Let It Shine

If I reach out from where I sit here and type these words, I can touch all the things in these photos. I am surrounded with little trinkets, pretties, textural objects that caught my eye at one time or another.

I like to constantly keep my senses stimulated, so that ideas will be more inclined to come forth and to nest.

"And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind."

-Wordsworth

I am not one to put my supplies away. Instead I want them left out so that they can talk to me. "Use me," they whisper. "Create something with me and bring me to life. Bend me, shape me, any way you want me."

We are the sum of our parts. We are the totality of our years, our memories, our experiences on this earth.

I have always been about "handmade" and "reused." The new buzz words are "repurposed" and "upcycled."

No matter. Women a century ago were taking worn clothing apart and making patchwork quilts to keep their families warm. It is not a new concept. It is simply fashionable.

This little light of mine...

For everything there is a season, you know.

"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance

...And there's pansies, that's for thoughts."

- Shakespeare

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine.

Let your little light shine. Every day.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Linking to Seasonal Sundays at The Tablescaper.

Seeking Inspiration

It's quiet, dark outside. I'm sitting here trying to summon up the energy to get some projects started.

But I should know by now that when I'm tired, I'm sucked dry of the kindling of inspiration.

I've learned that I must strike while the iron is hot. Because once it's cold, there's no turning up the heat.

Yet oftentimes ideas dawn on me when it's late and I'm ready for sleep. Or sitting in traffic. Or in the midst of raking leaves.

And then when I'm done with chores, the ideas have been swept away like cobwebs with a broom. All I feel is empty at that time. Starting a project is just not in the cards.

I'm at my most exuberant when the day yawns and stretches ahead of me. And I've had a good nights sleep.

And so I shall go take my shower. Grab some magazines and flip through them before bed. Perhaps tomorrow will be the day the ideas will flow from my brain into my fingertips.

When the muse will grab hold of me and shake me with new and exciting ideas.

Unfortunately, I can see that today is just not that day.

What do you do to get the creative juices flowing?

After The Dream

I see the same sky, feel the same air, smell the same flowers. And yet something feels different.

Maybe it’s something in the water. Maybe I’m just plain old blue. And then of course there’s that computer sitting in Buen’s shop with all my stuff on it, being held hostage by the whims of irksome technology.

Maybe it’s all of the above.

You get to own your feelings. Whether they’re good or bad or pretty or ugly. I wish I weren’t so disposed to moodiness. Or prone to isolation-type behaviors. I wish…I wish…I wish…

What I wish is that my dreams would catch up to where I am now. That my brain would kick into gear and get up to speed. I wish I could wake up in the morning and not think for a minute that it’s ten or twenty years ago.

For a few seconds, I’m fooled into believing that I have all that time to make different choices. (And naturally in your dreams, you make the right ones. Because otherwise it’s a nightmare.)

Those few moments, while your mind is blurred from sleep and your eyes aren’t properly open yet, can be such a cruel time. Because it tricks you into believing that the dream might still be real. That that ship hasn’t already sailed.

Sometimes I just wish I was invisible. That I could slip sight unseen into tight corners. And fly free as a bird over huge expanses of blue water, light as a feather.

Sometimes I wish I could disappear. Just walk out of one life like an actor in a play. And once the curtain goes down, become a whole new character. As simple as changing clothes.

Just that simple.

Technorati Tags: Just Reflecting On Life

Deciphering Dreams

Everyone tries to decipher their dreams.

Usually when I awake, the dream is illusive. My foggy mind tries to grasp onto the tail of it before it's gone.

How is it, I wonder, that these dreams come about? They choose to visit us in that darkest of places. Buried deep within our slumber. Shadowy bits and pieces of a puzzle we have no way of putting together. Or is that the point?

Intense dreaming occurs during REM sleep as a result of heightened brain activity, but paralysis occurs simultaneously in the major voluntary muscle groups. REM is a mixture of encephalic (brain) states of excitement and muscular immobility. For this reason, it is sometimes called paradoxical sleep.

