Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal

Gaian Tarot Music Video!

Somewhere online I stumbled across Animoto, a great little service that allows you to make your own music videos — or rather they make them for you.  It's free if your video is 30 seconds, or $3.00 for a full song. Such a deal!  You can upload your art or photographs and add a tune, and they do the rest.  How cool is that?  (Of course you need to be sure you have the permission of the copyright holder for both music and images.)  

So here's my Gaian Tarot video, set to Craig's "Circle Song," which he recorded about ten years ago on his CD "Beyond the Cedar Moon."   Enjoy!

A New Blog from an Old Friend

I've been harassing, uh, encouraging my friend Lunaea to start a blog for months now — or is that years?   She finally did, and it's beautifully designed and witty, just like she is.   Please visit At Brigid's Forge: A Blogue by Lunaea Weatherstone.  (Yep, I spelled it that way, just like she does — and you'll have to read her explanation of why it's a blogue and not a blog!)

Mooooooo!

I'm getting ready to go to the Readers Studio in New York, so I'm busy packaging prints and decks to vend.  I had new business cards printed and also had some Moo Cards made up as promotional giveaways.  These things are too much fun!  They're about the size of a stick of gum, and you get 100 (with 100 different designs!) for $20, with your contact info on the back.  Such a deal.   The creative possibilities are endless.

They arrived from the UK quickly — about ten days after I ordered them.  The printing is good quality, the card stock is heavy.  I sliced and diced my Tarot images, so that one Moo Card has the drummer's hands from the Magician, another has the face of the Hermit and another, the paddle of the Canoe. I like zeroing in on details that might otherwise be missed.

I'll have them in a little basket on my vending table with a sign that says "Take one!" — so people passing by can do their own little mini-reading.  Like I said, too much fun.

A New Year's Meditation on Time

Have I mentioned how much I love listening to Ellen Kushner's "Sound and Spirit" broadcast?

And the current episode is my favorite one so far:

Cycles - A New Year's Meditation on Time
As the calendar turns, many of us pause to reflect on the patterns that shape our year and our lives. Ellen Kushner examines the various passages in human life that mark significant changes, and how they are observed and celebrated in poetry, legend and music.

Click here to see the Cycles Playlist
and here to listen to the current episode.

My only complaint is that you can't download the episodes, you can only stream them. 

But it's worth it — especially today, New Year's Day.  An exceptional episode.

A Tarot Podcast, who knew!

As I healed and recovered from my cold last week, I took up my work on the Gaian Tarot Explorers (Knights). I spent the last couple of months writing my proposal and sample chapters, and setting up the "bones" of all the cards (composition and photo references).  Now it's pretty much pencil to paper, stylus to tablet.  I've set myself a goal of finishing two cards per week.  Even with a bad cold, this week I finished 1.75 cards.  I feel pretty good about that.

Getting into the flow of making art is very different, for me, from the flow of writing.  It's less about language and more about space, form and color.  Not necessarily right brain / left brain, as writing can also be very right brain.  When I'm making art, I usually listen to music.  Recently though, I've been listening to audiobooks or podcasts. (Hmm, I may have to record some of the Old Mermaid stories just so I can listen to them while I'm making art.  There's something so nurturing about having stories read to you.) 

Anyway I did an iTunes search on podcasts the other day and was pleasantly surprised to discover the Tarot Connection podcast. I'm pretty sure I had stumbled across the website some time in the past few months but this is the first time I listened to it.  I was really impressed with the episodes I heard.  They were engaging, interesting, informative and provided food for the spirit.  My favorite episode (of those I've listened to, so far) was one from last summer on the Card of the Day practice (one of my favorite Tarot things-to-do).  Host Leisa ReFalo interviewed both James Wanless (creator of the Voyager Tarot) and my friend James Wells.  Between the two of them, they came up with a wealth of ideas, all permutations on choosing a card a day and what to do with it after you've chosen it.  Who knew!

So thank you Leisa, for such a wonderful resource for the Tarot community.  I'll be listening again later today as I finish up the Explorer of Water.

(BTW, dear readers, I know I'm way behind in our study of the Seven Whispers — I promise to blog about the Second one this week.  Thanks for your patience.)

