Happy 2013!

I’m a little behind on the whole New Year’s thing, my intention setting got rolled right into the Haiti pre-trip, trip and post-trip, and now on the other side, life is slowly returning to it’s regular rhythms. Beginning tomorrow, I get back on the regular school schedule of getting up at some ridiculous hour to prepare and then head to work.

So 2013. My days will begin with A Year with Rilke: Daily Reading from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke Translated and Edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. When I first decided to use this book as my morning inspiration, I was going to continue making a collage-a-day in response to the reading. So I bought my $1.99 Kindle edition that I can read on my iphone and have with me no matter where I find myself. But then I had this brilliant idea, why not do a visual response right in the book? Do my own Humement of sorts. So then I ordered a hard copy of the book and today I began.

I visually responded to both January 12 and 13th entries, honing in on the narrowing circles versus the widening circles, and completely focused on one of the lines from January 13th’s entry from Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13:

Be. And know as well the need to not be. 

This is the lesson I want to learn this year. To not always have to be doing something. To be okay with just being sometimes. This is my biggest intention. It doesn’t mean I will do nothing, but that I will, every now and then, really and truly rest and just be.

January 12 +13, A Year with Rilke and fabric circles from Onel

Onel discusses his work

What you see pictured here is my visual response along with some fabric circles that I got in an exchange with the artist Onel while in Haiti. I gave him one of my Manifest cards, and I got the fabric circles. They will be in some collage soon. I’ll keep you posted.

I invite you to get your own copy of the Macy/Barrows translation and follow along/do your own altered book. If you do, let me know–we can share at the end of the year.