Circus, Circles & Curtsies

New house. New job. New perspective.

It’s funny how things can change so quickly. If my life was measured in surprises there would be no space left for anything else. Here’s just a small example of how things have turned out.

I had my sights set on a puppy…and not just any puppy. I was determined to have a corgi named Elvis no matter the amount of saving or persuasion required.

Move over Elvis. There is a new musican in the house. I just adopted my grandmother’s dog, Chloe. She’s blind.

My little Ray Charles.

Even though she ate an entire package of M&Ms the first night, refuses to sleep on the floor and is hopelessly wandering around the house - I’m measuring this surprise as a blessing.

I’m decorating my new home, which has turned into a sort of stroll through my childhood memories. My upstairs will be all cream and ivory tones, so I’ve decided to surround myself with old pictures. I’ve been restoring them and setting each picture in sepia this week. The one here is of my mother holding my youngest sister, Zoey, and Abbey, my other sister, and myself standing on the right and left respectively. 

I adore these women. 

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us…And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. 
Where there is hatred, let me sow love, 
Where there is injury, pardon; 
Where there is doubt, faith; 
Where there is despair, hope; 
Where there is darkness, light; 
And where there is sadness, joy. 

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek 
to be consoled as to console, 
to be understood as to understand, 
to be loved, as to love. 

For it is in giving that we receive, 
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

St. Francis of Assisi

“You call yourself a free spirit, a ‘wild thing,’ and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

(via teachingliteracy)

I am a small world made cunningly.

John Donne.

dancingraphics:

dreams, d.h. lawrence

(for the sketchbook project 2011)

by me

(via teachingliteracy)

Do it yourself.