And Do It With Love, For Yourself.....

TAURUS

 "The fact that someone else loves
you doesn't rescue you from the project of loving yourself,"
writes blogger Sahaj Kohli. Nothing else rescues you from that
quest, either, I would add. Sooner or later, whether it's now or
20 years in the future, you will have to master this fine art. It's
not enough to merely feel affection for yourself; not enough to
seek pleasure and avoid pain. You've got to make extensive
investigations to discover what it means to love yourself; you
have to develop rigorous plans for how to accomplish it; and
you must fire up a deep commitment as you actually carry out
those plans. By the way, the coming weeks will be an excellent
time to work on mastering this fine art.

Just, You Know, Do IT.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): What is the single best thing you could do to
fulfill your number one desire? Is there a skill you should attain? A subject
you should study? A special kind of experience you should seek or a shift
in perspective you should initiate? This is a big opportunity, Taurus. You
have an excellent chance to identify the specific action you could take
that will lead you to the next stage of your evolution. And if you do
manage to figure out exactly what needs to be done, start doing it!

I'm loving angels instead.....

So,
the work is progressing, I am as well learning to be with the ending of the life of my father, together with my brothers. We spent the last three days with him in his hospice in Miami, we slept in the room (a total ridiculously cramped snore fest) my brothers played scrabble, we sang to my dad, played endless John Denver (take me home, country roads, to a place, where I belong....) stroked his forehead, kissed him, and told him how much he was loved and what a wonderful legacy he had created. Sometimes we laughed pretty hard, which was a sort of funny way to be in a room of a man who lay dying. We whispered when we said some inappropriate things because we knew he was hearing us. Early on, I was crying and talking to my dad and I said "it's so hard now dad, huh?" and he leaned foreward and gasped out "yes."
We tried to tell him to go in peace. "Go in peace, dad, we're okay, we're taken care of."

There was so much love there.

He is still breathing, 3 days after the breathing tube was removed.

I wanted to share a youtube lecture with you:  Art as Therapy by Alain de Botton. http://youtu.be/qFnNgTSkHPM

take a listen. We are not alone. We share a wonderful commonality with eachother and the artists who are making beautiful work for us to experience.

gifts

"Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous — because you will never feel famous enough. Make gifts for people — and work hard on making those gifts in the hope that those people will notice and like the gifts.

Maybe they will notice how hard you worked, and maybe they won’t — and if they don’t notice, I know it’s frustrating. But, ultimately, that doesn’t change anything — because your responsibility is not to the people you’re making the gift for, but to the gift itself."

thinking about thesis....is work a gift? 

Would You Consider Bringing a Little Bit of Fun Into Your Waking Life?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): You Tauruses are customarily more grounded
than the rest of us. But this week, I'm wondering if you will be tempted to
escape the laws of gravity and rebel against the call of duty. I suspect
that your dreams, at least, will feature uninhibited forays into the wild
blue yonder. While you're sleeping you may float weightlessly in an
interplanetary spaceship, become an eagle and soar over forests, wear a
futuristic jet pack on your back and zip through the sky, sail across the
Serengeti Plains in a hot-air balloon, or have a picnic on a cloud with a
feast of cotton candy and sponge cake and mint tea. Would you consider
bringing this kind of fun into your waking life?

um, let me see now, YES! I have started up the studio practice and am exploring a few themes:  "EveryDay at Around Five,"   and "ReAttachment" are two videos in the works. Gingerbread is baking tonight, and I'm decorating the pieces before attaching them together to make the house. I have been rewriting the Hansel and Gretel story; I feel like the witch got the short end of the deal...it's not her fault that she eats children. What about that mother, huh? Abandoning the children to the forest like that. 

so, yes to fun. work is fun. 

Mindfulness and Presence

If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.    Alan Watts  

time to form synergistic bonds....

a horoscope for the New Year....lots of reminders about teachers, friendships, listening, and learning...all good, knowing that I need to write a thesis and come up with a thesis show this spring....I'll keep you posted.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): For years, French painter Edouard Manet and
French poet Stephane Mallarme hung out with each other every day.
Mallarme referred to their relationship as "the most complete friendship."
They influenced each other to become better artists and human beings.
I'm guessing that in the coming months, Taurus, you'll thrive on that kind
of stimulating companionship. Having such regular contact with a like-
minded ally might even be an important factor in ripening your
intelligence. At the very least, I predict that soulful friendship will be a
crucial theme in 2014. You will attract blessings and generate luck for
yourself by deepening your ability to cultivate synergistic bonds.




Smiles,
Michele