Just a second

‘Just a second. I don’t want to throw them away yet.’ I remarked to my husband while we were cleaning the kitchen and reorganizing it to accommodate my functioning with two frozen shoulders. The plates and cups moved out of cupboards to lower surfaces and the pots now are within reach for hands that somehow it seems became shorter in the space of just few months. I had my grip measured today by the physiotherapist and while his grip was as strong as 56kg, mine was as much as a round 0 so I’m cooking in lighter pots now and I’m trying to surround myself with soft and delicate objects to touch, wrap myself in and sleep on too. I notice that soft fabrics ease the pain immensely as I suppose the nervous system is running this show as much as the joints, muscles and bones.

My camera work has taken a back seat for a moment. I am quite frightened of the camera’s weight and the repercussions of holding it for too long and too high but nothing is ever lost for the stubborn-hearted, right? I am using the time to make some sensible rearrangements that support creative with restricted hand movements. I’ll write a few posts on this soon. It is tough. I’ll be honest. Very tough at times and I’m cursing and crying sometimes at once and of course I fail not to mention the word ’embittered’ too many times to my friends while describing my moods. But then, I remind myself that I still have my index finger working quite well and, you know, photographers do not blame people, God or circumstances, they use this finger in different ways. So I remind myself to live by the standards of the profession and to search for the light. :)

Writing is taking me to various places at the moment. I have been trying to voice difficult thoughts to myself sensibly before I share them with others. Inner-dialogues have got this ability to get very complicated if left untreated, don’t you think?

My son has just started his secondary school and it pleases me to see him searching for his literary voice and that he is indeed enjoying his English homework. There is something about working with a dictionary that gives us rest and reassurance. All of a sudden everything has a meaning..

How have you been lately?

Personal ‘wows’

I have been working with a borrowed macro lens this week that is going back to its owner soon. Hence this abundance in macro photography here. I’m enjoying it more than I expected and it pleases me to play with different forms and styles. I see great limitations to my craft here though – on the macro front – and great possibilities at the same time for dreamy illustrative work and wall art.

This exercise, as usually, is prompting a few conversations in my head about personal ‘wows’ that perhaps are more derailing than demanding. But then.. a long time ago I complained about my inability to deal with disappointments in the process of creation so I’m on a mission again.. of finding balance and an honest appraisal of my skills.

And as always, I think about consumerism and in this case about borrowing things.. or rather having to return things quickly. I’ll be honest. I do not like borrowing things – mainly because my children destroy things and then I end up paying for them anyway as I do not like returning items with scribbles on, dolls with hair-cuts, broken lenses.. you get the gist. Well… in this case… the lens needs to be returned soon and I am trying to be very careful and what I have noticed that out of this borrowing creative abundance flows and it makes me happy. I even wonder if I should be borrowing pens.. would I write more then as long as the pen has a return date on.

How have you been lately?

May be an image of scorpion grass and nature

15 s

Worth the effort?

While the Internet is flooding with messages of growth, renewal and resurrection, we are not there yet… really. We are still in darkness and we think that we will remain in it. Despite the promise, there is no certainty. Anticipation only, perhaps, on the shoulders of those who have never lost hope…

‘Why not to die on the cross for others?’ Jesus said not to Himself. But he did it. Because someone else said so.

He thought it was worth the effort. Do we?

Waste to Art: Guest Post on Laudato Si Blog

Yesterday, I was privileged to contribute my post to Laudato Si blog that is full of great green tips and explores the Christian calling to care for our common home.

Here is an extract to the blog post. Link to the full text below.

A long time ago, inspired by a blogger from Australia, Sash Milne, I started a Nothing New Project, i.e. I tried not to buy anything new for a year, to decrease waste and increase living. While back then I felt quite virtuous about living that way, there was nothing too virtuous about the way I live now, as if back then I stretched myself too far and snapped like a bandana that children get for the Remembrance Day in the UK. When you do a project like that, that forces you to reduce your buying and question every moment when you open your wallet and reach for a coin not out of poverty but out of restraint, you either learn to love yourself as you are, without the gadgets and extra consumption and you learn to live differently or you feel somewhat destabilized because you locked yourself out of participation in the prevailing culture, i.e. the culture of consumerism. Oh, and one more thing, you can also develop the maturity to make yourself accountable for the trail of waste that falls behind you but, in all honesty, this wasn’t the learning outcome that I have satisfactorily reached and consolidated. To consistently swim against the current, you have to decide to consistently swim against the current and that is hard.
What the Nothing New project showed me is that I by and large go through life inattentively, to the shouts of waste that brutally lurk in the shadows of my life or blatantly ‘shine’ on display in my house – as if the psyche couldn’t quite handle the tension between wanting more and needing less. I go through life with an ecological heart that is neither pure nor faithful to the principles of ecological teaching, but I still have hope for myself and the humanity – that we will make progress. Read more..