Sail

Lonely white sail.

Today the picture turned out differently than I had planned. I was going to do something with two colors, a dark blue and yellow. But as I was cutting paper I started to get the idea of a boat. Of course that led my brain to a poem by Mikhail Lermontov called Sail.

It is about a lone boat far from home sailing in some foreign sea. I’ve always liked the poem because of the last line. And he, defiantly, asks for a storm. As if in storms there is peace.

Personally, I never go out of my way looking for storms. Yet, somehow they seem to find us all the same. While going through life’s trials we often overlook the benefit until some day when time has past and we can look back on them with a degree of introspection. It is then we find that some of the things that felt like they would break us actually made us into what we are. Admittedly, that isn’t always a good thing, we can let challenges make us bitter, but we can also choose to be a little wiser and more compassionate too. It’s really up to us.

I liked the fact that the boat says, in essence, “Bring it on!” And then with the ripping wind and crashing waves threatening to sink her seeks to find peace at the time of peril. Maybe one day I will be able to be like the boat instead of the screaming sailors who are tossed overboard.

About the water — I know it is usually blue, but the poem mentions the currents of light lavender, so that’s the color of the water today.

Outlet

Wait… What?

As I was moving pieces around and wondering what I was going to photograph today, the pieces started to remind me of an electrical outlet. I’m not really sure what you would plug into an outlet like this, maybe an e-bike or the alarm for a pirate treasure.

 

Dog

Honestly, I think it kind of looks like a googly eyed rabbit.

I won’t lie. This isn’t my greatest picture ever, but I wasn’t full of ideas today so a paper dog with a googly eye was about all I could come up with.

Ice

Food coloring on ice does different things then on water.

I expected that the food coloring would spread out on the ice (or the layer of melting water on the top) like it does in water. I was surprised when it found cracks and things to creep into.

Sometimes I just experiment with ideas. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. I’m not sure where I categorize this one. I think it is interesting what happened but I’m not sure anyone else will find it interesting or appealing to look at. That is one of the risks that you take when you share something with other people though. Sometimes you are misunderstood, sometimes you just aren’t interesting to them, and sometimes you are a great success.

With the odds clearly not in your favor, in terms of outcomes, it can be easy to not want to share. It is much easier to just do nothing and not risk the rejection. I wish I could say that I didn’t feel that way, but I do. It would be nice if I didn’t think about others’ opinions, but I do that too. If only I didn’t really care about this project, it would be so easy to just post and not worry, but unfortunately, the project is meaningful to me, which just makes it that much harder to share. No one wants to share something personal with people who will possibly mock it or even worse, be indifferent to it.

Regardless, I will keep working on this project for the next few months and keep hoping that someone else finds it meaningful.

Puzzle

Let’s see… I think this piece goes here.

There’s a reason that puzzles aren’t made of clay.

Sometimes life is like a puzzle. Sometimes a piece just looks like it won’t work but when you fill in all the other pieces around it you find that it does fit. There are times that you know exactly where a piece should go and then it just doesn’t fit and you can’t figure out why. Eventually, the pieces all go together and form a picture. With a puzzle you know what the picture is supposed to look like going in. Life doesn’t work that way. We get parts of it put together and think we know what the picture will be, but then something happens and we have to work on a different part of it and it looks totally different. And that part of the puzzle often seems unrelated or out of place with the rest until we have some time to work through it and find out how it fits with the whole picture.

I believe that things will work out. It often isn’t how we want it to or how we planned it, but if we keep moving forward, somehow things end up alright.

Apple

Because tomorrow pie.

I know that most people will be eating pumpkin pie tomorrow, but I prefer apple. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I feel like I have a lot to be thankful for. I think I should just list a few:

1 I have a good family and friends.

2 I have my health.

3 I get a long weekend this week.

I could go on and list a lot more things that I am grateful for, but I don’t want to post them here. Instead I will spend some time tonight and tomorrow considering the many things I count as blessings and hope that you will take some time to do the same.

Foot Springs

We’ve all heard of handsprings, but these are foot springs

These are the springs from a pedal. I get to go ride my bike with my friends tonight which is good. It’s one of many things I have to be thankful for. So I thought I should just post a picture with a message of gratitude today.

Spindle

On her eighteenth birthday she will prick her finger on a spindle… Hey cool bike.

Wouldn’t sleeping beauty have been a way better story if it had been a bike instead of a spinning wheel? But then the king would have banned all bikes. Sad.

Of course you couldn’t really prick your finger on a spindle like this, you’d have to do something like skewer your ankle and the road rash, well prince charming wouldn’t have found that very attractive.

Maybe the story is ok the way it is.