Yoga Poem

I'm having a rough day. Very frustrated with myself, to sum up what's really bothering me, on top of everything else that a stressful workday entails. I realized earlier it had been a while since I posted on this blog, and intended to find something old to share. But then I sat down, before I changed clothes, and a thought came into my head that turned into another thought & turned into a rough little piece of verse.

Yoga helps with everything. And so that's what I'm going to do in a moment, but this is what that thought brought out of me:

Breathe, exhale, and center find
Calm, be still, and clear my mind
All that came before, put behind
And let every knot unbind

Let every worry drift away
Let every black pain fade to grey
Don't allow fear to have it's say
Let peace uplift, at least today

I should do my yoga every day. Because when I am done, I am at peace. So I'm off to go find that peace, little though it feels possible at the moment. Hopefully you have something that can bring you a little peace too =) Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Lotus Inspired Knot

This started off as a little doodle & I "forced" myself to develop it into a finished piece. First time in probably about a year a doodle has evolved into anything more LOL so I guess the blog is working =)


Lucy, my one & only follower (although I do know I get other people peeking in here, thanks to the Stat Counter), you'd asked about how I come up with my ideas, so I took a few pics with my camera (the finished product above is scanned in) of the process.

It started with a doodle that wasn't even worthy of a pic, that evolved into this line art:


Line art gets expanded into the final design:


Uhm, I'm not very technical, I don't know how to explain the next step other than I just start erasing stuff & darkening other stuff, making the overs & the unders. This is where I remembered that if I have lines that don't connect to anything, they need to end outside of the design, rather than inside:


Start adding some color:


Finish the color & add shading, and ta-da! The finished product above. I draw stuff other than knots sometimes too, but a lot of the time I'm not very pleased with it. Knots are fun & relatively easy & I'm usually very happy with the end product. Thanks for reading.

~Colette

No Reason

Some people sing in the shower ... I compose poetry LOL. I don't usually have time to write any of it down, since my morning routine is timed to the millisecond (I usually punch in at work at maybe 6:28 on the early end ... I start at 6:30), but this stuck in my head long enough to make it to paper. Not quite happy, but happier than normal. Not the greatest, not polished at all (this is the way it came out of my head the first time), but good enough to share:

No reason not to switch it up
No reason not to change
No reason not to make things normal
That once would have been strange
No reason not to suck it up
And go that extra mile
No reason not to be happy
No reason not to smile

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

From The Notebook

At one point I started a notebook exclusively for poetry. I'm sad & somewhat ashamed to admit that it still has a lot of blank pages ... this is from May of 2002, a ridiculously long time ago, but like I said I'm digging through old stuff more right now than I am writing anything new ... looking for inspiration maybe? But even though I still think this is good, it isn't what I want to write anymore. Kind of the wrong kind of inspiration LOL:

How can I be happy

When pleasure is so brief

When every struggling smile

Is too soon stolen by a thief

Good feelings quickly borne away

As though on wind

As though a leaf

And every laugh feels like a lie

Because the mirth so quickly dies

False amusement

From an empty husk

Singled out, within a group

And so alone

Among other people's friends.

Thanks for reading.

~Colette

Green Spiral Knot

Also from about August of 2007:


~Colette

Pink Star Knot

Hmm, found this looking through some of what I already have scanned into the computer. I want to get some more up here before I lose my nerve LOL. Looks like this is from August of 2007:


Thanks for reading... well, looking I suppose, but there were a few words involved =)

~Colette

Throughout Me

Hi =) To readers from my other blog & new readers alike. I guess this is kind of like a mission statement LOL.

My Simple Little Pleasures is my happy place. And while writing makes me happy, sometimes - ofttimes - it seems like I do my best poetry when I'm sad, or angry, or lonely. So, while I'm not going to call this my sad place, or anything quite so dramatic, it's going to have a little bit of a different vibe that MSLP. I feel like I'm in a better place that I was a few years ago, I just regret that my writing seems to have suffered for it somewhat. I don't want to fall into the stereotype of a maudlin writer, someone who needs to suffer for their art or be in pain to be creative.

So, I hope that having the "obligation" to post will encourage me to write more - much as my obligation to MSLP got me to take better care of my nails. I'm honestly not sure that it will work out that way. I have no clue right now how often I'll be posting. I do have some old stuff that I may expose to the light of day, but a lot of what I find myself doing lately is just jotting down a quick 2 lines of verse that may pop into my head, without ever going back & making something more complete out of it.

This is also going to be home, in addition to my poetry, to some of my artwork. Possibly other things as time goes on - I guess anything that I don't think fits on My Simple Little Pleasures.

I don't know what else to say for this introduction. These things are more of my life's simple pleasures, that for one reason or another I just don't quite feel fit on my original blog. So I guess this is kind of an extension of my first blog. If you plan on hanging around, I hope you enjoy =)

I'll end this first post with a poem, just to get over the emotional hurdle of sharing my work. This isn't my first poem, but it is old ... I don't know how old, but I find it scribbled in notebook margins from years & years ago. It's almost a kind of mantra. A reminder. And now, in a way, the inspiration for this blog:

I can't see
Throughout me
What I need
To be
To become
What I must
I don't trust
Myself

Thanks for reading.

~Colette