skip to main |
skip to sidebar
.
"Life becomes precious and more special to us when we look for the little everyday miracles and get excited about the privileges of simply being human"
~ Tim Hansel
tumultuous couple of days
my darling brother had to have an emergency operation to remove his appendix.
he wasn't recovering well so was moved into intensive care.
he has stabilised and is on the road to recovery,
but its been an emotional time.
its hard being so far away from home sometimes.
my partner's parents arrived last night for a holiday.
i feel like i am being held in the bosom of family at the moment ~
with so much talking and connecting and feeling the loving bonds of my own family
as well as having chris' family here.
if you could send healing thoughts to my beautiful brother,
i would muchly appreciate it.
with great love,
leonie
.
the best things in life cost a total of $3.
$2 for 2 sweet, sugary marangues for me and Deb to eat while walking, talking, miandering the city.
Walking by a display for diving - with a real diver submerged in a perspex box of water. We stand and watch him, waving at him and smiling big at him. He waves back, kissing a plastic fish that swims in the water box with him. Silliness, giggles and fun.
A guy with an orange beard and light blue eyes on the street with a sign.
$1 for 3 jokes.
So we buy ourselves jokes. And we laugh ourselves silly. Our smile muscles hurt as we walk away.
That was five minutes in my day.
Five minutes that I treasure...
.
safety glasses are always an attractive accessory.
Tonight me and three rocking chicas ~
lile, erin and ange ~ along with 200 other DIY~hankering women
descended upon the Bunnings Hardware Store DIY Ladies Night.
ange, erin, lile and me.
hee hee hee...
We spray~painted to our sniffing delight,
made mosaic madness,
squished sticky white mud into designer wall hangings,
won lucky door prizes,
splattered paint on wine glasses.
our creative masterpieces..
We would have learned to do the useful things ~
like fixing a fly screen or using the right mulch ~
but the creative workshops lured...
And... funnily enough... magically enough...
at the end of the night, as we stood outside taking our obligatory fun photos,
the celebrities of the night ~ Gav and Waz from "The Block"
walked past us. So they joined us. In our fun photo madness.
I'm going to gigglesnort about this silly, magical night for days to come.
It's also going to take me that long to clean this grout from under my nails...
hee hee hee...
.
illustration friday's theme this week is DARING.
my dear friend lisa marie asked the SARK community
for bits of paper with YES written on them.
YES to succulence, to open living, to chasing dreams.
YES to facing fears and following one's heart.
there is nothing more daring than that.
this is my contribution...
A big YES Fairy.
close up of the YES Fairy.
.
The gods and goddesses convened once again for their picnic to discuss worldly affairs.
or not.
Perhaps it was just an eclectic group of friends meeting to share lunch and laughter in the park.
Maybe it was both.
All I know,
is that on Friday,
the gods ~ chris, paris, ben
& the goddesses ~ me, andrea, lile, erin, deb
joined again.
And we ate our lunches on our purple rug.
We used my new magical mermaids and dolphins oracle card set.
We laughed a lot.
We talked.
Stories were told.
An hour was a holiday.
the beautiful andrea. i love how the light dances by the side of an eye.
she looks like a laughing south american warrior goddess.
lile. telling us "I told you people! I'm supposed to listen to my dreams! Even SARK tells me!"
Erin laughing. I love how Erin's face exactly what she is thinking. She'd be crap at poker but oh my gosh she is sincere. :)
no explanation necessary. i heart deb.
mr paris, in story tell mode.
he is the bestest story teller ever! when he talks i feel like hitching my knees to my chin and just listening.
so that was our lunch.
gods, goddesses.
friends.
an adventure.
and a sublime way to be at peace.
love,
Leonie
.
"The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you."
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
I've been noticing around town lately serendipitous stickers on sign posts.
Today I took my camera with me on the stroll from the carpark to work with Chris and Paris.
Art IS precious.
And I'm not quite sure who Rob Carr is.
But dang it was fun to photograph.
