Making, Doing, Being

We take our everyday lives for granted, which is pretty much what we are used to on a daily basis.

Some people are always worried about where the next meal is going to come from – people who live in poverty or war-torn areas probably experience this far more than I can imagine.  If I skip a meal, no biggie – lots of stuff in the fridge or down at the market.  When a student tells you that in his former country, as a child, what he remembers most is always being hungry, it makes you think.  To live like this is beyond my imagination.

And what about people who go from being very active, to suddenly being limited on a physical level?  From walking to not walking?  To using both hands to using one?  The physicality of everyday life is not something most of us remark upon, unless it is suddenly gone!  A stroke?  A fall?  Some crazy American with a gun?  A nerve-wasting disease?  How do we handle this?

If you think about, everyday life is normal as long as it doesn’t change.  When it changes, how do we handle it?  What do we do?  Do we fall down and pity ourselves?  Do we get up and move forward with whatever is in front of us?  Certainly a level of self-pity and horror exist when something bad happens which changes our daily lives, but it also can lead to creativity and a philosophical or spiritual awakening.  How we choose to adapt – and the key word is adapt – often determines our outcome.  It may be minimal in the eyes of others, but it can be major within the person affected.

I really believe we need to look at our lives on a daily basis, to appreciate and be grateful for what we have, not focusing on what we don’t have.  If our lives can be better, how?  If we want to change things, what do we want to change?  This is not an ever-moving forward process.  Like the frog in the well, three feet forward, two feet back.  The road is bumpy and challenging.  At times the goal is obscured or lost, but movement continues.  We choose in many ways how to adapt to our lives, however horrific we may find them.

Those who adapt, survive, even if the survival is not to their liking.  Those who give up are also adapting, but probably not successfully.  What we want, too, changes.  We need to adapt to those changes.  We need to think about them, to consider them on multiple levels.

When we stop making, stop doing, we stop being.

94. Gift Bag

Today – clean up the house!  I am still trying to get things organized after the repairs and remodels, which means getting rid of junk, boxes, and putting things back into some sort of order.  It is funny how orderliness can equate with mental and emotional serenity.  This messiness seems to be spilling over into painterly messiness and disorganization and directionlessness.  The end of the school year is also to blame.  Thus, something simple, with lines, and perhaps symbolically, something that can contain something else, but is brings new and pleasant surprises – like found in a gift bag.

Freedom!

Sounds grand, doesn’t it?  It’s a heady feeling.  Instead of ending my work day at 6:30, it now ends at 4:30 for the next 2 days, then next week at 3:30, and then after that, 5 weeks off (maybe 4, I haven’t really counted) until I return to work for 2 mornings a week to do a short summer school session of ESL (English as a Second Language) before another 2 off  and then begin my last year of work.  Retirement looms closer and closer, and what is a girl to do?

Practice!

Yeah, I mean that.  Practicing for retirement means finding a meaning and a purpose and a general “raison d’etre” so that life is not a series of TV and aimlessness.  It doesn’t mean finding a second job or a new vocation, it means simply doing things which have value and meaning to me.  Volunteer work?  Maybe.  What kind?  Where?  Why?

I have all sorts of ideas about what I want to do, and this summer, with my free time, I really want to explore things.  LIke a lot of old folks free from the traces of work, travel sounds really good.  Of course, photography and painting and reading.  Exercise – going to the gym – long walks – hiking – socializing – thinking – making – sewing – painting – egads!  My head is exploding!

Lines, Shapes, Shadows

I had to take a day off from painting as my head was swirling.  This seems to happen whenever I do a lot of any one thing.  My brain feels overloaded and I need to do something to break out of it.  Then it settles down with sometimes clarity or a nagging little sense of something different, good but not completed, if that makes any sense.

Today’s focus – this morning in poor light – I decided to look at white space and dark space.  Neither results are spectacular but what I do see is shapes in this pictures.  Corners outlines, curves, straight edges.  I also like the merging and blending and granulations I see.  Other than that?