chaos – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Across the Pond

This has been a terrible week out here. Where I grew up was burnt to the ground in a lot of areas with family and friends losing houses. Election week was a roller coaster. It is always surprising to me how such things can just cause my sense of world order and sanity to just blow away, as well as realizing the world is not as I see it – perceive it – want it to be. But connections with people and hobbies and doing things – normal, everyday things – does help settle the discomfort and chaos a bit. Not sure what the next several years will bring, so we will wait and see – what else can we do?

I guess we can paint!

Watercolors almost always soothe my troubled soul! Painting and drawing does in general. The act of doing is an act of being, an affirmation of life, and the validity of existence. Me, I am always searching for explanations, but there are times when the only explanation is to do something, like paint, watch a movie, read a book, go for a walk, watch the cloud pictures in the sky.

Nature. Water, trees, sky, grasses. Peace.

Watercolor, Kilimanjaro 300# CP paper, 11×14.

Hiatus from Focus, or A Return to Chaos

These past 8 weeks or so have been very, very busy. I have been taking an art class online which is very demanding and equally fulfilling. A sewing class, too, which is also demanding and fulfilling. At times I have had to make choices between the two, and the art class won out, as it always does.

I don’t know about you, but for me focusing on one thing for a long period of time becomes overwhelming and I feel trapped. It’s not like I spend an hour or two doing something, but sometimes a whole day just doing one thing. When this happens, it is really hard to get back to a normal perspective of life. That is when everything has to simply stop and a determined moving toward other activities has to be done.

One way I do this is to get out and move. Going for a walk, watching a movie, gardening, cooking, socializing. Getting out of the house, away from the studio or fabric, pulls me out of the singular focus of the moment. Being singularly focused gets a lot done, but the feeling of being trapped is not a good feeling. It is suffocating and in many ways crippling. Anything beyond the focal point becomes unimportant.

Obviously, that doesn’t work too well!

The other day, I decided to take a camera I had loaded up with film out and take a long, long walk. Up hills and down, near creeks and on rather scary heights. I went alone. I took my phone for safety, and I let my husband know where I was. I just needed solitude and movement and being out in a world welcoming spring. And then I played with the post processing, sometimes with color, sometimes with silly extremes, and sometimes just to enhance a pretty place.

The world feels a bit more normal now! And given the current craziness, it is something to be cherished and appreciated. Nature gives us something far beyond our comprehension.

A Little Bit of Chaos

This afternoon was fun! A meetup up group met at a local brewhouse, art supplies and toys in hand, to do some art journaling. I’ve never done any. When I think of art journaling, Frieda Kahlo comes to mind – her journals are filled with words and pictures that swirl around and create a lively chaos of their own. Not reading Spanish, I have no idea what they say – but words are not always necessary.

What does one use in art journaling? It seems anything you want. It’s a self-expressive medium. So, I took a piece of tape and put it across the bottom of the page – you can see where it is. Houses, baloons, a Ferris wheel. From there, I added my own. Is there any meaning? Mayhap – no idea! I can tell you that the tiny buildings made me want to create some disproportionately large things . . . and for some reason, the serpent showed up with his apple, alongside a few hands, a dead chicken, a mouse, and who knows what else.

It’s just fun to play!

Topsy-Turvy, Crazy-Making Chaos

Well, maybe not that bad. But, there are just some days when the proverbial best laid plans of mice and men totally fall apart and you wonder what the hell is going on.

Today was that kind of a day. I had to make a phone call for some medical stuff – no call returned, but I’ll push it more later on. A friend is being badly treated at work – trying to help her figure out what to do in the sea of contract breech and lies. Then there were the plans to paint which produced crap. And a lack of sleep at night and an interrupted nap mid-afternoon. And then, I have just discovered that steel-cut oats make for a wonderful savory addition to a meal and are not as weird as I thought they would be – they paired really well with tonight’s salmon, fermented mango sauce, tzatziki, and salad. I mean, that is just too strange for my “oatmeal for breakfast” mentality.

The whole day felt really unproductive and messy. Somewhere I read that for the French, their verb “etre” (to be) is how they live – more in the moment. English speakers, on the other hand, live by the verb “to do.” Life in the English-speaking world is accomplished by things checked off on a list, written or mental. I really like the idea of living more immediately – flexible to adapt, able to plan, able to accomplish and not accomplish. The French are smart in that way, if such is true. I just felt crazy all day!

It is so funny how a culture is determined by words and verbs and habits. Americans are descended from Puritans – the Australians from criminals! What a contrast – rules and fear and conformity versus rebelling against society out of need or perversity. When everything does NOT go as planned, what can you do? Just kick back and laugh, think about it, and move on. In the end, I had a quite enjoyable – if unpredictable – day!

Thursday Morning

This has been quite a week or so. I am so glad I get the next ten days off from work, starting at 5 p.m. tonight. I am just about done in!

You could say it began two weeks ago. A pipe broke under the shower pan in the master bathroom. Three days later, half the carpet in the bedroom is gone, the shower stall is destroyed, and the leak is fixed. Now all that remains is arguing with the insurance company, choosing tile for the bathroom, ordering tile for the bathroom, ordering flooring for bathroom and back third of the house, painting the bathrooms and bedroom, and installing new vanities, possibly one or two new toilets, new mirrors, and new lighting in the bathrooms. Maybe it will be done by the end of April. The other half is going bonkers with all the estimates and people coming and going. Besides that, I had a 3-day painting workshop (yay!), a nasty cold and flu, and now Josh has the cold.

So, what is going to happen during the break? A few appointments. Lots of art if I am lucky. Lots of photography, too. Choices being made for tile and paint – the flooring is already chosen – and writing big checks for all this stuff. And researching what “contiguous” means in context of California insurance law – but that is another story!

And, of course, organizing all the bits and pieces of my life that have fallen apart over the last few weeks. I never realized how disorganization is like a perpetual motion machine – it is entropy at its worst!