lay down your burdens lighten with the sky dawn a new day no matter what they say. CKS
not gonna lie, its been a rough road lately. still not feeling all that well.
a lot of resting and sleeping, more resting, more sleeping. . . and being frustrated and a bit lost. allowing depression to grasp at me. allowing fear to have a little taste of me too.
I recently found my old ipod and it has my favorite Yoga Nidra practice on it. I had allowed this practice to fall off. It is back in my life.
It feels good. It helps. It helps ease my soul. and my mantra or Sankalpa (short positive statement of intention) is:
I give myself permission to accept my body just as it is.
How do you feel about your body? Do you accept yourself? Do you struggle with judging yourself? I wish for us all to find peace in acceptance.
paint much love, always, CKS a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
unfurled my chaste i gather my temperance on the paste-chalk lines of charcoal.
sullied is clean is
pure, breathe air of imperfection’s delight i temper my haste in paper-sand-dust. CKS
from Brave House Secrets
love in a time of turbulence repetitive contemplation active listening
We must act according to our integrity. How do we find such things? Where do we find where we belong within the context of belief, integrity, and action?
Practice.
“Repetition strengthens and confirms” a friend once said. Indeed. True words.
Practice.
Never give up. Repetition; teaches us into action. Actions us into where our teaching needs attention.
Practice, teaching us to listen.
Paint much love, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
Holy Darkness River of unbroken rigidity. Resonate the overcast softness; Mitigate my distress. CKS
L123
Plains in the middle of nowhere; I simply stopped; to paint my words.
Always armed with supplies, I always enjoy simply driving out on the back roads and finding what I find. Sometimes, like here, I simply am struck by the simplicity perfectly explaining my thought process.
This is in the middle of nowhere. I cannot remember what state, or location. I do remember firing up my little personal stove, making a cup of coffee, and a cup of soup. I put on my finger-less gloves and settled in the absorption of the moment.
A vast plain with one lone tree in the distance, seemed perfectly content, so I asked it why and how.
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
Look into my eyes Deep in the you of me, of us. CKS
Due to my health I had to close my studio early for the June Toe River Arts Studio Tour where I was having the Celebrate Life Sale and was to continue the sale online after the tour.
I had a flare of the NMO. Along with Rituxan, I had 5 days of IV Steroids with an oral taper. I continue to struggle. Fatigue is an issue and my arms are still weaker than they were. I am better despite the struggles. My breathing is not the same since the flare either.
I am taking care of things one at a time. I have not been in the studio. I tried to be there a couple of short visits, mainly to print a few digital paintings to make sure my printer was still happy. I will admit it was exhausting.
Treatment changes to hopefully help keep my health more stable is moving Rituxan from 4 months to every 3 months. I must admit it is a little unsettling. I started at every 6 months and when that was not okay, I moved to every 4 months and for quite awhile was stable until i wasn’t. What happens if Rituxan completely fails? I don’t have a complete answer. I don’t have access to the new NMO approved drugs because I am not antibody positive.
What we are adding is pulse dosing with IV Steroids. This means once a month I will have 3 days of IV Steroids. Steroids do usually make me feel better. Steroids come with there own side effects I don’t like. It is a matter of weighing benefit vs. side effects.
pulmonology, we are doing testing, and depending on the outcome, we might be adding daytime oxygen in addition to my ventilator.
I am working to get back in the studio and hopeful to be there soon.
We are getting more and more pieces up on the CLFStudio Shop for the CELEBRATE LIFE SALE!!! Going on Now! Finally getting back to what we started during the studio tour.
We are working hard to get works up day in day out and they are deeply discounted. I turned 50 this year and I did not know if I would even make it to 50, so this is a great time to celebrate.
So please share far and wide. I would really appreciate it. and I hope you enjoy, and maybe find that perfect piece for yourself or someone you love.
Thank you so much for your continued encouragement and support!
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
Memento of two; lovers’ whispers; gentle delighting. CKS
L145
Aspen grove Intimate moment Spring Morning
I believe this tiny painting is the foreshadow of great love.
Aspens grow in colonies from a single seed. Often they are seen as evidence of ancient woodlands, because their root systems can live for thousands of years. Another beautiful fact; Aspen colonies are able to survive forest fires, because their root systems are below the heat of the fires.
Caught in awe one day walking among Aspens in Idaho, I felt the weight of the many as the morning light danced across these two trees; catching their kiss in conversation, they allowed me in, and so I danced too.
Here I was feeling family; generational love; grounded through life’s heat in the good and the difficult.
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
faraway near carefully observes the presence-day dawn. CKS
Dance of the Forgotten Child. I don’t talk about this a lot. For years I haven’t talked about it. It has not been a part of my life. Many many years ago I had an eating disorder. At one point I was in bad shape. I wanted to disappear. I had the ridiculous idea that I needed to by skinny, to be invisible, to be dead, to not exist, and it was the only way I would be okay. It was control because Life was very out of control. My existence was within the reality of abuse. When you can’t get out, and you can’t scream out, and everything is secret, and nothing makes sense, it comes out sideways.
