Every night when I go to bed, I look at it and I can’t quite put my finger on it. It makes me think of..
is it the veil of a bride?
or is it a waterfall that covers up immense beauty still to be discovered?
or is it a hidden city where the buildings are rooted to the ground like plants with bridges leading to…I don’t know where.
Some days it makes me think of one of my favourite things. Rain. When it rains so much and hard that I can’t see through the rain-curtain that rolls from the roof. I don’t know what will be left after the rain. It’s so loud that I can’t hear what the person next to me says. It’s just me and the rain and what I know to be true behind the veil.
I wait.
I wait to see what will still be true after the rain.
I search in anticipation to see what I need to see and then I fall asleep.
In waking up I fall in love with the piece all over again.
In love with the delicateness in the give and take of the colours that look different and new again in the light that the morning brings.
In love with the lightness that I feel.
In love with the little imperfections that reminds me that there is room for change.
That reminds me that nothing is permanent. Everything is permanent until it’s not. Not to me any longer.
After the rain, my truth (that always has room to) changes. I am no longer who I was before the rain. It’s a new day.
The girl sat and stared out of the window. It was still early, night was still deciding whether or not to open the door to day. In the background the washing machine gently rolled the to-be-washed-alone shirt around and around. “What kind of a life is one that has to be lived in isolation?” the girl wondered.
Scribbling away in her notebook to leave evidence that there was in fact a life being lived between the edges of photographs, the girl started to ponder about borders / no borders. Which option is the freer option? Sometimes borders – emotional borders, country-set borders, bank account borders – are set as freedom protectors.
Pondering and pondering about questions like these for days, weeks, months – the girl decided to rely on the idea that made her feel happiest on the inside. “The idea that freedom lies within borders, tend to be driven by fear”, she thought and she decided that the idea of “My sky is your sky is her sky is his sky” felt much more bright-eyed, open-hearted, open-armed and definitely promoted hugging on a regular basis.
She felt relieved about her conclusion and pondered about it no longer.
In my work so far I’ve come to the conclusion that the first step to change is finding our connection to each other and to nature again. A clue that you are connecting is that you feel moved. On the X-factor, someone once said when asked how to write a great song: the song has to move people – either on the inside or on the outside.
I occasionally do creativity “preservation” sessions with kiddies. They are wonderful to work with. I once had a little princess (Isabel) and her chess-champ brother (Adam) over. They made this beautiful castle:
with this beautiful damsel:
and this super-strong superhero on his way to save the day:
We made our own custom tower-heads and carriages. When Isabel wanted me to pass her the blue she asked: “do you maybe have sea color?”.
How nice to see the world in your palette.
Then there was Emily the three-eared giant (so that she could listen better) by the lovely princess Isabel:
She is bigger than my husband (what he wouldn’t do for me:))
I recently had another little girl that came over for the second time. The first time was a little bit hard on me, because the little one didn’t speak a lot, which meant, I had to balance out the conversation ALL IN GERMAN (whew!).
So, we set up another date to play and wonder.
This meant getting ready. In preparation, I read the german version of “The Little Prince” aloud to my husband at breakfast in an attempt to loosen the tongue a little, should conversation be up to me, you know? I also removed gold from the palette for the session, as, in our first session, she made EVERYTHING in her best-loved color: gold:).
We decided to make fantasy animals, by drawing our favorite animals, cutting them up and using their parts to create our own animals.
Now, with gold removed from the palette I wondered what was coming. Surprise number one: she talked!! Yay! Then she made the most beautiful peacock, an oh-so-cute owl, a butterfly, a horse within a camp (so that he couldn’t runaway) and a flamingo with an egg hanging mid-air (so cute!!!!!!!).
As you can see the animals are super-cute. I felt nervous…
Would she really want to cut them up?
SO, I cut my animals up and glued my new animal friends into shape. When she was ready I assured her that she didn’t have to cut them up if she didn’t want to. And, to be honest, not sure I would’ve had the courage if they were mine… Then, without any hesitation, she cut off the legs of the peacock!!! [shocked!]
Here are her fantasy animals:
Strutting Rorse and Flutterfly
Flying Chorse
Flamingowl with magic wand (the pink oval shape was the flamingo’s egg)
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: that was natural creativity for you in action.
At the moment I dream of visiting Japan and as the cherry blossom season starts in Japan, I thought this beautiful poetry could lighten up Monday for all of us:
