I WROTE A FEW POEMS TODAY

I wander deep into the abyss of where I originate;

Not knowing why I exist in this realm or what my purpose be;

The urge to fly envelopes me, swallows me whole;

Until I no longer understand the shackles of physical being;

I see beyond the skin and bones, above the realm of all I’m told;

I feel welded to the earth, but long to float above it and watch;

To ponder all living things as they ponder their purpose and make their way;

To soar from place to place; only lighting for moments at a time to catch my weary breath;

I feel mortality ebb as my soul intertwines with the universe;

Are we individual units, or intricate pieces of a celestial cog?

The feeling is deep; from the depths of my center;

I must wander and roam, for that is the only way to find the center of my universe.

© 2008 Kimberly Miller

She is She:

A woman, like no one you’ve ever met; an unrefined jewel of raw mineral ore;

Elusive, delicious, an enigma to behold when she allows you to behold her;

She tells you when or if; you do not cross the line; she is she; a woman undefined;

To know her, is to want her, to yearn to envelope her entirety, entirely;

To long to breathe her in and feel her in your everlasting moments;

She is art; a woman no one owns; a person of the soul; she is she.

© 2008 Kimberly Miller

I HAVE A DREAM

"I have a dream, a song to sing, to help me cope, with any thing, if you see the wonder of a fairytale, you can take the future, even if you fail, I believe in angels, something good in everything I see, I believe in angels, even though the time is right for me- I cross the stream, I have a dream."
This is an Abba song, whose lyrics have never held more true to my life than now. The instruments are Greek and beautiful. The melody melds into your sole and wraps its message into your heart and mind. I DO have a dream. I WILL live it. This song is my inspiration as of late, and my reason for pushing on. It is helping me get through all of the really large piles of crap that have been heaping up in my life lately, like finding out yesterday that my mom has three masses on her lungs, full on lung cancer, and I can't be there the day of her surgery because I have to be in Tucson to train for a new job, which, if I don't go and I lose out on the job, I lose the roof over my son's head. I am stuck between right and wrong, a rock and a hard place and a tough call to make. Mom is very angry with me, so the pangs of her frustration, anger, and fear are all being directed at me, which I fully expected as I am the oldest child and the one who tries to handle everything.. My brother, next on the sibling ladder, is going to be there on Tuesday for her surgery and hopefully keep me posted, at least I hope he will. I've always been the black sheep, if you will, the family bastard at the picnic--you know the type. I've always chosen to be different from the rest of the family, which I guess is why I constantly hear them all say, "we don't understand you." Maybe that goes with having the soul of an artiste -- a nomad--a free spirit in a family of Virgos --tied to the earth, holding everything inside.

Well, that aside, I am going to really enjoy being gone for two weeks by myself where, in my hotel room, I will not be a mom, a daughter, a sister, an Aunt, a confidante, a problem solver, or a pet-pooper-scooper. I'll just be me, which, let me tell you, I am totally looking forward to.

I'll be taking my computer with me and fingers crossed, if they have Wi-Fi there, will be posting. Have a great week everyone.

FIGHTING THE URGE

Have you ever felt those weird urges in life, you know, the kind where you know it would be wrong to act on them, but you just can't help thinking about? You want to do it so badly, that you literally have to fight the urge?

I've really been thinking about that lately because everything in my life is going wrong. I don't just mean one or two things, I mean everything!!!! I was at work the other day, a job which I won't have much longer, and my boss was getting very testy and kind of getting on my case. At that moment, I had the urge to slap him across the face as hard as I could. Now, rationally, I know I could never act on this, but I really had to restrain myself from just doing it. Mind you, he is 75, so this could have hurt him and knocked him down as well. I am not generally a mean-spirited person, but I think we all get these instinctive human urges - or should I say animalistic urges, to just act out and not hold back.
I remember another time, quite recently, when my friend and I were having lunch together. She was sitting rather close to me and when I looked up at one point, the stem of her water glass was almost in my eye. I had to hold my hand down because I wanted so badly to put my finger under the stem while she was drinking and lift it up so all the water would run down the front of her. What an impish thought. I chuckled a little and as she set her glass safely back down on the table, she asked me what I was laughing at. I actually told her what I was thinking and she laughed right along with me, stating that she always had urges like that.

What about the urge to jump off of a high place without a parachute or hang glider? Okay, that's a bit suicidal, but I remember feeling that one once when I was really down.

