Spooky Things

Anne’s Sentence book from Jamie Fingal’s Book Sentence Challenge.

One of the things I have always loved to do is to enter challenges if I can understand them. This little piece is 8-1/2 x 11, and I had a lot of fun doing it. The challenge was to pick up a book, go to a certain page, and pick a sentence somewhere down on that page and use it as the theme for a quilt. The sad thing is that I have no clue which book I used anymore. It was years ago, when we had a lot of challenges. But fear not; I have other challenges we did that are a lot of fun too.

This quilt is a collage quilt; I cut the images from different places, and then held them in place with bridal tulle netting. Collage is probably my favorite technique for my quilts, though I also enjoy painting on then. I think I printed the lettering with the computer on cloth that I had specially treated to hold the ink.

This quilt seemed to have a good story and it seemed spooky as well. It might have been made around October, but I honestly don’t remember. I don’t like competition, not that I can’t do it; I just don’t like it because it seems to me to put us all in competition with each other, and I guess some people like that, but I like to enter personal challenges where we are challenging ourselves and not anyone else. There are no “bests” in challenges.

If you find it difficult to enter some sort of event where there is competition, you might try just pretending you are doing a challenge, and so you are challenging yourself to do that thing you want to do.

I am enjoying this particular Halloween season more than any I can remember for a long time. For one thing, I have never seen so many homes really decked out with tons of skeletons doing all sorts of fun things, or humorous decor such as a sleigh pulled by spiders! And the stores are filled with goodies to create your own story at your home, and costumes even for the pets everywhere.

I’ve read some great poems and prose and some very short stories for the season, all of them good. I hope that all of you who celebrate the season in whatever form, are all happy and enjoying it. Winter will be here soon enough.

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Writing Your Obituary

Courtesy Pexels

It seems an odd thing to think about when we are still alive and perhaps still young. Writing your obituary is a good idea though because if it is left to others to manage, they may write things that you would not have wanted to have written about you, or perhaps they would leave out things that were important to you.

It is a good way to remind yourself of all the things you have accomplished in your lifetime, and to remember people who others might not remember who were important to you in life. We don’t have to be thinking about dying, but we don’t really know what life has in store for us.

I often think of the story of Anne Frank, and how her story of her life in those last days was captured and has been an inspiration for so many people because it is the story of someone who lived a life with such meaning in just little everyday things. That is something I think it would be very difficult for another person, no matter how close they were to you, to capture your life the way you would have thought of it.

I think of my father, and I have not a photo or anything left of his life. He was not a role model for a father in some ways, but he did take care of us to ensure we had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and clothing always. He once got me a Ford Taunus, and I drove it out to White Sands Proving Grounds with him, and it went on the fritz out there. I could only drive the whole way back in 1st gear, not being able to shift at all. It seemed that drive was forever, and I never wanted to drive that car again. Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and I wonder how I might have written his obituary while he was still alive. I think the same for all of my relatives who are gone now, and those I particularly loved, and I so wish now I had captured their lives for my own children and their children and grandchildren.

Perhaps this is a good way to spend a bit of Father’s Day. If you can’t capture the life of your own father, perhaps you can capture your own growth from being a child to growing up and then becoming a father. I know someone will be glad someday to read about who you were as a human being and the things and people that were important to you in this life.

The Gift

The Tin Woman by Anne Copeland (She says, “I always had a heart.”)

This may end up being a series post because it involves the story of a life. It is my hope that this may serve to help anyone who is having difficulty coping with life. It is a true story. It is my story. And I am feel blessed to be able to share it.

I was inspired to write my story when I read a beautiful and touching post by a person whose blog I follow, http://www.3Bones.wordpress.com. Almost everyone in this life goes through some sort of tragedy or issues that can change a life forever. Challenges, no matter what the nature of them can be, are a blessing. The reason they are a blessing is that without them, we might never learn compassion for others, or how to help them when they need it most. We might never experience the beauty of life because life is full of valleys and mountains, sunshine and shadows and darkness. And we might never develop a sort of strength and true understanding of a journey. We might never develop faith in some form, from a belief in a God and a loyalty to that belief, or a sort of spirituality that we recognize in the things, people and places that surround us every day.

And lives – all lives – are sacred in this world. They are here by design – all of them. All forms, all shapes, all colors and names we have made to categorize each of them. They are needed to help the earth and the universe to survive. Even the smallest grain of sand is sacred. It has a special function though it may seem insignificant. Nothing is insignificant in this world.

I want to let you know that this story contains elements of life and death. It contains elements of goodness and love and kindness. And it also contains elements of evil and hatred and the horrible acts that human beings are capable of enacting upon selves and others. This is an opportunity for anyone reading it to perhaps change your thinking about human life on this plane.

The Tin Lady is not only an art doll that I created from found objects. If you look at her carefully, you will see that she is imperfect. Perhaps we can all be both imperfect and sacred a the same time. Most of my art falls into the Wabi Sabi category I have written about in the past; it is an appreciation of the imperfect, the impermanent, and the miracles that can be appreciated in the simplest of things. It serves to remind us that we are all here but a short time in the overall scheme of things, and that life is not a destination, but a journey every day that we live.

So with this brief introduction, the next part of the story will be told in a second post. I do not have a schedule for this. I will write more as I am able to continue. Thank you one and all very kindly for being here.

The Chair

Photo courtesy Pexels.

Everyone knows

The chair is an inanimate object,

Or so they say.

But as I look at the chair, it fills the space

With your everywhereness.

Music from a radio somewhere in the distant past

Dances through the air

As shadows move, changing shape

Softly to the rhythm.

The moments of the clock

Are suspended

Waiting patiently for the rhythm

Of my heart.

The chair softly pulses

Its electricity bringing everything into balance

In a world where everything

Is part of everything else.

It’s funny

Everyone knows

A chair

Is an inanimate object.

Or so they say.