Touch Drawing as a Communication Tool in Friendship
continued-
Here are my notes about doing Touch Drawing with P.J. Dunlap.
From P.J.: (PJ is unable to talk, but agreed that this statement was aligned with her thinking) I have been an artist all my life, showing my watercolors and
‘clay paintings’ in galleries in Washington and in my home studio for many
years. Illness now makes that impossible. Touch Drawing gives me a way to
engage with color and shape - to use my hands - in a way that I have not
been able to do in a long time. Touch Drawing gave me the gift to discover
that I could still play with color and be so engaged that I did not think about anything else.
From Madelyn: The gift for me was seeing P.J. so engaged in the creative
process. P.J. sat in her wheel chair at the dinning room table. Her use
of her hands is limited so I positioned a piece of plexiglass so the surface
would be easily accessible for her. In the first session she picked two
colors to work with (blue and purple) and I spread them on the plexiglass
and positioned paper for her, removing it to dry, re-braying the paint, and
replacing paper as she needed. We played lovely music of her choosing and
gave P.J. as much privacy as possible, making the dining room her "studio."
She painted for about 90 minutes.
For the second session, which was four weeks later, she chose to work with red paint. I spread it to create a small rounded space towards one corner of the plexiglass and she added design to paintings from the first session. The paintings make strong statements as abstract designs but, like clouds, many forms from nature are there to be discovered by the viewer. While P.J. painted I played a set of three crystal bowls tuned to different chakras. She was more involved with each painting this time but tired more quickly. It was a shorter session. It was such a gift to get to do this with my dear friend!
SoulCards Inspire Writing - continued -
by Racheal
A workshop generally looks like this:
1. Brief introduction – writers share names, and why they came to the Bloomington Women’s Writing Center.
2. I share how I came to know Soul Cards, and my interest in using cards as divination tools. I share my philosophy that all answers are within – that cards like Soul Cards and Tarot are tools that we can use to help us unlock the answers we already know.
3. I read from the accompanying book, with emphasis on the cards being “windows to the soul.”
4. If I am feeling that the group is in need of a “purging,” I ask them to vomit through their pen onto the paper for one minute. So, if they’ve had a horrible day, they can just write that, and let it all out. We do NOT share this. It’s for them, and the only rule is that they keep writing, even if it is a series of curse words. I want them to be able to focus on the cards and their authentic voices – not the voice of a bad day at work or a fight with a lover. (although, if that comes out in writing, that’s fine too!)
5. I give each person the same number of cards – 7 or 9 is a good number, depending on group size. When there were just 4 of us, I gave each of them 15.
6. I ask them to choose the card that speaks to them the most – with the idea that other cards will be used later, so don’t stress about deciding.
7. I ask them to TELL THE STORY OF THE CARD and allow them to write for 3 or 5 minutes. We usually share these.
8. I ask them to write WHAT THE CARD IS TELLING ME for 1 minute – ie, what is the message of the card? We do NOT share this.
9. We continue to write the stories of other cards, for longer and longer periods, but I’ve not tried more than 10 minutes so far. We generally share the writing. And I also like to either display the card (prop it up so we can all see it) or even better, pass it around before the person begins reading so that we can all see it up-close. I almost-always allow a full minute for them to just LOOK at the card, before they even pick up the pen.
10. To end the workshop, I ask them to choose the most positive card that they see or have seen – it can be any card from the deck. We write for about 3 minutes on this card, and then end the workshop!
I have also asked them to write completely in first person…and this last time we did something really fun: we all wrote about the same card. It was super-cool to hear all of our different takes on the same image.
4/20/06 Image - SoulCard # 38 
Beauty Follows Her
She is walking away from Beauty but
Beauty follows her
A humongous butterfly,
Beauty flutters about her shoulder
Alights on her hair, sends tendrils
Blowing, as wings flap, then slowing
As the Butterfly of Beauty now lands
on her wrist
She
Is oblivious
Oblivious to the beauty left behind
Oblivious to the beauty around her.
She
Is on a mission
Sadly, confusingly, forcefully
She
Is on a mission
To where, she does not know
To what, she does not know
But this butterfly will not leave her alone
This butterfly just keeps bugging her
So she stops.
Missions can wait.
She takes time to breathe. She listens to the wind around her,
Watches the beautiful butterfly, its wings glowing
Dances with it in a meadow of buttery sun and delicious grass
And falls asleep
Leaves blowing, wings hush-hushing up and down
Mission unaccomplished. 
MESSAGE OF THE CARD:
Stop. Listen. Breathe. Slow down.
Know where I’m going. Know why.
Take a compliment. Recognize beauty every day.
Give my time, in the moment.
Stop. Listen. Breathe. Slow down.
