Illustration Friday: Missing

Ink and gouache

Illustration Friday's topic this week is "Missing."

Dear Diary

Ink and gouache
Inspire Me Thursday's topic this week is "Dear Diary."

the cowgirl hangs up her adventure hat for now

lena

I have returned, hung my blue cowgirl adventure hat on the doorknob (for now).

I have been on 12 plane flights in the last month. Adventure upon adventure. See what that hat does?

It is odd to be back here ~ I am still in two different places.

More than two actually.

I am:

Walking the streets of Adelaide.
Holding my breath, watching magnificent buffalos.
Making inspiration sandwiches with my magicmakingmistress Donn.



Making silly with my rather hilarious lil sister.


no, seriously, don't make me do that dumbass poetic look outside the window...
oh, okay then...

Breathing in the sea salt air of Hobart.
Living the pre-wedding week of my soul sister Shan and a gaggle of new goddess sisters.



Chanting by the river.
Leaving my personal belongings splayed across Australia (clapping sticks are planted in the sands of a creek. I hope the pigs don't gnaw on them.)
Dancing ecstatically with a new friend with the same mermaid hair as me.



Meeting a woman with priestess eyes and finding a crystal with stories in it.
Gathering with women for sacred rites.
Running barefoot down the dirt road of Shan's property at dusk.
Walking all the way home in the dark holding hands with my sweet friend Lena from school.
Photographing one of the women I honour most in this world marry her beloved, letting rain tears of joy and light.



Dirty dancing with my imaginary friend Patrick Swayze.
Laughing until it hurt (and it hurts so good).
Asking for healing, again and again.
Learning how to live in this world with my Spirit showing.
Meditating on a single bed with my big sister, niece and nephew. A breathing love sandwich.
Walking in the morning with my mama, finding two eagle feathers as gifts from the universe.
Meeting my mum's tai chi guru and being thoroughly told off by him in a loving kickbutt kinda way *gigglesnort*.
Looking for frogs with torches.
Laughing through the halls of a nursing home with my ancient kindred.
Being an angel.
Kneeling on the ground at my ancestral home, praying and smudging.
Playing on the see-saw with my mum and 90 year old goddess crone of a grandmother.
Crying and laughing and growing and healing and sharing all at once.
Family. Family. Family. Need I say more?
Savouring the moments at each place I travel to and each heart I meet.
Returning home to my crazily colourful and cozy home. Into the embrace of his arms and eyes, and the lickety-lickstering of my joyful dog.
I ask him: Why do we live here again? Away from our families and the land?
He doesn't know the answer right now either, but that is okay. We know for now, we are here. And we are here for a reason that is simultaneously unfurled and still blossoming.

This is where I am at.

I am a radically blessed woman,
Leonie


on the travels, charters towers beyond my window

Magnificent Dream March

Some lush link adventures to take:

* This shirt would have to be the most freaking hilarious {and potentially effective} thing on Planet Earth.

* The delightfully vintage art of Eveline Tarunadjaja.

* Be a lender and change a life - Kiva is too cool for school.

* The goddess art of Thalia Took {is that not the most perfect name ever?}

* Tatiana Cardeal's photography is breathtaking

* Every single creation of Jen Lemen warms the cockles of my heart.

* The power of I'm sorry, I love you - Lessons from a Hawaiian shaman.


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Ola from the Isle

Will write more on the weekend.
In the meantime I'll be drinking in great gulps of ocean and miandering through a new town.

Bless you.
love,
Leonie

the imaginary life of a cowgirl

At the moment I am working my way through The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
One of the exercises is to write a list of your Imaginary Lives ~ I did the above journal page as my answer. One of the lives on my list is "Cowgirl" ~ I grew up as a cowgirl on my parent's cattle farm, and have been riding horses since I was 2... but now, living three states away from the farm and in suburbia, the life of a cowgirl seems much further away.

Next on the Artists Way list ~ you had to do one small thing this week to move towards one of your Imaginary Lives.

