PANCAKES!

I love pancakes!

I love Escher Dashiki!

I love flowers, fields and birds!





So I'm a day off. Oops! I've been in a food coma the past two days. So much delicious food and people flowing in and out of this house, sleepy sunshine on the porch, fluffy clouds peering in at me from my window. Last night Erica and Simon made amazing sushi, and then this morning we had amazing pancakes. So good that the above picture is what breakfast looked like after .2149 seconds. The pancakes sky rocketed to the depths of my stomach, lining my soul with sweet maple syrup. I had REAL maple for the first time up here in OH!Canada and it is the best thing ever. MM!

Today was a really fast and slow day! I needed to switch gears a little bit:
worked on these photos,
started a new song with a really fun finger picking,
did a little writing,
had my business, bank and finances organized and consolidated by the amazing Peggy Yen. I decided that I was a creator of matter, of the seen and heard (art, music), Peggy deals with dark matter ( the unseen: business, money, etc.). We balance.

My writing is found under THE BLUE SHORTS on my blog. It's a collection of very short contemporary stories all starting with "THE". They're very frank, sometimes stark but softened with shimmery femininity. I like to toss in some abstract ideas, images in my mind, sometimes they are harsh, other times full of love. Some just prose, others more poem. Anyway, I love creative writing and reading and I am blessed to know and have some very amazing writers as my friends. Sometimes if I'm feeling less visually productive I won't work on any art or music that day (like today) and I'll write what is flowing in my head, conversations and ideas. Do you ever find yourself narrating your life or reciting a book from the depths of your mind? When I stop to think about it, this is where they come from, usually brought on by certain incidents that have happened in my life.For example, the inspiration for this piece below is from a mosquito I killed. I was feeling a little tense, I don't usually kill bugs, and through the writing I was able to explore deep deep down why I did it. I was able to even do a little forgiving and understanding because the fuel for writing creates metaphors of our own internal struggles, wishes, dreams and I had been feeling a little hurt by some people in my life. It's amazing how the perspective can change from just moving over a tiny bit. I redid this poem over and over for about an hour. It's still settling. I used to believe firmly in first creation without editing--so I really should show the before and after (of everything I do actually!) to show how your creative endeavors evolve and how you find yourself evolving as well.



The Mosquito

I killed the mosquito. We decided it was okay to do it.

Elephants beat at flies, volcanoes burn and bubble, trees fall and a spine is snapped,
monkeys spear bush babies in their sleep.
First no, then yes! YES! It bit me earlier and I was itching, hearing it's tiny wings whine:
diseases sleep us you the future blood on my pillow an open window welts mothers
tiny arms needles in black fur the open chest cavity the wetness
(it was shimmering, quivering the exposed heart afraid and alive)
and your ovens: rosemary and butter,
my hands under skin rubbing cool autumn in with surgical gloves salt eyes
brushing my face against the collar like making love to flowers
the secret corridor in the castle pushing up against the chair
I kept thinking there was more of you, even though you had left
kept crawling back into the bed with the light guillotine

Could we sit at the table, get to know one another first?

I felt mosquito wings on my cheek, a very soft and gentle wind, like cat paw.
You were just tiny and delicate, hungry for something you needed,
hungry for me because I happened to be there under the lamp, in the light.

There are more on the ceiling.
There will always be more, in the warm and the wet.
You forgot, didn't you?
Lemongrass and screens, honey.
Protect yourself.
We do the most damage.


-Christine Ohara Hale




It's so convenient to have blogs, because you can write from anywhere and the blog is there for anyone at anytime to see. Our personal domains and websites are our owned land, blogs are public space, the free poles you can put your signs on, the walls to paint, the grass to lay.

YESTERDAY:
I got some french books yesterday, started to study my verbs and using flashcards. Ah! I love geeking out on everything. The guy at the store asked me if all my books ( I bought a big giant fattty fat Dreamweaver 3 book too) were for school. Silly man, silly man, I laughed and said in a smooth buttery velveeta cheesy way "The school of life, man."

I found this wonderful shop on St. Laurent called Frenco, it's all natural shop full of bins of spices and beans and teas. Because it's all in the open air, the smells stir around, dance, jazz the senses. I bought a tiny self-serve bag of dried blueberry tea and some dried bananas for 66 silver candadian maple leaf pennies. Life is good day by day, treasure by treasure. I will admit that I've been feeling a little blue lately, but, it's important to let that out in my art and write about the good stuff here. So, just for a reminder, my life is not insanely happy and exciting at every moment, but, the moments that are I want to give my gratitude for and share them. :)



This is from a series I am working on called IN THE PARK. You can see more if you click the image. You can see more of everything if you click the images. Hopefully they don't have those borders on them---or do they? Let me know if you see one! YUCK! :)


OH! I also helped a friend feng shui her apartment, we started with the first step: making a blueprint of her place and mapping out her areas then we talked about what she felt was lacking in her life and what she wanted to improve and---this is the really fun part, things that she had already done that matched up with feng shui theories. I've started to do mini-counseling sessions with some people lately, it's cool, I love imaging and branding ( I am a "specialist", it was an official job title!) and to integrate that with personal identity is even greater: helping people find their identity by covering different areas of their life. This is a major project I'm working on slowly but surely. Chapter one is in the works. I know this will take me a while to do and really define this job, but, we'll get there eventually. One of the millons of things I love to do: help people make their dreams come true by helping them find themselves. It's good to have outside perspective that comes with advice! :) More on this later. Right now I'm calling it Personal Identity/Imaging/Branding because we are our own mini corporations!



Love, Christine