Step Seven: Stillness, journalling, and a hot stone massage...

Dear Fi,

My goal for today is to keep this post short ha, ha. The last one was so long and boring that I had a problem reading it while editing it. As you can see even my titles are long ;) Actually... there is nothing else to add, everything that was important is included in this title.

For the whole week I thought about painting these nine hearts I mentioned in last post. The image was still very alive and I already have a recipient for this painting in my mind. However, yesterday I posted my photo in our Unravelling 365 flickr group and I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it. I noticed a shift. There was no more space for cute hearts in my head, only stillness.

I kind of regretted that I hadn’t painted my hearts before the energy changed because now I have no idea when I will paint them. It happen sometimes, it happened with my idea for the first post for our blog and for a few other small projects.

The first inner image I saw was my photo covered in writing, and before falling asleep there was more images coming. It was a very strong feeling of certainty that something important will emerge. Honestly, I fell asleep with ambivalent feelings, I was probably as much excited as I was scared. However, I’m very happy that I followed my inner voice.

There were three important factors which allowed me to create today’s piece. First, I made a tremendous discovery last Sunday. For the first time in my life I scheduled a hot stone massage. During and after the massage I experienced a deep state of relaxation which lead me to a glimpse of stillness. Second, I’m currently in the process of working with Christina Baldwin’s book, and this is a place where I found lots of quotations that resonated with me. I used some of them in my work today. Third, I decided to try a new format a "journal page" to work on this project.

I’m sure that you agree Dear Fi, that there are some experiences in life that deserve recording. There are significant moments we don’t want to forget. The marks we would like to be reminded of. The {extra}ordinary passages, annotations of the changes we want to learn from. There are the moments which allow us to somehow measure our growth. Today’s artwork is one of them.

When I looked at this journal page after creating it I was surprised by how many messages I was able include. How many more I hid and I still need to discover? Because working on this piece was an intuitive process for me, when I look at it, I’m not concerned about it’s artistic value, but about the value of the messages I was able incorporate into this one page. If I wanted to describe in my journal what I was able to “describe” here it would take me many pages, not one. So today’s experiment was a meaningful endeavor for me. 

There are a few details I would like to share with you Dear Fi. So, it is official now that this post won’t be shorter than the previous one ha, ha ;)

One of my favourite fragments of this journal page is the shape in the upper left corner. It reminds me of a human heart, and it was created by a totally spontaneous action. My daughter who was painting beside me had a small piece of paper loaded with these colours I noticed while working on my project. It was an impulse, I just picked up this paper from a table, I blotted it a few times on different piece of paper and then pressed it to my page. I was very surprised by the effect and also by my behaviour. When I started to work on my piece I had a sense of what kind of tones I would like to incorporate. I wanted to keep it “black and white” with some elements of gray, ivory and maybe some traces of sepia. The colours red and purple weren’t even on my table. So the “heart” happened and it has a deep meaning in my interpretation of this page, as well as the fact that it came through my daughter...

The word “Live”, which I glued before I added the heart, came from a Japanese newspaper (there were only two English words in two different spots on the page I inherited: “Live” and “always”). The newspaper’s page was tucked inside a box with Danbo, as you already know a lovely Valentine's Day present I received from my husband this year... I have no idea why I kept this page until today.

The stones below my photo are the ones I photographed during The Wilderness Retreat and later used for my 365 project. They are also a representation of the hot stone massage and my deep connection with stones. This is why I added fingerprints on the first two stones, to symbolically show the connection. I learned an interesting fact about the origin of the hot stone massage in this article. Native Americans used hot stones for healing. Mary Nelson, a native of Tucson, Arizona, developed a technique called LaStone Therapy where both hot and frozen stones are used. A hot stone massage is a “spa" version of this original massage. So, as you might guess LaStone Therapy ended up on my 2010 “to-do” list immediately.

The last thing before you fall asleep my Dear ha, ha, is about the quotations I included in my journal page. There were more “words of wisdom” ;) which resonated with me. However, I didn’t want to make this piece look busier and there was not enough space to add more words.

So, now the final word {seriously!}:
Week by week I feel more grateful for this place, for this commitment, for the fact that you agreed to be my fellow journeyer, that you are here to play with me and to witness the process of my discoveries. Thank you!

:***

Sylvia

P.S.
The CD on one of the pictures is the one I’m listening to lately. Beautiful Sade: “Soldier of Love”.