solid

So I didn't take a nosedive. Which is as awesome as it is... disconcerting! Because here I was, all prepared to - uhm, nosedive into my usual shut-down-mode, which is where I generally find myself when chaotic happenings end (the need to take apart and rebuild everything I already knew) - but then I didn't. Which leaves me strangely at a loss when it comes to words. I'm in a good place - not Fabulous, but good, and it's unfamiliar. But if I wait untill I've got the words to bend with the road I'm on, this blog will gather dust. I promised myself it wouldn't, and yet it has been empty here for the past two weeks. I started to write and then I stopped. Drafts waiting for - clarity. Or the recycling bin. I'm not sure. Not sure of much at the moment, but - again - in an unfamiliarly good sense :) Things are cooking, but not boiled down. So here are some drawings that came out over the past couple of weeks.

Squirt's bikes. Which seemed like a great subject to draw - lots of lines and technical what-nots to fight with, as well as a good example of the theme I'd thought up for myself: growing. Yes. And then I found myself quite sad ;)

And then there's that. It wasn't immediately inspired by my kid undeniably growing, but it's a part of the whole story anyway, of course. It's something I fight with, still, at times. Not all the time, but it comes up. And right now, strange as it may sound, it feels like a solid thing to come up. Not something that will push me over any kind of edges, not something I'm making harder for myself, but something that is - understood to be hard. I don't know if that makes any kind of sense to anyone but me, but hanging out in a space where I'm actually okay, this is - alright to feel something about...

I don't feel like I'm on my toes. Of course I'm vigilant - I find myself in a strange field of wildflowers, and while I'm enjoying the scenery, and sniffing the air, I know I'm me and I'm vulnerable. But I'm dealing with things, as they come up, and so far?

I'm squeezing just fine :)

Hope you're fine, too. Hope whatever is on your plate is just enough to hang out with, on the sane side of things. 

Here's to whatever lays ahead & facing up! I'll be back... :)

tea

I've been doing some incremental thinking ;) Life's been really busy lately, but it's been good. There isn't always time and space to crawl to the bottom of things. Full stop. But I've been okay with that - it's brought insight, instead of mayhem. & that's a whole lot, coming from me ;)

I've been thinking about staying close to myself - as opposed to running off, exploring other lives. I've been thinking about my feet, about finding them where they hang out - and I'm slowly trying to bend myself around the idea that needing to stick close to my feet can also mean - is okay to mean - not always necessarily feeling them, but keeping them in sight. Not losing them altogether. Things might well be perfect if I could feel my feet no matter what - but maybe that's just another one of those things we're being sold.

You're not off to the shop to buy a wabi sabi tea kettle - this is a metaphor, so bear with me ;) You go to the store and they'll try to sell you a Brand Spanking New Idea of Tea in the 21st Century. Because the People selling The Kettle are all about Tea. 

But life - my life - isn't at the bottom of things all about Tea. I need tea to swallow life. So that Perfect Tea will never be all that, outside the Kettle People's laboratory. Yet I buy the idea and feel less than perfect because it doesn't glu my wabi sabi life...

But nothing will - & everything will. It's inside my expectations, eventually - and inside myth. Back to my feet? They're no myth & they're totally wabi sabi. & I could buy an idea - a laboratory-perfect idea about my own feet: that they'll never do unless I feel them, always. But outside, in the world, in my life? What if anchoring means: knowing where my feet are, approximately? So I know where to find them when there's space and time to have a chat and really check in? So I can give them attention once a day perhaps, instead of expecting nothing less than an open line - feeling disappointed and at fault for losing the connection more often than I care to think? What if that would do? What if that would be enough to feel I'm still here, still near enough?

I think connection gets lost at times because I've got overgrown ideas about its nature - bought straight from the Laboratory Doors. What if anchoring really means - to buy from a street vendor & sip from a cracked cup on the corner of Life and Lost? That feels like something I could actually DO!

