cliodhna’s wave

I have written a lot about mermaids,  not sure what the fascination is except maybe they are women who live in the sea and maybe because of that are the connection to our subconscious. Here is an older post about them. Maybe it is laziness on my part, easier to draw a tail than legs

Mermaids can bring wishes to the sea and make them real. She can find what we really want in our deep minds and tell us and bring it up to the surface for us to see.

This is my latest embroidery, the mermaid swims around a magical island. If anyone except the mermaid tries to go onto the island to take the fruit then the birds sing them to sleep and they are transported back home again

This took me a while to do, I beaded it more than usual and layered netting over a gauze over blue to get a depth in the colour. I love the fabric I used for the tail. I am enjoying doing some more detailed pieces before I have to get into production for the Christmas fair (fingers crossed I get a place!). I also bought more fabric for the quilt today so no excuses, get out the cardboard shape and get scaling!

xclio

A year later,

a century later,

or a whole turn of a galaxy later,

a child was holding onto her mother’s hand and looking up at the stars. She pointed up to the sky and she said

>What is that beautiful star called? It looks like it is dancing?

The mother smiled and said

>That is a new star and it shines brighter with every year

>I would like to shine like that star, the little girl said.

my new threadless submission…..

I have a fascination with mermaids… they appear everywhere… I have even been mermaids in dreams… have written at least two posts about them and the sea here and here.

I like this bag, mermaid on the front and fishies on the back. I made it so she could give dream energy to the things inside the bag.

Glorious Bags, designs by cliodhna

Water…

…is incredible, it is the fuel of life on this earth, it is the biggest shaper of life on this planet, it gets bigger when it freezes and gets bigger when it gets warmer. It has a ‘skin’ on it which holds it in shape, which is why we have raindrops, rivers, clouds, bubbles, water walking insects. It comes in so many forms and shapes and sizes and functions.

I was in Mazatlan a little while ago and was thinking about water. There is a hurricane on the coast swinging its way around towards Baja California and although the sky is blue and I wear factor forty sun screen the waves are huge rolling in towards the beach. Really huge, no-one is swimming, the jet skies are away in their sheds, the guy who hires the belly boards and surf boards shakes his head when I ask him to hire two ‘Not right now’ he says and points at the red flag flying nearby.

I go into the water and its feels strange and a bit scary. The waves are a wall of water coming towards me, pulling at my legs and pushing me towards shore then dragging me back the other direction as they leave. We have fun for a while jumping around and splashing onto the waves as they smash into us and we marvel at the size of the ones breaking further out. As a contrast the hotel pool is blue and calm and safe and the sun reflects patterns of light from the surface.

I forget sometimes the power of water until I see the it in all its glory and wildness. Rivers that are mere trickles turn into raging torrents during the rainy season and turn city streets into four feet deep unpassable for cars or pedestrians.  I took water for granted growing up in a rainy wet country and the concept of water shortages was alien to me. It rained, it came out of the tap went back to the sea and it rained again. Now living in high desert I see the hills and mountains turn brown again after the rains have gone, the cattle and horses will grow thin again until next year and water will be shipped in from far away reservoirs.

Water is life because we were formed in water and we come from water and it carries us and the moon moves the sea and the water inside us and moves us back and forth and we work to the rhythm of water without even knowing or thinking about it.

So how important it is that we look after our water and keep it clean and pay attention to it. I wrote a post about water ages ago about snowflakes and the memory of water here. We take it so much for granted and it is the fuel of life on this planet, it is life on this planet, it flows in our rivers and seas and underground wells and clouds and rainbows and in the blood of every living thing on this planet.

sea blue and falling into water. Fishes sparkle around me and dart from side to side. I fall into deep water.

the sea holds all our unfulfilled dreams and wishes until we are ready to receive them

she remembers promises we made to ourselves in previous lives

when the mermaids sing then the waves dance and the sea spray casts rainbows high into the air

x clio

this picture is about the judge that lives in us. I find him very strong sometimes. The guilt that tells us we have done a bad thing, the voice that says we shouldn’t have fun, should be more successful, more happy, more creative, more talented, more whatever. It is also the voice which judges other people too. We judge outside of ourselves so we don’t have to face our own perceived shortcomings. The judge in the picture is not touching the ground because he is not connected with the earth but lives entirely in the mind.
There is healing going on here too though, my higher self sees the judge giving out to the small child and is sending healing energy.
Down with the judge! We are all perfect just the way we are…

The next picture is tears. I find I go straight to tears whenI am doing emotional work. Part of it is buried anxiety or hidden fears or old sadnesses that I haven’t faced and which have built up and part of it is fear of letting go, the mind wants to hang onto to its control as long as it possibly can. I have actually gotten quite accepting of crying in front of people and very accepting of other people crying. I am happy to sit and be a witness, give support and just let them go through their process.

I am sitting in my parents house in Ireland writing this and it is beautiful outside. A perfect irish summer day. Sunny, calm, birds singing. I am going to have breakfast and then go for a walk in the mountains.

x clio

My other project which I have been doodling away on is a submission for threadless, the t-shirt company I have been going on about recently. I am getting the hang of photoshop, just discovering how I can make it do what I want it to do and also, what does it do best. I like the clean lines I can get, it suits my style.

A close up of the boat and the birds…

What else.. I have been discovering new music recently, I am finding what can only be described as noise. I love it, when it doesn’t have any reason or beat to it but layers of texture. The newest one which I downloaded without listening and then go lost in it for an hour is called the Disintegration Loops by William Basinski, he was transferring electronic loops from analogue to digital and the tapes were very old and decaying as he transferred them. “The music was dying as I listened to it”. They are wonderfully calm and spacey.

Another group called Godspeed You Black Emperor and the album is called ‘Lift Your skinny fists to heaven’ another ambling through soundscape and random samplings.

For one last one along the same vein, Amon Tobin’s Chaos theory has a beat but at the same time is pure noise.

Cool stuff all, I don’t know how to put a sample on this blog so you are going to have to imagine it!

…and the cock crew at midnight, witching hour, space between yesterday and tomorrow, a tiny space of now.

I slept and did not hear his clarion call to the world, that caused small animals to look up in wonder and large ones to feel the pull in their bellies. I felt it in my bones though, and dreamt of tidal waves and earthquakes and great winds sweeping the earth.

In the chicken coop an egg was beginning to hatch, the chick following blind instinct to hit out at the darkness surrounding it, to crack, to break, to push outwards. Imagine! all the world this chick has ever known is about to get as big as eternity.

But then, the world is the perfect size for each of us and we should not be afraid of the spaces between the stars.

x cliodhna,

to all us little chicks pushing out and breaking out of all the world we have ever known!