Inspired by Wonderland & Other Starving Artists

Today,  while looking for courage in my hot, black liquid brew and listening to an older Carolyn Wonderland interview, I googgled the words, “Unemployed, Starving, and Stuck,” where I found a somewhat different take on life in “Kokes Notes.”  Here’s one of the more inspiring thoughts from this blog:

So here’s to the life of a starving artist! Only it’s not a physiological starve. I’ve found there is no such thing as an anorexic artist. Not only do you lack the energy to pick up a pen, paintbrush, or instrument, but the arts are reflections of life and refusing to eat is an invitation to death so it just doesn’t work. The starve of an artist is one of ambitious yearning in the midst of mystery.

What happens when you don’t have a steady income is that you can’t afford the distractions – the ones that keep you from concentrating on your dreams or the ones that screen your imagination, or most importantly the ones that fuel your reckless vices. You start to see signs. You start to appreciate what you already have. You start to trust your gut feelings.~~Kokes Notes

After being awestruck by Little Red Elfinghood Wonderland for years, as she visibly dances with her muses, and thanks to the eloquence of  “Kokes Notes,” I now realize the guts it takes each and every day, to keep concentrating on your dreams in order to be the artist you are becoming.  What an artist Carolyn is.  No distractions.  Only her music.

Because of you, Carolyn Wonderland, I’m willing to just be with my muses, just be the starving artist for as long as it takes, because nothing else matters.  Think of me and others like me, who are looking hard to find the guts it takes.  You’ve got it all.

Home in Austin, Texas

Home, where the music’s playin’; Home, where everybody knows my name; Home, where I’m not on probation; Home, where eveyone knows me and loves me anyway; Home sweet Home, with those who made me who I am today.  I love you Austin…it’s been Heaven…thank you for calling me here, if even for just a little while. 

Know this, Sweet Austin, wherever I roam, you’ll always be Home.

Economics USA: The Crumbling of an Empire~~Our Time Has Come

We’ve known wealth.  We’ve known power.  We’ve known comfort.  We’ve known ease.  We’ve lived the illusion.  Living the illusion cost us more than we ever took the time to evaluate.  It cost us more than -dollars and cents.  Living in a super-inflated economy took its toll in relationships, in ethics, in priorities, in values and in character.

Many have warned us that our economy was on a collision course.  Two of my dear friends, Dr. Robert Jensen and Dr. Jim Rigby have long been describing this unavoidable occurence, when no legislation Congress can forge will circumvent the inevitable.  In Jensen’s book, Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity, he writes encouragingly of  Maintaining political, intellectual, and ethical hope in the heart of the world’s most powerful nation.  Now that this Empire, this illusion can no longer be sustained, we the people have the enormous gift of being able to come together on solid ground~~claiming our humanity.  We have the opportunities to once again create time for our families and our neighbors…to take turns lending a helping hand.  We can use our two hands, our minds, our hearts, our backs to shoulder the labors ahead of us together.  We can learn anew to live closer to the earth, use less, replace more…our time has come.  To paraphrase the recent words of Dr. Jim Rigby,

…let us open every pore to the present gift. [encouraging us to "taste the soup."]

Now, more than perhaps ever in our lifetimes, we can appreciate all of the genuine abundance that we truly live with.  We can savor the breath that gives us life.  We can cherish the life that surrounds and sustains us.  Without a doubt, we will have less in that we no longer can delude ourselves or the world; yet, undeniably, we will have more.  Each and every day will bring new riches that money and inflation cannot buy at any price.

I look forward to working with each and everyone of my neighbors, regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation in life sustaining,  community building endeavors. 

I will consider it my highest priority to meet each day with joy in the privilege of being alive in this exciting time when the Empire crumbled and the people arose.

Our time has come; the perfect time for relocating~~for moving from the penthouses of our heads into the rich wilderness of our hearts.  This is the perfect time to live abundant lives of compassion, recognizing the worth of every creature, of every individual, of every nation.  Now is the time to “beat our swords in plowshares,” to mine our vast resources of courage, strength and determination in order to live not the illusion, but a life worth tasting.

For more from this author, visit http://itsawonderfulife.wordpress.com and http://ashtoraspeaks.wordpress.com.

