there was once a prince…

There once was a prince that lived in a kingdom of shadows and rain. The colours were shiny and bright when the sun shone and the dark and gloomy and grey when it was raining, which was often. He loved it when the sun shone and he thought how amazing it would be if the sun always shone.

He had a cousin who lived in a far away land and so the prince abandoned his kingdom to go and live with his cousin in the land when the sun never stopped shining and when it rained it was a relief and a joy.

This land appeared at him to be barren at first. With so much sun and so little rain there were very few plants and the plants that did grow were tall and prickly or small and stubby and the animals were thin and scrawny from lack of water and at first he missed the greenness and bright colours of his own land. He loved the warmth of the sun though and so he stayed.

He began to look properly at the land where he was, and he realized thought the desert looked empty it was actually full of life. When he looked closer there were subtle colours he had not noticed before, pale greens and purple pinks and slow growing dry lichen covering the rocks and tiny flowers that grew and died in a day and bright red ants and shiny black spiders with hourglasses in warning red on their backs and pale almost clear scorpions that looked as fragile as water but packed a punch in their curved tails. When it rained the desert burst into life and colour and bright green singing frogs emerged from everywhere by magic and the spiny plants gave forth huge flowers.

The next time he went home to his own rainy land he looked at it differently also and he saw all the colours he had not seen before. Colours that were beautiful, not grey and sad like he had thought before. Earth colours and greens and rich colours and dark brown mountain water from the rich peat lands and mosses a foot deep that were cushiony to walk on and when it rained they glistened and shone with life. He realized that these colours were a part of him also, he had grown up with them, they were in his innermost being and in his dreams and he loved them.

He remembered when he was younger not understanding colours, being afraid of them when he painted pictures and not knowing how to use them and being clumsy with them and he realized it was because he didn’t like his own colours and he was trying to use other colours. He had to understand and love his own colours before he could understand them and use them how he wished in his paintings. He began to use these colours and to look around him for inspiration for his colours and he became much happier than he had been before. Now he can be in his own land and love the colours there or be in the land of sun and heat and love the colours there also.

truth

There was once a girl who always believed the stories she heard, whether they were stories about the rain and the clouds or stories about aliens landing on earth. She believed them all. If someone said she was beautiful she would believe them and feel happy and if someone said she was ugly she would believe them and feel sad and ugly. If she failed at something she believed she was a failure and if she succeeded at something else then she was a success and the world was her oyster. She believed men when they said they loved her and she was the most wonderful creature in the world and that they would never love another and she gave her energy and her life to feed these stories to keep them coming to validate her because if we are not our stories then who are we?

One day she found out someone was lying. This was a huge shock to her, it had never occurred to her that someone would lie. Then she looked around her and realized everyone was lying, including herself. She was lying to herself. She believed each and every one of the stories she heard and told them to herself and there had been a part of her that knew they weren’t true but she ignored that part and kept believing the stories because they told her how to feel and how to be.

She stopped listening to the stories. She stopped listening to all the stories, when someone told her a story she would smile sweetly and look for the truth behind the story and the truth behind the story generally ran something like ‘listen to me I am lonely’ or ‘please believe this story of how amazing I am because I need your approval’ or ‘if I tell you how wonderful and beautiful you are you will stay with me and love me’ or simply ‘I need love’

As she stopped listening to the stories she began to lose her own stories and she saw that she wasn’t beautiful or ugly or a failure or a success or the most wonderful creature in the world capable of inspiring undying love in men, that these were simply stories to make people feel good or bad about themselves and it made her sad to let go of these beliefs. She wanted to be beautiful and a success and the most loved and most adored but these were illusions and stories and so she let them go.

