Happy New Year

2007,

May this New Year bring you joy in your pain

hope in your trial, challenge with gain.

May strength in temptation

and courage in fear

grace this new living with lasting good cheer.

May successes be real ones and critics be still

unless in their speaking

they show you God’s will

May your heart be tender and your vision clear

May you say when it’s ended,

“It’s been a good year.”

Donna Woodall,

Silent New Year

New Years Eve makes me melancholic. Don't know why, but I'm always restless and displaced on New Years Eve. Well, here's a bit of a strange write. You don't have to like it and by the way, I'm certifiably sane. (Had to pass the tests for education and for social services.)
Restless, anxious.
Wanting former days; wanting future days.
Wanting anything but this moment and its solitary plight.
Walking into a moonlit spot, I look out in expectation or is it despair?
I hear the babes rustling in their bunks, striving for ordered sleep.
Yet in my true self, I know.
Babes no longer lie in the other room safe from reveling drivers with too much to drink.
Loneliness sits there instead.
Silently in pain the space cries out.
Inside my heart the space cries back
to no avail.
In silent moonlight I begin the ritual dance.
The silence is not broken by word, or song or clattering explosions heard a short time past.
Instead, the silence gnaws and claws
devouring my waiting heart.
It would be sensible to go to bed now
to wrap myself in the numbness of sleep
to dull these keen senses that reach out for –
what? I do not know.
I wish my slumbering prince were riding through the night
to enter on the brisk east wind and whisk me away to a place
where there is no now:
no screaming silence clamoring for fulfillment,
bursting with unmade plans, unanswered visions, untold stories.
I sweep it away, and sweep it away, frantically striving to rid my world of its cry.
Yet the silence stays while all others abandon.
Soft tears surround my submissive form crumbling on the floor
Time? Time is a cruel master.
It stole my youth, my children, my vigor and left behind this crumpled mass:
a wadded loveletter, discarded without reading, its message bleeding in a bitter pool of tears.
These irrational thoughts and feelings surely belong to another.
This purposeless form cannot be the person who will face the coming dawn.
This bereft woman bears no resemblance to sparking eyes enthralled with family and tasks.
Some would not trust me if they knew.
And so with a sigh, I stand and stretch,
peer once more into the moonlight of a new day,
whisper my felicitation and stumble noisily to my bed, and my prince,
in hopes that the sweeping of the floor,
that the forward bracing of the wind,
that the solitary moonlight dance and the gentle dreams that lay in store
will usher in the fulfillment of this new age,
this new destiny,
this brand new year.

Light

I waited before your throne

Enraptured by the coming sun

Knowing the light would blind my eyes but not my heart.

A phenomenon in the dark forboding clouds

I saw the light of the Son break through

with peace, renewal and love.



This drawing was done after a painting that I struggled with and still do.  Sitting in self absorption, music engulfing and yet with space to think and create, my mind realized that I had missed the point.  It was the light!

Entry for December 10, 2006

I look up and see only lavendar-grey clouds.

My heart sinks yet my eyes cannot.  I know there will be light.  The light will surely come.  I need the light to break the horizon and fill my world with illumination, good will.

But the greyness shrouds the morning.

Most days, it's no big deal.  An extra cup of coffee, a sweet roll and a little laughter for inspiration: I'm up an out.  But today the coffee is bitter, the sweet roll is stale and any laughter I try for cakes in my throat.

This heaviness, this unspeakable weight shrouds my spirit as the greyness shrouds the morning.   It encases me in hopelessness: speaking defeat, rejection, despair.

I wait fruitlessly.  Yet a voice is calling me out of my tomb, out of the cold heart, the aching heart: a soul in need.

With waning strength, I meet the task and feel the sting of my own inadequacy.  Barely strength remains to creep back to my hole, hide and wait for the light to break into my world.  Yet another and another interrupts my pilgrimage until the day is nearly gone.

What is this light that breaks forth now: now that the day has taken what I did not possess?  I cannot tell its source and yet it shines before me and in my wake.

With little strength I reach out to touch it and find that it comes from within, passing through and out of me with illumination and goodwill.

I've Lollygagged

We don't do life easy.  Louis and I used to say when we had Shambley - our former dog- that some day we'd both wake up and the dog would be driving.

Well, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.  I just had a few intensely busy days. 

I’ve lollygagged today and felt really guilty.  Ah, not too guilty.  I had a show last week for my HS Class and a Party last night for the Christian artists forum I belong to.  Those two things should never be booked back to back. 

The kids were supposed to help with the matting, etc of their pieces for the show.  Well they changed the schedule and I had to do all 17 pieces by myself.  My studio was a mess of chopped up matt and cardboard.  I turned 4 extra tall narrow doors into a large display board for it and prepared promo materials for the sessions beginning in January.  Then, because the front came through and sat on us for 2 days, the place where we scheduled the event was flooded and it had to be postponed!


Meanwhile, Louis has been emptying and organizing storage and bringing the stuff in and stacking it around for me to deal with.  I sort of understand, but had to deal with that stuff before I could begin cleaning and decorating for the party.  They rescheduled the show for last night (Mon) and so I didn’t even get to go stand around and listen to the comments or answer questions about what, why and what’s next.

I got most of the decorating done by Sunday and though I did have to pick up a little to teach a lesson on Friday, I decided to ignore the Study and Studio and just keep the party in the main part of the house. 

