I love to stand out in the blistering cold, wrapped up to my nose and just listen...the wind sings sotto voce through the arching naked limbs of trees and the cool blue January sun glitters brilliant on the snow surface. I am mesmerized by that Christmas Card effect to the point that I am dazzled snow blind when I go inside.
I have six acres to wander and adore, and it is my intent to learn the position of every rock and leaf until I know how it's face mutates through each season, through the station of light of each time of day. I am so in love, so besotted by this precious place. I am storing images in my head so that I may paint them. It will be my job to honor this place in my work, something I do not take lightly.
I've approached feeling like this only once before in my life, when I was led to believe a certain home was mine, but it was a cruel illusion, crafted by one hiding a dark heart who sought only to deceive and possess. It never, on my best day there, felt.............like this.
Al Di La...it means "beyond the beyond" in Italian. It took me four months to name this place, because I needed only the most perfect, most appropriate nom for my new kingdom. I awaken each day nearly bewildered and overcome with a quiet, abiding joy and gratitude. I owe no man for this home....it is mine and mine alone and for as many years or days as God awards me, I will cherish it with my entire life and heart.
This is my first winter and it has been truly harsh thus far...huge oil and electric bills trying to heat my house and cavernous studio, which I love, love,love as if it were a person....but, I bartered with a tradesman with a Ruby and Opal necklace and now, wonder of wonders, I have a woodstove in my dear creative womb~ :) The pups and I went out there yesterday, started a roaring fire and relished it's toasty warmth. We curled up on one of my cushy upholstered Italian benches with some pillows and so gently, so softly, we all fell asleep, lulled by the warmth of the radiating stove and the symphony of crackling wood. I did not mean to sleep, only to rest, but it overtook me like a narcotic and I could not resist. I awoke smiling, a phenomenon which occurs fairly routinely here at Al Di La.
I have such substantial peace here and I treasure it, every second. Sometimes I feel a fierce protection swell in my heart, a steely determination to keep this place whole, to maintain the uncanny serenity I experience when in my element and not encumbered by Life's knotty twists. That deep joy, it brings tears, because it is so new, so unfamiliar but humbly treasured. I suppose I am am war-worn, scarred by many battles....and this place binds up those wounds, slowly they heal where healing could not happen before.
When I trek the 350 yards or so to my studio, it is as if I am traveling across vast oceans and clouds, into a welcoming, enveloping new land...the place of my work, of my heart and serenity, my studio, where creation,learning, satisfaction and accomplishment journeys abound, and await me to fulfill them.
I have been no saint in my life but I've genuinely striven to be a good human being. I've fallen prey to the errors a wanting heart can make, many times if truth be told. I've lost my way a few times and felt abandoned and alone, impoverished of spirit....and that vacuum needed filling, as any vacuum in Nature will, leading me specifically to this place, this time, this tranquil happiness. But whatever good I may've done, was intent upon doing, I thank God so very humbly for this reward, this place of respite for my soul. I never sought any reward,truly only craved feeling as though I belong.
And now I do.
Amen
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