What was past the stories? I am still finding out, it is a place of calmness and sense of unshakable self that comes from the heart. It is my own connection to my truth that does not depend on outside approval or a need to comply. It is not selling myself for love and realizing that being on my own does not mean failure, it is the letting go of all the stories bit by bit and facing the fear that comes with letting go my way of manipulating the world to see me the way my mind wants to be seen. It is happiness and a feeling of freedom that is greater than anything the stories can offer. It is love.

finding ones voice

There was once a little girl who said nothing. She was so shy she couldn’t speak, if she opened her mouth to ask someone something no sound would come out, even when she was on her own she couldn’t say anything. She would practice in front of the mirror and make the shape of the words with her mouth but no sound would come out, she would write them down and whisper them into her pillow but as soon as she stood on front of people she would freeze and her mouth would form a smile and that was it.
People all thought she was just happy and calm and they would tell her all of their problems until she felt like she was full of everyone else and there was no room for her own thoughts. One morning she even woke up and realized she was even dreaming someone elses’ dreams. This is it, she thought, I have to do something about this, I need help.
‘I need help’, she told the universe, and the universe said ‘ok’
Now at the time, she was also looking for a job and the very next morning a friend rang her looking for her ‘I have a job for you’ she said ‘a live in nanny for this very old lady whose daughter is going traveling for a month. She is a dear but she can’t hear very well and she refuses to wear a hearing aid, you will have to shout’
‘Ok’ said the girl
At first the girl and the old woman didn’t get on at all. The girl couldn’t shout and the old lady would get frustrated with her and then the girl would get frustrated with the old woman until finally one day the girl shouted at the top of her voice ‘WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEA!’ and the old lady answered ‘Why yes dear, thanks for asking’. Then the girl shouted everything and they got along great.
Now the girl can shout and she does and she speaks up and people can hear her even in crowded bars or on trains or in noisy streets and she is much happier having found her voice.

Coat Boy

There was once a boy who liked playing with his friends and having fun and being happy and he had lots of friends who loved him and wanted to play with him and so they would pass their days making up games and wandering the countryside discovering lost treasures and making up stories as they went.
He had lots of coats he loved wearing. Some were bright yellow and some were dark blue with stars and some were silver and shimmered in the sunlight and sparkled in the moon light. He had long coats and short coats, some with beads and bells on them and others of the finest silk that slid noiselessly through the air.
He would choose carefully every morning which one he felt like wearing. What colour, what style and at the end of the day he put it carefully back in the coat rack for the next day he wanted to wear it. He took good care of his coats.
One day though, something happened, someone was mean to him, or hit him or threatened him and when the evening came he did not take off the coat. He didn’t want to, he wanted to keep it on as protection or as comfort and he went to bed and slept in it. The next morning he put another coat on, on top of the first one and he went out to play.
From then on he changed. He didn’t take the coats off as he had done before. He kept them on and he began to wear bigger ones and heavier ones to protect himself from the world. He moved slower and didn’t laugh as much as before and his friends gave up trying to cheer him up and eventually left him to his plodding walk and silence. People made fun of him then. Slowcoach, they called him and pitied him and stayed away from him and his gloom. Eventually he stopped going out of the house and stayed there and no-body called to the door.
This went on for a while, until one day, he felt a stirring in his heart. The sun was shining outside after a rainstorm and everything was wet and shone and sparkled like jewels. It reminded him of one of his favorite coats and he looked down at what he was wearing. For the first time in ages he wanted to wear a special coat and he felt dirty and itchy and smelly inside this big coat he was wearing. He took it off and the one underneath and then the next one. How many coats am I wearing he thought to himself?
He continued taking them off, getting lighter as they went down, thinner and as he took each one off he remembered what had happened that made him keep it on in the first place. A heavy black one was the day the bigger boy had punched him in the nose and the teacher had thought he started it and punished him instead. The grey one was the day he stole something and then blamed someone else. The next one down was when he had a fight with his best friend and never said sorry. He also began to remember the good times with his friends in each coat. The green one, now faded with its silver buttons gone, was a day of summer adventure in the mountains when they had found the sheep skull and made a fort. The silver shining one was a moonlight search for fairies and goblins in the forest. He smiled when he remembered how scared and how excited they had been.
He kept peeling them off until at last, none remained and he stared down at his naked body all dirty and grubby. He ran a bath and sat in it until all the soap-bubbles had been burst and he was clean and water soaked and his fingers had water ridges in them. He stood up feeling lighter and happier than he had ever in his life.
I will never let myself wear all those coats again, he thought
He ran out the door naked with nothing on and danced down the street. The children in school saw him and laughed and told their teacher but she didn’t believe them and told them to stop staring out the window. He danced past a house where children were playing in the yard. They ran in and asked their mother could they go with him but she shook her said, ‘You must have imagined it? She said ‘No-one goes out and dances in the street naked’. He danced past a café where people sat drinking coffee but they didn’t see him, they were too busy… reading papers, talking.
Coat boy danced into the hills and the mountains and far away close. He is still dancing to this day and if you are very lucky he will dance past you some day. Don’t blink… you might miss him!

