CHROMATICS I WANT YOUR LOVE VIDEO

I love contrast. Contrast of black on white. Contrast of a deep thrashing drum against the quiet reverberation of a harp. Contrast or a strong mans hand on my own soft flesh. And the contrast of these innocent images as the sultry sounds of the Chromatics play on in the background. I don't know that I prefer the music or the imagery over the other, but I like the way they look together.

I know that my own personality is very contrasting - my political views don't match my religious views - which doesn't match my societal morals or mores.

According to dictionary.com, used as a noun, Contrast means "opposition or juxtaposition of different forms, lines, or colors in a work of art to intensify each element's properties and produce a more dynamic expressiveness." And you the know the Oscar Wilde quote "“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” I think ones life is a work of art - therefore ones life is subjective. We can't be judgmental of each other in this life. It's not our job - to pass judgment on someone else. The only thing we should be passing over to another person is love. I'm open for that - give me your love.

Let's see what I could do with it.

Little Green Apples-O.C Smith-1968

Little Glass Heart

Mid-year I went through a break-up of a relationship that devastated me - not that I don't understand most break ups are devastating, or that I think mine was more devastating than yours - but to get to the next blog, I have to muddle through this one...

PREFACE - An Apple a Day

PREFACE (I know, blogs usually don't have a preface, but then one does)

2008ish 

A few years ago, while working at the Temple, I was finally able to put my design skills to use designing lobby presentations for High Holy Days, Shabbat Services, Kristallnacht, Yiddish Words & Phrases and a number of other subjects related to Judaism. I loved doing the research and learning so many new things.  Being a "non-Jew" I worried that my my work wouldn't be as true to the faith and the Jewish people as I desired it to be. I looked at Jewish Art, read the Prayer books and even listened to the Rabbi's Shabbat Services (as it was also my job to convert those files and save them on CD's for the congregants.) But more than anything I wanted the content and presentation to be meaningful to the viewers. I wanted to evoke an emotion from them - even if it was on a subject they understood and lived daily. I hoped that MY view, as an "outsider" would bring something more to light for them and it would become more meaningful in any small way.

As wonderful as it was to design the presentations and other marketing materials, I also had a lot of administrative work to complete. I found this to be mechanical, tedious work, best suited for someone "Left-Brained", not me, a creative and free spirit who particularly care to conform to societies groups, including that of an "artist". I am individualistic and feel constrained with policies and procedures and having my brain cluttered with the necessary format of a business letter or how to do the perfect mail merge. That information just doesn't sit well within my head - so I don't retain it. Try as I may, and as important as that information may be, I am just not the type of individual that should be doing that work.

One day I was so exasperated at the postage machine! I was trying to figure out why it wouldn't seal, after realizing I had just labeled 348 envelopes with the incorrect postage amount and stuffed them with letters to the congregants with the incorrect address format (It's THREE hard returns YVONNE! THREEEEEEE!!!)when I blurted out to Heather "All I want is an Apple Orchard! I just want to sit on the side of the road barefooted, feel the sun and rain on my face and sell my apples....maybe sing and play my dulcimer for people as they pick.... but I am tired of papers and formats and postage machines!" That thoughtful emotion came out of nowhere. I didn't consciously form that thought in my head. I really had never thought about owning an apple orchard. I mean I can barely keep a houseplant alive.

But once those words hit the air and they resounded in my own ears, I began thinking about how nice that would actually be. Yeah, an apple orchard. I have a dream. A real-doable-dream. I am sure I had dreamed before as a child, as to what I would be when I "grew up", but lately I couldn't remember any of those dreams. Life as an adult is hard, sometimes it totally gobbles up our dreams, or we get side-tracked, or we just plain don't know how to realize our dreams or have the resources or the people supporting and encouraging us.

fastforward 2010 - AN APPLE A DAY

I work with a great group of people in Marketing. Jason, who recently lost lots and lots of pounds, has  encouraged the rest of us, by his example,  to take better care of our bodies.  It all started with the apples he would bring in daily. He cuts them up and offers a piece to each of us, which we would greedily partake. I can't remember ever enjoying an apple more than those he would share. Soon we were all bringing in an apple as well and we would each get a slice or two of everyone's apples - so in essence we each ate a different apple everyday. It kind of became a game of "what-type-of-apple-who-would-bring-in" - we've sampled Galas, Granny Smiths, Honeycrisps, Jonathan, Fuji, and Pacific Gold.....to name a few...and we each have our favorites. You know, I never even realized there were so many different types of apples or how different their flavors and textures are - or how the sharing of these apples would keep my dream "In-My-Face" on a daily basis.

Other dreams began puddling around this one, reminding me of the importance of knowing what you want and not settling for anything less.

finding HAPPINESS, keeping PEACE, continued LEARNING, living LIFE (not watching everyone else from the sideline), sharing INTIMACY.....all things, that to me, the thoughtful desire for this apple orchard represents.

Owning an Apple Orchard? It is a far-fetched dream - granted - but still, it is mine. I haven't put any particular goals or objectives into action, haven't written a business plan, don't know the cost of purchasing land or even if Ohio is a good place to lay the seed. I do know that the sun shining on my face, with my toes in the dew-covered spring grass, while I strum out "Peace Train" as you gather a basket of Honeycrisps, sounds like a beautiful reality.

This is my story....

pink martini - hang on little tomato

What happened to the plan?

