Wise Words of Joseph Campbell

"The Privilege of a Lifetime is Being Who You Are." - Joseph Campbell

Something to consider whenever we hit those 'dark' patches of self-doubt.

Art by the amazing Susan Seddon Boulet.

 

What a Fabulous Little Dreamer

I felt compelled to add to Woodland Dreamer's previous post, regarding the passing of painter, Margaret Olley. What a fabulous little dreamer she was! I love this Still Life in Green above, in honour of her favourite colour.

Just look at Margaret Olley in the picture above, busy putting her innermost dreams into visions of colour we could all get lost in...

Thankyou, Margaret Olley, for bringing a little joy and colour into all our lives.

Green is the colour of rebirth...

Margaret Olley dies, aged 88.

Green was Painter Margaret Olley's favourite colour...  'green', she would say 'it's the colour of rebirth'.

I have a thing about paintings of mirrored reflections....and I love this one.  Here, she paints herself as a young artist in 1948, framed by the still objects and collectibles that would inspire her life's work and also by postcards of the works of the great masters whom she admired.  

Vale Margaret Olley and what a life well lived, doing, as she has said "The only thing I've wanted to do all my life."  And that's exactly what she did....  These words inspire me to refocus on my own direction in life and hopefully, gain more clarity as I continue on this winding and ever-changing path we call life.

Wind Songs & Liminal Hymns....

There is a cold and blustery North-Westerly-Wind that blows a mighty gale and rouses us from our winter slumber.... The Windy Weather of Change talks to the trees and knocks at our doors...  it speaks of Freedom and Possibility.  More than once today I felt like (and secretly hoped!) I was Dorothy, about to be whisked away like a feather to the magical Land of Oz! 

My hair a tangled bramble of tumbleweeds and other wind-swept oddities...  Or, perhaps more like a Mariners net... what bedraggled urchins will find anchorage within my hair-net?  Although the sky is full of winter sunshine my fingers are numb from the biting chill in the air ( a lesson on the importance of mittens!)  My cheeks are rosy, and I have a spring in my step - compliments of the strong wind blowing my way, nudging me along the path like a gentle pat on the back.   As Boreas, with a touch of the Zephyrs pay us a visit on this fine winters day!

This is the weather of Wind Songs and Liminal Hymns, heard in nature all around us.... This is the elemental aspect of faery and sylph, now more than ever they dance on the air currents, this wind appealing to their wild nature!   Stories of Gypsies and Bohemians arriving and leaving on the whims of the wind... of journeys and of an uncertain course... where it will take you, nobody knows! 

 Windy weather is a time of great change... of shape-shifting, of static in the air.... you can almost feel yourself taking to the sky as if bird-transformed.... This weather is a Susan Seddon-Boulet painting.....all movement, and liminality, and transfomation.... I almost feel as though I were one of the ever-changing desert dwelling beings of Terri Windlings' (excellent) Sonoran desert imagining, The Wood Wife... able to leap from human, to animal, to bird form as easily as a thought....

The joys of simply watching clouds move at such a pace as to seem almost unreal, casting patterns of dark and light across the ground in an ominous but strangely calming way... changing the way we see things, transfoming the dark places.... reminding me of the multi-facetedness of all things, yet again....  

 The Wind speaks of the appeal of the unknown and of anonymity or invisibility too... of the ability to move through moments in time and the liminal spaces, where self-transformation occurs...  It speaks of the freedom and restlessness that great mystery brings, of that carefree notion of being unrestrained, free for travel and new adventures.... of being happily root-less,  of vagabonding through life, travelling with the breeze, or the Clever North Wind… and I can’t help but feel that I should not leave the house today without wearing a red cape….. 

Always travelling, forever wandering in reverie...

Images 1,3 & 6 from We Heart It, 'Boreas' by John William Waterhouse, 'Playing with the North Wind' by Susan Seddon-Boulet,  Movie stills  from 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Chocolat'.