Micheline Brierre's Writings and Musings

The Transition

2011-10-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

There are fallen Aspen leaves in my driveway and over the lawn, in the garden and all over the streets in town. Trees seem on fire with yellows, rust and red gloriously back-lit by the sun. I drive on some streets that seem like tunnels of radiant colors and I sing to myself a few internal songs. It is Fall in Colorado and the air is cool and fresh while nights are cold.

My husband and I went on Old Stage Coach road, up in the mountains, west of the city. It is as the name says, a very old, unpaved and very narrow way with tunnels, blind curves and nothing, not even occasional guard rails to keep you from tumbling in the void that is often on both sides. But the views ... the views make all the effort of taking that drive worth it. Aspens line the many mountain sides and present a huge, astonishing warm palette of immense beauty.

It is this time of the year again, when we have to let go of the exuberance of summer and contemplate the changes that come with Fall. It is a precursor to Winter and as such it is the exciting in-between time of the year that comes with a magnificent splash of colors and lets us know that it is time to settle down within and think and reevaluate the year. Nature presents us with the transition, the entrance to this state of awareness and whether we sense it or not, life is coming with its packet of changes.

For me, transitions are the beginning of retreating into myself and finding simple joys that I had forgotten in the rush, work and pressure of summer. Like waking up before my husband at dawn and walking quietly to the living room where with open windows I can see the sunrise and greet the day; a form of silent meditation about what might happen and also a form of salutation to the budding sun.

I can knit with the fabulous selection of yarns that I have collected through the years and see patterns of color develop while my thoughts are silent and the day unfolds. I can write in my gratitude journal and mention things that are so basic and real to me. I am grateful for taking a breath at a time and being alive. I can send love to my family and friends and imagine a security circle around each one of them. I can dream of the next piece of jewelry I will create and imagine the curves and the stones plus the shades offered to me in my studio. Most of all, my priorities become more obvious as I let go of the non essential and embrace the most important. I also like the joys of reading a real paper book that I can hold in my hand and let the the words evolve into a story with a character leading a life so unlike mine. It is great to dream a bit!

It is my time to reevaluate. Life has so much to spread in front of me but choosing one thing is of utmost importance. It is good to have a single main goal and go in its direction.

I can think about all the persons that I have met and loved and that have gone out of my life for many reasons, especially the ones that I will never see again because they have died. I can think of the finality of death and the strangeness of life. The way we come on the planet, learn and live each day with awareness or not and create a trail of questions that life answers if we are lucky. We can also add our name to the long list of beings that have come before and left a legacy to admire and try to emulate.

My loved ones march in front of me in my mind's road. I love to follow this stretch of my days and look at the beings alive before me that stand in their own glory and grace and by so doing are so deserving of my attention and love. I can put aside the people which are indifferent to my life and do my best to enhance the life of all the other ones that walk with me and present challenges and growth to my days, or let me embrace the example that they present.

All of this comes with this slow approach of Winter that serves to focus us on what we had tuned into in the Fall. In a way, regroup our year and set the tone for what in the next year will happen, surprise us, challenge us -- or simply, delight us.

Life is such a journey and it helps to discover more of ourselves with each passing season as we meet the day and continue our life fully aware and conscious. I believe that humans were not meant to live with passivity but make happen what is close to our hearts, and Fall is the time to get in touch with our wants and what brings a smile to our face.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre

Living in Different Places

2011-09-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

"You have to be invited to a baptism or go to a funeral to really feel you belong."
Words of my first husband when we lived in countries other than ours. And of course, he was right. Living in a foreign country is getting to know different cultures, different food and maybe different languages and clothing but also the same people with the same emotions as ours. Once we get passed our veneers and the outer look of a new place, we are met with the same humans: our great family of Earthlings.

Going to live in Mexico City for the first time I was dazzled by the culture. The beauty of multiple handmade things that sold in stores of "Artesanias" and the many villages with an astounding array and specialty of food, great dances, special hand-embroidered dresses and twists of the language caught me totally wide-eyed and receptive to it all. I loved the songs, the romance of the mariachis at midnight on plaza Garibaldi, the markets, the flower vendors everywhere even at night and the restaurants filled with huge tables where three generations of people got together united by the need to visit and eat together as a family. A real treat that made me remember with nostalgia my own family, hours and hours away in my Caribbean island. I also loved the fields at the foot of the volcano where we picnicked with flowers all around us while the smoke in our our grill smelled of fresh tortillas and new found food.

I was in awe at all of what the country offered that seemed so different, and delighted me so much. The play of vibrant colors, the accents, the play of words used everyday and the music had me marveling each morning. As I got to know the friendly people, I felt a great empathy, as they corrected my budding Spanish and laughed at my mistakes as I translated too literally from the French, I carried a dictionary everywhere. But more importantly, later, I felt like I belonged when we were invited to share family dinners or asked to weddings and when friends took me to their favorite markets and later taught me how to cook their specialty food.

Sometimes my husband would drive us to some villages around the country whose specialty was one item only; like the one that produced so many guitars and where so many open little factories lined the main street. I delighted in the lavish sensual curves of the wood, the shine induced by the rubbing of assiduous hands and when I heard people sing and play the instruments, it was as if their souls opened up to cry their love or sorrow. It brought me close to the silent pain in my heart that life sometimes creates and about the nostalgia that resonated within me through the cords of their guitars. I was entranced.

Living in Peru was an exercise in endurance because of the frequent earthquakes and the fluctuation of food and restrictions of the use of our cars. It was the time of the generals and things weren't easy. A recent agrarian reform made all food scarce and our German pilot friends brought us steaks from outside the country. But there was the discovery of strong woman: worldly and open-hearted that I learned to love and the resurgence of my own voice as a person and an artist. My children were bigger and I could lead a group of creative people with their art, show it and sell it.

I thrived, I felt like I was back to my roots. I learned to make jewelry with Mary Traver in the Miraflores center. I learned to conquer metal and silver and also let it speak its voice and met many life time friends friends like Therese or Guillermina dear to me forever. Between carrying the duty of a welcoming hostess present at parties and fiestas that we gave, I learned to embrace the family of people that I met and that nurtured my soul. Making an international phone call was a true adventure. You screamed, they did not hear you, they screamed and you still did not understand. My ex husband used to say " If I scream some more I will not need a phone!"

After a particular strong earthquake in the middle of the night, my mother who was visiting helped me carry the children fast asleep as usual to the middle of our garden while the maid yelled "Salvase Senora" save yourself! but she ventured all the way inside the house, courage on her side and we retreated running into the darkness of the garden. When it was over, we made tea for and illusion of strength, or so we hoped. My mother, silent until then, finally told me in French "Micheline what are you doing in this hole?" My husband was away on a trip so all of us woman returned to our bedrooms, but I never slept. I thought of her comment but realized it was indeed a very interesting hole and mostly-- a beautiful one. I was far away from my country, but in many ways, I was home.

The high country was my favorite with the smell of the Spanish Broom filling the valley with their scent and the yellow flower floating on the air on their slender stem. Huancayo was one village that pulled on my heart, a village with a huge market that I would walk and explore with the children and that my husband would photograph beautifully. I would sit and sketch, attracting a group of kids marveling at what I considered mere traces of my pencil. The handmade things varied incredibly and never ceased to fascinate and tempt me. I went from the unique pottery or silver filigree jewelry (light as a dream) to an incredible family of multicolored potatoes so incredibly varied and fun. I made many friends that later died or got dementia or simply disappeared later from my life but live forever in my memory.

Eating out was a delightful adventure and a surprise, like when my husband ordered oysters and they started to move when he put lemon on it ... I guess freshness was of utmost importance as was the huge size of all the sea food and vegetables there.

I was peacefully at home when my husband walked in one day to tell me "Pack your bag we are going to Bogota Colombia." I was in mourning. My friends came to tell me how sorry they were. I was going to live in Bogota, a dreadful, dangerous place and they were so sorry for me. I had just moved to a new house and our things were still in boxes. The high Jasmin climber was transplanted by our much loved gardener and was starting to reach the balcony of this new house smelling delicious on the wind. Moving? I was distressed but packed I did and was on a plane with the family, sad and fast as I could pack.

But what a surprise! Bogota was a large handsome city, women held important roles in the government, artists became my friends; and even though we had a Wakenhut guard in front of the house, I started to love the food, the gold museum, the haunting song on the guitar and the particulars of this land where people spoke a most beautiful Spanish and received us late at night for dinner. Pretty soon I was exhibiting my work, having my paintings praised, participating in the art field and having a blast. The butcher was my friend and sent us his best cuts of meat by a delivery boy on bicycle. We had a baby deer for a few months that our friends found on their Finca and that ate the whole garden but was my joy and pride until much bigger when we gave him back to our friends to release to nature.

I had a studio and worked with the Inner Peace Movement, traveled, had lectures in my home and did many counselings.

I learned a lot. I realized that each country carries its own flavor and look but that it was up to me to belong. They were born there, it was their land and they were used to its idiosyncrasies, its joy and its music, its language and charm. It was up to me to make myself at home and get others to respect my presence. Up to me to keep a wondrous eye and show an open heart. To try all the food, to dance the rythm of the day, to be the person who would be invited to funerals and celebrate the baptism of the new baby.
People all over have the same aspirations as mine and seem different only at first sight. Once having shared a cup of tea or or the drink of the land, people are astonishingly the same and that make us a huge Earthling family; a set of souls sharing the same thoughts, the same worries the same hopes and the same sadness or joy as ours. The Spanish spoken there was very different from my native French but it brought a new language to me that still delights my ears and that I miss.

Living in other countries and in South America has made me more receptive and more open, more accepting, more flexible and understanding, more myself. It brought me a beautiful memory of so much that lives in my heart and sometimes creeps into my dreams. The eternal gift given by many lands.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre

The Faces of Work

2011-07-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

My life of late has been immersed in work. I work most of the time but recently it has been at a furious pace to keep up with the outdoors juried fairs for artists and mostly to maintain my inventory at a decent level. We did five shows in a row, one every weekend and that meant waking up very early each day and going to sleep quite late at night. It meant traveling to those shows or never leaving my studio but for an occasional break.

It made me think about how "Work" take its place into our lives. After all, once we are out of school and in many cases before, we are working at one job or the other. And that is for a long life until we retire and many of us, artists included, never retire completely since our art is an expression of who we are and how we see the world.

Artists are different and the art scene is full of graying hair people who need to express the feeling they experienced all through their life. Art is the result of a filter that we all possess and that seeps through our emotions and finally yields what we have seen or felt or heard in the form of our art.
Go to an art show and each artist has a different vision and their unique way of seeing the world. Walking an art show is like peeking into someone else's consciousness. Quite a feat.

But work could be just as creative and take another form of expression. It could be the doctor who makes sure our health is good and actively fights every threat to our state of being. It could be the fireman, the nurse, the teacher, the chef, the engineer or the truck driver to cite a few. I think there is a difference between work that is a calling, an urge to do it no matter what; and the work that is just boring; a simple routine that we do just to earn a living.

Working when our soul is not there is a difficult task. We often look at the passing of time and cannot wait for the weekend to come and give us a sort of relief through other occupations. That form of work leaves us frustrated and sad. We go home at night and try to forget the day and its activities. There is nothing to nurture our soul.

Work as a calling is different. It pursues us once we leave the job, gets in our dreams and incubates thoughts and ideas during the night. That work is rejuvenating, it brings our mind to the current problem to solve with a form of eagerness and fulfillment. So why are more people not doing it?

Sometimes infancy presents a very small vision and people, once grown, go to work as a convenient and easy road to provide for life instead of searching their soul for that thing that makes them tick. Sometimes life is tight and the circumstances do not permit people to choose. Sometimes one does not know what would the pleasing thing be and how to make it a daily opportunity. Such people are like butterflies and jump from one thing to the other never feeling satisfied. Circumstances do vary an awful lot. But often work is no more than a burden.

One thing that I know as an artist is that no matter what you do, there is a part of it that is always work. It requires discipline and sometimes the tedium of doing what you have to do. But when our work is also our life passion, despite all, we thrive with what we do and each day brings us the joy and the wisdom of creating something new. Not only us artists but what all people do in their own field. Creativity is not jut a privilege of artists.

Whether work is a pleasure or a bore we all have to work and earn a living unless presented with a rich background and our monthly expenses are covered. So let us bring our body and soul to work as my friend does who works for the government in helping poor immigrants solve their problems and so find a way to give back to the community -- a real service.

There is also the artist's form of work changing as we change and evolving as we do and that we can do for a lifetime and and never find tiring or boring. I believe we were born to do it and I guess a calling is just that.

Copyrighted 2011 Micheline Brierre

Memories on Mother's Day

2011-05-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

My children were born when I was very young in Mexico city at a Spanish hospital. My Spanish was not very good then. The nuns, also our nurses, spoke a clipped Spanish from Spain, so quickly I could not understand them and my husband daily translated what they had to say.

It was a wonderful hospital. My room had a great view on the flowery garden and for lunch I was served Paella which is a chicken base, saffron, chorizo and rice dish with many more things added and it was delicious. Gourmet food in the hospital! Quite rare. I walked at the end of the corridor to see my son and my husband was happy to smoke a proud cigar. When they brought me the baby, he was always wrapped like a sausage with only his head showing. So I unwrapped him marveling at this minute pink body moving in my arms. This was the time women stayed a few days in a hospital and it gave me time to get used to the feeling of being a mother.

Nevertheless when the day arrived for me to go home, I was feeling so anguished and scared wondering if I was up to the task of caring for this little baby. My mother had applied for a visa to Mexico that was slow in coming so I gave birth without her.

Coming home was a strange mix of joy and worry but the baby and I bonded quickly and I would sit in silence in front of him with wonder in my heart.

We had a good maid then. But she told me as soon as I came home that she had found a job who would bring her to the USA. How could I not let her go? It left me with the task of caring for the baby and his many diapers and cooking and taking care of the apartment and the laundry plus all else. At that time we had cloth diapers and no diaper service.

My husband prepared the bottles for the baby in the morning and it was a great help. But one afternoon he came in the door and I burst into tears. I did not expect to do so but the tasks of living were catching up with me. We had a good friend who brought me a maid to help. I was elated. My husband and I went shopping and his camera films - films were only used at the time - disappeared. We went on a search and it yielded nothing. No film in all the empty bags from the grocery store. But I found them the next day -- in the freezer...The maid did not know better and to her the freezer was a safe place to put the films. She did not last very long.

The next maid was much better and my mother arrived in Mexico. Help was available. It saved me a lot of work.

This little baby is now a grown men with a wife that I love and a family of two boys living in Maine.
Sometimes I remember him, wild kid on the roof of my house or swimming in the canals of Miami and I remember all his many stages of growth plus all the ones my wonderful daughter went through and I marvel at the force of life reproducing itself through us - mothers.

All over the world mothers carry their babies, give birth and raise them as best as they can. The dedication, the patience, the loving, the pain and worry and also the rewards are enormous. Babies come with so many lessons for us parents to learn. They act as our teachers when most of our education is done.

I remember at night looking at my kids sleeping and thinking their presence was such a gift. A marvelous fact of life and a new addition to the world population. And the world population is growing everyday. In so many countries the birth rate is high and the question is: How can we cope with and feed so many people?
In my case I only reproduce us -- the parents. But the future is something to consider as we face those little bodies with so much love.

When my children became teenagers they had a very good friend from Nicaragua who used to come and visit all the time. Even after my kids were gone he kept coming just to see and talk to me. One day I realized he was my other son. Not born of my body but a spiritual son whose family I love as well.

I wonder why mother's day is not also fathers day and childrens day as well. The bond are obvious and celebrating them at different times puzzle me. So I did survive raising my children, learned a lot and loved being a mother and I would never give up what I experienced as a parent. I can face myself in the mirror and say: I did the best I could and I know many mothers around the world will be thinking the same.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre

The Changes

2011-04-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

Our planet has become much smaller than we ever thought. The news travels at tremendous speed and our economic life on Earth is interrelated. Ideas float from one country to another and long is gone the time of isolation. Are we better for it?

It means enormous changes in the way we think and our ability to stay within the compound of our personal consciousness. We are now multinational beings involved one day with the news of Japan and the other, news of Yemen. In between, we stuff the news from Egypt, from Libya, from Africa or Haiti and we add to that the news from our speck of earth plus many more places or countries that may interest us. Plus there is the economic crisis, unemployment, budget deficit, tax cuts, weather damage and death in the southern USA....is it not a lot?

