Tag: Blog

What do we do to talk more: painting and phone/ Co robimy by rozmawiać więcej: malowanie i telefon?

Gratitude for time to talk and create

One of the things that I do with my daughter is painting. She is 6 at the moment and loves creative expression. To talk about colours, mixing and cleaning brushes covered with oil paints, we sat down at our dining table, lied down a huge white canvas and painted together with old dry and new brushes, wooden blocks and all available fingers and tools at hand. After the session at the table, we hang the painting, took a photo and edited the screenshot in a photo app on my phone using available filters and tools erasing parts of the photo, smudging it or camouflaging some elements of the photo. Talking while creating is very natural to us so we were able to create a nice conversational flow focused on filling up the empty canvas. Try this too and show us your creations. 🙂

Jedną z rzeczy, które robię z moją córką, jest malowanie. W tej chwili ma 6 lat i uwielbia twórczą ekspresję. Aby porozmawiać o kolorze, mieszaniu, czyszczeniu pędzli z farby olejnej w zeszły piątek usiadłyśmy przy stole w jadalni, rozłożyłyśmy ogromne białe płótno i pomalowałyśmy je razem używająć starych i nowych pędzli, drewnianymi klockó i wszystkimi narzędziami, które miełyśmy pod ręką. Po sesji przy stole powiesiłyśmy obraz, zrobiłyśmy zdjęcie i edytowałyśmy zrzut ekranu w aplikacji fotograficznej w telefonie za pomocą dostępnych filtrów i narzędzi wymazujących części zdjęcia, rozmazujących je lub kamuflujących różne elementy zdjęcia. Rozmowa podczas tworzenia jest dla nas bardzo naturalna, więc udało nam się stworzyć przyjemny przepływ konwersacyjny skoncentrowany na wypełnieniu pustego płótna. Gorąco polecam wszystkim.

Zachęcam do eksperymentów i pokażcie nam swoje prace!

Pozdrawiamy,

Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini i córka Gabi

First published by my on my other site: Accomplished Squirrel dedicated to multilingual communication.

Take me beyond forgiveness / Zabierz mnie poza przebaczenie (bilingual English-Polish post)

Take me beyond forgiveness
.

POEM

Take me beyond forgiveness
Where love ends all quarrels
And gratitude replenishes hands
Tired of work
For nothing
So it seems…

Take me beyond forgiveness
Where I understand the concept
of a nutrient
without doubting its worth or value
and I clean
and I eat
wisdom for breakfast
and love for dinner.
With you.

QUESTION TO PONDER

If you were to take yourself beyond forgiveness, where would you take yourself?

Who is ‘you’ for you?

What would be on your wisdom plate?

Acknowledgment: I first saw poetry combined with questions in the book 21 Spotkań. These questions lead to individual insight. Click here to see. It was written by Maciej Bennewicz and Katarzyna Zaremba. Both psychologists create poetic dialogues and work with metaphors that aid individual growth and self-understanding. The more humble I become, the more I grow in the appreciation of this approach.

May is a mental health awareness month and I would like to strengthen us all using my talents today in a similar manner. I learnt yesterday that a friend of mine died being only 48. She loved travelling and this blog too. I wish I had still a chance to eat a dinner with her. Travel. Keep on living. x

By engaging in this exercise you are practising these mental skills:

  • self-compassion
  • self-awareness
  • inner peace.

So if you were to take yourself beyond forgiveness, where would you take yourself?

Enjoy it.

POLISH TRANSLATION

WIERSZ

Zabierz mnie poza przebaczenie
Gdzie miłość kończy wszelkie kłótnie
A wdzięczność wypełnia dłonie
Zmęczone pracą
Za darmo
Na to wygląda…

Zabierz mnie poza przebaczenie
Gdzie rozumiem pojęcie
składnika odżywczego
nie wątpiąc w jego znaczenie i wartość
I już teraz sprzątam
i jem
Mądrość na śniadanie
i miłość do obiadu.
Z Tobą.

PYTANIE DO ROZWAŻENIA

Gdybyś miał/miała zabrać siebie poza przebaczenie, dokąd zabrałabyś siebie?

Co by było dla Ciebie mądrością na śniadanie?

Z kim jadłabyś obiad?

