Buenos Días Paella! … I Mean Oranges! … I Mean Valencia!!

// November 29th, 2011 // 4 Comments » // illustration, painting

 

Todays Ephemeral Adventurer is about to touch down in Valencia, the ‘Bright City’.

 

Valencia is the birth place of Paella and famous for sweet oranges, stunning beaches, Medieval churches, and for hosting America’s Cup Yacht races (yawn).

 

Bonus Fun Fact: Valencia oranges are delicious, and have nothing to do with Valencia. They were hybridized by some farmer in Santa Ana, California.

 

Noticing Mondays: The Word Count Is Not What Counts

// November 28th, 2011 // 5 Comments » // Uncategorized, writing, writing ideas

Noticing Mondays is a weekly event on this blog where I discuss my mindful writing practice of ‘noticing’ and encourage you to join in. What’s noticing? Well, here’s the twitter version:

 

Comfy? Good. Start writing whatever you’re experiencing right now: sights/sounds/feelings/thoughts/etc. Stuck? Write ‘noticing …’ continue

 

And this post has a slightly longer version

 

*****

 

I’ve tried different kinds of writing meditation practice before, and had trouble keeping them up as a regular thing. Partly because a lot of them have a goal like hitting a certain word count, or number of pages.

 

I decided early on with noticing that I wouldn’t do that to myself. Most of my noticings are actually quite short, a page or so in my smallish notebok, often less.

 

Sometimes they go on for a couple of pages, even hitting that magical three page mark recommended for morning pages. But it’s not like that days practice is any better, or deeper, for hitting that mark.

 

Each time I sit down and do some noticing I’m connecting with myself, through the act of writing what I’m experience in this moment. That’s what counts. When noticing where I am and what I’m feeling and thinking, the act of writing becomes the act of returning to myself.

 

So often, writing can be a way of shutting myself out, of ignoring my body and what I’m experiencing in order to think up and capture a stream of words from my thoughts alone.

 

That can be a useful way to write sometimes, but there’s a cost to it. When I write that way, the words can feel disconnected and lifeless. They count less and when it’s over, I’m glad to have finished but rarely interested in reading what I’ve just written.

 

When I write even a paragraph of noticing my life is there in the words as lived experience spilling onto the page, the details fresh and heightened so that when rereading it a day, a week, a month later, the warmth of the room, the feel of the carpet beneath my feet, light filtering through the room, all come back to me and I get a second, or third taste of that.

 

It doesn’t matter that I didn’t hit 750 or a thousand words, or use up two, three, four pages in my notebook. I have a small time capsule on the page mapping out where I was and what was going on in that moment. Through words, the world in that moment is folded up like a small origami figure, mine to unfold and refold over and over.

 

Here’s an excerpt from this morning’s noticing session:

 

“Noticing a soft, silvery light outside. From the lilac tree, colored Christmas lights glow like small specks against the mossy branches. Everything is still and wet outside. Noticing how, despite the grey and wet day, the yard seems light. The birch tree’s bark is peeling in places revealing tender pink patches of wood. Everything seems vulnerable and open.”

 

*****

 

How You Can Join In:

 

 

Everyone is welcome to join in in whatever way you like.

 

First of all if you haven’t done noticing, you can check out the brief instructions in this post.

 

Then … You could hang out in the comments section and share your own experiences and ideas.

 

If you have a blog, you might like to do a little noticing experiment in a post, or write about your experience with noticing, and leave a link! I’d love to go and check it out and leave a comment.

 

Of course, you could check-in and read the posts and never comment, just hang out and play quietly with your own noticing practice. (I’ve always been a shy commenter, and that’s my preferred way of hanging out on a lot of blogs.)

 

Even though posts are titled ‘Noticing Mondays’ they are there to capture any noticing, or ‘noticing noticings’ that might come up for you (or me!) throughout the week!

 

You could also post mini noticing sessions, or noticing exerpts on twitter or google+. (Use #noticing hashtag so I can respond!)

Jizo Bodhisattva: Study

// November 23rd, 2011 // 2 Comments » // painting

Here’s a change in direction for the Art Every Day Month challenge, as I wanted to do something that also fitted the Illustration Friday theme for this week: Round.

 

I’ve been wanting to do a series on Jizo Bodhisattvas, they are a kind of Buddhist Deity / Saint. Jizo Statues are everywhere in Japan, often sitting alongside roads. Jizo Bodhisattvas are protectors of travellers and children, particularly unborn children, they offer support to beings as they journey through different worlds/incarnations.

 

This is a study using acrylics and bristol paper. I might be getting a few canvases to do the final paintings but this is a good way to play around a bit and work things out.

 

More ephemeral adventures tomorrow! If you’re enjoying the series, most of the artwork posted to my blog for Art Every Day Month is now available in my Etsy shop.

 

Paper Crane: Coming Home To Hirosaki

// November 16th, 2011 // 6 Comments » // painting

So, after much fussing and sketching I finally got a paper crane painting done for Art Every Day Month.