What has all of this done to our psyche?
My grandson told me the other day that he was most concerned by the news of the nuclear leaks in Japan. He is 8 years old. He told me that they discuss it in class. I think that all the involvement with so many happenings on different countries opens our minds very early to the fact that Earth as we know it has become so very small in terms of communication and interconnection. As a consequence, there is more to think about, more to worry about, and more to stay on our minds and keep us awake at night. The information is crammed in to us through TV, videos, CD's written articles by reporters all over the world, social medias and text messages. It is unavoidable.

Because of this, it seems that now, more than ever, this Earth is undergoing tremendous changes and not all for the better. There is the problem of climate change, the scarcity and rising price of oil, the possibility of water shortages, the climbing cost of food to cite only a few. We are facing huge problems and as we see it, there is no solution at hand now.

Of course at the same time, so many groups, institutions or individuals are creating wonders and propose a different vision, therefore a different consciousness in the people they touch. On one part some destroy while many others build what they can. I, by nature, tend to be on the side of hope but I often feel invaded by all of what I read or hear. Especially when I am unable to do anything about it. It is not simple or easy and even harder to escape. Our life is more accelerated and there is much more to do in one day.

We have e-mails, text messages, phones, TV, CD's videos, many electronic gadgets to facilitate reading or writing, a whole assortment of high tech things that have an effect on us human beings. Are we relating to each other as best as we could? Do we take time to pause? Does it make us more anxious?

Little children take anti-anxiety medicine and the other day, I talked to a friend who takes 2 drugs to stay calm and serene, or at least try to. Drugs and pills are so prevalent and can mask our behavior in many ways. Scientists are finding little by little the effect on us of all this relatively new technology. They are divided and so are we. I find that more people are having a hard time coping with all the delivery of high tech gadgets and long for a more relaxing yesterday. Only, this can be true for the ones who remember yesterday. But the children?

Do we live on a more violent planet? I wonder sometimes reading all of what the earth has been through. The history of our past is loaded with conflicts, wars, many challenges and epidemics and terrible things to face. We have evolved, but we are still the same human beings that lived off the land and raised our kids the best we could or hoped for a better shelter or a more lavish life. Our aspirations are no different from country to country. The basic human being has not changed that much over so many years. But changed it has, with the discovery of so many ways to make things happen and to change our lives. Horrible things like mass killings, suicide bombers, drone killings, latent terrorism, wars, unrest, inflation and unemployment has become a way of life. That is not pretty or even desirable in any way.

If my grandmother was alive now, she would have a hard time to integrate herself to all we play or are involved with everyday as if nothing. Even now, I write snail mail to my mother in law who does not use a fancy phone or the internet and to her sister for the same reasons. When my grandkids are here, they play video games and relish their Facebook accounts. Of course they also play on their bike or skateboard. My childhood was spent reading, painting and perched up in trees! The kids behave like kids to a certain extent. Compared to the way I grew up, there is a huge difference. But each generation faces the same changes.

So here I am with many questions and just a few answers. What do you think? Where are we going as a specie? What is happening to this Earth? What is on your mind? What about violence? What concerns you? What keeps you awake at night? Are we better off today?

Please leave your answers. Consider this blog as a forum for your thoughts and our common feelings as humans. As the planet evolves, there is a price to pay and as we express our worries and our appreciation as well, things become clearer. Let me hear about you. You can leave a comment, become a follower of this blog and we can touch a reality that we can create commonly as humans. I will be waiting.

Some links to read that illustrate my text:

http://video.pbs.org/video/1883045635

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/age-of-man/anthropocene-photography

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/signs/chap7.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13089758

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13185499

In Anticipation of Spring

2011-04-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

I was going to write about the marvels of Spring and to my surprise this morning, I woke up to a thin layer of snow and temperatures well below the fifties as we had been getting used to for the last few weeks. In Colorado we get our snow in the Spring and it is hard to know when to cover up and when to let a little skin show. Days vary so much. But Spring is in the air, not just on our minds. The little Forsythia I planted a few years ago between my neighbor and us is showing many leaves or petals and the trees in front of our house are greening.

I, like many people tired of winter, am giddy over the coming Spring and we all relish the warmer temperatures that bring us closer to this beautiful time of the year. I never appreciated before the difference between the cold days of winter and the rest of the year. I lived in Miami years ago when a rare cold spell would strike sometimes, but the trees and plants forever showed a lush look with bushes full of blooms, rapid growth and exotic colors. A very exuberant environment that clashes with our semi arid climate here and the plants that manage to grow in it.

This is a fantastic time for street performers. I was in Boulder yesterday with my husband. We had gone to Greeley to see the "Riverdance" show which was just fantastic. We admired the Celtic dancers that enticed everybody to get up and move wildly with their elaborate step patterns that contrast with their rather stiff upper body. We both loved it and the haunting music still rings in my ears. Boulder was not too far, so we slept in a hotel there to go to Pearl street the next day. It was full of people and street performers who bring their talents and their ability to gather a crowd on this pedestrian mall.

As we strolled down the street looking for our favorite art galleries we came across a man with a great sense of humor and acrobatic abilities who was perched high on a unicycle talking to the crowds and doing his tricks. In his hands he had a few lit batons that he juggled along with a sword. He got a little boy to be a part of the show. And as high as he was, managed to catch his hat with his raised foot while still up in the air. People happily gathered around him and most everybody was happy to drop a few dollars in his hat when he was finished.

A bit further down was a lovely girl with a violin that played beautifully some classical music themes, full of longing and memory. The sounds she created were so beautiful it made me think of my mother who was so fond of the violin and would cry sometimes when it played.

We visited a few more blocks and found a man against a huge boulder preparing to play the didgeridoo. He had nailed to the instrument a few rasps and had one more in his pocket. Then with his eyes closed he proceeded to touch lightly his heart chakra and retreat obviously into his creative and higher self. Then he began to play. The sounds were amazing as he blew in his didgeridoo and struck his rasps with a stick both on the one he had attached to his instrument plus the one in his pocket. The result was very soothing and quite deeply haunting and most unexpected. I liked it a lot. My husband photographed him.

After a full day, we started the ride home. We had spent the whole time outdoors and observed the tulips coming out of the grounds, the early daffodils, the budding trees and their reflections in nearby windows. So many people traversed the mall laughing and taking pictures, eating ice cream, thriving on a balmy weather to let us know that even though it snowed today, Spring is coming around here after all.

We Live on a Trembling Earth

2011-03-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

We live on a trembling earth. The new earthquake in Japan with its horrific tsunami, the unimaginable loss of life and the nightmare of a possible nuclear meltdown remind us, after the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, that nature runs us in a big way. Earth is very old, it has gone through its cycles and repeats again what it has done in the past. Mankind is a new phenomena on the planet and even though we have become the top dogs here, we are no match for the land when it shows its moods, its might and power.

The awful destruction in Japan reminds me of how vulnerable and insignificant creatures we are after all. Even if we construct the incredibly tall buildings like in Dubai, and set huge bridges across the water like the Kobe-Awagi bridge in Japan, carve long tunnels like the Delaware Aqueduct in New York, set rails across countries, all our tectonic plates have to do is shake a bit and we are at risk of losing it all.

In 1974 I lived in Lima, Peru, when a very bad earthquake took me by total surprise early in the morning as I was bathing my young daughter while my son rode his bicycle outside in the front of the house. The noise started slowly at first and intensified to an indescribable roar; a sound I will never forget. I hurriedly took my daughter to the middle of the garden where the terrified maid had already taken refuge and handed her my daughter. I went back inside the house while the earth was shaking and books and things were falling down all around me; the earth, normally always under my feet, was failing my every step, undulating wildly. I found my neighbors all in a circle hugging each other on the moving street and my son, on his bike. He ran toward me and said innocently "Mom, is there something wrong?" I grabbed him frantically, ran again inside the house and rejoined the maid and my daughter. It was still shaking and the walls of our living room were parting in the middle like a big mouth opening and closing. Our cat was trying frantically to climb over the tall wall covered with ivy. I thought the shaking would never end. My husband came home horrified, took his cameras and went through the devastated city numb under a cloud of dust and debris that hovered for days. Lima was a sad sight.

The aftershocks were so many one could not find a Valium anywhere in town. It lasted over a month with some tremors strong enough to scare the daylight out of you. I went to bed every night with my car and house keys and my purse next to my bed in case I had to wake up the kids and quickly escape the place at night. It was a sheer nightmare. This was "only" an earthquake of 7.2 on the Richter scale compared to Japan's recent 9.1. But it killed 304 people and devastated over 4000 buildings. I had been in earthquakes before in Mexico where the maid had jumped in my arms after my mother, who was visiting was telling me the advantages of having an older maid who would be the responsible one. We both had a good laugh over it afterward. Because of my familiarity with many earthquakes and their aftermath in many countries, including Colombia, I identify enormously with all the human beings that suffer through them and their inevitable aftershocks and huge destruction.

I found out that the earth shakes all the time. Most days and everywhere. Many of its movements are felt and many are barely noticed. But once a big one happens, the whole community of countries is alert since we have become this global village with the speed of our instant communications and instant messages plus the world-wide presence of the internet.

So we are not safe ever. Safety is an imaginary feeling, the calming thought that we are okay, but it is just a dream. I think of the importance of living life doing what we love and loving all the people that touch us and inspire us to be more than we are. I think of all our family of friends and blood and the need to share our love and our feelings. The need to say what we think and express who we are. The need to be honest with ourselves and honor our integrity.

After all, we are just creatures moving on big tectonic plates fighting odds against the planet with the possibility of seeing our creations destroyed. It may happen and it may not. We can only hope for the better. It takes a lot of courage and a sort of huge arrogance to do what we as humans do. But earth will survive. It has been a part of the galaxy for eons of time. Our beautiful Milky Way that we observe in total awe at night.

We may go on and survive as a species and we may not. Time will tell.

See the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Peru

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageearth

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre
Edited by Barry Kaplan

When a Cat Comes To Visit

2011-03-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

The cat looks at us from his high perch on top of the kitchen cabinet. Big round eyes glowing with discovery stare at me. The tail flicks in the air. This is Miso, my daughter's big cat. He is spending time with us so she can be on vacation. He entered our quiet life and brought with him the old concerns about his safety that we used to expend upon our children long time ago. My husband, Barry, created for him soft landing spots on our sofa in the living room so he could jump from his high perch unharmed -- but he never looked at it and lands carefully by its side.

Miso the Cat

Miso jumping to his perch

Then Barry created a step on our bookcase leading to the high spot by adding my thickest books to its top but the cat ignores it and just jumps amazingly where he wants to go. It is a big distance from the shelf top to the perch but he does it as he would take a stroll in the garden. Daringly and elegantly.

In other words, we have become like new parents while he does of course what he wants; prideful creature that cats are. He also showed us incredible catlike affection, turning his tummy up for us to pet him, sitting on Barry's lap while he would tell me "Answer the phone, I cannot move!" I would look at his face in total bliss and laugh watching his hands stroke the cat's fur.

Miso allowing Barry to pet him

The pets in our life pack with them a whole lot of joy and activate new concerns, keep us entertained, bring us the happiness that our unpredictable life sucks out of us at times. I remember a friend in Florida who photographed pets, told me that they were our kids especially after our children were gone and had started their adult lives. I had proof of that with so many people around me loving the furry, feathery or fuzzy creatures we have as pets.

I sometimes look at Miso with wonder thinking how another specie has come to be our friend and adopt us as foster parents although our pets run our lives in many delightful ways. I peek in the mystery of Miso's green eyes and wonder often about his allegiances, his choices, his ancestors past as an older predator and his familiarity with us, his human friends now. It is itself a great mystery and a marvelous step in our development. I know the scientists have their theory but I retain the mysterious approach of the cat to my life as a compelling tale of friendship and attachment.

It is a proven fact that pets are important to our well being and keep us alert, alive, involved. They are our companions, often our lifeline, as many handicapped people can attest.

We have had many cats. Mimi was one of our favorites. We went with him through the destruction and the horrors of Hurricane Andrew and traveled with him from Miami to Colorado when we took my small Honda and explored the state. I remember the big orange tabby that he was, looking out of the little car, waiting every day to eat until we reached a motel at night even though we had provided him with his cat litter and food bowl to no avail. We would stop at dusk at a motel that would not always welcome pets. We would sneak him in at night and hope for the best only to find him at the window in the morning innocently looking out giving his presence away.

The day he died, he came to my studio already so bony and sad and I petted him till he retired in the adjacent guest room to die silently. I discovered him later and wrapped him in my best shawl to grieve alone until my husband came home.

In our case now, we cannot keep a cat when show season starts as we are often gone for several weeks at a time. We tried with Coz, a brown tabby, but once when we returned from a trip, my friend the cat sitter had left me many notes telling me that she never saw the cat who hid under the bed every day when she came to change his cat litter and check on his food and drink. The cat would miss us horribly and we would miss him as well. After a while he became almost neurotic and we gave him to a good family with children where he thrived.

But we miss all our furry ones and I envision the day when a cat will delight us again. Not just for a few weeks as it is now, but every day as I want it to be. I like cats since they stand for what they want and not what I want; their sense of self and undeniable regal attitude, their great dignity and purr and their quiet affection. They would climb on me if I was sick and lay on my stomach purring. They were great healers concentrating at making me well in the silence of the night.

Of course people like all kinds of creatures that add to their life in some manner. Our pets are our companions that speak in their own way and tell us tales of love and loyalties. For many that is enough, but for me, their mystery enhances my life and adds a taste of the wild even though they are tame, and make me a constant care giver.

Mystery of Miso

The Self Image

2011-02-21T08:19:00.000-08:00

I have made a huge decision. For me it is huge. I have decided to let my hair go natural which is most likely... all white. I have decided this because I have lost a lot of hair and it is a way to avoid all the chemicals of hair color. It should be simple, but for me, it is a big change. When I talked to my grandchildren about it, they told me "We cannot imagine you with white hair." I told them "Neither can I."

Since I was a kid my hair has been dark brown. This is the image of me that countless mirrors in many parts of the world have reflected to me. Over the years, I started to grow gray hair that came relatively early in my mid thirties. I guess it was a family thing since I remember my mother and grandmother both with beautiful white hair. But my grays had an easy fix. A colorant, and my hair was like it always was before. Dark brown. That went on for a long time.

My "raccoon" self

Over the years, my hair would get thinner until I looked at myself in the mirror one day and thought "I need to put a stop to this." The result is big white roots and the look of a real life raccoon. I know, I could have my hair color stripped at the beauty salon but it means more chemicals and that was not acceptable to me. So I keep it short, cut the dark tips and hope for the best.

Women have been coloring their hair for a long time. Since Egyptian times there was evidence that they used hair colorant like Henna. In old Egypt, women spent a great deal of time on elaborate coiffures and wigs; over the years people wore their hair powdered, gray, propped, curled, long, tied, frizzy or wavy, treated; now we let hair fall mostly unnaturally with the help of many salon experts, products and many colors and additions to choose from.

Here in Colorado many men and women let theirs go gray naturally and the impact is lesser than going suddenly white like mine. I can imagine other people looking at me and wondering "What happened?" which brings me to the idea of self image. I will have to get used to this new woman who will look back at me from the mirror and smile as if I should have known her all my life. But no, she is new to me and will be new to many others.

How is the image we have of ourselves? I have had skinny friends who see themselves as fat. And fat ones who seem to think that they have a slim body. We create an imaginary self not necessarily anchored in reality who says "hello" to others and walks the streets with us like our own double.

Many women do not like to have their photo taken. The image they see on paper or on computers does not reflect the idea they have of themselves. Faced with having to see an image they do not like, they stay far from the lens.

Celebrities like movie stars have a look that is often man-made and the image we see of them in films or on TV is not the one they have once the make up person is gone. But we like their double and their image stays in our memory. I have a tendency to imagine friends as they looked to me the last time I saw them, which is pretty far out and wrong. Many I have not seen for a long time. I imagine a full grown woman I knew as the lovely child she once was, and never got to rid my self of that image since we only e-mail now. The same goes for many others that I knew in the past.
"How," I wonder "do they see themselves?"