Podziękowanie: Po raz pierwszy zetknęłam się z poezją połączoną z pytaniami w książce “21 spotkań”. Te pytania prowadzą do wglądu we właną sprawczość. Kliknij tutaj, aby zopoznać się z książką. Autorami tekstu są Maciej Bennewicz i Katarzyna Zaremba. Obaj psychologowie tworzą poetyckie dialogi i pracują z metaforami, które pomagają w indywidualnym rozwoju i zrozumieniu siebie. Bardzo doceniam to podejście.

Maj jest miesiącem zwiększania świadomości na temat zdrowia psychicznego i chciałbym nas wszystkich wzmocnić, używając moich talentów w podobny sposób. Wczoraj dowiedziałem się, że moja przyjaciółka zmarła mając zaledwie 48 lat. Uwielbiała podróże i ten blog. Chciałbym mieć jeszcze szansę zjeść z nią obiad lub kolację. ”Podróżujcie. Żyjcie dalej.” powiedziałaby dziś. x

Angażując się w to ćwiczenie, ćwiczysz poniższe umiejętności:

  • współczucie dla siebie
  • samoświadomość
  • wewnętrzny spokój.

Warto?

Więc: Gdybyś miał/miała zabrać siebie poza przebaczenie, dokąd zabrałabyś siebie?

Front yard fairy-tales. Manifesting joy.

Hi beautiful souls,

How was your day? What you’ve been up to lately? I so rarely hear from you but you often hear from me. It would nice to hear from you. Who you are? Where you living now? What has awakened your heart recently? I am sending you a few photographs of our fairytale wonderland yard. They are still performing well against the darkness of the world. Making neighbours smile or wonder why they are still there. Wouldn’t it be lovely to get all our front yards’ decorations and place them all in our local park to make a magical fairytale land out of this world? Can you imagine children’s faces and all the wows exhaled with joys of laughter and fingers pointed: ‘Look at this!’ ‘Look at that?’ Maybe neighbours and local community centres would be up for it?

Sash Milne from Inked in Colour believed in the power of human connection and community. She planted a strong seed. Thank you for making the difference through your voice and writing, Sash. We can be resilient independently and we can be even more resilient together. Yes, we can.

And I was also thinking…

🙂

Sometimes magic is not readily available to everyone. Sometimes children cannot walk through the city or even ride through the city for various reasons. Sometimes it is because they have to stay at the hospital. And I think that they need magic too, so on the 24 December, trying to observe Polish tradition of having one more place at the table for a stranger I thought that no stranger would come really (they hardly ever come), but I thought to myself that I can be a stranger who makes someone feel better. And I think you can too. If you would like to.. so I wonder if you would like to manifest some hope and joy.. I have something in confidence to share or rather a recipe for joy to share. Good deeds are embarrassing to share but then The Gita for Children taught me this year that goodness leads to intelligence and it leads to knowledge. So perhaps you would like to do it too?

I bought these lovely aurora LED lights (click here to see) and I grabbed my second-hand copy of the book 100 Reasons to Hope. True stories of everyday heros (here) and I took them to our local hospital for the children on the inpatient ward to enjoy together with the nurses, doctors and other members of staff that were working during Christmas. The children’s team play coordinator was so moved. I felt I did the right thing and I’m feeling I am doing the right thing now too to share it with you. Maybe you would like to do the same for the children at your local hospital? Or others. Talk to your family and friends about it. Maybe they would like to do it together.

We have these lights at home too and we use them with my children of they are overly anxious or struggle to come down before going to sleep.

A bit of magic is so necessary when reality is too much to handle. Isn’t it?

Have a lovely week. X

Merry Christmas. Gratitude from a trail.

25. 12. 2024

Can you imagine our joy when we discovered a Brussels sprouts field and a flock of pheasants on our walk? Neither of them expected or planned. They felt like rewards for venturing beyond the comfort and warmth of the house when it was so tempting to be inside to make it all perfect for Christmas. We did not plan to make it all perfect for Christmas. We planned to go through it with good and steady pace that would render us less fragile and susceptible to germs in winter and would give us time and space for progressive clean-up. Haven’t quite succeeded at that as the younger one managed to catch a cold that has just developed into a 38.5 fever but we’re trying so I commend us for trying.

