three birds one post

photo friday's topic is BURN.

"Do you wanna be a poet and write
Do you wanna be an actor up in lights
Do you wanna be a soldier and fight for love
Do you wanna travel the world
Do you wanna be a diver for pearls
Or climb a mountain and touch the clouds above
Be anyone you want to be
Bring to life your fantasies
But I want something in return
I want you to burn, burn for me baby"
~ Tina freaking Arena "Burn"
I can't believe I just quoted Tina freaking Arena on my blog.

also, on all things burny, i am currently obsessed with photos from burning man
i want to go. i want to go. i want to go.

and it's going to be a tough one, but i can try and tie the next one into the burn theme too...
drum roll please...
sooooo... wanna know what goddess lights YOUR FIRE???
{ho ho ho, even *I* astound me)

Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
brought to you by Quizilla



my work in the world is done. three topics, one post, vaguely tied.
AND i have quoted Tina freaking Arena.

tender thank you

sunset blossoms at lanyon


thank you.
for holding my truths with two hands and a heart
and honouring my spirit when when it is tender
and sharing in tales of messy, beautiful days
for yelling SMILE, for being okay when i'm not,
for hand plucked flowers, for stories of extraordinariness,
and for reducing me to tears (the good ones).

you guys know who you are.

haiku and crocs and fairies and sand...

i know i haven't said much lately.
i've been bike riding and brewing and letting the sand sift from the gold in my mind.
i've been doodling fairies for my friend The Henna Fairy.
marinating in thoughts. dreaming up ideas. rejoicing in friends. eating lentil and bacon soup. not talking, just doing. cocooning with eyes wide open.

the simple pleasures. the joy in wearing new purple crocs. feeling like i'm sure to set off a fashion trend for happy feet.


and i've been reading a haiku anthology. my favourite:

smoothing paper
on my fingertips
the roughness of words

~ jackie hardy.

wishing you these quiet days. when there is much movement below the ocean surface, but no ripples at the top.

:)

N R G

i bartered with a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago ~ a painting for a bicycle. each evening and weekend i've been hauling ass up mountains to gape over sunsets, riding balmily through the spring flowers, breathing in new and fresh and fast running air.

and damn, it feels GOOD.

the last two days i haven't gone... and i notice the change in me.
i notice how i get bored much, much easier
how i get a bit frenetic and crazy and start barking imitations of police academy 2 at chris. i find it hard to sit down and paint. there is so so much ENERGY in my lethargic body and can't constructively get it out.

me thinks putting energy into exercise doesn't detract from energy into creativity. in fact, i am discovering they exist in a symbiotic relationship, developing further my understanding and enjoyment of them.

shock, horror, i know, for someone who has RESISTED exercise and sport for a long time now.

this afternoon i was going a bit nutty and started recognising behavioural trends in me that are kinda like a hyperactive kid. i get annoying, even to myself. i really, really wanted to sit down in my studio ~ but felt like at once jumping off the walls and shmoozing on the limegreen couch by the windows.

instead, i got my bike, and my hunky lover,
and out into the day we went.

up, up, up the mountain further than i've been before, until my lungs hurt with growing and expanding larger.

if i had said ~ i am going to climb that mountain, i would have felt daunted and afraid and wouldn't have attempted. instead, i just imagined it as stages. all i had to do was get up to the next corner. then the next. then the next. step by step by step. spin by spin by spin. kinda like life really... if you feel daunted by something... just do one part at a time.

up to the top of the mountain, onto a firebreak with our mountain bikes until we were above all the houses looking over the valley. it felt so freaking good to do the thing i thought i couldn't do.

then coasting down, down, down again.

back to here.

and i'm ready to go settle in my studio. drink some chai tea.
paint and draw a little. look out the windows to this marvellous day and do what i can, joyfully.

Leonie's new motto:
Get out. Then go in.

with energy, and joy,
Leonie

The Best I Can...

photos from my day...

{click on pics for bigger images}

had the pleasure of seeing salsabor, my dear friend andrea's salsa school performing at lunch today. they have just been selected to compete at the Los Angeles Salsa Congress in 2006. if you're an canberra~ite, looking to put some hot stuff in your step, salsabor might be just the right spice!

"We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams."
~ anonymous

for the earth angels and the universe. riding a bike up the mountain to see the sky at bluey~pinky sunset time. the world all laid out before me. hand picked flowers. a thousand ways to count the blessings that shower us all...

