Still playing catch up : I’m just a few pages from bringing you up to where I am in the book now!
This week’s collage fodder includes some ex-pages from a gridded notebook, and a recycled envelope with a pleasingly matching tiny-gridded inside pattern.
Coloring in the squares makes a tranquil meditationy pass-time. Time to brain-idle for a bit. Coloring in the bitty little envelope-innards squares was more of a tiny dot technique that was less restful, and less pursued.
Color-wise I’ve got a big Red/Blue thing going on a lot in my life. Season of contrast – I want to balance out all that muted wintery grey and fog.
Edit: I just noticed this: the poppies! That was a subconscious thing I didn’t register at the time. I actually had to look back and check the week this was, and yes, it was the week with remembrance day.
This week I’m mostly wearing red & blue. (Did I tell you I have blue hair right now. This color obsession has literally gone to my head!)
His finely tuned systematized out-sourcing structure is a few bounds further than I will stretch, but I’m finding workable elements to feel more productive before they even manifest out of the theoretical.
One rule is ‘Don’t multi-task’
This is a truth I already get.
It’s just a way to do more than one thing simultaneously, less efficiently, with added confusion, and slower. And don’t get me started on all the associated women vs men BS.)
I totally get the point of not multi-tasking
So being reminded made me smile…
…as I witnessed my self simultaneously fail at several tasks, as my inner rebel will neither listen to her own advice, nor that of the instruction she’s currently agreeing with.
I mean – the whole audio book thing – is surely a vehicle to enable the doing of too many things at once.
Sure I can read an actual book, I’d enjoy that.Oooh, but what if I could distractedly miss chunks of the content while concurrently doing just a few other things….
Y’know, so long as you can appreciate the irony, and it makes you smile.
On the theme of streamlining efficiency, being less time-wasteful. Bullet-journaling has bobbed up on my horizon a few times.
I’m a long time journaler, diary writer, and exhaustive lister. It’s the best kinda brain-dump, and as a bonus I love to read over the thoughts of a previous me, comparing a today from another year, another era.
I’m drawn toward bullet-journaling cos I find so many notes and lists are repeated in fragmented form over years. I can round them all up in one book, once and for all. Resisting beginning with a list of lists, this looks like it could be a solution.
From the start of December I’m going to utilize a variation on this system. At the time of writing, I have over a week before it begins for proper, but I’ve already acquired a new notebook, noted some notes, listed some lists.
Each week I complete another page of this book, each page is similar but distinctly individual, echoing the shape each week takes.
More often than not I’ll be listening to the radio, a podcast, or someone speaking to me from the internet. And the words that resonate loudest often find their way into the page. This week the words came (again) from Bashar
“… the key to riding the wave of chaos
is not to resist it
but to allow yourself to know
you are a part of the energy of chaos.
To allow yourself to be chaos
and in becoming chaos
and allowing a new form of organization in,
rather than imposing your old system of organization upon it,
by letting this new idea in
and, as you say, riding it,
going with it,
not resisting it.
you will then, by becoming chaos,
allow the chaotic action
to show you through sychronicity,
what it is you really need to be aware of,
how it is that life will organize itself
using you as a guide post.”
Sometime earlier this year I fell upon the Four Agreements (Miguel Ruiz). This week they fell back into my mind, so I caught them here on the page. If you don’t know them,
The Four Agreements are:
1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
I remind myself of these to keep on track. Again and again. There’s something magical about the physical act of writing words. I think the process is wired up to a special section of the brain that remembers differently.
There’s a lot about contrast. By which I mean to say – everywhere – it’s all about contrast, isn’t it? And on a smaller scale too.. Yester-page saw the words shouting out unhindered by art. This page is the opposite as from almost the outset the wordage got drowned out by heavy paint.
But it’s ok, I know what I wrote. The words are still fresh in my mind and readily retrievable from this bountiful online repository of stuff.
This page saw me in the mood for change. Random artifacts. Desk findings.
