Aspen Branches, Utah 

by

Gillian Cornwall

ink on paper

c2009

A Poem

I have expanded with love

Burst forth from the cement of the city sidewalk

the rogue flower

I learn and I shift

my perception

I engage in the moment that is

and leave the moment that will be

to its own devices

I have no animosity in my heart

no blame

I have expanded with love

I learn

I do my best

I share the gift of love

worship the living temple of my self

Love is a story of the world

in which 

we all belong

-Gillian Cornwall

Seek to enjoy, not to possess. -Nana Veary

My Online Heroes

This year I have been met with such great warmth and kindness from those of you that I have never met in person. I have built phenomenal relationships through social networking. Some of you have warmed my heart through your openness - expressing your fears and joys and kindness - restoring my faith in the human spirit. 
   Is it true that this kind of emotional intimacy is, at times, easier with strangers? Is the risk less and thus the willingness increased? I don't suppose it matters in the long run.
   My own ego tells me that it is, in part, down to my own openness of heart and spirit, that I create a space that is safe to join and to share your truth.
   This Christmas, as the year winds down, I want to ensure that all of you know that I am grateful to you for joining me in the moments we share online and that I see you, I hear you and what you say means something to me. I will do my best to honour your time and effort with my own truth and kindness. 
   I wish each of you every joy and blessing for the coming year and that you have every opportunity to live fully in the precious moments of your lives. 
   So very sincerely,
   -Gillian

Camp - Part Three

I know where I am drawn. There is peace in this as I walk on. It feels further in the dark than in the light, fewer distractions I suppose, but before long the woods open up to the upper level seating of the council ring and a lone star shoots across the open sky through the thick lick of the milky way. I sit, shoving my fists into the pouch of my hoodie and I sigh heavily into the night. I am a child, an animal with senses sharp and alive, nose to the cool air, eyes darting and adjusting to the light. 


In this ring, some eternal part of who I am, something I have yet to comprehend, releases and I know I have not come here to be alone as I originally thought. I have come to connect to something, to connect to everything, to belong. My young, taut, clean body breathes in the power of the love of all. I hold this cool night air in my lungs, eyes closed, connected; full. As I release this breathe, my self mingled with the universal soul into the one. I open my eyes wide to see the mother wolf staring at me from across the ring. Her two cubs are in tow, wrestling each other and the mother sits, our eyes locked. I gasp. I stay. I feel the hot tears on my cheeks. I understand the journey from longing to belonging. Purity. Comprehension. Love. 


Gillian Cornwall, copyright December 22, 2011

New Story "Camp" - Part Deux

   I make my way down the chip trail and across the bridge as the stream below gurgles its greetings, the water on its ceaseless path to bigger bodies. Ahead, the entrance to the cedar wood looms dark and wide and I shiver a little in this moon and star-filled summer night, briefly considering the consequences if caught mid-adventure by a concerned grown-up. My consideration does not outweigh my desire and I carry on down the path and into my beloved cedar wood. While my heart thumps time to this song of escape, it is more excitement than fear as I have walked the trails of this camp and lingered in these woods since age four. I have crunched through the crisp-top winter snows and lazed at the foot of these trees in the dog days of summer. I am comfortable here and more safe on these grounds at any time of day than I ever have been or ever will be at home. I walk here at peace and rest here in the palm of my maker, my nature.
   
   The scent of living cedar is my mother's milk and the branches sway in a trance with the whisper of the night time breeze. I tread upon the bouncing carpet of cedar fronds and the net of roots beneath my feet. This is a place of magic. This is a place of rope swings and tree forts. It is Peter Pan and Captain Hook and everything wild and good about being a kid. I maintain a ninja silence knowing the boys tribes, including my own brother, sleep in the tree forts overhead. I smile at my courage and, quite frankly, my gall; I will not stop here. I know where I must go. 


-Gillian Cornwall, copyright December 19, 2011

New Creative Non-Fiction - "Camp" by Gillian Cornwall

  Here is a taste from a new story in the works:
  "There is a particular scent to the canvas tent with its pine platform floor, replete with eight 9 year old girls, the counsellor-in-training, Cathy, and our revered leader, Liz. After three years of these overnights, I can quite confidently say that, while the scent is unique to these circumstances, it varies little from camp session to camp session and from year to year and tent to tent. I can not fully describe it but I will try to lead you by the nose and give you some idea because it's beautiful and peculiar and, for me, both inviting and petrifying. If one were to mix brown sugar with sweet summer sweat, dry pine and sun-warmed canvas and blend it with stale peanut butter and jam sandwiches from lunches gone by, you'd have a reasonable facsimile of what I'm trying to get at.  


I already know I like girls. I lay among them and I barely understand how it is I am an interloper in their midst. I have no idea how it is I am different or why I am the only one who feels like this. I am the only one awake though thousands of crickets and frogs trill beyond our fabric home. They call me, incessant as the sirens of Greek mythology. One more call, this time from the loon, and I silently slide from my sleeping bag placed purposefully by the zippered net door flap. My stealthy exit goes unnoticed or without comment as it is not uncommon for a young girl to require a night time trip to the outhouse; however, this is not my planned destination. I am equipped in my Keds, sweatpants, and hooded sweatshirt having planned my adventure earlier in the evening. I am restless and intense and night time sojourns both feed my sense of adventure and calm my troubled young soul."


-Gillian Cornwall,  copyright December 18, 2011

You

The stars in the sky would stand aside for you
with fascination and adoration.
This is how you light up a room.

Cowichan Winter Forest

Cowichan Winter Forest

Ink and coloured pencil

Gillian Cornwall

copyright 2011

From the Deep Blue Sea

Where from come I?

