Here Be Dragons

I posted this poetry by John Squadra from 'This Ecstasy' once before and it came into my head again this evening, while I was meditating. I thought I would share it with you again.

The journal page is a map and we're headed north, to the love shaped island :) for the second time.

Enjoy the poetry!

'Forget Everything'

If someone says,
“To be enlightened you must fast and pray all night,”
Have dinner and go to bed.
If you see a sign, “This way to salvation,”
run the other way.
If someone says, “This book is the truth, you can buy it from me,”
Take your money and buy grapes and roses.
If someone says, “He’s talking tonight, thousands will be saved.”
Go for a walk…listen to the birds and watch the clouds,
and leave your backpack, your Bible and your Buddha under a tree
and hope they will be gone when you return.
Where we are going you can’t carry anything, not even your name.
If there is logic in the above, be afraid, it’s a lie.
But if you feel something in your chest as beautiful as the grass beneath your feet,
be grateful…open your arms
and forget everything you ever thought you knew.

Hidden on the Page

I've been distracting myself from all kinds of oily worries by making paint effects, then studying the page to see what is hiding. A bit like looking up at fluffy, white clouds and seeing a monkey riding a bicycle up there! Not possible to lie in the grass and look up at the sky today - it's raining and the sky is a pale, steely grey, puddles everywhere!

This page was hiding fish and once I found one, others kept swimming out of the page. The art journal is a bit like that too. When you look back at what you have created, you begin to see things that are an expression of your sub-conscious. Not all that helpful in retrospect, but interesting just the same. It's nice to know that there is one less thing cluttering up your mind, even if you weren't aware of it slipping out.

This next page prompted me to pull out some old children's verse that I wrote years ago.

Snake

Between two blades of grass
I spied your ankles and your toes.
I slithered out all slippery
So quiet, you wouldn’t know.

You saw me there right at your feet
And released a little gasp.
Your eyes grew wide, you tried to scream,
But your voice came out a rasp.

I decided not to bite you
I let you back away.
Then slithered off all slippery
To your absolute dismay.

by Patti Bourne

Slow Processing

This is a sketch I did recently of a large tree, maybe a fig, beside what is known as 'the Brisbane Water'. Someone has put wooden steps all the way up to the middle of the tree and a few platforms to look out from.
It reminds me of the Enid Blyton books of my childhood called 'The Faraway Tree', where the children in the story climbed up the tree and into a magical world in the clouds, full of magical characters. It's a little patch of paradise to me and I wonder if the locals realise what they have?

I have had lots to process lately, not all of it making sense to me right now. Journaling always comes to the rescue, taking care of the overflow. Sleep has been elusive for so long, for many reasons, and even more difficult throughout the extremely tropical summer we have just had. Lately I have managed to finally get some, so this has been an ongoing theme in the journal for a while now.

Sleep, sleep and more sleep! On this journal page I did a paintbrush effect that left what looked like lots of little eyelashes, so I turned them into sleeping faces, with dream bubbles puttering over their heads.