I once was on the plaza of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and saw a very old lady with jazzy boots and pink leggings, a belt with a riot of rhinestones and a top covered by a glorious design accented with gold and silver. Her face was made up outrageously with blond hair cascading in curls over her shoulders. Like a tragic-comic icon, the image stayed with me and I can see that she never accepted her age; her self image was that of a fantastic youth whose looks then beckoned others.

How do you see yourself? Young, thin, fat, not so fat, hair unchanged even after years of living? Good even if it is not how others see you? Bad even if you look fine to your friends?

Do not worry. Most people are too busy to care truly. They see us through lenses of friendship or love (bless them) or through distracted lenses while they are busy thinking of something else. We live at such a hurried pace, forever ahead of ourselves, or focused on children, TV, the phone or the computer; the next meeting, the next presentation, the visit in front of the boss, or what to shop for and cook for the family; we hardly remember the looks of others no matter the care they put into their self image. Yet the world seems to demand and market a great look. Each company battles the other for our infatuation and loyalty.

After all, we dress and use makeup primarily for us. Or so it should be. Our length of hair, our haircut or its color should be of no great importance in a world that supposedly would keep its priorities on hearts and feelings, thoughts, discoveries, wisdom and its results. But as long as our looks matter as greatly as they do in our world, we will keep on getting implants, operations, Botox injections, body enlargements or reductions, hair coloring and clothes to stay ahead of what is only -- a game; and at that, a game perpetuated by big business.

Now, I better go back and get used to that woman who is calling me in the mirror. After all, she is the real me now.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre
Edited by Barry Kaplan

Our Choices

2011-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

When I was very little, I knew I would be an artist. I spent hours drawing and painting, I took classes with other famous artists, I believed I could do it. I had my first exhibit when I was sixteen. I am still an artist after so many years doing one of the things I know how to do well: art.

So these were my choices and every day I feel entranced with the joy of creating, of harboring new ideas, of dreaming about my art and never failing to visualize or to imagine -- a way to fill my consciousness and a gift I share with so many.

Life, I learned, is about making choices. Some of our choices are conscious and some are not. Some are made for us by others and we go along or we rebel. Some choices are insinuated to us and we are in for the ride. Some choices we feel we have to do, whether by tradition or to please someone dear. All of our choices have multiple consequences. Not all are good and not are all bad.

First, it separates us. Choosing a career, a job, a partner, a friend, or a lover is a great separator. It dictates a course and no other. It is like choosing a certain path and ignoring the other road. A door opens and we walk through it while many possible others close along the way. If I were an architect I would live my life with others in this field and envision new styles for homes or buildings, talk to contractors, investors or entrepreneurs and in no way would I live the life of a singer or an actor. The separation is obvious then.

Doing my art is great but as a consequence I work every day all by myself in my studio facing my beads, my pen or my colors. I have to travel to show my work, I work hard some times late into the night, but so many do. No co worker. No one to talk to occasionally but my husband when I take a break. My good friends are mostly artists, my husband is a photographer. Walk into my house and the amount of original art, mine and from others, the yellow and purple walls, the red door, says right away that this is the house of an artist. I made a choice. These are some of the consequences.

We are aware of our path in life by the way it shapes our lives; restricts it or enhances it. Choosing and making decisions is the essence of living.

If we go to buy a shirt, so many are offered in multiple stores that choosing one becomes an exercise in decision. I will take this one and no other. But sometimes, we cannot choose. We wander down the store and walk out with our hands empty. No choice is a choice as well. We spend all day making decisions about everything. Thankfully, our tastes and habits dictate many of our choices so they are made automatically. Sometimes.

Coffee in the morning or tea. Eggs or toast. Shower as we wake up or at night? Pink lipstick or red one. Lunch out or at home. Afternoon at work or afternoon in front of the computer? What to cook? Do I choose to paint or to watch the latest movie? Do I kiss him or not? Do I discipline my kids or not? So many choices. Every day and all day. How do we know which choice is the best?

I have taken the habit to listen to my intuition for everything. It works. Most of the time. My husband's training was in engineering. His mind functions in a radically different way. He asks me how long do I cook this. I tell him "Usually I know it is ready by the way it smells around the house." It leaves him completely frustrated. But my nose is as good as his timer.
I get a feeling to go shopping and lo and behold the pants I wanted are on sale. He relies on the sales adds. We approach life in a different way. But who is to say that my way is THE way?

We all make choices according to our character and the consequences vary enormously. If I choose to paint my sky yellow on a new canvas, it is fine with me, but to the viewer it could be outrageous. It gets to be complicated. Our choices have different effects on others. They could like them or hate them. Most of our friends are people who support our choices and are themselves part of our path.
But once in a while, we meet someone so different, someone who walks a whole other way than ours and takes us to investigate their domain. How fun to discover someone elses different choices and consider how, if we would have chosen them, our life would have unfolded?
Sometimes we even move to someone elses territory and adopt the choices that they inspired us to make.

Many people find that they have to make mid-life changes of careers to fit their personality better. They have evolved and need a new choice. I know a man who used to be a great executive with a large company who now is a father-house- husband while his wife is a new teacher. Another friend of mine used to be an artist and is now a physician assistant. Another switch and another choice.

If tomorrow you are conscious of all the choices you have to make, you can be more effective in making them, or you can simply smell the room and you will know when the chicken is ready ... that is my way. Let your intuition guide your choices and have a good meal. Or set your timer -- for many, it works just as well.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre
Edited by Bary Kaplan

Love, our foundation

2011-01-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

The stores have just barely finished selling Christmas stuff and already they are showing things in various shades of pink and mostly heart shapes, to remind us all that Valentine's day is coming. So whether we recognize it or not, love is in the air and that makes me think of love's many meanings and the ways it insinuates itself in our lives.

Are we talking about the love we fell into not to ever come out again, or the love we fell into happy to emerge later on -- bruised and sore? Are we talking of this deep connection we feel with others of either sex that bring them close to our hearts and precious to our lives? Are we talking about the great, sudden infatuation that grabs us and invades our beings and dreams for awhile? Are we talking about this life-lasting feeling, deep and sound, that bonds us to our mate and lives though hard and better times? Well, the reasons are infinite, just as much as the feelings of what we all have experienced and stashed in a deep place of our memory.

Is is pink? Is is heart shaped? These are the colors and forms a material society has placed on something indescribable and so vivid and true that we cannot think of life without the ones we really love.

In my case, my love takes on so many forms and colors, all part of me, like a magical rainbow over my head in the sky of my life.

I love my whole family and so many added family members, friends, things, my house, my art, my life, people I adopt here and there, old pets, and more remotely, the whole planet of people and our life on this earth.

How could I not love what is a part of me and responds to my whims and fuels my thoughts and actions? What gives me life and inspiration everyday and propels me to grow and become a better me? Or, so I hope.

Love is a weird feeling. It invades our thoughts and minds in great secrecy at times and infiltrates itself to many parts of our beings and one day we are taken over, like by terrorists, and we succumb to our fate with a happy heart. Sometimes it is a very confrontational issue. It hits us over the head and we fall in its grabs with surprise and glee.

I remember when my grandchild was born ten years ago. I was in the room as he appeared to this earth and I looked at his red, swollen face and loved him instantly. I remember in Mexico totally in awe as I looked at my child, loving its very being and wondering how my husband and I could have created such wonder.

It took some days for love to brew as my actual hubby and I walked on the boardwalk in Miami, his first kiss left me breathless. A love still lasting. Add to that, countless beings that elicited love in its many shades and I know for sure that life is about loving and nothing could match love's fascination and intricacies. And we must remember that our love of people in the past does not necessarily die, but goes to a quieter place.

We do not love because of fate or accidents, we love because we are essentially in need of love. It makes us stronger and nobler -- real samurais of our passions. Love, real love, is not a weak feeling; it fuels a huge desire for us to be the strong defender of our hearts and many have died because they have loved.

I guess I will look at all the hearts in the store with more empathy. Gaudy, silly things as they are, they remind me of how empty my life would be without all of the ones I love. Valentine's day is no more than a reminder; and our feelings of loving are kept safe in the vault of our consciousness, because we would not be here on earth, unless love (hopefully) had something to do with it.

Copyright 2011 Micheline Brierre
Edited by Barry Kaplan

Intentions And Resolutions

2010-12-29T08:02:00.000-08:00

This is the time of the year when our minds considers the infinite realms of resolutions and intentions.
It is great to sit down and envision a better self as well as a better world. Will we read more books? Listen to more diverse music? Exercise some more or exercise at all? Eat more wholesome food? Be kinder to our spouse? Lose some weight? so many possibilities. Endless thoughts enter and exit our minds. The year that looms ahead is full of promises, but stays like a book, closed to our vision. Inscrutable, a blank book filled with the lusciousness of the unknown and the invite of our best resolutions and intentions.

Some of them we keep alive and struggle to make happen. But many are abandoned like field flowers on the wayside of our path. So many years become a repetition of the one past and our many resolutions and intentions live only in our minds and we feel remorse and guilt for all the forgotten possibilities we had planned for the future.

Along the years, I have learned not to make drastic changes. Maybe turn my thoughts a little bit one way and my vision a little bit the other way, open my feelings more, consider what I can do in my own mind. Like a fisherman, cast my bait and wait with not too much expectation but just the joy of the moment. It could mean unexpected changes, but it could simply mean the continuation of a line of thoughts and inner doings that I extend to the next year.

Some things are here to stay. Bills will come, we will pay our taxes, summer will happen and the earth will spring flowers on our door steps. Children will be born and some of us will die.
The planet will continue its revolutions around the sun and the cycle of the seasons will come again to fit our preferences.

In other words, life will go on as we know it. So what will change with the new year? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. An earthquake could happen anytime, a revolution, a war, a huge hike in our insurance, a fallout with our best friend or the pleasure of knowing someone new and discovering a new land. How much is due to our resolutions and intentions? maybe nothing, maybe a lot and maybe it is not due to our resolutions but to the ones of those in power and the simple movements of the earth. And also to the changes in the other people psyche, something that we have no power on.

Personally what do I want? more time to write, more time to create, more pen &and ink drawings, more time with my loved ones, maybe a neat trip to Europe or a trip around the states that I have not visited, more and more people to read this blog, and much more of my own inner life. Being in touch with my own feelings, my guidance and the world surrounding me would be an added bonus.

I wonder how much of this will materialize...I know that work will intrude and take me away, that life will interfere one way or the other. But maybe as everyone else, some of my desires will go ahead with the force of a running champion and show me that indeed, my dreams can happen. It is good to let go and envision a life where my desires are met.

Everyone could be thinking the same things and all our desires merge in the collective unconscious to create a strange global soup that eventually is here to confront us. It makes me laugh. Everyone has an intention, and many of our intentions collide!

But it is good to let go and imagine as John Lennon did, a better world, a better year when we thrive and blossom, when our intentions and resolutions line up with some fabulous world happening and we can smile knowing that the year ahead is what we all wanted.

Here are some ways to wrap the year nearly past and learn from all its happenings.

Ask yourself these questions, alone or with some trusted friends.

How was this year? Get an overall view of the year.

What did I not like?

What did I learn?

What did I enjoy the most?

Happy regrouping!

Copyright Dec 2010, Micheline Brierre

The Time To Love

2010-12-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

The kitten looked at us with wide innocent eyes wondering what all the fuss was about. My Dad had brought us the Christmas tree -- which in Haiti was not easy to find-- and we had set it up in the living room while waiting to bring the box or ornaments and decorate it. It was an irresistible attraction to our kitten who jumped on it and climbed to the top investigating the side branches. We were flabbergasted and at the same time laughing, as he cast a look of total surprise to us from the top of his perch. Getting him down was a challenge in itself but that is another story. That was the beginning of the Christmas season for us and I still smile remembering.

How far it seems compared to my life now in Colorado with our dry weather ( so far) and fairly mild one that seems to some very unseasonal and to me -- wonderful. I was born in an island of the Caribbean and the lack of snow is normal to me.

I still remember my first Christmas as a young and inexperienced bride in Mexico City having put the turkey in the oven and expecting it to be ready in a few hours. Well, we waited and I cried and checked on the bird in despair and it was not until late in the afternoon when the thing was finally cooked. I could have looked in cook books but figured on my own that if I could cook a chicken, a turkey was not much different. Mistake! In Haiti we had a cook who took care of such things but my ignorance paid off. Now I can cook the bird and enjoy Christmas.

I am on a sort of a semi vacation. My studio calls me but I have many other things to do. I recently joined a mostly fiber group to satisfy my craving for wool and threads ever since in Columbia I walked in the studio of one of my artist friend and Gallery owner at the time, Marlene Hoffman. I was so thrilled by the variety of yarn tossed in baskets and waiting to be woven into her tapestries that it has became a life long love of mine. The Fiber group recently put up a sale and show and more than twenty artist participated with unusual scarves with little windows made out of transparent fabric in the middle of felted material and others in a fantastic textured silk all ruffled, beckoning and so fulfilling to the eyes. Many handmade purses caught my eyes and I bought some little triangles sachets made of fabric, lined in interesting colors like a mini container and big enough to display an earrings to give to someone dear. Jewelry hang from a copper tree and fantastic work from Karen Pierce and Marc Jenesel filled a corner with their fabulous shapes. Many other intricate towels were woven in complex designs and warm colors. I loved being there.

This is the time for shows by artists of all kind and the stores are also beckoning us with the Christmas music piped in to set the stage plus all of their displays to grab our attention. I must say I love all the excitement of walking in the aisles of a store smiling at some women while others look rather harried and rushed. I look for a gift for a certain person that is my way of saying to them; I have loved you all year long, this is one of the ways I can show you. Of course our love is so encompassing it would be a bit meager to equal it with a gift, but our giving is just a form of expression and as such, getting it is a real pleasure.

It was my husband birthday recently and some friends of ours Paul and Julie, had us over for dinner and at the end brought a good chocolate cake and a gift bag for him. It was filled with so many interesting and wonderful things to please a man and I thought how hard it is for me to pick a gift for the guys. They seem to love things that seem so foreign to me unlike all the goodies that a woman loves; like perfume, silly clothes, purses, jewelry, frilly scarves, fragrant soaps, creams, in short, what makes us women the prime shoppers all over.

This is to me a magical time of the year. I just finished putting up the tree with my daughter's help and now it is all decorated and with so many ornaments, some very old that bring many memories. It stands up in a corner of our living room and glows as I write.

I realize that Christmas time is loaded with sadness for many different reasons. The loss of a dear one this time of the year, the feeling of being overwhelmed with shopping and and the stress of getting the right presents and the pressure of it. Others celebrate Hanukkah and not Christmas but also have to buy presents. For many, Christmas is a religious Holiday, a time to remember that it was the birth of Christ. Which is great but this time of the year can indeed be difficult. I myself do enjoy the spirit that brings us together and the celebratory feeling inside myself that propels me daily to go out and bathe in the ambiance as also we say goodbye to the year passed.

So we have no cats to climb our tree but I have a whole guest room full of gifts and paper, scissors. tape, and cards to finish the presents and come to the glorious day with joy.
My cards with many addresses filled the living room table and music remind me that so many artist created symphonies and songs to delight us and to live forever. My husband found for me a bag of precious gifts I bought months ago and could not find anywhere. He tends to be my finder! So I can wrap them now. I am almost ready to go to the post office and mail to loved ones that live far away the little things that will tell them; I love you much....To me, this is the time to show how we love and be loved back. The gifts are all a good pretext.

This Christmas as so many others bring so many memories engraved in my heart and so many more to come and the joy is endless. Cheers!

How Things Talk to Us

2010-12-04T16:58:00.000-08:00

In my house there are things I love. A little silver goblet that once belonged to my grandmother and that she took everyday with her to the bathroom to brush her teeth. A large sterling silver plate hand hammered that reminds me of my life in Peru and my friend Isabelle. Three orchids, waiting to bloom, these delicate but sturdy spray of flowers that last a few months; and many handmade objects by artists whose work I love. Many paintings on the wall, and my books, my brushes and beads, cherished objects that delight me everyday and remind me that this is where I love to be -- this is my home.

