Next . . .

Well, it's been a while! Life has intervened, slowing posting.

Since then I've given a paper in the 3 Books 3 Scholars series in the Beaglehole Room at VUW and have reduced my work hours to half-time.

I hope to spend a good deal more time on art-making.

It's gonna be a Great 2008!

I am eagerly anticipating another Transformational year! The new thoughts that I nurtured last year have now matured, dramatically changing the way I experience my life. This year I will sow the thoughts that will have me experience artistic success and a generally comfortable and relaxed lifestyle.

We may feel that we have little control over the circumstances of our lives, but we have total control of how we choose to think about them. To choose to alter our thoughts is to wield the greatest power available to humankind.

Let us choose to escape our conditioning. Let us choose to experience our world with new eyes and a clean slate. For What We Think truly is Who We Are. The choice is ours to make.

Check out this fabulous Altered Book!

The Fortune is a wonderfully colourful and witty Altered Book all about $$Money$$

Cleverly constructed over the course of a couple of years, it remains fresh throughout. Elizabeth's spreads are visually appealing and marvelously punning, an altogether fun romp guaranteed to alter your financial point of view

Enjoy!

Tempus fugit . . . decluttering my days.

HOW has a month flown by so quickly? The days just slipped away unnoticed, leaving me bewildered and feeling that Some-Thing Important has gone missing.

In one of the groups I belong to, we were asked to name our greatest Time-waster. Mine, naturally, is paid employment. Working a day-job eats up fully a third or more of my precious days! But that’s not what they meant.

So I was forced to admit/accept that I profligately waste Hours of potential art-making time on the computer. Embarrassingly, not posting to my blog, but trying to keep up with the daily hundreds of emails I receive from the 30+ groups I belong to.

I have been patting myself on the back for my success in systematically decluttering my home and my studio; now it’s Time to declutter my Days, too, removing from my daily schedule the time-wasters and habitual activities that support neither my resolution to Make More Art, nor my desire to earn my living through arting.

It’s hard to leave artist’s communities where I’ve gotten to know and enjoy the people. It’s sad, too, that the folks I think of as my community are overseas. But my Life Adventure is pressing me into the studio, to commit my creativity daily to paper, to canvas, to Objective Reality.

Please rejoice with me in my new enterprise, and stop by from time to time to keep me honest!

I've been tagged!

OMG! I've been tagged!

Thanks, Pam!

Here are the rules which you must abide by if you are tagged:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

OK. Seven facts about myself:

1) I work in a university library. I've also worked as a sandwich-maker, steel broker, teacher, airport security guard, nurseryman, photographer, and commercial artist.

2) I've been in every one of the continental United States except North Dakota.

3) I'm ambidextrous. Except for brushing my teeth!

4) I'm solar-powered — a couple of rainy or grey days in a row gets me low.

5) When I grow up, I want to live at the beach.

6) I'd LOVE one day to have a flutter of Papillons!

7) I'm not “the artistic one” in our family -- my talented sister AJ is!

I'm tagging:

Lori

Cathy

Debra Ann

Jackie

Wendy

Kira

Anne

Life, Change, Death and Transformation

I’m sure I was half-cat. If you want to upset a cat, change something. Cats do not care to adjust, adapt, take change in their stride. They complain, sniff, stalk about, and, if truly indignant, poop on your pillow. So much for change.

Unfortunately for us cats, Life IS change. It’s animated, exuberant, dynamic, energetic, vigorous, moving, CHANGING.

Mr Al tried to teach me this, but back then I was certain that if only I could get it Right, change would stop. If I could get it right, that perfect homeostasis would be mine for ever. Perfection. Stasis. No more uncertainty.

I struggled to become perfect.

Not surprisingly, this did not happen. Instead, once he’d reached his prime, Mr Al’s lungs gave out and he died. Now there’s a Change for you!

I tried hard to “get it”. Life is Change, he had said. Growing up is change, moving is change, working is change, every aspect of living was change . . . and death — well, death was the biggest change of all!

But that would mean . . . that death was the biggest part of Life?


Change, not cessation. Was that a sort of — metamorphosis? Could death simply be a form of . . . transformation?

My Daddy — a gentle soul

I'll never forget you, Daddy.

My daddy had the gentlest soul. He made friends with the insects that invaded his garage.

“Bumble Boy” was a truly unintelligent bumble bee who kept flying into the garage whenever the door was open; my daddy would shoo him out, worrying that Bumble Boy would be trapped in the garage overnight.

“Arachne” was the spider who skillfully wove a beautiful web -- inside the garage, where she was likely to starve. I remember my daddy scuffing through the long grass at sunset to stir up the moths and other insects hiding there. He would catch them, carry them to the garage, and throw them, like sacrifices, into Arachne’s web.

One time, two of our housecats caught a bunny; my daddy rescued the bunny, drove far out into the countryside, and let the bunny go where he would not be worried by cats.

Surprisingly, my daddy was not much of a “pet” person. When my sister and I pleaded to be allowed to keep the orange kitty who arrived in a shoebox on our doorstep, he said no til it was pointed out it was late and the kitty would be left outside overnight. Not surprisingly, this kitty cleverly attached himself to my daddy and became “his” special kitty, walking up his body each morning to peek into his eyes to see if he was awake.

I cannot imagine ever forgetting these details about my daddy — but I am young, and memories get lost. I will journal about my recollections, hoping that while something is lost, much is gained just in remembering.