Happy Sixth Birthday

My granddaughter just turned six which got me searching through the photos of our recent time together. They illustrate diverse aspects of her personality and the reasons I'm so utterly in love with her.

Six of my favorite things about this lovely, dear child:

1. She confidently walks her own path in her own way. She reminds me of her mother in that way which makes my heart happy.

2. She's always up for grand adventures.

3. She likes going to the beach, likes to run and likes to swim after diving wholeheartedly into whatever water is available. It's how she lives her life, too, come to think about it.

4. She likes to play with dolls (and wear aprons and make a pretty tote bag) and lets me play with her.

5. She likes art- drawing, using pencil crayons and painting with vibrant colors. Her creativity extends to  clothes designing and we have such fun doing this together. My mother, her great grandmother, loved clothes and fabric, designed and made clothes for me throughout my childhood, and had a keen eye for color and design. It brings me great pleasure to see this sense burgeoning in my granddaughter.

6. She picked my birthday bouquet while we were on one of our adventures. She's surprisingly thoughtful that way.

It's hard to stop since there's also her zany sense of fun, like wearing a butterfly crown in the belief that she's really a princess, or putting stickers everywhere including on her grandfather's iPhone, or wearing tattoos wherever anyone will draw them on her, or leaving little love notes where I can find them and have my heart warmed…

If the child is mother of the woman, she's on a good path. She brings a unique mixture of her ancestors expressed in a sassy but sweet self.  May her journey contain all that she needs to grow into her full,  beautiful self and offer her the ways to share her gifts with the sweet face of mother earth. Earth needs her gifts.

Act with Beauty and Courage

Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity's journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transform into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.

Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904

Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke

in The Luxembourg Garden

Excerpt taken from: A Year With Rilke, a wonderful blog by Lorenzo and Ruth, in their July 11 post on Transforming Dragons. Check it out. You'll be glad you did.

Final Favorite Photos of Rome

It's had to describe the richness that is Rome given its history, architecture and art but here are some of my favorite snapshots of my last visit offered with the exhortation to add it to your "bucket list" if you haven't already.

First of all, you have to love a city that has such beautiful ticket stubs!

Piazza Navona is a magnificent square, one of Rome's showpieces with three fountains and artists' stalls everywhere. It's a great place to sit and people- watch and soak up the vibrant energy and atmosphere.

Here's one of the sculptures in Piazza Navona that's considered a "lesser" fountain to Bernini's marvelous central fountain, the Fountain of the Four Rivers. This is the Fountain of Neptune.

And finally, the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone with the Brazilian Embassy next to it in the same piazza.

The Trevi Fountain with its marvelous sculpture is considered the most beautiful of Italy's many fountains.

I like the whole shabby chic vibe going on here.

The Pantheon is one of the best preserved ancient buildings not just in Italy but in Europe. It's largely unchanged in almost 2000 years and where I found that statue of St. Anne (2 posts ago) that I love so much. It was originally a temple devoted to all the gods and later converted into a Catholic church in AD608.

Just one of the details inside are these gorgeous columns and the various kinds of marble used.

Speaking of columns, I like this sculptural staircase in the Palazzo Barberini which houses the National Gallery of Antique Art.

More columns outside the Palazzo framing it's fountain.

Art can be from the over-the-top unbelievable very ornate school of art like this church ceiling (not even one of the major churches),

to the more whacky down to earth school of art, the gargoyles in hidden places all over the city. This is my favorite and I named her the grandmother gargoyle. Haven't you had days where you felt like this?

Shall we give her a name, too?

The Luxembourg Gardens

The Luxembourg Gardens in Paris proved delightful on one of my days in Paris. It's the second largest park in Paris and, on a sunny summer day, it was crowded with people of all ages luxuriating in this gorgeous outdoor space. I thought I would take a walk in a nice park but ended up spending all day in this unique and wonderful place.

The original palace is still there setting the stage. It now houses the French Senate and this is their garden that they generously share with the public.

The pond and fountain in front.

Flowers are everywhere, every color imaginable and bordering all the lawns.

One of the things that impressed me were the amazing statues and sculptures in lovely settings all through the gardens. Benches and chairs were plentiful providing comfortable seats to rest and enjoy.

The close up on this one shows the natural surroundings that enhance all the statues.

This one, embedded in the rocks and plantings, looks so real, like a man being born.

This one is of a couple enjoying their baby in a tender family moment.

These children and their mother are also caught in that spontaneous moment of joy. I love the various pinks in the flowers.

A tribute to Chopin tucked in a wooded grove.

I couldn't find who this was but it looked like Bacchus reveling.

I noticed young children stopping and looking at the many sculptures in between playing their games on the lawns. It's all part of their environment- historical buildings, amazing art, natural beauty, open spaces carefully tended that incorporate it all and is available to them. It's a lovely legacy.

The Sistine Chapel

            My favorite place in my recent week in Rome: (click on the [teeny!] link at the end of this post)

Beautiful!

This virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel is incredible. Apparently done by Villanova at the request of the Vatican, but I thought you would enjoy the quality and a bit of Rome on your computer.

