The rain is hitting the pavement.
As I look out of the window I can see the ripples in the puddles.
Another day.
The droplets on the back rest of the bench grow fatter. The rain has drained all the colours from the sky. No colour, no smell, no taste. Just the drizzle, the white sky and the birds, shrieking at each other over bread crumbs.
You feel so tired
and yet you keep on scrolling
Looking for disillusions,
Something new to believe in.
Your life is like a
bad internet connection:
Doesn’t seem to get going,
Sporadic, scattered.
Up or down. Or is it both?
It begins like a Tempest,
With a storm at sea.
I do feel like adulthood
is over rated.
It’s a palette of feelings:
I really thought that was the end of that.
But clearly I was wrong.
No signs, no evidence. Just shreds of paper.
I could hear the unmistakable sounds… right above my head.
One of the dogs could hear it too, even though she chose to ignore it.
Maybe it’s the best way? Ignore it and it will just go away…
No, it’s just too tempting.
I just… have got to… go and have a look.
“I want to write because I find expression of my thoughts and emotions releasing and revealing”
Hooded crow (Corvus cornix) in flight
… and also because it takes me to an unknown path.
When I go down that path,
I hear a crow and I feel safe,
like I have a life long friend by my side.
I might sometimes write my way to Africa,
sometimes only down the road,
but it always takes me somewhere safe, and clear.
I connect with my old friend soul,
together we detangle the yarn of life.
The happy times, the grieving times,
the times when I feel lost and alone, unloved
and the times when I feel life is the most precious gift.
I heal my relationship with others, and with myself.
I learn to trust, others and myself.
I reflect, self-reflect
Doubt and self-doubt…
And I always feel better for it.
“Live your life as an experiment” – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Hammer-head sharks, Crow and Crab
revealed themselves to me that morning,
after i sat in silence
on a chair in a circle, in a village.
the hammerhead sharks came first
and i felt safe instantly.
through me they sent an invitation
for a blond mermaid looking girl
to explore her emotions
a bit deeper on paper.
My prompt led her to meet whales,
then butterflies.
i can’t help but feeling a pull
towards the hammerhead shark
whenever I feel lonely, left out or sensitive
Hammerhead shark reminds me that
spending time on my own isn’t a curse
but a great opportunity
to swim fluidly through the waves of these emotions of mine
before they turn into unmovable rocks.
the hammerhead shark makes me feel protected on many levels
and i’m grateful for them to come to me.
Crow keeps coming to me too…
Although i know he is often around but unseen,
as a friend and protector.
yesterday he kept me company on 2 paths
the path of words unravelling from my soul
and the cycle path on the way home.
crow doesn’t usually say much
he is usually just a friendly presence,
watching over me like a close friend
as he landed on the path in front of me:
laid back, relaxed, amused, as if he was making fun of me
like an old friend.
i sometimes wonder if
crow isn’t a manifestation of my own father?
Blue crab asked me to tell his story,
like with everyone’ stories there are sad and happy times,
magic, light, wisdom, good meals and dark sea beds.
Ferdinand Bauer, Portunus Pelagicus Blue Swimmer Crab – watercolour 1806-1826, the Natural History Museum, London.
“I’m fast and I won’t be prey. I bury myself in the sand and I like watching the light coming from the top, sometimes it’s very bright and it lights up the sea bed. I’m used to darkness. I don’t like being picked up or handled. My life is simple you might say, but for me it’s full of action, drama, vibrations, rippling sounds… fears, the satisfaction of a good meal… Maybe not so many internal brainy turmoils as I take life as it comes, I live in the moment. I’m in the now and life is good” – Blue Swimmer Crab.
Blue Swimmer Crab has fascinating eyes, blue claws and an interesting pattern on his back and legs. His two front claws look like two pelican beaks with lots of teeth. The pattern on his back looks like a map of a world, with the shape of symmetrical lands.
Crabs feel very grateful when people free them from careless fishermen, SO do what you need to do to get them out of the crab pots or buckets before they end up on a fishmonger stall and boiled alive.
Whenever you feel that pull to set them free don’t ignore that call, they are calling you for help and need you to listen to your heart. Don’t dwell too much on how, just get them out of there!
Look in the eyes of a crab, and he will speak to your heart. Listen carefully for his message is simple but profound.
When you see someone fishing, focus your intention on telling the fishes in the water to go swimming somewhere else and stay away from that zone. Send that message out clearly again and again, it will work!
My recent times have been busy with home-educating my son, my yoga course, gardening, enjoying quiet family time, educating myself on the Ayurvedic system (and being amazed at how much it makes sense), and spending quality time in the woods with my canine friend Tara.