greenwitch

Greenwitch sings alone in the heart of a tree, and yet not alone for in the heart of every tree there is a greenwitch singing. Her eyes are green with gold sparkles and her skin is the mottled green of moss. Her heart is pure gold and shines through her eyes and it is from her heart that her love flows and gives energy and strength to all growing things.
It is for greenwitch that the flowers stretch their heads to the sky and the sun. It is for greenwitch that the spiders spin their webs and do their dance of death. It is greenwitch that inspires the song of the birds and the whirring wings of the hummingbird and it is greenwitch that the donkeys love as they amble their slow way across the mountain.
Rain falls for her and rivers run and she sits at the heart of everything and sings her song of life. She is the weaver and she is the warp and weft and the fabric emerges from the loom in a thousand colours and in threads of silk and gossamer and gold and silver.
She is me and you and everything around us.

a city of song

There was a city once, a long time ago, that was built by a people who worshipped the wind. They built the city to pay homage to the wind, they constructed every street carefully so the wind would whistle or howl or hum or simply blow straight and hard banging bells and clattering signs and causing windows to rattle as it passed.

There was a bridge in the city called the singing bridge. It was built of hollow pipes of different lengths and angled in different directions and the sound of the pipes and the combination of the sounds would tell the people of the city where the wind was blowing from and how hard it was blowing.

There was a narrow street that curved and twisted and the wind would run up it whistling and shouting from the sea, carrying the smell of the sea and the noises of the returning sailors from their fishing trips and the boom of the waves on the hulls of the big boats from far away. The children would come running down the street then, looking for fathers or brothers or the strange merchants who came from over the water with their goods to sell that smelled exotic and cost more than they would see in a year.

The roofs were tiled with wood, narrow slats that were only attached on one end and it took a strong wind to get them dancing but when it did, it seemed like the city would take off into the air and fly away.

The city was carefully built with streets facing the direction of prevailing winds, designed to take the wind into the heart of the city, spin it round and send it off in another direction. The people of the city could tell practically to a day what time of year it was by the noises that surrounded them and indeed they were so used to constant noise that, on the rare days when there was no wind, they stayed indoors and talked in hushed voices or if they had an errand to run they would move quickly looking over their shoulder for fear of the silence.

Every house had wind chimes hanging from the corner of the roofs. Wind chimes of hollow wood that clunked with low notes against each other, heavy, slow ponderous vibrations or wind chimes of perfectly tuned metal from low to high bell-like perfect roundness that would cause anybody walking under them to stop and close their eyes to feel it properly inside themselves. In a street the wind chimes were tuned along each house so walking down a street was walking from one chord to another of a slowly changing melody.

Song birds were bred for their voices and competition was fierce between the owners as to which bird had the clearest voice, the most limpid melody, the most satisfying roundness of tone. The best birds sounded like water gurgling through a brook, like an urn of fine metal filled with water and tapped. Try it; you will see what I mean. Gold was exchanged for breeding rights of the best songsters and eggs sold before they were even hatched.

The city thrived for centuries but alas the people forgot their worship of the wind and slowly the singing bridge became a home for bird’s nests and debris and became silent and the roof tiles were replaced with ceramic hardwearing tiles that did not rattle and slap. Noisy signs were more firmly fastened to their supports and some buildings were demolished and others built that did not pay attention to the layout or wind direction. The narrow curving street that brought the smell of the sea to the heart of the city was closed, blocked and forgotten about. The wind became an annoying factor rather than one to be used and enjoyed and slowly the past glory of the city was forgotten and became just another noisy smelly port city where the sailors would stop and move on from as quickly as they could.

