Here are several various focals I played with yesterday and got to “finished” and ready for adding to jewelry. The hearts were hardest – I need to pay attention to where I put the hanging hole (which can also be an accent hole and the hanging done through the larger hole – it’s a personal aesthetic choice). I must have tried 4 different designs with that green heart before I decided on simple.
My favorite piece (and the only one that size) is the diamond in the lower right. As easy as it sounds it took me more than several minutes to figure out how to keep the beads where I want them. Simple as wrapping the wire (or even a crimp but I couldn’t find one – I think I’m out) – but it didn’t immediately come through. Now, however, I’ve got it!
Imagine that!
Reading Patti Digh and using some of her work yesterday planted a seed. This morning I woke up with the idea of imagination being a muslce that we lose if we don’t use.
If we use it, the world keeps opening to larger and larger possibilities. I call this parallel worlds. String theory says there are (I think) about 11 dimensions (parallel universes). I’d explain it to you but it’s a bit over my head. I get the concept, though, because I think about this all the time. Were someone transported to my life from a life in the bush of Zambia, for instance, they would not believe they were in the same world. I know when I was transported to theirs I felt as if I were in one!
When I visited Zambia, working with Women’s organizations on self-empowerment by way of the League of Women Voters, I stayed in Lusaka (the capital) with a host who kindly made room for me in her house. One day I joined a training in a walled space that was a manicured garden of Eden. Literally right outside the gates to that were “houses” – one room concrete, maybe 6 x 8 feet, with open windows and doors. Families – families! – lived in them (parallel universes butting up against each other).
Here, right in my own country, I cannot imagine the universe where one pays $1,000 for a parking space at Redskins stadium. I cannot imagine the life of those people who are paid millions of dollars a year to “oversee” their corporation to the detriment of the rest of our world and our people. I don’t understand the “law of the commons” that says: if I don’t take it someone else will – and so the Chesapeake Bay is regularly raped by people making a living from her resources and then whining when others of us would protect her because they cannot imagine doing things any way other than they’ve “always been done” even though they are putting themselves out of business.
Okay – this took a bit of a rant turn. Not what I had in mind, but apparently where spirit decided to take me, so I’m leaving it there.
Meanwhile, here’s a great picture for imagining: my pond. I went to take a picture of the fish to represent all the yard work I did yesterday – raking lots and lots and LOTS of leaves, mulching, triming dead growth, opening up spaces in our forest so that lower things can grow. And as I looked at the picture, I realized that because the pond is so clear and the reflection so precise, one might imagine the fish flying. As good as pigs in my book!
I use the pond in my own story a lot – to try to imagine the pond I am swimming in and what I cannot see yet. Now I will imagine that the pond itself reflects to me all possibilities I might look for- all I have to do is remain conscious of what I am actually seeing, what is in front of me, what is offering itself for joy.
What stories do you use to help you expand your possibilities and exercise your imagination muscle? I’d love to hear them!
Wylde Women’s Wisdom
We tend to underestimate the range of our senses and our intelligence. We do the same with our imaginations. In fact, while we largely take our senses for granted, we tend to take our imaginations for granted completely. We’ll even criticize people’s perceptions by telling them that they have ‘overactive imaginations’ or that what they beliee is ‘all in their imagination.’ People will pride themselves on being ‘down to earth,’ ‘realistic,’ and ‘no-nonsense,’ and deriede those who ‘have their heads in the clouds.” [or their fish in a tree]. And yet, far more than any other power, imagination … underpins every uniquely human achievement. … You can think of creativity as applied imagination. Ken Robinson
4 Comments
T – you just made me remember that I have a painting with fish in the air around a woman and a wolf – I’m going to have to track it down and post it now!
Oh, that photo is magical! It reminds me of a dream I had recently, where these lovely fish were swimming through the air around people in the first part of the dream – and there’s a bit more synchronicity to that dream, I’m finding in your words here, today…Thanks for being the messenger!
Zambia was life changing for me in seeing joy in the face of things I would consider inconceivable. Nothing like sitting at a cafe with 3 machine gun armed uniformed guys wandering around. the definition of “normal” begins to stretch (and into the parallel universe you walk). The women I worked with are amazing. It’s interesting to see your own country and your own lifstyle from outside.
Wow, that must have been an eye-opening experience, working in Zambia!
I do love imagining those fish flying through the trees. 🙂