It's worth a thought. Or better yet - let's have tea! Let's chat & stroll down Life a little, together - admiring our feet. They take us places - even on Lost - and that's magnificent knowledge, that!

bone

I'm not throwing you a bone - I would never throw you a bone... If you're here and you're reading this - I appreciate you way more than you'll ever know! This is a bone for me... To remind myself that this is a place I like to hang out. To show some movement, even if it's corner-of-the-eye stuff. Because I want to be here more than I am, and I promised myself to keep a candle burning. Seeing that I'm still unable - but trying! - to make it a blazing home fire... ;)

After all that hard stuff, I'm not home quite yet - never mind the blazing fire! I'm not everywhere I want to be. I'm still figuring stuff out. Finding out about what's important to me, and how to make it all fit into my life is hard, hard work. And it takes a strong stomach. I feel queasy, some days, but I'm working on it ;)

And I've been busy. That, too. I've been designing Christmas cards to sell - printed them, dropped them off, to see a few actually sell! - and I drew and painted the above, sort of commissioned! I came up with an idea, showed the initial sketch to my lovely neighbours - who wanted to buy some of my Christmas cards to send to their business clients! - and they paid me to finish it :D

I've got so much to say about - making art to sell. Much of it is philosophical, some of it is about the hard work involved, and most of it is - about me, I guess. Whether I'm ready, to go there and put myself into it and behind it all. Whether it's worth the effort. Whether I actually love it enough. If I'll ever be able to really feel proud - from my toes. But that's another blog post. If I ever find the time ;)

It's interesting to find myself here - with these questions - after promising myself my art is for exploration and for soulwork. For finding the me inside this life. Until it's for something else. I had no idea something else was around the corner when I promised myself to be mindful about it all. But then again - these Christmas cards, this commissioned piece - maybe that's it, maybe that's all. & maybe - perfectly maybe - it's all okay, whatever is next. But I need to get my head to rest around that. And that's the hard part, right now.

So here, in this moment, this is it. Corner-of-the-eye movement, like I promised myself. Just to prove I'm still around. I was here, this morning. Not for long, admittedly, but I did show up!

laundry

MYM

It's been almost two weeks since this blog has seen any action from me... Lots of comments though, thank you so much :D

I've been a little - okay, a lot! - busy with Pikaland's Making Your Mark e-course. It's a course that promises to help you find or investigate your personal style in various ways, and so far that's true. There is a new assignment every week, and there is plenty of room to stretch yourself, if you choose to. It's interesting! Last week I had to create an image from a combination of one item on a list of things I KNOW and one item off a list of things I LOVE, and then recreate that image in both pen & ink and collage! It was a total challenge, especially to get it all finished within a week ;) But I did, and I love the way it coaxed me out of my comfort zone - especially the black and white image that was supposed to include tones and values. Man, tones and values are hard! I knew that, I've only just begun trying to add more light and shadows to my watercolour pieces, but then to decide whether red is lighter than blue, and how to represent that in ink lines? Hard!

Here is what I did in my 'medium of choice'. My 'items' were "I LOVE going outside with my kid on his balance bike - he's given me new eyes and a new lease on wonder", and "I KNOW my kid is half South-African". The elephant was annoying - I miscoloured it, then re-coloured it, which didn't work as well as I'd hoped, and then I tried to rescue the whole blessed overworked thing with coloured pencils. Let's just say he's got a skin condition and be done with it ;) And let's say I'm able to draw an elephant that looks like an elephant, because in the end, that impressed me most :D As well as how I drew my kid :D Sure, there is something not quite right with his hairline, but hey - we all need areas of practise, right?! ;)

This week's assignment will be fun too, I think and hope! We were meant to go to a museum or art gallery, and revisit an existing work of art. And while that sounds like fun (can't remember the last time I went to a museum - shame on me!), I don't really see when I could be doing that and finish some art work before Monday. And then I remembered (funny how these things work, really!) that there is a whole ado around here about a couple of months that Claude Monet spent in Zaandam back in 1871! I investigated and found out there is a little book about it, so I went out and got that - and there are quite a couple of surprises there :D But I won't spoil the fun just yet - I'll post about that when I'm able to illustrate my findings ;)

Yes, I'm enjoying MYM, for sure! I love a good challenge! I am a little disappointed in the lacking sense of community there though. After both assignments, I've been going out of my way to find something constructive to say about each and every piece of art work posted - because I feel that's part of the deal, and because I enjoy seeing what others come up with, for inspiration and at times awe, but hardly anyone bothers to come back and do the same. Apart from Koosje & Jodi - much appreciated :) Of course that is what it is, but in the end, I feel I've paid a lot of money for just a challenge and some feedback from the course's creators - who don't come back for a bit of dialogue either. But it is what it is. All that said and paid for, I will enjoy the challenge, and see what I can get out of Monet in Zaandam. Because honestly? I probably never would have investigated what the ado was about if it wasn't for MYM :)

