Starting a New Picture

Duane Wheeler posted a bunch of photos on Facebook, and I was drawn in. So many scenes caught my eye. I asked and received permission to use any I wanted to. I chose four different scenes and printed three versions of each at 5 x 7 inches – edited, black and white, and lightened. (The original tends to be a little dark, which I like, but when painting, I need a lighter version to see details.)

Thank you, Duane. Now which of these beautiful scenes do I paint first? 

The dark sky and mist in the trees in this scene intrigued me so much, I decided to do this one first. I got out drawing supplies to do the initial sketch. It took longer than I thought to do this first drawing. Once again, a scene I thought would be easy has its challenges. Halfway through the drawing I decided I needed to see more detail, so I also cropped two sections and printed new photos. Still, there are some places that’s hard to fully see what’s going on… but I can always fill in with grass. 

A challenge, too, is when the original photo is panoramic. This means the scene must be drawn not using the full sheet (it’s only 5 ½ x 8 ½) or I need to bunch the scene to fit in the aspects I want (which I usually do).

Of course, this is just an initial drawing. Once I actually sketch the outlines of the scene onto the support I'm going to paint on and use pastels, it'll come together.

My plan when I set up for the actual painting is to do the scene more panoramic.

I printed the original photo in 8 x 10 to better see details while painting.

Freedom of Speech – using words wisely

I read an email from Eric Rhoads, publisher, and it led me on another side of the freedom of speech issue which I’ve been writing about a lot. I love what he said here:

“What if we all watched our tongue? What if we held back the temptation to lash out and spew negativity, and instead projected encouragement and belief in others? We would change the world. Your small, seemingly innocent words can have an impact. Words can ring in our thoughts for decades. They can set us on fire or burn us at the stake. How will you use your words today?”

We’ve all said things we’ve regretted. And, too, sometimes it’s not what is said but how it is said. There’s got to be a way where we can freely speak and write about our beliefs without letting our negative emotions take control of our tongues.

This can be extremely hard. My emotions easily take over, especially if I feel my point of view isn’t heard and respected (respected doesn’t necessarily mean agree with). I don’t yell, argue or get nasty. I usually heart-wrenchingly fall apart, crawl into a hole and cry. OK, maybe inside my head my mind is upset and screaming, but I tend to retreat, go into hiding.

What I find happening is, by not being able to speak or write my truths openly, frustration builds, and frustration turns to anger ... and for the first time in my life, I am also experiencing the feeling of hatred. I’ve never hated anybody in my life! Even in my younger life when I was so miserable and felt like everyone was against me, I didn’t hate them.

I don’t like this feeling, and every time I feel it brewing, I pull it back and then just get incredibly sad … not just at myself, but things in general.

The lesson, if I can call it that, is that all this gives me understanding in how and why people lash out in anger and perhaps do things they wouldn’t normally do. I understand; doesn’t make it right or excuse bad behavior, but I understand how it happens. I understand when people are sad and miserable, they are going to be overrun with negative emotion and they will explode. It’s human nature.

Is there a way we can speak freely and compassionately stating our cases? I don’t know. Maybe our humanness will always lend itself to the down sides of emotion. Yes, there are those who are very compassionate and forgiving, but not everyone is that way. Maybe most will always succumb to the need to defend their rights (or what they see as right).

Maybe all we can do is try to use our words wisely and stay positive.

Distracted from the Creative Fires

Or Falling Victim to the Woes of Current Affairs

I look up from my morning writing. The sun lights treetops while the trunks and the hemlocks remain dark. The brook, too, is dark, although the yellow, orange, and brown leaves create colorful blankets on the hill, tops of rocks and in the crevices of the tree roots stretched along the far side banking of the brook.

With the fall of the leaves, I can now see more of the house across the brook with the sunlight reflecting brightly on the white wall of the building. The guy walks his dog along the flat ridge above the brook. Neighbor-kitty, Leo, keeps watch from my deck. Yellow leaves continue to float slowly downward in the wind.

