Seeing the Good, For a Bit

For several years now, I've known about and lusted for a Traveler's Notebook to use when I journal. Some of them are expensive (and that's the ones I liked best) and I was never able to justify the money on something as seemingly trivial as a notebook. Plus, I didn't know for sure what size I wanted and since it was such an investment, I did not want to take a chance on being wrong!

Then I discovered a group on Facebook where they bought and sold the brand I wanted. The first one that popped up at a price I was willing to pay was the larger pink one in the picture. Someone had tried to decorate it with ink circles and splats and didn't use permanent ink. I expressed my interest and ordered it. Then I began to sweat bullets because the owner had put a sticker on the front (that I did not want to keep on it). I'd asked her if she would remove the sticker so I could see how bad it was underneath. Although she said in her original posting there was no damage to the leather under the sticker, she wouldn't remove the sticker for me, saying she didn't want to damage anything. So while I waited for my shipment to arrive, I imagined how ugly whatever that sticker was hiding was and chided myself for being so foolish as to purchase the darn notebook (years, I tell you, years I looked at these notebooks*). But it was love at first sight when the notebook arrived. I carefully pulled the sticker off and what was revealed was nowhere near as bad as what I had imagined (isn't that so often the case?).

On that very same day, the smaller pink one was listed. I ordered that one too (though I had no idea what I was going to actually do with it)! This one was very new and had no blemishes on it. That made me nervous (and still does).

The green one was listed about a week later and I decided I needed that one too. I'm using it for a wallet and that is working out very well.

What I like about buying used is that they notebook already has a bit of character to it. I don't have to worry about protecting it like I do with the pink one. I really doubt I'd ever buy one brand new for that reason.

So I've been busy writing and doing collages and other things for my own entertainment in these notebooks. It's therapeutic!

The pages in the larger book are long and narrow, so I am somewhat limited as to what I can do in the notebook, but I do enjoy adding color here and there. This is a page I did not long ago.

The quote is "What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?" (E.M. Forster)


* When we were first married, I found some bedroom furniture that I wanted. We couldn't afford it at the time, and I visited my furniture at Sears many times. There was one old guy who would always come and try to sell the set to me. I told him I wasn't ready to buy just yet, but when I did, I would be sure and ask for him (at the time, my husband was selling and getting commission so I wanted this guy to get the commission, if there was any). I'd go look, come home and measure our teeny-tiny bedroom and ponder just how many pieces I could fit in the room.

The day finally came that we were ready to buy. My husband and I went together to Sears. We got there, and asked for the salesman who'd been so patient with all my looking. Poor guy had up and died on me! Another salesman got lucky that day. I hope he breathed a silent thanks to the other salesman.

Have You Seen the Sacred Ordinary?

I've been doing a little reading lately, gobbling stories up like Peanut M&Ms. I've been using the Overdrive app on my Kindle to check books out from the library. I didn't realize I was so hungry to read again. And there's just something that thrills me about borrowing good books from the library without even having to leave my house!

After finishing "The Five Invitations (What Death Can Teach You About Living Fully)", I moved on to "Big Magic", by Elizabeth Gilbert. I wasn't even sure I wanted to read it, but I did, and I loved it. It was very affirming. She helped me (begin to) resolve a few issues about my art/creativity, mostly by reiterating the fact that most artists have day jobs, and they still manage to create (and so can I).

I like this quote from the book, "Perhaps creativity's greatest mercy is this: By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative endeavors, you have a souvenir--something you made, to remind you forever of your brief transformative encounter with inspiration."

It also relieves me of the stress of worrying about things I can't control and cannot change. My mind is absorbed when I am working on creative tasks. 

I've been working on a few things this weekend, I got back around to my Kelly Rae Roberts class. I feel somewhat transformed and I have souvenirs!

I can't remember if I've already posted this one. It's a souvenir of a weed growing in our yard. The flower grows on a long stem and the bloom is probably no more than an inch wide. They are small but impressive when there are lots of them clustered together.

This is my not quite finished "sacred ordinary" angel. I toned down her blush after I took her picture! I haven't come up with her words yet. Or maybe I'm waiting on her to tell me something. "It has to be short and pithy, little girl," that's what I'm telling her. One of the other of us will come through. I just know it.

Thinking On The Page

I've often wondered, in the past year, if blogging is still relevant. I've asked myself if it matters whether I blog or I don't blog. Facebook, with its near instant response and continually changing flow of news has usurped my blogging habit. I've never really been happy about that. But I also haven't done anything to stop it from happening.

