Springing the Fever Out of the Cabin!

Whoohooo! Technically the first day of spring is this Thursday, March 20, 2014. I am so ready. While cabin fever has not got the best of me, I was certainly ready for the sunshine and warmer temps we've been having lately. The dog and I have been getting out every day we can. We are both ready to get "On the Road Again", which is the name of this little collage I did yesterday.

I love taking walks with Daisy and taking lots of photos. I used to do that before mom passed away and would load all the pictures on the computer for her to enjoy, too. That was the only way mom was getting out into the sunshine, especially towards the end. This little past time helped us both. Mom got to see the world through my eyes, which was a whole lot different than hers. I'm known for taking closeups of lots of things, be they normal or 'weird' and Mom found herself liking a lot of my odd photos. You just never know what might become the idea for a picture or collage. I'm always looking for inspiration.

For this collage I used some leftover map scraps and found that cute little silhouette car graphic in my graphics program. I looked up the lyrics to Willie Nelson's 'On the Road Again'. It stilled needed a little something so I outlined everything with black sharpie marker and voile—a painting!! I just love it when a plan comes together.

Catch the Moment

Be here now. I've been telling myself that for several years now. Pay attention to what is happening right now for 'now' is when and where life is lived and felt.

Emotions only happen in the now. When we think of past events, we often relive the emotions we felt back then, but those emotions are based on a thought, a memory. The event is in the past, not the present. We can choose to change the emotions that went with a past event. Or not.

Instead of reliving the past like an old rerun we can choose to 'catch the moment' and live in the present. We can choose to make this moment all that it can be. We can be all that we can be right now. Life is lived in the moment. Period. One moment at a time. We can choose to pour our emotion, our passion, into getting the most out of this very moment. And we can live that way every moment of our lives. Wow! Amazing!

You cannot be really first-rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So I suppose the best piece of advice I could give anyone is pretty simple: get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you’d care so very much about those things if you developed an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast while in the shower?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over the dunes, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over a pond and a stand of pines. Get a life in which you pay attention to the baby as she scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Turn off your cell phone. Turn off your regular phone, for that matter. Keep still. Be present.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work.

Get a life in which you are generous. Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take the money you would have spent on beers in a bar and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Tutor a seventh-grader.

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.
 - Anna Quindlen  

I want to give a shout out to Patricia Allingham Carlson whose art is really amazing!!!

I Am The Road Map

This project came about because of an art challenge I am a part of. The challenge was to create a vision board for the creative aspects of my life. This was my version which I have titled "I Am The Road Map".

I thought I would walk through the process for anyone who is interested in collage.

I started with a 24" x 30" canvas board. After tearing up brown paper grocery bags into assorted sizes, I used a mixture of half white glue and about half water. It helps to wrinkle up your paper before you apply it to the canvas board in order to get better texture.

With the right colors applied after drying you can make this look just like leather. I love this texture. I applied several shades of orange, followed by transparent washes of burnt umber and burnt sienna, building up layers of color.

 

I cut the shape of a woman out of an old map and pasted her on, adding a face and sunglasses.

I then cut the shapes of puzzle pieces out of various pics, gluing them together. The moon in the upper left corner and the heart shape came from some used coffee filters that I had painted during a day of experimenting. I then added the phrasing and there you have it.

 

 

Hope you like it.

Susan

 

My Inner Child

Inner Child

I joined a creativity challenge for the month of January. Week two was all about speaking your truth. This was my 'truth' that week. I was dealing with my somewhat recalcitrant inner child. In fact she was driving me crazy that week.

I've been reading three different books, one of which is John Bradshaw's Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child. I finally feel like I'm actually in touch with my inner child who is not at all happy I might add. It seems that our intellectual intelligence and our emotional intelligence to do not necessarily mature at the same rate. Who knew!! It would also seem that stunted emotional intelligence is possibly at the root of a great many emotional outbursts amongst the members of the human race—myself, being a prime example—and my current truth that week was that I was feeling about four years old emotionally. I'm sure you can imagine my dismay and the uncomfortableness in my life considering I am a few months short of turning sixty. Eeeeeekk! Fortunately, I was going through this childlike display alone in the comfort of my home.

People who go on longer fasts in order to detoxify their bodies, often experience a series of events that they call a 'healing event' or a 'healing crisis.' Me, I just call it a detox dump since that is what the body is doing—dumping a load of toxins. What I have discovered is that you can do a detox dump emotionally as well. And that, my friends, is where I found myself, in the middle of an emotional healing crisis/event minus the fasting. The artwork "Inner Child" is what I did to post for the challenge.

I have discovered within myself a rather strong passion for art as therapy. I've pretty much used art in this manner for most of my life but didn't really think about sharing it with others too much. Hence, this post on my blog. There will be more of these coming. I hope that others will be encouraged to do a little art therapy of their own.

Lessons in Nature

What wonderful lessons are available to us in nature if we would only look and see.

The lesson I see here:

In adversity greater numbers are better, providing companionship, warmth, and courage to make it through. Kind of describes life in general, doesn't it?

24 swallows huddling together to survive the harsh winter weather.
Photographer Keith Williams, spotted the scene while out walking his dog on a trail beside the Yukon River in Canada.

Slow Down Challenge Day 3 - Focus

I am a happy camper. It turns out that my being a lousy multi-tasker is really a good thing!! Whoo hooo!

