Totems : August
ART, SPIRIT — SUMMER 2022
angels flying too fast, 2022
August is a beautifully slow month for listening. Writing and drawing a few pages everyday is how I love to listen to my inner music — like putting an ear to a shell to hear the rolling waves. I keep hearing myself ask this question: How do you believe in your own dream?
The answer might be in taking time to develop that dream into a plan, to craft the blueprints for making what you envision to become reality. All summer, I have felt stuck in the gooey honey of a daydream state — my gaze shifting from one vision to the next, trying to be patient with the unfolding of things, when in reality, I need to be more decisive.
ancient ether, 2022
I’m also asking myself: How do you support yourself in the pursuit of your own mission?
How do you support yourself energetically, emotionally, spiritually, & physically?
No one can do the hard work of being disciplined and showing up for you — no one can be committed to your vision for you. The hard work is mostly choosing what matters over what doesn’t — everyday. Once we choose a path that feels right, we can run down that path with full passion. When we don’t decide what we want — that is when we feel lost.
August is a vessel for transformation (I feel like every month can be), but I love how the days become a bridge from the heat of summer to the cooling of early fall. Our bodies intuitively realize it is time to wind down from the chaos, but to wake up. These are weeks for remembering what truly gets us out of bed in the morning.
For as long as I can remember, I would wake up to see the beauty of the sun hitting the trees. That fleeting glow of nature waking up fills me up with a soft flame. It connects me to the cycles of nature that go on without us, and carry us through our days, so naturally.
Here are my totems for August… the charms that brought me some inner peace and clarity. <3
Turquoise. — I started to wear a vibrant strand of turquoise beads around my neck, a silver ring embedded with turquoise, an aquamarine ring. These soothing blue stones feel connected to my throat chakra, giving me the inner space to express myself clearly.
Mango. — On the hot, humid days when most food feels too heavy, my body has been craving mango. It tastes like eating sunshine, being far away from summer in NYC, resting on a tropical island. The nutrients in mangoes give me a burst of brightness that always feels needed in the lull of August.
Art Objects by Jeanette Winterson.
“The power of art is so immense that even its dilutions are homeopathic. Our mental baggage is mostly made up of things we haven’t read, haven’t heard, haven’t seen. And when we do read them, hear them, see them, it is often not as they are in their own right, but through a tiny chink in our consciousness, a consciousness every day diminished by the battering inanities of the media.
Art is large and it enlarges you and me. To a shrunk-up world its vistas are shocking. Art is the burning bush that both shelters and makes visible our profounder longings. Through it we see ourselves in metaphor. Art is metaphor, from the Greek meta (above) and pherein (to carry) it is that which is carried above the literalness of life. Art is metaphor. Metaphor is transformation.”
Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery
by Jeanette Winterson
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