When there is an end, there is a beginning

Lately I have been musing about the creative process and the comparators to life. Both are a journey. To create art and to live well requires practice, patience and persistence. These we can determine, these we can control. What we cannot influence are the natural cycles, the ever changing nature of life and the evolution of the universe and everything it contains.

As I consciously move my creative writing away from short stories towards poetic forms and my art practice away from representative towards abstract, I am learning more and more about myself and how to let go and participate fully in life without trying to control it.

Working creatively from inside out, being aware of my internal wrangling, my emotions, impulses, thoughts and intuitions, I have discovered I can more easily create art and write poetry. I am no longer struggling to make a ‘good’ painting or write a ‘good’ short story and berating myself if I fall short. Instead I find I am producing art that I really love and the most wonderful thing is that I love the process of making it. This doesn’t mean that it’s always easy. I often feel lost or uncomfortable with the way things are going and most disturbingly, I get attached to something, a brush stroke, a colour or a piece of collage paper for example, or I can often not like what I see in my work, but I have discovered I can carry on regardless, go with the flow and see what happens. I can fully participate voluntarily in the process rather than try and take control. I can sit with the uncomfortable feelings and just keep going and when I do, something beautiful emerges.

Reflecting on my life I can see that no part has been a formula or has been predictable. I have never been allowed to know what was coming or decide beforehand or dictate where it was heading. Lives don’t happen in that way. Random happenings and change are the only constant of the universe. I can participate in my life wholly but I can never control it. All I can do is roll with it and enjoy every moment.

My collage / mixed media painting and my crafting of poems happens in layers and every layer makes up the whole. When I create in this way, I am musing about life and its meaning. These ways of creating are helping me live my life in the way I yearn to – with openness, a transparency, with honesty, with a willingness to experiment, to take risks, to be free of constraints, rules, order and plans. To fly … like a bird.

The inspiration for this poem came during a poetry class where the theme was Samhain – a pagan festival marking the Celtic New Year – the end of summer and the harvest season and the beginning of winter when the first seeds are planted to be harvested in the spring.

The poem was a lovely surprise to me as was my collage painting above.

When there is an end, there is a beginning 

From the sallow of the night, a caress of moonlight.

I retreat to the edge of dreams, empty my heart

of haunting fears and fly with the goose in the shadow 

of her wing along banks of rolling thunderclouds 

into the mysteries of love. 

I have been waiting a long life to witness her take 

me with a whisper and a whip of her black satin skirt.

There are no words for love.

In this sombre season I breathe her essence, touch the silk of her skin.

The taste of rum lingers in my mouth. My tongue traces the fabric of her desire. 

If I could pour more I would do it all again for the things I have lost.

I am craving this love from the stars, the pull of the moon, 

a blade of grass, even from the tiny ant carrying his burden.

A single snowflake is melting on her lips. 

I take it on mine and feel for the first time 

the furnace of my centre where everything stirs.

It starts in the dark.

Now is the time, the moment to act, to be brave, to believe

I can receive love, give love, be love. 

In the darkness of winter, a seed is sown to harvest in the lightness of spring.