Starving Artist Ink.

My first grade teacher was pretty much one of the loves of my life. She was beautiful in that she radiated love, life, happiness when she walked into the room. Too much for a 1st grader to notice you think? Nao… Not with her.

She walked into the room-and we had to sing a morning song to her. Vain..sure. whatever. but it was so super sweet.

'Good morning Mrs. Meade yes indeed, yes indeed yes indeed.
Good morning Mrs. Meade yes indeed, yes indeed my darling'

We sang a similar tune to her at the end of the day…

Anyway, what I was wanting to get to is that she had this giant rain stick. In Washington–a rain stick really wasn't needed to listen to the sound of the rain, put your ear to the window and I'm sure-somewhere in the distant, you will find the beat and tune of the rain…

So, she had this rain stick, and she would turn it whenever she wanted us to calm down–or before she would read us a book. The moment that the stick would turn, our little bodies would stop….a deep breath… and just relax and listen for at least the 15 minutes of the mini rain storm inside the magic stick.

It was probably the most relaxing and calming thing I have witnessed–so easily achievable, moveable, any time-able…

And here I sit, in Ireland-with my ear pressed to the window-hearing the rain in the distant, hearing all the water rush to the cliffs. But I can't help but want a magic rain stick for my own.

Keeping an eye out for one, and some wooden wind chimes as well. How divine!

The sun was out yesterday-it felt like summer… It made me so happy. It was cold, yes…cold, chilly, goosebumps. But THE BLUUUE in the sky. It reminded me of when we first moved into our place-and so I immediately started craving summer food. Hot dogs, BBQ, swimming pools. (not that I eat those, but..you know.)

So we decided to go and get stuff to make homemade  burgers, and I am just so glad that I did. The smell of cooking them, with the sun shining in-it actually felt so romantic because it was summer-and new-and fresh-and we were on our own all over again.

…And then we stuffed our faces.

I decided that today, if it was summer again- I'd go for a walk to the different part of the lake and take pictures, have been wanting to take pictures of it for a while. Woke up to the grey. Boo… But that's okay. I've just been in my pajamas, and cuddled with my love, and ate sugar and warm tea.

Listening to BEAUTIFUL voices. here, I want you to hear as well… listen.

Makes me wish I had a voice that could sing. …I don't. I've tried. Sometimes I will try to sing in the shower (that's what musicians do, isn't it?) so…I'm sitting there (because I sit in the shower) and try to belt out a song…but it just doesn't float. le sigh.  So I'll just crank up the volume and sing with it, and pretend that my voice is melting with it.

haha, I know you've done that. In the car-driving to work, or somewhere equally boring. Belting your little heart out in the privacy of the steering wheel and windows and strangers passing by…and then the CD skips, or the DJ randomly cuts it-and you hear yourself again. bwahahahaa.. and it's PATHETIC.

…or maybe that's just me.

Either way. I'm having a good day, regardless of the grey. and the sugar lump in my belly.

Love you, hope that you are having a beautiful day as well.

e.darcy

1. I am not interesting enough to have secrets. I have none. I am such an honest person-and therefore think that everyone is honest with me. It means that I get stepped on a lot… like a welcome mat. It means that my heart gets torn-over and over again. It means that I have unconditional amounts of love for people… and can forgive.

2. Again, with not having secrets-not having interesting stories to tell…. Maybe it’s because my child hood was perfectly….sane. I mean, I know plenty of people can say they had a normal happy child hood, but really… I did. My parents are married for 25 years, they had their ups and downs-and what I believe has given me a true sense of what a real marriage is all about. They showed each other respect and love every single day-and always expressed it to each other in front of anyone. I am the only girl, and the youngest of three. I got pretty much anything I wanted-but also learned to work for things, and learn the value of things… The only thing that isn’t ordinary about the way that I grew up is that home-is not a place, it’s wherever we made it.

3. I make friends easily, but don’t tend to keep them. I moved around when I was young and made best friends for life everywhere-problem was, they didn’t see it that way-and didn’t keep in touch once we moved. It broke my heart many times… But I’ve loved the experience of making friends wherever I go. Picking up, and learning things from new people-and moving on. The only thing that makes me sad about it is not having one of those BFF’s since I was five kind of thing.

