Love to color? Think RubberMoon.

From my first purchased stamp, somewhere back in the 1980s, what I loved best about stamping was coloring in the images.  Fine-point Le Plume pens, mostly Berol Prismacolor Pencils.  When I was given the opportunity to design stamps, my focus was on designs that would be fun to color.

I've seen many mentions of the current enthusiasm for adult coloring books and a friend (thank you, Jean) just sent me a link to the reasons why coloring is good for us.  I've known that for decades.

The artists at RubberMoon have been, and still are, creating stamps to delight all of us coloring types.  I am sharing some of my designs here as illustrations.  The RubberMoon roster is filled with colorable (is this a word?  it needs to be) images.  Best part, RubberMoon is what we call in the stamping business an Angel Company, meaning anything you make using a RubberMoon stamp and not a copy of any sort you may offer for sale with our blessings.  Greeting cards, tags, with vibrantly colored-by-you designs.  Hmmmm.

At the company website, images are best viewed by clicking on Shop By Artist link, this is mine.  Allow yourself time to browse and choose from among hundreds of varied, versatile stamps.   Let every thought narrow down to the point of the pen.  You get the idea.  (Images are greatly enlarged here.  The original sizes leave plenty of room to color.) 

Word of the Week - 75

Painting by J.M.W. Turner, "Snow-storm - Steamboat off a Harbour's Mouth." c. 1842

Painting by J.M.W. Turner.

Word of the Week:  HOMESICK

The homesickness of childhood, a harrowing first summer at camp or visit to the grandparents with distant relatives, even riding in their Cadillac, is of a different species than the homesicknesss of a more advanced age.

The longing for family and what is familiar, one's own bed and one's stuff, may give a context for the more existential version of the affliction as I have come to recognize it.  I don't know if it is normal or pathological, the yearning for safe harbor, calm seas, reassurance and an external steadiness that life seldom offers.

Not a constant state, at least not a conscious one, this form of homesickness may be for something never experienced but dreamed of, idealized, sought.  It may be for the return to an earlier time when, whether it actually was or not, existence seemed less fraught with uncertainty.

Jobs and paychecks are more illusion than reality.  A roof of one's own is not a forever promise, nothing on the material plane is.

Home is a quiet mind.  It is the willingness to lean into faith in the face of so few guarantees.  It is acknowledging how much is unknown and uncontrollable and taking the next step anyway or standing still for a time, collecting my wits and other vulnerable parts.  It is a refusal to be swept away by fear or despair, by all the answers I don't have.

We are pieceworkers, patching together security blankets out of what we can gather, out of what we know to be true and lasting - beauty, love without expectations, serenity and an extensive collection of files detailing everything that ever, against great odds, turned out well, evidence of good outcomes.

It is important for me to know and name this yearning.  Otherwise, terror wins and I feel myself leaving this moment for tomorrow's shadowy corners.  Yes, it is a rocket ride to someplace I've never been.  It just might be home.

Happy Birthday, Little Blog

It is a week to think of friends, one just departed, to ponder the connections that flourish and endure because friendship is grace.  To all who stop here to read, perhaps comment,  my deep appreciation.  Today is Blog's 7th birthday.  In the past I called it an anniversary.  Today we have candles.  If I'm very lucky, a bit of cake may appear. 

What better way to mark an event than with a new-to-me artist.  JiHyeon Lee and her soul-nourishing, wordless book POOL.

In Maria Popova's exploration of POOL (see link above), Neil Gaiman is quoted as saying, "Behind every pair of eyes, there's somebody like us."  Thank you for being here, for returning.  Please put sprinkles on everything today, with my blessing.

Word of the Week- 74

"Arthur and the Triplets Waiting for a Letter from the Mailman."  (from the Babar stories)

Word of the Week:  WAIT

Patience, more a virtue than ever.  The willingness to wait for whatever is desired but not yet here seems to appeal to very few.  We wait for so much.  Mostly I feel as though I wait for myself.

I wait for guidance, for information, for clarity.  I've stopped hurrying.  I allow matters to unfold in quiet and calm, if possible.  If my inner wisdom is not a shrieking, "DO IT NOW, " I will do it later.  There was an article this week - somewhere - about procrastination not being only the refuge of slackers and layabouts.  The article suggested there was wisdom at work when decisions were postponed, immediate action deferred.

(From the album, "The 2,000 Year Old Man" by Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks)

Carl: Sir, could you give us the secret of your longevity?

Mel: Well, the major thing, the major thing is that I never, ever 
touch fried food. I don't eat it, I wouldn't look at it, and I 

don't touch it. And I never run for a bus. There'll always be 

another. Even if you're late for work, you know, I never run 

for a bus. I never ran. I just strolled, jaunty-jolly, walking 

to the bus stop.

------------------------------------------------------------------ 

It seems the popularly-held belief is that we miss so much by delaying, delaying anything.  I don't understand how this can be a universal truth.  Since we have no way of knowing what even the next moment holds, how can we be certain that not taking the trip, not seeing the movie, not rushing out in pursuit of 12 seemingly essential activities will cause us lifelong regret.  I have no "bucket list" and the name itself gives me hives.  We can be led astray by our wants, just as we can be inspired by them.

I am not one of the universe's bold children, I never have been.  Yes, I've done rash and foolish things, been incautious in dangerous ways.  The luck of fools or an army of guardian angels.  Haste is not my ally.  Answers DO come, or if they don't I assume there is no answer.  Rilke's* urging that we live the questions is my norm.  At times it seems to be only questions held loosely together by gravity.  Wait, is what I interpret him saying.  Wait.

