The Meaningful and The Mundane

An Array of Interruptions

2011-06-13T00:55:00.000-07:00

I try to imagine life without unwanted interruptions; in this life my stream of thoughts could be captured and attended to without distraction. This dreamy ideal must have existed at some point in my life, sometime before having a family. Still, one day my life will presumably be bereft of these intrusions and I shall wonder how it was before. I should be glad that there are many pairs of shoes dumped inside my front door shouldn't I.

Edie

The Call of Creative Things

2011-05-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

I really love reading technical stuff. Any relevance to anything that I might want to have a go at is in my mind worth a quick read up, even if it is just saved for another day. I mean, you never know when you might need something you may not have been aware of, if that makes any sense.

I was certainly successful in getting some technical bits done on the computer today. I mean, my conscience was most definitely nagging at me (a different sort of voice, guilt and obligation rather than procrastination) to make sure certain controls had been instigated with the wifi and certain young family members in mind. This did of course sap hours of my valuable creative time. But an opportunity to find out how to tackle control of the wifi, for free, presented itself to me in the WH Smiths of Paddington station yesterday evening. These things cannot be ignored.

A thoughtful present for me and a thing of inspiration.

I did have a really nice day out, with a good friend, a ride on the train, and plenty of art to inspire us.

So, today as I referred to the useful magazine purchased and the wondrous wisdom of Martin Lewis (money saving expert dot com) I found my computer sapping the hours from my pictures, whose small and helpless cries were attended to but sporadically and almost went unheard.

Edie.

Wrecking my Own Plans

2011-05-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

I need help with self sabotage. Something inside my head is meddling with my organisation and manipulating and contradicting my priorities. This has been going on for years. I end up with a vast array of procrastinating ideas which make perfect sense in the practical arrangement of my time....until....I realise I have not stuck to the original plan. Picking this apart is not so easy. The practical things in life really do need to be done. But in reality I wish to be creative, make images, use my artistic skills much more so than I am now. Personal coaches are often used to get individual's to focus and prioritise. Surely someone of reasonable intelligence, well motivated, and fairly well disciplined like myself can get their own life into the order they wish for...or then again perhaps not.

Life of course, gets in the way. My near-and-dear breeze in and out with their own routines impinging upon my time with queries and demands. But can I blame anyone else at all I wonder? What then is the problem? Is it my alter ego? It is not my conscience. What exactly is this adversary, and is it really friend or foe? In the meantime here is good reason NOT to stick to the plan.....

We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

by William Henry Davies 1911

Yet another distraction, in my garden,
the Scarlet Tiger Moth, what a beauty.

Edie.

Today I have lost myself, again.

2011-05-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

I have just noticed that if you stare hard enough at an A4 page of text from about 2 feet away you can see a myriad of spidery veins travelling down through the paragraphs created by random vertical sequences of spaces.
Well that is the most reflective I have got today. But perhaps this is some sort of analogy as to how my day has gone. All day my near and dear have sabotaged most of my head space and all that is left for me is obliquely placed tiny little random spaces; and any fragments of meaningful thought falling like bagatelle balls, pinging their way to the bottom of the day.

Edie.

To start with.....

2011-05-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Starting this blog feels something like starting a sketch book. The blank page or text box awaits something significant. But given this blog's title, how much meaning should I attribute to this first post and will it be found to be quite mundane?

I am sure I am suffering from major information overload. I heard on the radio the other day that on average our brains are trying to cope with 50000 times more information than 50 years ago. My thinking is not about to do with the ability of the brain to be tested in any particular way, it is just about having (too many?) thoughts.... and the constant and automatic requirement for my brain to react to pieces of information whether it be verbal, text, or imagery.
I really want to pin some of my butterfly like thoughts down but they numerous and are terribly skittish, eluding me something like fruit flies escaping on certain air displacement as I attempt to snatch at them with my club fist.

Today, I paused whilst working to observe cows in a nearby meadow. It was just for about a minute or so. I had the assumption some time ago that they stood and grazed. Well of course they don't do they, or they would obviously starve. Try sketching a real cow and you will realise how active they really are.
You may have guessed that I like cows. In fact I like them so much that I do draw them and sometimes paint them. To me they seem steady and grounded. Thoughtful and contemplative, comfortable in their own skin. Their bulk cleverly placed and dispersed on their frame with their bulky masses suspended off that protruding bony ridge of spine. To me they do not seem the sum of their parts. Each bit looks somewhat inelegant but arranged the way it is it somehow looks pleasing to me.

Edie.