One of the lessons in the Spirit Wings class (Kelly Rae Roberts) I'm doing is on building community. It's also one of the chapters in her book, Taking Flight, written in 2008. When I started blogging in 2004, the poetry community I'd been involved in had broken down and I sorely missed my online community and had no outlet for writing, or for bantering back and forth about writing. I was also in school, learning about photography and art, which meant my blog soon took on a focus beyond the written word. Visuals were added. Now I feel like I need to include at least one picture with every post!

(Plus, one of my male teachers at school, where I was an older, non-tradtional student, probably only a couple of years younger than the teacher, joked that I was "technologically challenged." I remember working on getting this thing up and running, and I had fleeting thoughts of "I'll show you!" Ha! I'm stubborn
tenacious! The trait has served me well throughout my life.)

Relevant or not, I've made some great friends through writing on this blog. I've met many of them. I have a virtual creative community, a tribe, a sense of belonging. I'm very grateful for that. I do still long for an in person face to face creative community but have not yet found that.

My writing, my art, my life, so much has changed in the last 12 or so years that I have been writing here. I count that as all good. To me, it indicates growth. And I want to grow until my dying day.

I won't give this up. The habit, however inconsistent it is, is still relevant to me. The friends, the community, the tribe I've gained from being out here is all lagniappe. I'm grateful for each person who reads and/or comments on this blog. I'm grateful for the connections made.

I am still operating under the radar, so to speak. Most of my day to day friends know nothing about this blog. When I think about going public on Facebook, I get all tight and nervous. But I think bringing the blog out in the open might be a growing point for me. Doing so does not feel as scary as it has felt.

So, to answer my own question, yes, blogging is still relevant to me. It is a creative outlet. It is a source of friendship, community, and support. It is a repository for pieces of me.

If you aren't interested in reading my long self-indulgent ramblings, here, have some art. I have more ramblings on the mere word "art,' but I'll save those for another day! I checked out a book to read for free on my Kindle because I like this artist's work and wanted to learn more about it. I think I'll probably eventually buy the book, The Art of Expressive Collage: Techniques for Creating with Paper and Glue, by Crystal Neubauer. That's one of the things I want to do this year, stop just admiring other people's stuff and do more of my own stuff!

Here...

 These are experiments of learning. I can see where I can improve. But I have all these old letters and pictures and I've always been reluctant to use them, for fear of wasting them. Fooey on that! I'm going to be courageous in wasting...using my somewhat vast store of ephemera. This piece is on an 8X10(ish) sheet of watercolor paper.

This one is on a 4X6 piece of watercolor paper. I have blank cards and I will probably glue it to one of those.

Happy New Year. May we all do the best we can at sharing our particular light into the coming year.

Project Thoughful Thursday Week 16

"Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken wing bird that cannot fly." Langston Hughes

I'm late this week. I've been doing some of the lessons in the online class I'm taking. I've finished one lesson, and one angel, and I've started another one. In between that, I did another face in the style of the first lesson. Only this time I did it on a piece of watercolor paper.

She did end up telling me not to give up! I didn't have any alphabet stamps to stamp the words on so I wrote them on a thin piece of paper and used the gel medium to glue the paper to the board and then blended it in.

This is the one I did on watercolor paper. But this time around I had the better oil pastels than what I had on the previous project. I carefully measured so I could put her in a mat with an 8X10 opening, then I proceeded to make her hair go over my  measuring line. I decided I could just lower her where all her hair would show because it would matter if I cut some off her dress. I forgot about that when I glued the words on tonight. I may have to end up cropping some of her hair off at the top. I think I could have made the letters a bit smaller. Eventually I will break down and order me a set of alphabet stamps just like Kelly Rae Roberts has. LOL I wish I could hand letter them, but my hand is not steady enough anymore.

Also, I made the picture smaller so it would load faster. The words say, "singing lullabies of love and hope for the little ones." 

In the Flow

I've had this project on my back burner for quite some time. I'd taken a deck of playing cards and did backgrounds on them. The technique was that you glued several of them to a piece of scrapbook paper (this means the back will be nicely finished with minimal work) and slathered on paint and paper and whatever else you wanted to add and then cut the individual cards out. Tonight I decided to start gluing on my various sayings and reminders. I'm calling them wisdom cards and when I am done I will have at least 52 cards with sayings and quotes on them that are personal reminders to me.

It's kind of mindless and meditative work for me. The time flies by and my spirit is quieted.

I took this one into Photoshop Elements and edited it a bit. The others are just scanned in with no editing on them. I may go in and later and enhance the others, I'm not sure.

