at last order: a place for everything and everything in its place. a miracle of perseverance.....room by room, i have cleaned and polished, dusted and closeted, sorted and discarded. so everything is back to normal now and we can start the new.  chile and argentina are becoming a memory and back in the US, small beginnings hint of great things.  settling back takes time and mental clarity.  and with a trip changes always occur, a newfound purpose stirs the conscience, a new passion (in my case a love affair with my camera), new challenges. especially with my relationships-to my people and with my things. 

in times when life comes at you fast, it is easy to become overwhelmed with too much sensory information so i discipline myself after short meditations to sift carefully, let things silt. 

people keep asking me to create, they beg me to create. i haven't really sewn or painted much since september of last year, but what happens is that i look at the stacks and stacks of  art materials and i just refuse to disturb the order.  art is messy and right now i need order.  so i opt for roadtrips in the rain (yesterday we drove into santa paula and the ojai valley), long conversations with my daughter, a night of dancing with richard, reading my magazines and discovering new blogs.  for now this suits me just fine.  i lived a year in a whirlwind of sensation and now is a time for peace and softer sensations.

i call it processing. 

it's so good to be home and to find everything so balanced

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we have booked passage to Uvita, Costa Rica for Thanksgiving and will stay with family and friends for 5 days and then travel the following five.  when i return though, i have to jump on a plane right away to go to chile, something i am really not looking forward too in spite of it being summer there in december.  the previous trip really left deep scars from which i have not quite recovered and i will be there mainly for more and more piles of paperwork and bureaucracy but be what it may, i have to do it.  to lighten the load, i have decided to rent a small furnished apartment since mom's no longer is habitable after the pending sale and will try to hook up with cecilia and paty and patty and rebeca as much as i can to take my mind off  all the work up ahead.

in the interim, camarillo has welcomed the rains and the colors of autumn which i have wirnessed first hand by driving around the farms closeby and taking photos

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this is what our sunset looked like today. richard took this photo at the upper Ranch, Somis, CA where he has his organic orange and mandarin farm.  seeing this view made me think of a newfound quote at robin's amazing dream-come-true world which in turn made me take the quote after pondering deeply upon it, printing it on a fabric transfer and making another banner titled "HOUSE".

the photo below is a photo taken in Llico, Chile about 5 hours south of Santiago, one of Chile's most beautiful areas where i used to vacation.

and this is a path up in Sloughouse, CA where a great friend of mine lives

then dwelling even more upon its profundity, recalling my favorite line from Neruda.

oh my, life is truly beauty full as my friend maria cecilia would say and my other friend ale spreads in deed with her keen eye for observation

and my friend Lucy in Essex, England witnesses in her own backyard!

what a God-Given day all around!

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