‘what if… it happened. what if…’
Moleskine users will recognise this addition (I never had cause to use these stickers – or these others that turned up a recent tidying flurry – but as somehow-un-throw-out-ables, there’s quite a collection to use up now)
It’s been a few pages since I played with the paints. So that was the spark to the first layer of word covering.
But…oh…
too dark.
Bring contrast: Add white
splurged on white
Thick dollopy white – oh THE PATTERNS!
OH MY DAYS!
But…..
Now too much white?
glimpses survive, but … more color to balance that white…
Like the proverbial kid in the sweet shop, or the bull in the china shop, I am the loon with the oil pastels, making the lumps and rhythms in the white paint come to life in all the colours of autumn that my eyes have been unconsciously soaking in.
Not usually a fav medium to me, I’m just developing a fondness for the slightly icky messiness involved.
And yet again, while the page (week) has a certain overall heaviness (ugliness)
Scribbled things. Filled in with nonsense and part heard words
Dabs, daubs, splosh. Dragged, drawn out, drawn on.
And more, and further. Anemones? meteors? Some frenzied chaos. (I honestly don’t know.)
But as usual, I like the details best of all
The title for this week – Courage, Faith, Trust – came from the same-named scrap of paper that got itself collaged into the frenzy. (it appeared a week early, as it’s numbered 34) but it also calls up the essence of this practice. Courage, Faith and Trust in the process:
Keep showing up, don’t plan, don’t expect, just keep doing and making and going. And all will be well.
I measure out every one of these weeks and I see it unfurl new aspects, new intrigues.
I don’t always tell you them – are they interesting to anyone but me?
Well, here you go:
These are three new facets of life which entered my world this week …..
This weeks page is powered by left-overs from another project. (Too many to throw away)
Tulsi Tea – I’m taking a rest from coffee in the interests of resting my adrenals and settling my cortisol levels. I’ve switched to Tulsi. It’s really grown on me. Yes, I kinda do miss coffee, but as a temporary substitute I’m glad it’s part of my world.
and finally:
Sauerkraut – from my ongoing fascination with all things prebiotic, probiotic & gut biome related.
An eclectic mix. Meanwhile, amid the above the following page took shape thus-ly:
This week started out, as they invariably do, with no plan, no ideas, just some scraps and a blank(ish) page.
I began with tissue paper. I love the semi-translucent. If you get the right stuff (usually cheap craft tissue) the dye runs beautifully and makes for water-colour kinda effect as soon as it comes in contact with water or glue or hands or pretty much anything. I think this must have been something more fancy, probably saved from gift wrap. (shame)
Anyhoo, it was the usual build up of layers…
There are bits of torn all sorts of paper in there now. I keep the box of scraps for recycling under my work table. There are bits from there. What the bits are don’t matter so much, it’s more just to let some shapes begin to develop.
In fact – most days I create loads – but in terms of the tangible, the painty reality, every week of this year I am creating at least one something: One page of One book of One year
I’m over half way in now, and I’m detecting more and more patterns all the time, every one a metaphor for the unfolding times in which they’re made:
Some weeks start on the first day and incrementally develop a little at a time.
Some weeks are a flurry of fervour, forced into focus in a short few days: blurting out in totality at the start, or squished up against the finishing hours.
They all reflect some underlying aspects, some current cares and the modality of the moment: Words and feelings ooze in and out.. You might not hear them, but we both know they are there.
Weaving in the elements: internal and external.
There’s what rests on the surface, andthere’s so much more.
The surface reflects to you what you project out.
For everyone it’s something personal and new.
Each page, each week, each is contained within a season of interest with the cast of supporting characters who meander about and around my days. These recent weeks have been populated by some images that I printed more than I needed for a project I’ve since finished. Smiling, familiar faces from within the framework that structures these times. Left over faces smile out of these times.
Here from the perspective of a photo I see all that I’d like to do to ‘finish’ the image. But that week has passed so it’s another that I’ll leave as it is, almost ready, a little soft in the middle and a bit raw in places. It’s all ok. Time pushes on, I’m over the other side of this one now.
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