Fostering gratitude and connection

Towards and with both myself and others

Hello, dear ones,

as life progresses, I assembled some ideas and thoughts that I wanted to share with you. As life is very scattered and hectic lately, so will be my letter this time.

I am trying to foster a new approach to everything I do, so I feel more satisfied with myself and with state of everything around. As it is much easier to feel pissed and meh, rather then content and attentive these days. And somehow I am glad to report that it seem to be working. It is not an easy game, but I am proud that everything that I do leads to hopefully better and deeper life. I do regular journaling, walking, therapy, you know, those mundane things, we most probably should do for ourselves.

We are safely back from Moscow to Turunç. I was expecting I will feel relief to be away, but it was more of a surprise for me how happy I felt coming back to the village. Greeting all the people, places, rocks, trees, sea with a crazy smile on my face as if I was absent for longer time. This region which was unknown to me before our move definitely will be a part of my authentic self if/when we move further on.

Artistic plans are the following. Here I assembled a collection of bird photos, 100 of them, and I plan to draw them in my new sketchbook which was handbinded for me by my friend Anna. I will start this Thursday at Pigeon Nest art club meeting that I host at discord on weekly and free basis. You are welcome to join - both with the club and the challenge. My interest of birds started when I moved closer to the forest, and artistically they caught my attention when I stumbled upon Louise Stigell YouTube channel which is one of my fav on YouTube ever since.

In April I teamed up with Nataliya Radina and Matvey Borun and filmed a music video for Portishead song “Roads”. It took me some time to edit it, as editing music videos and doing lip sync brings a lot of procrastination to my life. But here I am finally presenting it to you. I like the band, even saw them live once in Germany, but I don’t really know their stuff. But this song which was sang by my friend in a cave by the sea - oh baby - it pierced my heart. It might be quite an unusual video for what I usually do. Somehow it still feels very me.

Huge thanks to my collaborators. This could not be done without their talent and help with lip sync. During the season access to this location is possible only to the guests of the hotel (locals say it it illegal for the hotel to do so, but oh well). So we were able to film in April just week before hotel reopened for the summer.

Kind reminder - subscribe to my YouTube channel, as it is one of my biggest project now and I love to see it grow.

Lyrics in this song leave me in tears to be honest.

Ohh, can't anybody see
We've got a war to fight
Never found our way
Regardless of what they say

How can it feel, this wrong
From this moment

How can it feel, this wrong
Storm in the morning light

I feel
No more can I say
Frozen to myself
I got nobody on my side

And surely that ain't right
Surely that ain't right

My close friend and crazy talented artist Rumie Nordur independently released her oracle deck and it is a joy to behold. It took her 3 years in making and I was lucky to be near her throughout the whole process. I even think of making a youtube flip through video.

Also as a person who struggles to show off my achievements, I shamelessly promote myself here as well - saying that the lettering at the box of the deck was made by yours truly. Also it feels very special that I saw some of the artworks in making while Rumie was here in the village visiting us back in December.

She ships worldwide if your country accepts parcels from Russia at the moment. Here I am linking here her page with explanation in English. Cards have titles in Russian and the guidebook too, yes, but there is a PDF translation into English. I swear, this deck is a living organism and amazing buddy in any spiritual journey.

And I want to talk cards a little bit more in this letter. It seems that I finally found myself a perfect tarot deck that sits well with me. This tarot was made by Eya Mordyakova. I really loved how thought through this deck is. As a beginner I struggle with tarot decks that have messy design and unreadable Minor arcana suits. Also quite often the typography is very poor and just not beautiful. Here we have very smart color coding of suits and simple yet elegant type. A lot of cards are homage to Waite–Smith tarot, mostly to Smith part, who was a woman and an artist who did not get much money or fame out of working on this project. So I really love that I have this deck. I am not sure if it is possible to purchase it out of Russia, but if I hear such news, I will tell you.

Carson Ellis announced about the end of her TransMundaneTuesdays art challenge which was happening during last 3 or 4 years. It feels as an end of an era, because I remember it from the quarantine times. It feels like a whole other life, and turning back feels refreshing.

RIP #transmundanetuesdays

So I took time to do this final prompt set. I also borrowed a few colored sheets of paper from a friend and really want to do my own prompt box for the sketchclub. It definitely will have everything I love in it like frogs, sticks, birds, rocks, swamps, etc.

So in a way all this dispatch is about stuff I wholeheartedly enjoy, but still I decided to keep What am I enjoying section anyways.

What am I enjoying now?

• Reading “Elantris” by Brandon Sanderson, my first encounter with his writing. Quite a few of my friends love his books, so I am finally reading it and remembering how it is - to read fantasy in the best understanding of genre. Such a rich world, so many names, so many fictional words. I wonder where does Sanderson take those fictional words from.

• Watched James Cameron’s “The Abyss” (1989), it was the first time for me. Somehow talking about our favourite sci-fi movies with our British neighbor over coffee with Marmite toasts brought me this burning desire to finally watch sci-fi movies from mid 80ies to mid 90ies. We discussed what our favourite are and were. And as much as we agreed on our love to 1984 Dune, we both discovered some titles that each other missed. I totally missed a lot, so I really want do cover them now.

  

• Started playing Pathfinder on my computer, and oh well, it will be a run for eternity, because the game is huge and I play in tiny bits.

• “It is hard for the ego to be wrong” — Really great talk on spirituality from Nathaniel Drew podcast with George Poulos. I love how Nathaniel tries to make sense of the world, how he talks to people and how he presents it. He inspires me greatly to go on with presenting my own thoughts to the world. Important theme of this talk is why is it so cringy and weird to talk about spirituality?

Thank you for reading my dispatches,

see you in the next one, for now I wish you to spend Litha in a fae magic way,

Vera