Key to my heart

Here is the key to my heart.

Love is (always) the answer: 16th @ Owens

Love is (always) the answer: 16th @ vermont

Love is (always) the answer.

you are enough: Juri Commons Guerrero & 25th

you are enough: Lyell @ Still

You are enough.

If I could, I would come into your house at night and paint this on your bathroom mirror.  This way, you'd see the message morning and night as you brush your teeth and comb your hair. Maybe after reading it over and over, this message would sink into your memory and become part of your truths, something you never doubted. You are enough.

Of course you are going places. I know you have big dreams, goals and a to do list. But know this: You are enough. Just as you are, right now, in this very moment you are enough.

Yes, there are times you cry in the shower so no one will know. Yes, some mornings you wake up and stare out into the blank new day thinking you might stay curled up in bed. Even then, you are enough. Tell yourself. Over and over. You are enough. 

You are moving down your path in life - maybe you skip, perhaps you dance, sometimes you might even do the backwards walk. There are times you will stop on your path to smell the flowers or examine the hole in the ground, that's just how going down your path works. It does not matter how you go, but go you will. However you are traveling down your path, please smile the smile of someone who knows that they are enough.

Good morning, friend.  You are enough.

What do you love? Friday

Good Morning, Love!

It's Friday. Our weekly pause, meditation, prayer on the love around us.

This week I'm loving this amazing video found via Brain Pickings : http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/22/ira-glass-on-the-secret-of-success/

This Ira Glass quote has hung above my desk for the last year. What a gift from him, his creative process and opening up his journey to great writing.  I'm super inspired by the maker of the video, as well. The dedication to moving the text about and setting it to Ira's voice - even more profound to hear the familiar lilts and tones remind me to KEEP MAKING.

More often than not, the wooden signs I make for the fence don't turn out as gorgeous as I dreamed up in my head.  Painting words on wood is hard.  Many times I've been asked by passersby, "Do your kids make those signs?"  Nope. It's me. That's my best writing - its hard on uneven wood, in a hurry, out of practice or at this place in my creating.  I look at the finished signs and sometimes they want to be better themselves, I'll wish my handwriting looked like someone elses or that the colors were different, the spacing just right.

I love Ira for reminding me to simply MAKE MORE.  Yes.

It's Friday.  What do you love?

Outwitted

He drew a circle to shut me out.

Heretic, rebel a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took him in.

                  -Edwin Markham

my Tuesday night love for you

Going, going, but not gone.

This Friday: Live music, poetry, love note writing

Join us for a night of on-demand poetry, reading, music, and love letter writing!

Secession Art & Design (30th & Mission St, San Francisco, CA)

Wine will be served.

This Friday!
Feb. 24th
5:30-7:30pm

We look forward to seeing you!

POETRY:
Come see the poetry store's latest work and get a poem from the poet herself! Silvi Alcivar will be writing on-demand poems and at 6:30pm she'll read some poems, including excerpts from her new book "sometimes we must swarm." (www.thepoetrystore.net)

MUSIC:
Jamie McKenzie of pocket full of rye will be strumming her ukelele and filling the gallery with gorgeous song. Hooray! (www.pocketfullofrye.net)

LOVE LETTERS:
Help create a love themed art piece! Join Shannon Weber, creator of www.LoveYou2.org, and help change the world one love note at a time by writing your own love note. No prep necessary. Just bring your heart.

 

waiting for you

always

"What do you love?" Friday

It's "What do you love?" Friday, a brief pause for reflection and acknowledgement of the many loves in our lives. 

I love seeing small moments of generosity and thoughtfulness like these gorgeous flowers found on the fence.  Happy surprises that remind me of the many good deeds and kind acts that keep this world afloat.

It's Friday.  What do you love?

What do you love? Friday

It's "What do you love?" Friday. The weekly prompt so share what you love. Part offering, part gratitude, sometimes a hope - your chance to pause and say, "Yes. This is what I love."

I love dancing, twirling, spinning, moving on the wood dance floor. I love the top-chef-famous-DJ spinning the tunes. I love the happy, delighted faces mixing in the crowd. I love being surprised by a friend around the corner. 

Tell me. What do you love?

I am loved

A week ago I put up a "Love on the line" display on this fence.  By morning, the display was gone. Absorption happens.  Absorption is one of the mysteries and experiences of ephemeral street art.