The old people, who were the only ones who listened anymore, were the ones who remembered the stories their great grandparents had told them and were the only ones who wondered when they met for their morning coffee or afternoon tea were the stories true, of a city built for a worship of the wind and a city that sang from every rooftop and street corner, a city that was proud and shone and laughed and chimed and had a different song for every day of the year.

a story about the beginning of the world

First came the in-breath, the gasp from nothingness, the awakening the awareness of being. Nothing still was, just pure awareness and stillness, waiting for the impulse to move.

Then came first pondering; A simple ?. No words as yet just pure question, a wondering of the awareness.

Next came second pondering, an awareness of ‘self’ as something different to ‘other’. In the vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world ‘self’ looked round and thought ‘I’ and ‘you’

The vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world did not say anything back, did not look back, just was, in its awareness there was no difference between ‘I’ and ‘you’

The self began to name things; self needed some landmarks to make the vastness smaller and easier to live in. Tree (big green fluffy), grass (green soft), mother (love),

The world began to turn and the stars began to move and the self was frightened. Self asked the world “Why are you so big and all? And do not pay me any attention?”

The world did not answer.

Self asked again “Why do you not do what I say?”

The world did not answer

“You do not love me” said Self sadly

Then he heard a voice inside him “You are loved little self, you exist because you are loved, there is no difference between you and me, we are, look around you at the vastness and wideness of the beginning of the world and stop putting names on things to make it seem smaller”

“Who is speaking” cried Self

“I/You are speaking” replied the voice and suddenly Self understood, the world had begun and everything, self included, was part of it. Everything was on the journey and self was there to witness and be a traveler on the voyage. Self smiled.

The stars twinkled, “Hello stars”

The rain started to fall from the clouds “Hello clouds, hello rain”

Self looked in a puddle at the reflection “Hello Self”

a woman stands on the earth

I have a picture in my head waiting to be painted.

A woman standing with her feet on the earth and her head in the sky. She holds her heart in one hand and the other points to the stars. The land is flat and ochre and there are mountains in the distance. The land only comes up about a fifth of the picture and then the sky starts so my woman is standing in the sky it looks like. Her head goes all the way up the top of the paper. Her hair flows into the sky and becomes part of it. She looks out of this image with a proud expression, not an ego ‘proud’ but a sure ‘proud’ a sense of herself and her place in this world and her connection to earth and the stars. She is rooted in her own self and nothing can shake that.

Her dress is light blue with butterflies of white and yellow. Her feet are bare and around her neck is a necklace of green jade stones with a carving of the head of a jaguar carved from leopardskin jasper. The night sky swirls and moves and the stars twinkle and shine and the earth has faces that emerge from the dirt and the rocks, some eyes open some still shut but all looking upwards to the sky.

I have taken a break from constantly sketching ideas and drawing pictures to wait to see what comes in its own time. When I have an idea it comes fully formed into my head with only the details left to work out and how best to get across the original idea. It’s a new one for me; normally I am trying to have lots of ideas just in case I need them and I don´t feel good unless I have one in the process of being painted. This way is slower but I will see how it goes and what happens.

One resolution I made on my recent trip was to stop ‘doing’, to stop constantly trying and instead see what happens. Make room for opportunities to come into my life, stand still so they would know where to find me instead of constantly spinning like a top trying to get somewhere not really knowing what I was doing or where I wanted to go but doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing.

Anyone else care to comment on a picture they have in their heads?

I wish for…

letting go to flow free.. open hands and let the bird fly away, no point in making wishes and then holding them so tightly they smother!

I wish for a gift of clarity

I wish for a gallery to show my work in, to have an exhibition to work towards

I wish for success for my business

I wish to write always from the heart so even if I get it wrong sometimes I have done my best

I wish for a happy life for me and Paul

I wish for a really cool old car to drive around

I wish that my puppy and my cat will get on when they meet.. I anticipate fireworks!

what do you all wish for?

there was once a beautiful woman…

There was once a beautiful woman who wanted nothing more than know love and to love and be loved in return. She wore her best clothes always and make up and surrounded herself with jewels and the finest most expensive objects and love did not come to her. She was cursed.

