There was a knock on the door.

No one hears well or expects a 7 am caller.

Finally they answer. Its neighbor Pat.

Syl calls to me that G is running down to the dock. I’m just out of the shower so I dress quickly and follow him. Wet hair flying.

It’s the Belle Andie. She under water. Even worse her new motor is submerged.

This is terrible.

G runs back to the house to get the key for the lock. (the motor is new, well was, and we were warned of the dangers of it being stollen, so a lock was fastened on) It was hard to put on above water. Taking it off is, well, not easy.

G is mad. Syl is crying. I’m now hiding out because when feelings come on strong, I just want to stay clear.

Now

The motor is in the back of the truck waiting for a boat place to open that can flush out the salt water.

G and Syl are arguing about which place to take it. G and I are wet from getting the motor off and hauling the boat to shore, my feet are freezing.

I’m sad that my boating days are now over, it was just last night that we enjoyed a beautiful trip around the cove. It sad that we won’t get to do this anymore, but it is just a boat, motors have to have this kind of thing happen once in a while. I mean they go on boats. In water… Again I know nothing.

No one was IN the boat when she sunk. It happened early this morning at high tide. I’m sorry to be all Pollyanna about this, but we are all fine, there was no danger or suffering. Just the end of some fun, plus some worry about the motor. (Which I clearly don’t know enough to be distraught about)

I’m waiting to hear what the neighbor who used to own a marina has to say about our now hosed off motor.

G took it to a place to be taken apart and flushed out. (Everyone had the same answer)

Back at the dock, we bail. And bail. And bail. We pull our little boat out of the water.

Towel dry the sandy inside. Then push her back into the water. No one can figure out how the small leak managed to sink and submerge her in less than twelve hours. Neighbors have gathered. Everyone is trying to figure out where the water is coming in.

Finally, it’s decided that water is bubbling in from under the motor plate board thing. G recalls the motor jumping and slamming into the back of the boat when he put it in reverse the last time. A small slit has been found that can easily be patched.

The motor will be fine according to the boat experts at the place he dropped it off.

So good news! My boating days aren’t over after all.

That’s where I’m headed. But where is that exactly? What direction?

I’m at a turning point, I feel that, but which way do I turn? Which way am I going? Which way do I want to go? Hmmm…

I went to yoga

Where I was reminded not to over think it, to let go of expectations, to trust, to show up and let things play out as they do.

Which was the best answer for me today. Its what I did. I worked on my art for several hours. Have I forgotten how challenging it is to get out of my way, to allow things to be as they land, reserving judgement. To truly not like or dislike, anything, At least for this session.

Trauma seems to be a well used word lately.

Teachers, business owners, HR, nearly every kind of employer or employee is being trained and informed about ‘trauma imformed’ behavior.

It seems that trauma affects all of us. I guess being human, it makes sense that we can’t get through a life without traumatic experiences.

An interesting subject, on one hand, it can explain a lot about why anyone acts the way they do. It can explain better our own selves. Why am I acting this way? Ohhh trauma triggers…

The downside is, that it’s a good excuse for not trying too hard, as in: What’s the use, I have a trauma condition…

Which can’t be a helpful stance

Can it? I mean it’s good to give ourselves and others a pass, to veiw with a compassionate eye.

I think we have other options too.

With all the new research and understanding, my hope is that we can treat ourselves and our fellow humans better, but also have more skills for regulating.

I know I want to continue to learn more and to amend some of my life views, (the ones that get in the way of calm confidence). Times when I wake up off, or get triggered by something unexpected or even unknown. I’m always seeking more awareness. More self understanding, more other people understanding. Always more self understanding.

I wrote my book ‘Peaceful Hearts’, a few years ago. It came out of my triggered reaction to a very televised school shooting. I didn’t yet know anything about triggers. What I remember is not being able to stop watching the horrible scenes on repeat as they played across my computer screen or how sad and sick I felt. The worse I felt the harder it was to drag eyes away. The affects stayed with me for weeks. I didn’t feel this way immediately after the shooting at our school, the one I was actually in, years before. I even went to EMDR afterwards to help me get over the dread of going to work that I felt after a long weekend or week break. I wasn’t the only one who got stomache aches as I drove up.

My friend’s son, who was on the playground at lunch the day it happened, struggled to stay at school for lunch for years afterward.