"When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts."
~ anonymous

and here's my surprise silly magic shot of the day... we were driving home, when i caught sight of a stuffed lion enjoying the view from the back of a truck near us. i made chris drive along beside him while i took happy snaps of the crazy magic lion... and i *adore* how the pic worked out.

Symptoms of Inner Peace

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has, up to now, been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world.

Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of the ability to worry. (This is a very serious symptom).
• Frequent, overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

From Creative Growth

Happy Birthday Lile...

It was my dear friend Lile's birthday yesterday.
I love her muchos {but not as muchos as Argentinian inflation}, and I just know she'll grin and say YOU CHEEKY MONKEY when I wish her the BEST 29th BIRTHDAY EVER!

To celebrate, we had a picnic in the park,
which lasted 10 glorious minutes.
Those ten glorious minutes were spent opening presents,
doing a PLEASE DON'T RAIN DANCE,
making rainhats out of plastic bags (as delightfully modelled by andrea below)
before relinquishing our control of the weather,
and walking back to work in the pouring rain, giggling madly as we hid under our picnic blanket.


we couldn't have made better magic if we tried.

happy birthday lile~pilly.
may all your answered prayers arrive on rainbow wings and bearing belgian truffles.

love,
Leonie

rainbow seekers take note...

a huge, vibrant rainbow appeared outside our office windows this afternoon.
miracles abound.
they reek of answered prayers
joys untold
childlike joy
P R O M I S E.

i dare you to draw one.

"Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue,
and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true"
~ Lyman Frank Baum

"Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail."
~ Virginia Woolf

"The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched"
~ Henry David Thoreau

things i adore...

i adore this man, and i adore our green couch by the windows to read in. and i ADORE charlie's expression in this picture...



i adore wearing my ten year old docs with my blue fru fru skirt. i feel 90's kickass and new millenium hippy all at once.

on a mountain

this is where i was last full moon ~
gathered around a campfire with my family, watching that big white bellied beauty rise into the sky above the farm.

i invite you to join my full moon sacred circle on a mountain ~ click here if you are feeling wild and open.

my dear laptop has once again had an out of body experience. i am ever grateful that i hooked that hot computer guy at work four years ago, and still have him to work his mystic hands on all things technologica, as well as take me on fantastic adventurous bike ride adventures. not sure when said laptop will re-enter stratosphere and begin working again... but i welcome the opportunity to once again repeat mantra to self: back up, back up, back up; be zen and get over loss of photos {thank god for blog archive}.

for now, delicious spirits,
meet me on a mountain.

love,
Leonie

The Grace Walk...

how do i tell you about the grace walk?
how do i dare define it into words?
some things are so magnificent, so far reaching and so graceful that i feel clumsy at the keyboard.
but i will try. i will try, and i will do the best i can... because that is the most i can ask for.

today i walked the grace walk.


the ceiling reflection

my workplace organised a lunchtime walk from the city, into an older suburb and up to a park backing wilderness. there was a couple of hundred of us there, straggling along in a duck's line. me and two dear friends did something graceful ~ we left the masses. found our own way there, our own way back. time to walk slowly and relish the surrounds.

we talked. about dreaming, interpretations, movies, depression, joy.
we stopped often to inspect pine cones and bark and natural delights.
we found treasures, so many treasures.
tiny purple flowers on a vine wrapping around a tree.



we sat at the park, eating bad pork sausages and white bread, gazing at bushland that made me want to ride horses.

on the way back, we dawdled.


a deliciously old street sign that i relish with my eyes

we found luminous birds feathers. peered into ramshackle gardens that made our hearts leap. and every single time we came across a flowering bush, we stopped. we smelt. we breathed them in. some that smelt of honey. some that smelt like "old ladies" as dave put it. some that didn't smell at all, but were delicious to put your nose in. some that smelt of youthful abundance. we stayed by that tree for a long time, that youthful abundance scent distilling in us.


it was indeed magical ~ i think the colours in this picture capture the essence.

we talked about our secret selves. i am georgina, the artist by the sea. andrea is angela, the greek cafe owner.



dave is bjorn, viking forest man with muse.



and i delight in the sharing of our secret selves. i delight in walking in spring, with no cares in the world. good conversation, dear friends, a sweet stroll and miracles ~ miracles of the feathered kind, the scented kind, the spirit kind.


andrea & dave, fellow grace walk journeyers...


andrea & me, the two headed goddess!

i'm not sure how we really got back to work. i know i wasn't meaning to walk back to the cityscraperdom. i would have been perfectly, joyously happy to keep wandering for the rest of the afternoon.

and that, my friends, is the grace walk.

when an hour becomes a holiday...

what is the shenizzle?

