This is true:

This small black bear showed up next door to my in-law's house this morning. I loved it so much, I had to use it in a little piece of art. A good reminder: things show up, if you let them.

So let them.

What do you long for? Let your answer be an invitation to the universe.

Go ahead. Say it.

Dreaming in the morning

I feel like I am a feather or a tumble weed; something blown about across the vast space of the night. The morning comes too soon. I haven't dreamed enough. I wake, go through the motions: coffee, eggs + toast, say goodbye to T and the big boy (whose birthday is tomorrow!) and pull out my laptop, intending to be productive. But I can feel the way everything resists. My mind still feels slight and suggestible and tossed about, and when Sprout goes down for a nap I crawl beneath the covers of my sun striped bed and sink into sleep again.

Except I don't feel like I am sleeping: I'm not gone entirely. I've slipped into an almost lucid dreaming state. At first projects replay on the inner screen of my mind: the code and the physical dynamics of an interactive piece I'm making spins in and out of focus; other things arrive as well, rotating, repeating, overlapping. The cat leaps up onto my bed and for an instant I am awake, in the room, and then gone again under the opaque sheath of dream.

This time I get up again, go downstairs, do things: except that I am dreaming. My body heavy beneath flannel. My mind testing the length of thread that I can follow through the labyrinth back to myself.

Eventually I begin to have vivid dreams: each one complete, like an envelope with a snapshot in it. In the last one I am standing on sand dunes by the water, holding the strings of five or six yellow and orange helium balloons. I ask the friend I am with to take a picture, and then I run and leap, and feel the way the air catches beneath my feet before I finally land; the water warm, the sand pebbled and golden.

When I do finally wake to Sprout calling, it's like he is calling me from the other end of a tunnel, and I can't just snap to. I trail myself. I feel the way the dreams still flutter like prayer flags. I look about the room expecting that I will be wearing the clothes I dreamed that I put on. My disorientation is almost physical: it has a weight and color to it. And then finally I am here again, in this body, bare foot, and stumbling down the hall.

I haven't been getting enough sleep and I think I'm running a deficit. I think I haven't been dreaming enough. Not metaphoric dreaming; real dreaming. This kind of dreaming that filled with irrational beauty and wonder and disorientation and utter belief in circumstances of disbelief. I can feel the way I need this dreaming time to be wholly creative. It's vital, but I can't quite put my finger on how.

I'm curious: what are your dreams like? How do they affect your creative life?

Manifesting (+ a giveaway!)

Today there is coffee from three hours ago, milky sunlight, and feathers strewn telltale on the snow. The neighbor’s dog: a black, curly, stupid thing came again, her tongue lolling, killing hens. I chased her in socked feet across the snow, shrieking. Then pulled on boots, and called my friend who came with his quiet farmer hands, and his shotgun (just in case) together we found the hurt birds, and the scared ones.

In one of the pines along the drive, a Rhode island red; I scooted in among the sharp twigs, collected her akimbo wings and splayed yellow feet, then pressed the plumpness of her soft body up against my chest. She buried her face in my hair, and I could hear her breath coming fast and steady. It always surprises me to hear birds breathing. Like the sound of wings; fluttery, raspy, faint.

Today Bean is building a cardboard box fort with the empty boxes from Christmas and Sprout is napping after smashing his chin on his brother’s bunk bed, and coming up with a mouthful of blood. Today there is a broken glass jar pushed accidentally off a windowsill. There is laundry in haphazard stacks; strawberries cut lengthwise in a bowl on the counter; marbles scattered across the slightly sloping floor.

Today there is the chapter outline of my book waiting for me like a jigsaw puzzle shaken in a box without a lid. My desk is strewn, my fingers already stained with white paint and gel medium from setting up a few paintings for later work.

Today is almost the end of the year. The last day. And this is my messy, ordinary, glorious life. I am so grateful.

It’s been an amazing year, and you’ve helped to make it so. Truly.

Today I want to know: what your words and dreams are for the year that will begin tomorrow. One word, or a list. What do you want to manifest?

I believe in this. I believe in it deeply. I have found again and again and again that the things I ask for manifest when I ask clearly, when I put my greatest, deepest wishes into the palms of the universe to hold.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and endless plans.

That the moment one definitely commits oneself then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now. ~Goethe

So. What do you wish to begin this year? What is the wildest, truest thing that you want to have happen?

Leave your answer here, or link back here with a post on your own blog, and two of you will be the (random) recipients of these pieces of orignal art!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

(*Leave a comment by midnight, January 1st, 2011 to be eligible for the giveaway.)

UPDATED: I selected the winners using the random number generator at random.org. CONGRATULATIONS Ashley and KitKat! Please email me with your address & I'll ship these off when I get back next week! xo, Christina