A Night of Lights
With the whole world breathing,
Community
Compassion and
Hope
A Season of Color
With community leaning into
Celebration
Kindness and
Generosity
A time of celebration
With others joining in
Gratitude
Friendship and
Light
A heart full of gratitude
With a space full of
Presence
Joy and
Reverence
The moment has arrived
It is time
To celebrate
To release
To expand
And be well ❤️
While walking within the mist of a mountain morning, I saw this beauty. I know, I know, it isn’t much. It’s just a cracked seed fallen from the mother tree above. But the gift it gave me is priceless.
I have been struggling with the absence of my creative work. With the success and expansion of the gallery has come reduced time to be in my studio. It has laid heavy on my heart and on my shoulders. A feeling of missing an old friend where the dance of our time together had become comfortable. Expected. Routine.
This little gem of a seed gave to me the realization and reminder that all things, even preciously adored things, have a chapter. And those chapters can either repeat in the future or they have an ending. The emotion we put on those chapters that have come before are of our very own choosing. No one else’s.
And, it is so, once again, in my evolution as an artist. Even though I may not be creating as prolifically as I once have in the physical form, I am still, very much a creator and purveyor of beauty. It has just taken on a new expanded perspective.
And, just as the seed needs to crack itself open with water, light and shadows, so must we. To see that what is before us may not be what has come before. But, it could never the less, be beautiful indeed.
Lucy
Photo/Writing Lucy Clark 2021
I remember reading an interview by Mary Oliver who was talking about her writing Muse. She would be out walking in the woods and the Muse would suddenly strike; the words were floating in her head so quickly that she would have to run back as fast as she could and put them to paper before they flew out into the ethers and be lost forever. The story struck me when I read it because I had experienced the same thing from time to time. I would wonder, having missed chances to pay physical witness to the thoughts escaping my stream of consciousness that those precious baubles were lost forever. And, sometimes, they were. And sometimes, they would come back around because I was the one chosen to deliver that particular message, on that particular speck of time dust in this ever turning world we call our own. It is in the spirit of returning that I offer this.
If breaths make up moments and days make up weeks which eventually are all packaged up into a life, what gift have we made? What gift for ourselves, for our humanity, for our people? Have we left them with a gift of untold care and blessings? Or, have we played the game of “living” so well that people look upon us and mention the phrases, “Bless her heart”, “that’s so sad” or “she could have been something”?
As I sit here at 5:45 am on a chilly late May morning, woken by my Muse who I haven’t recognized in nearly a month, I am struck by this moment, among other seemingly mundane moments. A moment of the mountainscape revealing herself once again; of the seemingly endless bird sounds creating the soundtrack of their morning rapture and of my mind, words and heart coming together in a brief moment of recognition of the present moment. The “now” and the “before” and of futures not needing attention or worry. Just the breath and sounds and state of my heart. Just the warm mug of coffee and the cold glass table top beckoning my senses to step into another day filled with all things just as mundane, and yet, just as temporary, undulating and precious as a rain drop on parched earth.
If you are in a place of pain, I encourage you to turn and stare at it down “between” the eyes. Taking your “unseeing” physical eye and see it for what it is. Temporary. If you are confusion, take a deep cleansing breath and feel the movement produced by a sure, unconscious pattern that your body makes when it inhales and then lets it all go. If you are in a place of love and reverence, BE with it. Roll in it. Get dirty, muddy and blissful with it, allowing every ounce of it to make its mark on your skin.
Sitting with pain can be the easy part. It can be as natural and normal as first light. But, my friends, it is in the luscious, abundant good times that we can question our worthiness to the moment. Stop it. Don’t do it. Let it wash over you like a lover’s touch that has long been absent. Like the soft, caressed breeze of a new morning sky. Like the last gasp of your heart yearning for safety. For if we don’t acknowledge and wrap our arms around the beauty that Life HAS offered, why would it have any interest in returning to us once again?
If we are unwilling to acknowledge and bow to the unbidden gifts from our lives, we will be unable to encourage more of them. We will be numb to lightness and always look for the dark to return. Honestly, almost willing it to so that we can sit in our self righteous stupor and ask for more of the same.
Feel the enraptured spirit of Joy unbound, if only for the briefest of time. Now, after you have, think about this. What if we could transfer that moment into a day? What if we could recognize the light just a touch more than the dark? What if we finally decided to receive the gifts that we have longed for as long as we have been alive? Imagine what that would bring to the door. Recognition, acknowledgement, reverence, love and limitless light. And though we know it’s temporary, I can assure you it will return.
If I could tell you one thing it would be this.
Outwit your doubts. Give them a maze of self care and love that is so vast they simply just peter out, give up, throw up their hands with the hard, gritty work of getting you to make yourself smaller and wander off to doubt themselves.
And one more thing.
Take your inner critic out for a leisurely drive and show them all of the places, faces, crevices and refracted sides of your lovely soul. Let that miserable fucker see the beauty reflected in your eyes and deep within your heart until it simply cracks in to a shattered mess of butterfly wings, flying off to find the love it so richly deserves, just like you.
And lastly.
Show your anxiety the lushness of a single, solitary flower petal. Ask it to slowly brush its fingertips along the roads and byways of its visible veins allowing the softness to seep into your hands as you walk through a veil of mist from your future worry into the present moment.
