Texture Tuesday...sometimes, storm is the only way

thunderstorming

Call me lazy.  Call me predictable and cliche and overused.

Bypass these lines if your currency is nuance, if what moves you

are the minimalist gestures, if the threads of the crosshatch seams in the couch

are geographies you'd prefer for your treasure.  I can't help it.

That splinter of sky, that divisive, decisive crack, fractured something loose,

broke and birthed it all at once.  Sometimes, change is a jagged-toothed animal,

tearing the "was" out so fast my head spins, and I watch, almost drunk,

from the window as the whole earth luminesces, shaking a raw hunger

out of my bones.  Sometimes, storm is the only way to stillness, the great shaking.

How the feral animals run for home.  How even the trees bow down.

by Maya Stein

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Reprinted with kind permission from Maya Stein, who has been writing these treats

for the senses each week...a series she calls, 10-line Tuesday...

again, I thank her for the inspiration that prompted today's image.

Please do read more from her collection over here...

and her blog, one paragraph at a time, is about just that...

"looking at life one paragraph at a time."

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Linking up this week for another Texture Tuesday over at Kim's place.

Our challenge?  The "posie edition"...

check out the flower floozie awesomeness going on over THERE....

so much inspiration!

Techie mumbo-jumbo:

Shot with my DSLR, cropped & tweaked in iPhoto, then taken into FX Photo Studio Pro

where I added a Socorro effect; next into PSE, added 2 layers of Kim's texture, abstract,

soft light @ 80% + screen @ 15%

a wee bit of minor erasing & sharpening,

re-cropped,

added copyright.

Till next time, my friends...

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The unbearable lightness

translucent,

whisper soft...

five layers of hand dyed cloth

held (momentarily) by a single pin.

   We all need somebody to look at us.  We can be divided into four categories according to the

   kind of look we wish to live under.  The first category longs for the look of an infinite number

   of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public...

   The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known

   eyes.  They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners...

   Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes

   of the person they love.  Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first

   category.  One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark...

   And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary

   eyes of those who are not present.  They are the dreamers."

~ Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Although I wrote (what then seemed quite profound) a notation along the margin of the page,

I did not understand this quote when I first read it in my mid-twenties...

nor did I understand that lives can be shaped by irrevocable choices.

The summer solstice has arrived

and a few frayed edges are lining up...

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Texture Tuesday...that kind of faith

These beauties were not growing naturally on my land although at one time, there were multitudes

 found growing on these islands.  No, I planted these bulbs a couple of years ago

when I held high hopes for cultivating a native wildflower meadow.

These camassia were as far as I got.

So it goes.  Not unlike so many things.

Still, they make me SO happy.  The clumps are thriving, the bees love them, they add stature

to the garden when it's still a bit early for anything else

and they require zero maintenance or attention....

the perfect recipe for garden plants, if you ask me.

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It's another Texture Tuesday over at Kim's place.  Do pop in over there and check out the creativity

from the texture-loving crowd...better yet, join in with us.  So much inspiration!

For today's photo I used two of Kim's textures...'grunged up 2' and 'yesteryear.'

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Besides TT, the other really cool thing that happens on this day each week is 

Maya Stein's 10-line Tuesday.

I've been following her for awhile now...she is, oh, so good...

each week, a new poem in my mailbox...more inspiration.

And somehow she always gets me thinking past whatever is holding me up.

Here's what arrived today:

the juggler

At some point, of course, your own stamina will fail, and the rhythm

you began with will splinter, then collapse.  But that first belief that thrust

your hands in motion - I want to say something about that.  This was not some whim

or fantasy of epic talent.  It was your cells talking, trust

threading your very bones, your hopes held high as clouds.  That kind of faith

is untouchable, regardless of all those balls tumbling earthward.  Remember

where you started, those inklings that led you to practice your lofty art

on a busy sidewalk, color pinwheeling around.  That's the necessary ember,

the tiny fire churning,

your naked courage daring you to sing.

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Till next time, my friends.

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Texture Tuesday...perfectly perforated

Dunno how I got on this garden tool kick all of a sudden...in my previous post you had to read

all about my hori hori obsession and now this...

a portrait of my tried and truest, most favored and special watering can ever.

She's tough 'cause she's galvanized.

Doesn't she have a charming rosette?  THE BEST for sprinkling new seed beds.

And her handle swivels...oooh lah lah.

I once had a dark green plastic can that I loved so very much.  The pour spout was exceedingly long,

styled after those traditional ones from England...with a similar rosette, but upward facing

so the water came out like a small, delicate fountain.

Quinn chewed it tah bits shortly after she came to live here.

"Who me???....I only chew really big sticks."

Now I ask you, is that a face that could tell a lie?

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Linking up with another of Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday parties...

used Kim's lovely watercolor texture, 'Oh my', on both ~ added 'Heirloom' from French Kiss 

(Glorious Grunge Collection) to the black munchmouth.  

Click HERE to see what everyone else has been up to,

so much creativity!

p. s.  I promise for next time that I will not write about another garden tool.