"Be not afraid of growing slowly,
be afraid only of standing still."
~ Chinese proverb

My sister sent me this beautiful picture she took of me and my nephew Joshua. We spent that afternoon sitting on the lawn, reading books and laughing in the warmth. Joshua wasn't feeling well, and spent hours lying in my lap. It was entirely precious.

Precious moments are abound. I rode fast on my bike in the darkness tonight, stopping at each flowered bush to smell them. Raced under a luminous Jupiter and a growing moon. Stopped to watch water flowing down the flood drains. I finally discovered parts of my neighbourhood I had always wanted to find out about. I grew breathless and sore, and elated.

This freedom... this new way of seeing the world... has been the greatest gift of all.

A gift on two wheels.

The simple things...
they are the shenizzle.

gratitude

me and my sister, becky. aug 05.


We are here and it is now.
Further than that, all knowledge
is moonshine.
~ H.L. Mencken

so many things to be grateful for.

|| snail mail from my sister with photos. photos of me and her that made me well up and miss "home" even though I am home in so many ways. and i know i only miss her because i love her, so that's something to be grateful for.

|| riding a bicycle for the first time in many, many years. i've been manifesting a bicycle for a while now ~ and the universe birthed it out to me via fellow Interplanetary Love Trooper, Dave. When I got it home, I tore out onto the streets on it, even in the darkness and cold. I lost my breath quickly. My legs spun a zillion times in ratio to one turn of the wheels as I struggled with ten speed technology. And I rode out over a dark green oval, discovering the world in a new way. and that's something to be grateful for.

|| hugging my dear friend andrea last night, i wondered why it felt so strangely familiar. in that moment, i knew i had known her before. and that's really something to be grateful about.


me and andrea

and the best thing in all my days... is the people.
my family, who are love implicit.
friends who make me remember a time before my body.
women who hold my truth.
friends who cook scrumptious lunches for the cubicle of love and joy.
interplanatary love troopers.
drop after drop after drop...
of angel essence in human bodies.

pencil, photoshop. click on image for full size.

woman,
if i could tell you the ways,
that you are a miracle
you wouldn't look down.

and the shadows?
you would embrace them as they came like rain across the paddock.
you would instinctively know they are all a mesmerising blend of the cosmos.

woman,
i find you there at that wooden desk
that dips and curves with the rise and fall of a pen.
the scent of pine and felt pen still lives there
like history, like skin shedded,
like lantana scars on my knee.

woman,
if you didn't think poet poet i must write like a poet
as you wrote
the words would drip like the rain from the pine needles,
gush down the drains and leave you radiant, naked in the pouring monsoon.

woman,
some days i feel so very very human and so very very lost
that i forget i am divine.
i feel so normal and blind and scrappling for truth that lives in the hand
that it is hard to hear the wise one in me say:
it's all true leonie.


and man, i tell you,
same as above.

The moment and the floor...

click on images to go to the full sized pictures

I was feeling bored, crabby and out of sorts last night, so I did the best thing for me ~ I took myself to my studio, grabbed whatever was closest, and just created. Out came long piece of blue cardboard, paints, petals from a bouquet of flowers... and the offcuts that were on the floor (as inspired by Keri).

I like that each piece has its "story" ~ the cuttings off other drawings, pieces of packages that were in the bin, and even the dried blobs of paint from old palettes. Here was creating with all pressures off. Not caring how imperfect the scraps were, or what it would end up looking like, I was free to be in the moment. It was there, in the moment, that I found a temporary solace from the chattering and obnoxiousness of my mind.


Photoshop filters gave the collage new spins.
Speaking of spinning, Leonie is going to be a cyclist soon!
I have even made a new dance up, to go with Queen's "Bicycle" and have taken to wearing my new helmet around the house under the guise of "breaking it in" (when really, I do it because I like the feeling).

So in my spouts of obnoxiousness and boredom, there are also spouts of joy and unencumbered childish glee. In my moments of darkness and feeling lost, there are also moments of visions, understanding and enlightenment about where I'm at and why things are so disorientating right now.