Objects have the powerful effect of bringing with them all sorts of memories and enable us to go back in time and relive past moments that once meant a lot to us and maybe still do. My collection of blue glass was mostly built in Lima, Peru when I once went visiting the studio of a woman artist whose work seemed to bring me back to the Caribbean sea with its vivid colors and shades. I put them in my window and enjoy the warmth of the early morning sun shining through all the blues of my youth.

Why do we enjoy things so much? What appeal do they have on our psyche and our soul?
Some things have an affinity with us, they call to us and have a certain appeal that is irresistible. It can last a lifetime or just some months. It facilitates the exchange of money and feeds the pockets of so many who create such objects or make them in their studio or their factories.

I have some paintings by my friends Deb Komitor, Laura Reilley and Tracy Miller who delight me everyday. Some of my old oil paintings are a constant reminder of the passing of time and the beauty of the past as well as the anticipation of what could happen in the future. What will these artist create next? What will happen in their life to make them tackle a piece of clay or ceramic? My husband and I have some dishes and bowls and cups by the local and much loved artists Tina and Ken Riesterer and every time I touch them, I can see both of their faces laughing or talking to me. I go back to my time at the artist Co-op and there they are, sitting with me in the group.

Then there are old things that bring people back to us like a gift of the past. I have a little bonnet hand crocheted by my grandmother that is so tiny it could fit over an orange. Yet it was my hat when I was just a baby and it reminds me of my roots, my beginnings and the huge trajectory of my life with its turns and bumps and its uniqueness. My parents are alive in little frames in my studio and look at me from the high shelf. My poet uncle casts his sad eyes on me and I look back at him with gratefulness.

There is nothing like an album of photos to bring old memories back and faces we recall or have almost forgotten, brought to us by the magic of the camera and the old films now obsolete. Many of my friends are gone but their photos tells me of their presence on the planet and their place in my heart. The man who brought me a box of live butterflies is captured in black and white and looks at me from my studio. My ring collection is a testimony of my travels and the presence of my two husbands ex and new who have given them to me and put me everyday with the choice of wearing one or the other. And there is the large tapestry from Thailand that I have hanging in the back of my bed. It is full of life and shines with gold and rust and I remember the trip my daughter and I took to Cambodia and Bangkok and my complete awe at the population's sense of exquisite beauty and incredible, unique craftsmanship.

But of course things can also bring us to materialism; the compulsion to buy and buy just to accumulate more things than we can live with. Our country here is a good example of this as ahead of every season, the stores fill up with so much goods made in China or any other country. The store's owners are good at merchandising and tempt us with their goods. Such a variety of things, of clothes, of household items to entice us to spend our money while we accumulate more objects. How do we resist?

Could we recycle some of our goods? Send them off to others who might need them? I am in the process of getting rid of some of my books. I realize that they have no place in my life anymore. I have piles of them in my house ready to be given away and make room for the new. Will I get rid of my cherished objects? I do not know yet. The connection is there but can fade away. It will be time to let go. I have had to let go of many things in my lifetime. Having lived in many countries, some things could not be kept. I hope they made some others happy. With every move, I have given away some great amount of things and acquired some new ones. Yet some of my cherished objects still are with me, stimulating memories, they linger and bring me some joy.

Like one of my large paintings that I painted when very young; a composite of the old country with its beauty and symbols it stands now in my living room symbolizing my roots; powerful and bold, an image of what I search for in life.

Some objects become a part of us. They make us recall, they make us revere, they make us admire, or they make us smile or be grateful. No one can tell us to get rid of them; only a signal from inside that says "It is time now." Yet there are some people who can live with just what they need everyday and want nothing else to take their attention away. Monks or nuns, ascetics, or simply people that hold all their life within and need not the constant presence of things. I am not such a person. The things in my life are chosen because of a calling from my soul and will stay with me until it will be time to pass them away. We take nothing with us when we die. Our cherished things go and delight someone else or leave our heirs in complete indifference. Life keeps unfolding while more things get acquired..

Indeed, we are of two worlds at the same time and the material is a part of us no matter how spiritual we are.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre
Edited by Barry Kaplan

Water

2010-11-17T09:32:00.000-08:00

The rain filled our cistern that was under the basement in our house in Port-au-Prince Haiti. I was a very young girl (which was a long time ago) and always the cistern interested my brother, my sister and me. We used to sneak out and open the cover unknown to the maids or our parents, to slide in, like in a dark cave and fall in the coolness that invaded our soul. It was fed by rain water collected from our roof. It should have given me an appreciation for the scarcity of water -- but that came later. After all, we were surrounded with water since we lived on an island.

I remember going to the beach every time we could and relishing our outings along a coral reef. We took a small motor boat way out off the shore to swim between long and luminous coral formations with so many diverse Caribbean fishes. The attraction of the deep and the height of the coral formation seemed irresistible to us; it was like an underwater fortress full of life and unimaginable riches. The beauty, the shapes and colors it displayed overwhelmed me.

One time I got off the boat while my friends were getting in. Alone and armed with my spear gun, I was safe. I swam to a place all sunlit and looking like a pool; white sand, with the light falling on a slant and creating marvelous patterns, maybe twelve feet under me. I was mesmerized. Suddenly I knew I was being watched. A barracuda, a huge one -- I remember it being huge -- was swimming creating neat circles around me. My brother-in-law who was like a fish himself had told me many stories about Barracudas. In the Caribbean they are the next most dangerous fish after sharks. I froze, nearly dropping my gun that I trailed along my side instead of using it, and started to swim toward the boat knowing that I could not out swim a Barracuda but taking my chances anyway. It was a simple reaction in my mad pursuit to safety.

My friends on the boat waved at me, smiling from a distance when I lifted up my head to get my bearings, until they noticed that my swimming was at a pace much too fast for being normal. They put the boat in gear and I arrived to it out of breath, barely able to tell them that a Barracuda wanted me for his next lunch.

One of our friends puffed up his chest, macho that he was, and told me "I will bring you your Barracuda." Just moments later, he, too, was swimming at full speed toward the boat. "My god a huge Barracuda," I never forgot!

Water was a pleasure and an adventure. We loved swimming at the time. With my sister's family, we went to a river on the outside of the city to spend a day of picnicking and fun. We settled on its shore and found a green pool where my sister and I took off our bikini tops and talked and laughed a storm, once in awhile shooing our curious husbands away. It is one of my best memories of this time, sitting in the water and watching our families downstream swimming and kicking water.

But I live now in Colorado where water is becoming scarce with the weather changes out West. We live inland and rely totally on our lakes and rivers. I live close to a lake created by a dam and it is already maybe 10 feet or more below its original level. Its sandy borders lay dry and whitish and remind me every time I pass by that water is indeed the stuff of life.

When I do the dishes by hand, I turn off the water and first wash everything with only my sponge being soapy wet, then rinse them with a diminished flow of water. My husband saves water while his shower warms up and captures it in bottles labeled "plants." We do what we can. I keep thinking of so many women or children who have to walk each day to the nearest source of water and bring it on their back to a simple, humble home. Water that is not necessarily potable. My water comes easily,safely in a faucet. In so many parts of the world clean water is a luxury. Many people are dying now is Haiti with its epidemic of cholera, a waterborne disease. When I went to Cambodia, we gave money to build a pump and a well and we hope it got used for the community that was so poor.

Clean water is our safety and our life giver. Water here comes from melting snows and ice that cover our mountains and feed the rivers. There is talk here of bringing more water to our growing city from the Pueblo reservoir one hour south of town.

The Colorado river that springs from Rocky Mountain National Park to irrigate the Western states is the source of many concerns and competing demands. The Colorado river feeds many towns in many states of the West where the water shortage is greatly alarming.

I like to think of my days spent at the beach where we spent time under a thatched beach umbrella waiting for the air to get hot to the skin in the afternoons; we would then close our eyes in ecstasy while cooling off in the nearby waters. Sometimes little fish nibbled at our skin and that was such a treat.

Whether ocean water or river or lake waters; they all are our most precious commodity. I think that water is also our big connection, our link. I remember sitting on the beach thinking that on one more shore around the world, in the same ocean, someone is also sitting by the beach and thinking of our sense of connection, our common humanity just as I was.

Ships connect us and run these deep routes of the world as they have for centuries. They run rivers as well as oceans and it makes with airplanes in the air, the global village our earth has become and will stay. Water is our life blood. After all, it makes us human; we are mostly water.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre
Editing by Barry Kaplan

The Sadness In Our Joy

2010-11-10T05:39:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine, younger than my daughter, has cancer and lives on the outside of Bogota, Colombia. She is struggling with the chemotherapy, lost her hair and eyebrows and and I would love to be there to give her a hug and encourage her along the way. I met her when I lived in Bogota and have kept in touch with her ever since. I have another friend who has had cancer and recently got re-operated on for the same reason as the first time.

I keep in touch with both of them by email and sometimes just thinking of what they go through is so very sad. It is what I call the sad part of my happiness and my joy.

Many things make us so sad. We must live with them and let them go in the flow of our lives while we know that our happiness is always present like in a deep lake even if many pebbles create ripples through our consciousness.

Also, I have another friend whose eye is affected by a retina that got displaced and she primarily sees only through her good eye now even though the other eye is making progress. I could go on and on. There is so much suffering out in the world and tuning into it sometimes is overwhelming.

Yet we go on living and guard our happiness like a squirrel guards its nuts before winter. We can be happy and sad at the same time even though it is hard to place the two together.
My happiness is like my base in life. It is the state in which my life has earned its place through much learning and much trust in my abilities, the struggles with myself and constant introspection. I came to a point of great peace that I trust to be a part of me at last. It encompasses many others whose life is an example of radiant beauty and a true inspiration.

My sadness comes in many ways. My husband's recent operation and his suffering, the news of the recent tsunami in Malaysia, the poor men in Chile that spent so long trapped underground, the cholera in Haiti, the many bombings in so many countries, the sickness in my friends, my sister's cat who got lost ... the list is endless.

Then there is my inability to make a difference, the sense of helplessness. Yet I know that the world always has been with its problems, its disasters, its sickness and its riotous joy.

We live in a huge dichotomy, happy and peaceful yet constantly battered with the hurts that life brings us. So I smile today and will feel like crying this afternoon but I live in great peace and my happiness is intact. It is the basic state where I live even if yet on the surface so many things are affecting my joy.

I have come to believe that life is a place both of sorrow and peace, yet also joy and sadness. It is a matter of accepting this fact that ultimately brings us solace and a smile on our face. So today I place my joy in the sacred place of my heart next to my acceptance of the intrusion of pain and accept both, as part of my humanness.

It is the role of time to teach us the duality of life, the incredible dichotomy that makes us laugh or cry or deviate from the straight course we had imagined for our path to also encompass the sadness that we must embrace as a part of living.

There are things I cannot do. My inability to act is a part of my suffering, yet those things make a better human out of me since they teach me empathy, they teach my feelings to enlarge and encompass a great bit of my consciousness. I can feel grateful, I can feel for others, I can feel how life flows by me with its greatness and its pain; I can feel all of life's discovery and its losses. I am a real being and I can praise the fact that everyday I can learn and grow and be me. I am always in a state of becoming.

I realize that if I did not feel pain, I would not be human; and if I was not human, I would also not be able to feel the joy; like the warm morning light upon my walls suddenly invading my house as a marvelous happening that lifts my happiness to a state of ecstasy.

Life indeed is a constant lesson and our sadness is wedded to our joy.

2010 Copyright Micheline Brierre
Edited by Barry Kaplan

A Dream Well Lived

2010-11-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

It comes so naturally to most of us; we forget how eerie and strange is our ability to recall. The memories we keep in our mind are ours alone and are like one-of-a-kind items in a smart boutique. Our memories are not to be compared to anyone else's and stay in our mind like stalactites in the darkness of a cave; but flash a light on one of them, and it plays itself like a melody replayed on demand at an encore performance on the stage of our life.

There is something magical and so taken for granted in the huge store of events suspended in our lifetime. Often my sister tells me "Don't you remember?" And I remember, but not exactly the same way she does. Sometimes an event that we both lived together is remembered differently. Life and our personality has filtered what we stored. Our memories are not only unique, they are made of all the things we have paid attention to or that caught our interest. The rest is remembered, maybe, or left to the passing of time and is easily forgotten like doves flying away from us. We recall what we loved and most often remember what we abhorred.

Remembering needs often a trigger. Something like a song, a smell, a face of our past, a sight, a sensation deeply felt. It soars then in our mind like a kite in the wind, lightly sometimes or with the power to overwhelm us.

I remember living in Lima, Peru and walking with my kids on the beach. Lots of little pebbles made all sorts of clicking sounds as we walked. The waves crashed on the beach. We came upon a little trickle of water running off from the hill above and small fish swam in the enticing little pool at its bottom. It was so unexpected. We found a cup and brought some of the fish home for our aquarium and settled them in. I remember coming to the kitchen where we kept them the next day and seeing nothing in the aquarium but the newcomer fish who had eaten the domesticated ones.

Then there are rite of passage memories, like kissing our first boyfriend, bathing in the ocean or having our first babies, smelling their scent and sniffing their skin or kissing our parents and the feeling of their no longer young skin, so soft it seems like butter. Or getting married or divorced; those moments that come in full force and that haunt us for life.

Our ability to recall is sometimes fading, or disappear as we age. Like Alzheimer's patients who look at their family and do not remember them. The absolute horror of it. It seems like a whole range of our life is lost when our memory goes. Forgetting our loved ones is saying goodbye to so many days of our life when we were happy and laughed or were angry or hurt, inspired or lazy but fully conscious. Our life goes in a dark hole of the mind and we are subject to live strictly in the present minute.

Our memories trace for us a path that we embrace as we grow and learn, become more of our true nature and face new moments to enrich ourselves. We recall, to relive our trajectory, correct its course, to know who we are, who we have been, or who we want to become. To sort through people we have met and save time for our best friends or the ones that make our soul soar.

It is not enough to remember; it is just as important to trace our future and cry over what is gone and smile at the days as they collect and create more moments to savor and bring up someday to our mind as a dream well lived.

2010 Copyright Micheline Brierre
Editing by Barry Kaplan

Happiness

2010-10-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

How is your level of happiness? What mood are you in when you wake up each day?

I have received an e-mail from my ex-husband about Happiness. It touched a real sensitive aspect of me and I wrote him a long e-mail about the subject. I wanted to express my thoughts and feelings about this important theme.

Happiness does not hit us on the head with a big bang. Its subtleties reach us in gentle manners. It just whispers softly in our ears and is brought with the wind as we wake up to greet the day. And I do not think that happiness is only a choice. That would be too easy. I think that happiness grows on us like a song and installs itself with some struggle in our psyche.

I strongly believe that happiness is the best celebratory feeling I know. It is filled with compassion and understanding and a sense of joy about one's self, one's actions, and life in general. If you add to all this an eye and appreciation for natural beauty, an ability to be generous and give, and an appreciation of all the wonders of the world and the day, we have a real graceful bliss. The courage to be happy is a great joy.

That of course does not mean we cannot be sad or grieve or encounter pain, it simply means that by choice, we place our focus on other things the best we can and enjoy our lives no matter what. The sadness, when embraced and accepted, not pushed out of sight or covered up, flows down the river of our days and leaves us stronger.

I am always surprised at people who have so much and maybe because they have so much are blown away by the slightest event or painful episode in their life. They have not experienced the strength that facing life's problems will create inside of us. We gain a real amount of confidence and resilience by showing our fighting spirit and putting order and joy in our lives especially when it is threatened.

In this country, many of us are now super spoiled with so many benefits, so many perks, so many gadgets, so many gifts and abundance that we consider all this a normal thing. Yet a great part of the world lives without any of it. When one of these perks is taken away, we often come close to collapse.

There are so many depressed people who have no reason, that I can see or know, to be depressed.

Doctors make a lot of money treating depression and sometimes have to end their treatment when their patient commits suicide; like a dear friend of mine who jumped last year from a tall bridge. Yet from all appearances, she and many others had everything they needed to be happy. I often wonder what goes on in their mind and what created the depression.

This is one of the reasons some older people are precious to me. They are part of another generation that has endured and appreciates the gifts of life. I remember a dear friend in Peru, an American, telling me that during the great depression he had to go to school without shoes, even in winter. That created in him an ability to face adversity and win. I went through many of the atrocities of the dictator Duvalier in Haiti, yet life is to me now an everyday event fit to celebrate.