I turn to look out the front windows. The ducks and goose across the street are out in their little field. The ducks love the little puddles left in furrows from last night’s rain. They dip their heads, shake their wings, and wag those cute little tails. The goose keeps a watchful eye. They make me chuckle as do the chickens exploring the edges of the field.

I managed to finish three paintings recently and two more are in process on the easels. However, I find it hard to concentrate these days. The news, current affairs, and constant barrage of what we should and shouldn’t do is like dumping buckets of cold water on my creative fire. Every day I find myself falling into a deep sadness and any motivation turns to wet, soggy, smelly embers.

I go in the studio, pick up a pastel, then end up just staring out the window as I find it hard to get past the latest headline I heard or saw. The (what I call) ugliness is thrown in my face every day. I’m finding myself pulling back farther and farther and avoiding people. My world narrows. I don’t even want to go anywhere anymore.

Lately, my main connection to the world is through Facebook and sometimes that’s depressing, too. I search for something to bring me a bit of hope. Yes, there is some, but with MSM only promoting certain sides, it’s hard to find true honesty. I don’t know what to believe anymore …

Wait a minute, I do know what to believe and it’s not what’s being shoved in my face!

As a history buff, I’m dismayed to discover that what’s happening recently is too similar to what happened in the past – and all we, as Americans, fought against. What happened to our country that we’ve given in to the same promises Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and other dictators promised their people before the axes fell and their true intentions were revealed? What happened to all the ideals the United States was built on?

No, we weren’t/aren’t perfect. We are no longer a united country, but a country divided into races with each race demanding preference over the others. It’s not about equality anymore. It’s not even about us all being human beings. It’s about each race wanting special privileges.

And, as long as the word FREE is thrown in, the sheep will follow.

The Touchy Topic of Suicide

 

The topic of suicide has been coming up quite a bit. There’s the advertising of suicide prevention sites, along with news of the actual acts. One that tore my heartstrings recently was of a young boy who ended his life because of the bullying he was receiving at school.

Suicide is a topic I’ve thought about off and on for my entire life. I was bullied all through my school years. Even in my adulthood there have been time when I’ve been on the brink of deep despair. I’ve walked that sharp knife edge when one small incident could push me over. Somehow, someway, I always found a will to go on.

Of course, I only have the understanding from my personal feelings and beliefs. I’ve talked with others, who, like me, have contemplated ending their life at one time or another but never went through with it. I understand how someone could sink into such despair. I’ve heard the frustration when they feel no one hears them or understands, when they can’t get the help they need, when professionals can’t seem to find what will work for them, and the discouraging expenses in searching for solutions.

Someone once told me people who commit suicide are extremely selfish, that they’re only thinking about themselves and not about those who care about them.

My thoughts go to: How sad is it someone can feel so unhappy, so hopeless, with no way out of the misery? How sad is it they can’t get the support/help they need from those who care for them? How sad no one really listens to them. But how do we really know when someone is falling over the edge?

Who’s the selfish one if you don’t care how miserably unhappy someone is as long as they don’t make YOU uncomfortable? It’s an uncomfortable topic and hard for anyone involved to come to terms with it.

It’s no one’s fault, really. It’s not a black and white subject. Nothing to do with human emotions is black and white. We’re not cookie cutter beings. We may be human, but there’s individuality in all of us.

It’s very hard for people to deal with friends and relatives who are on the brink. How can they tell when someone they care about reaches that edge? What can they say? Are they so busy with their own lives they don’t have time to really listen? It’s uncomfortable dealing with unhappy people no matter how much you might care for them. Too often others’ misery gets brushed under the rug…

It’s not their fault, not anyone’s fault. When someone they care about is suffering, sometimes there isn’t anything anyone else can do. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if the person is just having some hard times. How can anyone tell when someone reaches the desperate, no-hope point?