You know what else is FUN?
hanging out in a park at lunch
with seven people.
Picnics are magic.
Just add rug on grass, and any meal becomes an ADVENTURE!
(pics to come tomorrow)
...
for now,
love and laughter,
Leonie
.
Seeing a man who was tilling the earth, a fool,
unable to control himself, cried out,
"Why are you ruining this soil?"
"Fool," said the man,
"leave me alone: Try to recognize the difference
between tending the soil and wasting it.
How will this soil become a rose garden
until it is disturbed and overturned?"
~ Jalaluddin Rumi (Helminski version)
Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance
i wanted to thank you all so much
for your beautiful welcoming of my book.
it has been such a wonderful experience!
for those who have ordered ~ please let me know what you think when you've received!
i love that my baby books are out, running in the wilderness.
adventuring words!
i've been deliciously delving into the pages of my new moleskine journal,
thanks to cinzia.
i've posted a scan of its already much loved cover ~
it has my favourite postcard of early morning swimmers in the river Ganges...
and a Led By Spirit sticker.
There is something so... homely about returning to journalling.
i can untangle the threads of my life out on paper,
see how they fall, the texture they make,
the patterns of repeating circumstances and emotions,
the overall shade of experience they create.
I'm doing deep delving into myself.
Retreating into the Western cave of the Bear
for introspection.
We all have these phases...
maitri's latest post was sublime, as always.
this post from lifeouttacontext made me tear up
:)
Wishing you consciousness
in these days...
.
front cover
It is with great love,
and dreams unfolding and expanding,
that I announce the release
of my first book
Today I grew like a Wildflower.
This is my story of growing and becoming.
Of consciousness, creativity, healing and joyful living.
In full colour ~ it is a gathering of my art, photography and writing.
Of all that I am, and all that I becoming.
My lessons ~ my loves ~ my life.
Stories of everyday magic and the sacred in the ordinary that are glimpsed when we open ourselves to it.
SARK has already read it ~ and gorgeously provided this comment:
"It's F A B U L O U S.
Pure Delight.
You are such a STAR.
I love to watch you GLOW."
It has been my childhood dream to write a book.
It with gratitude, I thank the beautiful souls who have entered my life in the last year. From SARK's website, from the beginning of the Turquoise Journey blogger and the blossoming into Leonielife.com. To the women's circle. To friends who fed birdseed to the winged dreams within me.
I know that these beautiful souls are an intrinsic part of this book's journey into existance.
May it live,
may it love,
may it be free.
I have been pregnant with this book for 22 years.
And now as I become an author~mommy, I realise that I will now live with a part of my heart living outside of me. Having adventures of its very own. Seeing the world. Living the dream.
Blessings on its journey.
back cover
You can buy the book through the printer, Lulu.com.
Aussie visitors, please remember Lulu is an American printer so price is in US dollars.
There is no problems with ordering it with your credit card.
It will take about 2-3 weeks to arrive.
Any problems, questions etc, please email me
with love, and words, and gratitude,
and a knowingness i cannot comprehend,
Leonie,
the Mother of the Book.
PS ~ for those who played the "which cover should i choose" game with me ~
i ended up cutting them all up and using them all :)
.
"Cream colored ponies and crispapple strudel
Doorbells and sleighbells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things."
~ My Favourite Things. you know the song.
I've had such a BIG week.
As hormonal as a pregnant woman.
I JUST WANT TO GET THIS BABY OUT
but at the same time wanting to clasp it near. Hold it.
I've been GENTLE this weekend.
Gentle gentle.
I took Lena and Deb's advice.
I bought Lindt 70% chocolate.
I curled up on the couch.
I let things be as they were.
I did not push for answers.
I felt revelations unpeeling.
Every moment was/is a choice to feel fear - build walls OR let it go. Breathe.
Imbue angst with forgiveness, compassion and love to myself.
"These are the days that must happen to us."
~ Walt Whitman.