I think that choosing to be happy is an evidence of lack of self-pity and a wonderful habit that we can encourage and nurture until it becomes ingrained. Our heart needs to soar and be present with our feelings and our relationship with others. Happiness can be filled with sadness and tears can be of great joy.

There are so many little reasons to be happy we can catch them like a fisherman on the shore and then take our catch home -- inside of us.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010
With editing by Barry Kaplan

The Gadgets of Our Time -- part II

2010-09-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

The comments I have received from my friends about "The Gadgets Of Our Time" were so convincing, so well thought of and so well written that I have decided to republish them and I hope you will enjoy what they had to say as much as I did.

Linda Ramsey said...: There is plenty to say about cyber-involvement these days. Or, should I say "lack of involvement" in real life? It is the rare person who can walk down the street without calling, answering, texting, listening to music, or twittering. How about those that are glued to facebook, emailing, Skyping, online porn, instant messaging, watching tv programs online, and "reading" kindle books? There is no question that these cyber connections result in obesity, inability to write a letter, lack of conversational communication, inability to write a story in longhand, lack of imagination, lack of outdoor play and exercise, and the like. Who needs a mouth anymore? All we need is cyber access and a pair of thumbs! HA! Do you recall the images of aliens with a small body, huge eyes and no mouth? Is this far off for us? It is enraging to see communication take this radical twist. We are developing a nation of solitary hermits who are quickly losing their innate skills! As long as there is an emotionally disconnected "voice" at the other end of an electronic device many are happy. But truly--how can they be happy? Did you know that there is no longer an emphasis on teaching students how to write longhand anymore? I forsee a huge amount of depression and related diseases affecting our modern times as a result. There is a huge need for humans to connect to others in an active manner. We need hugs, we need comforting, we need encouragement to bloom. How will this happen when our companions are "black boxes", with or without cords? Can you see yourself cozying up to a monitor and keyboard on a cold night? I don't think so. There is no subsitute for human companionship. In my world there is no worry that I will give up my "old fashioned" ways. I love to see the expression on a friend's face as I share good news. And know that a family member is holding my birthday card and letter in their hands. I will continue to use my cell phone at MY convenience and not allow that device to interrupt any time with family or friends. And driving will never be the place to phone or text when my mind is concentrating on the road. The computer is part of my professional life and a quick ability to email a friend--however, it will not steal away hours from my daily existence. TV will never fill in for a leisurely walk in the neighborhood or a favorite hiking trail. Our civilization must keep its eyes and ears open for new technology and new ways of doing--but not at the expense of our basic rights of life. All forms of communication have their place, and most new avenues are acceptable in moderation. Let's just stay AWARE.; September 29, 2010 7:26 AM
James Doering said...: We have high definition TV and another push for 3d in new technologys yet the highest definition and best 3d is a walk in nature, getting outside and getting active.; September 30, 2010 7:04 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear Micheline, I just read your blog on The Gadgets of our Time and I could not agree more with you that these "gadgets" (and I use one of them, a cell phone) are getting in the way of our person to person communication. I have also observed at times a family at a restaurant where the kids were all busy either texting (and what an absolute nuisance that has become) or playing with their playstations or whatever those things are called. I was taking the son of a friend (11 years) to Flagstaff recently, trying now and then to have a conversation, but was constantly silenced because he was in the middle of some game or other. I have often talked to Suzanne about this and I think it is a rather sad development in our society, that conversation has gone south. I know there will be and are families that still have their meals together without interruption, but I think they are in the minority. And I absolutely agree that obesity plays into this also, kids are too busy watching TV, playing with their gadgets, and not having any imagination left to start playing from scratch. Anyway, thanks for writing this. Love Brenda; September 30, 2010 8:11 AM
Anonymous said...: Dear Micheline, I agree totally with what you said and also with the followers comments...we are in the era of "communications"(?) but nobody communicate with each other anymore. It is very sad and I can see already the results of that lack of communication all around me. There is more & more problems in schools, in workplaces and everywhere people are killing others and themselves, why do you think that is? Lack of communication and understanding of life in a society...and it will get worst as these youngsters get older, they will treat their family like trow away elctronics. But this has started long ago with the radio for example...I remember wanting to have a nice, peaceful time at the beach with a friend or my husband and beeing blasted by someone next to me with a radio full blast in my ear...forget listening to the waves or the seagulls and all the wildlife, we had to move very far for that music(?) not to hit us with that aweful noise. And there is nothing you can say about it because they don't have any respect for anybody but themselves...the lack of respect is all over. But the parents don't seem to care either, so where can we go to find peace & quiet and a nice conversation with friends or family?... I have a cellphone, but it's like my home phone, and I don't ever answer while driving, it's against the law here anyway, and I put it on silent when I'm with friends,that's what voice mail is for,isn't it? Thank you for your article, Love Micheline in LC; September 30, 2010 12:55 PM

The Gadgets of our Time

2010-09-28T17:54:00.000-07:00

I was at a restaurant and a family was sitting close to me. Each one of its members was busy fidgeting with a cell phone. Texting, or seeing something on the web or playing some game. They were entranced by their phones until food was served. Then there was silence as they ate. Was it typical?

Wherever I go, people talk to their phone, very often in a loud voice, so I can hear everything they say. So many loud voices!

I wait in line at the post office and despite the sign saying no cell phones, the phones ring and I end up next to a lady busy having a private conversation that all can hear.

Others seem like lunatics as they cross by you loudly talking to ... no one it seems, until you notice the phone -- on their ear.

Do you go walking sometimes? MP3 players are attached to someone's ears and they are too busy listening to hear your steps. My husband and I passed a very erratic driver and I looked through his window and he was not looking at the road but was busy texting and we all know of the dangers of texting while driving. An accident is harm to one self but also to others plus the damage to property.

Children play with X-Boxes and communicate this way with each other. It is interesting. The gadgets of our time have us hooked to their convenience and their appeal.

It could be a laptop or mini-laptop or some of these gadgets to read a downloaded book. I wonder if there is a connection between the obesity in America and the fact that many of us stay inactive playing with our gadgets.

We are the generation that has no refuge for our thoughts. Any time the phone can ring and reach you no matter where you are. Driving? Yes it will reach you. Talking to friends? The phone will ring. On vacation? The phone is at your waist or in your purse. No matter what you are doing, the phone is the constant companion that will emit this ring tone (often loud) of your choice and you will feel compelled to answer or to text. Most of the time.

I am of a generation when none of these things existed. Lunch or dinner was an opportunity to talk and listen. Families would exchange ideas and I remember lively conversations with my parents. Family events were so important because the whole tribe was around and talked and told old stories and new ones that made us laugh. We talked and we listened. Children played with each other, got angry, fought and laughed -- outside. There was not the danger of being abducted, being killed, or maimed. Such things were rare. We were safely outside playing-- with each other.

Has all of this gone with the wind? I do not think so. But the gadgets of our times have us prisoners of their convenience and they never seem to rest. All day they are present, reminding us of work, of others, of cyber beings of other realities that never existed before. We can embody a whole new identity in cyberspace. Is that good? Perhaps and perhaps not. Those gadgets drag us to their realm whether we are in a car or at the office or at home. Scientists are already looking into our addictions and telling us that it often stills our creativity.

Multitasking is another fallacy of our time since the brain only tackles one thing at a time. Do we go rapidly from one thing to the other? Yes we do, and it looks like multitasking even though it is not.

I use no cell phone, no texting, and go in a car with my brain and my thoughts. I can imagine, dream, recall, anticipate, feel, grieve or rejoice at will. I use the uninterrupted silence of my mind as a canvas where my ideas and creativity take place.

At home I get the phone when it rings and use my beloved e-mail, but besides taking my laptop on business trips, I feel free and guess what? I also talk with friends if we are together at a dinner table. Life is so full of events, of happenings; I feel full, much too full of news, full of facts to digest and things to delete. That is enough for me.

But let the gadgets of our time beckon and who know? I may not be able to resist.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre
Editing by Barry Kaplan

Talkers and Listeners

2010-08-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Bogota, Colombia, I went to a cocktail party with my ex-husband and I was introduced to a man to whom I asked a few questions. He talked and I listened. I listened for maybe half an hour and then moved on. He told my ex-husband that I was such a charming person. I could not tell why, I had barely talked to him. I then discovered the great power of listening.

Life is full of talkers and listeners. People who start to tell you stories as soon as they have you on the phone and do not stop until you hang up. They are not terribly interested in you but inside of them they enjoy the fact that you are a valuable deposit for their words. They tell you interesting stories at times and sorry ones at others.

Some of us have developed the art of listening. It is like opening the vast territory of an empty space ready to be filled by others. But there is always a part of us that steps inside the talker's story and silently agrees or disagrees. A sort of inner balance that puts the talker in a place of evaluation. I listen to you and I can criticize at will with a silent question or agree with an empathetic laugh.

Of course, the ideal would be a talker and good listener at the same time. I have such friends and the exchange is so fair and fulfilling. You feel that your words are going to a place of receptivity and you let yourself become like a sponge absorbing the others sentences.

My life is filled with people who are interested and people who are interesting. I have quite a few friends out of state and we e-mail each other. Their letters are about their life and what they do or are going through, but also with questions about me and what has happened in my latest days.

I have also in my life the people who are the ultimate talkers. They are interesting but stop there. They do not ask me about me or about my work, my latest trip, or what I think about such a subject. For them I am the perfect receptacle. The one who puts my head in one of my hands and tilts it in a nice way. I listen.

I wonder where you fit in this aspect of living? Who do you talk to? Who listens to you with great patience and interest?

I think that our days are filled with the need for both telling and listening. Sometimes we need to be heard like a too full cup that life has filled with sorrow. At times it is nice to simply talk and tell the stories of the past or the last happening that made us laugh.

And we need others in our circle! We need good friends to make our days livable and fun and to have a dear companion to tell of our latest adventures or sadness.

The song "Tell me more, tell me more," from the movie "Grease" keeps us from being isolated in our cave. Being able to tell is opening ourselves to a catharsis, a much needed outflow that keeps us sane. Just as listening sometimes fills our cup with the pleasure of truly hearing another soul.

So no matter where you stand on the issue, I hope that your friends are ready to talk or to listen. Life has enough room for both.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre
Editing by Barry Kaplan

The Trip to Primeval Earth

2010-08-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

Did you ever take a trip to see between towns hours of some amazing landscapes looking so infinite and devoid of any appearances of man? Just the primeval earth in its beauty and desolation, its inviting curves and its light and solitude. This is what our trip to Sheridan Wyoming looked like. It lies just south of the border from Montana almost at the end of the state. A long journey from Colorado Springs but with great surprises as we reached the town itself.

One of our young family members, Jordan, was singing in a cute, intimate, packed theater. His voice was so great and his female counterpart also sang with a full voice and they both filled the theater with their songs. We enjoyed the performance, then went to Jordan's parent's house with Suzanne, a writer, and her husband Julio, a master creator of houses and apartments. We also enjoyed their unforgettable, so much fun younger children, Antonio and Enrique.

We had to do a show there in Sheridan and all the canopies turned out to be beautifully set on a long grass field in front of the college, shaded in parts by old Blue Spruce pine trees. Good artists and good entertainment but very few people and therefore less sales than we expected. The real pleasure of our stay was being in the Quintana's huge home with the magnificent view from their windows over the golden grassy hills and the Big Horn mountains all bluish in the background with a running small brook of water in between. Deer would come to drink and we were lucky to see a big owl that had perched on a tree nearby.

The constantly changing light from morning to night kept us mesmerized and constantly looking out when we weren't talking or playing with the kids.

The house itself is a fabulous creation of our host Julio, beautiful and vast and with every modern commodity and a huge panel of wires and pipes that I did not understand, but that made the house a fantastic, smart, computerized ten thousand square foot accomplishment for which Julio and Suzanna were proud. The house is in the country but very close to town, and there is a room for everything, even a full size ballroom with 25 foot ceilings whose beauty fits the dancing family that they all are.

Julio created great meals rivaled by his wife's and we ate in the morning and afternoon on their deck facing the best view. It was a great way to spend a few days and we were received like royalty in a special bedroom that at night shone with the light of so many stars as I had only seen once before in Monument Valley in Arizona. Wine tasting in late afternoon with all of them and Len, Suzanne's father, was a joyful experience.

On the trip back we took a side loop that reached Cheyenne at the end. At a town called Torrington, we found a fantastic rock shop with a great variety of cabochons and I promptly bought some to include in my jewelry. It was a lovely ride with rain some sun shining at times through the clouds; along with horses drinking at a brook that my husband photographed.

We came home exhausted but happy with the memories of time so well spent and with people we love.

Read Suzanna Quintana's Book and Blog, "Why my Kids Do Not Get Fat," a very entertaining, well written and well researched book about children current epidemic of obesity across the nation.

www.sheridanmomsforhealthykids.com/blog

The Death of the Trees

2010-07-24T19:00:00.000-07:00

My shows take me to many counties in Colorado and I was astonished to see the bare earth and denuded sites in so many parts of the state. What is happening?

The pine beetle has been munching over the huge forest in Colorado and killing so many trees it makes me sad as if I was in mourning just to look at the landscape. The devastation is immense. Cities like Frisco, Keystone, Breckenridge or Winter Park, to cite just a few, are losing their pine trees so fast or already have lost so many that my heart contracts. Marvelous old creatures that used to grace the mountains and slopes are now dead and all brown under the sun leaving the earth bare. Imagine the wildlife loss of habitat and the unimaginable effect on our climate. Southern Wyoming is also affected as the beetle is eating its way up the land.

There are over one and a half million trees lost to the beetle. It prefers the Lodgepole pine trees that are now a part of so many of our forests and loves to feed on the hundred year old growth that had stood so many years.

It is estimated that by the year two thousand twelve, the beetle will have eaten its way through all of the Lodgepole pine trees in the state. It is frightening. One of the great beauties of our land is its green cover of pine trees and aspen and people come from all over the world to see them.

Apparently, the culprit is global warming that created a drought in the late nineties and early two thousand and made our summers become warmer along with our winters. The beetle was able to climb to higher elevation so that we have these dead tree islands of brown battling the green in our forest and creating a huge fire danger.

When we travel, my husband does most of the driving while I stare fascinated by the land and its curves, its huge mountains and over all the glorious pine trees that cover a good part of our state.
Now, I stare at the desolation, the grand old trees now all dry and dead. But their remains, still reaching out to the sun, reminds me of their live presence years ago.

The spectacle is so overwhelming, it gets under my skin and invades my dreams at night.

I recently read that now the twig beetle is adding to our forest misery by also feeding on our trees.
I guess it is at times like this when I wish I had a magic wand and could eradicate those pests with a simple movement of my hands. But I have only two empty hands feeling useless and desolate at the sight of the old trees now dead.

Healthy pine trees in Colorado

I mourn your passing, old giants of the forest, and keep in my memories your glorious beauty, the shelter you gave to so many animals and the way you have swayed gently in the wind to delight us.

For more information, see the link below:
http://csfs.colostate.edu/pages/mountain-pine-beetle.html

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre, Editing and photo by Barry Kaplan

The Magic Mermaid

2010-07-15T18:53:00.000-07:00

The maid used to wait until nighttime to tell me stories of a beautiful creature with long hair bewitching the ones who found her under the light of the moon as she lay down languorously in her long tail down on the shore. Her hair was infinite and she combed it carefully with a magical comb and sang amazing songs full of longing but capable of attracting to her the erring man who knew a girl was lost, helpless on the beach.

She talked about a mermaid, of course, and after listening to her tales I started to believe that I was also part of the deep ocean and part of the air. A mermaid capable of living in both worlds at will.
This belief in the marvelous and the amazing, fueled my imagination and enchanted my childhood.
I believed in fairies, and often with my french girl friend Sylvie, we would tell Joel our little friend to watch out; we could turn her in a frog. And we believed it. We dressed in long gowns that belonged to Sylvie's aunt and she even made us up and, regal, we walked as Melusine or other faerie. The belief in the marvelous was anchored in our brain and never left me.

After all, I lived in two worlds, the world of my imagination and the world that surrounded me everyday. It is still true for me even after all these years.

