Buds Bursting

garden poppy blooming
"heart" opening

Greetings Beady Friends,

I must talk about Spring.  Our new clock time has arrived just as the fruit trees in Albuquerque are blooming.  Explosions of delicate blossoms are all about town.  Meanwhile, most trees remain bare and I still have a wonderful view of the Sandia Mountains from my home.  It is that quiet, warming, tease we get, here.  We go out without jackets and sometimes with shorts. Our gardens are begging for our attention, and we want to bend towards the earth to jump start them to their natural beautiful conclusion. But, before we can slide into summer, the winds will pick up and we will be accosted by tumbleweeds,  dirt in our ears, and dusty yards.  We will hide indoors, and shrink away from the sound of rustling branches and rattling windows.  We will see the sun shining in our vast blue sky and become impatient with another unsettling Spring day.  Then suddenly, it will be hot, and quiet, and our summer, if not the calendar's, will be upon us.

I usually brace myself for Spring here - it seems so changing and unpredictable.  This year I will try to enjoy every moment of it.  Wild wooly winds will not unhinge me.  Tumble weeds rolling under my car will not derail me.  I will cozy up inside with family and friends.  Perhaps I will bead and blog while the weather rages outside.  I will also go out into the mess of Spring to notice hatchlings and bursting buds, butterflies, and bees. I will let my hair be blown and my eyes water up with the wind.

I will let Spring swoop me up and I will not resist the light and renewal that is offered.  Like the hard-shelled seed that cracks to let the fragile, light-seeking cotyledon emerge, I will take the risk to grow… and I welcome all fellow travelers who are ready for their next ride.

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."   -- Anais Nin

Let us become a field a flowers.

Bead on, dear friends.

HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON!

Julia

Please note our new hours starting this week!

Monday 2-8 PM (no change)

Tuesday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm

Saturday 11 am - 4:30 pm

Sunday CLOSED (no change)

photo source

Follow Your Heart

Sandia Mountains, Albuquerque, New Mexico

The last weekend in September I will be selling my jewelry in an outdoor show for the first time. The Northern New Mexico Arts and Crafts Guild has 3 shows a year in Cathedral Park in Santa Fe. Recently, I went to scope out the show, in preparation for my show in September. It is a sweet fair, not at all overwhelming, with 35 booths of very high quality art and craft. I walked the fair, examining the set-ups for ideas, meeting the artists,and introducing myself. I met another seed bead artist, Elaine Sutton, who does fabulous bead embroidery collars. We talked for quite awhile.

The next morning I woke with a start. I remembered something my mom told me when I was hating junior high school. I grew up in a town on the east coast where I felt i just did not belong. I hated living there and felt like a misfit and also "unsafe" in some way. I remember my mom telling me that I would find my place in life and that I didn't have to live there forever. She mentioned some friends whose daughter had moved away to New Mexico to make jewelry as an example. That seemed far-fetched, exotic, adventurous, and mind-blowing. It didn't really help me figure out how to live day by day. But it did give me a sense that I could explore the world and find my own place. Something I've been doing ever since I left that town. I never did meet the girl who moved away to make jewelry.

I was interested in art but never pursued it seriously. I thought I should do something brainy and prestigious and I became a doctor. After medical school, when I was contemplating where to train in my speciality, pediatrics, I remembered that girl who moved to New Mexico and applied for a residency position at the University of New Mexico program. It was strange because I had never been to the state. But, the exotic idea was planted in my head 18 years before by the notion of this girl from my town who followed her heart and found happiness far away. When I interviewed in Albuquerque I saw the full moon rise over over the pink Sandia Mountains and find its place in the indigo sky. That was it. I have been living in New Mexico ever since - 15 years. It is only this past year that I have stopped practicing medicine to give my creative life a chance to blossom.

It seems while I was sleeping, my brain put this together with a face I saw at the fair. One of the artists makes beautiful "modern botanical" silver jewelry. We spoke a bit. That next morning, it was her face that I saw when I woke with a start. I rummaged through the cards I had collected at the fair, and there was hers. I sent her an email, asking if perhaps she could be the girl my mom had told me about. It was a shot in the dark. I got a reply and guess what? She is, in fact, the girl from my town, the daughter of someone my mother knew 20 years ago, whom we'd never met, who followed her heart, moved 2000 miles away, and makes jewelry in New Mexico. She is the girl, who just the notion of her, influenced my life, in ways neither of us knew.

Cheers to us (all of us), to self -exploration, to following our hearts, and to the wonderful ways we help others, by just having the courage to be true to ourselves.