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On my road to the salmon & turquoise postcards, I deviated and ended up making this sketch in my Moleskine journal. I’d sketched it out the other day while listening to Tori Amos’ music on my iTunes, and sketching koi for my May postcard project. Today I colored it in with watercolors (iridescent, water soluble pencils) and the above is the result. You can click here to get a closer look. The iridescent quality somehow didn’t translate well in the scan and the image is quite a bit darker than the original sketch, but this is as good as it gets tonight… I’m tired. *yawn!* Sleep beckons!
Every year I plan on sending out Christmas cards. With the best intentions, I actually purchase boxes of cards before the holidays (at full price) and plan on getting them written and sent out. These days I don’t even delude myself with the hopes of getting them out before Christmas, but I do have the expectation that they will go out somewhere around the week between Christmas and the first of the year, or at least close to that. As you can see, they sit in a pile, haunting me every time I walk by, and we are now several weeks into the new year and it seems hardly appropriate for me to mail them now. It amazes me how quickly time goes by… another year has slipped by and I have barely accomplished anything that I truly wished to. I’ve accomplished lots of the mundane… hours of sleeping, eating, working, doing household chores, parenting, taking care of basic bodily functions. All of that sprinkled with a little bit of reading and writing… and the creating of some art. Nothing substantive or organized. I keep saying… “next year I’ll [fill in the blank]…” but when push comes to shove, it’s so easy to fall into the same old patterns of complacency. Maybe it’s time for me to invest in another “self-help” book… the greatest self-help book of all time, which will kick me in the ass and get me onto the right path. Just need to figure out which one it is…
Gabriel and I were watching TV today and this “short” came on… he said it was one of his favorites and “I wish we could get a video of it.” I went on YouTube and voila… there it was. We chuckled throughout several rounds of viewing and then decided to move on to other things. I really liked the weird, large eyes and decided to doodle one of my own…
(Click to see image in separate window)
Good? Maybe not so much… but silly? Yes! I’ve done tons of laundry this weekend. My hands could use some softener. I still have two loads of linens/towels left. Ack! I did manage to get a very long shower in… the kind that drains the hot water heater. I turn off the bathroom lights, turn on my CD player (blast some Delerium, and probably drive the neighbors nuts), light a couple of candles and shut out the world… or rather, pull it all in. I do a chakra meditation in the shower. So here you go… instructions for an unguided shower meditation, just for you: + place self under shower stream, so water is beating down onto top of crown, facing outward (it will become apparent shortly why the outward facing stance is preferable) Well… now you know why I drain the hot water reservoir. Enjoy!
+ breathe deeply through the nose (aha! see? that’s why…), feeling your belly expand with air and then exhale through the mouth, your belly shrinking as the air is expelled, several times
+ stand with your feet comfortably apart, knees slightly bent, with your body comfortably centered over your feet
+ imagine the soles of your feet growing roots, and those roots going down, down through the tub and through the foundation, down through the earth, wrapping themselves around the core of the earth
+ imagine that the top of your head is open, like a pitcher and that the water streaming down upon you and through you is pure, white universal light. Pouring into you, flowing through you, clearing, cleansing and purifying as it goes, down through your torso and your arms, hands and through your fingertips, down through your chest cavity and through your mid-section and hips, flowing down into your legs and your feet, and down through your roots, into the center of the earth, with it all of your dis-eases and impurities
+ now, imagine the earth’s energy rising from the center of the earth and up through your roots, through your feet and into your body, activating your lowest (red) chakra, situated where your genitals are
+ as you breathe in through your nose, imagine that you are breathing in this earth energy, and upon exhaling through your mouth, that there is a red beam of light shining out from within your first chakra, the red light clearing any blockages as it radiates outward
+ feel (smell, taste) the earth energy rising to the next chakra, with the clearing of each as it progresses. The colors corresponding to each chakra, as well as their “energy” and location is as follows:
+ base or root chakra – red – survival, physical needs – location: genitals
+ sacral or second chakra (don tien) – orange – emotional balance, sexuality – location: a few inches below the navel
+ solar plexus or third chakra – yellow – personal power, self will – location: between navel & base of sternum (where you feel butterflies sometimes)
+ heart or fourth chakra – green – love & relationships – location: center of chest
+ throat or fifth chakra – turquoise – communication, self-expression – location: base of neck
+ third eye or sixth chakra – indigo – intuition, wisdom – location: above & between eyebrows
+ crown or seventh chakra – violet – spirituality – location: top of head