Are you straying outside your comfort zone in any way? I'd love to hear and see!!

relearning

conceptual

Playing, this morning :) Honestly, I was just playing! My pepper & salt shakers on top of an empty tub of body cream, because it was there, as a still life 'scene' :)

Now that it's finished, I see my current recurring 'concept' in it, again. About friendships, expectations, listening and being heard, pedestals and crap. Yup, even when I'm letting go, my conceptual brain subconsciously kicks in. It's a curse, LOL :)

I'm trying to learn to play more - let go. Not because it's infinitely important to play, or to let go, when it comes to what I make. But when I don't - when I hang on to my apparent need to draw and illustrate concepts - more often than not, I don't draw at all. Because I can't find the words for the concept, or I can't decide on the illustration to go along with it. Or because I start and my inner critic gets floor space before he should. That happens less and less, but it still does, occasionally. Especially when I'm digging deep, trying to excavate soul - like when I'm doing a course ;)

But if you didn't know all that, you'd just see salt & pepper shakers on top of an empty tub of body cream. Right?! ;)

normal

I know I'm being dramatic here... But it feels traumatic, this whole playschool-thing. To me, anyway. To me, much more than to the kid involved. He goes, does his thing, and sort of whines when I come to pick him up. Funny. But not haha, necessarily. Not yet, anyway :)

witch

Spent all day on a Halloween-y sort of project, spontaneously :) I hope it's going to be a window bunting thingy when it's finished, but it all remains to be seen. It's ongoing. Got a sore back from cutting and pasting - in the literal sense, involving scissors and glue! So for today, I'm done.

This is the witch I drew. I think she's sort of cute :) Trying to teach Squirt that there are good witches too. He's just discovered the idea of witches, ghosts and the like, and he's not quite sure what to make of it all - & to be honest, neither am I! We'll figure it all out, head on, together, I guess ;)

I'll let you know if this witch turns into something finished!

beauty

beauty is at times so up-close & personal that only taking a step back can reveal it

It's been quiet here, for a while. I've been caught up in emotions surrounding my grandmother's death. Thinking about death, passing on. Thinking, too, inevitably, about life. Trying to see what matters most. While I still can. While I'm still free to choose - of sorts - what I fret about, what makes me smile, what touches me.

It's been... hard, of course. But it's also been - ENERGY. I felt like I was high, almost; and then I'd feel heavy, too, and... consequential. Vibrating, spinning.

Of course, meanwhile, life goes on, and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster striking a balance between my emotions and scheduled events like diapers, food, opening the curtains ;) But you know what?! There is beauty in the mundane! Sometimes it takes a shock to the system to see it, but there is comfort in the motions, the ebb and flow of daily life. I've been focusing on what I have and feel as opposed to perpetually wishing for more hours in a day, and it's been... invigorating!

I know it will wear off, a little. Pettiness will take over again, a little. After all, this is life. I wouldn't have the energy to stand on serious crossroads taking stock all the time. Besides, taking stock isn't living, as such, either. I need to make stock, of sorts, in order to take stock, is what I'm saying. But I'm open, you know? For the first time in a long while, I'm saying - I feel strong! I'm ready! Bring it on!

How are you feeling? :)

mindfull

self

Inspired by this post on Darrah Parker's blog, I found a quiet, lightfilled moment for a long hard look at myself through my own lens... It's good to do that at times. Document Self. Hard to look at, too. Much harder than looking in the mirror, because it's less fleeting. It makes me feel - vulnerable.

I think it's hard because I'm not used to integrate being me with seeing me. When you look at someone else, you see their features as much as their actions, their words and your own thoughts of them.

I am, to myself, my thoughts, my emotions, my words and my actions. But not - not really - my face. When I look at a picture of myself, I find it almost hard to believe that it's Me. That this is what other people see when they look at me... It makes me feel - out of my depth, even naked, of sorts.
Oh, this is fascinating stuff to ponder! But also, ever so slightly, disconcerting...

wish

Merry Christmas!
May this holiday season bring you everything you need & everything you hope for!

dancing

as a mamma I feel torn - at times - between teaching my child that dancing on coffee tables isn't NECESSARILY a 'done thing' - & saying 'what the heck baby! dance till you sleep!'