Yesterday I got three parcels in the mail ~
"messy thrilling life" by sabrina ward harrison from musical dreamer.
a moleskine notebook from Cinzia in Italy.
"spilling open" also by sabrina ward harrison and GORGEOUS handmade creative goddess womyn jewellery from gail and kristiana.
beautiful beautiful parcels.
gail and kristiana wrote on the back of their envelope their FAVOURITE THINGS.
i so adored it. i've put it here to share with you all.
it inspired me to go back to basics this weekend.
sit in the sun because i like to.
eat chocolate before 10am.
read.
i started and finished reading
:spilling open: yesterday and this morning.
it is truly an experience.
i feel it came at exactly the right time.
to read the first book of a young artist and writer.
to see her story develop.
it was like watching someone be pregnant, and have their baby,
all the while being book pregnant myself.
hmmmm.
i'm not sure if i can articulate all my inner movements.
i only know they are. they exist, they continue.
i'm doing the hard ground. just as i need to.
i told maitri that the book baby's head is appearing.
i am preparing and opening.
and my hand is held, soothed by many things.
by chris. he knows me.
by playing ball with charlie.
by chocolate and good books.
by parcels in the post.
by beautiful friends. deb who is strength and beauty. lile who sits in the toilets with me when i am messily emotional. lena who emails me ~ be gentle loney ~ wear shawls and watch the sky. adam who writes to tell me to slay the crappy emotions, or compromise with them.
by the re-connection in recent days with my first best friend, Jade. for someone to know you and love you when you were 11, and still love you when you are 22 is a remarkable feat.
this has been all a part of the process,
i know this.
and i am grateful for it. there is lightness, and there is darkness.
there is grieving, and there is celebration
there is death of old parts that don't work anymore.
and there is birth.
birth of a new me.
birth of a book.
.
photo friday's theme this week is REST.
this is a photo i took of my big brother as he was getting a tattoo.
he looks so peaceful.
REST.
just what the doctor ordered.
or my beautiful friends.
"Be gentle with yourself lioness heart."
~ dearest Deb
"Go home and nurture yourself. I'm sure you will. Be gentle and be kind... Just curling up. Warm cups of tea or cocoa. Lying in the grass watching the blue blue sky."
~ lovely Lena
may gentleness pervade your days.
with love,
leonie
roaming searching scratching
surface
depths underneath
headstrong cowardly
lost found
lost
i've arrived at a destination and found that there's a bloody
long path stretching out again. this path is a bit rougher.
tumbling in the surf
gasping for breath
swimming to the surface
sucked back down again
no more floating on your back for YOU miss leonie
trying to be conscious, trying to be grateful.
i read poetry and it makes sense
even when there is no sense at all.
i write poetry and it isn't good poetry
but it is MY poetry dammit
it can be what it wants to be
at least i wrote it.
at least i formed the words
at least i stretched down that far to try to find them.
i find myself at moments that i have dreamt of before
but the fears that i didn't dream of are still there.
it's funny. how we place worth on what people say as the total context for whom they are. their whole entity. even when words are said only in the moment. moments pass. they always do.
and this funk of mine. yup. it'll turn from funk to funky and it will put on colourful shoes and trollop down the street singing ladeedah.
but for now,
i am overwhelmed. exhausted. a fiesty scaredy-cat.
i feel all teen-angsty even when I'm no longer a teen.
and for the first time in a long time, i'll post this without an image. because my words are worth it.
~
the moment passed.
.
shine ~ my little sister.
riding in the lift to work this morning, i find myself next to deb. my heart sings.
you were right
i say breathlessly. it came last night.
i take it from my bag. MY book. and i hand it to her.
we step out of the lift. she clasps it to her chest. she reads through it. her eyes well up and splash over.
I LOVE IT she tells me. IT IS PERFECT. And I know she means it, because i Know it myself.
It is EXACTLY sublimely divinely how it needs to be.
There is so little to change. The cover is beautiful. My heart sings.