For more perspectives like this, write Dr. Jim Rigby at jrigby0000@aol.com, visit Carol Creel at www.lifeworks-marketing.com.  You can also email Ashtora, izee4mee@hotmail.com.

WHEN YOU LOVE, YOU’RE A FAR GREATER PERSON

Because I loved you, I became a far greater me.

Loving you gave me the desire to live kindly with generosity toward all I could see;

I aspired to always succeed in ever new endeavors, to exceed all past success;

It was so important that my life earned your trust and your respect, without regress;

Never giving you cause to regret loving me, was everything;

Because you made my heart sing.

Because I loved you, I loved more, laughed more, cried more, lived more, worked more;

Beacause I loved you, my day was brighter, I walked lighter; I almost flew;

You made my heart soar.

When you left, I learned to love you still,

What a great gift–overcoming my will.

In loving you still, I learned to surrender my ego.

But when our paths diverged and I had to let you go,

I felt empty and small; it was a crushing blow.

Because I let go of loving you, I forfeited my heart.

I am become a lesser me.

LOVE REALLY IZ IZ!

 

  Meet IZ! I belong to him.  He picked me to be his human companion, five and half years ago, at Buchannan General Store, in Buchannan, Texas.

 I’ll always remember that day.  It was just before Easter that year. My husband, both my daughters, all of my grandchildren, and my brother and his wife from California were all with me in Austin, TX for the Easter Season. Eleven of us caravanned out to Lake Buchannan, where we met Jim Eachus, the owner of the General Store there.

Jim introduced us to IZ , his siblings and his cousins.

Eager to enjoy PUPPYVILLE, we each began meeting the resident inhabitants of Lake Buchannan. As I greeted each precious, fuzzy member of IZ’s canine family (and there were lots of them!), I held them close and nuzzled my nose into their necks, I couldn’t help but notice that IZ, the only one with a pink nose and pink belly, nuzzled me back! His warmth and love “had me at hello.” And, so it was, that IZ chose me, when he was only four weeks old. His brother ALI couldn’t bear to be left behind–choosing to come live with us as well.

Two weeks later,when IZ and Ali came to live with us, my husband and I returned to Lake Buchannan equipped with food, water and a traveling kennel…everything needed to bring IZ and his brother ALI home with us. Even though it was an unseasonably HOT day, we all really needed a “pit stop” to relieve our bladders, so we stopped at a roadside park near a stream with picnic tables and benches.

We poured water into a small bowl made of molded plastic, and set it on the ground for IZ and ALI to drink from. Before IZ took even one drink, he took the dish in his teeth and dragged the bowl beneath the nearest source of shade–a picnic table. There, he and Ali drank every last drop. When the bowl was dry, this six-week old border collie flipped the bowl upside down and began skillfully pushing it with his nose, running the parking lot with it as though he were running a soccer ball across the field toward the goal; thus, providing our first, minuscule glimpse of things to come, our first insight into the intelligence of this miraculous being and how dramatically he would change lives.

At first, ALI went home with my daughter, leaving only IZ to train and raise us as his alone.  IZ could have been described as “easy to train,”but my own personal view is that he was born a master communicator. From the onset, he consistently let us know exactly what he wanted–consistency in return-to be challenged and to always learn something new–IZ loved developing his own “repertoire” of skills he could perform. He wanted fed, he wanted out, he wanted in, he wanted to play ball, wanted more toys, wanted all of his belongings to have individual names, wanted to play hide and go seek, wanted challenges, wanted to be with me and go with me every time the car went, and wanted to go to work with my husband. IZ loved riding up front–or with his head out the window.

He has always enjoyed and loved the “drive-through” experience…greeting the pharmacist or the Starbuck’s baristas or the bank tellers–and gaining their respective rewards.

He made friends with everyone. The unrestrained enthusiasm and joy IZ expressed with finding his “snaky baby” or his “ball” or “mommy’s shoes” or “daddy’s keys” or bringing “the stick” brought sunlight into every moment of my life. Today, he still comes running, tail up, ears flopping like wings, whenever he hears his name called, or the simple, high-pitched, “YIP.” Again, the joy he responded to us with, whenever we understood what he wanted and were able to deliver it, was his SECRET SKILL of intentional, highly-evolved communication. No one could but respond to IZ with the same joy he directed toward each and every one of us. Joy to Joy, Heart to Heart–IZ courageously lives and breathes these qualities with every breath and every pant.

