This man knows how to breathe. It's call being inspired.
April 2009 Archives
Here's an up to the minute update about the my heat situation.
12 Seconds Going By #1 on 12seconds.tv
It's been a fast day. We have a house guest; Queenie, Tina's dog, is here for the weekend. Luigi is extremely happy to have a friend staying over. He was so excited about it that I had to give him his spring haircut just of the occasion.
Unfortunately...so sick, so true.
A reminder to self:
Think of creative energy as a wave. A wave that surges in; this is the active phase of creativity, when we make things. We feel excited about what we are making and we ride the energy in until the work phase has come to an end.
Then, the wave must flow out. On that day we tend not to make things; we feel bla. The mind tends to interpreted this part of the wave as "down," when in fact it's merely the passive part of the cycle. What we need to do is consciously surrender to the wave as it pulls out. The sooner we do, the sooner we'll be ready to catch the next creative wave in. This also helps to prevent us from getting "blocked" or stuck in the passive phase of the cycle.
Unfortunately, our culture is biased in favor of the active phase. Resting is often seen as loafing, being lazy, or unproductive. We sometimes even associate risk with rest, as if it were dangerous to take time off.
There is also a trend to treat ourselves and each other as if we were machines. We are not machines. We are life itself. Creativity is part of life, and resting is part of creativity. All of nature rests without guilt or recrimination.
Because we are so in love with our own creations, our machines, we sometimes forget who created what. After each creative phase, allow yourself "down" time. You may have to force yourself to rest, but practice makes perfect. Remember, even machines have off buttons.
And so a new day...is well under way.
I really like the new Fairtilizer player. I think it sounds better than most. If you'd like to help spread my music around the web, please feel to embed it, share it, email it, whatever blows your skirt up.
I wake at a decent and normal hour; 7:15am. What happened? Could it be that low carb "life style" I returned to yesterday?
You know, I don't like talking about the past too much, because it's already over, but yesterday I had the shock of my life.
I stepped on the scale and realized that I had gained yet another couple of pounds. Don't get me wrong, I know why this is happening. In a word...sugar. Ya, too much of it going in my mouth.
Continue reading Fail Whale.
I love Carrie Fisher. She's a true original. You'd be original too if you had played Princess Laya in the first Star Wars Trilogy. This made me laugh, and frankly, I need all the laughs I can get right about now.
I am on my second cup of coffee and the sun is shining this morning, so there is hope.
What a strange day it was yesterday. First the wind storm howling through the night, and then the call from my mother that one of the trees on her property had fallen over on to the house. Luckily, my mother and the house went relatively unscathed, but the tree is another story. It seemed to be a week about trees being cut down on purpose or accidentally uprooted. I shutter to think that this could be a metaphor for anything in my life. I won't go there.
On Friday the new washing machine arrived in the pouring rain. The delivery men were wet and obviously not in the mood. When they saw that my old washer still had some water in it, they were even less enthusiastic. The big one asked me, "How are we supposed to get it up the stairs if it still has water in it?" Hmmm, good question. Apparently, when push came to shove, it went up the stairs as if it were empty. I guess they just wanted to get on with it. Out with the old, in with the new.
I don't feel particularly cleaver this morning, not that I would ever describe myself in such terms. But, nonetheless I don't feel it, which makes me wonder where the expectation came from in the first place. If I lost you on that last sentence, forgive me, I'm as perplexed by it as you are. Never mind.
I have promised myself to take care of the quantity, and let some other force in the universe take care of the quality. Eventually, if I write enough, there must be something of quality, at least that's how the theory goes. We shall see...or not.
And so, a new day beings..all about trees and washing machines and things that fall over.
One of the Austrian pines in my mom's back yard became uprooted during last night's wind storm. In the video from this morning you can hear me rambling on in my usual, incoherently dyslexic manner. Such is life...sometimes it just blows, and sometimes things get knocked from their footings. Hmmm. I just hope it's not a sign of things to come.
I wake at 5:05am. We ate dinner far too late last night. Stephen cooked Swiss Steak and when it was finally done at 9:45pm, it was good, very good, but really just too late to eat. It all just churned around in my stomach all night.
I make my way to the kitchen and brew up some embalming fluid, my new term for decaf with a couple of spoons of dark roast coffee tossed in. All this in a effort to make it taste like something. It does, it tastes precisely like... something.
The wind is howling around the house. Rain is pelting the sliding glass door. Garbage cans are flying about the neighborhood, crashing into things; shed doors are banging back and forth against their frames. Inevitably I find myself being drawn back into the present by putting my attention on the sound of the wind, spitting this, throwing that.
Listening to the wind. on 12seconds.tv
Normally I write morning pages first thing, but for the past few weeks this practice has fallen by the wayside. It could be a good thing or a bad thing. It could mean I've done enough brain-draining and have nothing more to whine about. On the other hand it could mean that I'm just in good old-fashioned denial and I'm avoiding some urgent, unpleasant piece of business. I'm hoping it's the first option but placing my bets on the second. Well, a least I'm writing something...anything, even if it's only about how I'm not writing something else.
My inner weather patterns are precisely mirroring what's going on just outside the window. My mind is whipping up a strong wind, pelting me with ideas which will hopefully seep down into my creative soil bringing much needed moisture. Although it feels cold and rainy inside and out, warmer things are just around the corner; new and translucent things are about to spring forth. This inclement weather is nature's way of cleaning up and laying down the foundation for new growth, which in a few short weeks will become abundantly evident. Spring is here now even if not completely sprung.
And so a new day begins...
Tired Tulips on 12seconds.tv
Even the tulips seem to be in mourning this morning. One tree down, one to go.