And even now, sitting at work, it sits beside me. A part of my heart that now lives outside of me. Joyfully, I give this to the world. I do not own this anymore. It is an intrinsic part of me, but it pulls, like a young mare at its reins. Rears its head, mane rippling like a wave in the circle of wind. I am safe on its back. I do not wish for more.
It all feels like it is exactly how I should be. I was checking my website earlier today and my eyes caught on the picture of me with AUTHOR written on it. Yes, that's me. An author.
I was always going to be an author. Always. This is my destiny. And now I AM.
I always have been pregnant. Even as a child, I felt the yearning of my words~filled womb to give birth to a book.
the beautiful maitri even said this to me:
"Leonie Honey! I am so happy for you!!!
I can't wait to get my copy!
Gee, this is like having a very pregnant friend about to come home with the baby!"
You know when a woman gives birth, and how her and her partner just want to be alone with the baby together for a little bit?
Just to ruminate and form those bonds. To let the energy seep, to grow breathlessly together in the first few moments, for understanding to take place. To radiate in the love, and come out into the world shinier?
This is what I am doing right now. I am mother and I am daughter to this book, as I am with all my artworks.
I gave birth to it, but it gave birth to me.
~
and thank you LMB ~ for your birth notice of sorts :)
and thank you lile ~ for your review!
.
photo by my older sister bex. me as a 14 year old.
"You wander from room to room
Hunting for the diamond necklace
That is already around your neck!"
~ Jalal-Uddin Rumi
The last few months have been incredible.
I wrote a book, and have been digesting it, allowing it to be born, having sark read it, and provide a comment for it.
I've been waiting for the first draft to arrive ~ it has taken three weeks. i wanted to be patient. allow it to make its entrance in the world.
then today, i asked my dear friends at work ~ deb, lile, erin ~ to think Welcoming and Receiving vibes to my book as I felt it was time.
Deb closed her eyes and said firmly: It will be there when you return home.
Later on in the day, I picked an angel card.
MANIFESTATION.
I returned home this afternoon,
and there under my mat was it.
A.BOOK.WITH.MY.NAME.ON.IT.
I am so so so proud of it. SO proud.
It looks beautiful. Colourful.
Like a captured essence of a time. Of my growth.
As I said at the table, cradling it in my hands, I said to Chris:
All the moments of my life. Coming together to make this one.
So my butterfly emerged from its cocoon today.
And in the next couple of days, I will let it fly from my hands.
Just like that.
And watch it flit.
A book with my name on it.
A dream come true.
Today, I am so excited. Overwhelmed. Frenetically energetic. Brimming with happy tears and joy and prospect and promise and dreams come true.
Today I am an author.
.
"The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is "look under foot."
You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.
The great opportunity is where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world."
~ John Burroughs
Last Friday, my dearest friend Deb asked me what I was hoping to do on the weekend.
And I replied:
You know, I'd really like to spend some time with my dog Charlie. I feel like I have so much to learn from him.
I had some really incredible responses to my post about imperfect perfectionism. one in particular, the beautiful jenniwiffles, lovingly shared her story of chronic fatigue. and she said:
"what if leonie COULDN'T work full time, or go to uni at all, and simply had to BE? what would be ok, just ok, then?"
I've realised lately how much i put emphasis on producing my life. on doing.
on busily creating the life of leonie.
i'm want some balance back.
less doing, more BEING. just being.
lying on the floor with fluffy dog in my arms without thinking of how to contextualise it into words. presenting it as an image to the world.
just being there, letting it be.
trying to see that all i need is right there. in that very moment. not in the moments after. its right there.
charlie teaches me about being. he is, after all, the king of being.
he doesn't care if i got 84% in my art history test instead of my desired 90%.
if i tried to explain that to him, i don't think he would understand.
nopes. he would just look at me and proceed to jump joyfully over me.
charlie's priorities in life are:
those he loves.
cuddles on the couch.
frolicking in the back yard with his head in a plant bucket.
chasing his tail.
making passionate love to his favourite purple blanket.
