The Inn of Stormy Nights

She leapt, and for a moment, the world forgot how to hold itself together. Reality and fantasy danced hand in hand.

This is what night was made for.

****

I talk to trees, my piano has a name. When technology doesn’t work how I expected, we have conversations.

The birds have feasted on sunflower seeds all winter. The shells are little magic spells, and if you follow them you’ll find a faerie hollow.

Now my cats are singing with the ducks in the pond. The melody twines through the air like string through a labyrinth.

Imagination can make the most mundane observance important, meaningful and matter in the way that we all are just piles of star stuff.

What is your flavour of whimsy today?

Portrait-perfect photos aren’t real life. Especially for cats.

But as I snapped yet another photo of the thousands I have of Emrys, I realised it might look posed, but it is still my Emrys, in this exact moment.

A glimpse frozen in time of sun, and resting. Taking a breath. That is the value in a photo styled as a portrait.

A Fragment of Thoughts:

Every day can feel so routine, or like moving through mud and just waiting for “the perfect moment when things will be better.”

I’m struggling with that more and more every year, but little things like embracing whimsy, and my adventurous cat Emrys, reminding me to do my best with turning chores into adventures.

🐈‍⬛Getting cat food at the grocery store is questing for magic beans for my familiars.
🐈‍⬛Going to the doctor is visiting the wizard’s apothecary for advice and tinctures.
🐈‍⬛Washing a floor feels magical when I whisper little invocations with every swipe of a wet cloth.
🐈‍⬛Going to work is being a fairy pretending to be human and observing quirky human habits like humans observe local wildlife.

It doesn’t fix anxiety or even that impending sense of doom developed from the societal idea that we “must use our time wisely.” As if we are optimized production robots and not messy humans. But it does add a little whimsy.

What is amazing to me is how the things we imagined, we dreamed or we did as kids, are really the things to do as adults.

I used to dream and imagine things all the time, wanting to escape and be anywhere but where I was. While I am careful to not lean into the “I need to escape” vibe anymore, adding some childhood imagination to life just makes the overwhelm and drudgery less so.

I’m going on an adventure (grocery shopping). What are you doing today?

A snippet from the Echoing Library…literally

Taliesin loves these shelves in particular since I have more in another room, rather than the double stacking that used to be done with these books from my university days and my favourite fantasy reads. (Which now mostly live on other bookshelves. You might spot a few here though).

As a result she always looks like a witch’s cat who stumbled into the (mostly) English Literature section of the university.

A few lessons from Emrys this week.

There is magic all around us, sometimes it just takes a cat’s perspective to see the whimsical and wise in the ordinary moments.

☀️

A Cat Moment: Just Keep Climbing

Two years ago when I first met Taliesin in a tiny room in a fosters home, she huddled in an open closet while her sister pounced, played and paraded all over. The foster warned me that Tally was skittish and shy and may not do well with change or loud places, let alone other people or cats. I reassured the foster I was introverted, rather sound sensitive myself and preferred to live alone.

But huddled in the closet as Tally was I could see her watching her sister and watching me. Tally and I locked eyes. I gave a slow blink and a human smile. I knew then that there was more to her than anyone else was seeing.

Tally is painfully shy, and skittish. But she is also so curious, and lively and has a deep well of love that she shares with me every day.

When I got Tally I had hoped to settle and be stable for some time. Sadly life got in the way and the last two years have been some of the most turbulent. Through all the changes though Tally has blossomed. She meets every new thing or person with a quiet and watchful curiosity.

She has been observing Emrys climb this old tree all summer and finally this week she not only went for the lowest branches, but scrambled all the way up and then back down again when I have sat outside with her. She has done this a number of times now and always comes down with an extra sparkle in her eye like “look mommy, I climbed the big tree!”

She has been so affirming to me, as someone who has been labelled as painfully shy and too quiet my whole life that the labels other people put on us, no matter how true or false, are not the whole picture of who we are. We hold multitudes.

We can be happy and sad at the same time. We can be shy but curious in the same moment. We can be scared but wanting to take a leap anyway.

We are more than all the single pieces of ourselves. What opposite traits or emotions have come up for you lately?

Fable #11: The Owl’s Dream

Wandering through the Scriptorium at The Inn of Stormy Nights I sometimes come across tales left as scribbles in notebooks or scattered across loose parchment. They are pieces of me, pieces of other people. They are a collective record of what most needs to be heard.

Wandering through here always allows me to dig into what is going on in my life, what emotions, what fears and joys I feel and process them through the lens of story.

And sometimes all I know is I feel “something” and these stories are like pulling a tarot card without a question. Just following the energy. The wandering path.

Then the story that rises up from the mess is always the one I needed to hear.

Does this tale, or a piece of it, resonate with you?

Happy International Cat Day!

My kitties enjoy using anything as a spot to stretch and play. Whether it’s my yoga mat, or just whatever blanket I happen to be using outside, they love to do what I do.

This is my Lion’s Gate. Moving through the energies with my cats by my side, always. They are wonderful guides through every threshold.

Page #35: Rewiring Beliefs

I found this as I was reading and walking through the garden paths today. A little offering in an old sketchbook.

My creative process has never followed what any teacher has taught. I struggle with outlines, my action plans sound strategic but never fit in reality and when I have forced myself to do either, I never finish what I wanted to create.

Yet when I create as a Wanderers, letting my feet take me wherever they will. I come out with things that are unpolished, unfinished, and take readers on winding roads that are full of emotion and life, but and editor would say has too much going on and is missing a hook.

All valid criticisms and advice from teachers and experts. Those things and working on those things are important to the different crafts of creativity. However, I have come to find that to get to the hook, the heart, or the root of why I am doing what I am doing, I always need to let myself explore, to play and most of all, to wander.

Yes it means my paths take longer than the average person. Yes it means I get a lot of people giving advice on how to organize and track and plan and tighten up language, emotions and timelines. I receive that advice, but I never let it rule me anymore. (Well, I have doubts and days where I have to sift through all the fears like any human).

But I keep wandering. I keep creating. Because I am honouring the little girl still in me who started drawing a dragon in a sketchbook one day, and that became a living storybook. As the little girl drew the dragon, then another dragon, then a mountain, she told a story to her audience of stuffed animals. Then as the page filled up she went to the next and continued the story. Never knowing where it would go until her coloured pencils hit the page and the story unfolded with each stroke and verbalized dialogue.

I invite you to honour your creative process this week. Let it be whatever it needs to be, for you.

Snippet #27

I’ve been collecting photos of random finds lately. Here is a soft spell to root you into the flow of the tide. Imagine your feet sinking into sand as the water flows over and back, over and back.

It feels like home to me. Where do you feel the most at home when out in nature?

Entry 7: A Message in the Grass

Wandering outside during the summer means I spend a lot of it with Taliesin and Emrys. They are always exploring, watching, and often pouncing after butterflies, crickets in the grass.

I came here looking for something. Or at least hoped, as I often have in my travels, that going somewhere would give me answers. I never get those answers, but what I always leave with is a story and understanding or healing another layer of myself.

Where are your favourite places to wander?