Mindmelds and Weather Reports

I’m always rather amused when waking life physical sensations somehow get incorporated into our sleeping dreams.  You know what I mean – like when a honking horn or perhaps an alarm going off gets morphed into a ringing phone in your dream.  This morning I was dreaming I was undergoing a Vulcan mindmeld – with a tremendous pressure on my head.  The dream story was I needed to experience this, because I was about to learn how to do it myself, and this was going to make me aware of how it felt for others.  A little empathy and compassion lesson to go with the new skill I would be learning.

Alas before the secrets of the mindmeld were revealed I woke up to find a cat sitting on my head and the incredible stuffed-up pounding sensations of a full-blown my-head-is-going-to-explode cold.  Oh how we are humbled – I thought I was going to discover a great technique to understand people better, but I actually discovered my immune system invited in some unfriendly guests AND my cat thought a little cranial acupressure treatment might do me some good.

Every weekday Jamie Ridler shares a brief “behind the scenes” video where she talks about what’s up in her life, what’s she’s working on and thinking about.  It’s exactly the kind of glimpse I love into people’s worlds.  Today one of things she talks about is what a blessing and delight it is to share what we love.  She likens it to blowing on a dandelion puff and spreading all those seeds outward.  I love that image.  I love Jamie.  And you know I love the idea of sharing our delights and inspirations.  Clearly I was looking for a new way to do that with my dream mindmelding; but it looks like we’ll have to do it the more mundane way.

So let’s open up the treasure chest that’s been my week and see what’s captured my fancy…

Have you had your eyes to the sky?  It’s definitely worth an early rising before dawn to see the lovely La Luna dancing closely with Venus and Mars and being watched over by benevolent Jupiter.

I was also amused to find these glow-in-the-dark calendar pages with constellations to stitch like those delightful vintage lace/stitch cards.  How fun!  I’ll think I’ll put them on my wish list.  Do you suppose it’s extra lucky to wish for stars?

Following the threads of embroidery…

A few weeks ago I was mindmapping a project and is my way I was sitting on my bed surrounded with colored pens, arms flailing trying to catch ideas before they evaporated.  Apparently in my creative frenzy I left one of the pens uncapped, because when I was done with my session I found I had three dots permanently etched on the leg of my jeans.  When I put the jeans back on the other day, it occurred to me that it might be fun to embroider a few little flowers over the spots. I don’t know if I’ll actually do it, but it amuses me to think about it.

It also had me thinking about the fabulous art of Rosalind Wyatt, who embroiders fabric with people’s stories.  Isn’t this fabulous?!  I’m totally inspired, and my Muse had demanded I add this to my capturing-good-ideas journal so I can return to it one day.  I’m giving myself plenty of space to think about what item I might use and what story I might tell.

But it reminded me a bit of this wonderful bit of vintage embroidery I keep framed.  I love the message.  Apologies for the shoddy photograph, but hopefully you get the idea.  The little checkered patches at the corners make me wonder if the piece was once mounted on something else and those mounting holes needed to be patched.

Another piece of art magic I want to share with you this week are the portraits Ed Fairburn draws on star charts and maps.  Doesn’t the idea of a star chart portrait delight you?!

Still keeping our thoughts skyward…

Thursday evenings I have a standing date to gather with a small group of beloved friends to talk about what’s happening in our worlds.  I treasure that time and those friendships.  Last night only two of us were able to make it, and is often the case when we two get together our chatting covered a lot of ground.  Sometimes it feels like to the moon and back.  I thought a little bit more today about some of the things we discussed, and laughed to think about how many were weather-related.

Which is fabulously meaningful because it seems like a code word for something that’s up for us.  Talking about the weather is often held dismissively as superficial.  A sort of convention that allows some polite connection without actually diving deep.  My friend was saying how sometimes the things she’s doing/thinking/being feel so BIG and UNKNOWABLE she hardly knows how to talk about them with others, and has to search for more mundane things to chat about.  In other words, a “weather” type topic.

I on the other hand, was actually talking about weather.  I talked about how I’ve been feeling under the weather this week and how I needed start paying some serious attention to upping my nurturing and self-care practices to promote a quicker recovery.   It got me thinking though about where the term “under the weather” originated.  Luckily Google sailed to the rescue and informed me that had a nautical origin – when sailors were sick, they were sent down below, under the deck and away from the weather.

I also talked about the amazing wind storm we were having, which followed by some heavy rain, has managed to strip many of our trees of their autumn leaves now.  And that somehow reminded me of weathergrams I created one year from handmade paper I created with dried leaf inclusions.

A final topic we riffed on last night was something I’m sure we’ve all had thoughts about.  My friend was wondering if she had taken a different path earlier in her life where she’d be now.

And I can’t help but think of the quote by the very wise Pema Chodron:

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.”

There you have it – a peek into the skies over my world.  And a blowing of what’s been on my treasure dandelion seedpuff. So tell me, what’s the weather like in your universe?  What’s appearing in your skies?  What seeds of fabulousity do you have to send this way?  Do tell – you know I love to hear.