I’ve only personally known one person who actually did it. I worked with her a short while and heard the defeat in her voice when she felt no one listened or understood what she was going through. I didn’t judge, didn’t find fault, didn’t give all the usual platitudes. I listened and offered what empathy I could. She said she felt I was the only one who truly listened and appreciated I didn’t put her down for feeling like she did. (It was years later, after we no longer worked together, I finally heard she ended her life.)

And are drugs the only solution? Why does society/people always trying to put us in boxes? OK, boxes and categories may work for many people but not all. There are always the ones who don’t fit an exact mold.

I’ve also heard people say God said suicide is a sin. I don’t believe that. I believe God loves and forgives those who end their own lives. Those are the people who really need it the most, and I believe God welcomes them home and surrounds them in comfort.

The Choices I Make

I was thinking yesterday about the book manuscripts never finished. There was the book I was writing on day trips, the one on the trip I took to Florida in 2015, and in 2016, there was the trip to Kansas. Three manuscripts in various stages, along with lots of photos. Then there is the poetry book ready to go but for finishing the design of the front cover. And this isn’t counting the three manuscripts I’ve done the past three years on pastel painting.

There’s something wonderfully joyful about holding a book in my hand that I wrote and had self-published. The first were poetry chapbooks, then a picture book on windows, next was a beautiful book of poetry and pictures, and finally, the solo, 33-day trip to Florida in 2013. I was so eager to publish more.

However, somehow, somewhere along the way, a part of me has been crippled. I just don’t have the energy to go the last mile with these projects and I’m left feeling incomplete. I can’t even begin to describe the hole this has left in me. I am sad. The air has leaked out of my tires, and I’m broken down on the side of the road with no help in sight.

It’s no own’s fault but my own. It’s not that I’m putting myself down; it’s the choices I make on what to work on… or not work on. Yeah, there were people I interviewed in my travels, telling them I was writing a book. Do they remember? Do they care? Have I let them down?

I let myself down. After all, I’m the only one who cares about these books. But I need to be realistic. Do I have the gumption to finish any of them? It breaks my heart to admit I don’t. I still think about them. The books are always in the back of my mind.

I make my choices. I can choose to go over again all my writings, or I can move on to new things. I choose the new.

Morning Musings and More

Three things capturing my thoughts this morning distracting me from my regular routine.

The first was thinking about my aunts and uncles on both sides of my family never having children. My mum and dad were the only two of their siblings who had kids. One of my dad’s sisters had been married a short time but never had children. I wondered if somehow this played a role in how I’ve turned out in my later life. 

It dawned on me, too – I don’t really know my father’s siblings. (We saw my mum’s two sibs more often.) Sure, Dad’s would come for Christmas and exchange gifts, and maybe on occasion we might see one of them another time during the year, but I realize I have no idea who they were as individuals. I just know them by what my parents said.

Yes, I was an adult by the time they all passed, but I was still young and raising my own kids. I didn’t take the time to have conversations to find out anything personal about my aunts and uncle. I wish I could have conversations with them; find out who they really were. Of course, as kids, we don’t think along these lines, but now… 

The next issue is the water problem here. Last spring our water bills doubled and now they’ve doubled again. It’s so disheartening because they’re not solving any problems. The cost is skyrocketing, and we are limited on what we can use. People are wanting to drill their own wells, but it sounds like you need to have over an acre and most of us don’t. The most discouraging is, even if they do finally figure things out, it won’t happen in my lifetime, which means all these final years I’ve had paid an exorbitant amount for what little water I use. 

Then I read Eric Rhoads’ latest email and it led me on another side of the freedom of speech issue which I’ve been writing about a lot. I love what he said here:

“What if we all watched our tongue? What if we held back the temptation to lash out and spew negativity, and instead projected encouragement and belief in others? We would change the world. Your small, seemingly innocent words can have an impact. Words can ring in our thoughts for decades. They can set us on fire or burn us at the stake. How will you use your words today?”

We’ve all said things we’ve regretted. And, too, sometimes it’s not what is said but HOW it is said. There’s got to be a way where we can freely speak our beliefs without letting our negative emotions take control of our tongues.