If any man looked at her with love his heart would turn to stone and he would turn into a statue. She did this to them with her eyes. If she looked in their eyes and saw the love there that was the end. She would have them taken away and put somewhere in her gardens and soon the power of the curse became known and no more suitors came with roses in their hands and love in their eyes.

She lost hope and her wiles became desperate. She would have her picture painted and hung in palaces around the country in the hope of finding her love. She spent longer and longer each day on her toiletry to keep her looks and her beauty but to no avail, she grew older and began to grow ugly.

One evening, just as the sun was setting, a young man arrived at her door. He knocked politely and, when she beckoned him in, entered quietly and kept his face to the floor. He did not look at her. She anyway, did not want him to look at her, she had come to hate herself and believe she was the ugliest foulest creature on this earth. Nothing would love her ever and she had come to accept that bitterly and that knowledge and bitterness turned her evermore inwards and the lines on her face grew deeper and her eyes smaller and pinched.

He said, “I have seen your picture my lady and I thought it sad and lonely and I have an answer to your problem”

She did not believe him and was about to kick him out, angrily she hissed at him “how do you know what my problem is, and how dare you think you can fix it”

He did not move but, still with his face to the floor, said “Please let me try, what have you to lose? Let me try”

She was suspicious but agreed to let him try. He took a small round mirror from his bag and gave it to her. “It is very simple but very hard” he said “It will hurt a lot, are you sure?”

The woman was still suspicious but something in her really wanted to try and so she took the mirror and said “What now?”

“I want you to sit and look at yourself in that mirror until you look at yourself with the love you wish to see from someone else’s eyes” he said

“Easy” she snorted and he said nothing but just smiled at the floor.

“I will be back tomorrow” he said “It will take a little while, be patient and you will know when you get it right” and he left and closed the door softly behind him.

She went and adorned herself with her favourite necklace and earrings, did her hair just the way she liked it, she used rouge and eyeshadow and blusher and lipstick and when she felt she was ready she sat down and held the mirror up in front of her eyes.

At first nothing happened, she began to get bored and her arm began to ache, she looked at herself and looked at herself and she looked at her hair and her eyeshadow and her lipstick and her jewels and she thought how good she still looked despite her age and her lines around her mouth.

Then she began to see imperfections, this line too deep, this line too long, her mouth thin and bitter, her teeth yellow and that gap that she always tried to hide with what she always thought was a winsome sideways smile. Her eyes were too narrow and deep-set, the eye shadow only served to accentuate their positioning. She began to look at her make-up as ridiculous, who was she to try to beautify herself? It made her look like a doll or a clown. She put the mirror down and thought “this is stupid, I have never thought like this before, why am I doing this” and she went to get up but instead something made her sit down and she found herself looking at the mirror again. She looked so ugly! Her eyes like black holes with all the eyeliner, her mouth a hideous dark purple colour that stained her teeth, her nose too pointy, her skin pasty and caked with the paste she used to make herself fashionably pale. She remembered her skin when she was a child, how brown and smooth and clear it had been.

She got up and went upstairs and removed all her make-up and jewels and undid her hair and washed it. She washed her face completely clean and went downstairs again where the mirror was waiting for her. She sat down and again lifted the mirror to look at herself, this time with a little trepidation as to what was waiting for her. She sat and looked again and this time saw herself as old and pasty and wrinkly and bitter and lonely and she started to cry that no-one would ever love her. She had been living a lie all these years, how everyone must have laughed at her; seeing her look for love when she was so plainly ugly and desperate and unlovable. She wept and wept and she said to herself, “I will never leave this house again, I will stay hidden till I die, it is my fault all those young men are dead, they looked at me and I was so ugly they turned to stone in fright, I was selfish”

She cried for a while and then she began to get angry. It was not her fault the men had come looking to her for love. It was not her fault their hearts had turned to stone and they had become statues still adorning her garden. How stupid their faces looked, with their puppy dog eyes gazing at nothing adoringly, their hands outstretched that once held flowers or a gift for her. So much hope. Some had the beginnings of fear in their eyes where they realized what was happening to them but most were too stupid she thought. Stupid men. That was her stupidity, she thought, that she wanted to find love in the first place. Well, never again! She hurled the mirror in the ground where it smashed and she went round the house looking for other mirrors to break. Soon all of her mirrors lay in shards on the ground and she had to be careful where she walked so as not to cut herself. She sat down feeling pleased with herself. When that young man came back with his eyes to the floor she would give him a piece of her mind, how dare he come and upset her like that!

