Transparent

Here is my finished painting. I love it, actually. I bought some wide brushes from a hardware store, the kind you'd use to paint a wall, and they're very pleasing to use.

And I discovered that picmonkey has a new mirror effect which is amazing. A new toy. I've been thinking of re-booting my online shop and possibly selling at my neighbourhood monthly market (although that requires stock, i.e. risky investment). So some of these may appear. I think they'd look pretty smart printed onto wooden framed canvas, if I do say so. These are all based on photos of the painting above, as is probably evident.

I visited a reflexologist on Monday. She was one of those wise women that make you feel transparent to your very soul. She tended to my feet and told me my head was 'very busy'. She said 'you keep a lot of things in, don't you?' at which point the truth of it all and my frustration at telling her 'because I kind of have to - I take care of myself' bordered on too much. But she was skilled in not pushing me too much but leaving me feeling freer and more relaxed. I'm learning to breathe out, is what's happening right now. I signed up for an art class today, which I can afford, and in this and other ways I'm learning, having held my breath for years, to breathe out, to say 'yes, you can have this', 'yes, you can try this', 'yes, you can say no to that'.
Ah, I thought there might be a quote in Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul that would speak to today's condition, and there I come across that word transparent again. Synchronicity du jour. Love it.

As we become transparent, revealed for exactly who we are and not who we wish to be, then the mystery of human life as a whole glistens momentarily in a flash of incarnation. Spirituality emanates from the ordinariness of this human life made transparent by lifelong tending to its nature and fate.

Thomas Moore ~ Care of the Soul