The Inner Workings of My Mind

photo credit creative commons license shinnythings

This is what happens to me between projects:

My mind goes dead.

I get totally stressed thinking what to make next. Then I remember to check my list.  Ahh, yes, that would be a good one to do now.

Look around the house to see if I have everything I need to do it.

No.

Damn.

OK, I’ll make more of these….and I do start, but I am not quite there.

Because I live on a mountain (hill) in the middle of nowhere, going out to get supplies is more complicated than it was when I lived in Tel-Aviv, for example. I have to plan it. I have to decide if I want to deal with looking for stuff with the kids in tow. Believe me, making calculated decisions about what to buy while getting your kids to keep their grimy paws off everything in sight as you embarrassingly side glancing at the shop proprietor while you are at it is no easy feat.

Anyway, say for once you managed to multi task yourself into getting what ever it was that you needed for the next project (This time – Wax paper. Yes, wax paper, that’s all. No major thinking there, which is probably why I managed to pull it off)

You finally manage to sit down to start making said project, and all these ideas start bouncing around in your head… boing… what if I threw in some color…. Boing, Ooh, I could do this as well…. Boing… wouldn’t it be cool if…. Ooooh, I need to get some more wax paper…..boing….

Now I am no longer stressed about what I will be making next. The stress has shifted. Now I am stressing about if I want each and every item in my house to be made out of wax paper…..

And you?

Folds in Time

It has been one of those weeks when time seems to bend, making the beginning and the end of the week meet leaving no room for any kind of activity other than the run of the mill kind. I find myself sitting here exhausted, on Friday evening, with nothing to show for the passing week.

If I dig deep enough, I remember that yes, I did carry on twinning another placemat, did some water proofing experiments, tried with no success to make some more paper mache spheres, finally took my sewing machine to be fixed and searched the web for information on finishing paper mache….. But still, there are no tangible results other than extreme exhaustion, piles of laundry to fold, and yet more piles to launder.

What is even more interesting, is no matter how time bends, it only bends in some areas of my life. The time I spent working didn’t seem to shorten, nor, obviously did the abundant opportunities me and my family had to throw soiled clothes into the laundry hamper. In fact, when it comes to laundry, it seems as if time is incapable of bending. I hope I will make some headway tomorrow, although if its not raining, I want to spend some time in my garden, pulling weeds and transferring seedlings to there permanent homes. Maybe next week time will bend back again, and there will be more action in these parts. In the mean time, I want to share this to-cute-to-be-true video courtesy of the lovely Julie

You have to admit the baby owl looks a bit like my cat

Stammering Prologue

I am not sure how to call what I doing here. Re-education? A quest in search of the new me? It is all so new, but the whole point is that everything here is old.

I guest the easiest way to define it would be to say that I am trying to rediscover creative joy, and the wealth of materials even if the materials are not “rich” in the formal sense of the word.

Two forces are behind this journey, and I am not sure which of them is the main motivation. The first, which could also be called the-kick-in-the-butt, is the force that motivates me into action from an urgent and existential point of view is the need to find a way to a new livelihood. How do I take myself, along with all of my skills, talents abilities and things that I love and turn them into a livelihood?

The second is my love of used objects, the lives they have lived and the lives they have accompanied. In the past few years, my love of old objects has been given further legitimization in the form of environmentalism, and like many others, I am trying to live a greener life. I wear second hand not only for financial reasons, but out of appreciation for the value of the material and the work invested – values that have become obsolete in our society.

Disposable. A synonym to just about every object we use. Objects have become worthless to us, and yet we continue to accumulate and acquire more and more of them.  As a result, the substance that these objects are made of has become of even lesser value than the objects themselves.

At one point, things used to mutate. If a sweater was to small, it was pulled out and  a new, more suitable garment was knit. Not today. Today we throw it into the trash and run off to the nearest store.

For the next year, I will be studying recycling, re-purposing reusing and up-cycling, and although I know where this journey starts, I have no Idea where it will end. One thing is for sure it will undoubtedly pass by a few old t-shirts and piles and piles of newspapers.