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”

Alan Lakein

I don't particularly like this quote. Maybe because I am not a good planner....and it shows - believe me. I don't even know who Alan Lakein is and that bothers me. OK, so I took a moment to Google him. He's an author, and Bill Clinton credits his book to helping him achieve success by writing down all of his goals and then categorizing them by importance and then under each goal writing specific activities for achieving those goals. While that's all well and good for some, and would probably, perhaps, most definitely serve me well, I won't be making any lists and categorizing any activities under any goals. Maybe if I were planning a vacation to Montana and I was going fly fishing and moose hunting I might make a list. I am pretty sure you don't use worms and I am not even sure if moose exist in Montana. So for something like that I would make a list.

But right now my goals are pretty simple. Pay the bills on time. Don't eat sugar. Sleep all night. Don't cry. Focus. Focus. Focus. on the positive. Don't cry. Focus. Self-control. Self-control. Self-control. and Don't cry.

My very first post boasts of having this grand plan in two years - and get this, I even get generous with myself and state "the latter part of the second year", or something like that. Well, today that two year time line has passed and I am not one iota, one idea or even one list closer to achieving that goal. Am I kidding myself achieving? How about starting? Not even starting it. The ideas flourished in my head, I researched how to invoice customers, and read books but when it comes time to apply the intangible to concrete - nothing. I don't know if I got bored, thought it was going to be too much work, lost confidence in my abilities, became creatively blocked or just decided to quit. I am a quitter. I quit everything. It's a bad habit, I started young, I quit Bluebirds, I quit Brownies, I quit softball (although I am sure my teammates were quit thankful for that, I quit tap, I quit piano lessons, I quit band, I quit cheering, I quit nursing school....quit, quit, quit. I quit trying on my marriage(s). One would think after all of that quitting I would tire of revisiting the same outcome of UNsuccess. But I don't. The only thing I haven't quit is quitting.

What's that other quote "Life is what happens when we are making plans?"
That quote I can agree with. Life does happen. But it doesn't just happen to me - it happens to all of us - everyday. I guess those with lists know how to handle Life because everything is written in categories and subcategories that dictate just exactly what one should do when Life appears in front of us.

One of the most recent books I have read is Eckart Tolle's "The Power of Now". Great read. I needed it at the time I was reading it. His words spoke to me personally - specifically in regards to not being concerned with the past, or the future, but to only live here in the now. That can be difficult to do - I analyze everything, everyone, every thought I have...I have to make sense of it; mold it, shape it, color it so it fits perfectly where it is supposed to fit. But the truth is sometimes there is no sense to be made. Accepting that has been the hardest thing for me to understand and then to do. I have come to realize that within the confines my persona, comprised of the environment I grew up in and the way I perceive the world and how I live and love is not like others. Not that I am right and you are wrong. Just that there are differences. Vast amounts of variables that can make something so familiar to me become foreign and unknown.

Henry Miller says "“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”

I think I would rather grow than be successful.

Amost Heaven...

It was almost three years ago when I went to Colorado for the first time.
I absolutely fell in love.
Everywhere we drove was perfection. The rich hues of the sky and the water and the reflection of the mountains in the water. It was brethtaking - literally so.

I felt so little and tiny and insignificant in the vastness of it all.
We hiked and every hill we embarked upon brought more beauty.

I remember at one point we stopped and looked over a large clearing where many other people were.
There was a sign that read "To this scene nothing needs to be added, it satisfies my soul". I can close my eyes and feel that same overwhelming emotion.

John Denver was right.

What I miss

                                                 

I miss my dad.

I miss cricket.

I miss playing cupball with my brother.

I miss puddles.

I miss kissing.

I miss the county fair.

I miss hearing The Christmas Story from the book of Luke on Christmas Eve,

I miss New Hire Mondays.

I miss cornfields.

I miss hearing the mandolin.

I miss long van trips with no air conditioning.

I miss Georgia backroads.

I miss sticky little hands.

I miss Stockholm.

I miss thunderstorms.

I miss Saturday mornings.

I miss Friday nights.

I miss being a part of.

I miss love.

I miss you.

NASA - Predicting the Weather

NASA - Predicting the Weather: "Predicting the Weather
A United Launch Alliance"

yea, i know months again

Prolificity. It should be a word. The quality or state of being prolific. Is there a person to contact when one feels a word should be added to Webster's? Perhaps if I just randomly begin using it in everyday conversation and request my friends to do the same it may actually *trickle* its way into the english language.

I tend to think of myself as prolific - you know -one who posses abundant inventiveness or productivity. Not inventive in the way I can solve some industrious problem with my spectacular engineering abilities and knowledge, but inventiveness in a MGuyveresque kind of way. Ingenuity? and by productivity I mean working two jobs - raising a family of two teenagers - being in a play - and cleaning gems from every nook and cranny of my home and putting them in every nook and cranny of my garage on a daily basis. No - I REALLY mean it.

It's been an amazing week of Thrift Store and Yard Sale Gems. My garage is overrunning with these gems. Things I find with the intention of placing them somewhere in my home to be revered by guests and family alike. But these things most often end up in piles upon piles of Gems in each and every room of my house. Although last week while "staycationing" in my home I did manage to move all of my gems to the aforementioned garage.

Oh, yeah, the play...thinking of that I really need to continue memorizing my lines - considering opening night is next Saturday.