Category: spirit
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fresh inspiration
When is an ‘inspiration wall’ not an inspiration wall? When it’s been up for almost two years and you’ve stopped seeing it anymore… I have a creative room out in my backyard. Our garage was converted to a sleepout by previous owners and now we’ve set it up so half of it is guest-room (well,…
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the creativity muscle
I’ve spent so little time in my studio this year that I’ve been jokingly calling it “the cave of forgotten craft”. What with the new day-job and the intensity of the yoga-instructor training I’m doing, plus my general feeling of knackeredness which I’ve written about lately…the time and inclination to make stuff kind of ebbed…
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leaf water stone sky
I visited the creek. The stones hosted the leaves. The leaves bathed in the water. The water held the sky.
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open heart
(Life is) “…a slow, elated, awed recovery from humiliation.” -Geoff Cochrane On New Year’s Eve we climbed the hill behind the house and drank wine until the sun had gone. I gnawed on grass stems because they tasted like peas. When clouds crossed the moon, I couldn’t see your face and you talked about the…
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the next step
‘Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.’ -Chuck Close Halfway through last year I started work on my second book. The first book was out of my hands while it was being edited, laid out and designed. I had some notion of what I wanted the second…
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lean in
I went to the Pohangina valley. Clean spring green. PIcked up heart shaped rocks. Picked up broken glass. Picked up. They were throwing stones in the water. I walked away from the splashing. I walked past the Friday night fire pits, the Woodstock cans and pizza boxes. The trees along the bank were just flowering.…
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the trail is not a trail
One of my favourite poets is American poet Gary Snyder. He is described as the ‘poet laureate of deep ecology’ by some and I would agree with that. I guess he is a natural fit for me – he studied Zen Buddhism in Japan for years and writes a lot about the human spirit and nature.…
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forgetting and remembering
I’ve had a week of battling my ‘monkey mind’ – that part of the mind that is unsettled and dissatisfied, busy and graceless. This week my monkey mind has been a place of impatience and regret – both fairly useless emotions. It’s the school holidays, I’ve got far too much work on my plate (which…
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my journals keep me
Do you keep a journal? Sometimes I feel like my journals keep me. They keep me sane, keep me engaged, keep me feeling creative even when I don’t have time for larger creative endeavours. I’ve been teaching journal-writing for years. Teaching is a good reminder to me in how important it is to keep on with…
Helen Lehndorf 