It was heartwarmingly cool to create this page (over several days) whilst collaging with my ” very finest creation”, my daughter, Lilith.  I love how engaging our senses and working with our hands to create beauty brings us closer and makes us feel connected to our selves, our dreams and ideals, and each other.

Hello again Lovely Readers!

When I traveled from Hawaii to LA at the end of March to have spine surgery, I never thought it would be early June before I was able to begin posting again. Thank you for being patient with me. I need all the patience I can get right now. Yes, the surgery was a success and far more needed then the imaging had been able to reveal. However (brace yourself for a succession of bad puns), there is no quick fix for damaged nerves, and so I am still limping along in a strange kind of limbo with a long windy road of rehabilitation ahead.Keeping my spirits ups during these last 8 weeks hasn’t been easy – later in the post I share part of the “playlist” that helped keep me engaged and inspired.  I am eternally grateful to my Beloved,my dear friends, my amazing mother, and particularly my wiser than her years, beautiful, smart and strong (like her mum) daughter, for continuing to believe in the possibility of complete recovery, and support me during this sometimes hellish experience.

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Being available (both emotionally and physically) for my daughter has been my primary focus since returning to Hawaii at the beginning of May. It was such a joy to be able to give her the much-needed and deserved attention.

It was also at times hard work -what with me finding my feet again and the lead up to final exams and then, her annual trip to her mother country-and highly emotional (which is why we needed to engage our senses in art-journaling). So now, with her safely on the other side of the pond for a month, I am able to give the lion’s share of my attention over to my own physical and creative needs.

Today I made myself a new cover for my writing journal. It felt so good to surrender and allow myself to be fully engaged in the process.

Writing a book is often metaphorically compared to giving birth. Given that I am a writer and a mother it is easy for me to understand why-and to understand why it is so hard to do both at the same time.  The way I see it, the writing process itself is the gestation/pregnancy though the trimesters are often years instead of months. Having the book accepted and then (finally) published is akin to the birth-process. It is similar to the period of time when the baby moves down into the birth canal and begins to prepare for the journey into the world. Promoting the book is the next milestone, the raising of the book, so to speak which hopefully is done in partnership with a great publisher.  New World Library, are you still listening?

I’ll be posting regularly again and keeping you posted on my progress as well as letting you know about opportunities to engage your senses here in Hawaii as well as where ever you are. Because to paraphrase Yoga’s great teacher’s teacher Krisnamacharyi that is where engaging begins. Take time to find the beauty in your life and in your self….It is as necessary to your thrival (my word) as food and water. More about that in next week’s post.

I thought I’d end with a photo of Satine Bunny engaging her curiosity and her senses. For more bunny pictures click my Pinterest button on the upper right sidebar and then choose the “a dose of cute” board .

Bunny uses the coffee table to stand and smell the roses-well actually the carnations which are just outside the frame on the right. Later she hopped up and decided to taste them too! No bunnies allowed on the coffee table….

Wishing you the scent of ice-cream plumeria, the sound of palm fronds dancing in the breeze, the touch of gentle trade winds on your skin, and the taste of strawberry papayas from the big island on your tongue,

…..Love

Sabrina

ps.

• Here is my engagingly eclectic “Complete Recovery” partial playlist for the senses. I ‘ll add more to the list(s) in subsequent posts. To hear and see the music listed below click EngagingtheSenses  and then choose the Engagedsenses board.
• Music:
• Foster the People– Don’t Stop (Color On the Walls)
• IZ: Somewhere over the Rainbow/its a wonderful world
• Jason Mraz: I’m yours (Live On Earth)
• Bill Withers: Lean On Me-Live
• Jack Johnson: Breakdown and Better Together
• Film:
• Breathless– Jean Luc Goddard
• Strictly Ballroom– Baz Luhrman
• TV:
• The Colbert Report
• Defiant Requiem- voices of resistance
• Poem:

OWL

the sign for making the most of what you have

on the human hand is a thumb at full right angle to the palm

for the owl it’s two talons forward two back a flexible foot

that crushes the prey and lifts it to the beak to the eyes

which are legally blind this is why the owl

hunts in the dark in the dusk when nothing is clearly seen

and why the owl’s eyes are fixed facing ahead to better focus

so its whole face swivels in each direction like the turret on a tank

the round plates of feathers surrounding the eyes collect the least sound

when it turns the owl is computing by geometry the exact

location of the mouse or snake or songbird

that moves imperceptibly in its nest toward which the owl

sets out from the hole in the tree the burrow the eave of the barn

and crosses the field in utter silence wing-feathers overlapped

to make no sound poor mouse poor rabbit

last night

from the porch obbligato to the brook and the snuffling deer

intent on the gnarled worm-bitten apples we leave on the tree

I heard what must have been a Barred Owl or a Barn Owl

or a Lesser Horned Owl close by not deep in the woods

what I heard was less a call than a cry

a fragment repeating repeating a kind of shudder

which may be why the country people I come from

thought an owl was prescient ill-omen meant to unspool

the threads they’d gathered and wound I was a grown woman

when my father took the key from under the eave

and unlocked the door to the darkened house he had grown up in

and stepped across the threshold and said as he entered the empty room

hello Miss Sally as though his stepmother dead for weeks

were still in her usual chair

in the Medicine Wheel

the emblem for wisdom is the she for gratitude at dusk at dark

the farsighted owl strikes in utter silence when we hear it

from the tree or the barn what it announces

is already finished

—Ellen Bryant Voigt