ABAW:9

I discovered this one nestled in the far reaches of the Harvard Bookstore in their used book section.  I love that a 7 and two teeny zeros are penciled inside the cover.

I wanted to share a couple of quotes because I'm having trouble putting together my own thoughts tonight, and each of these quotes said the things I wish someone would say to me:

Who am I?  We ask ourselves this question over and over again during our lives.  We know for sure that between birth and death there is an experience that we call life.  But am I the experience or the experiencer?  Am I this body?  Am I my faults?...You are none of those things.  You undoubtedly have faults, but they are not you.  You may have a disease, but you are not your diagnosis...All of these things are not you because they are changeable.  There is a part of you that is indefinable and changeless, that does not get lost or change with age, disease, or circumstances.  There is an authenticity you were born with, have lived with, and will die with.  You are simply, wonder-fully you.

 * * * *

We experience our losses in our own time and in our own ways.  We are give a beautiful grace in denial.  We will feel our feelings when its time.  Meanwhile, they are being held safely for us until we're ready...We can't escape our past.  The sorrow of the past is often held in suspense until we are ready for it to find us.  Sometimes new losses trigger old ones.  And sometimes we don't feel the loss until later in life, when another loss occurs.

* * * *

Anger tells us that we have not dealt with our hurt.  Hurt is present pain, while anger is often lingering pain.  As we gather these hurts and do not address them, our anger grows.  We can accumulate many hurts, and it becomes hard to sort them out - eventually, even hard to recognize the anger.  We get so used to living with the feeling that we begin to think of it as part of who we are.  We begin to see ourselves as bad people.  The anger becomes part of our identity.  We must begin the task of separating our old feelings from our identity.  We must release this anger to remember our good and remember who we are.

* * * *

The universe is concerned with who you are, and it will bring into your life, in whatever the situations, in whatever time, what you need to become the person you're supposed to be.

This final quote reminded me of a letter I just received from a family member.  Handwritten on long notebook pages, exactly like my Walking in this World nightly journaling, the same length.  And at the end of the letter, the letter writer told me that God wanted me to have a house too.  No word on when, how or if it would ever actually happen - just that it was noted that I wanted one really badly and the sentiment was echoed up on high.  After reading this, I laughed and cried simultaneously.  Its nice to know at least that my wishes are being received.  But, um, a house would be good too.

S&E: 9 (SOOC) Spring

Not much in the way of spring here.  The snow is almost melted, but the roads are a sandy, muddy mess.  Things have not quite started to sprout yet, everything is still in hibernation.  This is the trickiest time of the year here; it feels like it could be and should be spring but it is not.  It takes work to dig deep and cultivate enough hope to make it through the end of winter.  And then there are moments that bring to life the possibility of a change of season, warmth in the air, more sunlight, and maybe, maybe, far away, summer.

Walking In This World: Week One

It has been a slow start to Walking in this World...I suppose that's the Universe telling me to slow down and shift gears.  Walking in this World is an online, 12 Week journaling journey, guided by the framework from the book of the same name written by Julia Cameron.  I am still waiting on my copy:  Amazon is taking its good ol' time shipping out my book (and some new CDs!).  I've just been making room for the journaling, and finishing up last month's projects.  Here is this week's check in...

1. How many days this week did you do your Morning Pages?

Morning Pages are meant to be done in the morning.  Hmf.  So I set my alarm early on the first day, and slept through the whole thing (that's a lie - I got up, turned it off and returned to bed).  I silently berated myself all morning and on my way to work, where I learned that my first client had canceled.  I started to in turn curse that person, and then I switched and offered them a silent thank you. 

For the next thirty minutes, I grabbed a plain pad of paper, sat down and wrote.  I struggled.  I felt like I should be working (even though I came in an hour early that day just to meet with that person, and this hour was technically my hour).  I wondered why I was doing this, I thought about my next client and confronted my feelings about that person.  And I decided that Morning Pages could just as easily be Evening Pages, and so they have become.  I have done them faithfully every night. 

