notes from the heart, laura lowery, daily notes, stories
Laura Lowery
inviting mischief

This fall and winter, I am inviting two new words to guide my creative life: attention and mischief.

inviting mischief
stories, voices
Laura Lowery
new year in county dublin

A few days after Christmas I’m eating veggie curry watching the sea through the window. There’s a lighthouse on a little island that appears and disappears through the clouds. Sometimes there are figures walking on the headland near the tower.

I’m here as a kind of halfway house­—after spending Christmas with my family in the suburbs and before going back to my tiny studio in the city centre.

new year in county dublin
daily notes, from the editor
Laura Lowery
they are blooming

All of the things are blooming. Have you noticed? June is here. The Cecil Brunner rosebush is magnificent this year--an explosion of flowers so heavy that its top has fallen away from the white wall of the little city cottage where Lucia is made, and is spilling toward the alleyway. There is a lesson here for me, in expectation and fruition...

they are blooming
daily notes, from the editor
Laura Lowery
forty-two

Sunday, April 9, 2017 - Daily Notes, From the Editor (550 words). Whoa, April is intense. Burgeoning. This thing we call Spring is aptly named. To the untrained eye, new growth appears suddenly, but if you have been paying attention you know: this all started long ago.

forty-two
daily notes, from the editor
Laura Lowery
unfinished, heart and soul

Happy New Year! Oh, the plans I had for ending 2016 with a neat bow, a perfect email, and an announcement of a new offering I've been working on for early 2017. Out the window they flew sometime in the last week while I struggled to balance heart work with paid work, dreams with reality. Instead, I woke this morning unfinished. Like I always do...

unfinished, heart and soul

equinox

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stirring it all

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stirring it all

Tuesday, March 21, 2017 - Daily Notes, From the Editor (435 words): Sunday was the last day of winter. It's gone now. Poof! Spring. Two magicians arrived at my doorstep at four o'clock in the afternoon. The little one wore shorts, a heart tee-shirt, and no socks. The sun was shining. Her mother wore a blue sweater and a long down coat, offering me tulips and a humorous eye roll as they entered. It was a silent acknowledgment of both the winter temperature (only 8 degrees above freezing outside) and the spring-like hope of a Seattle child who sees the sun...

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honor the shift

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September 22, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor

“Look up and marvel at how the morning half-moon knows today is Equinox.”

Words waft into my head while I shower. Sometimes they are directives, mysterious in origin but urgent with a request. When they move my heart I listen.

"Honor the shift," floated in today, under the warm water. I murmured the words several times, as though they hold answers that will only be revealed by their utterance. 

Move slower. Notice the two evergreen clematises your landlord planted in May and how one survived the summer and the other may not. Touch their leaves and give them encouragement. Breathe.

Autumn is here now. Look up and marvel at how the morning half-moon knows today is Equinox. Equal parts light and dark. Balance.

Walking slowly to coffee, think about how one need not clean for hours or spend a small fortune to make her home resemble the Restoration Hardware fall catalog. One candle, one prayer, is enough.

"May I move into this new season with ease, may the growth of the past season be assimilated into my body, mind, spirit. May I spend less time looking at screens and more time touching the earth, plants, and sunlight."

I lit a small candle and it flickered as I wrote those words. It is glowing at my desk now in the 10am morning light, marking the transition, this worldly shift.

That is enough, don't you think? Or maybe you have your own soft prayer. Doesn't it feel like a good day to make one?

xo
laura

Laura Lowery is the founder, editor and publisher of Lucia. She does her best to lead a creative life. Whether triumphant or stumbling, Laura shares daily notes (that are often weekly) here on luciajournal, including stories, behind-the-scenes happenings, little doses of inspiration, and large quantities of curiosity and heart. She is pleased to meet you.