Day 233

It's Sunday and about time I showed up. I've got nothing to offer but an update. I'm winging it this morning, just talking as I would to any other friend. True enough, it's been a tough week. A friend told me yesterday that I've sounded a lot lately like the wolves were at my door. It does feel that way sometimes when I wake, especially in the middle of the night. But it's more like I've moved to the advance class. Oh yeah, these last three years have been an education. I feel that I've brought my C- up to a solid B, but it takes a toll, this curriculum.


I continue to write things down and to look at things as openly as I'm able, employing the generous grace of Poppet Vision. There's a fair enough chance that my hard schooling will parlay itself into art and writing that will be 'worth the cost.' That's what every artist wants, is it not? Then it may not. In my earlier years, when my older children were tots, I invested a lot into my art career. In my earnest, eager, hollywood-fueled heart I believed that 'in the end' the work would help me create a life for them and they'd see it was all





worth the cost.





Really, there is no end and we must learn to balance what we invest in our futures with what we devote to our presents. It seems the only way to learn this balance is to live until our futures are smaller than our pasts. So I'm going to say to you, dear reader, put effort into your future. Climb a tree and see where you're headed. But keep your heart in the present. It's fleeting, for sure. Here we are. Now. And now that moment is gone. These words I've written are in our pasts. We can never retrieve time we didn't spend well.


Practice living in the now. Love your today. If even one of you benefits from this message I'll feel a bit less of a fool.





Have a good Sunday. I'm off to work today, so that tomorrow I can play with Orion. Fortunate that we humans sleep and can, like Finnigan, begin again.

Day 194

When I was deep into creating the carnival works for Dark Caravan, I would tell people that I liked 'working on the edge of failure.' What I meant was that I liked pushing my abilities past my comfort level. I was traveling with the pieces quite a bit, and talking in various programming. So I said that a number of times. I sure didn't know what I was headed for.

I finished Dark Caravan years ago and it's comfortably housed at the museum. But the last three years have been more like a carnival act than any of the time building the carnival. Every day I'm a juggler and a clown. Most days I feel I'm walking a tightrope and on what seems like a fairly regular basis, I must pull a rabbit from my hat to get by. Some days I think I missed disaster "by this much."

It's not at all the edge I'd hoped for. I wanted to be hacking away at some colossal chunk of marble or wood. Or building a full sized carousel.
This is a different sort of edge entirely. It's living in these circumstances, at this age, swinging from day to day without a net.
I'm not done learning this lesson, if I hold to my belief that there's a human curriculum. If I were, I wouldn't wake up with a stone of anxiety in my gut. I take a step back, do a little digging. I'm not alone, I see.

Is this how I look to Poppet? My eyes wacky with panic, every little thing a big ! deal? Am I overwhelmed with my job at panic central? I wouldn't have to work quite as hard at finding peace. So I'm still stumbling, but not falling.

It starts with breathing--simple to do, takes discipline to do well. Breathing well leads to calm. Calm leads to better choices. And so on.

No, this is not at all the edge I planned on, but it's the one I've got. It's up to me to find ways to survive here. I start with a look at my own anxiety. Poppets don't have anxiety. They simply watch and mirror ours. They imitate us, so we can see ourselves. Some people find that scary. But not me.

Are you more anxious now than you were, say, three years ago? What are you doing about it?