Re-inventing Geometry: One point at a time

Wood Rose

Two points!

I have a line.

Also a confession: I'm blogging because I wanted to post another photo. I'm allowing myself only one photo per blog, to help inspire me. This is the end of a wood pile. (Not all my photos are of flowers, real or created, as you will see in blogs yet to be.)

This will be a short entry because I am about to exchange some movies at the video store. It's a ways & I am going to walk out into the beautiful day & the beautiful world (even if it is a busy-ish road-ish portion of said world) & accomplish errands, exercise & enjoyment. I will let the moment wear many hats.

Blog alternative:

185. Walk somewhere you don't normally walk to accomplish something you want to accomplish. Fait accompli (with feet)

plus, today's quote from Peggy Tabor Millin's clarityworksonline.com

(which you can get 5 days a week by signing up for the writing prompts)

is a Nigerian proverb

"Someone else's legs do you no good in traveling."

Outside Forces vs. the Slacker Babe

Sunflower Flowing

A Blog at rest tends to stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force.

A Blog in motion--well, we'll see. I don't know if one post qualifies as motion. It takes 2 points to make a line after all.

So, outside forces, I salute you.

First, Ken, for checking on me during a perfectly sunny week on a trumped up hurricane worry excuse just 'cuz I hadn't blogged since March. It's only--ahh--September--hmmm--oops.

Second, Cathy who accepted my challenge to blog by Monday. She also hasn't blogged since March, although her March ended in 2009. (She just did that to make me feel like less of a slacker babe.) If anyone wants to see if she ponied up, or pigeoned up, check out YayPigeons.

I have been having a great deal of fun with my new camera, a Nikon CoolPix that is very easy to use. Playing around with image manipulation just by moving the camera and then deleting A LOT of bad photos--because they weren't blurry enough. Grin. I suppose my "Sunflower Flowing" picture would be better if I rotated it so the stem blur was on the bottom, but I got a little lazy. Hey, you can't reform a blogger slacker babe in one fell swoop, can you? (Apparently not.)

Oh, but my room is looking so clean & organized & the parts that are not yet dealt with are set up so they'll be easier to deal with. Part of my new organizational system, which started with me writing everything I wanted in a system 0n a giant lime green sticky note. Then I posted it on the wall beside my bed & just read it every time I noticed the giant lime green sticky note. Then I realized that the system was already created & just waiting for me to utilize it. Then, suddenly, one day I began to move things around & recycle magazines & do more creative projects & VOILA!

In random order, here are my system desires:

success.full growing natural peaceful genius self.organizing virtuous* essential organic logical loving vital vibrant magic s elf.sustaining true easy reflective mutating cosmic intelligent gnosis based on me rational invisible independent healthy supported true intuitive still wholistic feels good instinctual self.directed simple apt transferable sensible self.centering appropriate energetic fueled intellectual succulent focused in.sourced dynamic fit

*before you get too excited--in a good way or a bad way--about this, consider that at the etymological level, virtue means sap, as in liquid life force. So I probably should have just said "sappy" but that would require the same sort of explanation.

I am really not claiming the title of slacker babe at all. So I haven't been blogging. Plenty of other things (inside & outside of my skin) have been & continue to be accomplished. (For example, exploration of the passive voice. Grin.)

I trust that you have all been doing many things other than reading the Ides of March version of my blog over & over again, yet I feel compelled to give the latest version of the Blog Alternative, so here it is, the long-awaited number

184. Think about the descriptive characteristics of your desired organizational system. Not the number of sticky notes required or the actual time it takes to operate in any given week, but some abstract, feeling-y things. See if your list is substantially different than mine.

Wonder-fully-foolio

So February has slipped past, & half of March. I am here to report that I did indeed send out a batch of poems & a story. More on the sassy SASE horizon. (That's Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope for the non-writers in the audience. One must include a SASE to hear back from the editor.)

Plus I am going to be on TV Wednesday night, St. Patrick's Day, at 7 pm. URTV, Asheville's public access channel. I think you can access it online at www.urtv.org. I actually don't know when it's going to air, but you might be able to find it on the website. There's a show featuring cancer survivors being filmed at Chameleon Soul Foods where I "just happened" to stop in for the first time. I mentioned to the owner that I had a poem published in the Cancer Poetry Project ("Awkward Friends," which I wrote for my friend L.A.Taylor who was a cancer survivor until she wasn't) & was invited to read it on the show. I'm looking forward to it. (& perhaps to more fried chicken smothered in brown onion gravy. Or some of the wonderful cherry crumble. mmmm. I'm making myself hungry.)

The other fun thing--besides writing & drawing & collaging & walking & etcetera--I've been doing lately is playing no-limit Texas Hold'em at Buffalo Wild Wings. It's lots of fun, & I've started a short story about it. Making my way up the leaderboards--at least for now.

A short while ago I joined the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, which is located at the Reuter Center on the UNCA campus. They offer classes & workshops and special interest groups, besides which it's a beautiful facility to use as yet another office. (Buffalo Wild Wings is my poker office & for writing & art & such I have offices all over town.) I use the campus itself as a nice walking track. Plus they have a meditation labyrinth to walk & a sculpture garden & all sorts of wonderfulness.

Here I go again, all wonder-fully-foolio. Mmmm. Flavor du jour.