+ breathe the color in (through your nose) as you fill your lungs with air, and as your expel the air out through your mouth, imagine the color beaming through each of your chakras, all the way to the top of your head. Breathe your way through each chakra as many times as you feel the need to
+ now, imagine once again that pure, white, universal energy is being poured into you, through your crown chakra
+ breathe the light in as you inhale through your nose, and as you breathe out, starting from your sixth or third eye chakra, imagine that a beam of white light projects through each chakra, purifying, cleansing and healing as it flows
+ imagine on each exhale the white light of the pure universal energy spiraling (like a helix: think DNA) with the color of each respective chakra
+ once you have reached and cleared the root, base or first chakra, imagine that as you inhale through your nose and fill your lungs with air that you are filling your whole body with pure, white universal energy
+ as you exhale through your mouth, imagine that the light you’ve just inhaled is now being expelled throughout every single pore, in all directions
+ finally, give thanks to both the earth energy and the white universal energy and close your crown chakra and pull up your roots from the earth’s center
Moleskine journal entry – Pilot Varsity black ink pen and Bienfang waterbrush
01-10-07
Well, it’s been a while since my last post. Holiday mayhem ensued and I spent my time (and quite a bit of money at that) preparing for Christmas. I was bitten by the anti-Ebeneezer bug and the pleasure of giving far outweighed my budget sense. Hence, I did some “unshopping” this weekend and returned several of the “one for me” portion of the “one for you” holiday shopping spreeing. I also upgraded my blog to Blogger’s new template, and am wrestling with my stat counter now… grrr… but it does have a few new added features that will simplify things. Christmas was good to all (perhaps a little too good)… Gabriel got a guitar, a skateboard and other various and sundry items… Steve got an iPod (to replace the one that was lifted during the Jeremy McGrath Invitational, right from under our noses, in the press room, no less) and a wallet and other various and sundry items, and I should no longer be directionally challenged now that I have a Magellan Roadmate 2000. Which way to the bathroom??? The only down-side to the holidays is that Steve’s mom and dad were not able to join us for our December 25th constitutional. Steve’s mom still has not fully recovered from her heart valve surgery in May/June of last year and continues to ail. We drove over to Hemet on Christmas Eve for dinner with the intention of going to the candlelight mass afterward but mom didn’t even make it through the meal–she had to lay down. We skipped church and headed for home shortly after, not a single one of us particularly distraught at missing mass. They ended up not coming over for Christmas, mom instead heading for the hospital with what seemed to be gall bladder trouble. We’ve since gotten news that she’s much improved, though she is eleven pounds lighter.
(Click to see enlarged view in separate window)
The few days off between here and there were a welcome respite and I am grateful for them, though I would have liked about twice as many as I got. Vacation time accumulates very slowly when you only get two weeks a year (and use them up as quickly).
To ring in the new year, I decided to host (yes, you read it right… the very thing that I *swore* I wouldn’t do, under threat of bodily harm) an on-going Color Postcard Swap. There are nine of us participating and the main criteria is that we stick to the monthly color themes as picked out monthly by the players and that all the art must be original (read: not a photocopy) works. I was so sick to death of getting color copies of stuff, or just layered bits of fluff-as-art that I am hoping the colors will speak to the players and make everyone produce some cool stuff.
The color theme for January is black and white. Fortunately (or not), I’ve never met a color I didn’t like… colors by their very nature seem to make concepts “pop” in my head… for example, with black and white, I’m already thinking: “newspapers… read between the lines”… “old b/w photos”… “b/w prints”… “mardi-gras & pierrots”… black lace & pearl buttons… wrought iron… see what I mean? I sketched a bit in my moleskine yesterday, prepping for more imaginative work this weekend. I plan to work on some thick watercolor paper and then cut them into eight pieces as well as create an accompanying piece the size of the uncut sheet and keep that one for myself.
I also got a phone call at work today from Pascale, one of my hometown friends, who confirmed that she and her two boys will be out for a visit shortly. I haven’t seen them since returning home for my mother’s funeral, which was three years ago this past September. Her older one, Simon, is now a strapping six foot one, while the other, Emile, is closer to Gabriel in both age and size.
This past Saturday was a superlatively cool day for me… Gabriel and Steve both left at around 9AM and I had the whole apartment to myself the whole day… I did just about nothing except pick up a bit, the dishes, and watch the Discovery Channel all day long. Quantum physics holds a great fascination to me, and I greatly regret not applying myself to mathematics early on… numbers (and equations) truly do hold the key to everything. I also didn’t know that there are satellites floating around in space taking x-ray images of our universe, and how different a picture it is when taken into that context. Utterly fascinating…
Well… after a fine dinner of garlicy toast, I think I’m ready to tackle the stat counter once more, and if I still can’t figure it out, I think I’ll retire to bed with a book.