She sat there for a while lost in thought and then a great emptiness opened inside her and she felt she was looking into an abyss of nothingness. All her clothes and jewelry and hard walls and make-up and opinions could not protect her from that abyss and she felt herself fall into the darkness, a nothing, a spark of light extinguished by the oppressive blackness. She began to cry once more. I am nothing she thought; it is only me and nobody else to help me. She felt sorry for herself, she had been abandoned by the world and forgotten and rejected by it and it hurt her in every cell of her body to think that she was not worth the slightest bit of attention from the universe. I failed, she thought, I am a failure.

She lay on the floor looking out the window at the stars in the night sky. She began to feel something else strange to her, something she had never felt before in her life. She began to feel truly alone, but not in a bad way, she realized she was enjoying this sensation. Nobody else was here; she did not have to ‘be’ anything, not pretty or clever or dressed in the right clothes or, horrors, that anyone should see her without her make-up and jewels and with her hair done correctly. She felt peace, she thought, I can look after myself, I have been searching for someone else to look after me for so long, maybe I just have to look after myself from now on and not need anyone else in my life. She sniffed again, she could feel the tears of self pity starting, no-one would love her, but that was ok, she would love herself. She sat up and picked up a shard of mirror that lay close by and looked in it. And how strange, she thought, that a piece of a mirror shows the same thing as a whole mirror, maybe it is the same for us, that one person reflects the same as the whole thing, that we are all just shards of mirrors broken up into pieces yet we still reflect the whole. She began to see herself as part of everything and to look at herself differently. She saw her faults and they did not bother her, she saw past her outside into her real self and she cried for all the years she had spent avoiding herself. She whispered ‘I love you’ and smiled at her reflection, I will never again turn a heart to stone she thought.

But thinking this thought, her mind became fearful and doubt crept in, how can I love myself after all those years of turning hearts to stone, think of the harm I have inflicted, they must hate me!

Her fear came to the defense and with the same power she had used to turn to stone the hearts of the young men who had looked at her with love it used the mirror to turn her heart to stone and her last thought was it was too late, she would never know love, and love someone and be loved in return.

The young man came back the next morning. He did not knock, as if he knew what he would find. He stepped over the shards of broken glass and came across the statue of the woman lying on the floor with a piece of glass still in her hand, still staring that direction with one tear frozen on her cheek. He smiled gently and taking a small hammer from his pocket he took careful aim and hit the statue hard, once, over the heart. It cracked and the cracks spread and spread until the body was covered in a fine layer of cracks. He stood then and went to the garden and took a bowl of water from the fountain and carried it back inside. He stood over the body and sprinkled a little at a time over her until she was wet from head to foot. Then he leant down and whispered in her ear “come back”

She sat up in a shock. She was wet and covered in mud but alive and happy and feeling lighter than she ever had before in her life. She laughed and the young man in front of her looked at her straight in the eyes and laughed back. She had a moment of fear that he would become hard and still like all the others but it passed and he didn’t and she stared in wonderment at him

‘thank you’ she said,

he shook his head ‘I didn’t do anything, I saw your picture and thought you were beautiful but I had heard all the stories and I did not want to be turned to stone like the others, you had to break the curse, you and nobody else”

He took her to a mirror and there she saw herself young again, clear skinned and clear eyed and smiling, happy and free. She cried a tear of joy at the feeling of release it gave her.

He took her out the back and she freed the statues out the back of her garden and apologized to each one in turn. Then she turned to her new found friend and said “What now?”

He smiled “Now is just the beginning” he said