I’ve made a hard decision during this Dark-of-the-Moon.  Previously I set up a
second blog that was dedicated to my love of working with Lunar energy.
Lunar Moondae was also home to my Booby Gurl images.  After a great deal of mind-heart contemplation, I realized I can’t split out my artwork like that.  So, Booby Gurl is coming to this blog and that makes my life much easier.  I am keeping Lunar Moondae because eventually I may do the weekly challenges, but not right now.  The whole point is working with intuition and intention, and while the other blog was a good idea,
my heart wasn’t moved to blog there — and I am moved to blog here.  So here I stay.

I will reblog a couple of posts from Lunar Moondae in the next few days.

☾

Today, to celebrate a New Moon and the Solstice, I’ve a new Booby Gurl post and
will tell the story of how she got her name.

She is my alter ego, and I have been drawing
her for almost as long as I have painted.
She came to me in a workshop while listening
to Brugh Joy, one of my best teachers,
and I think her first form that is
closest to who she is today is right, with a
“flash of bodhichitta” created in a workshop.
She became naked mostly because I am
“naked” spiritually before my tradition —
it is me at my most me-ness,
if that makes any sense.

And as I moved into painting so long ago, I found another kind of me-ness,
the kind where you sing at the top of your lungs for joy, dance with the cats, and put
bright colors on canvas and paper.  I would not find that kind of freedom within marriage or with any other human being until I married my second husband, Mitchell.
And she has been drawn, off and on, in various incarnations, for twenty-five years.

She was named over coffee with Gwenn Seemel, as I was discussing my interest in working with Lunar Moondae and showed her some of “my girls.”  She called her Booby Gurl, and it stuck.  My baby brother Patrick, deceased, would have loved the name.

In naming her, I think I committed to her all the more.
Now she is drawn several times a week, through emotional upheaval and joy.
I no longer relegate her to spiritual endeavors, but to all of my life —
and life is a pretty spiritual endeavor anyhow, doncha’ think?
Sometimes she is pregnant with ideas; sometimes she is pushing the river,
sometimes she dances or paints or contemplates.
Sometimes her boobs become the crescent moon.

☾

I’ve been a bit blue the last couple of weeks, on and off.
I don’t know why, and maybe it is simply this year I long for the light more than normal.
The short days are getting to me, and I’m thrilled that today is the Solstice!
And New Moon, time to move into another moonth and toward brightness!

I had a synchronistic day on the tenth, when I finished a sketchbook and placed it with
my others.  I thought about all my children, my boxes of painted horses and goddesses and bulls and now, all the Booby Gurls and sketchbooks of my journey.  They sit with 30 years of journals of architecture and writing and a bad marriage and a good marriage.
As I was feeling into this, going about my work day, on two completely different sites
two other women spoke of what to do with their sketchbooks!  One wanted to know what we did with them, the other was in distress and had to find a home for hers as she is older and no one in her family wants them.  (Same here; no one wants my children!)
The latter was going to give up her sketchbook habit.

Well, my art may well end up in the dump, most likely.  And still I paint, for me.
So the message Booby Gurl came to this day was pure zen, a meditation:

Paint Daily Paint Daily Paint Daily Paint Daily Paint!

☾

Aquabee Super Deluxe 9×9-inch (of course, a lunar number)
journal with a Platinum Preppy fountain pen, Noodler’s Lexington Grey ink,
and (mostly) Daniel Smith watercolor paints.

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