I saw myself as being very large. It didn’t matter what I actually was because when I looked in the mirror I saw a very large and misshapen person. The dysmorphia was very real, and I never really lost that. What I lost was taking action and practicing not eating. I let it just be.
Fast forward to today. I still don’t know what I look like. I still see myself as being much larger than I am and misshapen. To be honest I didn’t realize how present that still was.
Slowly adjusting my wardrobe to suit both what I like and what works in the chair, it is a fun way of affirming life and little luxuries of life. What is freaking me out is size. I am hyper aware that I purchase clothing at 1x , 2x, XL, XXL. In the chair, I do not like tight clothing. It must have stretch, and comfort. As i am listening to other people, I tried on Mediums and larges and was 100 percent freaked out that they fit comfortably.
My mind cannot compute this. I can’t figure out the funhouse mirrors. I don’t see it. like some sort of alternate universe. I even have tried different silhouettes which I would have never ever done.
I like a-line, baby doll kind of dresses because they are roomy and hide things, but have been very unhappy with this silouette for awhile but couldn’t figure out what I was unhappy with.
Tells me I am beginning to see me in some regard. The new silhouettes feel vulnerable, and also feel good. not trying to hide. Which is also very weird to think about. To see myself as myself. That it would even be possible? Do you see yourself? I think I operate many days still within the Dance of the Forgotten Child , the one still needing to disappear into the wall as a wallflower hoping not to be recognized, safe in invisibility; safe as a shadow.
And, also seeking personhood. Practicing personhood. Practicing being present in my own skin. affirming self. affirming the safety of today. Affirming I am proportioned just because I am. Because it is safe to be who I am.
How do you feel? Do feel safe to be who you are?
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
Friendship, skins peeling in equity; silken curves that crash down the edge of my ears, like waves feel into you, into each.
words drip. you are peace.
Friendship, writing into my spring; fall cooing winter’s despair, bended-tree whispers, I listen, as soundness reasons with her own insanity.
blood-bitters soak. you are quiet.
Friendship, music calling as a dove rippling within sincerity encircling my smile; drenched, seen into water’s edge satire satisfactions appease rejoices, the you within each we.
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
She stood still; And danced The journey Come true. CKS
L752
Kathryn Albertson Park Boise Sesquicentennial in search of the iconic dancing with friends.
What a weekend this was! Boise was celebrating 150 years! The city decided to have a Plein-air Art Competition. I am a pretty solitary soul, however this weekend I accepted invitation to traipse Boise in search of the iconic with art friends.
What fun! This particular day as the rest of my crew went further into the large park, I was taken back by the entrance.
It was as if I was seeing it for the first time. How the light danced across the panoramic scene. Here in this tiny painting, I played and bathed in a smile. Knowing just how human this park was that day.
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others. (dictionary.com)
As we in the U.S. come to celebrate July 4th, independence day, I have been sitting with the word, Independence. Both in self and in community. In a time when things feel very out of control. I grieve. I fear. I look for the helpers, because there within is light. The divides feel greater and greater, and I don’t understand. In all the people I know, we are more alike than we are apart. I look to this. To move past the noise so I am not paralyzed into inaction.
Dear Rainmaker, there are discerning days. there are days of unknown melancholy. and then, there are days; days in which that clutching darkness dances around my wandering mind, and I question tomorrow’s dawn.
then I catch a brief smirk upon my lips when I remember the lilies of the field.
am I sitting with flowers? am I sitting with flowers, yet?
Fall into the coolness of the meadow my child. there is no grief and no madness, however great, that darkness can consume.
My strength and My peace shall surround you. My light shall fill you.
Dear Heart, I love you. lean on me, through the strength of those that surround you. you are loved, my beloved CKS
We can feel helpless. We can feel hopeless. Grieving in anger, frustration, and disappointment. We pause, we breathe, we hang on until hope and love reside next to us.
I share today a poem I wrote awhile ago, and it is within a greater story and resides in Rainmaker and Flower; pray on dirty knees, my first poetry book.
I share it because I return to this poem when I am in that well of darkness, and feel quite sad and overwhelmed. When my world is spinning and nothing gets accomplished.
Deadlines I have not met. Responsibilities not lived up too, and hope for forgiveness and more patience. When my emotions and mental capacity has weighted me down until I only hear the echo of “I am a loser. good for nothing.” and even less gets accomplished, and I hear less and less, and see less and less; and I want nothing more than to hide within myself.
I become paralyzed in fear. everything, even my art becomes suspect, and I am paralyzed; deciding maybe I should start over; abandoned all together.
Does your world ever appear in bleak darkness? Let us read it together, and know you are not alone. And there is no darkness that light cannot overcome, that fear cannot be comforted; that grief cannot feel kindness, that love cannot find.
It is okay not to be okay. My dear friends, I share my heart because this is what I do. I am with you. I am here in your disappointment, in your anger, frustration, grief. in joy, triumph, and happiness.
We are together, praying as we are; our dirty knees resting in the fields of the lilies.
Enjoy this 10 minute visual meditation:
paint much love, always, Connie Karleta Sales a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower
