Flip This Room

I will have to move my bed, redo my room, so the cable cords and transmission paraphernalia are not jostled every time I turn over.   It’s not just a matter of protecting the two or three splitters hanging out of the wall behind my bed; it has to do with all the connections being bumped and bandied about by stack of mattresses and innumerable pillows.  Plus, I just bought a new mattress topper and I hesitate to toss it on until my sleeping arrangements are finally finalized.  And that’s final.

 I do not want to sleep on eggshells.  I want to be free to bash about the bed if I wish.  If any dreams or nightmares so move me.  Whenever I roll around, do exercises, pillow play with cats, the TV signal breaks up the picture into pixels. And who knows what harm this is causing to the internet?  The best solution is to move the bed to the opposite wall. Then I will feel assured that the very best cable signal is being received by this room, and ultimately, this whole apartment.

So I am conceiving a plan of what goes where when I flip this room.                                  Preparation is 30% of the project. Implementation is 40%.  Restoration concludes with the final 30%.  Much more work is involved with getting things ready and getting things put back into place.  The actual move is cleaner, more methodically efficient, if the beginning and ending have clarity.  This is no time to be impulsive, like picking up the mattress, putting it on my head and spinning around the room with it.  I need a plan with teeth.  I need a spatial plan that functions for utilization purposes.  A place to sleep, computer and be creative. 

I’m equipped with pencil, grid chart and tape measure.  I have to figure out what has to be moved out before the flip sequence can occur. And where the moved out things can go.  And if things have to be moved before they can go there.  On TV this all looks do-able.  But I don’t have an inexhaustible crew and budget.  I have an exhaustible helper, also with a bad back like me, so I have to be very, very clever in how this all shakes out.  I don’t have a deadline, unless one of us drops in our tracks, in which case the project is automatically over (being glib here).  However, I DO have a timeline.  Somehow, I envision this all being in place by Halloween. If that doesn’t want to happen, then I will pick up the mattress, put it on my head, spin around the room with it until it sails into a corner somewhere. And then I just will build my world around that.

 Like I said, having clarity makes the onset of the project possible and even temporarily exciting.  

Best wishes, Whisel*

So tell me… have you ever flipped a room and flipped out in the process?

The One and Only

I paint a piece. It works or not.  When it doesn’t work, I am not frustrated or stymied. I see the problems. I know why the work fell apart. But sometimes I don’t know how to fix it. So I put it aside to start something new, something fresh.

 When it does work, I am agog. I am mystified about how that all came together and happened. I am both excited and apprehensive. Because I want to paint another piece…. that works.  Another item, hot on the heels of the recent success. More often than not, the next piece falls apart.  And I repeat the cycle.I think… maybe if I had a particular style or method of painting, the formula would embed itself in the practice and I would be satisfied with the results. Maybe.  Maybe not. 

My style seems to be…. not to create a piece, but to allow the piece to create itself.  I am not the Artist, but the servant to the art. I am not the Project-Master, but the supply technician, laying out brief elements of composition and color. If I say: I am going to do a beach scene, then I try to craft a scene that describes that subject…. very specific, controlled and rather static.  Obviously, it is better for me to paint without having the end in mind. Just paint… get those colors out there and see what happens.

 

This is one I call “Las Caux Cave Painting, Brookfield Illinois”.  For me, it is wonderful, exciting and very original.  I had no idea what it was until it revealed itself.  And then I knew I had described what it wanted to be, and so, I could lay down my brush with a big breath of satisfaction. Nothing is missing and nothing more can be added. It is complete.

 Now if I wished to continue along this line and depict symbols from Altimira or the Vezere Valley, it would never happen.  I would labor over specific and context, painting the life right out of the image.  It does not engage my spirit to try to make something too specific and visualized ahead of time. The process has to be more random, exciting and mysterious. It may represent a beach scene in the end or it might dazzle me into recognizing the earliest carvings of the dancing cuniforms of Sumeria.  Dancing Sumerians at the Beach maybe.     

 If it’s not an enigma, then it’s a fact. And if it’s a fact, then it belongs in a book…. not on a canvas.  And that’s the way it is…. for now   Stay tuned. I will probably take the opposite position next time I lay out my colors. 

Best Wishes, Whisel*

Heart

“Imagine your heart opening into a red lotus.

From its center comes a crimson child.

Pure, virginal, innocent.

 

Bring this child out of your body.

Imagine her floating above your head.

You, as a child, …..

holding a sun in each hand

while each foot stands on a moon.”

 

~ 365 Tao by Deng Ming Dao

 

 

To begin my day, I imagine my sacred parts awakening, functioning energetically within. My heart-child beaming, stretching, smiling.

 

The TV is not speaking, the radio is not playing, the traffic is not rumbling, the air conditioner is not growling, the fan is not whirring, the construction crew is not banging. I create a silence, shushing the mind, seeing only my heart, beating happily, opening to each moment of joy. And so….. the day begins.

