This fall and winter, I am inviting two new words to guide my creative life: attention and mischief.
A few days after Christmas I’m eating veggie curry watching the sea through the window. There’s a lighthouse on a little island that appears and disappears through the clouds. Sometimes there are figures walking on the headland near the tower.
I’m here as a kind of halfway house—after spending Christmas with my family in the suburbs and before going back to my tiny studio in the city centre.
All of the things are blooming. Have you noticed? June is here. The Cecil Brunner rosebush is magnificent this year--an explosion of flowers so heavy that its top has fallen away from the white wall of the little city cottage where Lucia is made, and is spilling toward the alleyway. There is a lesson here for me, in expectation and fruition...
Sunday, April 9, 2017 - Daily Notes, From the Editor (550 words). Whoa, April is intense. Burgeoning. This thing we call Spring is aptly named. To the untrained eye, new growth appears suddenly, but if you have been paying attention you know: this all started long ago.
Happy New Year! Oh, the plans I had for ending 2016 with a neat bow, a perfect email, and an announcement of a new offering I've been working on for early 2017. Out the window they flew sometime in the last week while I struggled to balance heart work with paid work, dreams with reality. Instead, I woke this morning unfinished. Like I always do...
Our lives are the sum of micro movements. Every second of every day, an infinite number of unpredictable factors wholly predict the course we travel—the people we meet, our life experiences and where we find ourselves—right here, right now. Independently, these factors seem trivial. A butterfly in Bali couldn’t possibly cause a hurricane in Bermuda. Or, could it?
May 29, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor
Sweet clover grows through the sidewalk cracks. Have you ever noticed that the bumblebees don't care where it roots? Only that it does and that it blooms.
Summer has arrived bustling with an abundance of sunshine and hope for longer days to bring love requited, success unfolded, creativity found, and accomplishments made.
I am watching my bank account hover precariously near not enough this year and remembering what my mother said about money. "It comes and goes, and wherever the numbers are, that's where you are."
I find myself walking to the coffee shop softly reciting the mantra I have adopted for the season. "Less is more," I hear myself whisper while the camera sways loyally from the pink scarf strap on my shoulder reminding me that creativity is right here, right now. It does not care how much money you have.
That is when I spotted the clover blossoms. Cars whizzed by on busy Madison Street and neighbors I do not know spied me crouching down in this odd place to set my camera on the ground, point the lens and click the shutter. I noticed the bumblebees, like me, driven to gather up all of the nectar in life and make something good with it.
xo,
laura
March 4, 2016 - Daily Notes
There is a big windstorm on Orcas Island tonight. It arrived with me at midday, a fitting metaphor. I watched a crow fly sideways past the iconic red-paint "ORCAS" letters on ferry terminal building and I wondered, "what does it mean?"
I don't know. It is a small thing, a lone black bird facing a strong wind. It is also significant. Everything here is.
Rain pelts my window and the candle I carried from home flickers softly. A flashlight the innkeepers brought stands ready, "In case the power goes out," they said. I forgot my coat at home, but remembered tea lights and the glass candleholder. Small, significant.
I came here to move slowly for a few days and to listen. It's harder to do than we think, you know? Slowing down, tuning inward, I mean. When was the last time you heard your own heartbeat? Soft, powerful. Small, significant.
Darvill's Bookstore here on Orcas Island has the most beautiful view of any bookstore I've ever seen. Better than Shakespeare & Company with its view of Notre Dame. That gorgeous cathedral cannot compare to the majesty of nature here. These islands with their cedars rise up from the waters of the sea like tiny emerald jewels in a pave globe of the world. Small, significant.
I ducked into Darvill's to escape the windstorm and buy coffee at their espresso bar. They serve Batdorf & Bronson, which I'm sure if you're a hipster means something cool, but to the synapses in my brain all that matters is the last time I was here the coffee was so good I've dreamed about it ever since. Small, significant.
I met the owner of the bookstore and showed her Lucia. She was warm. She said, "I heard you were coming." You did? "Yes, a friend told me, I can't remember who...anyway, someone told me you were coming this weekend." She opened Lucia and read a page in the middle. She picked up her phone and called her distributor while I stood there. She placed a standing order for Lucia. Three copies to begin. Just like that. Small, significant.
Tomorrow, I get to attend the TEDx Orcas Island conference. The theme is "Best of Both Worlds : The Potential in Polarity." I look forward to hearing new ideas, meeting people, and gifting my brain with the opportunity to grow a little more for my forty-first birthday.
Like a crow flying sideways in a windstorm, I am not sure exactly why I am here or where I am going. But my wings are spread wide and I'm flying. Small, significant.
xo
laura