My Muses

“When a moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is easy to miss it.”

- Boris Pasternak

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My inspiration flows intuitively from the stuff of life, revealing the remarkable within the ordinary.

Searching to understand myself as a spiritual being,

 

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Longing to see the entire world before I die,

Thirsting to understand my ceaseless nighttime dreams,

Learning deeply from words of poets and thinkers—

This all intertwines, fueling the images I create.

I walk to get out of my head, away from my monkey mind and into the physical world. I consciously slow down, even though I might be walking briskly, and observe, breathe in and truly feel what is around me.

I stop and photograph things with my phone. This is also when I pick things up.

This is where my collecting begins. The act of collecting is an ongoing ritual, soothing my edges, bringing glimpses of harmony and elation into the thunderous roar of life.

Then I play with my stuff, arrange and rearrange, and have conversations with it—

The physical stuff of life. The things that exist on this planet. I have drawers and baskets and boxes of wonderful things—

Bones, feathers, rocks, rusty bottle caps, wasp nests, seed pods, bits of moss, worn pieces of sea glass, bottle green, reflective bits of mica, a butterfly wings, olive and peach pits.

One of my most profound teachers, Walter Nottingham, taught me that things are not “its”; they are “thous.” Whether nature-made or human-made, all things possess manna - a spiritual energy that has the power to inform us about our lives. Ordinary oracles. This is one of my guiding principles.

Dreams

For over 20 years, I have been recording my nighttime dreams. Incredibly disturbing as well as joyfully surreal, they hound me relentlessly until I give them my full attention. Not only do these dream images enrich my life, but they are an impetus for my creative work.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the door sill

Where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

- Rumi

Travel

“… we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.”

For me, the sights, sounds, tastes, aromas, and rich, vibrant colors –washed by layers of time, surrounded by cultural textures, unfamiliar patterns, the sacred & the mundane hand in hand—feed who I am.