I have four more but I will wait until another day to post them. And I have many more to do. But for now, I have other things to do that I was supposed to be doing in the time I was working on these. ~sigh~ It's no wonder I am generally always a day late and a dollar short!

I did buy myself a fancy new planner and was working a bit on laying out some goals for myself. I'm trying to live a more intentional life. And also to get myself a little better disciplined and organized.

(I should make it clear that the first two cards are quotes that were spoken to me, I did not write them.)

Do What You Can...

This one started off with a dictionary page glued to watercolor paper and then painted with the little girl added as a transfer.The last layer was the text which was printed and stained with paint then glued on. I've been thinking I might go back and add a layer of machine stitching around the text paper. I've had trouble with these darker backgrounds trying to figure out how to make the text more readable.

The text says "Do what you can, suffer when you must, love and grow as you are able." Really, what else can we do?

I talked yesterday with someone who was complaining about a mother who was being pushy in trying to get help for her young son who has developmental issues. The mother was angry with the insurance company about not providing for certain services for her son. The mother was pushing on the office that was providing the services. The mother was suffering.

I wondered out loud whether or not the mother was struggling with letting go of the dreams and hopes she had for her son, just beginning to mourn all the things that would not be, and not yet "there" in terms of acceptance so that her battle to help her son was still a little awkward.

The mother is suffering. How does that old saying go, "suffering in inevitable, growth is optional"? I had these flowery thoughts that I hope she grows into her suffering and becomes a formidable advocate for her son. I do hope that happens (and I believe it will). But right now, today, my biggest prayer for her would be that bitterness does not touch her. Because sometimes, when you see suffering lying there on the table, and you start thinking of all the losses and the things that will not be, well at the beginning, you have no way of knowing the good that often comes from suffering. You see the suffering and the loss and you can't imagine that any kind of brightness could come from such loss. But so often, there is brightness. And there will be brightness here, too. She will see it if bitterness does not sneak in and cloud her eyes.

May she more often than not be met with patience and grace on her journey. And may she have more than a few friends along the way who are willing and able to hold the light for her and who are wise enough to gently remind her to "Do what you can, suffer when she must, and grow when you are able."

Dance Reworded :)

Changed the wording a bit.

Change

I've been digging through old emails collecting quotes from a particularly wise friend. There are so many I could use! I am not sure I am totally satisfied with the way these look but I am happy to have created something with my hands again, using paint, chalks, glue and a charcoal pencil. I did them on playing cards (ATC size) and then scanned them in and did a few things to them in Photoshop. I printed them up at the 4x6 size and the colors look really good. I am thinking I wish I had made the font for the words a teensy bit smaller. But hey, at least I am doing something again!

Remembering Christmas

If I have your address, you probably received this card in the mail by now (if you'd like to receice a card next year, send me your snail mail address and I will put you on my list). The photo is a little different. I played in Photoshop a bit and I really like the results, even though the changes I made were quite subtle and very simple.

A very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you...

Christmas-that magic blanket
that wraps itself about us,
that something so intangible
that it is like a fragrance.
It may weave a spell of nostalgia.

Christmas may be a day of feasting,
or of prayer, but always it will be
a day of remembrance--
a day in which we think of everything
we have ever loved.
--Augusta E. Rundell

You Might Be Wondering What I Have Been Up To (or not!)

Honestly, these women do look better in person than they do on this scan! I made a few mistakes while trying to do this, but I had fun anyway. When I got everything painted, I covered the canvas in beeswax. It gives the whole thing a nice sheen. If you want to see all the printing you can click on the picture--it is honking huge, I did not reduce it for uploading as I often do. I want to do some more of these as inspiration strikes. It was a learning process. I learned you ought to kind of plan ahead, that you shouldn't get excited and draw and paint the figures before thinking about and doing the background. In my defense, I am accustomed to working in Photoshop where you can add and remove layers as you go, or you can delete down to the original and start all over again. Anyway, I like them, even though they look a bit spooky!

I've been off my beloved Diet Coke now for 10 days now. I do know it is better for me but I still miss my old friend and snacking buddy. Sniff, sniff. I think the doctor is all right, just maybe a little weird. Lord knows I can't fault a person for being weird! But the evidence from the blood tests was not so good. I'll give you three little hints, no four--sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure--and the accompanying medication, none of it was unexpected. Now I just have to deal with it and decide whether or not I want to take care of myself. Everything can be improved with weight loss, changes in my diet and exercise. In dispensing the prescription for the diabetes, he said "I can give you medicine to help you along. I can't heal you. But you can possibly heal yourself." So, there is hope (there is always some sort of hope). I asked the doctor if it was similar to an addict dealing with a drug addiction, where they often have to reach bottom and decide to do the things necessary to live a healthier life and he agreed that was pretty much the idea. The really sad thing is, I do not feel like I have "hit bottom". I am still sort of in denial. Hopefully that will change.