I drove by the fence today and saw the amazing "I am loved" signs.  Ohmygosh. (!)

YOU ARE LOVED.  Yes, oh yes, oh yes you are!  And what happens when you walk around in the world being your amazing, loved self?  Everything. 

Rock on.

P.S.- sometimes I wish I knew who you are. 

P.S.S. - Most of the time I know it's the best when I don't know who you are, just like the book Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch.

Valentine's Day: my love is on the line

I grew up making paper Valentine's at the kitchen chopping block - cutting red, pink and white construction paper hearts after homework was done.  One year, we made homemade play-dough-heart-shaped-necklaces, baked in the oven and strung on red yarn. My mom insisted we make a Valentine for each kid in the class, themes from my childhood: include everyone and if you want to receive then you need to give, do your part.  You were either all in or you were out.  I was in! I loved the promise of my decorated paper lunch bag or milk-carton-turned-mailbox filled with little notes and cards. These cards saved year after year under my bed, "You have too much yammy-yama!" my mom would chide. There were egg cartons carefully protecting small and broken treasures and shoe boxes stuffed with cards and notes, held closed with a ribbon or shoelace.

As a child, the weeks preceding Valentines Day promised a trip to the drug store for a new supply of white doilies and maybe, just maybe, a packet of stickers. Today, the advertising and selling of Valentine's Day seems ratcheted up a notch or three. The consumption factor, the obligation to give big and bold, and the exclusive focus on couples are such a long and winding journey to another land far from the kitchen's chopping block and creative space of my childhood memories.

Valentine's Day remains one of my favorite holidays - the array of today's fancy scissors and paper, punches, and adonrments make me weak-kneed with possibility. 

During 2011 I celebrated Valentine's Day on the i love you, too blog with individual love notes posted near friends' homes or on businesses and corresponding blog posts declaring my love.  The experience of finding the words, posting the sign, clicking "send" all transformative moments as I practiced loving outloud. I gained major "heart muscle", if you will, not unlike what would happen to my arms if I did push-ups every day for an entire month.  My heart muscle grew bolder, stronger and telling people how and why I love them remains in my heart muscle memory.

2012's celebration of Valentine's Day on the i love you, too blog is a series of pop-up art displays around San Francisco - Love on the line. I love you, too fliers customized with phrases inspired by status updates and 'i love you because Fridays' from the i love you, too Facebook page hang with clothespins from a clothesline.

i love you NOW!
i love you and i am so very sorry
i love you with my whole <3
J- i love you
i love you because you wake up smiling
 i love you because you let me
i love you - Lucky Me!
i love you night & day
i love you - i can't remember not
i think i love you
i love you (i really do)
i love you. are you listening?

I enjoy the nod to laundry, an every day mundane experience, and turning upside down the concept of 'airing your dirty laundry'. In the end, love and loves and loved is who who we are and what gives our soul its beautiful shape.  I really enjoy seeing the repetition of the signs - I'm still enthralled with that font and the concept that you can pull a tab of love whenever you need it. The visual repetition along with the custom messages provoke a 'heart full and smiling' experience. I've learned there is something quite anonymous about posting the signs in a group and about more than one person or experience at a time- yay, more heart muscle building!

Before I sit down at the table and start cutting out hearts and layering the paper to make this year's cards, I had to put my love for you on the line. It seems the proper thing to do after loving you for all this time.

What will you do to show your love?  I can't wait to see what your big heart does.  

Expect Great Things: 15th & South Van Ness

Love on the line: 22nd St. Parklet

Love on the line: Church Street

Love on the line: Irving St.

What do you love? Friday

Welcome to "What do you love? Friday", a weekly prompt to acknowledge love in your life. Part devotional, part gratitude, part fill-in-the-blank, part wish - this moment is yours to explore the various forms of love in your life.

I love walking in the canyon with my boys, quieting my mind and experiencing the world through their eyes.  I love when they ask me to hold their treasures (even though I sometimes complain about being the family closet - asked to hold everything!) for safe keeping. These shells prompted long conversations about nature, the ridges fully explored and design examined and appreciated to the point I knew no one had ever seen anything exactly like this. Ever.  Beauty.

It's Friday.  Tell me, please - What do you love?

Love on the line: Cortland

For my Bernal Heights loves.

Love on the line