4. My heart is incredibly delicate. I am such an emotional person. When someone else is aching-I ache with them. Sometimes it can be something so little that will make me cry-either way, I feel it…

5. Steven doesn’t trust anything sharp to be around, or in any way close-when I am sleeping. This is because I am an incredibly active sleeper… I sleep walk and talk like no other. It sometimes frightens me… The very last time I know of doing it-I attended to my baby niece-picked her up, and brought her to bed with me and had her sleeping on my chest. It worries me because I don’t recall any of it—what if I would have dropped her… Steven says that I am very gentle, and very careful while I am sleep walking-but still, doesn’t trust having anything sharp-scissors etc. nearby.

6. I don’t eat lamb. I know that isn’t anything freaky or weird or anything—but the reason I don’t eat lamb is simply because I raised them… So, I still eat other meat. I was in 4-h when I lived in Colorado, and chose to raise sheep. A few died, some were sent to slaughter-but it wasn’t until I was made to go into the big refrigerators to ‘view the carcass’ that I freaked-and realized that I wasn’t SELLING my sheep-I was sending them to be slaughtered. After that, I started breeding instead. The first year of breeding, my mama sheep was giving birth-and I was the only one at home, she was having problems-and I had to call neighbours since it was an emergency. The two babies died inside of her-someone had to pull them out… Their little black, limp bodies I will never forget.

7. I wish I had more will power. I am weak. I can be my own cheerleader one minute- pushing myself to do something that I really want to do, or really am trying to believe. And the next minute it is all out the window. Especially when it comes to weight loss. I know it’s so true with most people-but for me, it seems to be extra difficult to have any control.

8. People come to me for advice. I don’t know where they decided that I was a good person to come to for it… I don’t know how I got the position-but people have always trusted me, and come to me for answers. Thing is, I think I give pretty good, sound advice. I just slip into the role immediately. Sometimes I surprise myself.. other times it just pisses me off like why can’t I just be a friend instead of becoming a therapist.

9. People are mistaken when they think that I am confident. I have always been very self conscious of my body-even when I was younger… It probably had something to do with my granny mentioning that I was ‘filling out pretty fat there’. I wasn’t. I was normal… but oh did I cry and question my little body at the time. And then came the bad skin… I went for a full year wearing pajama bottoms and massive hoodies to try to be invisible. I was so depressed. I had absolutely no confidence in myself what-so-ever. Slowly I have started to become someone who I love…. I have started to embrace certain aspects of myself-and it has dramatically improved my outlook on things, dramatically improved my sex life, and dramatically improved me. I am so proud of myself for getting to this step… I can’t wait to continue up.

10. I feel like I owe you. All the time… I feel incredibly in debt. Whenever someone pays me kindness-gives me something, wants to do me a favour-I feel like I don’t deserve it, and then immediately feel guilty-and feel like I have to do something back-that I have to really go out of my way. Money is a center of a lot of guilt for me. It is a lot of shame, and one of my biggest enemies. I will go with wanting something-forever, and never get it. If you offer to buy me anything-anything-even if it was only .20 cents, I’d pass it up, because I don’t want you to spend your .20 cents on me… if you do? I will feel like you might hold me accountable for it, and that I need to find a way to make it up to you. I am slowly… slowly. Painfully slowly trying to work on this. It’s hard… but I think it is a must. I end up hurting peoples feelings sometimes when I don’t let them treat me—how silly is that? But I know that it would hurt my feelings if someone did the same to me.

11. I met my husband online. I was 17 years old the first time that I actually met him in person. I flew, by myself, internationally…. I still cannot believe that my parents let me-and I don’t think that I could ever express to them enough how grateful I am to them-for trusting me, believing in me, and letting me follow my dreams.

12. I was born to be a mother. I am the mother to my friends that need it… sometimes I hate that-but over all, I think that it is a great quality to have. I am maternal, I will take care of you, I will go out of my way to put you first. (I know that this isn’t right… mothers should take time for themselves… but they just can’t without guilt. But they should, for their sanity) My body aches to carry a child. I know that I could mother any child, from my body-or from someone else's, but my body aches to CARRY a child and birth it. I believe in her, I believe that she can do this for me.

