new blog

thanks for coming back to my blog!

i’ve decided to host my blog elsewhere, and i hope you’ll visit me here:

www.erinfaithallen.blogspot.com

have a beautiful blessed day!

hořovice, czech republic

Still buried under piles of photos from my three weeks spent in the Czech Republic.  Editing is a joyful but tedious task!  Here are some selects from my trip to a small town, Hořovice, about an hour by train outside the city.

We left from the Praha Train Station just north of Wenceslas Square …

… the station is a strange and delightful blend of Art Deco meets scary 1980’s architecture.

The trains wowed me with how colorful and rustic they are …

best of prague…so far

I am back home in London now, and have literally thousands of photos to edit from the last few days spent in Prague.  I wandered for hours every day, wearing out my legs and my camera.  The compulsion to photograph was unstoppable!  Below are a few of the shots taken whilst meandering (and channeling Joseph Campbell and Walker Evans) …. following my bliss and documenting life.

Check out evidence of bliss by clicking on thumbnails below….

the best day ever….

Have you ever had the most perfect moment?  When all the world is good and true and the sun exists only to flood into you, to feed you?  When peace pulses through every cell of your soul and there is nothing in all the world but you, you, you?

If I listen very carefully while exploring, I will hear a lush hush of whispers pulling me into a time-stopping swirl of a world that exists as if in a dream….

My wanderings carry me there, to that world, as I follow the crushing symphony of hush behind a small chapel…

…into a small bowl of a meadow nestled at the base of the magical hill of Petrin.  Surrounded on all sides by monasteries and abbeys, I can almost hear the fervently reverent prayers and chants of faith….

The sun sends down streamers of puckered lips just for me, kissing my freckles….

…giant jackrabbits hop along the grassy lane….the grass itself is buzzing with green, zapping me through my bare feet….

butterflies are swimming in the sea of breezy sun…the hush bleeds into bells….layer upon layer of them clanging the arrival of noon….

I wander the grounds alone, in holy awe….except for the occasional nun scurrying in the distance.

There are many religious statues in the gardens, and I am not sure I am supposed to be here….

…except that I feel so perfectly, pleasantly, heartbreakingly at home.

prague is very texture-y

focus is overrated

Why do I love blurry photos so much?

If photography is an extension of the soul,  am I just a big ball of blur inside, or is there more than meets the eye to taking and viewing blurry photos?

Cut to an email I received last week from a dear friend.  In summary, the story it told was one of slowing down to take life in; to stop and notice the beauty that wants to emerge through all of our senses — to stop and smell the roses, literally.

I have been thinking about this during my wanderings in the hour between sunlight and moonlight.  When photographing at night I shoot compulsively and haphazardly, engaging all of my senses – and especially my sixth.  The blurry photos that result are indeed an extension of my soul, the core part of me that finds joy in letting the lens capture the imprints of time that is NOT linear.  Beauty emerges in the moments in between, in the silence between words, in the unknown of an unanswered question, in the space of motion not illuminated by a synthetic flash of a camera.  It exists all around us, waiting to drop into our awareness through any one of our senses in a movement of energy that is not always tangible.  The open shutter of my camera simply observes the time that exists in ‘nonsensical’ squiggles and swooshes inside the rat race from point A to point Z.

According to The Dictionary, blur is:  to dim the perception or susceptibility of; make dull or insensible: The blow on the head blurred his senses.

I challenge that definition though, with one of my own. According to Erin, blur is: to slow down and observe the motion of grace;  to soften the focus of the human lens and engage all senses with the magic that dangles in the air all around us:  The blow to his head allowed him to enjoy a blissful new view of the world – which resulted from the blurring of his senses.

My soul is not a big, fat, blurry wad of ambiguity.  It is plump and pleasant, with a penchant for layered compositions of time that exists between the lines.

i heart epiphanies

Today I am thinking about how this blog was intended to be an art/travel blog, keeping anyone who cares abreast of my creative world as I simultaneously travel and adjust to new life.  But it seems a deeper vein of Erin Faith Allen wants to emerge.

I have long been on the path of ’self-improvement’ or ‘enlightenment’ or (insert appropriate buzz word here).  This path has led me down a road or two and into many forests with swamps and creatures (who of course turn out to be my own inner ugly demons), and over a few mountains into a desert and a sea and through a few alternate universes and….you get the drift.

I am realizing that somewhere along the way I actually began to self-improve, or gather the first few threads of the magic carpet that is enlightenment.  I have come to believe that we absolutely create our reality, and if my reality is Europe, true love, and ‘work’ that is my passion and bliss and hearts desire, then somewhere along the way I have learned a thing or two about just which path to follow. Otherwise I would not be here, now, sitting in the midst of My Dream Come True.  I may be terrified at times, or fluttering around in one degree of hysteria or another.  But it seems that my great leap of faith and following my heart has plopped me exactly into what I have always hoped my life would be.

