Learning To Follow My Bliss: part one

Double Rainbow, barely visible

  The spiritual writer Deepak Chopra has a meditation that I     like to do on a regular basis that he describes as "Follow     Your Bliss." Translated from Sanskrit, Chopra describes   these meditation principles, Sat Chit Anandan as   foundational to existence. This meditation mantra   emphasizes that there is more than enough of all we need   and desire to go around. In my meditation, I try to focus on   being filled with love, and  calling in the love that I desire,   the love that is already there for me.

 Extra love is the nourishment I require right now. Extra is   the wrong word, but I don't stop to interrupt the flow of   writing to try to find a better one. I call in love to comfort my feeling of overwhelming grief.

 I don't think I told you yet that I saw a double rainbow last   week. During my trip back home to see my ill sister, I was   a passenger, so I tried to capture the private sensations I   experienced while traveling the familiar roads, because I   wanted to share them with you, you riding beside me in   the car, walking beside me as I walked the familiar streets,   seeing all the familiar places that created us in our youth.

Seeing a double rainbow is a spiritual experience, an auspicious omen of good things ahead. That's how it felt seeing it, the longest-lasting rainbow of any sort that I have ever seen. Barely visible in this snapshot from a moving car, it shimmered in a rainstorm sky for a good twenty-five minutes, sending out its blessings to all who saw it.

Today I am the white horse riding alone, remembering the rainbow, but not basking in its soft, colorful glow. I am seeking my bliss, but not finding it today, even though it is there waiting for me. 

Medicine Sticks for the memorial

Yesterday, while I was still in the thrall of my bliss, I did my meditation at my studio. After a morning of sorting through my brother's belongings, a parting gift from his former landlord as I left my childhood home to return to my current one, I needed a place to put my feelings of peace and joy and connection. I took with me a stick my brother had started to work into something, the dark one second from the left, along with some deer hide lacing he had wrapped around the stick. Both the stick and lacing reeked of cigarettes that will eventually dissipate, even as they carry the energy of my brother's hands. I put on my new Spotify playlist, and got to work with my drill, the stick beginning to smoke from the friction of the drill bit going deep until it emerged on the other side and I thought of my deep joy. I finished with sand colored waxed linen, carefully wrapping it tightly around the surface, imbuing the beautiful beach stick with my wishes for dear Denny: Deep peace of the quiet earth to you. 

And I am looking to find my double rainbow.

We are, each one, on our own path.

Full Circle, Beginnings and Endings

 

My brother Denny and my mom in the 1950s

This has been quite a year so far, a time of quiet reflection, of rediscovering passion, of circling back to childhood, of reconnecting with people who loved my family and who love me. It has also been a time of unspeakable loss, beginning with the sudden death of my brother at the end of February and the precarious nature of life itself even in the present, as other loved ones face down illness and more. And in the middle of all of it, I had an amazing opportunity to exhibit my work, which is one of the greatest honors of my life, sharing my work with the public and hearing their comments and feedback.

Working on the exhibition interfered with my grieving process. Because I am an artist, I was grateful to be able to begin finding my way again through sitting quietly and making art as I prepared for it. I mentioned one of the new pieces, Traveler, in a previous blog post, which I finished and dedicated to my brother. Following the gentle rhythm of my ideas and trusting the process, I kept working.

I finished a second piece, Talisman, that ended up being a trip down the rabbit hole back into my childhood family and my own childhood. The eggs at the bottom are my siblings; the five of us, now down to three. There are many childhood references, address numbers, birthdates, toys, moving parts, game pieces, a clock face, a broken Swiss army knife. A whiff of the past that pulsed through my veins into the present, as I let it come out in the work. It's one of my favorite pieces. Value the process.

Talisman by Gayle Pritchard, 2021

So, I go 'round and 'round, my head and heart spinning and breaking as I try to return to joy. This is the energy of the week of an total eclipse, the psychics and astrologers say, a week where it is time to be quiet and reflect while the full circle is completed. Clear the way for the future, make room for what is coming.

Grief and loss can consume a person. The path to living, however, is digging your way out from the abyss. That takes resilience, a highly undervalued skill developed through adversity; a skill that allows humans to completely lose their way and still come back, full circle, once again, to brings their gifts back to the world. What I am truly grateful for, as always, is that I know how I will heal; it will be the same way I have always healed: picking up the bits and pieces, fragments of memories and conversations, glimpses into another's soul, while I wait for what is mine, a gift from the universe.

This last artwork says it all, which is why I bought it from my friend Jill Milenski when it spoke to my heart. I have it hanging in my home where I can see it several times a day. It will be my new mantra for now.