So I stepped out into the great abyss we call the world of art.  Standing here in the midst of anxiety and wonderment, I see my past and future converge in a bright display of “holy shit what did I get myself into?” I passed the test of letting go of my pain as a child, discovered I passed the torch of dysfunction and messed up my own kids but in a different way, and found out that life is not going to pass me by and  let me stop moving forward.

As I sit here letting my wheels spin trying to figure out my next excuse for why I haven’t created any art I discovered  a new way to procrastinate and avoid the work at hand. I’m actually LOOKING for excuses and other people to blame for my inability to create! There is always going to be something I COULD blame…but why? It’s the old “if only I had a few more hours in the day” syndrome…what the f**k?!

I always seem to find time to contemplate what’s holding me back. I always seem to find the time to wander aimlessly through Facebook looking for someone else’s excuses so that I can take them on as my own and be “Liked” by a world that has no other outlet or so they say… I follow other artists on Twitter looking for inspiration, I read edgy dialogue looking for a quit witted response to global warming and death and pestilence throughout the world so that maybe, just maybe I can get riled enough to put a brush to the canvas and create a master piece of epic proportions!

Then…I sit back in my morning routine, sip another cup of coffee, get ready for yoga class and think…”I’ll find another excuse when I get home…” WTF?

Ok…I have the answer…I think I have the answer…

I make it to my yoga classes…its part of my schedule. I make it to my mom’s to help her with daily chores because she’s in my schedule…I have no problem getting to Board meetings because its…you got it! IN MY SCHEDULE! Ok…the excuses stop here! I’m going to schedule time to paint! I think…I’m gonna try…maybe… when I get that extra hour in my day… WTF?

It’s pretty cool how letting go of the past and living right now makes right now pretty cool…

I got to hang out with mom today. Took her home from rehab and helped her get settled back home and things ready for life as an independent elder…I didn’t think about the past and what happened then or the future and what would happen then…no more “then” only “zen.”

Such an awesome moment when I tuned into the moment. Mom so happy to be home, so grateful for my help, so truly inspired I felt as my heart warmed and I realized how much love I have for her. My soul engaged with the energy of her triumphs and suddenly I was proud of her strength both physical and emotional.  I think she feels the difference in my gaze…

To live in the moment…to let go of the past and only whisper thoughts of the future…whispers of only what we want from the future…no condemnation of what might happen or could…feel the air on our lips as it passes over on the way to our lungs…feel the ground underfoot as we stand at attention to the moment that is now…life is a gift…live it!

My grandma once said…”if there’s enough blue in the sky to make a pair of blue jeans, there won’t be a storm.”

Over the years I’ve learned to interpret this for more than just meteorology…it’s like a lesson in life.  Why focus on the vast expanse of clouds when you can look for the spot of blue? I guess it’s like the old “silver lining” adage.

We all have lessons in life to learn and something to accomplish while we are here on this ever changing planet. We can complain about the clouds or the lack of sunshine or we can embrace the day as it is and willingly give it sustenance through our generosity of positive energy.

I choose to go make a pair of blue jeans…

Letting go…

hhmmm… letting go…   …

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”
―     Steve Maraboli,     Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

I’ve been working on this “letting go” thing for a while now…letting go of stuff…Gawd! I have soooo much stuff! Letting go of pain…letting go of anger…letting go of the NEED to hold on to useless things whether emotions or things saved for a rainy day or the day “I’m gonna do something with that…” It really is an undertaking of epic proportions!

I still have a long way to go with letting go of stuff, but I feel that as I start to let go of some of the emotional baggage, It’ll be easier to let go of the stuff attached to the emotion.

As those who follow me here know, I have recently stumbled on some very interesting reading at my mom’s place. Old letters, journals and the like…learning things…hoping to find in the next hand scribbled text, a glimmer of hope…hope that I would find words of wisdom, words of sanity that would heal me… but they simply opened old wounds and poured salt and alcohol right into the oozing flesh!

Maybe that’s what I needed? Maybe the cleansing qualities of the salt and alcohol are just what I needed to let go! I’m looking for the silver lining here…if I can’t let go, I MUST find the silver lining! I feel like I drank to much tequila and salt and need to purge…spew out the toxins and free myself from these emotional bed spins…

Then – memories of empty pill bottles and 911 calls…the sound of her voice as I contemplated how to help her…the everlasting urge to RUN AWAY!!! I did that…it didn’t work…running away only caused different pain and it was self inflicted by my own actions…I was no better than her…I didn’t threaten my own life with a bottle of pills…I just hitch-hiked across the US with my thumb out front and my tail waggin’ like a dog! It was probably safer takin’ the pills!

Now – I can’t keep blaming her for my choices in life…so what? It was hard sometimes growing up as I did…I’ve talked to a few other artists this week that had it as hard or harder growing up…some had it made as a child and then had other life challenges to overcome as adults…life goes on and so they persist in their journey of creativity. They don’t stop because life was hard. They don’t bitch because life didn’t give them a silver paintbrush. They just continue to move forward in the life they live…They don’t hold on to the past and its things and emotions…they live right now…they create right now…I’m going to go create right now…

So… when I started this blog, I was setting out to change my world and maybe even the world of others by baring my soul and digging into my subconscious for answers to help me and others find a way to embrace the creative side that all humans are blessed with. I was on a roll! It was all my mom’s fault and it was easy to blurt out how I was “wronged” as a child and say “this is my reason for abandoning my God given talents!”

Well…my mom has since fallen ill and I have had to re-think, re-evaluate, remember and research into her perceptions and views of what I had previously determined to be written in stone and needed no further explanation. It just so happens that when my mom fell and hit her head, (you can read more about that here https://bohemiantiger.com/2013/12/12/i-honked/) it was due in part to the myriad random books and papers strewn about her apartment. She was going through some things to eliminate some of the clutter and in the process, made a bit more clutter.

As part of my duties as a loving and forgiving daughter, I had to go clean up the mess so that if and when she would be ready to go home, she could maneuver about with ease.  The first day at mom’s I found some letters she had written to my grandma…oh man…I shouldn’t have read them! Not because it was a violation of my mom’s privacy, but because I learned some things I didn’t want to know…

Letters lead to journals lead to excerpts from random psychology books lead to mental health documents lead to me needing to possibly seek counseling my self! So much information and so little time! Do I confront her now that she is getting stronger and is no longer confused from the bump on her head?! Do I leave this alone and forget I ever saw or read anything?! Her heart is what we worry about now…it’s always been bad, but since the fall, it hasn’t stabilized…In my heart, I feel pain and need answers…In my head, I hear the Beatles singing “Let it Be…”