jumping on our bed on sunday mornings.
crawling all over me as i write this post.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
those zeroes are actually from charlie. he just stood on the keyboard quite deliberately. i think he wanted to say HELLO to all :)
So it is in these small small moments I learn the biggest things of all.
love, and fur angel beings,
leonie
.
i've written about this before,
when me and lisa marie decided to form Perfectionists Non~Anonymous.
today i realised i need to attend a few more sessions.
i opened my marks for my last art history exam, and saw i got 84%
my first thought was:
how can that BE? i knew all the answers to that test.
i even made up little flash cards and made bus friend paris test me
over and over again, until even he knew them.
it was a spiral down from there. into grasping for the land of 90%Dom
kinda ridiculous, huh?
i promised myself this year to have more PEACE and BALANCE in my life.
perfectionism isn't conducive to that.
it's my dog chasing his tail around and around. it only makes him tired and a little bit angsty (he's a sensitive doggy).
so here i am.
taking a stand against myself.
saying: be gentle, be gentle.
everything is just perfect as it is, right now.
~
today i'm loving:
(as always) jen
violette
the stories of my friend adam
my new knee high purple ugg boots from the fabulously hippy gorman house markets
our sleepy doggy sprawled out on the rug
passionfruit fudge from tuggeranong homestead markets
the bearded man singing at the markets that sounded like a syrupy james taylor
janeane garafalo, just coz she rocks.
.
illustration friday's theme this week is ALONE.
saturday.
a beautiful crisp saturday morning. early.
you wake, put the dog outside to gallavant about with his favourite plant bucket.
pad to the dolphin and waves studio, laptop under arm.
here at your writing desk the world is at peace.
windows open, your hands grow cold in the stillness of the morning.
cold but alive. a theme these days.
even pain is thrilling ~ it points to growth and aliveness and living, full colour.
yang is asleep still. you, the yin, sits with a rug wrapped around you.
you think of balance. of the bad chinese you ate last night.
go back and read a favourite, comforting post about love.
find new ones about creative spaces.
even jen speaks of balance. we all are ~ thinking it and learning to speak it. j & k find words and shake them out onto the page. see what falls.
tracking life through cold hands in the early morning.
ponder the impending day. library. hierophant bookstore. mountain creek hippy wholegoods store with large drums of all things healthy. muesli. dates. dried fruit.
the fruit markets. i am lacking something and i think i'll find it there.
and most importantly, a day with my yang. so much time spent together, but it is like returning home when our days are full of each other. full and spilling over the rim.
after months of floating on turquoise seas, face to the sun,
my ocean is starting to be choppier.
there is beauty even in that.
he speaks to me of mindfulness. reads stanzas to me from his lama surya das book.
treats our dog like his own child, his own equal. i see him grow and i see him bloom.
i see connections being made that will always touch our lives.
i see my beautiful brother has a quote on his email now.
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart." ~ Helen Keller.
i like very much seeing this tender underbelly of my brother. it is daring and revealing and it makes me gasp in pride.
even when life is choppy,
beautiful moments can be found. captured, held, and lovingly set free.
look.
there's one now.
.
fimo goddesses, samsung digimax v3
Photo Friday's challenge this week is "Plastic"
~
"If I could wish for my life to be perfect,
it would be tempting but I would have to
decline for life would no longer teach me anything."
~ Alyson Jones
there's so much change abound. not just for me, but for so many close to me.
it has been the most interesting process.
seeing how both myself and others have faced fear.
how we've all hidden under the covers of the doona,
and romanticised old situations, even when they don't serve us anymore.
how we've worried over the new things that are coming into our lives ~
if we are worthy, if we are strong enough, if we can do it.
what if the sky falls in when we take a leap?
all this fear and worry and hiding and romanticising.
it's a part of the process.
Coz eventually ~ eventually all of us can no longer just sit in fear.
the heart is a powerful thing ~ and when the heart yearns for change, its call is too strong too ignore for long.
we have mastered and grown comfortable in the known,
and it's time to venture forth.
so we leap. we L E A P into the darkness of the unknown.
