Maisie and I are in an amazing place right now, we are in a river of creativity welling up and spilling over like a geyser, too much for one book, too much not to share, and so I am sharing it out in many ways. All the while I am working on the book I am, as I have said, warming up for painting in my sketchbook, and then Maisie has messages she wants me to share and I send them out into the world like notes in bottles set sail on the sea. Who will find them? Who will care? It doesn’t seem to matter, it only matters that I catch all the bits & parts & pieces as they spill over and out and share them in every way I possibly can — on a page in the book, here at Patreon, on my blog, social media, or just making posters to put up around my house to inspire and spur me on as I create this book. Maisie has so much she wants to say, and there is an explosion of color here on my work table. It is positively thrilling!

Amidst paints of a thousand colors, markers, paint markers, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, crystals, a prayer doll, other handmade dolls, a turkey baster (to rewet the big paint boxes I am making that are huge, Maisie size palettes!), little teapots, a Bird Goddess, a cup full of dip pens of many sizes and many many bottles of inks, yarns and fabric scraps in all manner of bright colors — vintage velvet, lace, brocade, satin, silk, cotton, wool, and more — and small fiber tools, a handmade wand that I created from a fallen limb after a hurricane that is now encrusted with many crystals that I keep adding to, notes taped all around both sides and across the top of my big desktop computer, candles, fountain pens, journals and sketchbooks, a whole big box of multitudes of sari silk ribbons, clearish plastic clipboards in many colors with pages in stages for the book, and so much more, the list could just go on and on and on, and here, with all of this, I am creating a book that is the story of a lifetime, Maisie’s story and mine, a memoir told through fantasy and fiction and the very real events and occurrences, thoughts, and memories, and lessons learned from a lifetime of living and loving and teaching and creating and mentoring and gardening and writing and doing healing work as a Reiki Master, one time Interfaith Minister, lifelong student of Buddhism, lapsed Catholic, and yet Catholicism is still inside of me, prayer and meditation and solitude and silence and a contemplative life, all of which are the foundation for everything I am, have been, and which have held me up through the many ages and stages of my life. 

Tending plants and animals, inside and out, and lifelong mental health issues and being agoraphobic which somehow suits me just fine and yet longing to reach out to the world and help and heal and love, I am writing this book, and my whole heart and soul and self and being are so interwoven into the tapestry that is being woven here at my work table and in my heart and on the page, writing or typing words or with paintbrush in hand, that there just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to do it all, to capture every fragment of a thought, and yet I use the hours of the day as best I can, and I count these hours my greatest blessings, and I am exploding in every direction sending out rainbows of love and hope and joy and tenderness and a million blessings to everyone on this earth, everyone of every shape, color, and size, everyone of every faith, every everything there is. It is all happening right now. This is creativity at flood tide.

Of course it will not always be this way. There will be down times, dry times, bipolary times, sad times, times when depression takes over, times when I just need to be quiet for a bit, but then these times come again and I ride the wave and lustily, greedily, take everything in that I possibly can, I do it all, I capture it all, I send it out to all of you, everyone reading this, every way I can while the tide is high. This is what I am doing right now, today, and I just wanted to share the river of joy that I am experiencing now with all of you. Dip a toe in, feel yourself being swept into your own river, allow the current to take you away, float, drift, dream, these times must not be wasted.

And so now I set sail again, dive back into the new page for the book that I am working on, dive back into something I am joyfully creating in my sketchbook, kiss Molly who is, of course, here in my lap as I write this, watch the wind blowing through the trees outside of my studio windows, and the countless wild birds at the 5 feeders that hang just outside my studio, and the playful squirrels, and clean up after Rocky Raccoon who visited again last night and turned the squirrel feeder over, all topsy turvy, and I will text my children and stare for several minutes at my blue lava lamp in a kind of mesmerized meditation, and I will listen to the wind chimes of which there are too many to count all around my little Dragonfly Cottage, and I will drift and dream and then dive back into my work. 

This day is a blissy kind of day filled with gleeful joy, gratitude, endless love, and an intense need to create and share it all. So here I am with all of you. What wonders are possible if we throw the doors of our heart open and let it all in. That’s my motto for the year “let it all in,” and so I am…