My nephew came in on Thanksgiving day carrying a brand new Nikon D80 camera, causing me to have a serious lusting spell. I have been wanting a new camera similar to that one.

I think I've decided what I want to take when I can start taking classes at the university. I am thinking about taking one class in the spring semester, but I don't know if I will be able to or not. Anyway, I am going take all my classes with the goal of majoring in Spanish with a minor in Art. Working full time and taking one or two classes a semester, it will probably take several years for me to actually earn a degree, but that is the path I am going to follow. I had three years of Spanish in high school and have always wished I could have continued to learn the language. As for the art, maybe I can learn more about how to draw pictures of women that are not so spooky looking! And I want to learn more about photography. I am pleased to have a goal in my head.

I am still loving my job. It is in some ways, quite the cushy position to have. The people students and faculty) are certainly fun and interesting. Sometimes dealing with the paperwork is a pain in the rear--we have had several people go on conferences and that means paperwork has to be filled out in proper order before and after the trip. It is absolutely amazing how helpless these PhD types can be when confronted with government paperwork! I don't understand half of it myself either. But I can always count on the friendly lady in "travel" to call and correct me when I am wrong. She does not speak, she barks. I don't think she means to be so gruff, it is just that travel is what she does all day long and she can't understand why the rest of us can't get the forms filled out correctly (and she has worked there for a bajillion years and is in an office in a round building with no window and a curved wall covered in brick--that alone ought to be enough to drive anyone crazy, IMO)!

Well, this seems enough info for the day. Possibly there will be more to follow. . .

The Beginning of the End

Today I gave my two weeks notice. I feel like a heavy burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel badly about disappointing them and causing them the trouble of having to find and train someone else, but it was time for me to "get out of Dodge". In the end, they will be all right, and so will I.

If you have some extra time, click on the link to "Postcards From Yo Mama" in my second blog list on my sidebar. Some of those posts are hilarious (and altogether believable)!

I'm trying a new comment feature from Blogger Draft. Please let me know if it is a problem for any of you who comment.

I came across this quote in yet another blog I read faithfully but never comment on. I will have to add it to my links.

"My basic philosophy is one of being well-prepared and exercising the greatest caution but believing that if I have an accident on the trail and end up being food for the vultures, it's better than a nursing home. Rest in peace." --Ralph Ramey

The guy is 79 years old and has written two books on hiking. I'm seeing his quote as a great metaphor for approaching change in life. In the next two weeks, I figure I will be "gnawed on" by the "vultures" at my old job but I also know that I am getting myself off that trail before the gnawing becomes fatal! I've made my choice and I am as well-prepared as I can be to deal with the consequences. That is about the best I can do. And if I start feeling too "gnawed on" then, by golly, I can pick up my backpack and move on down the trail!

I may have put this one up here before, but it seems especially appropriate for a new beginning...

November 1st? Uh.....

I'm venturing out a little more into the open with this NaBloWriMo project, not writing so much in private. But don't worry, I will try to remember to wash my hands afterwards. November 1st already, and I don't have much of anything to say!

I also joined the 30 Days of Thanks group, so I will be posting something each day I am thankful for. I am a grateful person, but I often have trouble expressing specifically the things I am grateful for. Maybe I will improve as the month wears on.

So, today, on day one of 30 Days of Thanks, I'm thankful for the progress my son is making.

While I've Been Out

I've been trying to figure out what I have been doing since October 10th that I could write about, but believe me, there has not been much happening (sometimes that is a good thing!). Rather than making something up, I'll just lay out a few random things as they come to my mind. Be assured, this post will contain nothing profound or earth-shaking.

• My young boss backed into me a couple of weeks ago. He always moves 90 miles an hour. I always move at a turtle's pace. He thought I was gone already. I thought he was still in the office. In the meantime, I have been driving an 08 Nissan Altima with a keyless entry and ignition. All I have to do is get in the car, put my foot on the brake and push the ignition button and the car starts. I am fascinated by this setup. Through a few experimentations I have figured these things out: You can't lock the keys in the car (it beeps ferociously). You could (conceivably) set the keys down somewhere near the car (but not in the car), start the car and drive off without the keys, but when you got to where you were going and stopped the car, you would not be able to start it again. One thing I wonder about, but have not tried, is what would happen if you were to push the ignition button while driving down the road--would the car stop right there in the middle of the road?


