Bread Crumbs...

This is what I call my own process of reconnecting with the contents of various journals, that I either am currently writing in, or have stock-piled over the course of my life.

In this very public forum, I bring aspects of my journal activities online, in order to reconnect to the larger world, again. The thoughts presented here will have largeness to them. This is consistent with the artist's work_ what is at first abstract in thought, feelings, etc. Consider that this page of journaling then, is like that magic when we are watching an artist work on a drawing, and how that set of making marks on a page impacts all of the senses at once. The, in fact magical moment, when we begin to experience the drawing come together as if right before our eyes. My journaling here is very much this way, finding my own breadcrumbs of wisdom, and teaching myself to keep focus on the path. A path that has led this particular artist's life in healthy, creative, intelligent ways, away from the house of origins. Back there, no one, whose job it was to care for, and to raise us was ever really happy. So it was quite early in childhood, that I decided to pay attention to who might have ideas about how one might live as a happy adult_ was that only childhood logic?

In brief synopsis of the personal, I will open the door a bit to let you very generally look in. Perhaps because it was traumatic, and childhood was dominated by my biggest question: how would I learn to coordinate happiness with work, come that magical master-of-one's-own-fate, called adulthood? Or, from a child's perspective, when that moment of arriving looked like it would all just be a larger-than time, and that this would be what was called adult life, because surely, I reasoned this is what having the freedom to choose for one's self must be, I concluded at the age of seven: "I know, I'll be an artist!"

A lot of time has passed since that epiphanal moment in a cathedral in Europe. As my childhood moved toward emancipation, my life was dominated by tears, as it really wasn't a happy life for the rest of my family. In those early years, I just planned out my own escape.
At this juncture, my task may be to look at the reality that I have yet to have a healthy, mutually sustained relationship with another peer, and in the meantime to get on with the next direction of living. Fulltime single-parenthood, has been a shared priority during the therapy years of my early adulthood, along with much deep creative development, and just plain hard personal work. I will point to these parts of who I am in a variety of ways over time, as in the inclusion of my visual art, on this public page.
What my personal journey has been like, is intended for those who are in earnest to learn from one another's experiences. The visual allows one point of contact, and from my bread-crumb-reconnecting-wisdom point of view, as a garden variety hybrid, I offer another point of contact. I am banking that it is as often in hearing threads of commonality, that one can actually find the inspiration needed to feed individual decisions, about forward movement toward clarity, about the purposes for one's life, and ultimately, for a conscious liberation from the inherited patterning of unneeded burdens. In other words, what is the best of all human endeavor that is possible, and in combination, what will this looking, seeing, understanding define as new? How will we then choose to recognize and experience living? Too big? Just trust the process...
For example, I can see that I have experiential resources of value to offer the collective healing work out in the world, as a working artist. I just don't yet know how to get paid to do it happily.

Trusting this place to begin, let the flavors of these maxims reveal what may be valuable in the waking process_ what is important about the process for each individual, that one can add to the collective process of building an environment that supports each one feeling safe, and supported enough to live this life as it is meant to be lived. That of consciously waking up.
How can one put a price on this kind of work when engaged with others?

Therefore, these quotes are important in and of themselves, outside of the context they may have been originally stated, thus converting them to the maxims that I refer your attention to here. Breadcrumbs of wisdom for your own considerations...as a result, please feel free to be engaged with me in mutually respectful dialogue through this site. Expect the entries to be like the artist's renderings right in front of your eyes. Initial sketch, shade, chiaroscuro, using the eraser to draw out negative spaces...continuously and organically morphing toward clarity.

Thank-you_


'The lover of life makes the whole world into her family.' paraphrased from: Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

'The more intensely the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more that child will tend to feel and see her earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of the adult.' paraphrased from: Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Suggestions

“Sometimes the best way to keep peace in the family is to keep the members apart for awhile.” FDR, letter of December 18, 1942, to Assistant Secretary of State, Sumner Wells

“There’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in but not looked at, love within the light of which all other love finds speech.” This love is silent.” TS Eliot, The Elder Statesman

“Jonah’s adaptive niche in the family ecosystem was to be the perfect grandchild, eager to scramble up on laps, unafraid of bitter vegetables, under excited about television and computer games, and skilled at cheerfully answering questions like, ‘Are you loving school?’ “ Jonathan Franzen, The Correction

...The systems I have always liked best arise from a poetic combination of desperation, generosity, imagination, and practicality....who wrote it?

The name inside this image identifies the face inside the image, not the
painter! However, I am the same painter who stepped away from
the easel to learn the software, to then make this image in Illustrator!
What peaceful, health-promoting purposes can these skills begin to serve?