More updates from the trenches

Whew! I just finished hand binding four journals for my Imagineering workshop's Visual Journaling participants. This'll be my first workshop ina series of workshop focused on rediscovering creativity. I'm really psyched about it!

My hands are sore from punching holes on the 80lbs. paper I used for the journals. They turned out well. I'm pleased. I hope my students will like them. I also had an epiphany, why don't I sell these? Will factor it into my already filled up creative calendar.

I really should cut down on my teaching load so I can do all these things. I keep reminding myself that I have two completion papers to write on tope of getting my thesis top of my thesis topic proposal. Sigh!

More later. I'm off to finish the rest of the kit, or what I can of it.

Foregiveness

I'm not sure where to start on this matter as it is still only a concept to me. I'm still in the process of learning its varied facets.

I came across this topic on Paul's spiritual diablog and I started thinking about my progress or my lack thereof.

Almost two years ago I decided to live on my own believing that being away from my source of grief I would be able to recover enough to achieve some spiritual healing and thus be able to learn a little more about forgiving my past hurts. The universe, alas, have other ideas and I found myself in a circumstance that not only tested my construct of forgiveness but also of friendship and self worth.

Without going into details, I've been ruminating on several issues concerning forgiveness along with other issues related to it and these are some of them.

When I decided to move on from a current or past hurt, I realized forgiveness is part of accomplishing that goal. However, deciding to forgive and accomplishing it are two different matters. I thought making the decision forgive is the first step towards achieving that end and that the rest of the process will reveal itself to me as I go along. After all intentions shapes one's experience, according to Gary Zukav.

My issue at the moment, one that I seem to still be stuck on for the last year and half, is how does one achieve forgiveness when the ones who have hurt you in the past continually hurts you every time you see them. As it turns out there really is no respite from it so my original idea distance being a key factor in recovery seems to be a dud.

I've realized that the reason why my offenders keep hurting me is because I am vulnerable to them. This vulnerability stems from the fact that their words and opinion matter to me. This also means that despite all that I have learned about self worth and self respect, I still need their approval. Otherwise I could just invoke the dictum, "Sticks and stones may hurt my bones..." and I’d continue to move along.

How does one go about fortifying one's sense of self worth and self confidence enough so that one becomes oblivious to the ill opinion of one's family or people one regards as friends? Is it really possible to insulate oneself from such hurts? Isn’t pain part of the lesson of forgiveness as well as betrayal and love?

I thought I’ve managed to figure out the former as I thought friendship have a self-appointed-shelf-life, which depends on mutuality and some form of set conditions but this part of my belief system is also in flux at the moment. As for the latter, I have a sneaking suspicion that a person is always vulnerable to one’s family because of unconditional love. It is this lack of condition that gives this relationship its free-fall-nature and thus places one in a constantly vulnerable position emotionally because it is part of our genetic code to love family members no matter how they treat us.

Does this mean then that the only thing a person should do is to turn one’s back from one’s oppressors whether they’re friend or family? Can one really do this? Does this not mean that a person has turned one’s back on the karmic circumstances that has been dealt to them? The karmic lesson that is to be learned then from that circumstance will be forfeited and will therefore be delivered in a more compounded manner?

I am baffled by this probability and also quite fearful of it. However, although I do not intend to carry along the burden that is the result of not forgiving I am still in the process of figuring out how to navigate this tumultuous path towards spiritual healing.

It seems like there are more questions than answers at the moment. Perhaps these questions are part of the lessons too and so it continues…

Blue Wednesday

I'm not reporting for work today. My head feels like lead and my eyes won't focus. Fatigue and life, really has caught up. Happily though, I'm catching up on my backlogs steadily now that Mercury has gone direct. No more delays and mishaps.

More later. I'm going back to bed to sleep this off. Perhaps my mind will turn out better stuff than this current sludge.

Coming up for air

Whew! I've finally been able to come for air after nights of staying past 1 AM laboring over the details of a portrait doll I'm making as a comission for a friend.

The wig gave me a bit of a problem but I think I was able to manage it well enough to install it tonight. Regretably though, I'm afraid it's not the same hairstyle as the person who's portrait this doll is supposed to be. I can't quite seem to get the naughty impish look I'm aiming for either.

I'm going back to work on her after I finish this post. Hopefully I'll be able to post jpgs of herwithin the week.

Meanwhile, I'm still figuring out how how to manage my time between the comission works which are steadily coming in trickles, the upcoming creatitivty workshop early next month and the two completion papers that are due by the end of this semester among other things.

I'm trully torn between devoting more time to art production and the completion of my master's degree. When I started on the program I was quite sure I knew why I chose art theory and criticism. I thought this area of study would help me sort out the varied contradictions I have about art and it's significance to me. Now that I'm only a thesis away from it's completions (plus the 2 papers I've mentioned earlier) I'm even more conflicted.

I started out looking for answers to several questions about the true value of art to me and to whoever will be coming accross my work. I realized that my personal significance is more valuable to me that how others will regard my work or the text of my work.

All this digging into the myriad of ways of reading text has informed me of different methods and devices for producing text. As to how I'm going to turn this realization into a topic for a masteral thesis that is plausible is another matter.

At the moment I neither have the inclination nor the desire to work on my thesis. This realization alone is what's giving energy to what augustine calls the inertia beast.

As far as I'm concerned, what I've set out to accomplish when I went into this field of study has already been accomplished. These realizations alone however does not earn me a master's degree. And so I labor to convince myself to push on with this endeavor for completion if only just for the sake of completion.

Perhaps I'm not really that much in the dark about all this and that I merely need to look at all this another way, as James parents would suggest (james & The Giant Peach).

More discoveries!

I've just been going through natalie's pages and discovered her Thoughts illustrations and decided to post it here. Everyone would benefit from it so here's a glimpse of it.


Okay, back to work on Moppet's boots. Will upload images of her soon so youd know what i"m talking about.

I'm back.

Whew! I'm finally back. My phone line was down for a couple of days. It's finally fixed and am able to post.

Its been crazy. I've been trying to finish two dolls but my body just isn't responding to my will. Those 2 am bedtime of several days have finally taken it's toll. It's like only my face is awake and the rest of me have taken a snooze without telling me. Sorry Moppet. I was hoping to finish it in time for your flight back to Cal.

Meanwhile I was happy to have visited natalie I discovered The Writer as a result. Thanks, Nat.

I'm going back to bed and waking up early to go back to work on it.

Notes from trenches

Whew! I'm finally able to post after I've recovered the details of my accoutn here. Wa-ha-ha!

Everything seems like a blur witht he semester in full swing and the prelim exams just last week.


This is Li'l Delirium. More pictures of recent works here.

I've been busy with comissions and preparations for journaling and bookbiniding classes next month too.

I've also discovered the blogs of other interesting and wonderful artists (blaugustine) and am now oficially a blogger. Woohoo!

I'll post more when I'm able to get the hang of this.