How about the urge to trip someone as they walk past you, or to belt out a song in a public place at the most inappropriate time (I have that one a lot).

As I progress in age, both physically and spiritually, I realize how little I care what others think about me and how the need to be totally and unabashedly happy has gone from a desire to an obsessive necessity. I don't want to have just happy moments here and there, because in my life they come all too seldom. I want to feel happiness in the depths of my soul and see the beauty in everything life has to offer. I'm working on these things, but patience is something I was born without. You're supposed to gain patience with age, but I don't find that to be true. In the meantime, I find solace in capturing beauty with my camera and in my art. The sad thing is that lately I haven't been able to do any art because of my moodiness. Hopefully that will change and time marches on.

Look out Graham Ettridge - I may be knocking on your door in Wiltshire England soon, taking you out for a night at the pub and some Irish "crack" (not sure they call it that where you live, but I've always loved how the Irish make use of a word that in my country means an incredibly hard drug - lol.)

IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN LIFE

Some of us are so busy in life we forget to take note of the smaller, seemingly less significant moments in life, but nonetheless moments which are all too important to stride right over the top of. Driving home the other day from, what felt like, another dull day at the office, I started to realize that I was living this unhealthy pattern of driving straight home after work and doing the same thing every day. BORING. I turned the truck around and drove myself to the theater for my sixth viewing of Mamma Mia. I did it on a weeknight, a night in which I knew I had to get ready for work the next day, and I didn't care. As I drove home, joyfully and loudly belting out the Abba soundtrack to the movie, I rolled all the windows down in the truck, let my hair blow all over the place, and let my left arm surf the air currents outside the window. The air was full of moisture and permeated my nose with the smell of oncoming rain. Stars peeked out from around the clouds when they could, and I sang as full and boisterous as I could, never giving care to those around me when I sat at a stop light. It was a short, but leisurely 10 minute drive home, but probably the best one I've had in so many years I couldn't tell you.

These are the moments, the little things that we take for granted. I see them in my photography and can capture them, but on a subconscious plane - not because I realized they were even there.

There is a line from a movie called, "The Color Purple" with Whoopi Goldberg, in which a woman says as they stroll through a field of purple flowers, "I think it pisses God off if we walk through a field with the color purple, and don't even notice." I've always loved that line, and I doubt if I quoted it verbatim, but it makes me think about how absolutely beautiful it is to be alive, to be able to feel and touch, to see and hear and smell and taste all of the things around us. Life does not always feel like it's a good thing because we just have days when it's hard and we don't see beyond our little caged-in daily lives, but if you really give that caged-in life the value it deserves, and look outside of bars, you will see that life is SO much more than work and school and kids and home and bills, because that part can be so stressful. I want more from life, and the more priority I give to finding and enjoying the important moments in life, the more clarity and satisfaction I find in my soul.

Whatever this odd search is that is going on inside of me lately, it has brought into light some clear retrospection and the opportunity to get to know who I am inside of this host body. I strive to leave a mark on the world, a sort of "I was here", if you will. I am attempting this with the three books I have written in trying to get them published. I have published some poems, some of my photography and some articles, but not on the scale that I desire.

The most important thing I have realized lately, is that it's okay to have dreams and lusts and desires. To want more for myself to fulfill myself in ways that I have always denied myself. I no longer wish to be the uptight single mom who struggles to make ends meet. If ends don't meet, then there will be something else around the corner. It's time to let go. I've put myself on a list for caretaker jobs to be able to see the nation and the world and live in many different places meeting many different people. I know now that this is what I want, what I need, what I have to have for total fulfillment.

If I had any money at all, I would be on the next plane to the UK or Ireland or Greece. Material possessions no longer merit concern with me, which is a HUGE growth spurt in my life.

An artist's soul is curious and longs to express and create and travel to soak up knowledge. Denying these needs has only brought a sense of poison into my life. No more.

TIME

One of the blogs that I really enjoy reading on a regular basis is One Man's Travels by Graham Ettridge. He has the most fabulous insights and eye for photographs. Anyway, I loved his idea for a monthly challenge and I decided to give it a go this time. The theme is TIME and the guidelines are as follows:

1) Take a photograph that in some way, manner or form represents the theme of "Time". You are welcome to use your artistic touch to manipulate the photograph using a photopackage such as photoshop. Be as creative as you desire!!! You are even welcome to sumbit a video clip, if that is your preferred media.

2) Include a brief explanation of how the photograph(s) relate to the theme. The photograph doesn't need to be outside, it can be of somebody or of something around the home.... it just needs to represent the theme of the month.

