do you know

that shadows lurk

in the light?

can you feel your way

through the shadows

to the light?

When I was very, very young, I had a children’s book about a farm and a character called Uncle Bunny Bunny.  I don’t remember the title or the story.  But I remember the illustration on one page.  It was looking up into the fall colors of a tree and the artist had captured beautifully, to my child’s imagination, the specific way that the light comes through the layers of leaves, shadowing and lighting each in its own unique way.  Time and again I would go to that page and look at the tree, savoring the light and the shadow.  It felt deeply familiar, physical, delicious.

Today I saw these iris as I was having breakfast and saw the way the shadow and light were coming through the fresh leaves.  It is that way for me today – feeling my way through the shadows into the light.

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This photograph is one of a series that I took on one of my morning pajama outings to catch the light.  I love the negative space, and the filigree of carts and trees.

This year is the first that I have been taking pictures, and it has thrown me into a relishing and savoring mood about light.  In the past, winters were dark, period.  Camera in hand, I am a light hunter, a sun seeker, and discoverer of color everywhere.

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I spent the weekend in the theater, directing Ryder Cooley’s production of Xmalia.  For the past number of years, my theater has been the arena, dancing with horses.  It is good to get back inside for a bit.

The theater is a good place to look for light.  Literally, figuratively.  My focus with this production is to find the light within the dark themes of extinction and mourning.  To bring each of the performers into their individual, specific lightness of being.  And doing that in such a way that the shadows are also revealed, the spaces between, the interstial illuminations.  That is how the work can surprise us with little moments that shake the heart, as well as the big ravishing ones.

How are you finding the light?

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I saw this cabbage in Whole Foods.  It was so beautiful that I bought it specifically to photograph.  It was also sweetly delicious.  Since I got my new camera, I have been obsessed with image-making.  I am like a kid in a candy shop of color, light and shape.  Seeing me in my pajamas on the road is becoming a common sight for morning commuters.  Oh well.

I am also a new blogger.  I LOVE that.  I feel as if I am awakening from a long hibernation, and stretching out in the sun like a cat.  Writing has become luscious, unpredictable, my morning improvisation.

It has also pushed me to re-calibrate, to look at my goals.  Life goals, work goals.  To articulate them for myself and for those who are helping me figure out how to attract more people to the site.  More readers, more conversation, more connection, more community.  Practical law of attraction work.  Yesterday I heard Abraham say that if your action is driven by need or worry or lack, it is counterproductive.  That the best way to attract what you want is to get happy.  Simple as that, really.  It is a vibrational universe and we have to be vibrating at the highest, happiest frequency to attract what we are wanting.

I am pretty happy these days.  Actually joyful.  That has not always been something I could say.   I am writing about that this week in The Journal. What it is to be A Dangerous Woman.

Today though, I am writing to you, and that makes me very, very happy.

What is making you happy?

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This morning opened with this light.  I kid you not.  It looked like this.  I ran up the road in my pajamas to catch it and five minutes later it was gone.  The sun slid under a cloud, and when it re-emerged an hour later, it had that cool, fall crispness to it.  No longer like honey on the trees against an unreal blue sky.

That is how the creative moment is.  You have to catch it.  I have learned that if I don’t follow the impulse in that moment, it is gone.  The readiness to go into the studio and move.  The readiness to write.  If I let myself be distracted by too many things, like checking my Mailchimp account, or looking at email (other people’s work), the impulse is like that light.  Gone, or too cool to cook with.

This morning I caught the light, but not the writing.  There actually is a reason.  Outside, the truck is chipping all the branches from my shattered trees. The noise is deafening and seeing what remains of the beautiful cherry, the pear trees and the lilac is painful to see.  I wrote about that in The Journal two weeks ago.  The Journal is my ragged memoir, unfolding in fragments, every week.

This week I am writing about The Dangerous Woman.  I hope you  will join me.  You can do that here.

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I think that one of the things about becoming older is that the shadows get smaller.  More of me is revealed to myself and others, rust and all.

Riding, yoga and writing practice all help me to bring things forward into the light, illuminating what is hidden in the shadows.  Each time I ride I am seeking more and more sensitivity and refinement in what I feel from the horse and in my own body.  It is the same with my movement practices and with writing.

Taking photographs is teaching me that sometimes practicing is just about waiting for the light.  Or making peace with the shadows.

This week in The Journal I am writing about what happened when I went to have new headshots taken.

Where are you feeling the light today?

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