Tne Nautilus Effect

After I showed our art journals to the artists the other day, one of them being the Nautilus journal, with the nautilus symbol on the cover, they asked about the significance. I explained that the nautilus, once she has outgrown her current shell segment, moves to the next bigger one, and seals the old door behind her. It's outgrown, she's moved on.

It's a wonderful metaphor for life decisions, too, and I've often found myself at a new phase of life, a nautilus moment,when I have to decide if I've outgrown some part of my life and need to gently move on from it now, to let bigger things come into play, or whether it still fits.

It's such a good idea to remember, when our decision making includes the concept of investment. Like: I've invested five years in this job, better not move and throw all that away. Or I've invested years of my life in this relationship, so it would be a shame to move away from it now. People do this with financial investments too, figuring that if they've kept their stock in buggy whip futures all these years, they really should keep it. But when we think that nothing is ever lost, and that every new move takes all our knowledge and accumulated wisdom, such as it is, with us, we can gently close and seal the door on the investment concept if it's holding us back. What might have been a good idea then might be outgrown now.

Anyway, those are just a few thoughts that occurred to me while admiring your work in the journals.

The embroidered panels are moving along gently and slowly, can't rush stitching, and here's a couple of views of what's up now. I moved the camera around to show the relationship of the current parts in process, to each other.







Many Nautilus moments in the course of making any art.