Digging in, staying put, and blooming

Living the dream - a collection of
magazine clippings 

In need of something different to read, I turned once more to memoir. On the library shelf was Jerusalem Jackson Greer's At Home in this Life. Intrigued by reading the back cover blurb something resonated with me, so home the book went with me.

Greer opens with describing  a "terrible year" that she had lived through. I knew exactly what that consisted for I had lived through about four years in a row of what I would describe as terrible years - Dad died, Mom went through cancer treatment, Memere passed at the age of 100, my mother-in-law passed, and my father-in-law's health deteriorated at such a rate that he had to be moved into assisted living. One thing after another. Now that's not to say that things weren't without joy - both my children graduated from high school and went on to college, Mom is approaching her third year cancer free, I found a new job, and there were countless glimpses of peace and serenity even on the darkest days.

Jerusalem, a loving wife and mother, wanted more for her family and dreamed of upping stakes and moving to a farm. It just wasn't meant to be - well not yet. She had some lessons to learn first, the most important being to learn to live well with what and where she already was. Her focus for this memoir is a passage from Jeremiah 29:4-14, which she elegantly summarized as "Be Here Now. Be content and invested in the life you have, instead of wishing for a different life (p.89)." No truer words touched me while reading. Here we are growing older, dreaming of retirement yet there is so much to do in the here and now right where we are now. Before we could ever downsize the house will need a list of projects completed. Now that we are done paying for college, funds can be funneled into a new furnace, roof, and siding for the house. Carpets need replacing and wood floors resurfaced. Plus there is plenty of stuff to purge - stuff we no longer need or would desire to pack up and move to a smaller place.

Art journal piece - found poetry, collage, and zentangle

It was comforting once again to know that I am not alone in the daily struggles of life, that there is someone out there going through the same thing. That's one of the benefits of reading memoirs - coming to see that our lives aren't all that unique and perhaps someone has a small bit of advice that will help us get through. Greer's advice was to learn to live simply, pray for guidance, focus on family, and to serve the greater community when possible. Simple doesn't always mean easy, but when given the chance this type of lifestyle can bring many riches.

I was inspired by her work to create these two pieces that illustrate the many themes discussed in the book. Greer loves to collect, decorate and feather her nest. I love to do the same. The first piece features the display of beautiful dish ware, a passion of mine. The second piece centers on building that safe space that is home.

A way of looking at obituaries - The Good Byline

Art Journal Pages - magazine scraps and
sympathy card pieces (from my grandfather's passing)

Sooner or later we all find ourselves in the position to clean out our loved ones homes and we need to decide on what to keep and what to get rid of. Some of the material we take home with us to sort through at a later date because often it's to difficult to do at the time. Recently, while visiting with my mom she was going through one such box filled with the sympathy cards from her father's passing. Knowing that I was collecting scraps for my art journaling projects she offered to let me take what I wanted. That's how this piece started - with the irises from one of those cards.

The Good Byline, by Jill Orr, features Riley Ellison a young twenty something whose life is on hold after her long-time boyfriend has dumped her and left town. She's under-employed at a job that doesn't fully use her skills or talents, lives in a house inherited from her grandfather, and hasn't moved on from the break-up. "I was living a life I'd lost control over somehow, treading water in a self-designed purgatory." (p.95) She is rocked by the news that a childhood friend has committed suicide, and this girl's parents want her to write their daughter's obituary. Riley has experience with writing obituaries as her grandfather was a well known writer of them. The difficulty for Riley is that the police ruled her grandfather's death a suicide and she has always struggled to believe he was capable of taking his own life. She can't come to grips that her friend has done the same, and she would be right - she didn't. I'll let you read about how Riley manages to unravel the mystery.

The point is about the obituary. If you've read some of the more popular self-help books, they advise writing your own obituary as a way to set goals for your life. Riley's grandfather often told her that obituaries were about life and not death. Sprinkled throughout the book are quotes from obituary writers such as this one from Jim Sheeler, "What can I learn from this life that will impact my own life?" (p.111) I thought that was a powerful question. In our grief we are often blinded by the loss of life and forget to remember the joy of the life lived. That consolation comes with time. When I work on an art journaling piece, I pour through the clips of words and phrases that appeal to me and begin to put them together with images. Little did I know that I would take pieces of a sympathy card and weave them into a piece that encourages the choice of living life to the fullest when you find yourself in a dark place (just when all hope seems lost). As Riley and I both learned, you have to live life to the fullest in order to provide lots of great material for your obituary.

This summer's trip to France - The Templar's Last Secret

Bruno's St. Denis - art journal collage
Magazine and Vintage book scraps 

If you have been following my blog for a while you may have notice the shift from using photos of the books I've read to photos of my art journaling. Often I find pieces which represent the theme of the book I was blogging about. Perhaps that is because my artwork is influence by my choice of reading or vice versa. Today I needed to create a piece specifically for this blog's book title - Martin Walker's newest, Bruno Chief of Police novel, The Templar's Last Secret. 

I began by imagine what Bruno's village of St. Denis and it surrounds would look like. One of the home decorating magazines I recently purchased featured French cottages. Prefect! Add to that a vintage book of French stories and another about the Impressionists and I was ready to get to work with my scissors and glue stick.

This novel centers around an ancient castle believed to have once been a Templar strong hold. A woman has fallen to her death following an attempt to deface the property with spray paint, but where is her climbing equipment and the can of paint? This isn't an accident and Bruno is now on the hunt. Before the reader knows it Bruno and his colleagues are tracking a small band of terrorists and trying to determine their target. One possible target is the treasured Lascaux caves in the region. Found by four boys in 1940, the caves are filled with paintings created over 20,000 years ago by the inhabitants of the region. The caves were closed eventually to the public to prevent their destruction due to the humidity created by visitors' respiration. A replica has since been created on the site of the original caves.

To the inhabitants of St. Denis the idea that their sleepy village is threatened by terrorists seems absurd. Doesn't that only happen in the big city? As one character states, there is no where we can be safe now. That was a chilly reminder for me. Here in the United States the increasing gun violence is an issue that we have all come to face. This new reality was never more apparent to me as when I sat in an auditorium with my colleagues - all of us school teachers - learning from our local law enforcement how to deal with an active shooting situation. Frightening though it may be, I will not allow this to paralyze me and prevent me from going about my business. I'm saddened that this is the new world we live in, but I know that I can work to be a source of peace.