No one was talking about trauma back then. Many parents and teachers struggled with strong feelings, random fears, even anger, for quite awhile. Many refused to talk about it. EMDR was a new, unique therapy that many of us tried with pretty good success.

But these triggers…

I wrote and illustrated ‘Peaceful Heart’s’ long before I knew anything about the term ‘triggered’. I just knew I was affected and so were others. Here was an event, long since past, affecting us so completely. I was trying to just find some peace for myself.

It’s interesting that now, I don’t expect to ‘get over’ the traumatic events of my life. Years ago, I would have felt shamed for not being able to ‘just move on’. Instead, I now understand that these experiences never go away, but that I can live peacefully, triggers and all, anyway.

Even though things are recorded in my brain and body, I found some helpful tools that work.

Awareness, breathwork. Yoga

Having ‘Peaceful Hearts’ come to me, was as though the future was handing me a bit of help across the years.

Lately, as we as a society, become comfortable discussing harder things, Peaceful Hearts, which talks about emotion and breathing and feeling, is selling out.

Things you can’t predict.

For me anyway.

Change is not just coming, it’s here.

After passing the year mark of my blog and website, the wordpress prompt questions are repeating and won’t let me answer.

The temperature has dropped significantly. Leaves are turning from green to orange to brown and landing all over.

I have to change up my daily routine. It’s too cold to dash outside barefoot, my garden is waning. It’s time to turn inward, to set up my mornings to paint.

It’s time for me to start finding productive artistic success. It’s time for me to get down to work. I’m ready to get a new series going.

I’ll keep blogging, but I’ll be turning my focus to visual art as the seasons and everything else changes.

I admit that I’m a little excited about change. I’m used to it. I like where things seem to be going.

The consensus is that summer is officially over. There’s this big division of season that I’m not really feeling today. Is it really Fall? No white clothes or something like that?

We spent the morning in my boat at high tide. I love the vantage point from out on the water. It’s so pretty and so peaceful. Birds fly overhead, fish jump, solitary fisherman are the only other people around.

It’s too warm to feel like picking apples or baking. This morning I’m in shorts and barefoot. We have been enjoying warm days on beaches, eating dinner outside, little evening bonfires.

I’m not finished roasting marshmallows on sticks, or eating corn on the cob or barbecuing. I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer, not this week anyway. Our garden is still giving us vegetables and even surprising us with new flowers and growth.

Somehow I want to slow things down and savor all the lovely summer moments that will soon, so very soon, dissolve into the cozy sweater weather of fall.

Not that I don’t love Autumn, not that New England doesn’t have so much to enjoy in Fall. Maybe I’ll be ready for all of that next week…

In the meantime, there’s some sunshine, warm water and sand still to hang out in.

That saying: “you need to turn this ship around” usually said to someone whose life is noticeably off course, why a ship?

Ships don’t turn quickly. Neither do boats really, (so I’m learning). They get off course in increments. If a ship is going in the opposite direction, there will need to be a lot of time and turning. A U-turn is a pretty big complicated, slow move for a ship. Probably, it over shot its destination, correcting sounds hard.

I woke up thinking about turning my own ship around.

Turning…

Where and how did I get off course? My instincts are not to figure out where or how and to just start turning.

Start…

I feel like my moves will be small, I want them to be gentle. My swath wide.

I don’t know what lies ahead. On course or off, there is always the unknown. I’ve spent plenty of time as a human in the unknown

Haven’t we all

It definitely feels better to make a decision. Initially course correction feels daunting, though

And hard.

Meanwhile,

My favorite baseball player was just called up. He has been making his way through the minor leagues for awhile and finally, finally put on the uniform and hit his first ball as a major league player.

This was last night. He’s twenty one. In the stands they interviewed his dad who said the thing we have always known about Thomas. For him it has always been all baseball. He has loved it and nothing else since he was very little. He spent the majority of his time (pretty much all) playing, watching and practicing baseball.

This kid never got off course. He did what he loved and he worked hard at it. Every day.

Not to discount my or anyone else’s meandering style life. I’ve had a lot to learn.

A lot of other stuff, also.

How incredibly excited we all are watching Thomas realize his dream! It’s the best kind of energy and we are all feeling so privileged to watch it all happen

It too was in increments.

It did take him nearly twenty years of continuous dedication, work, focus, and love.

Part of the fun of this new gallery development, is that it’s my good friend. We’ve been having the most fun conversations about designing her new space.

My kitchen needs some further definition. It’s functional, but I have ideas.

