Photo Art Friday 12 April 2013 ~ Shadows & Light

As best I can I am limiting my computer time for the next while. It helps, actually it helps a lot, but I really DO enJOY my digital fiddling time, so I am trying to get in at least a couple of fiddling times each day.

The two photos I've settled on for Photo Art Friday this week are much more composites, a funny realisation I had as I was fiddling away.

The first I played with a LOT in Picasa and then in Pixlr Express. I've been shying away a bit from textures the last while, at least in the one [and so far only] way I've learnt to use them.

Yet others here have talked about textures and layers and I thought, HEY, I know how that would work!! So I did it. I used a bunch of PDPA textures, Age It, Scratched Lens, and Vintage Vellum, and ah-HAH!! I even knew how to find them AFTER in my Recent Items List!!

Isn't this amazing the things we learn going blind into the digital fiddlish frontier!!!

The next one is actually part of a larger piece that I cropped and fiddled with. In this one I like the way the shadows play off the windows onto the fire escapes and then about the bricks.

I also used the Antique Me texture in this one along with Age It. Really very interesting to fiddle effects with textures and overlays. I think this may BE why I need to limit my computer times...

So that's it and that's all from me and I surely will BE looking for you all over the next couple of months during our PAF hiatus. 

As I shared with Bonnie when I read of her taking a break, I think it may well BE a blessing in disguise for me. Still, I really especially love this part of my week and connecting with you all.

BE Well and Stay Well and EnJOY the little things in Life. See you in June and I thank you one and all AGAIN and AGAIN for your kind words of encouragement as I continue healing my banged-up brain. 

You've no idea how VERY MUCH your time to write has helped me. You are some amazing and wondrous human beans and I wish everyone were as blessed as I've been in this time of really needing to know I'm NOT just out here whistling in the wind.

Making Lemonade

Somedays ask for more patience than I can muster. 

I try to catch people DOing things "right" or "well."

I make room.

I practise breathing in and out, smiling, finding the JOY in waiting.

And in the end, I sometimes just have to surrender.

This was my afternoon.

Waiting for the Connection bus that never came...

Until I'd got on the regular bus... I am so tired of this process.

For almost a year my drivers were always on time, even early.

I could call and speak to someone, like that!!

Last week I let this all bend me out of shape.

[which is saying something, considering the "shape" I am in ;~D]

NOT today.

Sometimes you just have to make lemonade.

Even without lemons.

I am challenging myself to write out loud for the 91 days, 1 April through 30 June 2013. I'm pulling questions out of hats and giving them some room to romp. If you have a question to share, please email me... 

silver dot currie at gmail dot com

Artist's Play Room #52 ~ Fruit

I've kept it very simple this week; still resting my brain and spending smaller bits of time on the computer.

EnJOYed exploring Fruit.

Did some drawing. That's saying something.

Mostly, though, I digitally fiddled and here's what I came up with:

Fruit Patterns "Tossed" Together

Kim Klassen Texture, Refresh
fiddled with in Picasa and Pixlr
with Mahatma Gandhi quote

Ol' Man Simon by Shel Silverstein 
for National Poetry Month

We Know How To DO This Better...

I need quiet and simplicity today. 

Yesterday took me deep into the experience of pain. A long night's sleep, with Gracie right BEside me the entire time, reminded me that I know how to deal with or "DO" pain better so it is time I DO it better.

I've navigated Today more slowly, accepting my Present reach and what is BEyond my Present grasp. 

This causes me to wonder how often I DO what I know better than to DO, and How I DO what I Know How To DO Better. 

It's tempting to sweep it under the rug. To look away.

BUT...

Seeing is important.

Making mistakes, like the one I made yesterday, apparently essential.

This is NOT news, yet it seemed outside my experience yesterday.

When we know better we DO better. I've heard that all sorts of places, but for some reason Oprah's saying it is what I "hear" when I hear it.

When we KNOW better we DO better.

Simple.

Quietly simply.

Just what I need to remember today.

I am challenging myself to write out loud for the 91 days, 1 April through 30 June 2013. I'm pulling questions out of hats and giving them some room to romp. If you have a question to share, please email me... 

silver dot currie at gmail dot com

I Want To Know...

It happened again this morning. It was just BEfore 4 o'clock. 

I woke myself up talking. 

Out Loud.

Making Sense.

I want to know if this happens to YOU.

If YOU, too, are sometimes undone, awoken, and rather astonished by what your sleeping brain is DOing.