And then…..be Whole ❤️
Photo/Writing Lucy Clark 2021
In the shape of night, we can see what our deepest desires implore.
The brightness of a half-full moon shining into the shape of an Angel.
An Angel of lightness and hope
Of loving and forgiveness
Of moments and lives cherished
Of lifetimes honored and embraced
In this light there is a delicious ease in laying down the sharpness of our fears.
The battles we fought
The words we flung
The hate we have embellished
The bruises we inflicted
And the causes we have forged.
For, if we are to be IN the light and OF the light
We must relieve the darkness for which we hold
And reflect the stellar sky within our hearts
Shining fiercely toward a brand new day.
LC Photo and Writing
The Setting of the Sun and the Rise of the Moon
As I look back on this year with the eyes of a weary traveler, it feels like I have lived in a world created by Salvador Dali. At any moment I’m pretty sure the clock in front of me will start melting on a piano floating in the sky and I will simply think……..Hmmm, I wonder what I’ll cook for dinner. Like the ability to make this shit anymore surreal was just about impossible.
And then, I saw this.
I saw, with my very own eyes, the rise of a blessed Full Moon and the setting of a divine, fiery Sun. In that precious moment, it felt like a portend of the future and a putting to bed of the past.
Like the heat of this year was slowly fading and the cool, wispy beams of the Moon were set to take center stage, calming our fears and comforting our souls.
Yes, I’m hopeful. Yes, I’m tired. Yes, oh Yes, my fellow soul exhausted lovelies, I am still here. And hopefully, so are you. Battered, but awake. Soul shot, but healing. Loved but with the aching sense of loss and renewal.
I choose to believe that the best; mine, yours and ours, is yet to come. For in the moment of destruction comes creation. In the moment of death comes Life. And in this very moment, of all moments, comes another breath of a chance to capture the joy that has been waiting there all along.
I bow to the New Year with just a little more humility than I had before and knowing more than ever, all we have is Now.
I wish I could tell you how it happens. How the din of quietude entering with the mist bellows its way into the space between the thoughts.
How it huffs and it puffs through lyrical, silent breath and lifts us from the reverence of mental gymnastics, immediately transporting us to a place where nothing and everything exists in luscious, living color.
Just like the magic touch of a long tended lover, the mist simply lights on the soul and commands you to breathe slowly and languidly, all the while wishing like a firefly one more chance for the dark of night.
As it soothes our hurried gasps and inhales while quietly speaking of peace, you have no choice but to bend to its demands; wishing for those commands to be met and dropping the cloak and dagger around your heart.
To each and everyone of you, I wish you the Magic of the Mist ❤️
Meanwhile, down in the basement……..
Below my gallery you will find this. A deep recess of dirt and concrete that ends with a door to nowhere; a dead end that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades and an ever present sense of soul breaking loneliness.
I have thought a lot about this space since I had the courage to take the plunge and walk down the stairs and spend anytime at all in that shrouded world of dusky mystery. And I will be absolutely honest and tell you that the reason I could was due to being accompanied by my husband who lovingly chided me for my irrational fear.
In a weird sort of way, that basement reminds me of my very own dark side. And not just my dark side, but everyone elses, too.
We store are deepest, darkest secrets within the bowels of our selves. Any practicing Spiritualist will tell you that the Chakra system starts at the base root of body and encompasses our tribe, our survival voice and our need for power and control. Blessings and curses included in them all.
After having pondered this for quite awhile I have come to the realization that It is up to me to uncover, acknowledge and converse with my darkness. To clear the path so that the light can get in; to shine a light on it so that others aren’t bludgeoned by it.
And finally, to bless the fact that the deepest, darkest, most badass inky blackness can be obliterated with the light of a single, solitary candle.
LC/Photo & Writing 2020
The very beginning. The beginning, from a seed to a sprout to a mountain forest and all that grows in the in between.
To me, the definition of Life.
It is the verdant, unreasonable, furtive hope that we will grow into ourselves and encompass that whole of who we are. All of our aspirations laid within the cellular structure of this beautifully designed, almost imperceptible, breath of a wish called a seed.
The netting laid down with the mastery of sacred geometry, holding upon the earth our shared missives and dreams of what’s to come next. Of what could be. Of what we so longingly yearn for. Life abundant, prosperity unparalleled and love unbound.
The resilient trees and masterful mountains in the background to remind us of what could be, ever changing; of the possibilities that might be, of what we are destined to be if we only allow it.
Within each of us is the greatness of our true selves just waiting to be uncovered but playing small will never do. For we have the strength of the seed within us and the glory of the mountains to become. Everything in between is the journey of 1,000 roads to be adored.
Writing and Photo; Lucy Clark 2020
Twilight Dancing
Even when we can’t, even when we won’t, even when we don’t think we can take one more step, twilight still dances.
Each evening brings another opportunity to immerse ourselves into the galaxy of stars and wear them like fairy lights while swishing our coats around us in the deep umber of night.
Be the Twilight Dancing.
Dance Among the Stars
And bathe yourself in the wellspring of night.
Photo/Writing LC 2020
The Life of Mud 