I’m feeling the need to connect with my creativity so I’ve been writing regularly, enjoying looking around me with a sense of wonder, and I even started to draw again.
I think all human beings need to find ways to express their creativity… Music and Photography used to be my ways of expressing myself back in my 20’s, and when I became a mum I started to cook a lot instead and of course I have a well-documented child, as I took quite a lot of photos of him as a baby and toddler.
Although at some point I had no camera… that was a dark era!
Portrait photography used to be my specialty, I used to enjoy taking portraits of animals a lot, and also trees, flowers, stones… I did take a lot of portraits of people too. Some of them were famous in their scene, others were famous with their Mums… it didn’t matter to me who they were. With every single being I had the honour to photograph (note I’m deliberatly not using the expression “taking” a photo…) I got to have a glimpse of their soul, and I must say that with animals that experience is often a lot more powerful than with humans, because animals just “let you in” without any attempt to shield anything.
Since being a Mum I have been constantly amazed by the sense of creativity that is innate to children. They are naturally creative as they don’t have any blockages within their creative process or great expectations for the result. Making a mess certainly doesn’t stop them getting started. Most of us adults have been conditioned when we were kids to care about how the things we make/create look like. We were compared with one another by thoughtless teachers or parents, some of us were told we were not good at arts, or that we didn’t have any talent in a particular subject whereas others may have been told they were creative geniuses and had to live up to the expectations that come with such a statement… I have met quite a few very talented artists and some of them seemed to be carrying their gift like a heavy load on their shoulders… that’s possibly why :-)
But for kids, art is just easy:
Thom and I go for long walks in the woods regularly and it amazes me to see how he comes up with Land Art projects on his own, and really enjoys immersing himself in the zone of creativity, creating a world made out of stones, earth and sticks…
He started to write on his own last year, because he was attracted by letters. So he started copying them on his own and now he writes his own name on everything and inserts random letters in his drawings as a part of the picture, because he likes the look of them.
Nothing seems to intimidate him, a few months ago we went to march to protest against the badger cull in the UK. I asked him to make his own sign and he just drew a badger, from the top of his head, just like that:
Obviously I’m aware that it doesn’t look exactly like a real badger, but I really like the fact that he didnt have anything holding him back from just doing it, even if he has never done it before!
(Re)opening the creativity channel doesnt need to be a complicated process. Even if as adults we may have forgotten the simplicity of just drawing or painting whatever comes to us. It is in fact a very liberating activity.
I find that writing a few pages first thing every morning helps. Most of the time I just start to write with no particular goal and my ideas just articulate themselves, and as I allow the pen to connect with my soul I realise in amazement that I’m releasing a few things that were stuck somewhere, in the back of my mind.
Going somewhere we have never been before can help, and also revisiting old places every once in a while to re discover them with new eyes is definitely an interesting experience too.
The practice of Yoga is a great way to release old blockages, to connect with ourselves and discover new possibilities – extending and stretching our own limitations.
Carrying a note pad and pen with you when out and about is useful as you may feel like writing something down while being in an inspiring place, such as the woods or the sea front… or in a cafe in town. One of my favourite activities back when I was travelling a lot used to be sitting down in a cafe somewhere and just writing anything that would go through my mind. Sometimes it was bits of conversations I could pick up around me, or words from a song… I have filled lots and lots of books like this. With poetry it sometimes feels that there is no thread to follow at all… but every single entry is an instant of my life. I would just spend hours writing, filling up pages and pages… and I would also sketch a lot.
Music is a great way to release blockages too. Singing makes you feel great, drumming can be very liberating and dancing is a very powerful way to release emotional build up!
The possibilities are infinite, but if you feel stuck you need to feed and nurture your creative self. That can be done through spending some time on your own in an inspiring place, to reconnect with yourself, and recharge. That can be in nature, in the woods, in a park, in the mountains, by the sea or in a museum, a cafe…
Sometimes yoga teachers advise their students to take on a creative activity to release certain blocks, so they might advise them to start playing a musical instrument, or to start singing. Creativity is a very healing process if we are open to let go of our fears/apprehensions and just go for it!
Releasing blockages through creativity is empowering and very useful when one is learning to communicate telepathically with animals or any other beings. It stretches our minds to towards infinite possibilities, giving us a sense of strength and joyfulness that elevates us to a higher state of consciousness because we are really connecting with ourselves and the world around us…
So don’t fear judgements or criticisms and enjoy every single step of your unique creative process, and remember: The journey is more important than the destination.
Namaste!
Noemie.
FocalHeart 