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
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Love, our foundation
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
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
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Intentions And Resolutions
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
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
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Time To Love
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 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!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
How Things Talk to Us
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
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
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Water
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
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
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Sadness In Our Joy
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
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
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