Weblog 319

March 25, 2012~ 12:30 am
This has been an unnaturally warm week with temperatures in the high 70's....consistently. All week long. The trees are budding COMPLETELY, and daffodils dot every byway and yard.

It seems magical. As though...... if you'd look closely enough, there'd be pixies hiding in the green, green lush grasses. (Perhaps their pixie dust has enchanted everything.)



And wildlife are feeling SPRING through every cell. Birds and bunnies, at one with the budding season.



Weird as it sounds, it is, in its own way, depressing to me. I find I'm out of step with all the greenery and growth....I feel stuck. And old. LOL..It's true! I spent Friday evening looking through old VHS tapes taken in the mid-90s. Tapes of Matt at West Point. Tapes of Holly's graduation and prom... the fun of having rescued fawns right next door --and Wayne bending down to tenderly pick one up-- the joy on his face like the sun itself. My hair was dark and long, and I was slimmer and bright-faced... and though I was in my early 40's, I looked young. Watching those old films made me realize how many years have passed and how achy my joints have become, how thickened my waistline- and in many ways, how jaded my outlook with the passing years. Over all, I feel like one of these sad-looking Pierrot clowns



standing amid many clowns, all of us waiting for what comes next and what tricks will be expected of us. (It wasn't a good day at work on Friday- that's probably where this residual funk is coming from, because every call and every email concerned some mistake or snafu I might have caught before it turned into a problem. I hate ending the week like that. It tends to stick with me all weekend, and I never really feel free of the place.) So yes, I feel old (from watching the video tapes) and dumb, from belaboring my mistakes.... and yes, quite clownish.


It didn't keep me from my favorite pasttime, however. Searching the web for wonderful art... something to make me sit up and take notice, mouth open, wondering how in the heck they do it.


For instance....

remember Edward Scissorhands?



The boy with the amazing ability to create topiary beasts in minutes-- leaves flying while he sculpted hedges into animals? He even went to school for Show and Tell and snipped out paperdoll chains to amuse the class....



(I love that movie!) Even EDWARD would be impressed with the STUNNING work of paper artist

Eric Standley

who manages jaw-dropping works of cut paper that resemble stained glass windows. (Click on any small image and increase its size to really study their amazing detail. The intricacy of his work defies explanation.) They're little miracles crafted simply from colored paper and a pair of snippers, to produce works of art so uniquely beautiful, they defy description.

(Art pulls me out of myself and for that I'm grateful. 'Self' can be such a quagmire at times, and I need the 'thrown rope' to pull free.) Here's hoping the coming week will lift this gauze of whatever it is that's clouding things for me.

I could use some carefree clarity, more gratitude- and a better sense of balance.

Clown uniform or not :)...I'd like some of this springtime in me.




March 28, 2012~ 4:30 pm
It's been a blessedly uneventful week thus far. (I know a lot of folks would find such a thing either boring or bland..... or blah- but for me, I love a long expanse of absolutely nothing on the immediate horizon and nothing to claim my time but what I happen upon. In other words, to me....



THIS is not 'empty'..... it's FULL.

There's nothing inside, there's no beginnings or left-overs of a meal, the air alone inhabits it- and into such an unoccupied expanse, I can roam free. Be me. Hear the spaces between thoughts... and that's where the real creativity resides.

In spaces. Waiting to be filled.

(Which brings me to an amusing story about my daughter Holly.) Last week, she drove to IKEA and bought a blond wooden kitchen table with a white formica top and four blond, unfinished pine chairs. (And YES.... she assembled them herself at home!) But...... on her way to the check-out, she spied this



-- a modern looking, red wire fruit bowl. Imagining how wonderful such a thing would look in the center of her new table, she bought it- without checking the price tag.

When they rang up her purchase, she was AGHAST to see the price of the bowl was more than a chair! LOL!!! So now...... every time one of the kids come into the kitchen -no matter what they've come in for -she's asked them to say, "OH! What a BEAUTIFUL BOWL!" And they do it! I HEARD THEM. LOL!

And I understand completely. I believe Holly was compelled by it's formlessness, it's emptiness. Its esoteric possibilities. It's SPACE..... in wonderful red stripes. The bowl represented how she was seeing her kitchen transformed (to say nothing of the endless ways one could enhance that bowl with various decorations for the season or holiday.) I LOVE THAT BOWL!

So thus far, I've had a week like a 'red wire bowl'. And it's simply delicious. :)





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