Inspired by a SARK quote that I read somewhere about a year ago - to say YES as often as you can. And I do - wholeheartedly! But at times it presents a challenge - like this one ;)

Do you ever hesitate to say NO? Or YES, for that matter?

photo challenge: HAPPY

I thought I'd kept the challenge simple. Photograph what makes you happy. Even amidst chaos & mayhem, there are things that make you happy, right? Or, there should be, to keep you grounded. The important thing is, you should never stop looking for things that make you happy, especially while in the jaws of disorder and dust bunnies, both actual and in the form of dislodged bits of settled life.

And I do actually still see the happy! I would be lying on the floor in one big blubbering heap by now if I didn't. Honestly, yes, I am that dramatic in the face of Big Change. But Squirt keeps me firmly planted in the Now, most of the time. I like to think I'm more realistic and practical these days, since becoming a mamma almost 2 years ago. But still. All I ended up with was a photo of a pizza cooked from frozen (with added banana and jalapenos), after a hard day of sorting, discarding, packing, cleaning...

& a bowl of fresh home-made pesto. So apparently, as far as visible records go, my happiness is in food these days! But it isn't, not really. Although it helps, food. Especially the not quite responsible, greasy kind. My happiness is - as always, really - in the small gestures, the funny remarks, the Big Hugs I get at times. The stuff that doesn't photograph well at all. So I emailed Mridula, and told her I was out of the challenge till the move - The Move - is complete, somewhere near the end of November hopefully.

But my creativity isn't locked completely - granted, it's a tangled heap at times, these days, but it's definitely part of what's keeping me sane(-ish, some might argue)!

And also, I think there is nothing wrong with responding to a challenge saying; 'well, there it is. This is the best I can come up with right now.' So, I'm not out! I'm still in! I can't promise to meet exact deadlines at the moment, but I'll be there with what came up, whatever it is, to publish when I can!

Please look at Mridula's post to see how she interpreted the assignment! She came up with the next challenge, SHADOWS, and the deadline is the 8th of November. I'm going to try to make it there :)

photo challenge: SPARKLE

A few weeks ago, Mridula from Blogaloorgirl's Blog sent me an email asking me if I'd done any photography recently. And I hadn't, not really. Which got me thinking. I love photography much! But at times it's hard to find objects or subjects to talk to your lens, especially when inspiration is running low. When there's a lot going on in my head, I find I'm not looking around at the world with as much wonder as I need to restock the proverbial well, to paraphrase Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way.

So... I suggested a photo challenge! I've done a couple of courses in photography, and I've found it's much easier to capture something worthwhile when you know what you're looking for! It's great to have a theme to work with; it gets the creative juices flowing and it helps me open my eyes to what's been staring me in the face all along!

Luckily, Mridula accepted, and she came up with the first theme: SPARKLE.
Which was a challenge for me, to say the least ;) I don't know whether anyone who knows me would actually classify me as the outgoing type, but in my own skin, I feel I'm more of an introvert. I get it, it's a 'duh!' thing to say. But much of the beauty I see around me gets chewed on and put away on shelves in my mind, never seeing the light of day. Never mind sparkle!
But I love a good challenge, it really works for me - as far as photography is concerned anyway ;) - so I set out on a quest to find sparkle in my world :)

Here is a rose from the bunch of beautiful flowers we got as a present for our wedding anniversary last Wednesday. The water drops didn't really want to sparkle much, even with the low sunlight I had to wait for - for days! Which isn't that strange, really, considering we've been married for 10 years now. Nothing wrong with that, just that it's more the soft light of a place to call home than it is the dazzling sparkle I was looking for ;)

Here are some shards of glass I found in the bike lane on my way to the shops. They shouldn't be there, for various reasons, and I felt they might do prettier work on my coffee table, too. Oh, the funny looks I got when I got down on my knees to pick some up ;) I love that - giving people something to talk about around the dinner table ;)

I still didn't feel like I got all the sparkle out of the challenge, so I added the one piece of costume jewelry I own into the mix to see what that would do... I don't know what it is, but - there wasn't any real sparkle to be had... You know, the kind with the light-star, refraction or whatever it's called... Maybe my lighting wasn't what I thought the early Autumn sun was going to be, and maybe I just didn't do it right, but I couldn't get what I was looking for.

