Come now the flood, for you have no idea how long I can hold my breath.

Alright, so here I am. Back again after a LONG absence from this space, mostly because I have been absent from myself and my own stability. It has been a CRAZY year, filled with intense emotional drama, some huge kicks to the face, and many, many projects.

I haven't finished posting for you guys where I have come to in the gear project, (which is has had a HUGE amount of work sunk into it), after which, due to personal reasons, I decided to take a year leave of absence from my Masters program at Concordia.

I haven't posted a couple of shows I had.

I haven't posted about my HUGE multiple month journey of working for the incredible company Archimedes Design, and my travel through the country down to Burning Man and back, and everything that happened along the way.

I haven't posted about what's been going on in my personal practice for the last few months.

And finally, I need to post that I finally began the Prayer Flag Project, a project I had intended to start last year, which now has begun, starting with the incredible festival of Intention Gathering BC.

It is a new year. Time for new beginnings and recentering. Going to a beautiful, community run festival was just the grounding that I needed to approach my life anew. This year will not be like last year. And so I am back, and will spend the next little while filling in the gaps of everything I have not put up here. Probably starting with what is current and working backwards, haphazardly as I feel so inclined.

SO -

ENTRY 1 OF THE NEW YEAR!!!

Part of the reason why I took a leave from academic study was because it was just so ACADEMIC. I was beginning to feel like all of my work was coming out of my head and not from my heart, which is exactly the opposite of what I feel like art should be.

There is this amazing quote from Martha Graham that has been inspiring my face off lately-

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,

a quickening that is translated through you into action,

and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.

The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is

nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions.

It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.

You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open… no artist is pleased.

There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.

There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us

marching and makes us more alive than others."

So in the last few months I came face to face with, when I'm not making something for an advisor or prepping for a show, what exactly am I making? What is channeling through me right now? And suddenly, the image of the scarab beetle began entering my head everywhere I turned. It was in my dreams, it was in my thoughts, I couldn't get it out of my head.

And I began drawing. The same images over and over again. Something I haven't done since technical art college about eight years ago. Drawing the same images, painting the same images, researching the same images, putting the same images in my stain glass.

In egyptian mythology, the scarab beetle is the symbol of creation. It is a creature that obsessively and tirelessly works to build something out of nothing. It was essentially the "patron saint" of artists of the egyptian world.

In my dream book, A to Z of Dream Interpretation by Pamela J. Ball, it states that the scarab beetle was an ancient egyptian solar symbol- it is said to have rolled the sun across the sky. Seeing this beetle in your dream thus represents protection from evil. It is also taken to represent hard work, efficient planning and a use of resources that needs to be undertaken. As well, a third meaning is that to can carry the symbolism of all insects- that is, something which is unclean if not given the correct attention.

But I will stop rationalizing. I don't give a damn why these images are pouring out of me. They just are.

As Martha Graham says, it is not my business to determine how good it is, as long as they just keep pouring. And I'll be fine with that for now.