When you have the right people to bounce ideas off of, it does make things so much more fun.

I almost forgot that part. When two or more people collaborate there can be a bigger creative energy. Even famous designers hire designers to help design their own homes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about these things lately. Creativity works well when creative people come together. Creative communities can be fun and innovative and inspiring!

Flowing energy always feels good. Flowing creative energy is my favorite kind.

Today I picked tomatoes, basil and a green bell pepper from my garden and made pasta sauce. I also made a caprise salad with more garden tomatoes, all while on the phone helping my friend pick colors and design her logo. I also worked on a new painting.

Before that, I had some fun art conversation after yoga. Plus, while still at yoga, I sold two more books.

On my after dinner walk, I remembered to bring scissors to I cut a vine I’ve seen hanging over the sidewalk. I made a wreath as I walked.

As the full moon and Fall equinox close in, creative forces seem to be swirling around. This could be my imagination but I don’t think that matters. I know I’m not the only picking up on it. I’ll happily take feeling creativly inspired for any reason, A N Y time it shows up!

All summer we have been meaning to go to one of these and finally we are heading there tonight.

I spent most of today online and on the phone trying to sort out tech issues (not art related). This is not a favorite activity of mine. I actually feel quite spent, but good to have things resolved in a few places and be on our way to something with art in its name.

Fun or not, (you never know), there will be pizza and ice cream and it just so happens to be a beautiful September evening.

I feel like it’s a research related trip to see some art and some examples of gallery spaces.

Things have changed in the art world since my early days of trying to get gallery representation. I had some lucky breaks off and on over the years. I did plenty of juried shows. ‘Juried’ which is a fancy term for paying money to have your work judged pretty harshly. Usually it comes down to who you know, but if you get in, you feel so approved of.

That’s a good thing to remember, or know. I wish I knew it way back then. I thought it was all about how good my work was. It’s partly that of course, but there are a lot of other factors.

It’s a fickle business.

I’m glad to be on this side of my art career looking at this wacky possibility/opportunity.

Taking it all with a grain of salt. (I guess a grain was a pinch and a pinch is a measurement). Salt represents skepticism. I looked it up) So a tiny measure of skepticism is my nod to the fickleness of the business of art.

Meanwhile, we are going to Chester for some art and music and pizza…

There is a cool possibility that maybe, I don’t know, but…

I’m getting that reminder again.

It seems like every time I get away from doing art, something always pulls me back.

Art is a funny thing. It’s superfluous. It’s not practical or even nessesary. Survival has little or nothing to do with art.

Yet, art has a power over me that I can’t deny or ignore for long.

I try.

Life seems to do everything it can to distract me. I often find myself in circumstances that distract me for every understandable reason imaginable.

Finding supportive friends in a sea of practicality is challenging, but I’ve done it. Even here in the NE. Still, I have a big chunk of my life revolving around the most uncreative pastimes.

Yesterday, I was caught between two conversations. One had to do with lawn maintenance and neighbors who choose fertilizer over organic lawn care. The other was about art.

Oh art… art art art…no contest for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I care. (plus I really do strive to be practical)

It’s just that, well, the pull from art gives me a more expansive perspective. When I’m really feeling low, I miss, I grieve for, I CRAVE inspired creative expansion. I don’t know how better to explain it. Little details that circle around and around seem to feel like a spiral downward and that circle feels like a funnel, like backwards Fibonacci, getting smaller and tighter and more constricted.

I think we all have a different balance for our comfort levels and when it gets off, we feel off. For me it seems that if I don’t experience newness from someone’s innovated creation process (mine included), regularly, I lose some of my lightness. Weirdly a measure of hope disappears with it.

I can exist for awhile and have, but it’s like when I have too much time between yoga, when I exist without it, I don’t feel as healthy.

Once again I am being reminded of how important art is to, I guess my outlook. What I find most interesting today, is the familiar little nudge or tug. I never know where it will come from, but I love that it shows up. I love the serendipity, the randomness and the unmistakable power that inserts itself into whatever is going on.

My friend and long time collector of my art, just got keys to her new gallery space.

In LaJolla, CA.

On Prospect St.

Suddenly, I have a reason to paint. A very good reason. A weirdly fun, dream-come-true kind of reason that only the comic ethos could dream up just for me.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting for a callback from the WiFi carrier…and discussing why brown patches are spreading across the lawn…