So here we are, at the biggest cliche of them all, when it comes to sparkle... It suddenly hit me! If I'm such an introvert, at least by my own sense of being, then surely the sparkle must be inside! From the senses being tickled in every way imaginable to the world of possibilities behind it all - eyes are the windows to the soul (to stick with cliche!). If it sparkles anywhere, surely it must be there! Not brilliant photography, but honest sparkle if I say so myself :)

There. That's it. My ode to the sparkling beauty inside :) Hop on over to Mridula's post to see what she came up with!

Now I had to come up with a new theme, and here it is: QUIET.
That might not be a much easier thing to capture, but the word's been playing in my head (for various reasons - haha) for weeks now, and I couldn't ignore it...

Our next deadline is Sunday 26th September (if that's okay Mridula?) - but we might post sooner, depending on how it's going. If there is anyone out there reading this, who wants to give it a go too, whether it's sparkle, quiet or the next little/big theme, I'd love to see! Send me an email or leave a comment here or over at Mridula's!

life

* & that's not a bad thing, necessarily. Through changes we grow. I call it gathering Wisdom.

headless

Not an ancient site in Rome. Just a garden-variety mishap. Quite literally. The back garden in fact. Poor little plaster(?) lady who'd been hanging out on our garden table long enough to gather mossy bits... When it happened, I almost cried!

But wait - I can sort of explain that. Really. A few days before this incident, a little rose quartz heart I had been carrying around in my pocket for luck (quite obsessively), fell on my toe when I forgot to take it out before taking off my jeans. Ouch!

The next day, I knocked the bottle of rose water my mother gave me when Squirt was born (yeah. I know. But never mind that now) off the ledge where it - granted, precariously - had stood ever since I'd come home from hospital.

And then, this happened. Decapitation no less...

I saw signs. And they weren't good. I caught myself, standing puzzled, wondering what it all meant. Feeling I was surely headed for some great disaster...

But before you start to worry about my sanity - here it comes: the anti-climax. The soppy bit - the wisdom in the center of the bowl of oatmeal. I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. And I decided that - if it meant anything at all, it would be that I should stop looking for signs in the weird little accidents happening around me - to stuff. Stuff I was holding onto, holding dear, for no other reason than the idea that it all meant something. I decided then and there, that I should trust myself much more than the stuff I've been holding on to.

Paradoxically, I wouldn't be me if I didn't think that is exactly what these signs meant ;)

So I took the dear lady & her head, and glued them back together. They're inseparable for now - for as long as the weather lets the glue hold. Just hanging out on the table again.

I've made a mental note, though: if this chick loses her head again, it's more to do with the quality of the glue than with any sort of misery looming. Not sure similar guarantees apply to this here chick losing sense of perspective again - that happens on & off... I'm getting over myself though; one garden-variety mishap at the time!

Anyone else out there, putting too much stock in signs? I totally understand if you don't feel comfortable facing up to it all here - I only wrote this post so you know you're not alone ;)

quite

This might make no sense, but you know...

There are days I so hate having to be the responsible adult that I'm really not! There is a very defiant little girl inside of me. At times I'm surprised no one can actually hear her scream - or see her standing there, fingers firmly in her ears, singing lalaLALALAAAA! Which probably is a good thing.

All a propos of nothing in particular - not right now, anyhow. Playing around with cookies - as a petulant child must - this was what came out. Mysterious minds & their meanderings...

Just wondering; am I the only one who feels so completely out of depth in the 'grown-up world' at times?

verb

From the morning pages I wrote today:

"A lesson reinforced: you can't just expect Happy & Fun to miraculously make a run-of-the-mill day perfect. It happens, of course, more than occasionally, but when you specifically want Special - it might need some encouragement, some planning.
Like 'Future' needs planning. It won't magically appear on your doorstep all pretty & tied up with ribbons and pearls. Rather, it will happen right outside your window (under your nose). While you're cutting the dead flowers out of your geraniums, wondering when the sun will come out. Or something. The metaphor might not help, but I get my drift. Basically - happy is, at times, a verb."