It all sounds so mysterious. I find that I dream about people who have no correlation to one another. But are for some reason packed into the same dream sequence. Like someone from my childhood might be paired in the same dream with someone from my adulthood that I know never met.

I frequently dream of being light as a bird and flying through the skies. It is a feeling, when I wake, of being free. Free as a bird. Soaring high above troubles and earthly complications.

I dream of being another age. I dream of being chased. Or of someone shooting a gun at me, and then I immediately wake up. Not knowing if the bullet pierced my skin or stopped my heart. I wonder if my heart speeds up in my sleep as it does in my dreams?

It is an enigma, this dreaming and figuring out the meaning of it. I wonder if it is like a stew in which everything that has ever happened goes into the pot, and then it is stirred?

Or is it as translucent as these leaves? If you patch all the things in your dream together, like a quilt, does it make some strange but logical sense?

This morning I tiptoed through my garden, waiting on this dragonfly to light. I watched as it balanced precariously yet gracefully atop the object of its choosing.

Is this what dreaming actually tells us? That there is a point if only we can find it? Do we choose our dreams or do our dreams choose us?

What are your most frequent or odd dreams composed of? And what do you hypothesize about the inner workings of what happens when we sleep?

Technorati Tags: Dreaming,gardening,dragonflies

Blue Decorating & Terminix Is On The Job

Yesterday I received this lovely, thin quilt on a wonderful online sale at JCPenneys. Love that place for quilts! It’s a very good thickness for summertime. I got the shams to match.

It’s going to be 100 degrees tomorrow. And 101 the next day. So I’ve decided to “bring on the blues” in my house. Maybe it will make the weather a little more tolerable outside if I’m soothed by blues inside.

The blue and white pillowcases, above, were an eBay buy a few years ago. The cat pillow, below, is one I appliquéd and sewed a long time ago.

If you look below, you’ll see that I also appliqued and quilted two cat wall hangings.

The Terminix guy came this morning. He brought two of these black boxes, seen below. (Looks rather CIA-ish, doesn’t it?) The plan is that the rats go inside and eat the poison. The rat will then seek water (naturally, I have the convenient pond and waterfall). He said they might be coming from the water drain across the street at the bank.

One of the boxes is placed outside my fence in the alley, and one is perched underneath a birdhouse.

I told him I see them running along the fence at night, peeking out from my sun and red mirror. He goes over and pulls this sun away from the fence just a bit, and a little nest falls to the ground.

So I decided I’d better call my elderly neighbor in the garden home next to mine, and tell her there are rats in the neighborhood. In other words, keep your garage door closed and watch out for the snakes they might attract. She said she’d already seen them in her little flower gardens, and had taken down her birdfeeders. (Don’t you know the poor birds have to pay the price for this!)

I told her she would see the black box behind my fence, and not to be alarmed by it. I was afraid someone might think a terrorist had left the nondescript black box there. (Yes, I know I have a rather vivid imagination. But you never know.)

I can just envision police cars surrounding the alley. A bomb squad alerted. They might even think the big bank across the street is the actual target. (Seeing as how people aren’t thinking too kindly of banks right now.)

Now wouldn’t that turn my hopefully ordinary June into something exciting?

Well, to me it doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched, and I’ll tell you why. A few months ago there were arsonists burning churches in this and surrounding towns. One Sunday I’m in the midst of a decoupage project, and the doorbell rings. I go to the door to find an ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) agent standing there. They ask me to come outside. So there I go with my hands outstretched due to the decoupage glue all over them.

There is a church about a block south of me. The agent tells me that someone had broken in the church the night before, but had been scared away. They wanted to know if I’d heard anything (like the alarm) the night before. I tell them no. This is before I learned that my neighbor Ken had already been interviewed by one of the many agents scouring the neighborhood. And he had obligingly told them, “Go ask Brenda. That woman can hear a mouse dropping on a cotton pad.” (Gee, thanks Ken, I said to him later.) The agent tells me the church break in has marks of the same “MO."