Today's Slow Down Challenge has to do with focus. I have always had an ability to focus. In fact I have been nagged and ragged on for that ability since I was quite young. Being organized enough to keep track of several things going on at once is not the same thing as being a multi-tasker.

A multi-tasker has divided focus and attention on more than one thing at a time. I've always hated the whole concept of multi-tasking because I know for myself that when my attention is divided, I generally remember nothing about anything, and that frustrates me beyond belief. I get irritable and grouchy because it makes me feel stupid. I am not stupid, although I have done some stupid things in my life as have we all. It irritates me when others say they can multi-task when I'm talking to them or wanting their full attention because I know that I am unable to multi-task, therefore, so is everyone else. (Smile) The truth is we all think like that. We figure because we know something, everyone else does, too. Un-uh. Nope. Nada. No way. Not even. Etc. Etc. But, scientifically speaking, the truth is our brain can actually focus on only one thing at a time, which is not the same thing as being able to do more than one thing at a time.

I also think flexibility, or lack thereof, can often be an issue when one's attention is divided, which has certainly proven to be a truism in my life. Some would say I tend to have a one-track mind—a dog with a bone sort of thing—and they would be correct, but being focused on a single thing doesn't necessarily mean that I'm not flexible. It merely means that I am not giving any of my attention to my surroundings except as it relates to whatever project I am currently working on. 

For those of you who are interested, here's a hint when dealing with me: if my tongue is out, I'm deep in the middle of something and concentrating hard. Go away and leave me alone. Or, if you need to tell me something really important to you, make sure you first get my attention before telling me whatever it is you want me to know. This does not mean just achieving eye contact with me. I am perfectly capable of looking straight at you with a questioning look on my face while saying 'yeah?' and not even remember seeing you to start with. At the very least you will have to repeat yourself multiple times before I actually wrap my brain around the fact that you are talking to me and it's important that I listen.

And please don't take this personally. I do it to myself as well. For instance, I will have to go to the restroom. I recognize that physical need, but I will put it off because I don't want to interrupt the flow of whatever I'm working on until it becomes so pressing that I am in danger of embarrassing myself. I repeatedly ask myself, "why did you wait so long?" while trying to figure out when I first felt the need. And I can't remember. Seriously. I'm focused and I will ignore my own physical needs in order to finish what I'm working on. This also can extend to answering the phone, dealing with unexpected company, remembering an appointment, or taking the dog out to do her business, etc. Just saying... :-)

When I am focused, I'm focused. It doesn't matter whether it's my art, writing, researching techniques on the internet, grocery shopping or whatever. I am an all-or-nothing kind of girl. That's focus.

I wonder how often people have been called derogatory names when all that was really happening was that a person was entirely focused on something that others couldn't see or else didn't see and/or thought was unimportant. A lot more often than most of us would think, I'm sure.

So really, the issue becomes one of "importance". What I think is important at any given moment is not necessarily going to match up with someone else's idea of what is important. And this is where so many problems begin in relationships of any kind. I can attribute every argument between my husband and I to disagreeing as to the importance of some issue or aspect of an issue. I find that often what I think to be important is not necessarily what he considers to be of importance and vice versa. When we have disagreements, I have to constantly monitor my own understanding/beliefs of what is important in life and what can sit on the back burner for a while, or even indefinitely. Looking back I can see how this was also the case when dealing with my children when they were younger, or with family and friends over the years.

For me it all ties in to focus plus beliefs. It is important to remember that all things are relative, even our beliefs. Beliefs are directly related to our experiences. Our experiences are directly related to our focus/attention, etc.

So, the next time someone disses me for my lack of attention/focus, I will remember this issue of importance, examine the relationship between what I consider to be important versus what others consider to be important, refuse to step into any sudden emotional hurricanes that would cloud the issue, and be more tolerant, kind and forgiving of others interruptions, attitudes, words and actions.

I'm actually loving this Slow Down Challenge. I'm learning lots and I love most things that make me exercise my brain right now.

Slow Down and Savour the Moment

Savour: to relish or enjoy [from Old French savour, 

from Latin sapor taste, from sapere to taste]

The word of the day is 'savour'. In retrospect I have done very little savouring over the span of my life, excepting over the last couple of years, during which time I have been learning how to savour my life. I think I'm getting much better at it.

For instance, I am savouring the time spent with my son and his family who are visiting me for a couple of days. Life is so much different when you savour it. To savour one must take the time to really taste that thing, to really see what you are looking at, truly experiencing it instead of being to busy to take the time. You do not have to like everything you taste in order to experience it. I think we forget that, or maybe don't realize it to begin with. In truth taking the time to give your full attention to the moment is really 'loving' in its truest sense.

 I'm learning to savour time spent on my art, time with my husband, my children and grandchildren, time spent cleaning my house or playing with the dog, even time spent in the shower or giving myself a pedicure.  Once I grasped hold of the word I began to apply it to everything I do.

Savouring the moment helps me to 'be here now'—to remember to experience and enjoy fully whatever it is I may be doing at this moment in time. To live life now. It seems I have to constantly remind myself to come back to the present moment and give my undivided attention to it, while also remembering that this is a process, and growth requires time to happen. That is okay.

My hope is that eventually I will find that I have formed a habit of being aware and in the moment. I will have intentionally retrained my thinking to savour each moment of life. What a gift to give myself and others!