understands! Thank you Misha
No longer will I feel guilty when I don’t want to talk with someone while I’m creating art in a community artists’ studio.
No longer will I feel ashamed that I don’t know Suzy Q, Barbi X., or John Z. when asked, “Why don’t you know them, they go there all the time?”
No longer will I apologize for getting snippy to my family when they interrupt me while I’m trying to choose which monoprint to submit to an exhibit, while reviewing art prints at our kitchen table.
Now I can proudly proclaim, “Don’t you know art is a very slow and fragile process? Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov told me so!”
While exercising this morning I heard on NPR about Baryshnikov’s Art Center in NYC, marking its 10th anniversary. Hearing Baryshnikov simply state the obvious changed my day, my week, and my world. He says that art is a fragile process and artists need privacy and space to create. I know that! Thinking back to when I had a separate studio space I remember those as the glory artist days. But I wanted more in life and co-created a multi-faceted, multi-use home and life. Yes, I adore our teenage son, but can’t a girl dream about “space, and light, and privacy?” That is just what Baryshnikov created for artists in New York City, an environment in which artists of all kinds can go and create to their heart’s content. Well done Misha!
Creativity and wellness message for today: Even if your kitchen table is filled with college tour brochures, applications, and forms, keep your vision of space, light, and privacy on the horizon.
Creative Gifts: Respond to What’s Inside You
Enjoying Japanese food and a glass of Chardonnay last night with a friend, I listened as she told me about joining a local artist’s collective. She is renting studio space, outside of her home. My friend was so happy to be back in the nest of like-minded creative souls. I was so lucky to be able to rejoice with her.
She said, “I haven’t painted, I mean really painted in 20 years.” I nodded, “I understand.”
Her longing, that she turned into bliss, reminds me of a quote from Joy Harjo’s book Crazy Brave.
“If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you, or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned.”
Creativity and wellness message: Start today by listening to your inner drum beat. Respond to the calling of your gifts.
