Don't we all just live on eye candy? Until I have time to return to the writing desk, may this inspire juicy art and joyful life!

If you'd have asked me a year ago, did I ever think it was possible to fall in love with a mouse, I'd have laughed, hard. Kind of like the time I laughed in the first grade lunchroom and power-shot milk through my nose all over Heather Troxell's new dress.

But thirty three years later I am not laughing. Well, I am, but at myself and the absurdity of my love affair. This mouse - my mouse - who's just turned four months old and lives inside my pocket is a testament to opposites attracting. Could there be a more unlikely pair? Little mouse and brazen woman? Contemplating unlikely inter-species relationships yesterday, I was reminded of the moment in An American Tail where Fievel meets Tiger, a big fluffy orange cat, and they become the unlikeliest of friends.

I feel alot like Tiger these days, with a little Fievel tucked in my shirt. He nestles against my skin all day long, sleeping, then wakes to wash his face and whiskers, eats peanuts and sunflower seeds from my fingers, and then goes to play in his Mousie Dream Home all night while I sleep. 

I always LOVED the scene in American Tail where Fievel meets Tiger and they sing "We're a Duo." I've used that song many times in my life to describe unlikely friendships. And now, with this little guy asleep on my shoulder, I can't get it out of my head. Let's sing! All together now!

Tg: I can tell,
we've got an awful lot,
in common,
even though,
we look as different as can be!
We don't even have to try,
to see things eye to eye,
it just comes to us, naturally!
Come to think of it I think we fit together,
playing cat and mouse won't get us, very far!
There's no need to fued and fuss,
when it isn't really us,
Let's you and me be who we are.

We're a duo,
a duo,
a pair of lonely ones who were meant to be a two!
Oh, a duo,
it's true-o,
wherever we go, we're going me and you!

 SHARE THE INSPIRATION AND WIN A 2010 LIVING OUT LOUD CALENDAR!

We're giving away twenty five brightly woven Living Out Loud calendars this fall, and you could end up with one (or more!) of them. But before you read on, ask yourself one question: Are you fierce? Because only the fiercest of creatures can hang with polka-dotted flamingos in striped stockings, dancing elephants and peacock-feathered women. Only fierce creatures flaunt their fabulous selves, empowered with possibility, fierce with reality!

Are you one of us? Then by all means, read on!

How it works:

Post a link to the Message From The Muse (MessagefromtheMuse.com) on your facebook page and/or your own blog/website. When complete, post a comment to this blog post, showing your link(s). (This is how we will get your name to put into our Hatter's hat!)

All names will go into our Mad Hatter hat - modeled here by Silas.

Contest runs September 6 to October 31. Winners announced November 1.

We are giving away 25 calendars, so your chances of winning are wonderfully good!

Calendars ship November 10th*

You can enter as many times as you'd like, as long as your link to MFTM is posted on different sites. (not multiple times on the same site). If your name is pulled more than once, you will win more calendars!

Not on Facebook? Not a problem! Post a link to Message from the Muse on your blog or website and leave a comment under this post showing where you have linked.

More Chances to win! Write an article/review of Message from the Muse of 200 words or more and you'll be entered twice for every article you post on a different website! When you write an article, just post that article to this post and we'll put your name in the hat twice for every article!

Please note: The impetus behind the contest is INSPIRATION! We wish to share the juicy living and luscious writing found on MFTM and grow our community!

*Calendars are free, winners pay postage of 5.00 within continental USA. International winners pay USPS flat rate air shipping.

Continuing our Santa Fean exploits, today's post is "Eye Candy by Day" (a follow up to my night-time window eye candy). All these photos were taken on our three day jaunt to Santa Fe to celebrate Silas's birthday. Do you get the feeling Santa Fe is just wrought with deliciousness? It is! And I'm saving the best for last, so rev up those juices!

Enjoy...

So I've had this fantasy for a while, and it has nothing with a chick walking into a bar with a summer sausage and a poodle. Instead, it goes like this: I'm with someone I love and we're strolling through a beautiful village at night. There are lights on in the shop windows, music spilling from the door of a blues bar, a few people ambling arm in arm around the town square. And in this fantasy, I'm taking in all the loveliness of the store displays and...I'm taking photos.

 I've always thought the best way to window shop is at night. You can see what's in the window and actually glimpse into the store in a way daylight does not allow. Everything is illuminated. Shiny things shine brighter, gauzy things look gauzier, green seems greener. Only one problem with making this fantasy a reality: while on vacation I'm often too tired from daytime sight seeing to muster the energy to shop at night. 

 Until now

For Silas's birthday, Mernie agreed to babysit our dogs, house, plants. It's been three entire years since Silas and I were out and about completely alone. (Confession: we weren't entirely alone. I took Houdini with us.) Knowing that Silas appreciates rare and strange beauties as much as I, we decided to head for Santa Fe, a perfect town to make my night shopping fantasy come true. We spent three glorious nights touring the town, taking photos. We paused for French pastries and espresso, but most of our evening hours were consumed with store display eye candy.  