It is easy for me to visualize anything and easy to imagine. After all, I have been a mermaid and life was the stuff of fairies. They creep up on my drawings and my watercolors and in my living room where I have an Indonesian mermaid hanging from the ceiling and holding her comb, her magical tool. Her presence was felt in many parts of the world. After all, Ulysses barely escaped their chant.

I have another mermaid and she has a luscious and robust derriere. I bought her in a flea market in Santa Fe. When I met the artist who created her, he told me she had to have big muscles on her butt so she could swim all the way to the ocean from Santa Fe. Indeed quite an endeavor!
I understood, completely, what could she be doing in the mountains if not seeking the ocean?

I understand that a big community of people believe in mermaids. They buy my work and delight in the mermaids I paint. Sometimes they order mermaid necklaces ... I recently sold one to a lady whose friend was getting married.

I see mermaids now as the ability to live in two different worlds. When I go to work in my studio, I enter the world of the magical where most things are possible. I can create, I forget the world of wars, of ruins, of terrible corruption and chaos, of deadly bombs killing so many innocent people.

I know that the world of everyday life is also a part of me and part of my life and present in all things. The task of living with grace and if we can muster it, some peace.
But I can dream...I can imagine... it saves me from oil spill and floods and news of the hardships of the world.

So if you hear a song on a beach in the middle of the night when the moon casts a warm glow on the planet, beware, a mermaid is seeking with her magic comb and you may just fall for her her song.
After all, the world of the magical is there for all of us.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

The Difficulties of Doing Art Shows

2010-07-06T18:49:00.000-07:00

There is a part of doing art shows that every artist who does them puts up with. The hardship and difficulties of being in an outdoor show. There are many obstacles to cross and they are as big sometimes as the rewards you get.

Some art shows are beautifully juried. Lots of very good artists and it is a joy to walk among them and see all the huge diversity of the art and the creativity and fun of so many good creations. It fills me with joy when I have time to escape my spot and see the other artist's work. I can rejoice in the fact that so many people from so many walks of life have been busy in their studio and expressing themselves through their art. You may like it or not, but you have to admire the art.

Some shows are rather poorly juried or not juried but in name only. They let in a lot of what we call "vendors." A lot of people who buy a certain merchandise and resell it at these shows as if it was their own. In the trade we call them "buy and sell" people and they rob the art shows of their quality and the pleasure of seeing something unusual and great. Most of the times, these people have poor displays and low prices. They compete with you who have worked hard to create pieces that are filled with your integrity as well as with your talent. But often they send a great picture of some work to the jury and misrepresent the nature of what they sell. They get a free ride and make us real artists look like nuts with our prices that reflect our efforts and our hard work. What hurts us is the fact that the show organizers say plainly in the contract "do not send images of thing that you did not make yourself!!!" but there it is in the show. An artist's constant frustration.

And there is also the weather. It seems to get more violent with global warming. You have to put weight on your canopy for outdoor shows and in my canopy there is eighty six pound at each corner plus forty pound sand bags on the openings of the canopy. It makes you feel quite secure until the wind starts to push or sway the canopy like a paper toy in the wind.

I did a show this last weekend and when my husband and I walked in in the morning it looked like a bomb went off during the night. More then ten canopies were wrecked on the ground with what they sold scattered or broken across the lawn. There had been up to seventy mile per hour winds and a huge storm overnight. So sad, plus so much work for all those affected. Some of the artists salvaged their work but stood all day in the sun trying to sell what they saved. Our canopy still stood and nothing seem to be affected. We were lucky, and prepared, from having been through once what they were suffering.

Many years ago as we were almost ready to pack the whole thing up at the end of the show and I went to get the van and while I was away, a sudden microburst of wind blew our canopy that my husband was in the process of taking down and took it across the park with weights attached like a huge octopus and dump it across the lawn breaking some of its legs. Fortunately, it hurt no one since the crowds were gone and only a few artist were left and helped us pack the sad remnants of what was our canopy. We had to buy a new one. Sometimes the wind is a constant, wrecking your nerves and swaying the canopy all day as if you were boating on rough seas.

But there is something wonderful about the damages of the weather. The incredible empathy and willingness to help of the artist community. It is a sort of fellowship that has no name but that we all share because we, at one time, have been there having been the victim of the winds or storm. We know what the damage of rain and wind or worse, tornadoes, can do to our creations. We help each other. This is a silent knowing that helps us sleep better at night.

So doing outdoor shows can be a charm but also can be a trying experience. I guess we do it to escape the galleries huge charge on our work, the appeal of the crowds and the buyers, the knowing that some thousands of people are exposed to your work and it becomes known in many parts of the country. And with a few exposures, you develop a following. People look for you every year and buy your creations, compliment you on your work and encourage you.

Most artists lead a lonely life in their studio and face the material their tools and themselves, their intuition and ideas all day. In my case, I love what I do and it makes me forget the ills of the world, its problems and its wars and corruption.

It makes me feels great to know I contribute to so many women's joy in wearing my work and for them and for the income it provides; I hit the road!

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

Life on the Road; Our Show Tour in the Midwest.

2010-06-22T19:08:00.000-07:00

We were dripping wet, our clothes looking like we had taken a dip in a pool. But no such luck, we were on the grounds of Eden Seminary in Webster Groves, setting up our booth for the show the same day. It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon in St Louis and also very hot and humid and my mind kept thinking of a shower or a dip in some Caribbean lagoon. But we had to endure and go on. After on day the shape of my shoes were etched on my skin and I was badly sunburned. What a relief when friends brought us ice cold malted milk shakes and we all visited.

We had arrived in St Louis the same day after a delightful time and previous night at Randy's apartment (a close friend of Barry's in Kansas City) and had lunch with Ruth, Barry's mother, who had cooked her marvelous vegetable soup. Seeing her was great and since we live quite a few miles apart it was a joy giving her a hug and visiting with her again after one year apart.

The show at Webster Groves went well but the heat was almost unbearable.
On the 9th of June, we went out for dinner courtesy of Ruth whose card and gift filled my soul as did the Indian goddess Lakshmi that my husband had brought for me from Colorado. We met with Barry's brother and wife and a dear friend of Ruth accompanied us. We had a great time and since it was my birthday we had a good meal at a fanciful restaurant with interesting paintings on the walls.

All day, I thought a lot of all the family and friends left back at home in Colorado and other states. I thank you for all my messages and good wishes on my recorder or my email.

Back at Ruth's house I was working like crazy to try to replenish my stock of jewelry and did an awful lot before leaving for the next show in Salina, Kansas. I astonished myself.

It is quite amazing that this relatively small town puts on such a fantastic show, so well organized with fabulous art all over the park where it happens; and also 4 stages of live entertainment with a different group of musicians every hour. It is a major local event, and tons of people come from the surrounding communities. They have a booth for everything including lost children and many volunteers with water, tea or coffee all day long for the artist and a really good breakfast for all of us. But again the intense heat and humidity pursued us.

I recognized many of our clients and enjoyed especially the lady who is a long time local reference librarian and had many interesting thoughts about many things. Very interesting, creative gal.

After suffering two days in the heat, a strong shower Sunday morning cooled things off for the afternoon a little bit followed by sunshine, and we broke down our canopy with it being completely dry. We were barely at our hotel, took the needed showers and cooled down and got ready to go out to eat when the sky opened up. A storm of epic proportions with intense winds forced us to promptly retreat to our room where we ate a salad for dinner. It was fortunate that at least it gave us time to close the show and get to our hotel before the storm. It would have been a horrible scene had the storm arrived an hour earlier while we were all packing up.

Another great thing about the Salina show is that I also got a second place prize for my jewelry with money attached and it added to our income for the show.

On Monday we were on our way to Kansas City. While cruising in the van, and I got to look at the road and terrain while Barry drove. I was entranced by the patches of pink flowers on the sides of the road, the tall grasses undulating like waves under the breeze and the furrows seemingly moving in curving shapes just as lovely as the land and the gentle hills so green with watering holes for the cows punctuating the landscape and reflecting the sky.

There in our suite, I mostly worked while Barry ran necessary errands and also got to see a few friends. The show began Friday, and on Sunday morning the show started later at eleven so we had time to have breakfast with Bernice and Maurie, some of Ruth's oldest friends who insisted on cooking for us. What a breakfast! three juices, eggs, sausages, bagels, biscuits, hash browns, coffee, delicious fruits, two different butters, and two different jellies and finally a delicious apple strudel! Enough for a crowd. Bernice also packed a great lunch bag that we ate at the show. It was wonderful!

We also survived another brutal and humid heat and a violent storm that pushed our canopy (with 88 pounds of weights on each leg) six inches while on Barry's advice I had packed all the jewelry and we had closed up and abandoned the booth. We went to the nearest restaurant "Bravo" for lunch while the storm raged outside. There I ate the most wonderful spaghetti with a bolognese sauce I ever tried.
After the storm was over, one of our neighbor's canopy was ruined and he had to go home. Ours was wet of course but it stood the rain and wind and we were so glad since we had a new canopy top, to find the interior really dry. I had to redisplay the jewelry of course while Barry reopened the canopy and the show went on. We had the visit of many dear friends and of Nancy who was our greatest buyer! She also brought us a bag full of goodies from Andre's, a gourmet place packed with beautiful napkins and little miniature knives. Delicious.

The day after we slept until we woke up. Quite a delight instead of waking up early to the alarm clock. We also packed, which took a while since we had a mini studio involved and we left to go see Marietta who is Ruth sister and lives in a nursing home. She was having lunch and afterward we went with her to her room and chatted one hour and a half. She is ninety years old, very upbeat, and remembers the whole family by name, talks as she was nineteen and is current about the news and the family life. An amazing lady and an inspiration.

We left around two p.m. and hoped to make it to Colorado that evening since we have a show in Brekenridge this weekend; but a lightning storm developed on the way that Barry loved but that scared me totally. On my right, the sky would light up totally white with so much lightning. I was speechless making myself very little in my seat in the van.

Then the warnings came on the radio of severe thunderstorms ahead with possible tornadoes and we decided to stay at the nearest little town, Oakley. We had one of the rare rooms left in the town late at night and slept well despite the fact that the room was not much but it was a refuge from the storm.

After what seemed like a long drive we finally returned home today with many memories and three good shows and a good tour. Barry was a champion at driving and creating such fantastic and creative solutions to our life while away, and also being a funny, warm and dear companion to share this time with me. I have to say it was quite an eventful tour but also very rewarding.

The Sisterly Bond

2010-05-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

I remember when she was born. I came home one afternoon and she was there in my mothers bed, nursing. I was allowed to hold her over a pillow and she rewarded me with the strangest little sounds. She was my sister and I instantly loved her.

Little blond hair sprouted out of her head and she grew to be so friendly with my brother with whom she would always seem to get into some kind of mischief while I read my books. She also made me the older sister, a title I was doomed to accept although I was not always successful in being the example my parents expected me to be.

She continued to grow and got much attention from all of us including my grandmother and my parents, in addition to a neighbor’s house where she spent many days of youthful bliss while we attended school. She was fond of the cool shade of their veranda, of the grapes hanging from their trellis and their current maid, soft and gentle.

She eventually adopted my friends as hers and accompanied us on outings to the beach or the mountains. She was beautiful and married young.

After both of us found our husbands we really became good friends. Back from South America I landed in Haiti with a leap in my heart remembering people I had not seen, along with places and cities where my memories were left untouched. We spent long evenings talking late into the night bringing to life the things of our childhood. Back in South America such long talks stimulated memories of home and brought tears to my face with my throat constricted and dry. They were things I longed for while I led my life in Peru or Bogotá.

We visited as sisters, but were also surrounded by our kids; and her husband would catch moray eels or else would talk to my husband while fixing some long rum punches. We talked as we soaked in the waves. He would also drive us to some hidden river where we met some long green snake that would scare the hell out of us and we would take refuge with bare tops in the green flow of the waters.

At times, we would both put on our makeup in the two vanities of her bedroom, each under a different light and talk until our mouths went dry. This house that both she and her husband designed created a U where the pool stood like an ancient blue lagoon graced with blooming hibiscus and Bougainvilleas with many hummingbirds turning around her head in the morning light to my total astonishment.

We grieved together when my parents died and when many of our loved ones disappeared. We went through the pain of the years growing up together under a dictatorship with its killings, its horrors and multiple crimes. We also witnessed together the birth of our first grandchildren and shared the fun of a trip to Paris.

Now in Colorado, we meet to tell stories about life and we laugh together. We remember the many memories of a land long ago left behind which will never be what it was before. The country of our childhood is gone.

Her strengths are in interpreting, in designing and growing great gardens, in people and stories and in writing like many others in our family had done. She balances my seriousness with her vitality and her laugh and her gift for people while I work alone in my studio!

But there is a reason why we are sisters; our family left us a legacy of pride, learning and the teaching of many principles and wisdom that we carry within us. At times it seems a burden, but we honor it the best we can. She is my sister of beauty and knowledge and our common roots run deep.

2010 Copyright Micheline Brierre

Friendship

2010-05-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

I opened my door and she stood smiling in front of me. I had the eerie feeling that I knew her from before -- I mean from another lifetime. We became friends right away. Her blonde hair was curly then, permed like a little lamb, one of my favorite animals.

We visited so often over a cup of tea and talked for hours. I loved to go to her house because I had to cross a great deal of open fields and nurseries that refreshed my mind and soul. She was the one who announced the change of seasons to me. “There is a scent of Fall in the air,” she would say. I though it was a great feat of perception for someone who lived in Miami where one barely senses the change of the seasons, unlike other parts of the country.

We traveled together. Went to Texas together, to Haiti together. We toured Florida for the Inner Peace movement and we went to be interviewed together to appear in radio shows. Our friendship was complete then as it is still now.

When my mother died one evening after I traveled to Haiti, I was so awfully stricken, taking care of all there was to do after her death. It was not until midnight that she called me from Miami and asked in a gentle voice “Did you remember to cry?” Her words gave permission to let the tears flow and grieve as I should.

Back to Miami on a bench park in front of a lake, we talked about our most intimate thoughts; sex, life and about what we wanted out of living. We walked out of there a bit elated; a weight was taken out of our chest. We could breathe again. Our life was difficult then, we both considered possible divorces and indeed, she accompanied me to see the judge to get the final word on a divorce that was sad after a long marriage and she got divorced as well.

Life separated us. She went to live in Alaska and I moved to Colorado. We both remarried. Computers or phones linked us so we could communicate as before but with much more acquired wisdom and always the yearning to spend an afternoon over a cup of tea.

When I got sick, she came from California to be with me.
Her presence was a healing balm. So many years of togetherness have joined our spirits and it seems like we are more sisters than just friends. I have my real sister that I love but I will write about her later.

She was always one of these bright lights sent by the universe and I knew she loved me as I loved her. She also adopted my sister as hers, my daughter as hers and she was always present, ready to add her input if I needed it.

Friendship is sometime ephemeral like the passing of a comet in the sky of our lives. People seem to enter our days for a certain duration and once this time is passed they leave us to move to what they need at this moment of their lives. Some rare ones are planted like a tree who stand firmly in our lives and accompany us through our joys and our sorrows and the little inconsequential things that makes us laugh.

For me a true friend is rather like a rare hot house bloom. Someone to be nurtured and kept in my memory as a fine companion that life has provided to smooth and share the current of events and enchant our dreams.

I call her my soul sister and there is a laugh in her eyes.

copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

The Power of Little Things

2010-05-13T19:17:00.000-07:00

So many disasters happen every day in the world! Besides the devastation in Haiti and the war in Afghanistan, the bombings in Iraq, the killing of the children in China, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the conflict in Thailand, and so many other atrocious news stories, we have many reasons to feel that we are a very fragile, a most vulnerable specie. We, humans, are at the mercy of the next event and it makes us contemplate the little things that bring a light to our eyes and that can create an inward smile.

I had a friend who used to tell me “Don’t touch that plate, doing the dishes is my meditation!” Now every day as I do the dishes I think of her and indeed the dishes have become my meditation also. The water flows, the detergent is running down the sponge and my mind is far away, lost in bliss.

Some little things are more potent than strong discourses; like waking up and while still under the covers, warm from the night, I feel the joy of being alive and I imagine myself sending love to all I know and all I will meet. This is a moment of pure bliss that transports me to visit my friends and family even though only through my senses.

