Hand-built clay sculpture, Oshun, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals
Well, this is my fourth go at a post here today. I imported two articles from ArtDaily.com and they skewered by post – cutting off sentences, messing up my link, etc. I tried to salvage pieces of the post, but no go. So I’m starting over from scratch, including a new picture (perhaps the old post simply wasn’t meant to be – it was a bit of a rant on "what is art." I’ll include, but won’t rant…too much).
My original post praised ArtDaily.com as a great source of material for this blog. It is an unending supply of interesting articles that I enjoy reading daily, and also an unending source of my own frustration at their definition of art.
In my impatience with not being able to get the post to work, I deleated my article references. That’ll teach me. Because here I am again trying to get this post out.
So rather than focus on ArtDaily and its article (they must have been older articles because I can’t get them to come up in the "last 7 days" section on ArtDaily), I’ll have to find something else to write about.
Maybe I’ll pull a Seinfeld and write about "nothing." Sometimes the brain just refuses to come up with sparkling repartee.
I could tell you that my day is too full. That I have yet (and am, with this 4th post, seriously up against the clock) to finish two commissions that I am to deliver at my network meeting today. Not just any old meeting, but Women in Harmony’s 3 county luncheon where all of us will get together. Which means I also need business cards that I don’t have made – another to do before noon today. I’d like to try to pressure wash and scrub the deck for painting. Why, I’m not sure, since they’re now calling for thunderstorms and you can’t paint the deck unless it’s dry (which means it may not happen this year with all our rain – note to Mother Earth: I am not complaining. I think this is the best summer we’ve had in as long as I can remember). Then there are the 12 zodiac tiles that I wanted to design and cast this week that I’m seeing slip away, and the 6 fish I must make today or tomorrow to dry in time to mail out Friday (a shop order), which means I have to make something else to fill up the kiln – probably word tiles. I’m getting tired just thinking about it all.
So, having done my Seinfeld and not really written about anything, I’ll give you some substance to chew on in the thought for the day. Tomorrow will bring new topics. If I can remember my camera today, I can do a posting on the luncheon and networking tomorrow. Yeah! That’s the ticket.
Thought for the day: "How is there going to be less aggression in the universe rather than more? We can then bring it down to a more personal level: how do I learn to communicate with somebody who is hurting me or someone who is hurting a lot of people? How do I speak to someone so that some change actually occurs? How do I communicate so that the space opens up and both of us begin to touch in to some kind of basic intelligence that we all share? Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet…Compassionate action, being there for others, being able to act and speak in a way that communicates, starts with seeing ourselves when we start to make ourselves right or make ourselves wrong. At that particular point, we could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where we could live. This place, if we can touch it, will help us train ourselves throughout our lives to open further to whatever we feel, to open further rather than shut down more…Our ancient habitual patterns will being to soften, and we’ll begin to see the faces and hear the words of people who are talking to us…As we learn to have compassion for ourselves, the circle of compassion for others…becomes wider." Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