2. Did you do your Artist’s Date this week?

Yes.  Every weekend I make time for some sort of art making.  This weekend, I finished up my February project, prepped my journal for more art journaling, tracked down some photos and took some more.  I'd like to take this further:  getting together with other people to make art, going to a museum or three (and these dates are supposed to be by yourself, but I might cheat and go with my fella), something else to take this time to a new level...

3. Did you do your Weekly Walk?

I had to do a compromise here, but I promise to try to find a way to do both.  This weekend, I chose to use my time to go running outside.  It was so warm (50 degrees!), it was a simple, sheer pleasure.  Ideal would be scheduling in a walk during the week at work...

A Thing A Day: February

During the month of February, I made the commitment to make one piece of art a day.  (The other part of the commitment was to post it but I couldn't get that part done in time!)  I finally finished scanning and posting all of the images, and would very much like to share them.

To the left is the card for February 28th, but I didn't make it until yesterday.  I didn't want to end, and I didn't know how to encapsulate how this project made me feel.  And I found this surprising:  many nights I didn't want to sit and make a card, or cards would back up, waiting to be finished.  I thought I would be glad to be done.

But this project has helped me to shake myself out of the day-to-day grind that I was stuck in, especially at work.  I had to start looking and paying attention, instead of covering my eyes and running blindly through my day.  I had to stop and pick up images or sort through my thoughts that would make it to the day's card.  Unusual for me, I was okay with letting things be what they were and I was uniformly pleased with the results.  I began to see patterns in my art making and journaling that I don't quite understand:  symbols of tsunamis, noticing that my writing started to lag behind the wiser image.  And it seems that the project isn't quite done yet:  I have to link the images together somehow.  I may not know what the project needs to be complete for many months.

Beyond that, I have this feeling that this project will take me to new places in my art making and journaling, I just don't know how or where.  I just know I have to keep going and trust the process.

S&E: 8 (PS) Self Portrait

"Blurred" from the Scavenger Hunt

SOOC - Self Portrait

This was pure play.  I got lots of great comments that recommended creative edits, so I went for it!  When I was taking the photos I took a bunch of ones with my husband wandering in the background, rapidly losing his patience...  I pulled in each of those photos into Photoshop as a layer, resizing with me as the center; erased me and the mirror but kept everything else in the background.  This kept his skulking form visible, and created this awesome, off kilter background.  All those straight lines became slightly crooked and slightly rotated.  Loved that.  I put all the layers in a folder, and did basic edits.  Not so sure about how all that worked but liked the results.  And then I pulled in a texture:  my first one!  I found this here.  I lowered the opacity and erased just me, so I stayed primary in the picture.  Wish I had gotten him wandering around the other side, far in the background or closer to the mirror. 

Talk about a self-portrait:  I can't help but admit that this is how I feel sometimes!  That aside, pure fun.

ABAW:8

I recently picked up this book from our local Borders which was sadly going out of business.  Books were ridiculously cheap, maybe 80 cents for this one.  Heartbreaking and scavenging-inducing.  I felt compelled to rescue them from uncertain fate.  And so I left the store with another pile of books.  Sigh. 

I know I joke about my book addiction.  But the serious truth is that addiction is part of my history, my family, and now my work.  I feel resentful because I was never taught about addictions in graduate school:  things I know are unfortunately things I know.  I've learned theories about family systems, trauma, development, but there is something about the lived experience.  I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Beyond that there is a ton of new information, research, changes in drugs, a new movement in the world of addictions, addiction vs pain management, inclusion of eating, shopping, sex.  I want to learn more.  I'm not sure where to start. 

S&E: 8 (SOOC) Self Portrait

Not a huge fan of self portraits.  I usually look terrible and feel embarrassed to share them.  Plus, still internally debating how much identifying information I want to post out in the great big blog world... 

But - I wanted to give it a go and see what I could come up with.  A handful of self-conscious images, and then this:

SOOC

This is where we park, thank goodness because I never have to shovel snow.  I love you underground parking.  I realized I have pretty tight posture when I'm taking photos:  it was also dark in the garage, and so I was being like a statue to decrease camera shake.  I was trying to experiment with layout, rule of threes and visual lines.

So that's me.  In my brown winter coat, wearing jeans and carrying my camera bag.  A little bit of a cop-out - er, compromise?  I do promise to practice self portraits, and maybe one day I'll get gutsy enough to post an image.  Kudos to all of you who did!