{there's got to be shadows in order to dance in the light}

love,
Queen Space Cadet.

a walk to clear the space.

i dig when street art gets all joy*soaked

go on a walk, you scorpian folk ~ as advised by the ideas magician brezsny.
and i RESISTED. let me tell you, i resisted walking.
i wanted to sit in my shell, marinate for a while, until this "stage" passes me by.

but we got home early.
and the light was still golden.
so i donned my walking shoes in the first time for a long time.
i donned my ipod... began with willie nelson, breaking into routine strides...
down the road. out on to the paddock. over the great green oval. sri chinmoy flute music floods my overactive mind into sedation. back into suburbia. past the shops. the woman with tired eyes and two small dogs.
the cherry blossoms are blooming.
it is warm, it is spring burbling from the earth.
around the street, and enter the park i haven't been to before.
there are two huge concrete turtles, smiling joyfully.
with them is a great mother water energy, so i sit with them.
watch out across the playground, into the mountains where the sun is setting.
then down the stormwater drain, passing the backs of houses as james taylor sings me home.
the trees beckon. i see a miracle - a dozen white turtledoves flitting about, free, in a backyard filled with miniature houses on poles.

and so i walk.

i wonder what miracles i discovered in me as i walked.



ps ~ it is a couple of hours later. i discovered the miracle. i am tee pee woman.

pregnacious...

a badge i created...
for all you gorgeous pregnacious succulents out there!

{feel free to pin to your bosom at your pleasure}

"To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -
to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it,
lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -
is a wonder beyond words."
~ Joanna Macy

this picture makes me giggle.
it makes me believe we can create magic wherever we are.
we are such marvellous creatures, we can create our own reality.
don't like where you are at right now?
change it.

start living how you want to live.
the rest will follow.

take dave for example. dave decided that a samurai kimono would be a good thing to wear to the office today. so he did. he got the thumbs up from a hippy chick on the bus, odd looks in the elevator AND a photo opportunity. not to mention the onflow effect of making an ordinary day that little bit more special {or even extraordinary}. never one for taking "ordinary" pics, i made dave stand on my desk (to get some light action happening) in his best god position.
and even though this is small, tiny, tiny, tiny, it reminds me that we can all do it. we can create our own reality. we can be sulimely serendipitious, consciously create, and radiantly radical.

The Mother in me...

I see the mother in me raising her head these last few days.
The way I just found myself holding my aching belly, firmly, lovingly. There is a presence in my hands that seems softly familiar.
The way I touch others. How I hold their hands. Touch their backs.
The way I love them deeply, but trust them in their journeys.

The way I feel a burgeoning love for my body. I have felt sad for years that my body was not "perfect." And now I take the time to admire myself. I leave sadness behind, and begin finding love there. I wrote a page of questioning and answering to myself yesterday ~ "What gifts I have been given in my body." Guess what? I'm actually incredibly blessed to have uneven breasts. You know why? Because I have grappled with self acceptance for many years. It has been a slippery road uphill. I fought for self love. It has been one of my greatest lessons. I still learn it every day. And that triumph... the triumph of seeing myself in the mirror, and beginning to see only divine beauty... that triumph is all the more tasty for having searched for it for so long. And you know what else? I am the only person in the world who has ever told me I was imperfect, that my breasts were imperfect. My words. My thoughts.

I claim them as my own. And I claim them as being infinitely changeable.
I claim my life and my body as mine. I fall in love with me, gently, gently.

I see the mother in me. I see how she sweeps her hands into my life, and uses my hands to heal others... and myself.

Deepest blessings,
Leonie

Studio Friday ~ Favourite Tools

studio friday


there is nothing more I dig than pen or pencil and paper.

a freshly sharpened bouquet of pencils indeed!

Illustration Friday ~ Roots

www.illustrationfriday.com

To my goddess sisters...

this one is to...
the women who have changed my life.
my mother and sisters.
women of the jaguar temple.
women of the sacred honu tribe.
women of the MMB sacred circle.
and those women who are everyday goddesses in my life ~ friends from across the globe, in my dreams, and right here in my heart.

deepest blessings,
Leonie

the wonders of photoshop...

"Every morning is like a new reincarnation into this world. Let us take it then for what it is and live each moment anew."
~ Paul Brunton

"Dreams are meant to be grabbed by the nuts."
~ Leonie Allan

i have set about learning the art of photoshop cs2 ~ i've set up my laptop by the window, lit my three wicked rose candle, opened the textbook and BEGUN!

i've been playing around with one of the commissions i created for bluma... from the image above, i ended up with...


am feeling rather chuffed with my efforts... that i've just grabbed the dream by the proverbials, claimed them as my own, and given them a good shake about!


leonie's advice:
dream B I G.
and then, just DO it.

:)

the magician

magician painting... for my beautiful nephew joshua



















"Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The trouble-makers.
The round heads in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.
But the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do."

~ "Think Different" ad by Apple

























i think joshua liked his painting...