I am never too busy to water the plants and as I do so, I marvel at each new leaf, the growth reaching for the ceiling and a miracle, the buds on one my orchids. I anticipate the blooms and the beauty that it promises and the colored petals freshly arching toward me.

I love to take a break from my studio and watch the birds on the deck. They come to eat, of course, but the collared doves just linger as a pair on the railing and even look straight at me and make me wonder.

Life is full of disasters and horrible crimes but it is also full of beauty for us to absorb and let travel slowly through our soul.
What about the simplicity of a smile from a total stranger at the super market; the minute power of such an innocent gesture so endearing and so life affirming? It freshens my mood and resets my day very much for the better.

There is also the strength of the written word. A simple and marvelous comment on my blog or an email filled with words that embrace each other and make the marvel of a sentence. For me, a real delight.

As I look at my computer I find the news from a dear friend and I transport to their window with a photo of a tree, a flower, or a precious pet and best of all a new child in the family or a cherished grandkid.

And of course there is the presence of the one we love, the hand encircling ours, the pure pleasure of being together and laughing at the same funny thing.

The list could continue over miles of paper or a lot of memory on my laptop. The truth is that each person has his or her own secret joy that is offered by very simple but potent things. We are aware of those things or we aren’t. For me, bringing my total focus on these little happenings is relief from death and disease, wars and world news.

So next time I do the dishes I will let my thought go to sleep and it will be once again my meditation. Think of what is the little things that makes you marvel at the world and laugh. I’ll bet you have a long list already.

2010 Copyright Micheline Brierre

Preparing for an Art Show

2010-05-04T07:04:00.001-07:00

Everyday I have worked in my studio and now my signature is needed for most of my jewelry. This is a job that Barry my husband does. I do the signing on a special background and he places the signature on the suede on the back of the pieces. Once it is done, we will start gearing up for a show this weekend in Wichita, Kansas.

It is organized by the Museum of Art and I hope their publicity will bring us lots of buyers and lots of sales. We have never done this show before and we have never been to Wichita. So we are going on a real adventure. Discover Wichita and discover what makes the people there respond to my work or ignore it.

The life of an artist is rather solitary. I work by myself all the time. Almost. I don’t need to mention my inner voice that leads me to new designs to new ways of creating a piece so as to keep my work always fresh, always new. After all, the pieces are all one-of-a-kind. My customers expect it. And I am so glad not to have to repeat myself. It would be a bore.

Breaks are like a breath of fresh air. I come up to listen to the birds, see the garden, see the light and the mountains, let my mind pause and reflect. It is good to take a look at the world that constantly changes at every moment. In the afternoons after three I listen to NPR on the radio and strangely it does not seem to affect my work when I make jewelry; but when I paint, I need the silence of the soul as each stroke leads me to the picture I want and see in my imagination.

As I listen to the news about the world, I shiver as I hear some and rejoice at others. News is someone’s rendition of the facts; I take it all with a grain of sand.

Then there is all the jewelry to price and tag. A job that I do alone knowing about what the gemstones are, the elements I bought at the last bead show, the amount of work on each piece and finally putting a price to what I have done. It goes very fast. I listen to my inner voice as a price comes to my ears as if I someone had placed it there for me to transfer to the paper. The wonderful intuition in action for which I feel blessed and that I trust completely.

Then I organize everything by colors. It goes in a box, well cushioned, ready for the trip. Then there is the project of loading everything in the van.

We use it just for traveling to shows and it is crammed with light racks suspended from the ceiling, bins of gift boxes, a collection of pens, little bags I use for earrings I sell, plus my cards, tissue paper, display material, extension cords, bins with table covers, photos of my jewelry enlarged for the walls, and of course the canopy and its covers. Walls and roof. And there is more.

We also need to pack our credit card machine, our calculators, my tools and of course the findings to change earrings to clasp or to post and to create a smile on the faces of our customers.

Did I forget anything? We need to pack our clothes for warm and cool weather, our meds or food supplements, our shoes and all the necessary paraphernalia to look good or decent.

And there is the house, watering the plants, securing the doors, the lights, holding the mail, the sprinkler system and at last sometimes let the neighbors know we are leaving.

Finally we review our show checklist to make sure we do not forget anything.
One time we forgot the roof to our canopy. Another time the covers for the tables. So we learned and have made a list to ensure we forget nothing. Hopefully.

When we get in our van ready to leave, I get to anticipate the road ahead. The beauty of the earth as we go along and I marvel at the curves of the land, blades of grass bending under the wind and birds flying off as we approach the arc of their flight. When I drive, I focus on the road and my mind is free to imagine. A trip to a show is for me a hard working vacation, a break from my studio and once at the show, the joy of meeting strangers, people who can become friends or remain clients. I smile at them all and rejoice, no matter how early I have to start the day, it is a fantastic adventure, a new city, and the promise of a new experience with all that the word entails.

The tough work does not matter.

I still remember the field of sunflowers on the way back from Omaha displaying their petals as far as the eyes could see. The yellow on the bright sky crying for joy.

Traveling by road has its infinite beauty, a chance to visit the places of the earth that we know or the ones reserving their grace for our eyes.

Our show will bring just that. Time to go!

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

The Connection

2010-04-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

There is something special in waking up at dawn and looking at the dark but blue sky and watch it slowly become a lighter shade until it envelops me with the incredible presence of the atmosphere so rare, so far, in our known universe.

Our dreams still cling to our skin and the stars are still a part of the night. The stillness is palpable while on the street below, people drive following some unknown calling. The light of their car is a streak of light in the dark. This is a magical part of my time. The in-between hours when it is no longer night and not yet day.

I like to come to my favorite oak chair and listen to myself;
kind of set the energy for what is to come even if it is only to write a bit on my computer or listen to the birds as they awaken with the timid sounds they make at dawn.

I imagine things; I see decorated elephants that are leading me on a trail and beckon me to images of dunes partly lit in the desert as they open a world of fantasy that I enter quietly and where my imagination gets lost.

Soon, the day will start and the phone will ring or my husband will awaken and I will find my voice like a bipedal being that I am. Talking. I wonder sometimes if it is really necessary; if our thoughts transmute and travel to others and we do not need to voice what our minds entertains. Sometimes my daughter calls me just as I am about to pick up the phone and call her. Our connection is so tight and I find myself realizing that indeed we are united and we let our spirits touch. So often my husband’s mind is exactly focused on my own and we voice at the same time the same circuitry of our thoughts.

But when I go to my studio, the light change inside of me. I see things differently as I pick up my needle or my brush. My sense of acuity is intense and I listen to the voice that resides in me and tells me what to do. The inner voice…the intuition, the creative self.
I know that I am not alone. Countless people wake up early and stare like me at our sky above and wonder. Our atmosphere is so rare and fragile.

It is like being connected to a long army of watchers that are all waiting in silence for the day to begin. A sacred ritual, like a long line of thread that is present and goes around each person enchanting them and freeing their soul.

So, early today, I am next to you in my thoughts. We do not have to say any word. But deep inside of us the magic begins somewhere between night and light … we connect.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

The Bright Instruments of Our Will

2010-04-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Since I was very young, people’s hands exerted an immense appeal on my imagination. How many paintings have I done using my hands as models? All the innumerable pen-and-ink drawings that I made of hands? I cannot count, but the number is great. I incorporate little bronze hands in my jewelry and there are quite a few hands on the walls around my house: a collection from other artists who also revered hands.

It is not only a fascination but also an awareness of all the roles hands play in our lives. Not only are they so very useful at the end of our arms, but they seem to symbolize the ability to create, to grab, to caress, to gesture, to feel, to touch, to heal and to manipulate. The list is enormous.

As an artist, my hands are my main approach to life. With my hands I paint, I draw, I make the necklaces that will grace someone’s neck, in a few words, I create. All with my hands. I have seen some paintings made by artists who had no use of their hands and with a brush lodged perilously in their mouth, they paint. Imagine…the huge effort, the pain, for what is so simple when we have our extremities.

I look at my hands weathered by years of living and now showing a few veins, skin a bit loose on the bones and yet, I am so thankful. I get such an exuberant joy out of working with my hands. A good deal of my soul is flowing from them to the piece I am doing. And many people notice. Sometimes I look at my fingers and they seem foreign to me, more like very competent tools, the infinite potential for a mute pleasure that seems to engulf me as I use them to render my moods.

Our hands play a momentous role in touching another’s skin, in running them around the curve of a lover’s back, in moving through a mop of hair. Our hands ignite passion or tenderness, healing and discovery; our hands say our welcome and spell our goodbyes. With our hands, we feel, and people move into our lives or are left aside and forgotten according to what the handshake tells us.

We give our hands in marriage; the blind touch our face to feel. I am thankful to live in America instead of being under a dictator who rules with an iron hand. Of course, unfortunately, hands also do their share of hurt. They can harass or terrorize, torture with utmost dexterity. They can kill. They destroy, they rob us of breath, of life, of our humanity; but they also bury what had been alive and through a companion, shake us awake at times to witness the stars in the night or the rosy light of dawn as we face the new day.

With my hands, I can write on your walls the many words that unite us both. Or draw my signature. Or signal a common road where we will discover together. Or clasp them in reverence like I learned to do in southeast Asia.

Lets us lay our hands in front of us now. Let us look at them, let us give them thanks at last for being the expressive part of the body that we inhabit and which allow us do so much each day without too much effort … as if they were the bright instruments of our will.

Copyright 2010 Micheline Brierre

The Purr in the Dark

2010-04-19T12:16:00.000-07:00

In the dark and silence of our nights, I would wake up and find two intense eyes right in front of mine, staring benevolently; once the shock was gone, I would listen to his purr and smile. He would sit on my chest driven by some obscure interest and watch me sleep. My dreams were alive in his eyes with the mysterious exchange of our two psyches merging in the middle of the night.

We named him Mimi, a short for Minet, the French nickname for cats. Pretty generic but so natural to me and pleasant to the cat's ears. He came to me when he pleased with the wonderful independence of cats imbued with a sense of self that inspired me always to be only my own person.

Who gave them this complete sense of personal ease, of simple pleasure like finding the plushest cushion or the place in the morning sun to lick his fur and, pleased with the world, fall asleep, ears in tune with the wind?

Mimi thrilled me with his elegant form and the simple grace of his movements as he went about living like a regal self all over the house. I watched him move to the innumerable places he liked. I could not have chosen better. The higher ones were best. He was a red tabby, big, an orangey shade that I loved with the amber eyes that seemed to echo some of my most hidden dreams and whiskers forever moving, in tune with the days.

My husband and I had to leave once and my niece found a
coworker to come and check on him. As they reached the top of my entrance stairs, he told her "I though there was nobody here!" Mimi's steps resonated on our cushioned floor like the ones of an intruder pacing the floor. The man was astonished. How could a cat make so much noise? Mimi was taking his morning walk, strolling the house.

We got him in Miami, Florida. After moving here in Colorado, he looked at our decks covered in snow with total disbelief. A medium he had never seen. He went out reluctantly and once in the white stuff, he shook his legs, looking at the snow in dismay and shaking it off his paws until he got totally used to it. Since then he would go out in the cold and white garden as if it was his territory of choice.

I let him free. I watched him from the deck while he roamed the outdoors, smelled the flowers, got an occasional bird, chased butterflies, established his territory and reigned like a benevolent monarch upon his land.

He oftentimes would accompany me in the garden while I pulled a plant from its roots or collected weeds in my basket. He was silent and gentle but his strength was never in doubt.

I refused to put him to sleep. I thought he should die in his time, like humans do, with dignity and the knowledge that he lived well and that his life had come to an end. He came one evening to my studio and purred in a diminished body then went outside the door and was no more.

I wrapped his body in one of my shawls and stayed with him until my husband returned. It was dark and I loved him.

We buried him in the garden but at night, in my dreams, he comes to visit, silent with huge amber eyes watching me sleep. I know he helps in healing my body, straddling me like he did years ago when I was sick while his purr would absorb all the pain.

Memories

2010-04-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

They sneak up on us, take us totally by surprise. I am quietly doing my work in my studio and the vague sound from my husband's stereo suddenly awakens a flood of past memories and I am lost. The attack lasts a minute or so, but for awhile, I was back a very long time ago in Mexico city, after a dinner, late at night, listening to a band of Mariachis on Plaza Garibaldi as if they were in front of me, dressed in their black and silver suits, playing. Little boys sell little bouquets of flowers that remind me of my mother who is back in Haiti and my husband graciously buys the flowers for me.

What triggers our memories out of nowhere? How can we say: "I remember?" It is like having a double who can recall anything if enough is there to stimulate him or her. It works sometimes without effort and sometimes we struggle to remember but achieve nothing. I know that men in white study our brain and record the effect of different impulses on our mind. It is done in sterile rooms (I imagine) and is given many efficient and serious names. Names that leave me cold. After all, I am not a scientist.

To me, there is something wild, diabolical and magical about my memories; the easy flow of recall that leaves me awed and amazed.

My memories aren't selective, they touch on the miraculous and on the sad or bad. I still remember the voice of my school director who told me: "Even Micheline Brierre!" after gathering a bunch of us, little girls then. Standing in front of her, I was so ashamed with her three words but her tone of voice was shattering! What had I done? With some other kids in my class, I had helped to put salt at the base of a tree, in the back of the school, in the hope of killing it. Why would I want to kill any tree? Trees are precious. I was just following the voice of one of our peers and of course, the little salt we put at the base of the trunk did nothing to the tree; but my double laughs at me while the memory emerges and swamps me with shame.

I see memories as a long, infinite string with little pouches attached to it, floating wildly in the wind. A sound, a voice, a smell, music or a touch will open one of the pouches and we are back to another time - dreaming, reliving what once was.

Yet there are some things we would rather not remember. But they hunt us down and like a snake slowly coil their way around our mind and demand that we learn from them to put them finally in repose in some imaginary coffin of our dream. They are like a force from the past battling us until we see the hidden lesson they sometimes bring. Being able to learn from our recall is one of the great aptitudes we carry through life. It frees us to reset our will and let it bring a better future for us.

How do memories that come from days past influence our future? I tell myself that they set a course for us but we can correct their influence and with that will move us to a different day. Our actions are in the now, but the now becomes tomorrow, and hope is there forever present. We can, our lesson learned, let such memories go innocently down the trail that we bury in the past.

I still remember a dress my mother made me when I was barely an adolescent. It was called at the time a princess dress. Sewing machines then did not do the fancy zigzags they do now. A straight stitch was plenty. The dress had enough panels to create a whirlwind and bellow under the Caribbean air. She handed it to me asking me to finish the inner seams by hand and only then, when finished, could I wear it at last.

This was a time when many of my projects stayed unfinished in my drawers, cabinets and my mind and doing slip stitches on the dress seemed to me as a task of patience unlimited. Yet, I wanted to wear the dress, it was new, tantalizing, waiting for me to look so special in my princess dress. So I threaded my needle and assiduously did the stitching, seam by seam. As I did, I also learned. My incomplete little projects started to call me and I learned to finish what I had started.

In the now, I look at what I do and I complete my work.
It is not difficult; I recall the princess dress and imbued with memories, I want to walk out and dance on my deck between birds and squirrels while letting the panels bellow in the wind.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010

One Day

2010-04-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

One day
you leave behind
the many masks
that you forged in the past.

The shadows and layers
now dissolved in sadness and dust
and you gather your Self
your hands raised in praise
to sit between roses at dusk
and call forth
your very own
angel.

You sit in awed silence
as a small voice
rises on the breeze.
You do hear what
your heart
has saved
for last:

It is time for you
now,
it is time for you.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2001

The Call of Books

2010-04-08T16:36:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I arranged my books from the huge disarray left by my eagerness to read them when finally late at night, I finish my day. In bed, facing my inner thoughts, I get to open a book. I put much on hold for this moment. Needless to say, I love books. Not the electronic books, but the real paper ones that you hold in your hands while you turn each page like some silent treasures and complete fantasies that echo in your mind and unleash your imagination.

I used to go to visit a book binder when I lived in South America. The moment I entered his shop, the wonderful smell would grab my nose with visions of glue, gold leaf, old parchments and leather in many colors all ready for him to do his craft. The many shelves would dispatch me to another lifetime when monks copied rare books by hand and traced these great illuminations to add a touch of color to the first page and specially to the first letter.