My house is the first garden home on the street. I stood outside my fence (with Modge Podge drying on my hands), and watched as they went about picking up bits of trash in my yard. Thinking the suspects could have thrown trash with their prints on them out their car window.

The agents used gloves and put the trash in evidence bags. Then stuck little orange flags in my yard to show exactly where they’d taken the debris from.

I didn’t write about all this because an arrest wasn’t made for awhile. But not much later two young men were arrested. The alleged arsonists, that is. And they’re now in jail awaiting trial.

So from that experience, I know very well how exciting ordinary life can suddenly get in my neighborhood. One minute I’m working on a decoupage project. And the next I’m standing out in my yard with dried glue all over my hands, watching them pick up tiny pieces of debris in my yard. Leaving orange evidence flags in their place.

Technorati Tags: Decorating with blues,Terminix,rats,reflections

It’s A Jungle Out There

I think I know now why bears hibernate. It’s to get the strength to face the world for when it is time to re-enter the jungle.

It’s been just over a week since Bonnie went missing. I want to think that she somehow miraculously escaped the yard and is off on an adventure. Some of you suggested I do that. That’s she’s readily finding food and meeting new friends and seeing the country.

Each time I’m on the computer I feel compelled to click the “Feed the Animals” icon.

The other night I was outside with the dogs. I saw a face peer out from behind my red mirror on the fence. At first I thought: what an odd lizard. Then it scurried out and across the fence. And I realized it was a mouse/rat. And then there was a second and a third.

It truly is a jungle out there. Even in a small suburban neighborhood that’s so heavily populated. Where they mow down trees for construction, and then turn around and plant new ones. Where do they expect the wild things to go in the interim?

This may mean I have to take down my birdfeeders. Sadly enough. To keep the vermin from being attracted to my yard. Anyone have any advice on this?

Poor Clyde doesn’t feel like going outside and hunting right now. At times I will find a decapitated rat in my garden. Yes, I know that sounds horrific. But I don’t think Clyde is a serial killer with deviant ways. I think he’s just a cat.

Yesterday I had an appointment at my doctor’s office for the recurring trigeminal neuralgia. I stood in my closet looking at my tops after my shower, and thought: I have to add to this dwindling medley of shirts. So before my appointment I went by the mall. I will occasionally shop at Dillards or Penneys, which means I don’t have to enter the dreaded mall atmosphere.

And so I gathered my “get ready for the many cell phone tones that assail you everywhere you go” mentality, and started shopping. I managed to find four tops that will hold me over for awhile.

As I walked by the cosmetics counters, I was greeted by all the new “anti-aging” products for our skin. I hate skin cream. I live in such a humid climate it would be dripping down my face. So I suppose I will show my wrinkles to the world in all their glory. And just look my age.

Anti-aging. Just the word makes me laugh. None of us can turn back the clock. Oh yes, we can get Botox treatments and hinder the outward appearance a bit. But it isn’t going to turn back time.

And really, would you want it to? Would you like to go through, say, adolescence again? That awkward stage when acne occurs and your body is developing before your brain catches up?

And then there are the women who are shopping for clothing that would look more appropriate on someone much younger. Know what I mean? I’m sorry, but seeing a woman with pants that are barely hanging onto her hips without slipping to the point of no return just don’t look attractive to me. Or at any age for that matter.

I kept running into the same woman in Dillards with dyed blond hair and clothing that was suited for someone much younger. She had a good figure, so she wore it well in that regard. But why would she want to? Why do we cling to another era by the tips of our fingernails, grasping at another time that has already slipped by?

Part of a song kept creeping into my mind for some strange reason. It followed me through shopping, the clinic and the pharmacy. As I went about town taking care of mundane tasks, the lyrics rode along in my head with me.

Don't talk of love,
But I've heard the words before;
It's sleeping in my memory.
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died.
If I never loved I never would have cried.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me;
I am shielded in my armor,
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.

Simon & Garfunkel lyrics

Technorati Tags: Aging,everyday tasks,Simon & Garfunkel lyrics,Just Reflecting On Life