Songs for Spring

Since buying my iPod about a year and a half ago, I've had a lot of fun creating playlists according to themes. My favorites have turned out to be my seasonal playlists, my elemental playlists and (of course) my playlist of Songs to the Moon. I've been playing my Spring Playlist over and over lately and it finally occurred to me that others might enjoy it too. My tastes in music run to acoustic, singer/songwriter, contemporary folk (like they play on Folk Alley, with a little Celtic, country, roots, reggae and rock thrown in. If you're looking for the hard stuff, you won't find it here.

So here's my iTunes playlist, an iMix called "Spring Songs for the Pagan Wheel of the Year." (Disclaimer: if you buy any of these songs through iTunes I'll receive a few pennies.) These songs focus on Imbolc and Ostara — I've got a great Beltane playlist shaping up, which I'll share in a few weeks.

Tree Frogs and Flower Essences

No, I haven't fallen into a black hole -- I've just been working long hours this past week so we could launch the newly redesigned website for Tree Frog Farm before the weekend. Diana and John are island friends of mine, and their original website was one of the first I designed when I went into the web design business a few years ago. If you're interested in flower essences, you might enjoy taking a look!

A Broken Foot and a Languishing Muse

It's noon and I just blushed -- busted once again. The Lovely Man with the Red Gold & Grey Beard just stuck a post-it note in front of my face which read, BAKED POTATO??? I giggled and (once again) pulled the iPod earbuds out of my ears -- with the sound turned up I hadn't heard him asking me at all, at all. (It's not like this hasn't happened before . . .) And what had my rapt attention? At the moment it was Cheryl Wheeler's "Defying Gravity" -- no, not the same "Defying Gravity" that Elphaba the Green Witch sings in the Broadway show "Witches." Although I think I may have liked that "Defying Gravity" better. But I digress.

Have I mentioned how much I love my iPod? My "Workout" playlist gets me moving faster when I work with weights and walk my power walks. My "Lullabye" playlist lulls me to sleep (well at least sometimes). If I really want to fall asleep, I listen to a book. There's nothing quite like being read to sleep, is there? (The folks over at TidBits discovered the same secret I already knew, the cure to insomnia being listening to Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything on the iPod.) My "Trance" playlist puts me in an altered state (lots of Soundings records on that one). And the rest of the time, I listen to my contemporary folk-country-rock favorites. (At the moment, that's a shuffled playlist with Eastmountainsouth, Lucy Kaplansky, John Gorka, Patty Griffin, Old Crow Medicine Show and -- of course -- Craig Olson (the aforementioned Lovely Man with the Red Gold & Grey Beard).

Did I mention that I broke my foot last week? Did I mention that this has played havoc with my plans to double or triple my daily walks of 2-3 miles each? Did I mention I've been feeling a bit discouraged, not to mention being in pain? OK, that's enough whining, way more than enough whining. This break is not nearly as bad as the other one -- three years ago, I shattered the cuboid in my right foot after falling about 8 feet off a ladder from a loft to the kitchen floor of a friend's cabin. That one took nearly a year to heal, and I still have twinges in my foot from time to time. This time, it's my left foot and the break is not nearly as bad, although it is in that same cuboid area. This time, I was coming down some wooden steps (skipping happily in the bright spring sunshine, if truth be told) and I simply slipped. Simply slipped while skipping in spring. (oh jeez.) It didn't help that the tread on my shoes was worn down to nearly nothing and that I had had "Buy New Walking Shoes" on my To-Do list for nearly three months . . .

I have still managed to get around, upstairs and down, out the door to community meetings (oh those small town politics), across the street to staff the neighborhood garage sale for a couple of hours, even into town to see my dad and hook up his new high speed internet access (I am sooooo jealous). But I've been spending most of my time here on the couch in the Gathering Room (aka the Great Room), listening to music, watching DVD's, checking my email on my laptop, working on artwork and website work and reading and napping and reading some more.

Meanwhile my Muse has been languishing, as I have not been paying enough Attention to Her. She needs to be fed and watered. With daily journaling and sketching and Tarot readings, not to mention walking (which will have to stay on hold for awhile).

I've been feeling guilty for not blogging (or journaling or sketching) and of course, guilt does nothing but make us wallow even more in our bad habits. So just do it, darlin', I would say to someone else. And so I did. And here we are. Blogging once again.