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Texture Tuesday...the little things

Enjoy the little things,

for one day

you may look back and realize

they were the big things.

~  Robert Brault  ~

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Linking up again with Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday crowd...

have a wander over there and see some of the amazing work that's being created.

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Soft...

...it's time for another Texture Tuesday photo and the challenge this week

is the 'oh so SOFT edition.'

This is Isla dawg, watching raindrops.  Or at least, that's what I think she was doing.

She's sitting on the very edge of a small dock about four feet above the pond.  It was a new dock 

and she'd never been out there before.  I don't know if she'd ever looked down *into* water before...

she was fairly new to me at the time so I was still discovering

what she knew...and what she didn't...

like how she barked at waves,

didn't like to chew on hard things,

and lived for love over any other form of reward.

It was a gentle rain that afternoon and I was able to capture (what has turned into) one of 

my favorite shots of her.  Her white ruff is soft as an angora bunny...

that white triangle is such a symbol of her true nature.

It's also a symbol of how she doesn't like her picture taken, something else

I've learned along the way.

If the camera is pointed towards her, she will turn & often gives me her back...

I've re-worked this photo several times since taking it in 2009.  

The straight out of camera shot is

so  b.o.r.i.n.g.  Here's a very lackluster interpretation I did back then...

isn't it just so darn obvious my struggle with digital?

Ha! charting my photographic genealogy!

One of the most exciting things in learning about all the tools available for the "digital darkroom"

is the newfound ability to bring an image around to the way the moment  felt  to me.

That was my joy in the chemical darkroom, too...

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Today's tools?  Kim Klassen's texture 'embrace' paired with a texture from

French Kiss from the 'Glorious Grunge Collection.'

Is it worth noting...I'm probably not *done* with this photo yet...

it may show up here again at some point, dressed in new textures.  :>]]

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Texture Tuesday...the view from here

Rot...it happens to the best of us.

That  was  going to be the title of this post, but I didn't want to go all negative on you.

There are days...and today was one of them...I wish I was the writer of one of those "feel good" blogs...

you know the kind I mean,

the ones you can always count on to be upbeat & positive...leave you feeling glad you visited.

I'm really laying out the welcome mat for you now, aren't I?

Don't mind me.

I'm kinda sick of gray.

Grabbed the camera

& wandered out with my bestie today.  We have some favorite haunts around the island that we visit regularly.

She never cares which one we're headed to...soon as that leash comes out, she's so

upbeat & positive

we could walk to the carport and back and her tail would still be wagging.

Someone's got to have the sunny disposition around here.

Anyway, the *Beyonders* are working on black & whites over at Kim's place and as it happens,

the challenge this week for Texture Tuesday is b&w... I knew

where I could find some grotty subjects...

nothing like a falling down, derelict dock

and an old rotten boat to....

oh you know what I mean.

I'll tell you what little bit of gray I am NOT sick of...

my new programmable breadmaker...

with a gluten-free setting.

The delicious bread from this recipe is manna from heaven...

oh joy, oh joy.

A gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do,

don't you agree?

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Many thanks to Kim Klassen for supplying such fab FREE textures...the dock has

two layers of 'Madlove'...the boat, two layers of 'Faved'.... 

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Pockets of paradise

Of Goodness


How good
that the clouds travel, as they do,
like the long dresses of the angels
of our imagination,


or gather in storm masses, then break
with their gifts of replenishment,
and how good
that the trees shelter the patient birds


in their thick leaves,
and how good that in the field
the next morning
red bird frolics again, his throat full of song,


and how good
that the dark ponds, refreshed, 
are holding the white cups of the lilies
so that each is an eye that can look upward,


and how good that the blue-winged teal
comes paddling among them, as cheerful as ever,


and so on, and so on.....


~ Mary Oliver ~

When I am outside, it is far easier to see (feel) the big picture than when I am sitting here in my chair, sometimes worrying over what isn't helped by worrying.  You'd think I'd learn after all these years to stop wasting time on useless habits.  All it takes is changing my perception - and sticking to it.  But how to hold on to that?  I think our deepest frustrations arise when reality doesn't mesh with our deepest desires.  How to let go of that?   

The other day, my dear friend wrote to me, "you have to find pockets of paradise."  I have not been able to get this out of my head.  How perfectly true.  More than that...how attainable.  I started to think about where my "pockets" might be and once I started to pay attention, they were not hard to find.

Here is an amazement --- once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.


~ Mary Oliver ~

Paradise....an illusive wish-I-were-somewhere-else place....a place of outstanding natural beauty that serves as a buffer to the out-there-over-there world....somewhere one has landed due to much good luck and the fortunate movement of the stars?  Ha.  It's what I make of it.  Nothing more.  No matter where I am.

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I found a very heartfelt interview with poet Mary Oliver over here.  It's from March of 2011, then age 75.

She reveals some astounding truths about herself

and offers a few glimpses into why she is braver now...

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Still learning & working with textures in PSE...for the cloud photo, I used two
from Distressed Jewell and for the bracelet, one again from DJ and another from Tim_in_Ohio.

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