Collecting Stars Blog

It’s raining here today. It somehow fits my mood. As I lay on the couch, trying to take a nap, I look out the window and see the leaves fall with the rain. For some reason, the leaves falling makes me so sad. I cry for the leaves.

My thoughts turn to Christmas, which should make me happy. But today it makes me sad, too, because

One of the most powerful visuals I remember from when I was young was the choice and consequence stick. It was a thick wooden dowel that said ‘choice’ on one side and ‘consequence’ on the other. The idea was that while you could choose whatever choice you wanted, you couldn’t choose the consequence that came with it. They were connected, and you were stuck.  For a long time I thought this way about feelings and actions too. Whenever I felt a certain way, I couldn’t really control too much of the action that was attached to it. On particularly depressed...

Imagine that you wake up one day and are in a city you’ve never been in before. People everywhere are speaking a strange language. You don’t know anyone. You don’t have a map. Even the smells are new and different. You have no point of reference. You don’t know if you’re in the middle of the city, or where the city is in its country, or even what country you’re in, or where in the world that country is! You’re scared, completely disoriented, and have no idea how to help yourself. Normally, you are very aware of yourself. At home,...

My soul is black.  Black and hard and crushing and it sparkles.  It has burned, and healed, and conquered.  It can make you into something new  or turn you to crumbling coal my soul is lost it often loses its way, stuck sucking light my soul forgets that it sparkles  that it reflects, spreads, and shines.  There are parts of me that sparkle,  even if most of me is harsh and unforgiving and sucking black They protect each other, the black and the sparkle.  They are never left alone, one without the other. And I am always protected.  The black...

I have always loved impressionism – the idea that you can take little brushstrokes, that are just small blobs of paint acting as tiny puzzle pieces in a masterpiece, is amazing to me.   I once had the opportunity to go to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  They had a section of impressionist paintings.  I was in heaven!  I studied those little blobs of paint in wonder.  There were deliberate movements in each brushstroke – where the brush first touched the canvas, where the paint came off the brush in different amounts, and where the brush was...