~
dedicated to my change path companions.
chris, deb, lisa marie.
i heart you all BIG. you make the path much less lonely.
.
"Thus we see that the all-important thing is not killing or giving life,
drinking or not drinking, living in the town or the country,
being lucky or unlucky, winning or losing.
It is how we win, how we lose, how we live or die;
finally, how we choose.
We walk, and our religion is shown
(even to the dullest and most insensitive person),
in how we walk.
Living in this world means choosing,
and the way we choose to walk is infallibly
and perfectly expressed in the walk itself."
~ R. H. Blyth
felt so so ordinary on the bus coming home today.
ORDINARY and small.
i was so bored with the humdrum of my own brain that i wanted to go on holidays from myself.
so i kicked my own butt, lovingly.
i got off the bus kilometres before my bus stop
and i walked the rest of the way home.
I walked the shit out.
I walked like a pissed off warrior, like a monk, like a woman.
Like a girl in the breeze.
It was cold,
but the coldness awoke me.
And it was getting dark,
but goddamn it was beautiful.
With fading light and cold breeze and perfect dustypowder blue skies and orange sunsets,
it made me thankful.
It awoke me to the steadfast beauty that remains,
even when i can't see out of my bleary and tired and ordinary eyes.
I walked on ground. Real ground.
Not that shitty concrete. REAL clay and clufts of grass.
Red bullants. Stones. It made my innards sigh, relieved to be so close to dirt again.
Today I took the path less travelled.
I had a mini adventure.
I was once ORDINARY and small
but I walked it out
and became me again.
Radiantly windswept, cold but ALIVE.
Leonie
.
Don't go through life, grow through life. ~ Eric Butterworth
What are your daily internet rituals?
I like to start with jen gray
then superhero it up
even a bit of keri
and some sketches by michael
and i always check my friends ~
lisa marie and lemissa and leigh
and helena and jayne
why?
why do i adore reading blogs?
because i love the stories of people.
of them growing and being conscious.
the very act of writing forces, reinforces, fosters that consciousness.
you know what else i adore?
my dog lying on my writing desk as i write on a sunday afternoon.
.
the bee makes love to the flowers, tidbinbilla.
"We must not wish for the disappearance of our troubles but for the grace to transform them."
~ Simone Weil
I've realised lately how I tend to view things in BLACK or WHITE.
I either love something, or I DON'T.
My views of life are quite rigid. What is right, and what is wrong.
I was talking to my bus friend Paris about them today ~
and he said to me:
You really are a funny old duck, aren't you?
And he said it in the kindest of ways.
I am a funny old black and white sort of duck.
An example is I really don't deal well with the thought that my little sister has sex.
(She, by the way, IS 18 and very mature!)
Anytime my older sister mentions it on the phone, I squeal and say:
don't tell me. I can't deal with it! I don't want to know!
Just at the very thought that my little sister ~ whom I still see as my four year old doll that I could play dress ups with ~ is not that four year old anymore.
And Paris said to me ~
Now, Leonie, you really need to get in touch with your own Aphrodite.
I protested and said ~
No, no, I know my Aphrodite. We are dear friends!
Well, he said.
Are you unable to see her in your little sister then?
And that was it.
You know those moments when someone turns the light switch on for you?
When before you were standing in the darkness of confusion,
and with a simple piece of knowledge, you become
I L L U M I N A T E D.
That was my moments of illumination today.
Of being a funny old duck, and
of suddenly realising that I wasn't seeing my little sister as a true sister, an equal in the temple of Aphrodite. I still want to protect her from the world, and yet I know she is a warrior goddess in her own right.
So to wisdom growing,
illuminating friends,
and aphrodite sisters,
I honour today.
Love,
Leonie
~
wanted to send out candle light and healing thoughts to my lecturer's wife tonight. they are two remarkable, passionate intellectuals whose love shines.
