Life Images

I am so proud to announce that one of my photographs was published in the Life Images magazine in January. It is a lush, full volume overflowing with inspiration and dreams in ink.

You can check out the Life Images magazine on the Stampington website.

Bless you, sweet dream come true!

Dear One

this came out just after i wrote this...


Dear Clinty,

I've been dreaming about you lately.

You've been in my dreams and close to my skin, and when I awake I find you're not just around me but inside me now.

I think, "you are my biggest brother" - not only my oldest, but the biggest - the man who is bigger than the stars and clusters of planets and a field lying yellow in the summer. You are bigger than exquisite possibilities and truth and body, and you teach us that.

A few weeks ago, a boy I knew when I was a teenager died. And he made me think of you. He would have been nearly the same age as you when you died. I turn your eternal age of 25 in a few short weeks. I used to think you were old enough to die - that 25 years is a good go at life. And yet, here I am on the birthing precipice of that age, and there is still so much to do. So much to live and feel and experience and know and do.

I dreamed that you died again, and I began to wail that I was losing you all over again. And the stars came out, and I stopped wailing, and I realised I knew how to grieve now.

My grieving made me yearn to dance, my bare feet thrashing the gravel, my sweat becoming stars, my heart pumping long, loving bursts of blood through me. I wanted to dance you into heaven, I wanted to celebrate you in the ways I now know how to.

I didn't want everyone to go home, to sit in our silent rooms on our own and cry, to not know what to say, to feel that the experience was too uncomfortable to sit with. So I gathered our family and friends together in a big circle near the shed. And we drummed, we sang, we danced, we prayed, we spoke, guiding you home to Great Spirit.

I danced you into me, in that dream.

I danced until my arms were a-swirl and every precious possibility, every piece of love, every dream, every promise, every lifetime was awake.

Today, I wake up and you are with me.

Today, I wake up and something I want falls through, but I feel you beside me, smiling down a thousand lifetimes on me, telling me that everything is sacred, everything is real, everything is new, and everything will happen.

I want to photograph you today. I will photograph the stars and the grass and the great looming trees instead. You are in them.

All My Love,

Bony


And then the sun came out and glowed through the rain
and the whole world looked like a miracle...

Gypsy Heart

Gypsy Heart Goddess
(prints on Goddess of Leonie etsy store)

In her heart, she longs to explore all the joys and possibilities of this splendid Earth ~

she dreams of garlanding herself in a sari in India
of the breeze floating by as she explores the back roads of Tuscany by bicycle
she longs to travel by canoe in Indonesia
to sing romantic songs in Morocco
she yearns to arrive, panting, at the peak of Macchu Piccu
and to dance a desert dance in Africa.

She longs to experience and explore this world,
to devour it whole,
to savour its beauty in her soul,
to be a part of this wondrous rainbow of life.

Her whole life, through and through,
she will be a discoverer of this world,
a lover, a documenter, a celebrator of its beauty and aliveness.

She is Goddess with a Gypsy Heart.

May she always remind of you the rapture of exploration ~ the delight of discovery ~ the Heart that loves this whole wide world.


With love,
with joy,
with five months until I experience INDIA ~ oh land of my aching dreams!
blissfully,
Leonie

Manifest this

This is a photo of me and one of my dearest friends and earth~sisters, Sone.

She lives in another city, and we see each other a couple of times a year.

Both of us are lunch-hour lovers ~ using those hours for discovery, artists dates, good food and reading in the park. Now if only we could do those things together.

We are always telling each other ~ "let's meet up for lunch!" "meet you at the bookstore for lunch! we'll have frappes!"

Talk about manifestation:

Tomorrow, my work is sending me on a big winged steel bird.
To my dear friend's city.
To a building only a couple of blocks from my dear friend's work.
With an hour of lunch.

What are the odds?
What are the miracle-freaking-odds?

So tomorrow...
at lunch,
I'm going to do the most natural thing in the world...
and sit across from this beauty,
share stories,
hold hands,
laugh and
revel in each other's company.


My LunchDate tomorrow: This girl has pretty much the best laugh ever...

I want this to stand as bonafide proof
that we really can manifest anything and everything
under this glorious, impossibly possible sun.

I think I shall wear pink,
Leonie

Hello, dream coming true

When I was 16, one of my favourite places was a beautiful bookstore named The Sanctuary. Quite the perfect name for that Nag Champa scented haven, really. I would curl up in the green director chairs there, letting my fingers wander over the book friends there. Perfectly positioned by the chairs was a panoply (quite literally: a splendid array) of SARK books.

Finding SARK was like finding home. A friend, a teacher, a kindred spirit. Her books were a place to sleep in, to find absolute faith in my own rainbow soul. Susan, over the years since, has become like a lighthouse for me, shining her light to the sea so I could cast my own sails and shine my own beacon light.

Today, a brown box from Amazon arrived. This is an incident which, in itself, creates a great amount of joy, but today was an Extra Special Amazon Delivery Day. I stuffed the box into my bag and bicycled home as fast as these little Amazon legs would take me. Once at home, I setup a picnic in the backyard for me and Charlie, with celebration Aloe juice at the ready.



Welcome home, Fabulous Friendship Festival.

So we read that book together, there in the backyard on a warm May afternoon, witnessing a dream being birthed into the world.

When I was sixteen, could I have ever dreamed that my name would be in a SARK book? That my dog would be a friend of this soul~lighthouse?

Somewhere, sometime, sleeping in the moonbeams, I must have dreamt this awake.

This Universe is one big Miracle unfolding, and I feel greatly blessed.

Dream High, Big and Wide,
Leonie





It reads:
My dog friend Charlie lives in Australia with Leonie and her partner. We've never met in person, but as soon as I saw his photo, I knew we were friends.



Sometimes Charlies and friendships and SARKS make this whole world go round. Make that all the time.

Off to bed now ~
Charlie is in need of some feet to sleep on.