Self

1 Comment Posted on 18/03/2014 Learning, Menu, Settling in Darwin

Processing

Hello there, it’s been a while!! How are you all? How are the seasons where you are? Can you smell a change in the air? Have you seen the magnolia blossoming yet? I so miss them…

I miss reflecting at loud on my keyboard too!! I have clearly neglected my blog… but life gets in the way!

and art;

and moods as well…

I am realising about my loneliness. It’s been more than six months now that I have started my job in Darwin. Settled as we are. Things are rolling. Shouldn’t they?

I suppose it’s when things settle that feelings start coming back to a surface… stirring the so-called settled happy self!!!

well..this is where I am right now. and I am trying to stay quiet about it, to see what will emerge. Listen carefully, I say to my inner self… I hear whispering…

Don’t get me wrong. I love being alone. This, to me, is the dream. Not having to worry about anyone…in the studio or in my thoughts. But when the time comes, it’s good to feel close again.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
― Anaïs Nin

4 Comments Posted on 13/10/201314/10/2013 Learning, Menu, Settling in Darwin

A thread

I was reading Flora Bowley’s blog http://braveintuitiveyou.com/ which is always so inspiring, but I got distracted and clicked on a link and landed on Alena Hennessy’s http://www.alenahennessy.com/blog/.

In her post, Alena was telling about the article she wrote for a magazine http://www.alenahennessy.com/art-becomes/ on how blogging changed her life.

I felt encouraged by what I read and had to post a comment to Alena. Little thread that we create and follow..

Here are some of my thoughts that I shared with her.

Like Alena, I was unsure on how to write a blog..and more important, why!! When I started almost a year ago and, as I kept writing posts, despite the encouragements of my friends, I was still going through self doubt. Very perverse self doubt!

I was feeling that no one or only a few friends were reading.. This omnipresent question bugged me. Why did I care?? Now, I love the fact that my friends can access to some more intimate up dates and I really enjoy when I can access to theirs too. I find this is a more genuine way to stay in touch when living overseas. But why was I still wondering why??

You understand that for me, the question ‘why am I writing this blog’ comes regularly. It is a significant point as I often tried to sabotage myself (“who do you think you are”).. I knew where it was coming from, and yet was unable to not feel ashamed.

But through the amazing and inspiring work of amazing and inspiring women, and by that I mean well-known authors like Brene Brown http://brenebrown.com/my-blog/ and artists like Flora and Alena, but also my close friends of many years around the world, I am more solid. I can feel I have now integrated some of the knowledge and wisdom shared by them.. Now when such question arises, I notice myself embracing it as a way of growth, a way to reconnect with my heart, and a way to say to the world, but most to myself, I AM… Amazing, beautiful, capable, powerful…but more important, worth it!!

This blog is in fact helping me to stay on this very track.. If I am interested in getting more readers, my focus changes. Life is a learning and creative process, right!? Writing about my thoughts and realizations, trusting and sharing some of my inner processes, genuinely and with humility, sharing some of my photos and favorite quotes… It simply feels good. And it helps me to grow and to be brave! People reading my blog, it’s like the cherry on the cake! You are my bonus!!!

So I will continue:)

and I hope that, through my words, images or suggested books, you will find too some inspiration.

(and I recommend Brene Brown’s books, because they are really good;)

and

Leave a comment Posted on 12/10/201312/10/2013 Menu, Settling in Darwin

Grounded

Do you read your old post?
I just did that this morning… I got transported in my own old thoughts in an instant…and found it very refreshing which surprised me actually…I read my very first post, dated 12/11/12.

Sometimes when you look at old photographs, you feel disconnected from this old image of you. The cloths, the hair style, everything seems ‘demodé’… old fashion… A distance between two selves…

Not that a year is a long time.. however, so much happened since that first post – so many worlds crossed, physically and mentally, so many photos taken, so many lost faces, so many K’s and roads traveled – that I thought I would feel a distance from those words.

Instead, I felt this warmth in the center of my heart, some sort of recognition blended with joy, affirmation of a grounded self.

Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.

― Rumi

2 Comments Posted on 07/08/201308/08/2013 Learning, Menu, Settling in Darwin

Sketching

When we were kids, my sister and I had a large collection of comic books. One of them was Yakari, stories of a little Native American and his mustang, Petit Tonnerre – Little Storm. My Dad, who has amazing drawing skills, used to draw, upon our requests, Yakari and his horse and other animals on our school books as cover. I always admired and envied my Dad’s skills and ability to draw and I wish I could provide here copies of his sketches and drawings. He could reproduce any animals perfectly, with its characteristic and personality. I always thought I couldn’t draw..

Well, through the current absence of strucuture (job, home, friends and family, and even belongings), I have recently discovered that I can immensely enjoy myself by drawing flowers..

A whole new horizon opens up…and it’s fun!

Leave a comment Posted on 27/07/201327/07/2013 Menu

Needing faith

We can put our whole heart into whatever we do; but if we freeze our attitude into for or against, we’re setting ourselves up for stress. Instead, we could just go forward with curiosity, wondering where this experiment will lead. This kind of open-ended inquisitiveness captures the spirit of enthusiasm, or heroic perseverance.

~ Pema Chödrön, Buddhist teacher

I think I need to read this beautiful quote several time each day. Repeat it and repeat it again.. To let go of my impatience and my expectations.

Leave a comment Posted on 18/07/201318/07/2013 Learning, Menu, Settling in Darwin

..and have faith

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away… and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast…. be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust…. and don’t expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

4 Comments Posted on 23/05/201324/02/2014 Learning, Menu, On the road

The Red Centre

While driving on the Plenty Highway, across Queensland and the Northern Territory, I experienced the vastness and a sense of isolation. The experience of leaving behind friends, family and let’s say, security, was quite fresh in our mind and heart. But nothing too unfamiliar to process.

When we arrived in Alice Springs, a totally different scene welcomed us, very similar to what I experienced when I first visited Darwin. What I saw was mainly two groups of people, living together but not living together. Two communities in the same town with very little connection between each other and very limited understanding of each other. Also what I felt was that those two communities weren’t interested in reaching the other, whether by fear or ignorance. I am aware I’m generalizing. This is a very complex issue. But what I experienced was confronting and overwhelming, which stayed with me for some time while in the Red Centre.

We then drove to Uluru. Magnificent Uluru. While we were walking around, I had some interesting insights. One of them was about the people of this land. All of them, all of us.

Every Australian should visit Uluru, as a pilgrimage. This immense and sacred place brings healing to the heart. The indigenous of this land would benefit of this nourishment, bringing some (re-)connection with themselves, with their identity and their culture. All non-indigenous should also come here. To hear the Centre, this land’s heart, talking to their own heart. This could bring some understanding about the land and the so many stories. To build connections and relationships. Between themselves and between each other.

Another way of building a bridge perhaps.

sur le chemin du zigodor