 

Best wishes, Whisel*

 

 

 

 

Things That Go Together

  I watched a TV program on hoarding recently, so I’ve been busy around the apartment.  I’m not really a hoarder.  I can throw things out, but the items I keep are amazingly disorganized.  I gripe on this periodically, I know.  It’s non-impairment disorder of not being able to gather some like-things together and place them into a permanent or even temporary space.  Some items are easily categorized, though, and DO have a space.  My vitamins are all together.  They are all vitamins/supplements and they come in bottles.  That’s not too hard.

It’s the doo-dads and variations of like-things.  Like paint.  I can keep bottles of acrylic paints together.  But I don’t put acrylic paint in tubes or cakes with them or with each other.  They are like-things, but they are differently shaped, so somehow that tilts the playing field for me about how to organize things.   I can keep photographs together, magic markers too.  Things that are the same, but differently shaped…. puzzle me.

I don’t do well, spatially,  in a three-dimensional world.  It’s not my most familiar choice of existence.  But I’m here now, trying to make the most of it, just like the rest of the population, each with their own puzzlement.  What puzzles you?

Best wishes, Whisel*

Where Am I?

The magnitude of everything that is encompassing my life these days is astonishing.  Yet it is barely noticable in the “see-able” world around me.  To those who might be looking my way, giving a glance in my direction, it would seem I pass the days in quiet, slow moving, unfettered shuffling about not doing much of anything.  Although they may notice occaisional bursts of creative energy spent in constructing useful and perhaps visually attractive items from “useless” scraps of wood.  On the exterior I think they do not see much from me.

Within, however, there is an amazing smorgasbord of changes, releasing of the “old ways,” deeper understandings of all things, endless and unfettered joy, deep awareness of earth and sky and clouds and mountains and rocks and plants and animals, birds, wind, rain, clouds. . . .rainbows. . .sun and moon and stars. . .planets, the physics of all things, and most assuredly the wonders of the unseen in physical terms of things.

It is an intoxicating time of living in between two (or more) worlds.  I am overjoyed with living in any or all of them.  It is all quite wonderfully interesting, exciting, odd, yet familiar.  I am finally beginning to understand first hand why we chose to participate in this earth experience.  Sure, I have known from the “other” perspective what we have been reminded of and why “we” came here in the first place, but this. . .this is something else. . .this is a personal cognitive understanding of the why.  And it is surprising to me that it all feels so magnificent now as opposed the many times it felt like drudgery, obligation, a not so delightful voluntary service that often had me asking “what was I thinking?”

The winds of change and ever evolving consciousness expansion are here and in force.  The “when will it ever happen?” has become the “NOW it is here.”

It is all in flux and change is GOOD.  The adventures of every next NOW moment are irresistible!

ENJOY!!

Scrap Wood Planter

Bar-B-Que Side Table

Scrap wood storage bench - 1

scrap wood storage bench Inside view

Loves and Hugs to all

Shirl

A Few Lines

I made this drawing in direct response to a larger canvas I recently covered in paint. I painted and painted and painted it. Without finding a coherence in any stopping place. What I discovered is that I’m not disposed to large canvases at this time. They are too big and too involved for my current physical and head space. I am in a smaller zone these days: smaller brushes, smaller movements, smaller painting sessions. It’s good to periodically test out ones stretch of motion, determining if it feels comfortable, beneficial. And if more-than-what-I-do-now can really produce extra satisfaction or joy by pushing it a few more inches or a few more hours.

 

Everyone experiments with the borders of their lives. A good challenge is either successful in and of itself, or it can teach a person something meaningful by specifically pursuing that activity in such a way. I don’t believe in failure. Failure is a humon concept developed by someone else’s expectations. I don’t fail. I simply learn what I need to learn, then move in the direction of where to go next.

 

So just a few lines today, a few wavy, colorful lines, suggesting a creative time, place and experience. I know this world. The Art of Drawing. The elegance of expressing….. just enough. And employing the enticing, dalliance of white, suggesting volume, shadow and void.  

 

Best wishes for a day of recognizing your personal freedom to be who you are, how you are, and spontaneously anyone and anyway in-between.

Whisel*

Au Naturel

My MN family brought me some vegetables from the Farmer’s Market. They’re colorful, beautiful, oddly shaped, food stuffs, fresh from the ground,  grown organically. I could almost feel their life force humming. 

 Natural ingredients take on unique forms of development. They do not conform to shape and color like processed food grown and packaged specifically for uniformity.  If you purchase farm fruits and vegetables, you might have enjoyed their odd, robust manifestations.

I say: Whenever possible, be natural. Enjoy your unusual shape and character. It’s good to grow into a character, like those ornery, farm-stand potatoes that remind us of clouds, faces, animals and even historical figures. Make a soup and slurp down the life force.

Best wishes, Whisel*….. recovering couch potato

 

A Screw Loose

Yeah, well…. aside from that, I’m talking about those teeny-tiny, microscopic screws that hold my eyeglass frame together.  Back in the day (or when I was your age, haha), I preferred those thick plastic, heavy-duty eyeglass frames that were melted or soldered together at the corners. I may still have a couple pair in one of my “Precious Past” boxes. Just for old times sake.

