” Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but … life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

                                                    Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A most beautiful excerpt from my favorite new book, “When Women Were Birds” by Terry Tempest Williams.

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

( canvas collage by CATHERINE MASSARO, “Bird on the Wire”)

You can change your entire outlook on life today. You can change your point of view on every move you make by considering this.

It’s not HAPPINESS you should count on in life.

It’s CHANGE.

I can count on the weather changing –  and look forward to the seasons.

I can count on getting older – as I watch my grandaughter grow and thrive.

I can count on life being a puzzling challenge – and proudly finding the pieces that create the picture of my life.

And for now…right now, I can count on the sun rising daily and setting each night. And with everything I do in between those hours I can count on change to guide me through each second, minute, and hour of  my life.

(photo by Catherine  Massaro –  sunrise over the Grand Canyon)

Home is ACCEPTANCE.

(monoprint and photograph by Catherine Massaro)

It’s all so temporary.

All of it.

Lest you forget…

Your body’s ambition is mulch.

(photograph by Catherine Massaro)

” Nature is PAINTING for us, day after day, pictures of infinite BEAUTY.”

John Ruskin

 

The hardest thing to see is what is right in front of your eyes.

(featured photograph by Catherine Massaro)

You all know how the old adage goes –

  Fences make good neighbors.

I just smiled big when I saw this fence on a road trip.

Can’t we all just get along?

(Photograph by Catherine Massaro)

” You do not pass through this life, it passes through you.”

(photo by Catherine Massaro)

There are hundreds of things that happen at the end of my pencil. 

But perhaps the most important thing that happens at the end of my pencil is being present. Completely and in the moment present.  I love photography, but it’s such a fast moment that happens between you and the shutter and the image capture. Drawing is a longer experience – more of a meditation that requires sitting, and looking, and looking even harder. And when I’m drawing from something – a tree, a person, an animal,whatever, there is an energy that runs through the end of your pencil from you to that object. This is how it is for me anyway. If you want to see, really see something, sit down and draw it. Get to know it intimately.

You can’t do anything else when you concentrate and give yourself up to a drawing, so you are forced to BE HERE NOW. And that’s a very good thing for correcting a life out of balance. (photo and drawing by Catherine Massaro)