Winged Protection

My granddaughter, Hailey, age 5, draws me pictures of winged creatures that she then tapes up on the walls above and around my bed. She says they are fairies; I tend to think of them as angels. A rose by any other name...

She has also drawn me a picture of herself with her super powers, and she drew me a picture of her brother in the playpen. Both these pictures also went on the wall.
Under a rainbow.
And both these pictures had angel fairy pictures placed around them.

My bed and my grandbabies are very protected, it seems.
(Which is, of course, okay by me.)

This morning, when I woke up and reached for my glasses case, there was one of these pictures lying across the nightstand. It covered the glasses case, my phone, and my current book. There was no way for me to miss it.

And no reason for it to be there.

No obvious reason that is. The tape was still on the paper, the tape was still sticky.
But there was  a blue fairy angel smiling up at me and making sure I knew that it was there today.





I start my new job today with just a little extra boost of "good".

finding fairies

I began with the fractured memories a fractured strobe of a forgotten theme, but one with a title, a phrase that repeats in my mind: The Sinner Cannot Hold.

Over time, I begin to hold the images for a few seconds longer than the strobe flashes. A fountain. Three or four females. Compass points radiating from/relating to the fountain. Many background of red-and-black, projecting a feeling of menace; in contrast to the light and water and spray-rainbows of the women and the fountain

My dear heaven, is my mind, or my muse, heading me into some post-apocalyptic drama? That type of story is not quite my thing, but I'm always willing to learn as a writer. Also as a writer, one must go where one is led.

The women begin to come clearer. They seem to have finely spun wings, although their clothing is heavy and ragged.
They are looking for something, perhaps from the four corners of the world.

Then life gets in the way of the creative process -- or does it?

My granddaughter came for a week long visit. There's nothing new in that. She probably spends one week a month with us. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but that's the average.

This child has a creative imperative of her own. She draws. She sees colors with a depth and intensity that I can observe, but never see. I am in awe of her Great Ability. This three (then) year old child drawing faces on envelopes, calendar squares, and any other available scrap of paper is not so different from my own scrabbling to record a phrase -- such ad 'the sinner cannot hold' on any scrap available to me. It's not so different from a brief description of an image. Not so different from the need to put into words the Visions that Fill the Mind's Eye.

Her last few visits, she had drawn fairies. Tinkerbell is her main model, but she can and will discourse on the differences, although her vocabulary is mainly limited to color. But the different colors do different things.

During her most recent visit, she not only drew her multi colors of fairies, she had to hang them up. Not on the refrigerator. No, that wasn't where they belonged. They had to go on the walls around my bed. They had to be hanged in a precise array, in an exact order, and they had to stay there. A falling fairy was an urgent problem.

It was not until after she went home that I began to wonder. Fairies? Around my bed? The same bed where I dream of fairylike females as a bright spot of air and water as an oasis against a backdrop of dark and angry?

Am I incorporating her fairies into my musings? Is she seeing the fairies I am trying to place and put into words? Are there fairies around my bed that are unseen save by the unconscious mind of the dreamer and the innocent open mind of a child?

Is this an example of the Creative Synchronicity that sometimes happen, especially when there are great grave events in the outer, physical world?

What do you think?

Art will Out.

My husband used to say. when we'd go flea marketing, "I could do that if..."
He could be talking about wooden yard cutouts, or concrete statues, or handmade pottery, or plaster busts, or just about any handcraft.

His "if" was usually
"If I had the tools."
"If I had the equipment."
"If I had the space"

I was usually the penny pinching bully who wouldn't "let" him have the whatever he wanted for something he might do. Never mind that he probably never would do any of it.

I knew he wouldn't.

I made this judgement because he could have done many of the things using the tools at hand, but because they weren't specialty tools, he 'couldn't.'

Art doesn't work that way. If you have a need in your soul to create, you create. You don't wait for tools or stop for argument. If the need is in you and has to get out, you use what's at hand and do the best you can.

Period.

I know this, because I write. I write in all conditions, under any, many circumstances. I HAVE dived into trash cans for something to write on. I have used a mascara brush to jot down notes for a plot twist that just came to me as I was waiting in line. I have written with crayon, with full-fledged permanent marker, with broken pencils where I've chipped and peeled the wood away from the lead with my teeth and fingernails, because the words need to get OUT.

If I had no tools or equipment, I created some, I found some, I made some.

The same can be said for those who want to dance, or design, or act, cook, or do any other creative, expression.

There is no "if" in making art.

I'm reminded of this today watching my granddaughter.
She draws.
She paints.
She has taught herself to use the Paint program on the computer. She knows more of how to get it to do what she wants than I do.
If she finds an ink pen, a crayon, a marker, a burned stick, a charcoal briquet, she picks it up and draws a line or a circle with it.
If she has no paper to draw on, she uses a sidewalk, a rock, a board, a wall.

There is no "if" in this child when it comes to her art.

"If" she has no other legacy, I hope this is what she gets from Mammaw.

There is no "if" in "art."