His powers of recovery have been demonstrated over and over again throughout the five years we’ve spent together thus far. When he hit a car while trying to meet a neighbor’s cat, he yelped, ran back into the yard where he layed down for about 20 minutes before leaping up as though nothing had happened. When he fell down a fifty-foot mine shaft in New Mexico, he lay motionless in the blackness of the interior for four and a half hours (4 1/2) while we found a rock climber to descend down the hole, scoop IZ up in a canvas duffle bag and bring him back to the surface. He was one happy border collie, rejoining us and the light of day. His courage has never wavered; not even when he was bitten by the rattlesnake IZ mistakenly greeted. Bleeding profusely, muscles failing him, he kept his eyes fixed on mine, with his Spirit shouting, “I love you too much to leave you–I’m gonna be okay, I’m gonna make it!”

It took IZ a year to recover from the bite. For a year, he couldn’t open his mouth wide enough catch his precious balls, yet his efforts were relentless until he did indeed, finally regain his abilities. The left side of his head remains concave, reminding us of his gallant spirit in the face of adverse circumstances.

IZ came into this world with his own remarkable genius, his own indominatable spirit, his own gregarious personality, generously, unabashedly sharing his love, sharing his tennis balls and frizbees with everyone he meets, while at the same time, remaining quick to join you in your game, idea or activity–always alert, always ready, always willing. He’s taught me and everyone he encounters how to love, how to live in and from our hearts, how to experience pure, unadulterated joy.

I’m so very grateful for the many gifts that IZ is and has brought to my life and this world as it comes to him. He’s truly been a great gift to the humanity that have been fortunate enough to make his acquaintance. ALI later rejoined us, and became a vital part of our lives, but it has been IZ who taught me more about what LOVE IZ and LOVE IZ NOT, than anyone or anything in the whole of my experience. 

When my husband and I went our separate ways, we were both very grateful that we had two border collies.  Ali went with my husband and IZ remains with me…my constant joy, friend and companion.

 

 

IZ PICKED ME!

 

HOW DID ONE ROOF BECOME SO POPULAR?

Who can tell us when the concept of men and women living together under one roof became widely accepted?  Who would vote with me to end this senseless practice?

 I believe that the world today would be a much more peaceful planet, were the sexes to agree to live separately.  Sincerely, who wouldn’t be able to love and respect their husband, wife, lover more, were they allowed the space and freedom of autonomous living?  Sure, your “standard of living” may not be quite the same, but with your quality of life and relationship enhanced, suffering would be counted as gain.

With the advances in personal freedom, mutual love, respect, and peaceful relationships, doesn’t it stand to reason that the personal gains would rise through the hierarchy of community, national and international interactions and relationships?  What I’m asking is, wouldn’t we live more peacefully on a global scale, if we had peace at the family level?  What could we possibly be sacrificing by providing for privacy and space–what I consider to be most elemental and foundational in our “hierarchy of needs.” [Maslow]

Once you’ve given it some thought, allowed the concept to sink in, your ideas on how to accomplish this shift in societal thinking are welcome.  Is this worthwhile?  Why or why not?

Keep in mind, I’m not devaluing or discrediting men or women, families or singularities, marriage or non-married unions; to the contrary, I’m only recognizing the value in respecting and supporting one’s own and well as the significant others’ person, space, individuality, autonomy, and freedom to agree to when and how to share those along with time and energy with another; as well as, acknowledging how unsatisfying the nature of cohabitation of couples truly is.  Before you argue, note that statistically, divorce rates and unhappy “marriages” bear this out.  Maybe, it’s not our marriages that are unhappy; maybe, just maybe, living together, beneath the same roof, seeing each other every day, day in and night out, is an impossible way to live and support happiness and harmonious living.  Simply because, Love, peace and harmony are not by-products of control or invasion or even suffering in silence or outloud with someone else’s intolerabilities.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so get to blogging.