These are much more intimidating to do than the paper planes, but I really enjoy painting and drawing them. My wife knows how to fold paper cranes so we have a few scattered over the house, the boys love them.

Hirosaki was a medieval Castle town, which basically means a town built around a big old castle. The Japanese term for that is jokamachi (thank you Wikipedia). Hirosaki is also famous for apples, and is a favorite nesting site for migrating paper cranes. Believe it.

 

Noticing Mondays: Point Of Contact

// November 14th, 2011 // 7 Comments » // writing ideas

Noticing Mondays is a new weekly event on this blog where I discuss my mindful writing practice of ‘noticing’ and encourage you to join in.

 

*******

 

What’s noticing? Well, here’s the twitter version:

 

Comfy? Good. Start writing whatever you’re experiencing right now: sights/sounds/feelings/thoughts/etc. Stuck? Write ‘noticing …’ continue

 

 

And this post has a slightly longer version

 

 

The first thing that fascinated me about noticing when I began was the way that it seemed to ground me. I took up noticing as a way of overcoming the anxious feelings that overwhelm me when I write. All I asked of it was that I could just get some momentum going so that the anxiety wouldn’t keep me completely blocked.

 

What I found was that ‘noticing’ seemed to loosen the anxiety and tension I was feeling.

 

I would start noticing how anxious I was and move on to something else, then I would come back to the anxiety and notice that it had lessened. As I went through this process a number of times, I started to see that there was a link to noticing the physical sensations I was feeling, and that they would change as I noticed them.

 

This is the single biggest gift I’ve got from noticing so far.

 

Here’s one of the ways I’m working with that at the moment.

 

Points of Contact

 

When I’m noticing, at some point I’ll often focus my attention on the points where my body comes into contact with other things: a chair, the floor, the edge of the desk, keyboard, clothing. Simply noticing anything that is making contact with me and what my experience of that is.

 

What I find is that I become more aware of points of comfort and discomfort in my body, and either rest into those points, or adjust the points where I am uncomfortable.

 

I’ll usually do this exercise and make any adjustments I need to get more comfortable, then move on to some other kind of noticing, what’s around me, or thioughts that may come up, then after a while I will often come back and do another sweep of the points of contact to see if anything has shifted.

 

Here’s an exerpt from one of my noticing sessions this week where I spent a few minutes noticing while sitting on the stairs in my home:

 

‘noticing the hard line of pressure against my back where the step is digging in, the sensation is solid, and it feels like the step is pushing forward into me rather than me pushing into it. Like there’s movement there, or something. Now I’m shifting my back forward a little to lessen the pressure.

 

Noticing the warmth of the wood beneath thesoles of my feet, this step feels soft and yeilding. Another step presses lightly against the mid-point of my calves. It’s stronger against my right calf, barely noticeable against my left.

 

My notebook rests on the top of my thighs, it’s light except for where my hand rests as I’m writing. I can feel that pressure moving as my hand shifts across the page. noticing the thumb on my left hand pressing down on the page, holding my notebook steady, and how the opposite corner of my notebook shudders lightly as I write, I feel the stuttering contact up near my right knee.’

 

This went on for a while and there was a bit of shifting around to get comfortable and I noticed some subtler things (like the movement of the notebook as I was writing ) that I would normally never really be aware of.

 

Focusing awareness on my body has a grounding effect, and it’s something that I forget too easily when I write.
I’ve found noticing the points of contact an interesting exercise because it gets my awareness focused on my body in a way that is different each time–noticing my posture, what I’m sitting on and how I’m sitting on it, what I might be leaning against, or holding–the experience is always different.

 

How You Can Join In:

 

Everyone is welcome to join in in whatever way you like.

 

First of all if you haven’t done noticing, you can check out the brief instructions in this post.

 

Then … You could hang out in the comments section and share your own experiences and ideas.

 

If you have a blog, you might like to do a little noticing experiment in a post, or write about your experience with noticing, and leave a link! I’d love to go and check it out and leave a comment.

 

Of course, you could check-in and read the posts and never comment, just hang out and play quietly with your own noticing practice. (I’ve always been a shy commenter, and that’s my preferred way of hanging out on a lot of blogs.)

 

Even though posts are titled ‘Noticing Mondays’ they are there to capture any noticing, or ‘noticing noticings’ that might come up for you (or me!) throughout the week!

 

You could also post mini noticing sessions, or noticing exerpts on twitter or google+. (Use #noticing hashtag so I can respond!)

Paper Crane Study

// November 10th, 2011 // 7 Comments » // creativity

So, for today’s Art Every Day Month offering I’m posting some study sketches of paper cranes. I’m going to try a few of these out for my ‘ephemeral adventurer’ series of art cards, they’ll be joining the paper planes, paper boats, and paper lanterns. I enjoy drawing the cranes, they’re not as complicated as I thought they’d be, so a few more study sketches and then I’ll try one out with the paints.

 

And while we’re on the subject of paper cranes, here is a link to my old paper crane poem, which is at least partially responsible for the idea behind the series of paintings I’m working on this month:  Letter Written On A Paper Crane