Without your instructions.

Without you even knowing it. [or suspecting]

I've learned to write these things down. As though I have uncovered buried treasure. 

And I have often seen the depth and reach of these captured treasures only after some time has passed.

This morning's little pearl was:

We are all broken and we are all remarkable.

Hmmmmmmm...

Perhaps I CAN see the seed in this little bloom.

Since my fall on my head I have felt "broken." 

My brain isn't acting like itself and I've a sense of BEing a stranger to myself.

Despite this change of circumstances, I am adapting a little more each day to my sense of brokenness. 

To my unsense of self.

I see myself as I was in ways I clearly took for granted.

I want to know if YOU have experienced this, too.

If you surprise yourself as I DO myself with what I don't know I know.

I Want To Know...

I am challenging myself to write out loud for the 91 days, 1 April through 30 June 2013. I'm pulling questions out of hats and giving them some room to romp. If you have a question to share, please email me... 

silver dot currie at gmail dot com

Fearlessness & The Unknown

I had originally planned to explore more about knowing and NOT knowing, but I've learned something this week: 

I am quite content about what I know and what I don't know.

I am even just fine with NOT knowing what I know and NOT knowing what I don't know.

Having a head injury has made this all really clear for me. I'm sure that sounds odd, but this is what I am thinkingandfeeling today.

I know there are always going to BE unknowns and probably unknowables, too. So BE it. Life goes on...

I'm comfortable with anyone seeing that I don't know although as I navigate this head injury I am more than a little uncomfortable with what I don't know. I'm just going to have to find my way and give others time to adjust, too.

All of that is getting better day by day, little by slowly.

I know that I am a person of integrity AND that at Present I am forgetting things I should BE remembering and thinking about things that sometimes make no sense at all.

This will pass OR a way round it will BE put in place.

I am attending to what is important and learning that letting go of what is NOT is NOT anywhere near the End of the World.

I'm recalling a quote from Lao Tzu that goes:

If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to. If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.

Change is constant. And ongoing. And while that may on the face of it seem redundant, it's NOT, at least NOT to me.

And I've no fear at all of dying. I know it's going to happen and I trust it. I am in no great hurry, yet I am NOT anxious. It's merely another Let Go.

Honestly...

I didn't know I would BE Here, Right Now, yet I canNOT imagine me BEing anywhere else. 

That seems a good way for me to BE and to Live.

Open.

Willing.

Knowing I know some things and don't know some others.

How about you?!

Any of this stirring your pot?!

I am challenging myself to write out loud for the 91 days, 1 April through 30 June 2013. I'm pulling questions out of hats and giving them some room to romp. If you have a question to share, please email me... 

silver dot currie at gmail dot com

Knowing & NOT Knowing ... Is There A Difference?!

I used to think it was important to know stuff. 

To BE "in the know." 

To have a handle on things. 

In fact, when I would go someplace, a new-to-me city, for instance, I'd bury my nose in a map rather than looking around in awe and amazement.

But over the years I have learned to revel in the unknown.

To enJOY NOT knowing and BE enthralled and deLIGHTed by it, too.

My Life and I have changed so much this past year that I no longer prefer Knowing over NOT Knowing. 

Certainty over diving into the depths of the Unknowable.

One year ago today, April 6, 2012, I sold my car and BEgan my New Life as a person without wheels. 

I had no clue, it turns out, what a magical World I was stepping into.

[I even admit to BEing utterly clueless how wondrous that spur of the moment decision to sell my car could possibly BE!!!]

What I thought of as a means to "afford my Life" and "buy me some time" has turned out to BE a magic key.

A Journey that has taken me to the center of JOY, a place where there is no map, where all I CAN DO is BE captivated by awe and amazement.

Life is like this, I know; one thing suggesting another but then it is NOT that at all.

While it's NOT all peaches and cream, and here I refer only to dealing with the public transportation side of my new Life, it is daily awe-inspiring.

I sometimes wish I was still the little girl who could cover miles on her bike, but I'm content to walk. I've nowhere so far to go that the walk isn't a JOY... 

I thought I knew all the trade-offs and good in this, yet clearly I did NOT.

How about YOU?! 

Where DO YOU sit along the Knowing & NOT Knowing spectrum?!

I am challenging myself to write out loud for the 91 days, 1 April through 30 June 2013. I'm pulling questions out of hats and giving them some room to romp. If you have a question to share, please email me... 

silver dot currie at gmail dot com