Back to the joy related to the Brussels sprouts field. I was thrilled. The kids even more. I felt someone was reminding us where the Christmas food was coming from and feeling both an awe and gratitude for those that must have worked very hard for these small green balls to appear on our table was a very natural response to have. All of a sudden the connection between what we eat and what is grown around us became very clear to the children. It was great to see it.

We walked a trail that we took years ago on a Mother’s Day but we took a slightly different route this time – one that guarantees an enormous amount of psychological space. I appreciate this so much. This feeling of being unobstructed by buildings, houses, objects, cars or people is life-giving. Our thoughts and anxieties need to be processed somewhere and when we travel through spaces like this one, they seem to be swimming away into a distance and it’s easier to detach.

I think I cannot live without vast spaces and open landscapes. The breathing spaces. That trail years ago was my treat and it remains so. With new routes discovered as we follow the children’s instincts and wishes. They discover paths, we agree to follow and in return we discover new vistas. It is a very fair arrangement. Well… as long as we don’t get lost and there is a safe path of return…

As for the pheasants, aren’t they mesmerizing? Always a joy to see one passing across a road, let alone to see a flock of them landing on a grass patch next to not-even-slightly bewildered sheep. You end up being twice surprised. First, with the number of pheasants appearing at once, a second time with the calmness of the resting sheep. ‘Haven’t you noticed what I have just noticed?’ You almost want to nudge them to get curious, to little or no avail.

Wherever you are, I hope you are relaxing now and if you fancy a bit of magic in your living room, to cater to children around you or your inner child, I recommend this magical relaxation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reRSAx2gwDA To bring the fairytale land inside your home or wherever you are right now.

Thank you, Dear Readers, for visiting Postcards Without Stamps. My gratitude today if for your presence and love of reading. I hope that every page you read will contribute to your greater well-being and you will accumulate strength, resilience and joy.

Merry Christmas.

Alicja

Photos taken at Tissington Trail, Derbyshire, UK.

In and out of the woods: coping with writing anxiety

The Society of Authors has recently justly expressed in ‘The Author The Journal of the Society of Authors’ its strong disapproval regarding authors’ work being sent to to A.I. generators to create texts for education. This is apparently frequently done without authors’ permissions or consultations. Similar doubts, I suspect, appear among online writers and bloggers who simply worry that their writing style, crafted for years, would be hacked into and reproduced in multiple ways depriving the original author of their well-earned and unique voice. These worries are of course not alien to me and I do often question online publishing knowing at the same time that a lack of online presence reduces greatly my own verbal productivity and outreach to minds that also like to create with words (or images). That said, on examining my own writing styles, I can simply say that I am also made out all that I read over the years and my own inner A.I. brain is defiantly activated when I read or hear good writing. Tuning into styles is very common for language learners and decoders and I think it is our common pleasure, just as artists like to create a bit in the style of someone.

A long time ago I attended a photography talk at a camera club given by Paul Mitchell on woodland photography. I do remember being very much inspired by his work. To copy Paul Mitchell is impossible but to embrace his appreciation of the subject does not require much, especially if you happen to grow up next to a forest but were somehow dissuaded from heading that direction and then felt cheated when the adults went there themselves just before Christmas to find evergreens to decorate. ‘So is the forest safe or unsafe to visit?’

I know what answer The Woodland Trust would give, especially when it comes to visiting their trees, ferns and fungi..

I have been writing for a while now some poetry and fiction that features little bits or significant elements of the woodland and I am overcoming my fear of being eaten by the A.I. monster. I hope you will find it enjoyable and I hope you will visit your nearest woodland soon before all the leaves are hijacked by the wind and pathways turn to mud.

Apparently, it’s going to be misty tomorrow… time to get the cameras ready.

Bye for now.

Poem

how sweet the sound of shadowed grass

made no disturbing threat unkind

how sweet the blacks on the bark unlit

that survived the wisdom

and the wit

of loving being so obtuse

that gave me no silence

no choice

but to refuse

the darkness so unkind to self

that went undone through childish maze

how kind of him to make me free

of liberty

to be all

I can be

i.e.

one

at

a

time…

Copyright Alicja Pyszka-Franceschini 2024

The poem forms part of the anthology ‘Bitter toes: Poems on Immaturity’ (title in development) or some other book of mine.