Walking In This World

Tomorrow morning, I am starting a new challenge:   Walking in this World. 

The challenge is a 12 week course to follow along with Julia Cameron’s Walking In This World.  She is the author who created the Morning Pages, in which every morning you are required to write three pages of just pure thought, every week you take a walk and also go on an Artist's Date.  Oooh, I love the idea of an Artist's Date:  a museum, making things with other people, going to the craft store...

I've been feeling like I want to spend more time writing, and using my journal again.  But I'm not going to lie - I feel a little uncertain about what to expect and if I can do it.  But I'll give it a try...

And, I am almost done my February Thing A Day...

creativeTherapy: February / A Year in the Life of An Art Journal: Fight

Along with the photography challenges I'm following along with (Scavenger Hunt & Now to Wow), and the Thing A Day challenge for February (and something else coming up for March...), I've been also working in an altered book and following along with two art journal challenges.  Yikes, this seems like a lot, but its all good stuff. 

Two prompts came up at the same time, and I've been trying to get them done.  They were both really difficult and meaningful, hitting me in a vulnerable spot.  I felt like they go together, and so I worked on them simultaneously.  One was past, one was a wish for the future.

From A Year in the Life of an Art Journal:
THE PROMPT: Fight
THE SONG: Breakin' Dishes by Rihanna
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE: Bleach

I used a bleach pen that we normally use to spruce up our grout, and experimented on paint, magazine images, and types of paper.  I wasn't really pleased.  The bleach didn't have much of an impact.  Then I used some black card stock and started writing some heavy words using the bleach that I didn't realize were in me.  Those became the basis of my interpretation of the prompt.  To make a long story short, I used to equate fighting with love.  I've since been taught otherwise, and that has been extremely healing.  But I have a lot of residual feelings that are just as conflictual as equating fighting with love. 

From creativeTherapy: 
What are you (or would you be) giving your children that you wish you’d had?

This was a hard one to start.  Seems like some people have babies easy peasy, and others, its an anguishing process.  I guess I fall in the later category.  I've been thinking a lot about "fairness" and the type of mother I would be, and fertility and being "ready."  Frankly, we are so beyond ready, it hurts.  All I can think to do to be more ready is to be as healthy as possible, to keep dealing with my "stuff", and to spend as much time together and with myself as possible.  But that's only so satisfying. 

A lot of my ideas for this one built on the previous prompt.   I couldn't help but feel like I was sending out a plea to our one-day baby, trying to prove that our home would be warm, and full of love, and that they would be given both lots of support and lots of freedom to grow and learn. 

And a shout out to the elephants:  In my magazine cuttings, I ran across this article about elephants in families, and how they fight, protect, and wander alone, all part of the growing process.  I had to include all these amazing images.

Scavenger Hunt

Woo hoo!  I was able to do the scavenger hunt again this week!  I'm pretty excited, because I am thinking about photography again.  As I was putting these together, I realize I'm still a lot all over the place, and I feel like my edits are far from perfect.  But I'm learning, thinking and practicing.  Which is awesome.  And thank you so much for welcoming me into your community - I was happily overwhelmed last week.

1.  Capture the Sky

The skies here are not so interesting, they are flat and dull.  Yesterday, there was a nice feathering of clouds behind this municipal building.  Score.  Cheat:  the sky was not that blue.

2.  Everyday

I took this photo in Panera, our favorite place on earth.  The light is a little wonky.  

But I'm a big believer in eating an apple a day. 

3.  Furry

Furry was hard!  I don't have anything furry in my apartment, I don't have any pets. 
Then I remembered these buds right outside our apartment building - they are amazing, they've held on for the whole winter.  I have no clue how I captured the little fuzz around it.

4.  Life

It snowed again today, and we had errands to run.  I kept thinking about how everything just continues onward even in the snow, it doesn't stop.  And I loved how the green arrows keep us moving forward.

5.  Blurred

This is a sneak peek into my attempts at a self-portrait.  We park in a garage and I have always wanted to take a photo in that mirror.  That's my husband in the background, getting antsy.  I love the lines and shapes in this image.