bricolage project day 4 [perceived]

Each day during the month of October, I’m creating an ephemeral bricolage art piece.  I choose a random word from a book on my shelf by opening a page in the book and pointing to a word without looking.  I also started creating a rule for each piece because I like constraints.

Today’s rule was paper.  This is an easy one because I’ve had a thing for paper since I was a very young girl.  My transitional object at age 5 and for many years after, as I went back and forth over the Cascade Mountain pass from my mother’s house to visit my father was a large manila envelope.  I put various bits of paper, old checkbooks from my parents, and whatever other paper objects I could find inside and played with them for hours even before I knew how to write words.  My brother called it my Paper Friend.  In many ways, paper continues to be one of my better friends.  Reliable.  Receptive.  Beautiful.  Goes everywhere with me.

Today’s word is “perceived” from Joseph Cambell’s work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.  I appreciate receiving this word today as how things are perceived has been on my mind of late.   Most especially, I’ve been pondering judgment and how constant it is both in the outer world and in my inner landscape.  Judging myself.  Judging others.  Making assumptions based on judgements.  So much judging taints my perception of the beauty of life and yet it’s so hard to rid myself of.  It isn’t that compassion isn’t right there hoping to smooth out the wrinkles if I want to choose it.  It’s just hard to choose it sometimes.  Being in the moment helps.  Remembering that we’re all doing the best we can helps.  Re-membering.  That’s what I’m doing with these bricolage pieces.  Remembering what’s lovely about the world and myself with shells, words, ink, and bits of paper.

Speaking of lovely paper, did you know that the Book of Kells is available for viewing online?  Well, now you do.  It’s beautiful.  I noticed that you can also buy a scanned copy for your own library.  What a world we live in!  The film Secret of Kells from the fabulous Flatiron Film Company that features this book is a stunning work of art.  We watch it at least once a year.

Today’s quote comes from one of my heroes,  Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.  She writes in Women Who Run with the Wolves:

“La Loba sings over the bones she has gathered. To sing means to use the soul-voice. It means to say on the breath the truth of one’s power and one’s need, to breathe soul over the thing that is ailing or in need of restoration…That is singing over the bones.”

Let us re-member the loveliness.  Let us sing.

 Magic in this issue.