Since I have been struggling lately with the concept of time and how it has factored into the massive changes I have made lately, it started me thinking about things that change quickly over time, so my relevance to the theme is the change that occurs because of time.

Time is not terribly friendly to flowers. They emerge as beautiful blossoms and morph into fragrant, eye-catching flowers (in this case roses, which I love). Within only a day or two a rose becomes saggy and wilted and by the next day, brown and shriveled. It is so sad that this beauty cannot last beyond those few days, but I think the secret to a rose or anything beautiful in nature, is to enjoy its beauty and substance while it does last.People are often not as quick to cycle through this process as flowers, but nonetheless change so greatly with time. An example of this is a sort of photo log I keep of my son each year to track how drastically his appearance changes with time. He has so quickly changed from an innocent, helpless babe, into a responsible, caring, loving young man, who I am so proud to have had on loan to raise until he comes into his own.
Time is unstoppable. It's the one constant in a world of uncertainty. You can count on it to be there day after day, methodically and dutifully carrying on until, one day, it runs out.

THE COOKBOOKS ARE DONE!!!!

I'm SOOOOO excited. The cookbooks that we collaborated on in our Yahoo group, are finally finished. I completed the binding this past week and will now mail them out to everyone. Only those people sneaky enough to know I post everything here will know to check to see how the covers came out. This is the paper I made in a previous blog post and it just came out great. The back covers are antique brown paper bag with vintage images on them. Silly me, I forgot to take a picture of those, but that does leave an element of surprise for the group.

We had such fun doing this project. We each created an art card incorporating a recipe from six groups, i.e., appetizers, meat or soup, vegetables, casseroles, desserts, etc. We then made six cards each of those categories (a total of 36 cards) and everyone mailed them to me. I then laminated each page, because how sad to put so much effort into an artistic page and have it ruined by an ingredient while cooking, and then bound them together. I made tabs for each section as well. They will be mailed out hopefully next week. We have recipes from Nevada, Arizona, Kansas, Illinois, and New York. I'm so proud of my girls. They hung right in there and got it done, and very artistically. Each person in this group is such a talented artiste.

Can't wait to see how you like them ladies.

WANDER LUST

I don't know what's going on in the world right now, but most people I know are in turmoil, including me.

I don't know if it's because my job of 11 years is ending in December, or if it's a total lack of fulfillment, but I am just not happy these days. I was born with a soul steeped in wander lust, and have always been a Nomad, that is until I had a baby. I then sunk my roots in the ground to raise him for the past 15 and a half years, by myself, basically living a life with no fulfillment for me, other than what he provided.

Something's stirred up inside me now to the point of no return. I cannot go back. I cannot break free until I am true to myself. This means moving away from this state, which I have nothing against personally, but which has never been the place for me. I SO desire to move to Salisbury CT or the surrounding area in CT, MA or NY. If you are somebody who lives in those general areas or know somebody in those general areas, I would appreciate any link to you or them to help my son and I relocate. I need to be hooked up in the way of job openings, places to live, even a place to stay temporarily until we can lock into the job and a place to live.

The older I get, the more I realize how necessary it is to be TRUE to yourself, to listen to yourself and know what you need to be fulfilled. I am suffocating here in this life, working a job for 11 years that I dreaded going to each morning. I am in search for happiness and will NOT stop until I find it. Moving to the Salisbury area will open so many doors for my son and I, both. It will allow me to open up the fields and genres of art that are close to my heart, including singing and writing, it will open up possible schools and employment for my son, and it will get us to a freakin' Broadway play for once in our lives--introduce some culture, some trips, getting out, having fun, finally living life.

I'm such a mess right now, but at the same time, I finally know exactly what I need to fulfill myself -- to see what it would be like to be truly happy and fulfilled, inside and out. You really have no one else in life to be true to but yourself, and in doing that, you spread it wherever you go. These things are contagious.

Please pray for me to make our dreams come true - I know I am.

AUDREY'S BOOK

I finally finished my spread in Audrey's book. I decided that because most of what she likes centers around fairies and cats, and people thus far have done spreads on fairies and a cool dragon spread, that I would mix it up with a cat spread. I filled in the squares for the letters to sink in, with some clear gloss self-leveling gel. It came out really cool, looking almost like the letters were sunk into resin. I would not say this was my best work, but considering the funk I've been in lately, I was surprised I could do any work at all.