Botticelli

Botticelli

“Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,

Something helpless that wants our love.”

                                                                                      Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Valentine, the priest, became a saint after he was beheaded on February 14th, when Third Century Rome, ruled by Emperor Claudius forbade soldiers to marry yet Valentine married them anyway.

Whether or not the tale is true that Valentine crushed violets to make the ink used to write a letter to the blind girl he fell in love with, makes the heart pine for the days when love was blind and in full bloom, and everything right with the world.

But then, love makes heroes of us all, as well as foolish, as well as blind. Like Valentine’s love story, I don’t know a story that isn’t a love story. Whether the tale deals with the love of one’s garden, a lover, or the self.  It’s a story of endearment and the heartache we suffer when love is lost.

…I was wondering how I was going to write this. For days, I felt nothing brewing. This morning whatever had been percolating, percolated about love and the manner in which it is expressed:

I must be doing something right if people want to copy my style.

Yet, you can’t copy style. You can’t copy personality. Personality just shines through. You either have it or you don’t.

If you aren’t me you haven’t a clue as to what makes me tick inside. What it feels like to write the way I do. You’re trying to say what only I can say in the manner in which I say it on the page. But this only falsifies you. Makes you an imitator instead of an original.

So, I must be doing something right that people want to copy me.

I have stopped making excuses for my talent. Have stopped running away from what I love to do, for fear of outshining you.

I’m excluded anyway. Have gotten used to it, so what’s the dif?

It should be that people give credit where credit is due. But in return what a lot of people give is envy.

It’s such a shame. For I believe in sharing, in cooperative engagement, in inclusiveness. And because of this willingness, this openness, my talent for the creative flourishes.

I’ve got to honor and recognize the gifts I contribute. I’ve reached the point where I refuse to give other people the credit for something they’re too lazy to acquire for themselves.

I know I’m tooting my own horn. But hey, like everybody else with their blogs and their Selfies that’s why I have my own website.

With this thought in mind, I put my deck to work. I reach for my SoulCollage® cards; pose my question, and allow these feelings to attract the cards that need to speak to me.

1st Card: Scorned, I Become Self-Aware

1st Card: Scorned, I Become Self-Aware

2nd Card: Honoring the Chef in Me

2nd Card: Honoring the Chef in Me

I’d post the 3rd Card: Jealousy, which is a collage of Sophia Loren eyeing Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage, but due to copyright laws and magazine photos covering movie star figures, I can’t. You have to use your imagination, though I think you get the idea.

Filter of Negative Energy. My Inner Healer

4th Card: Filter of Negative Energy. My Inner Healer

 

If this set of cards doesn’t blow your mind, to understand the process of intimacy and synchronicity involved in this work, you have to make your own deck of cards. You have to know what they reflect. You must want to know more about yourself, and grow.

Seena Frost advises every maker of his or her deck, should add their Shadow cards. Honour them for what they represent, for what they have to tell you, even if you’re afraid.

Getting to know our Shadows, we integrate those parts of us that strive for balance. To balance this imbalance, Seena suggests every deck should include a Filter card to purify negativity. My Inner Healer appears as the 4th card in response to heal what I’m feeling.

Here’s what my 2nd card, Honouring the Chef in Me, has to say:

“Chef is always creative. The One who sparks and lights, and nourishes the soul and hearts of other people. Consider the freshness of your produce, and create from that space. Never let food go to waste. Make your plate shine and radiate the beauty it serves.”

You get the gist, need I say more?

If anything, somebody’s paying attention. Somebody’s reading my work. Somebody knows the difference between quality and mediocrity. They can spot the freshness of ideas and the sincerity of my expression, to love it enough to want to do it my way.

Honoring the Writer in Me, Community Suit: I am the One who inspires you to write, and whose writing and poetry you aspire to exceed.

Honoring the Writer in Me, Community Suit: I am the One who inspires you to write, and whose writing and poetry you aspire to exceed.

Portrait of writers from top left to right: Haruki Murakami, Marguerite Duras, Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Oliver, Carson McCullers; left and bottom: Gabriel Garcia Marque, and Rainier Maria Rilke.

Copyrighted Image Amirrorself.com