• We had a friend over last weekend who installed two new toilets for us. They are the "high seat" kind, 18" tall, I think--good for our knees in our infirm years! They have been declared by expert flushers to have superior flushing capabilities. They do have excellent flushing capabilities, but I wonder, how does one qualify for the status of "expert flusher"?


• I have taken an Enneagram personality test and have been declared to be a Nine--a Peacemaker, Mediator, one who is capable of seeing all sides to an issue and can pretty well get along with anybody. Another characteristic is that they have trouble getting their momentum going when they get stopped. Obviously that has been a problem for me lately.


• I've just recently gotten caught up again with my blog reading. Some of you have been very busy while I have been sitting around in my lethargy.


• I've been trying to think of some kind of theme that I would post about once a week (to get my momentum going again). I can't think of anything specific. I guess I will just have to decide to write once a week whether I have anything to say or not. Maybe eventually, something worthwhile will come of the effort.
  

• I came across this quote in my blog reading several weeks ago. I glued it into my journal as a reminder to myself. I wish I could write in depth on this, but I can't quite get my thoughts together on it. I feel like an empty-headed fluffball lately (I started to say "blonde" fluff-ball, my peacemaker tendencies made choose "empty-headed instead. My apologies to any empty-headed readers I might have, but I just could not offend my blonde readers!) Here is the link to his blog, Letters From Kamp Krusty. I have to admit, I often don't "get" him, and I have not been reading his blog lately, but these few words resonated with me.
  

Soul Hunger

This first one is entirely digital. There are some issues on the side that I may need to go back and fix. I'm no expert at this stuff, that is for certain!

This one is a gel transfer and other background papers glued to a canvas.

How often do we neglect the feeding of our soul, or try to fill it up with junk?

Honestly? No. I Am Not Exactly Fine

I think I have this unconscious belief that once things get settled with my son, then I can live my life. I forget that things are never totally settled with any of us. Stuff happens. Yet it still takes me a little while to adjust after he does something like this. I lose small pieces of my life while I try to regroup. He's doing okay now. He is going to meetings (Narcotics Anonymous) every single day. He's going to church with my aunt. He has a job now.

But I am still a wreck. I can't keep my thoughts together very well. If I am not at work I want to be sleeping. My "get up and go" done got up and went, as my rural kinfolks would say. My house is a mess. I spend too much time aimlessly wandering around on the Internet.

Sometimes I feel like I am about to cave in on myself.

Sometimes I feel sorry for myself and create stuff like this--

Eventually my heart and my head get it together and realize I have plenty to be thankful for, that it is not the end of my world and that I will be better off it I will quit thinking and worrying so much and just live one day at a time. Then I create stuff like this--

And then I stay up half the night playing around with canvas and gel medium trying to make it look all artsy-fartsy like this--

Then I throw it on the bed in the extra bedroom, my studio (yeah right, keep trying to fool yourself old lady) and dream of one day doing something with it.

So yeah, I guess things are getting back to normal for me, whatever that means (sounds to me like I still have a little self-pity problem). Anyway, that's how it is with me at the moment--a little bit empty, a little bit like a rat on a maze.

(BTW, Mindy, yes, in the previous post, those are ATCs I created.)

Sigh...

I got a job, BTW. It started out being part-time, then moved to full-time. That and family issues have kept me away from the computer.

I read May Sarton's Plant Dreaming Deep, and when I saw the old fashioned pocket with the signature page was loose, I could not resist pulling it completely off the book.

I drew the three women and did a little watercolor number on them.

My Photoshop skills leave a little to be desired.

Yeah, Right

What does it mean? Who knows? Who cares? I drew the chair, the other stuff is glued on. Wish I had some of those Lydia E. Pinkham tablets to banish the bad days. Wonder what was in them?

We've got a guy around here who does motivational speeches and his little motto is "no bad days". Everybody has bad days, buddy. The trick is, not to get swallowed up by them.

Seeing Things

I did this collage as part of an experiment in altered books. It is a children's book and I painted over the pages before I started gluing stuff down. There is no reason there should be a guy with a beard by the candle, but I see him. I just went and looked at book itself, and sure enough, he is there. But upon closer inspection I see that it is actually an innocuous part of the scenery that I did not get covered with the paint. Weird. I have looked at that page many times, and tonight is the first time I have noticed him.