My new pair of frames are sleek, thin-lined, trendy and fragile. Not meant to go the distance. They are very nice to look at, they favor me too, but one must tend to them like an orchid. So I popped a screw. Not bigger than a blastula or a small flint for a lighter. Probably nobody remembers flints for lighters. Like I said, back in the day….

Through some miraculous intervention, I found the screw in my bed. By accident. My hand just pressed down on a hard spot, sending a message to my brain that it was a crumb from a cat kibble. But there is was. Huzzah! I had the lens safely tucked away, thinking I was go to the eyeglass place and have them fix it. And as good fortune was smiling at me, I did have a teeny-tiny screwdriver for eyeglass repair. 

So easy. With one hand, set the lens in the frame, squeezing the ends together, hole over hole. With the next hand, gently and slowly position the screw over the opening. No breathing or trembling allowed. With the third hand, turn the mini-screwdriver clockwise until the screw has made purchase with the top and bottom of the frame. I’m sweating now because that third hand is not functioning as well as it should. I am focusing on that screw, commanding it to turn and tighten. It is moving. It is turning. It is tightening. I am amazed. No, I am totally shocked that this could happen without the screw popping out into a parallel universe. 

I have my new glasses back. I can see better. No headaches or eyestrain. But I keep taking them on and off, checking on that screw for some type of sabotage or chicanery. I’m sure this is not helpful. I’ll try to restrain myself for the rest of the day.

Best wishes, Whisel*…. not fretting with her eyeglass frame…. for the moment.

 

Bang For Your Buck

<—————–  ******  YES !  ******

No, I am not Friar Tuck. I just look like one, since this haircut yesterday. All I need is a brown cowl and a white rope and I’m good to go. Nothing even comes close to the wonderful cut and style that my sister gives me when she comes to visit, once a year. After that, it’s all retro1950s. I shouldn’t complain because DID want a 1970s shaggy mullet. I was hoping for an adolescent David Cassidy style, not something fresh from the Priory. The stylist was two decades off. Not too bad I guess.

 

 All I wanted was a trim. I had let my hair get long and scruffy, just the way I liked it. The sides and front needed a little cut-back. The back… a little trim. Yeah.

 

 As usual, there’s always more hair on the floor than on my head when it’s over.

 

The Stylist, Gladys, works several senior buildings where her customers are a median age of 80, some into their late 90s. Each one wants their some kind of variation of a 1950s bob or a short, tight permacurl. Always with bangs, straight or curly. Evenly cut, fastidiously falling, forehead fringe. I do like a frazzled bang, wispy, various lengths of hair exploding around my face, from ear to ear. I tell her that. She pulls back, looks at me with a smug smile and says: Ok. I think she just wants me to quiet up, stop giving instructions, bow my head, so she can mow it into a 1950s bob. Then the blow dry… so my hair will fall in precise little layers around my newly exposed face. I’m in shock, but she still has scissors in her hands, so I smile, thank her, try not to wince when I catch my short bangs in the mirror, as I untangle myself from the chair.

 

 In the other chair, Gary is whooping and hollering up a storm, watching and listening to this entertainment. He is waiting for his turn, getting hysterical every time I say something. I give him the arched eyebrow. He has tears running down his face by this time. I’m finally finished, hoping to sprint to the elevator without anybody seeing me. Gary gets in the chair. I pop my head back in, saying: Give him a Mohawk, my treat. They are both laughing now, so I guess that’s good.

 

 I’m ok. I take deep breaths and cover the mirrors when I get upstairs. I ought to be able to receive company by mid-September.

 

Best Wishes, Whisel*

 

Orange

They say that Minnesota has two seasons: Winter and Construction. I was out doing errands today and had to take various detours to get where I was going.  Unfortunately, I had four stops to make, requiring many left, right and U-turns, not specifically in my plans.  However, the imposing sight of orange encourages one to slow down, relax and get psyched up for the scenic route.

 Barrels, cones, people in orange Xs waving flags determine the parade route of where we travel and when we get there.  I am not in any hurry.  Not like the honkers and attitudes yelling from open car windows.  Let them go around me and miss everything they might never get a chance to see, had they not been directed along this ziggity-zaggity route through residential streets. 

Look how small forest areas grow right up to the street.  And the towering pines flash the overhead light of the afternoon sun… on and off the car with sweeps of strobe rays. A squirrel. A chipmunk. A pigeon. A scruffy small dog on a blue leash.  All residents… exploring their quiet, homey habitats. A marshy area with an old pontoon boat.  An off-road of gravel leading through the trees. Wherever you look you might find a lake, a pond, a gingerbread house, a wood carving, a glorious garden of wild flowers, a weather vane on a mailbox.  So interesting when the destination is less important than the drive. Eventually, everything gets done.  The route taken is much more satisfying than the unblocked, straight-away, city  streets and highways.

So if you come to Minnesota not-in-the-winter, not in the wonderland of white, you’ll be coming in the season of construction.  Be prepared to wind your way around the neighborhoods in a sea of orange.  You might get lost in the loops around the lake. Be sure to stop and take photos if you do. It’s a grand way to see the highlights of the semi-rural areas in the city.

Best wishes, Whisel*