Blessed Candlemas/Imbolc/February Full Moon! I just learned this lunation is known as the Eagle Moon to the Cree: Mikisiw is the Cree word for Eagle, Mikisiwi-pîsim, the Moon at which Eagles begin returning to their home roosts with their mate. In the region where I live, that's absolutely right, and next weekend I'll be one of the guides on the wildlife refuge Eagle Tours, spotting Bald Eagles. The tours have to happen during this precious, fragile window of time each year because it's a) when you can view the eyries as there is no foliage, and b) the Eagles have not yet begun to guard their nests ready to lay their eggs. But I just learnt this exact lunar time is called the Eagle Moon, which is one of the marvelous synchronicities of the Universe!

This Full Moon is also more familiarly called the Snow Moon, which is also apt because in Southern Illinois as with much of the continental United States we were blanketed with a foot-and-a-half of snow! When it snows that much, there is the reality of so much physical matter in the way, an actual obstacle of weight and mass which has to be waited for and then patiently moved with care from one place to another. In the meantime, it's kind of an enforced rest, much more restful than the holidays, because there is nothing to do, nowhere to 'be,' as no-one else where you'd be going to can get out, either.The university where Metamorphoses is happening was closed for two days, so we didn't have rehearsals.

So it has been a very good time for painting! to go into a flow state, to get deep and vigorous at what you are doing, to experiment and make changes on the board, with the intrinsic faith that should anything go awry with the new things I'm trying, I'll be able to fix it. I've been hard at work at Principalities I. Particularly teaching myself how to paint clouds, big puffy cumulus-type clouds: I've only ever done cirrus-y, high-atmospheric, wispy ones. But how do you teach yourself how to paint something? One way is by looking at paintings of clouds that you admire how the artist made them, and working it from the ground up. Like, did they use a brush or a... SPONGE?!!!  ;o) 

For the rest of my life, whenever I lay eyes on Principalities I, I'll remember that this is the painting where I taught myself to paint a cumulus-type cloud. This Angel likely will be ready to debut at the next New Moon Newsletter... which will appear just after Valentine's Day, around February the 17th! Here's a perfect song for how it feels, bouncing off clouds :o)