I didn't really have any idea of what I would do. I had vague thoughts of going for a sunset bikeride or paint a painting for one of my other imaginary lives.

We were out having lunch today with my love's family, and I wandered into a hat store. And there on the first shelf was the most perfect cowgirl hat. Turquoise of course.

And what's the first thing a cowgirl needs?

Her hat.



I feel quite strangely liberated,
giggling as I write this in my cowgirl's hat for a turquoise goddess.

You smell so good,
Leonie

perfect

page from my delish new journal


playing the perfect game from dancing mermaid's new blog (so glad you're sharing your online voice/art/miracles, honey!)


perfect concert:

Three metres from a shining goddess illuminating the stage. She wore a shimmering silver dragon that swam over her belly, and her voice was cosmic.
Her name was Sarah McLachlan.

perfect story:

The one where she falls in love with herself.

perfect movie:

The Shawshank Redemption. I'm not sure why, but it has something to do with the tunnelling and the tree and the buried box.

perfect food:

Noodles from a stall in the street in Asia.

perfect find:

Feathers, or today's MIRACLE find was a heart shaped rock on the street.

perfect gift:

Giving someone your favourite childrens book.

perfect song:

"Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield

These lyrics are just so perfect:

"Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips"

perfect sound:

Rain on the roof.

perfect color:

The colour of the sky on any old day.
Vibrant stinging blue, soft azure, the light of clouds, the gentle breast of grey in the swaying rain...

perfect spot:

The little mole on my belly button I have lovingly named Tiny Tim.

perfect line:

Yes I will stand with you, laugh with you, grow with you, jump with you, run with you, fumble with you, understand you, acknowledge you, honour you, because I love you, myself.

perfect place:

That blissful piece of heaven wedged between soil and sky (Mama Earth). Of particular interest to me at the moment is a wee patch of Earth called India. Oh dreamy monsoons, I am heat fevered for you.

perfect time:

The moment. (When I can remember I'm in it!)



What's your perfect?

rain on

my love welcoming in the new year

A little more than a week ago we celebrated summer solstice on a sand island in the shallow river of the Murrumbidgee.

As part of our summer solstice service, we connected with the hearts and minds of women manifesting rain, a movement which started in Victoria in an effort to end the rain.

Large tracts of Australia is in drought, and the state of Victoria suffered from some large bushfires a couple of weeks ago. So much attention was placed on the dry and the fires that we were attracting that which we didn't desire. Womens circles across the state, over Australia and around the world were asked instead to manifest rain, to imagine gentle soaking rain to fall for a week to quench the thirst of mama Earth.

In our circle, we visualised the drenching rains, filling our spirits with grey clouds lumbering across the sky, soaking us with her plentiful abundance.

As we spoke to the sky, asking it to rain, I voiced the words:

May the rains fall so this river fills, and the sand island we are on be reclaimed by the water again.

We raised our hands, eyes closed, feeling the gentle drum of rain coming inside us, delighting in the small light drops which fell lightly on us as we spoke. They were as gentle as a kiss, as light as a whisper, so soft we had to ask each other at the end: did you feel it too?



Over the New Year weekend the storms came, the clouds ranged over the mountains. Hail fell leaving our background to be smattered with white globes. And the rain fell.

Yesterday, I went for a walk with my lover.

This is the river a week later.



In the middle of the water in the photo was where our sand island at circle was. The beach where we watched a boy play with his dog was gone. The small waterfalls that we explored in bare feet was now part of the swelling mass of rain water surging through the trees.

It was the most perfect new years surprise of all.

We stood by the rocks for a while, smiling at all that water.

More needs to fall, but for now, let us savour the moment of the rain.



We walked along the sides of the riverbank for a while, breathing in the sweet scents of damp Australian bush, delighting in the wombat holes and the soft moss on the rocks.
A gum stripped of old bark captured our attention, and we knelt in the damp soil so I could capture that perfect time in my new journal.



This was the best way to welcome in the new year ~
with arms wide open to the rain.


love,
Leonie