13. I’m a very open minded person. But I stop being open minded when you start being conservative-or ignorant. I love to learn from other people, I love to find someone who has different view points as me-I want them to teach me something, and in turn, I want to teach them something. I want us to come together and realize that neither of us are right-we are both equally surviving. Sadly, not everyone can do this…not everyone can take something, and leave something. A lot of times-it is like talking to a wall, and when that happens-I lose a lot of respect for you.

14. I ask questions. I am a black sheep… I made a lot of trouble in school by doing this. Going to high school in the southern bible belt made for an interesting mix of conservative and ignorant people. I’m in no way saying that all of them were-or even that the majority were. I’m saying that a lot of people were closed minded to change, or to seeing things in a different light. I believe in asking questions-in being curious as to why you do the things you do. Why DO you pledge allegiance to a flag? Why DO you believe in this, or that? Why Do you follow things blindly? It isn’t a matter of asking you not to do it, it’s just about asking you your personal reasons as to WHY you do the things you do—if you don’t have an answer, I think you should find one. Following the crowd leads to a lot of ignorance, blindness.

15. You are only as old as you feel…. I certainly don’t feel 21. Sometimes this makes me sad… I’ve never felt my age-always older. I didn’t do the things other people were doing at my age-I just wasn’t interested. I always felt that their ways were immature and I was already done and over it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like to be immature and have silly fun and laugh at stupid things. –it just means that I didn’t get caught up in a lot of drama of the teens I hung around with.

16. I am not religious-but I love learning, and experiencing some* religious traditions. I love the traditional settings of certain churches and organized religions-I don’t believe a word that they say, but the sentiment is beautiful in the way that they worship. I used to attend a church for that very reason-because I was in love with the way they did things, the ceremonies they preformed. But I don’t belong. My church is with the earth, from where I came-and where I will be eternally.

I'm big on communicating, on expressing myself in many different forms. There are times when the paper is calling to me, or when I feel like I can better express myself through a picture. But with all of these, there is my vulnerability.

When I first started off writing on-line-I really had no idea in mind of what I would be writing about, or better yet, who I would be writing to. I read, and still do read plenty of on-line journals-and then one day I just decided that I wanted my own space to create. My own space to leave my words… My own space to do whatever I wanted to do.

It isn't as simple as that…

So I began with boring, mundane, day-to-day crap. I wrote without any meaning, and I wrote to the nobody reading my words.

…and then I found out that there were actually real people, sitting there, following along to my boring crap.

and I freaked out. I got stage fright.

That is when I stopped creating a space for me, to write-or create, or do whatever I wanted. That is when I started to censor myself, cover myself up.

I could care less if I am really 'artistic' or not. I could care less if someone likes what I do, what I write…whatever. The thing is, creating is just a way of showing pieces of me.

I've always found it very difficult, not to create or show those pieces of me, but to hear feedback of them. I used to write poetry, but only a very few select people could actually read them-and if they did, it was not to be when I was around. If I were to draw something I was really proud of, or something that really meant something to me-it would only be shown to a few people-who I knew wouldn't celebrate, or put down. I would seek neutrality.

…I've started to unmask other parts of myself. Started to seek more, to grow more, to expose more. I've started to be more in tune with expressing myself in more abstract ways. Inspired by other great women. My downfall though, is that I feel like I have no place safe enough to show it-with neutrality.

e.darcy

So I'm learning to take my space back. To create this for me, to do whatever I want. To let whoever wants to-hop on board, or go ahead and depart at the next stop.

Today… today feels like a breath of air.  I am so overwhelmed with emotion-and I've never had the chance yet, to feel this way about a President.

I feel it swell up in my chest and I'm just so in love with our new family… Reading about Michelle, her history-her power… It's just so inspiring for young women all over the world.

I really don't have many words to describe how I am feeling-my heart is so full.

e.darcy

Regardless of if he makes all the promises he says he would, if he lives up to what people are expecting… It doesn't even matter to me-because I know he is a good man, and behind him stands an amazing woman.

Today is the day, a mark of change.

'Let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. Change will take time. There will be setbacks and false starts and sometimes we'll make mistakes….And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words — yes, we can.'
-Barack Obama

Together they'll set a new standard. Not just for women, but for equality.