Five Things
1. I love the I Love You cards!
2. I want to be Matt's assistant – he must need someone to bring him a bottle of water after all that dancing, don't you think?
3. This article about Gypsy Girl extraordinaire Alessandra de Souza inspires me to keep exploring no matter what.
4. Hey all you Squam Art Workshops Lovelies – the deadline to submit work to the Squam Art Show is coming up on Thursday, April 30th. Click here for all the details.
5. Interesting people and their creative spaces – inspiring portraits abound over at The Selby Store.
This Is How It Happened
About two weeks before I was to leave for New Zealand, my husband came home and announced that he had to go to Japan for business, the first time he's made this specific announcement in almost three years. As is often the case when he says he has to go on a business trip, my immediate response was, "I want to go." Our conversation then proceeded like this:
Me: "When are you going?"
Him: "About a week after you get back from New Zealand."
Me: "Then I can go! Can I go? Can I, huh, huh, huh?"
Him: No response, just staring at me with a stunned look on his face, blinking a lot.
Eventually: "You'd get back on a plane and fly back across the Pacific that soon after all that flying?"
Me: "Don't you know me?"
Him: "I can't believe you would do this voluntarily."
(It must be noted that my husband despises air travel – despises it so much that if a magic fairy came to him and said, "You'll never have to board an airplane again as long as you give your wife foot massages every evening," then I'd have the happiest feet on the planet.)
Me: "Yes, I want to go! Can I go? Can I go? Can I, huh, huh, huh?"
Him: (Still incredulous) "I might be really busy you know…"
(It must also be noted that my dear sweet husband always goes to this place in his brain where he feels like he must take care of me in situations like this. He literally forgets about all the days I've spent on my own all over the world, and thinks that if he is too busy being Mr. Businessman then I won't have fun.)
Him: "…I don't know what my schedule is yet."
Me: "Don't you know me?"
Him: "Well…"
Me: "Come oooooon….take me!"
And so it happened….so it happened that I've been home barely more than a week and tomorrow I'm back on a plane, flying back across the Pacific, for a trip that will give me just three full days in Japan. Is this what it's like to be J Lo on a press junket?
I felt the need to explain this after having experienced a stunned silence, followed by "WTF?" from my friends over the past week when I've told them I'm heading out for more time away. I didn't wake up today and decide, "Hey! I think I'll hop on over to Japan!" it just happened to work out that these two trips landed side by side.
(It must be noted that I feel like the most ridiculously, insanely, magnificently fortunate person in the entire world.)
It probably would be been wiser and more practical for me to stay home and focus on my writing. It would have made plenty of sense to say, "Have a great trip, my love, I'll be here holding the fort down and taking advantage of five days of solitude." That would have been the smart move, the disciplined move, the oh-so rational move.
But he had me at Tokyo, so today I fly away.
Five Things
1. From New Zealand: Rhian Sheehan’s Standing in Silence CD is moody in the most beautiful way.
2. Catherine Swan is actually an Australian artist, but I saw her work at a gallery in Wellington, and promptly fell in love.
3. Creative self-development coach Jamie Ridler is now offering Your Creative Spark: Inspiring Interviews with 12 Highly Creative Bloggers – including one with yours truly, I am honored to say. This creative power e-pack includes 2 hours and 57 minutes of audio, over 100 pages of full transcripts and bonus materials!
4. I love Leafcutter Design’s World’s Smallest Postal Service. How many times have you thought to yourself, “I sure wish I could send a teeny tiny letter…”?
5. My latest essay for Skirt! magazine is now available in their current issue. It’s a story from one of my trips to Tokyo, and you can read it here and in the print edition.
[My next round of New Zealand photos are posted here. More coming after next week.]
Snippets
[Taken at Paekakariki Beach, North Island, New Zealand]
I have pulled out my favorite shots from my first three days in New Zealand, and you can see them here.
“We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.”
~Kahlil Gibran
Ritual
[Taken in Nelson, South Island, New Zealand]
It is what I do just after or just before a new project – a day long studio purge. The requirements for these purges are straightforward and purposeful: every shelf is dusted, a vacuum cleaner finds its way into every crack and crevice, and all of my supplies, books and baubles are either put back where they originally existed, put in a new location or donated. This latest purge helped me unload eight bags filled with goodies that will be delivered to new homes in the coming weeks. The top of my studio shelves – which once held two huge paintings and an assortment of more than a dozen other items – now seems a vast expanse of emptiness with only four objects. Artwork on my walls has been re-arranged and stacks of creations have been neatly stored under our bed. I look around and feel lighter, as if I've just created a wealth of new space that needs only my imagination to be filled.
I try my best not to go on trips with big expectations. I expect to have an adventure, to see new things – the basics – but as far as going with specific agendas, I try to keep that to a minimum. When I left for New Zealand exactly two weeks ago, I boarded the plane with a secret wish for clarity – on many issues – and this felt a little like cheating, like I was setting myself up for a big disappointment. Knowing things rarely turn out the way I think they will, I kept reminding myself that my journey to New Zealand might not offer me any great epiphanies, answers, or realizations, that it was not outside the realm of possibility that I would return home more confused than ever. Still, I headed across the Pacific with a collection of tiny eggs in my pocket, hoping I could crack them open somewhere far away and find some of the answers I was seeking.
It just so happens that sometimes our secret wishes are evidence of our intuition in action. While they feel like wishes in the beginning, it soon becomes evident that they were prophetic whispers – tiny glimmers of what lay before us if we pay close attention. I realize now that the wishes I carried with me to the other side of the world were not mere wishes, but inklings of what was possible as long as I was willing to invite a significant amount of solitude and quiet on this journey. I was in a new country with much to see and one of my dearest friends to spend time with, but I went there knowing this trip could not be one of constant motion, that there had to be time for me to sit still on a beach, walk quietly through a forest, and write for hours on end in a tiny pink house. I honored these wishes, and in doing so I was given that gift that so often feels painfully, maddeningly elusive: clarity.
So when I got back home and walked into my studio, I knew it was time to take part in this ritual of mine, to scrub my studio top to bottom in preparation for my next big project. In New Zealand, on a train ride from Paekakariki to Wellington last Thursday, the direction for my next book came to me like a bolt of lightening. It was an idea I had been pondering for a while, and then suddenly I knew without a doubt that this was the answer. It was like this the entire time I was there – where all those little eggs were cracked open one by one, and, after revealing the answers I had been seeking, the little birds inside fluttered away gently, carrying all my questions, angst and anxiety away with them.
"The more you strive to reach the place of Splendor,
The more the invisible angels will help you."
~Rumi
Five Things
1. Women Thrive Worldwide "develops, shapes and advocates for policies that foster economic opportunity for women living in poverty." They have a nice big list of ways to get involved.
2. For the film geek in you, head to Film Movement for an indie film feast.
3. I love Mimsa's hand-embroidered clutches – a fresh take on something that reminds of the days when men wore hats to work and women didn't dare leave the house without lipstick.
4. Cool gifts are to be had over at Violet.
5. I've just discovered Gaia – so much to explore!
Metamorphosis
Always it happens when we are not there —
The tree leaps up alive in the air,
Small open parasols of Chinese green
Wave on each twig. But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first.
Lovers of wind, who will have been aware
Of a faint stirring in the empty air,
Look up one day through a dissolving screen
To find no star, but this multiplied green,
Shadow on shadow, singing sweet and clear.
Listen, lovers of wind, the leaves are here!
~May Sarton