The images were so scrumptious, I thought you might like to enjoy them here:

Have I mentioned that Mernie has been in our small Taos adobe for weeks? You'd think it could feel crowded and tense with three humans and three dogs and a Houdini mouse in such a small space (especially given the relations of all involved) and you'd be right! But now that we've settled into a routine, things are smooth sailing and we're finding creative ways to enjoy ourselves and each other. We're all back to work with a healthy dose of plurk mixed in.

With business and household duties out of the way, Mernie and I sat down yesterday afternoon for a little mother/daughter collage activity. We haven't created or painted together in over ten years. And as I shared with her some of the techniques I've learned at workshops and through my own risk-taking (mistaking) I really heard myself clearly, as if listening to me with someone else's ears. As we painted, drew, cut and glued, it dawned on me that the "rules" for art (in this case, collage) are the same for life. Well, when I say "rules" let me clarify: rules are the codes by which one operates if one wishes to BE DELIGHTED, and enjoy the creative process, regardless of the results. (But the results are almost always better for having followed the rules. It just works that way.) 

 
"To know delight, you first must be delight."©Angi Sullins 2009
This is the piece I made while contemplating the rules of delightful creation

Rules of Art, Life and Delightful Creation

rule #1 - start where you are! 

Pull out your materials and just play with them. Be inspired by colors, textures, patterns. Delight your senses. Then choose a starting point. Pick a color that moves you and put the paint down.

rule #2 - play spontaneously

Once the paint is down, sort through shapes and figures, faces and places, pull out the images that feel most connected to the colors you've chosen. Instead of intentionally creating a vision from your mind, spontaneously make choices and let the images guide themselves into a story. Let them talk to your right brain and bypass all the anal-retentive "have-to's" of the left brain.

rule #3 - respond to What is

Regardless of what stage you are in, respond to What Is, rather than what you have in mind. Give your creation a little room to create itself. When one arrangement feels dissatisfying, try another, move things around until they feel harmonious. Pose them upside down. Look at your overall composition from multiple angles. Get a new perspective.

rule #4 - fuck ups are fun!

Really, they are. Oh they don't feel so fun when you've worked eight hours on a project and then splashed black ink on top of it, resulting in an ugly smudge in the middle of your lovely Victorian landscape! Then when you relax and let go - after some chocolate and red wine and an ever so teeny bitch session about how you want to pull your eyeslashes out and how you'll never buy black ink again and why doesn't anyone put the LIDS back on the BOTTLES ever ever EVER - you begin to loosen up and play again and suddenly the black smudge resembles an old oil stain, the exact kind you'd have found on a cool Victoriana steampunk engine.

Loosen up. I think maybe all great art and life comes from this one rule. Ultimately, fuck ups are invitations to surprise ourselves with our own brilliance. Think of the students in an art college I heard about recently that requires its students, after every assignment, in each class every year of their schooling, to burn their art. Yup, after completion and critique, all the art is burned to ash. As painful as it sounds, the school turns out incredibly grounded students ready and willing to risk-take, to take themselves and their art loosely, prepared to greet a new genius each day.

 rule #5 - love the process, not the art

Of course it's ok to love your art. But it's counter productive to hate your art, to despise or degrade your results. If you keep your mind continuously flowing with What Is, however, you really give yourself a gift. It keeps you in the moment. And when you finish your piece (or in the best of circumstances, when it finishes itself and nods to you with a wink) it feels stunning to have taken the journey, to have been timeless, dancing with the muse. If, when all is said and done, you feel less than thrilled with what emerged, - and this is the kicker! - allow the result to simply be. what. it. is. 

It's your judgment that creates the dissatisfaction, the misery. Allow your art (your project, your life circumstance) to be what it is. Allow that creation to be  a creation. It's not a measure of your talent. It has naught to do with your worth. The joy of being a creator is in the creating. Move. Start another project. The results will change. And, once you've honed a skill (if that's your choice), even if you are a master, results will often vary. If your results don't vary, if they aren't creating eyelash-tearing, chocolate-eating, red-wine swilling meltdowns you're not taking enough risks. Risk takers inevitably encounter defeat, dissatisfaction. But only on that same risk-taking road do they also meet surprise, thrill, joy, and bliss.

rule #6 - at the end, begin again

I read a poet laureate's work recently that said "All of life is saying goodbye." Our world is built on change, on the life,/death/life cycle. Breath in. Breath out.  And in our art we find, as in life, our end is our beginning. After the blooming of a really great project, I discover the seeds of the next project germinating. Open up. Receive. You've created, birthed and are being called by the great wheel once again. Move on. Don't get too attached to any triumphs or too depressed over any defeats. Just move.

Until. It's time to be still. You'll know it when that time comes upon you. Writers call it "Writers Block." Other artists call it "The Wall." No ideas come. Creativity comes in fits and starts, it stutters. Some days it has Turrets and screams obscenities at your self confidence or barks nonsense at your blank page. Just be still. Once again, "allowing" is the cure-all. Don't fight it. In fact, in your stillness, take a walk, look at the sky, watch a candle, court nature, both inner and outer. The seeds for the next project are there. They just need your field to lie fallow so they can settle into the ground. Be that ground.

rule #7 - feel free to break any and all rules. even these.

In the name of joy and wild abandon, make your own rules!