https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2020/05/16/15234/

[Stay tender. Touch a wildflower. Something I love about the desert is how hard everything must try. I see the flowers and bitter brush leafing out and blooming with such effort and reckless abandon, hurrying to unfurl and flower in the onslaught of wind and the growing heat of the sun. There’s so much life force here. I add to it. I draw on it. To reach out and touch it is to touch faith.]

I’ve been feeling weary, despite my great attempts to go gently (which is against my very nature). It’s not the state of the world that I find draining, it’s watching how some humans treat other humans. It’s feeling that brute force on my own soul and taking it. Taking the hit.

I receive my lessons from the sage steppe. I see how things lean so the gale force winds can rush over instead of through, I see the charisma of the wildflowers despite the silent litany of drought, I see the trying. I see the trying! I’m trying. Are you trying? My chest bears up an optimistic heart, even if I was blind, I would see the silver lining in everything, see the promise in most everyone, see the dream alive, feel the pulse of hope that sets everything wavering.

Everything wants the light. Even when it has been told it is unworthy, it wants the light. We reach. We are reaching. Reach with us.

My goal this month has been to receive everyone around me with joy, with care, with compassion — even if I am upended or publicly crucified, personally attacked, affronted by grumpy and frumpy souls. I have strived to reach out with the light I know is in me and as a result, I feel such a deeply rooted joy. I cannot be capsized. There’s something to “loving thy enemy” and “turning the other cheek”. I’m not sure what it is in me that suddenly allows for this kind of tolerance, for I was born with a short fuse, but it feels good and it feels headed somewhere. Upward. Onward.

While this fire season already has me feeling lonely and overwhelmed at times, I am trying to let my friends love me. I keep saying yes. I keep my heart open. I talk. I share. I care. I text my mum. And best of all, I know there’s a greater plan, I keep faith, I believe, I do not falter, I am one more sprig of Indian paintbrush reaching for the sky.

I wanted my feathers to be bigger and feather-ier and more LIFELIKE and this is the result of simply trying something wispy and vaporous and opaque that lived in my imagination but not yet in my fingertips. I’ll be offering these pieces and a couple others from the same design family in my shop sometime on or after May 25th. Until then, I’m in the middle of a major commercial photography project here, hence the availability delays.

One other thing worth mentioning is the slice of Succor Creek picture jasper in the larger design was cut by me with the help of my friend Nick. I’m dipping back into lapidary work here. It’s been 13 years since I last seriously cut stones! It’s so much fun. I’m remembering some aspects of stone cutting and I’m learning new techniques that no one ever told me about which is really cool. But most importantly, I see a future wherein I am able to cut cabochons exactly the way I want them cut with the rock I want to be using — namely local agates and jaspers — and the future is going to be sweet!