Tadasanacrow, 30″ x 30″, mixed media on canvas, available

My mom left me a tub of Pyrolean Red paint on her way home to South Carolina.

This is the first summer I felt really misty eyed when they drove away. Every summer, mom and dad come to mean more to me. I don’t know if it’s a sense of time marching on, and my increasing awareness of the finite. Or maybe because my dog Jesse, who has been with me for 14 1/2 years, is slowly fading, and I am burying my face in his fur, and breathing deeper into his ruff every day.

I can’t remember when Erika starting saying, “Tadasana, Kellie, Tadasana”, but she has said it often enough that it has become automatic to stand firmly in my center, grounded, when the world becomes chaotic around me.

Tadasana, or Mountain Pose, is often the beginning and end of a yoga practice, the foundation of all other “asanas”, or poses. Tada, is a sanskrit word meaning “Mountain”, and the pose practices standing in your center.

The most grounded thing I can imagine is these mountains that I see every day. They stand firm, and appear to be still. Though they are constantly crumbling so slowly the naked eye cannot see it.

You can see circles of joy floating out of the heart of this mixed media crow painting.

Only the mountain climber faced with the immediacy of stretching herself across their snowy face, forced to retreat from rockfall, feels the truth of their decay.

To stand in Mountain Pose to me, also means to find joy. This is what I found in this candy-colored tub of red paint.  You can see circles of joy floating out of the heart of this mixed media crow painting.

In the eye of the storm, in the ruff of my dog, there is always joy to be found.