New paintings and regular art updates.
Thursdays #bandofsketchers prompt was knit.. I hadn’t got a clue what to do so I drew random pattern as if it was cable knit jumper in an abstract pattern. The colours are off because I took this photo in the kitchen and the lighting has a yellow cast. I only drw it today as I didn’t feel like doing it before.
I’m watching one of the Star wars movies so I thought I’d create a digital image that reflects the power of the film sets. Full of massive architectural shapes and dark power. This though is a plastic star we have hanging in the living room. I’ve duplicated and twisted it, then added texture and overlays of a lightning storm. Figuring out how to produce an interesting image takes my mind off things.
Star up in the sky
And hanging up
From the archway
In our room
The bright light
Shines at night
To cheer the gloom
Changes colours
Like a red dwarf
Or hot new star.
Blue and purple
Aglow.
Your mind is muddled, thoughts roll over and through your mind. Repeating over and over the things that went wrong in the day. Things pop into your mind from years ago. This is never ending, you start watching your alarm clock as minutes or hours tick by….
Then you remember, someone told you think of the word ‘THE’ nothing else, just ‘the’… Think of it slowly, over and over again…
Why? I think it’s because the word ‘the’ has no connotations, nothing to cling onto, while you are thinking ‘the’ you can’t think of anything else. It helps block roiling thoughts, and you just drift off to sleep. Honestly, over the last two months it has really helped. I don’t even remember drifting off, but then I sleep quite well….
This is a photo I digitally played with a few months ago. It sums up how I feel at the moment. I do not want to feel like this, honestly.
It’s hard to be positive at the moment, but I am trying. I am still writing three gratitudes a day and they are helping. If you try and think of three small things that give you a little boost each day it seems to lift your spirits slightly. So I’m on day fifty of them. It’s not a solution to the blues, but it does seem to help me.
I woke up last night about three am and I swear I thought someone was talking to me! But it was a garbled sound, so I couldn’t tell what the words were? Then I realised it was possibly me (or my hubby) talking in our sleep. But in the small hours it’s hard to decide what is going on. Sleep and dreams change to wakefulness slowly sometimes.
So I came downstairs to get a cup of cocoa and to try and unstress. I sat down with the cat and tried to take my mind off things. I watched lots of silly videos about American politics and people for a while (why is content overwhelmingly American?). But after boring my mind for an hour I went back to bed.
So I had overcome being spooked by my mind, but some of the things online could equally spook you, some very strange ideas!
What do sad words mean?
Do they explain
Do they confer
Anything?
How do I say
What I feel?
Words are not easy
They don’t encapsulate
They don’t wrap you
In their arms.
They are just noise
Between people
When what I need
Is a hug?
The Russians continue to try and take over Ukraine and its citizens. They have run a referendum in the south and east of Ukraine to see whether the people there would vote to rejoin Russia. Four regions were balloted. Russian soldiers went door to door with guns and got people to vote for Russia. They have announced a 96% vote in favour. But these referenda were not free and fair.
The annexation is illegal, but Putin will use it to say parts of Ukraine are now Russian soil. Then he has threatened any fighting to try and take it back could result in the use of Nuclear weapons. This is madness. Seven months into a war on European land this must stop.
Other things that have happened include damage to the Nordstream one and two gas pipelines bringing gas to Europe from Russia. Methane gas a kilometer wide US bubbling up from the baltic sea.
Ukraine continues to be bombarded but the army is fighting back. Where it will end? No one knows.
I was reading a fellow bloggers post about a book that describes the complexity of the middle ages and how peoples freedom was affected by their ability to sell goods locally. I’m afraid I am struggling to understand the explanations.
It led me to think about a book I’m currently reading called Green Mars. It is the second of a trilogy about terraforming Mars by Kim Stanley Garner. The ideas in the second book Green Mars go into a lot of details about transnational companies becoming the defacto rulers of Mars. The population of earth are split between the rich who have had gerantological treatments and the poor who only have slight access to them. It’s amazing how thought through the future civilisation is. But it’s densely argued, even with a well plotted history including a brief third world war.
I’m only half way through the book, having read the first book in the trilogy, Red Mars, a few years ago. It’s my second attempt to read it. I’d read the first chapter during lock down but couldn’t get into the book. I think it’s worth reading if you don’t want rip roaring sci-fi, but a densely imagined history of the characters that use their scientific knowledge to terraform the planet. Reading about varieties of variously genetically enhanced people plants and lichens is fascinating if you have the inclination to read it.
I have Blue Mars on the bookshelves somewhere, I might try and read it one day.
Memory of a picnic on the beach this summer. The tide was out. There was soft sand to sit on. We had a simple meal of salad and melon for dessert. What makes it memorable was that it was a beach we visited a few years before and I didn’t think we would be able to go back. It didn’t matter that it was overcast, or that the beach was quite crowded, it made me feel happy. That’s why it’s good to go back to this memory. Nothing bad happened and it was really enjoyable. I need good memories.
Mallaband-Brown