TO VIEW EVERY PART OF THE MICHAELANGELO'S MASTERPIECE JUST CLICK AND DRAG YOUR ARROW IN THE DIRECTION YOU WISH TO SEE. In the lower left, click on the plus (+) to move closer, on the minus (-) to move away.  Choir is thrown in for free.  Hold down the left clicker on your mouse or use yor computer's arrow buttons to rotate the picture. AMAZING. MOVE THE ARROW AND YOU WILL SEE EVERY PART OF THE CHAPEL, INCLUDING THE CEILING.

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

Things To Do While I'm Alive

In my birthday post on 26 January, I mentioned a self-discovery art journal inspired by my good friend, Annee. When the mood strikes me (usually 3-4 times a year), I take a few blank pages of this spiral notebook journal and pick out whatever magazine pictures or words catch my eye and put them in a current moment snapshot collage. It visually represents what's up for me. It has been a meaningful process for me for the ten or more years I've been doing it and I like to review the pages and see how they portend or document personal shifts or changes in my life. It's satisfying and fulfills my yearning to find other ways to express myself, this way through art.

Here's the cover page:

And here's a combination I put together some years ago as a self portrait. It's a combination of a Klee painting and a stone circle in Ireland. This, for some reason, speaks to places deep within me and is still accurate:

I did one in Trinidad on my birthday and then arranged it on the picnic table since I didn't have my journal with me. Now that I'm home I put the pictures into the journal today but tweaked them a bit by adding in some tickets from recent places I'd seen in Rome.

Pages 1 and 2:

Pages 3 and 4:

I'm not sure all that they indicate but they're partly to do with designing a new dream, re-innovating myself and getting back to simple things in a place that's simply spectacular. It is what's on my mind for quite awhile now come to think about it.

As I reviewed the past journal pages, here are the things listed in my illustated discovery journal over the years as things I want to do while I'm alive:


Defy

Dream

Imagine

Chime in

Have taste

Be flexible

Become quiet

Get innovative

Create sacred space

Give art the run of the house

Have a second career goal of changing society

Say "arriverderci" to average

Create domestic bliss

Serve up well being

Forge a new view

Work for legacy

Dream globally

Stay fascinated

Re-innovate

Worship

Share


They're values I resonate with, goals I think are worthy, challenges important to me to work on. And I like having a place to play with them, make art about them, keep them before my eyes and heart.

What inspires you these days?

Roma

Ah Roma…

Even though I live two hours from Rome, my husband and I took a week to really have the time to walk, look, appreciate, sit, soak it up. Rome calls for that. It's hard to know where to let your eyes rest, there's so much. They'll be happy no matter where. So much beauty, art, architecture, history, ambience, good food. Everywhere.  It's a delight to the senses and the heart. The gods cooperated by providing a week of sun and temperate weather unitl the last 2 days when it was windy, cooler but still sunny. Good walking weather. And Rome is a good walking city.

The museums have audio tours available in English and I found these anywhere from quite good to outstanding. There are English speaking tour guides available and we hired one for a fun night tour of Rome and an individualized tour of the Capitol Museums. It costs more for these specialized tours but they're worth it depending on your interests, needs and budget. Our guide majored in Art History at the Sorbonne with a specialty in Italian Art. She was amazing!

The Vatican Museums ending with the Raphael Rooms and the stunning Sistine Chapel were gorgeous and diverse. From classical statuary, Renaissance paintings and Etruscan art to Egyptian artefacts, it can take all day to see or pare it down according to your interests or stamina.  The sheer abundance and extravagance is overwhelming but my favorite was the Sistine Chapel. I just sat and stared at Michalengelo's masterpieces for an hour or more. His spirit seemed immediate in these monumental works and afforded moments of inspiration in the presence of greatness.

Check out the official Vatican Museum website for a trippy look at what's there, from every angle. Go to "exhibitions" and then click on "collections online" and you can see the ravishing Rafael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel from 360 degrees. Stop at whatever you want for closer views. It gives you a flavor anyway.

There are the must sees in Rome like the Trevi Fountain and the Coloseum and some less known destinations like the delicious Giolitti gelateria with the best gelato in Rome! Walking the neighborhoods gives a good feel for their differences and is a great way to people watch to catch the unique Rome vibe.

Outside of Rome, we spent an entire day in Tivoli, a treasure of a place with three villas to amaze and delight visitors. We saw two of them, Hadrian's Villa and Villa D'Este. When I say amazing, I mean awe-inspiring, one-of-a-kind, I'm-so-glad-we-did-this amazed! Hadrian's Villa had ruins of 30 buildings spread over three miles in a beautiful countryside and called it home!  I loved meandering through all this beauty for hours. Villa D'Este was in the town of Tivoli but became it's own world behind the gates. Fountains galore was its speciality. Old town Tivoli is lovely.

One of our walking tours featured the best mosaics in Rome. This took us to three churches rich in this beautiful art. One, San Clemente, featured three levels of excavations in their basement dating back 2000 years to the first century.  The oldest section was a pagan site with intact altars and stone school benches among other artifacts.  Since this is off- peak tourist season, we got to wander around with abandon to our hearts content and just soak in the history.

To think about the decades, the centuries of people who have been here before and to be a part of this human procession over the ages was really a remarkable experience. I'll be back.