river_kate

Finally a day when I feel I can stay indoors and do things. My home is in disarray; I was looking for a needle and thread last night. I found them and am pleased that I easily threaded the needle. There have been little moments where I experience easier functioning lately. What I struggle with is more acceptable to me lately; I have patience with my mind and body these days.

Several times I've changed my mind about the found objects I'm going to make art with. I found my fabric stash including leftover upholstery fabric from my Victorian settee. I'm thinking I'd rather attach my objects to it instead of the wire screen that the metal artist is using. I wonder if I should share my results or if it would annoy her. While laminating two items with do-it-yourself paper, I cut a cancelled stamp from 1904 that was on an envelope from St. Louis as they were getting ready for the World's Fair. When I looked in the envelope, I found some curls of human hair. It is from a child named Robert who wrote to my grandmother. It is a bit brittle but a beautiful golden color.

Some more paints came via Fed-Ex today. They are student quality acrylics for landscape painting. I worked on the small seascape and finished it and am way more satisfied now that I have a different color blue. (When I started, I was actually using a six tube basic set and painted with a brilliant blue, black and white.) Now I am reminded of how messy I am when I create and how I neglect to eat. Really, there has always been this challenge with attention for me.

This morning I read about a woman who basically laid in bed with Lyme disease for five years. She found a way to heal and came to a point where she decided she had to give up using it as a reference point. It's such an individual thing and people have to find their own way no matter how much assistance they get from others. It's kind of a dance that I understand. Giving up feeling the need to explain and apologize can seem unnatural. The more at peace I become with my functioning, the more people see me instead of my apparent limitations. Maybe I'm just getting better at tuning out those who are uncomfortable.

In ways I can't explain, it feels like I am having a wonderful harvest right now. Of course, there are cycles and this time will pass. In the meantime I am appreciating and focusing on the good things I have now. So, I'm soaking in it because we all will be challenged again soon.

I took a photo of my painting with a one-use, point-and-shoot camera. There is dust on the bench that the small easel is sitting on. Housework is still not a priority.

Yesterday evening I went to First Thursday in my city and looked at art, talked to artists and ate non-gluten-free cookies while doing so. The weather has been so lovely lately that I've been unable to make myself stay indoors. Today I ate breakfast on a penthouse rooftop and then spent most of the day outside. If it rains this weekend maybe I will get some grounding things done inside.

Most of the artists I chatted with yesterday were kind. I tend to repeat myself, not make sense and not understand everything that is being said to me. The more compassion and patience I have with myself the more others seem to, but not everyone is up for it.

Several artists are using donated space in empty downtown buildings and one of them has a set-up where people can make brooches from found objects. She has objects there in case people don't bring their own. This afternoon I gathered some items in my apartment and hope to assemble them and then attach them to the little screens she uses. (She plans on doing this again.) I have two old pins that I found when cleaning out Mom's house, a dyed pearl earring, a gauzy gold jewelry pouch, and a cancelled stamp from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. I will laminate it in addition to laminating an icon I'll print out. The icon is of Barnabas Collins in his exotic silk dressing gown sitting in the Old House looking through photo albums of his ancestors. I intend to attach these to an old crocheted doily which I'll then attach to fabric left over when I made quilted Christmas ornaments years ago. This will involve some sewing and ironing. I actually have an iron and ironing board and when this is all done I hope to stitch it to a small quilted wallhanging. Hopefully I'll be able to get the needle threaded.

I signed up for 2009 NaNoWriMo today and am really excited. I have been gathering snacks for my pantry and need to watch some DVD's for the 1875 timeline which will be part of my story. (I am doing a Dark Shadows fanfiction with both original and canon characters.) It is amazing how I can forget about my aches and pains when I focus on these things.

I did the underpainting of a small 5"X7" canvas board the other day and that seems to have satisfied me for the time being. By now I have forgotten everything I was taught in high school thirtyseven years ago. In a book I looked up how to clean and care for my brushes and was careful not to look at techniques so I can see how I do this. With the tremors in my hands it could be interesting.

It is fascinating how I've once again gotten to that place where I want to throw off everything about how I should be doing things. So much of what I've been told about myself is just plain wrong.

The paintings I really want to do are of the black and white photos of my ancestors from around the turn of the century. Many are professionally photographed indoors; the women have long dresses on and the men have long beards. Once, long ago, I could draw well and can probably learn to do so again. The portraits would be painted in the neutral colors of the photos and then I'd like to add bright flowers in vases and other little objects that I like.

Much of what I am clearing out in this lifetime, I once thought was from past lives. Feeling the experiences, I knew they weren't mine. Now I believe a lot of it is in my DNA from the experiences that my genetic line lived through. Not everyone is going through this but I have spoken with enough others who are, that I have some understanding of this little project. I keep hearing, "There is nothing wrong with you. You aren't doing anything wrong." This feels right to me most of the time now although it is contrary to appearances.

It might appear that my life really sucks but I am focusing on the freedoms I have now. After being twisted into a pretzel for years trying to be who and what I was dictated to be, I now find myself being able to be myself and yet survive. That feels great.

Something like my turning a corner has occured. For the last three or four years I have had to coax myself to get out of bed and do something rather often. Now, I am encouraging myself to rest more, although I am still relatively unproductive. When I allow my body to rest for several days, I've noticed that it always pays off. Always do I get a gift from it. My body, after all, is doing most of the work in my physical healing and I've come a long way in supporting what it's doing.

Anyway, recently I keep coming across the saying about what is true in the morning of one's life is not true in the afternoon of one's life. Certainly, I am on a different platform now and have learned not to judge myself for the results of doing what I thought best in the previous decades. It's like ceasing to tell yourself you were a loser for falling down so much when you were learning to walk.

This afternoon I actually got to spend some time in a lofty place of seeing how great I've done in the last few years, which I admit looked like a total train wreck. Finally, I can move on from second guessing myself, crying over spilt milk and lost opportunities. There was actually a whole body rush of information telling me that my great windfall of that time, now lost, was there to balance the truly horrendous things I went through and it was there to help me choose to stay in this life, not to be my only form of sustenance for the rest of it. My seeming limitations are helping me refine what I truly value now. I got a sense of how important it is to look for the gift and the best of any situation that appears restrictive or intolerable, without repressing the shadows or denying the reality of the challenge. I am aware of the wisdom of making the most of the free time and solitude that I have now instead of focusing on what is lacking. For me it did require solitude and lots of space from the outside world.

The documentary "It Might Get Loud" is one of the most impressive and meaningful things I've come across in the outside world recently. I also thoroughly enjoyed it. While it was interesting to learn about Jack White, who seems authentic to me even though I don't resonate with his views, and while the parts about The Edge were interesting too, what really amazed me was Jimmy Page. Jimmy Page is a god. It was wonderful to see the joy he still has when he plays guitar and it appears he is doing well with his current stage in life. He makes a remark about not knowing if he played it or if it played him. (I'm not sure if the word he used was played or chose or had.) But he said he had fun.

He is speaking, of course, of the happenings of his youth regarding his music career. Often things seem to randomly happen to us and then at some point it is the afternoon of one's life and things do appear different.

At this point, if anything would want to "have me", I'm sure I would better negotiate for more comfort and more of a sense of my own choice and pace instead of being used by the energies floating around in the universe.

The last few days I've had more of a sense of the rightness about where I'm at and how to make the best of it. It's good to be here in this place.

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Entries tagged with introspection

Harvest

Not A Bonsai Tree

Afternoon

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January 2010

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