A friend of mine also floated sheets of paper on salt water loaded with pigments destined for the first page of old and precious edition books that we relish in our collection.

I have lots of books. Some are quite old, some are in French or Spanish, most are in English now, some I have given in complete collections to others as I left a country or a town. Many are on my many bookshelves tantalizing me with their silent calls.

Did I say I love books? I buy them everywhere. In Barnes and Noble, Borders, little bookstores, thrift stores, online, and wherever I can find them. Oh yes, they accumulate! I have bookshelves with books two rows deep and only in my bedroom are there five bookcases with more books laying on the ground beckoning me to read them.

Books reveal complete worlds of thoughts to us and have multiplied since they are now printed in huge numbers overseas and also here in so many presses in America. The source is unlimited.

I still remember the French books of my childhood, pages uncut that you read with an ornate paper cutter and insane curiosity never knowing exactly what the next page would reveal.

Books remind me of my grandmother who spent her money on foreign books bought for me in the years of my adolescence; she would show me my grandfather's collection, carefully bonded with his initials in gold on leather. She also showed me books printed in France by my ancestors, crowned by the French Academy that linger in my mind and inspired me to take a pen and write.

I also remember my uncle's books that he lent me once a week as if he was a library. He kept them upstairs behind glass locked by key in a long bookshelf. A book returned meant another book lent. A most private collection.

I remember books I passed to friends and never recovered or books returned to me, covered and cherished. And I remember ancient books by the Seine in Paris in little cases that I could not bring home, not having the room for them in my small suitcase.

Books, I suppose, will always transport me to someone's imagined world, a foreign land of thought and ideas, explosions of the mind with the mystery of words put elegantly together to seduce me and attract me in the vortex of their pages.

Bookcases

2010-04-08T16:30:00.000-07:00

Bookcases I brought in my room today.
Pale wood shelves, three tiered, new,
ready for whispered secrets
sealed forever on paper.

Journals, novels where worlds
initiate at the first page
and shut down on the last.

Poems standing
triumphant or hermetic seducing or luscious
laying between covers.
Silent history facing memoirs, where
life explodes in humor, success or arrogance
with infinite losses and love gained or lost.

Fingers linger on long loved pages.

I summon the past
with the quiet power
of the inner call;
The past, imbued in words
the phrases of personal
remembrance
and I watch shadows
pursue the trail
of very old dreams
asleep … quiet,
between
my books.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2003

Unseen as a Lone Queen

2010-03-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, trees were our favorite hideout. They provided a high perch to see but not to be seen and we spent hours there along with birds and lizards. Nestled in the crook of a branch when I was small, I was the queen of the forest.

Find a nice branch and lay down in comfort and shade, bring a good book and life up there rivaled the luxury of a home. We were small and my friends and I loved trees.

The tree across the street is almost greening, something that happened almost overnight. A sign of what is to come: Spring, this indecisive time here when snow mingles with days of warmth and sun. My neighbor cut some of the tree limbs and this gives me an open view but I miss the great canopy of green that swayed with the wind and kept our neighbors life private.

In the back, beyond the deck, the aspen is growing long little pods of brown and small pendants, soft with a white fur, ready to open and show me the leaves. Our two collard doves prune their wings and stare at each other. Oh the love they express … their sound brings me to heaven as they fly in the Aspen.

All over town the trees are starting to bud. Very shyly at first but later on they will graciously extend their umbrellas and their call of the forest. My friend lives in LA. She raves about one tree facing the window of her apartment. It is her connection with the gifts of nature and she tells me “The tree is happy now to be green.” Its presence as she comes home from work and opens her window is at the root of her joy.

All over the world, trees are big or rachitic, full of shade or full of insects, full of birds or full or animals, tall with a life that started so often before ours. Some trees on earth witnessed our beginnings and still sing it seems, moving with the moon and the breeze.

They rise above us, all alone or in enchanting forests. They supply dead leaves to protect the roots of our plants in winter, timber to build with; and rise in the sun, each one a lone bearer of life for a shady rest on the road or a place to hide if you want to be queen but not to be seen.

A Bunch Of Contented Monkeys

2010-03-29T11:18:00.001-07:00

I slept at Lisa's, my daughter's house the other night and we woke up early, ate, packed a bag of fruits, some hard boiled eggs and left. The kids were excited and so were we. All along the way, beyond Divide, CO, a magnificent heavy carpet of snow covered the land. You could only see the evergreens along the way and rarely some bison and some cows and some houses that seem to be swallowed by the snow; green over the white with some speckles of black here and there. I am sure it would take some snow shoes to go over the countryside looking so very white and pristine as far as the eye could see.

When we arrived at Buena Vista it was snowing over all the Collegiate Peaks like a light veil over the mountains behind the city. It was eerie and gray at times with the sun still shining between the clouds.

We went to Mount Princeton and arrived at the hot pools with the hot river along one side. I was surprised to see so many cars, but my daughter reminded me that it was spring break and that so many people traveled then. Once in our bathing suits, with a locker rented for our purses, we went into the hot pool and it was heavenly! So warm so calming and so soothing.

It was great to stay there like the enduring but contented monkeys ... but the kids were starving. You can tell they are hungry, growing boys at their age, being eight and ten. Lisa had done all the driving and it was time to eat. Someone told us of a good restaurant and we figured we would come back to the hot waters. The girl working there fixed around our wrist a bright orange bracelet that showed we had paid for the day and off we went to town in search of food, fortunately with everything we brought with us.

Lunch proved out to fill us to our total satisfaction and we headed back home instead of going back to the hot pools. As we traveled, we could see the snow falling all around us on the different peaks, but we made it back to Woodland Park and the little snow we encountered was not much. We stopped to eat some ice cream and the man was so great as to give Lisa some extra bites in a dish as we left, this was beside her regular cone. A gift. Maybe it was her reward for driving all of us for so many hours.

In Colorado Springs, it was raining more that anything else and we were pleased that we had such a different morning filled with the beauty of the countryside and the hot bath that left us rather limp and happy like a bunch of contented monkeys.

Laughing, Up River

2010-03-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

It infiltrates itself like water into sand and like a current of strong muddy slush, it undermines our joy and shapes our lives.
Pain is like a neglected sore and an assault over our sense of well being. It comes stealthily in our psyche and forges our best traits but can also reveal our worst nature.

My childhood was full of enchantment. Life at the top of the tallest trees, books in my hands, dolls made alive with will and love, colors to paint, and a family to enchant with tales and history. I was alone on my hill retreat and my rare friends called me “the lone light of Debussy,” our neighborhood.

I drew maps of the trees for the other children, led them up the mountains, gathered butterflies and let the blooms talk to me. It was a silent language that I could understand. Life on top of the hill was magical. Poetry was normal.

Until the government was ousted, my uncle, a secretary of state then, had to go into exile. Duvalier the dictator came into power and all I knew just died, along with so many people, family members killed or disappeared. Our family was shunned. Life became a never ending session of survival and fear. Pain was asserting itself and I had no defense.

That was my first great encounter with pain. I shoved it in dark boxes where the sun did not appear and the light of stars let it show its head, but I was young and strong and acted a fancy front as if nothing really bothered me. People around me were dying but I survived and eventually, I escaped the country.

Was pain the winner? I never grieved openly. I could not cry. I learned to live with my will, my courage, my strength. Pain had shown me the power of its forging qualities but I was left so vulnerable, alone inside and it took time for my joy to emerge in the course of the days. It took time for me to listen to my inner voice and lead a life of pride and humility. It took time to heal and to speak of the past and its history and bring my love to the surface where it lives now.

I learned. Pain has been assaulting my life ever since showing its head where I do not want it, but I practiced what I learned: give it time and let myself experience all of my feelings of sadness so that pain, the tears, the harm, the destruction can slowly go down the flow of life and leave me whole, laughing, up river.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010

2010-03-24T18:45:00.001-07:00

Since yesterday we saw a strong storm come into town and leave trails of snow drifts everywhere. Our cars are looking like cream puffs on the driveway and I stare at this extension of winter and wonder if the winds from the North will ever let go of their grip over the city.

So I wrote this earlier but it fits the white world we are all looking at.

The Land Lost Its Colors

The land lost all of its colors
to shiver under a tight cover of white

The snow last night got into most crevasses
and filled my night with unremembered dreams.
But at dawn I was rubbing my eyes
and the earth had lost its colors.

Some birds traveled in the gray of the sky
unimpeded by the trails of white

they leave behind and that wraps
around my neck like an invoked
infinite and light crocheted shawl.

My smile is inward
and my song is chanted to no one.
I am thrilled with the sight and
watch, as the earth and sky merge.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2009

I Am Grateful!

2010-03-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks so much for all of your presence, my friends and family. I now have a real audience and I can write to my heart content! I am thrilled!
Micheline

A Dance Accross The World

2010-03-22T16:57:00.001-07:00

A Dance Across The World

When I lived in Bogotá, Colombia, I was closely acquainted with a great artist, Marlene Hoffman. She had a gallery where I showed my art and her employee served a fragrant Orange tea, hand-brewed in a crystal clear teapot. You could see the leaves and buds floating unopened in the water and that vision would make me dream of my childhood where flowers erupted everywhere.

More importantly, Marlene was a highly talented fiber artist and one day in her studio, I saw for the first time baskets and baskets of handspun wool and horse hair, multicolored yarn of alpaca, cashmere, and many more wools from all over the world that she used to weave into her fantastic tapestries. I fell in love. I crawled all over her baskets…internally I raved! Wool and fiber were in my life to stay.

I never realized that countless hands made yarn happen. Hands from a Turkish man may have sheared the sheep, while other hands off the Falkland islands or the highlands in Peru knitted it; the fine yarn from India or Pakistan or China all were nurtured carefully for our delight. Twice a year the sheep were sheared. More did so in Europe. Angora rabbits shed their wool for the shade of red that I crave. Yarn is often a hand to hand connection as if it was spun across the world in an unbroken thread, felted at one point then passed from one person to another and honored along the way.
For a long time, machines have taken over some of the job and give us skeins of acrylic or blends that are very easy to fall in love with.

But these blends do not have the presence of the noble yarn still patiently gathered, spun, died, woven and knitted by many hands. Many animals were led under the sun and stars and herded by knowing dogs or cared for by loving owners to give us yarn.

All over, people work with the soft stuff and it is worn and reworked at times by many generations. Young people, old people and people of all ages in between love it and use it. Unless you are in the field you do not plunge your hands into the yarn; yet you admire it made into garments that attract and seduce you and your skin. Like a friend used to tell me “Some days I have to spin!” I remember many Peruvian highlanders who pierced their precious alpaca’s ears and like long earrings, the wool dangled from them. Quite a sight!

If I extend my body from the Colorado mountains, catch the yarn dangling in the wind, unseen to you, it will dance over the peaks and weave softly many times around the world.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010

A New Year

2010-03-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

It is supposed to be the first day of Spring tomorrow but it snowed here so I want to post the first poem I wrote earlier this year as it was created in the depth of Winter and the depth of my creativity.

A New Year

Full of mystery and wrapped up
in unknown but tempting as a new gift
on the breast of an esoteric dancer
the year beckons and calls me
on its path, whispering its promises.

But who is to preview its possible sadness
its quirks and its joys, its folly and its remorse’s
who is to know its games and its delights
the shape of its days
and the night of
its whims?...

The year will die but will bud in our minds
it will trace many stories for many lives
and seal the fate of many more in death
and the solace of remembrances.
The year will dance on our trails
bury its stories and memories
and open like the stillness
of recollections
like a coveted book.

A new year is like dawn
or a winter sunrise,
rich in reds, full of light and
silently bringing the promise
or the threats of an unfolded day.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010

Howling Under The Moon

2010-03-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

Like coyotes sitting and howling under the moon, we are all witnesses and participants of the magic of groups.

There is a group for everything, every whim, every inclination, every taste, every dream and every skill. We are drawn to groups for an infinite number of reasons but the most powerful, I think, is the sense of togetherness, the feeling of belonging and becoming part of a larger family of our own choice.

Groups exert a potential catalyst for change and help us find like-minded people to share the journey of life and inspire us while we inspire them. They also offer us a number of individuals to bounce off our ideas and watch them take or be rejected.

Think of the person in your group that you do not seem to like no matter what they do or say. Groups offer endless possibilities.
Besides all else, groups offer us mirrors and create leaders and their supporters; they show us what we left behind and dislike seeing now in others. They reflect many facets of us.

I have been a part of many groups and being together brought the element of change and the element of patience. We have the opportunity to turn up our patience for what we see and do not want to espouse anymore so that we can grow from the experience.

Groups offer a unique dynamic that can be both satisfying and humbling. In front of a group, we have to leave our pride aside.

So we group together on Earth or in offices, under neon lights or under the sun as we did for eons of time. We group for joy, for war, for peace, for finding our family of choice, ready one day to exchange it for another one.

Humans tend to congregate not necessarily to howl, but we know there is room between the coyotes as they gather under the moon.

How to Become a Follower of this Site

2010-03-19T12:27:00.001-07:00

Greetings!

If you would like to be a follower of Micheline’s blog, here is how:

At the top left of her page, click on “Follow”
Then you will be presented with another page, where you need to log in using an existing account you may have. You can choose from Google, Twitter, Yahoo, AIM, Netlog or OpenID. If you do not have one, then you can create a new account with Google. It is free to do this. Simply create a User ID and password.

You can also just enter a comment on her site by filling in your comment in a comment box underneath the post you would like to comment on.

If there is no box there, then you will see underneath each post something that says “0 comments” or “3 comments”, etc. Click on this and it will reveal others comments and also a box for you to enter your comment.

You will also need to select your profile from the drop down menu. You can enter Google, or Anonymous, or Name/URL, etc. I tried it with my name of Barry and my website, www.bdkphoto.com, and it worked.

If you use an account like Google and you are not already signed in to the blog, it will prompt you for your User ID and password.

When you go to post it, it will also require you to enter the code that is presented. This is to prevent automatic spammers from working. Simply enter the code and your most welcome comment should post.

Also, if you are a follower, then when you come to Micheline’s blog, in the upper right hand corner, you can “Sign In”. If you do this, then if you want to make a comment, it will remember who you are and automatically enter your profile in the drop down menu so you do not have to do it.

I know this sounds pretty complicated, but it actually sounds harder than it is. Good luck and if you have any problems, e-mail me at barry@bdkphoto.com or call me at 719-392-5995 and I will help you. Once you get the swing of it, esp if it is your first experience with a blog, it is really pretty simple. Thanks for your persistence and patience.

In light and love,

Barry

Woman of the Seven Veils

2010-03-17T22:00:00.000-07:00

Woman of the seven veils
woman of the seven words
my semblance and my mirror
woman who dances with the scepter
the flame, the sphinx and the pauper
you are my eternal self, my hope
and my strangled fear, the treason
of my imaginings
and my redemption
at the edge of my day.

Battles were won in your name
towns feasted on your flame
and your desires, you walked on Frangipani
and sheets of music, with cymbals fluttering
in your ears. You were queen and slave
you smelled roses in the garden of heaven.
You fought endless battles and walked
in many homes, revered for your intuition
while you absorbed many secrets
and opened many paths.

You ventured in dark spaces where
light was negated yet your spark thrived.

You were a part of me for eons of times
sprinkling words over my steps
and singing the new incantations
to make me strong as the wind
to make me wise as the old sage
to sing with me now
as we peel the veils
one at a time.

Copyright Micheline Brierre 2010

A Dream Come True

2010-03-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

A dream come true! My own blog to communicate with you, to grow with you to go on the incredible journey of life together. Sign up, and get on board!

I will give voice to your inner self, your concerns, your memories, our connections, your roots, the infinite possibilities of us. Become a follower, not because you are, but because I, with you, also follow my own intuition as I write. I have always believed that any creative form is the result of all the participants. So send me your comments, be a co-creator in this process and let us go together on this trip of self expression.

Winter is losing face and the plants I surveyed yesterday in my garden all have some green at their roots. The doves that enchant me all morning creep into my paintings and from the paper they salute me in my studio.

I am missing the time of quiet and peace when I can retreat within myself and pause, as the world of winter follows me. The early morning fog, the cold outside and the white mountains created a cocoon of grace and creativity that has given birth to quite a few poems that I will share with you.

Now, will come a different time pleading to speak to us with a different voice. And our words will echo back.