Wow, I really have self-improved!  Next stop, enlightenment…..

sunshine drizzle storm

Life as a human gives us the opportunity to indulge in choices, which always bring an accomplice or two in the form of experiences, emotions and sensations. When we choose to pay attention, we can see our own inner world of loops, of patterns, of ups and downs and all arounds….

When I look inside myself a world reveals that can be, metaphorically speaking, quite like weather patterns. My basic self is like the bright sky, an eternal umbrella of clarity made of beam-upon-beam of illuminating high frequency light. Inevitably, however, a density creeps in. It is akin to a coastal drizzle, or any illusory haze that dims the appearance of the sky. Blown into a bundle by invisible wind, clouds gather and bluster about. The air thickens with electricity as the threat of combustion puts all of nature on alert, seeking shelter as varying torrents of rain, lightning and thunder spill and explode…and then the wind scoops it away as effortlessly as it was swept in. The dissipation of clouds reveals a sky still cerulean and pure. I am that sky.  I am that gloopy, gloppy exploding emotion of weather. And then I am deliciously and deliriously bright again.

Navigating the stormy patterns is much easier when we hold on to the truth that we are both the clear sky AND the weather.  If we ride the sensations of those surprising storms in all their raging glory – we can ALSO stand rooted in the knowingness that the sky is simultaneously placid and sparkling with clarity just above the clouds.

Weather is temporary. The sky is eternal.

persephone….my queen

‘persephone’, mixed media on canvas

Today as the rain falls in Prague, I am curling up on the sofa and conjuring up the myth of Persephone, ancient queen of the Underworld.  Persephone was the overly sheltered offspring  of Demeter and Zeus.  One day, while frolicking in flowery fields with the nymphs, she was quite suddenly kidnapped by Hades, fierce god of the Underworld, and kept in his lair.   After much hullabaloo on the part of her mother, who rallied all the other gods and goddesses against Hades, Persephone was freed.  However, prior to her release, crafty Hades tricked her into eating magic pomegranate seeds which forced her return to the Underworld for a season each year, where she ruled with him as half-prisoner, half-Queen.   And so the seasons were born.  Winter marks Persephone’s descent into the Underworld, with the shortening of days and the death of vegetation.  She then rises to the Upperworld in the spring, and the earth celebrates.  Blooms abound and the sun extends it’s daily romp in the sky.  (For a thorough description of the myth go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone).

My love affair with Persephone is not just about the surface story of her seduction into the darkness by the clever Hades.  She comes to life when I dive beneath that, in typical Persephonic fashion, to the energy and symbolism, to the guidance and illumination of this Underworld Queen.  Persephone teaches me about duality, transition, surrender, and holding space for myself even when blinded by my own darkness, or stumbling about in a subconscious maze of self-sabotauge.  She models authenticity, courage, and reminds me of my sensual and creative energies.

'scooping stars', mixed media on canvas

I understand the universality of her fragility, and that it is precisely her delicacy which is her power.  If there is a world between the Underworld and the Upperworld, this is it: the landscape of vulnerability that sits in the transition.  Skillfully navigating this transition is the jewel in her crown.  It is what the archetype of Persephone herself embodies as she glistens and glides from world to world.  Opera with the angels or bellows with the beasts of hell, she does not identify solely with either end of the spectrum because she has integrated the opposites within her.  She does not know blindness in darkness.  She does not know deafness in thunder.

In my minds eye, she is a shimmering slither of a shadow, a lithe and nimble shapeshifter of grace, dignity, and authority.  I see a woman-child with soft budding breasts made of blossom, and tendrils of hissing shadow crowning her head.  I hear a cackle and a giggle, I feel her vulnerability and her strength, and in my veins I carry the pulse of Persephone who chose to rise above victim status in order to gain her crown as Queen.

'symbiosis', mixed media on canvas

the undertow

Being out in the world, in a magnificent foreign country, I am learning about me.  Every day I become a new version of me, and I find it sometimes difficult to keep up with my own swiftly changing internal world.  I have chosen this new life, I have brought this wondrously vacant expanse to myself.  Where once I had an apartment, belongings, clothes, make up and shoes galore, with Whole Foods just around the corner, and a studio filled to the brim with art supplies…..I now brave the world with just my camera, without make up, in the same clothes over and over (sans fabulous shoes), and must trust that the food I am eating will not trigger one of my many food allergies.

My carefully constructed life in Los Angeles is no more.  I am out in the world, without my ego distractions and the fortress of walls I built around myself to keep my world safe and to keep me in control.   The illusion of those perceived methods of safety and control is fading away, and these pangs inside are proof of an internal shift.  Some days I feel the freak out more than others.   Today is one of those days.  I know how to be with myself on a day like today.  So today is a day of quiet, of hush, of feeling the current of the undertow that is sucking at my feet.

It is a day of just treading water…and being grateful that on most days, I float.