I must briefly review a recently-read book. Talking to Tesla: The Mirror That is the Door: An Artist's Dream Journal by Alex Bigney. This book tickled every tendril of my soul. Alex Bigney is a (very good) artist who began to have a series of dream conversations with Nikola Tesla, whom he'd never heard of before meeting in the first dream. The lessons from Tesla, the insights he brings from a life of painting, the stories of the thoughtful & interesting boy that he was--I am going to read this book again. With underlining! You can find out more about it at talkingtotesla.com or amazon.com or you can pick the book up (signed) at Malaprops. Just don't ask to borrow mine! I'm re-reading it. Alex Bigney is a warm & accessible man who lives in Utah. I--well-dressed in my what would Tesla do? t-shirt--saw him read at Malaprops. If you get a chance to meet him, do.

Blog alternative:

183. Think about who you would like to meet in your dreams. Nikola Tesla? Amelia Earhart? Hatshepsut? Get all relaxed & cozy before you go to sleep & invite them in. Who knows? It could happen.

Wavy Davy rides into the sunrise

Janus is thirty-firsting, so if I am to blog in the month of the 2-faced god, it must be now.

I did indeed venture to the northlands, & in doing so escaped a grand snowfall--12 inches--that shut off power in the house where I live for 4 days. By the time the electrical flow was restored, the temperature inside the house was 34 degrees. So, it was snowier down in the westnorth of the southeast than it was in the states that border Canada when I was there. Go figure.

I am deep in the throes (& sometimes throws) of re-organization. It is not a new year's resolution so much as a seepage (& sometimes eruption) of the new state of cosmic ordering within me into the reflecting surface world we call reality. So much fun!

We just had another snowfall. It was forecast to be 10 to 15 inches but stopped short of that. Still, it is beautiful & crisp & (for some folk) crazy-making. I happen to love it. What else do I love? Pierre Teilhard du Chardin & Carl Jung, slow dancing with Einstein. Maple truffles with smoked sea salt. Envisioning Narcissus falling in love with his own true self, rather than just his pretty face. My new leopard print storage boxes with black diamonds on their magnetic closure lids. An ongoing Star Trek movie marathon--only one left to go! A powerful, personal worldview.

I say goodbye-hello (perhaps aloha would be a better word) to my uncle Dave, who turned into a different version of himself the day before Christmas & to my second cousin Marvin, who did the same the day after Christmas, & my dad's best friend Phil who is no doubt playing pinochle with my friend Cathy's mother, since they both exited/entered the same day in January's first week. I already had a dream visit from Uncle Dave & look forward to more. We scattered his ashes on his dog's grave--13 fenceposts from the corner of the cemetery & 13 paces out into the pasture.

Blog alternative:

182. Celebrate a friend or relative who no longer inhabits a point in the space-time continuum--or at least not a point that you can reach with your physical senses.

Nomads R Us. Northern climes or bust.

Merry Happy Everyday, y'all.

I am off on a pre-holiday, holiday & post-holiday adventure. Actually, that sentence makes no sense. Is there a day that isn't holly-wholly-holy? Not on my calendar.

I am turning into a nomad for 3 weeks, with only a backpack & a toiletries bag that contains mostly art supplies & notebooks. I shall not let the grass grow under my feet--mostly because I am going to be in northern climes (don't you just love to say "climes") & it's cold & snowy in them thar hills.

So, in case I don't blog again until Janus turns his face toward the new year, may you celebrate the birth of the new you every day.

Blog alternative:

181. Plan a trip to another time zone, another temperature zone, another dimension. Pack light--only what you can carry. This is imaginary, perhaps, so you really can get by without 3 extra pairs of shoes. Perhaps, like Bilbo, you run off for the first adventure of your life without even a pocket handkerchief. Do you want to go to the Victorian Age? Visit Camelot? Enjoy the trip.

Now Fly!

Once there was a girl with wings

Once a book that flew

Poems lighting hearts

Art flowing like a river

& once is now

always now

now is always

Blog alternative:

180. Think of something you have loved doing or loved loving & love it all over again. Now.

November Dance

I can't believe I missed an opportunity to wish you all happy friday the 13th so I shall do so belatedly.

We have had a string of wonderful days. Some of them were rainy--there's a hurricane somewhere, or was--but they were wonderful anyway. Today it's sunny and seventyish. I'm sitting in a coffee shop. Or perhaps I should call it an ice tea shop.

I just finished typing in a little short story (just under a thousand words) that I wrote on 3 placemats. I have a BUNCH of poems to send out, so I hope to be reporting--oh, Cathy! I just saw this cool car that you would love to see drive past, all tailfins & chrome, with its spare tire encased in the same metal as the car & trimmed in chrome--that I've done a nice little marketing binge.

The other thing I've been doing of late is artwork. Dozens of placemats have laid down before me & offered their unblemished surfaces to my pens & pencils. Plus I've gotten out the watercolors & some scraps of paper I bought at a local letterpress. Such fun.

I read a new brain plasticity book: The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge--a very good read. I find out that multi-tasking is over-rated, as to make actual changes in the brain structure requires actually paying attention to tasks...

As you might recall from my last blog alternative, I invited stories or poems based on my list & was interested to hear from anyone who used every word. Drum roll. Her Chloeness sent me a story the next day that did that very thing--while attending graduate school! I am impressed & humbled & honored & tickled & all sorts of other words that end in ed. Thank you for Death of a Shoe, Chloe m'dear. I appreciate you.

Blog alternative:

179. Dance around outside to celebrate November--but only if the ground isn't icy where November finds you. (I would like to report that no readers were harmed in the writing of this blog. grin.)