I had about everything done and ready –fresh baked sweet bread, almond cookies, red and green pretzels, wassail, holiday punch, pinon coffee set up in the coffee maker.  The fireplace was ready for a match, the cd player ready to turn on.  But a few hours before the party, a member called to ask if he could have a place to set up slides to show.  Okay.  I’d just have to get in there and clean up the studio for him.  He showed up about 6:30 and nothing was done.  I’d had bunches of phone calls and people in and out.  It was crazy.  I suggested we set it up in the living room.  That wouldn’t work.  So his daughter and I began to clean the studio.  Nothing had been dusted or mopped or vacuumed, but there was no time for that.  I  hauled stuff out to the clay room where I piled it high and then onto the studio porch.  It went okay, but it wasn’t clean and I was so busy with it that the guests came and had to attend each other while I finished.  Sigh.  So much for the reputation I don’t have.

The party was a good humored event.  So much food, so many choices.  What I listed above was just what I contributed.  And I forgot to put out the spinach and roast beef pinwheels.  They were very good and Louis and I are enjoying the fact that they weren't eaten by the guests.  They consumed about a gallon of wassail and about a gallon and a half of holiday punch.  The pinon coffee was all gone and I could have made another pot, but things got busy. 

We played a version of the white elephant gift exchange game equipped with the two or three unwanted and the two or three really wanted gifts.  I gave one of the really wanteds and received one of the unwanteds, but who cares in the end!  One of the unwanteds was a Christmas tree with little black ribbons and little black balls.  It had a little black satin skirt attached and everyone called it the goth tree.  Another was a set of paperbacks and a cd.  The reason it was an unwanted was because it was received initially by a retired divorced lady and the one title that jumped out was something about handling your husband's mid-life crisis.  We all made jokes about our husbands and about her burying hers in the back yard.  The other titles were decent titles as was the cd.  But no one wanted it after that.

We watched the slides and yes they were worth it.  I must admit that even the slide he took while we steamed in the car in Colorado was worth it!  We sang some carols and we waved them off into the cold night, cleaned up the mess and went to bed happy.

So today I took it a little easy.  Tomorrow I'll finish cleaning the clay room and set my studio back up for teaching.  It will be fast and furious.  It's the way I live my life.  But today I lollygagged.

one man show

The picture is one I painted after my previous trip to the Santa Fe area.  It is conte stick on red suede board.


Suppose I give a one man show

Collect the pieces I’ve let go

And rent a space both wide and grand

Pictures in a hall, sculpture on a stand

And I stay and listen to the critics cry

The slams and complements that fly

From the mouths of fools, masters and kings

Would it help or hurt the cause of things?

Or would it only waste my time?



Suppose I gather a one man band

And sit myself by a hotdog stand

In a county fair or festival

And sing and play till the air is full

And wrench the hearts of those who hear

With a song of love, sorrow or fear

Until the day or my voice is gone

With the hope that the crowd stays on and on

Would I only waste their time?



But suppose I offer a friendly hand

To a lonely soul, or a broken man

And stay a bit til the sting subsides

And he wanders off to where he resides

A little stronger for the bit we shared

With a happy tale of someone who cared

And I walked away to a sumptuous spot

To carry on in my spoiled lot

Where I waste much more than time.



Do the things I have and the things I’ve done

Ever last a day, ever change someone?

Are accomplishments worth the energy;

Do I give myself to what’s meant for me?

Will it mean a thing if I reach some goal

and ignore the things put in my control?

In the here and now, in the scope of things

Is success, success if no truth it brings

and I’ve wasted all my time?  DW '06

Room to Grow and Bloom

The last few days have been quite busy.  We went to see my husbands siblings and mother on Thanksgiving day.  We worked around the house and then went out to eat with another daughter on Friday.  I took my grandchildren to see their mother on Saturday.  Today, we did some rearranging and reconfiguring.  I used some discarded doors with rollers on them to make a display board for my fall drawing class, which is coming to a close and will formally end with a show on Thursday night.  I hope to take some pictures.  I also put out a flat of pansies today with the hope that they will get over being transplanted before the cold sets in later this week.

The picture above is a collage from my sunroom.  My digital camera is, as I've mentioned, getting quite tempermental but I like these anyway.  They are, from top left, a bougainvillea, an angelwing begonia and a Christmas cactus.  These are, of course, common names.  The magnifying glass will enlarge them somewhat.

It's funny how plants you live with take on meaning.  The begonia isn't blooming right now.  It takes a rest every so often.  The plant is one I got from my mother and I know it's at least 30 years old.  For a while, it didn't look well and seldom bloomed.  Now, it's gotten much healthier and blooms frequently: rich heavy drooping clusters of orangey-pink flowers.

The bougey is one I bought about 10 years ago.  It blooms frequently as it is now.  Sometimes it will rest and gather strength for the next go round.

The Christmas cactus was blooming when my daughter brought it home about 15 or 20 years ago, but never would bloom after that.  The last two years, it has been gorgeous.  I don't know what I'm doing right, but I hope I can keep it up.

I have two other bloomers, but they aren't in bloom right now.  They give the sunroom a nice appearance and a feeling of life happening.  I've never been a very good gardener, but I'm learning from both my mistakes and my successes when I can identify them!

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a good day and plenty to give thanks for.  DW