From a deep, dark place

Where from come I?

From the silt of the deep blue sea

Flowing and forming

and spanked to the shore

to open a mouth

and fill the lungs

with air I feed this life

with feet I fled the sea

with fire I made the food

for the ceaseless belly

Upon the earth I dwell

From mother to mother to mother

all-a-one

-Gillian Cornwall,

copyright August 8, 2010

Buy Art?

Oil Pastel on Paper.
- Gillian Cornwall
$1000
Click on the pic to see it big.
c 2005
22"x30"

Address to my Students - UNI 201 Spoken Word Event

What an incredible journey it has been. We, as a group, have defined education as a holistic process, not merely the relaying of information from one to others.

In our Spoken Word class, we combined the use of our minds, bodies and spirits to address the very basis of our ability and right to human interaction.

As a result of our interconnection, our dreams and desires, our trust, and our capacity to examine and share our fears, we created an environment in which we were ultimately able to access our truth and our capacity to learn and teach each other from a place where fear has not held us at bay.

This fluidity is perfection. Learning, like love, is about openness; it is about sharing information and thought. You are gaining a mastery in this and it is a rarity in contemporary education.

Your desire and willingness are a much greater measure of success than a letter or percentage grade.

Knowledge and learning are shared gifts and for this I thank you.

I will take this opportunity to address a question we examined in class: "Why write?"

-if for no other reason than to share the story of your beautiful life, to take the reader or listener by the hand and walk them through the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of your real or imaginary worlds. For through a multiplicity of perspectives, so shall we know ourselves better.

I look forward to the many journeys we will take through your hearts and minds this evening. Love and blessings to all.

-Gillian Cornwall, November 15, 2011

Autumn on the Island

"I let myself go into the passing landscape as the Greyhound races over the Malahat. Raindrops tear across the window pane and the forest blurs a golden green red rust perfection. From this warm, dry seat I traverse this wilderness of fog and mystery in relative coach comfort.

I place myself in these woods, down paths over spongy undergrowth and through a thousand stories waiting patiently for my arrival, each one held in the gem drops of moisture on the tips of the fragrant pine needles. I can smell the tales and taste them in this silty, salty, coastal soil. I am here and here again and at once with the past and future colliding in the big bang of the present.

There are fireplaces and books and peaceful moments with your head in my lap as I read you the story you have always wanted to hear, the one you never knew existed but it has always been right here in our shared cellular structure, in this peaceful place of perfection.

It is autumn, my love. You can rest easy here with a lullaby of golden leaves dancing down from these ancient trees."

-Gillian Cornwall, October 22, 2011.

Walking the Path Inside and Out

What transpires in our hearts as we traverse our life paths all intertwined, running parallel and doubling back? Our motions as open thermodynamic units, mirroring the minutia of our own atoms and molecules, we careen through chaotic space and time where everything is happening all at once.

Brave and crazy, we remain in motion, all in a million directions, each with a different map, yet, all with the same destination. Through the traps and blockades of fear we march on, heading towards pure love.

- Gillian Cornwall, 21May 2011

Some Photos by Gillian Cornwall

Vancouver Trees

Vancouver Fog

Victorian Sunset

Downtown Victoria

My Radio Interview with CFUV in Victoria, BC

Have a listen while I tell you my story, "The Kid", read a piece on writing and have a chat with Lynne Super of CFUV.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Gillian

Wendy Welch - Cell Ruminations

Please check out these beautiful new works by: Wendy Welch, Executive Director of The Vancouver Island School of Art.

Fluidity

"The wonder and greatness of all that is, all that can be imagined and beyond flows through me. I find wonder in all things and beauty in the most simple. I am in awe. Life and love abound and in the giving I am made full. Nothing is held within so there is no loss. Life is eternal in the light of freedom. What shall I choose next on my path, each footfall a fresh breath and a re-connection to the changing universe? I am engaged in the chaos, autonomous, yet completely connected. What is external is internal, each cell a microcosm of the greatness of everything. There is peace here amid the knock and grind of the human engine. I purr with life."

- Gillian Cornwall, 31May2011

The River Witch

Where do I live
if not in your woods?
I burrow nose deep
in dead leaves and silt soil
by the river's edge

Your crows
march wicked sentinel steps
They blow my cover
pluck my eyes
drag me blind
to your lair

Feral friend
I am the interloper
in your land, in you deep
Your ash tree a marker
for my soiled soul spot
In the forest deep
I sleep

-Gillian Cornwall
Copyright 2009

Salt Spring Island in September

The mill - Crofton, Vancouver Island, BC

The bridge of the ferry

View from the ferry - Vesuvius, Salt Spring Island to Crofton, Vancouver Island

Fishing on the lake - from St. Mary's Lake Resort

St. Mary's Lake - the view from the dock

A lovely old roadside zucchini cart

I love the attrition of an old wooden building.

A little bit of history along Beddis Rd., SSI

The beach

Arbutus at Beddis Beach, Salt Spring Island

All images Copyright by Gillian Cornwall c 2011

The Big Sky

The last light of day touches my heart

I am in everything and everything is in me

From Here to Forever

Softness

Intensity

The Enterprise?

All images are the property of Gillian Cornwall - c2011

Quamichan Lake

Ink and Watercolour Pencil
4" X 6"
Quamichan Lake, Duncan
by Gillian Cornwall
Copyright 2011

New Drawing - Summit Park Garry Oaks

Garry Oaks in Summit Park - Victoria BC
India ink and EB pencil on paper
by Gillian Cornwall
Copyright 2011