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You should never make things up with the intent to deceive, but you could/should make it up to reveal the truth. Two writers we will never forget Nadine Gordimer 1923 – 2014 and Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927 – 2014 died this year. Both recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature (Gordimer 1991 – Marquez 1982) they showed us truth in many incarnations. The truth of why we write, of what we write, and how we write it. A grateful recipient of epiphany, Gordimer’s courage and insight showed me the essence of truth. Marquez’s imagination and fingerprints taught me about choice. Through the fictional worlds they create we can more closely align ourselves with reality.  Read More »

The word quell floated into my consciousness a few weeks ago. I had no idea what it wanted from me. I envisioned the fury of a storm at sea. Over the next several days quell kept surfacing, until one night a figure standing on the edge of a quay, with back turned, emerged through the mist. Ah, the French Lieutenant’s woman, I thought. Where did that come from? The past? The present? Life as film?

In his “Notes on an Unfinished Novel” John Fowles chronicles the genesis of his 467 page work of fiction, The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Four or five months before he began, a visual image rose in his mind one morning when he was half asleep – “a woman stands at the end of an ancient quay and stares out to sea. An outcast.” He didn’t know her crime, but the image kept recurring until he began to fall in love with her.  Read More »

Over and over I hear the dilemmas of the creative process i.e. a game of chance. As a true Libran I have flogged the arguments to do or not to do without mercy. With the back up of an Ancient Chinese philosopher/poet, an Irish rocker/philanthropist, an Italian renaissance painter/inventor, an English playwright, a Canadian journalist, an American political activist, a Spanish painter/sculptor, an English painter/poet, a Roman Catholic Saint/Spanish mystic, and an American writer/mountaineer, I offer a menu of 7 dilemmas with paradoxical mantras to attempt to unlock the paralyzing questions.  Read More »

A few centuries ago no one had heard of a blood moon. Between April of this year and April of next year the full moon will turn coppery red four times as sunlight and sunsets bleed through the atmosphere when the earth spins between the sun and the moon. As a lover of the moon fascinated by all its phases, I wonder about this quirky happening. Chance arrangement, apocalyptic, a scientific phenomenon, or spirits shifting? Read More »

The spaces we inhabit reveal more about us than the literal structure. With my recent foray into the world of real estate, as liaison and muse, I contemplate the work of the two maverick Franks – Lloyd Wright and Gehry and find inspiration in their concepts and execution. A brilliant architectural design may bring the outside in, and the inside out. An expansive view can transform by creating an illusion of space.

One could chose to dwell in a loft, a castle, or a French Chateaux, a beach cottage, barn conversion, or 60’s bungalow. One might gravitate towards a Georgian, a Victorian, a brownstone, a colonial, a Spanish hacienda, as easily as a cave, a houseboat, a double wide, or a hut made of thatch. What about a tree house, church, log cabin, factory, rectory, or perhaps a hillside wood and glass contemporary? The real living occurs in the space created by the architecture, not in the framework or the external.  Read More »

LOVE… The sound of the word conjures up a host of possibilities – a slew of connotations. Passion, desire, infatuation, courtly love, free love, maternal or paternal love, compassionate or spiritual love, sacrificial love, conditional or unconditional love, obsessive love, unrequited love, forbidden love, falling in love?

With love on the line, the stakes soar. In the romantic quests portrayed in such enduring tales as Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre the ante reaches its pinnacle – death by love, madness by love, haunting by love.  Read More »

As we venture into a new year, we imagine unlimited possibilities. The mystery of creativity dwells just beyond logic’s reach. You can’t calculate it, will it, order it online. Beware the great inhibitors of creativity with official disclaimers such as writer’s block, lack of inspiration, just need to do a little more research, still working on a plan… Meanwhile doubt creeps in and strangles you in your sleep.

As we venture into a new year, it may also be timely to address your creative fears. Instead of allowing the unknown to plunge you into a state of paralysis, tune into frightening feelings. Primal and instinctual, fear raises the stakes, forces you to pay attention. Read More »

Under cover of darkness lies a timeless fascination. Inspired by the imagery in the poems of Walt Whitman, Van Gogh painted Starry Night (1889) while in an Asylum at Saint-Remy. Perhaps his relationship with night illuminated the clarity and depth of his self-awareness for he sees “under the great starlit vault of heaven… eternity in its place above the world.” In Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888) the stars appear surrounded by their own orb of light and reflected in patterns in the water. Read More »

Some say you don’t know what you have until its gone. The real truth? You knew what you had – you just didn’t think you would ever lose it. It’s not like there wasn’t an undertone or overture of warning. But all my good intentions blown like fine dust caught in a gale, strewn about by the winds, rendered worthless, are no longer negotiable. Read More »

In this first year of blogging, I looked backwards and forwards – looking up, looking down, looking in, looking out, looking for patterns, and even looking in mirrors. I found wisdom in paradox and truth in strange places. I proposed using less in the achievement of more, I merged art with life, and loved being off balance. I honored great writers, and visions, and fighters of freedom. I championed courage and passion, and studied reflections. I invited discovery. I endeavored to challenge. Read More »