* “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

 

When one door closes, there's always FANFICTION

Enzo Cilenti as Mr. Childermass.

Bertie Carvel as Jonathan Strange.

Very dark indeed describes two knights so recently found, then lost, when the BBC miniseries in which they appeared concluded.  JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL (yes, let's use all caps) was a story into which one could disappear, pulling their imagination behind them before the portal closed.  As I have not read the book upon which the program was based, I hoped wildly that episode 7 was not the finale but merely the end of the first season.  Alas.  No more Bertie Carvel at his disheveled best, no more of Enzo Cilenti's cheeky disregard of orders from his so-called betters.

Across the past several years, however, I learned from my son about the existence of fanfiction,  a refuge for disappointed viewers of, among other things, concluded television shows.   And what storylines the amateur screenwriter could restore to life, if one cared to.  I will not go and find out if there is fanfiction for Jonathan Strange.  There are things we may be better off not knowing, such as the truth of what happened to Lady Pole (if you haven't seen the program, as you can guess I recommend it with embarrassing enthusiasm and will try not to give anything away).

My son tells me that, in rare instances, fanfiction may have opened up real screenwriting opportunities.  No promises, no guarantees, perhaps a foot across a threshold.  Most notable in this category is (see linked Wikipedia article) 50 Shades of Gray which began as fanfiction for the Twilight  movie series.

Such is not my path.  The writer who creates original, compelling work deserves better than to have his or her characters hijacked and shoved around to suit the expectations of dissatisfied customers.  As a genuine senior citizen who has learned the world cannot be made over to match what I think it ought to be, I find something familiar, if not exactly comforting, when an entertainment from which I receive so much pleasure comes to an end.  Let a bit of time elapse, then go back and watch or read it again, either remembering or forgetting important events.  See/read it often enough and it becomes part of us, full strength, just as we fell in love with it.

When the Harry Potter books were at their peak of popularity, my son told that one reporter's suggested answer to the question girls so often asked of J.K. Rowling, "What happens to Harry Potter?" was, "He grows us and marries YOU.  Okay?"   I am nearly content to leave Jonathan Strange, Mr. Norrell and the beautifully enigmatic Mr. Childermass, with his tarot cards, to find their way without me.   I know we'll meet again.

Word of the Week - 73

Art by Sonya Fu.

Painting, "Swing Sleep," by Bob Walkenhorst.

Word of the Week:  BALLAST

Not just for ships or hot air balloons, ballast, generally, is that which gives stability.  For me that means sleep of a deep and dreaming sort.  It means ample quiet, not doing more than one thing at a time if I can help it, an absence of chaos, remembering how many reasons I have to be grateful.  It means love and kindness among family, friends and people I don't yet know well.  It is slow and glad, it smiles at beauty and humor.  It can no longer tolerate exchanges which lack harmony.  It rejoices at good news, weeps when sad and wishes sugar wasn't so seductive. 

My ballast, my stability is solid in its softness.  Patience with all I could find to criticize about myself may seem a curious stability.  It is ballast in the most basic definition:  it keeps me on an even keel.  I begin to hiss and spark when I take up dissatisfaction with my essential being.  Finding fault with self or another is the unbalanced load in the old washing machine.  The shrill whine and thudding can be heard all over the neighborhood.

It smells like freesias or the older vintage scent Femme or fresh mint.  It tastes like iced decaf mocha or a perfectly ripe mango.  The soul is shored up with what might seem like magic spun on fairy looms but is really as simple as a cotton shirt dried on a clothesline next to the honeysuckle vine before the sun is very high.  It is the wading pool filled with cold water fresh from the hose, the discovery of an Earth-like planet deep in space, it is snail mail from a friend, something that was lost being found.  We grow stable and centered through the appearance of miracles, through wonder, through joy.  Float on, steady as she goes.

Feathers

Thanks for photo and link to Scott's LA audio tours, where you can hear the parrots.

I have mentioned before that our Los Angeles-adjacent neighborhood is home to a rowdy flock of wild Amazon parrots.  The other morning, as two of them bounced and scooted around a utility wire,  a scuffle ensured, the result of which was a lime green feather floating toward the ground.  As my mind wandered during meditation, I remembered that, for a brief time in the early 90s, I made ceremonial art using found feathers.  The source of these objects was my father who discovered them on walks along back roads near his coastal home.  He'd save each in #10 envelope upon which he wrote, in his famously illegible hand, the place and type of bird.  Many of them were raptors which enjoyed good hunting in the hills above Cambria.

The meditation, part of the grace and gratitude program, today mentioned the bounty of nature as a cause for gratefulness.  Here on our suburban street color alone is enough to bring gladness.  Between the parrots and, this time of year, the yellow blossoms from the Cassia leptophylla tree which often land on my doorstep, not to mention the backdrop of blue sky, a Berol pencil type can sigh with pleasure.

Cassia leptophyll, the same sort that grows outside our studio window.  Learn more here.

Because of their leaf blower-volume, frenzied screeching, most intense around 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. in the summer, my son began calling the parrots The Children of the Night, now shortened to The Children.  They are frequently the center ring attraction to which the ringmaster has called our attention, while lesser-billed creatures like ground squirrels, mourning doves, various songbirds and crows perform around the edges.  The crows are not content for long to be a novelty act and soon clear the general area for themselves.

But what began this was the feathers, modest stacks of envelopes which arrived in batches, then my sawing and drilling branches from a neighbor's trimmed tree and binding the feathers to them as a prayer fan from which dangled talismans of flight and journey.  I love the mind's neglected doors from which even an abbreviated meditation can clear the rust and cobwebs.