Many of the amazingly choreographed dances in the show “So you think you can dance’ beautifully portray the conflicted characteristics of coupledom. Pairs carry themselves in unison across the dancing floor or pull and push, reject and connect, moving from difficulty to ease in cyclical motion. As in dance, the beauty of anything, for me, lies in contradiction. In this spread, graphic ‘harsh’ black contours and soft boundless blobs of color, gracefully dance in tandem.

This one is honoring the fluidity and abruptness of couplehood. 

This is a photograph of a finished journal that is so thick, chunky and scrumptious. It’s telling of so many stories. I love holding it in my hands. I thought I ought to take pictures of a few of its pages and show them to you…Now they reside in Flicker…please go visit…This one here in particular did ‘things’ to me…it is a side view of the book. The horizontal lines piling up on top of each other…a great analogy with my beautiful life lately…An expansion of the range of my pursuits, liveliness, understandings, and mastery…with each and every page. “I walk to the horizon, and there I find another…” –Enya

—–Thank you to those who shared the reasons for their song…It was so awesome to read the variations on the subject and the question you presented…‘If I don’t sing my song, who would?’
 
And now for the give-a-way…I used a randomizing site to determine the winner based on comment number. The winner of the Artful Blogging Autumn 09 magazine copy is…Comment #4 by Renee Khan of circlingmyhead.blogspot.com/ 

Congratulations Renee!…A gracious lady who at the most painful of times allows herself to be comforted by beautiful words and images.

Maya Angelou said that a bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song. She also said that there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Yummy words. I would add that it is even yummier for a bird to know that other birds in the forest are listening to her song. But the yummiest of all is to realize that the other birds are moved by her song and maybe even are inspired by it to sing their own. I, too, don’t have an answer but since I’ve started ‘blogging’ I gained confidence in that I do indeed have a song. And now that my song is featured in the publication Artful Blogging I am officially in the yummiest of times. We all seek to live lives of significance, aspire to live lively days. There is no greater joy than the fearless practice of blogging, the unfolding of your never before told story, the creating of a new visual image, the singing of your song, one of many songs in your collection.

Among the magazine’s beautiful pages, filled with rich worlds of bloggers, you will find mine. What an honor. The breathtaking Autumn edition will be on magazine stands on Aug. 1st at major book stores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, it can be also ordered online. Treat yourself to a copy of this attractive publication, undoubtedly a sense pleaser. Find fascinating words and images of fellow bloggers. Prepare to be enchanted! 

The publisher of Artful Blogging and its editor Christen Olivarez handed me a treasured and an unforgettable gift. In the spirit of generosity I’d like to offer one of you, my blog visitors, a copy of this publication sent to your home. The receiver will be drawn out digitally and announced on Friday Aug. 7th.

To enter my Artful Blogging givaway please comment with your answer to the following question:

Why do you sing?

 …or Bon Voyage, that’s what we hope for…to have our path wide open in-front of us and from time to time for other people to cross our path and for us to cross theirs…to teach us and learn from us…to love and be loved by us. The other day a friend of mine handed me 12 little black and white photographs dated in the back as taken in 1947. I didn’t recognize these people. I was puzzled. She said she didn’t know these people either. I was more puzzled. She said she found them in a jewelry box she bought at a garage sale and thought I would have an idea of something to do with them. What a gift. So here they are, a few of them. As I put this spread together I got more and more attached to the people in the pictures and to the images I was creating around them. The settings, the faces, the spaces, the objects, the time in these pictures evoked emotional response and nostalgic associations from me. The kind of response we get when we read a good book, see a good movie, listen to a piece of music. So I guess we feel comfortable on our familiar path with familiar faces in it but in the same time welcome the company of other ‘Characters’ and even need them to cross our path and be an integral part of our Bon Voyage.

My brother is getting married TODAY! ……Admit it, we walk around for years with persisting aching hunger for sweet love, we find that love, we grab that person who gives it to us, we marry that person, we promise we’ll give it back. Yeah, I know, we walk around for years denying it for as long as we possibly can, as we look at love as conflicting with freedom. Once we understand that both can coexist beautifully, we allow the two to marry. It is a bit tricky but totally possible to feel free in the ‘for ever’ company of one another. Just like we are unique individuals with distinctive personalities, each union has its own distinctive personality, an endearing quirk. I am not naive but I absolutely believe in love, sweet love, love is everything, yes it is.

Okay so I had these leftover Chinese miniature vase paintings from my trip to China Town in LA after I have used some for my ‘Trip to China’ journaling class and also on spread #54- Mind Trip. Since then I stumble upon these magnificent little creations lying around and I ask myself what should I do with them? I cannot let them just be. Need to recycle. They are just breathtaking. Sheer, delicate, fragile, feminine, oozing with color, whimsy, spunk and lots of sensuality. Gotta do something. And they look like female shapes…party dresses…so yes you know what I’m thinking, seeing and imagining, and you know what I’m up to. So there it is. It’s a light and happy one, don’t you think? With all the festivities coming up surrounding my brother’s wedding I am all for light and happy…or must I have an excuse?

On this fourth day of July and also my man’s birthday, I choose to celebrate interdependence. Independence is good, but interdependence, better, as it relates to reliance on one another to achieve a better life to all, within one’s family, community, city, state, country, continent, and most importantly these days, within our globe. In terms of self-expression, which seems somehow to tie to everything that matters to me, a devotion to come out of seclusion and create in inclusion will take care of our individual needs and the needs of others as far from us as they may be.

“We do not live independently of one another but are deeply intertwined. Like the proverbial butterfly deep in the Amazon, who by flapping his wings affects the weather patterns halfway around the globe, everything we do sends out waves of effects in a seamless pattern of interbeing. Many of us long to bring the awareness of interconnectedness to the foreground of our experience, to celebrate and give expression to the web of relations.”         –Nina Wise

Here is to Interdependence!

Juncture is one neat little word… ‘A particular point in events or time.’ Exactly a year ago today, I’ve posted my first art spread on my blog, only one year, but for me, very eventful in terms of personal evolution. I have been diversified. I became what I have only dreamed of becoming. Since that first defining post I have discovered a few things about the human’s capacity for creativity and interconnectedness. I have learned to notice my own landscapes and those of others, about sharing and mostly about the many joys of creating out loud. Looking back at my first spread, I see that I have realized the objectives on that spread. I am still on my jaunty journal journey where I travel solo, and from time to time, here and there, I am genially joined by others while on their path to their own peculiar destination. You are still invited to meet up every now and then, as I further my art journal, a book unfolding an intricate yet simple story…one page at a time. I so enjoy creating these pages, scanning images from my physical journals and my photographs into Photoshop and further working on them to achieve the digital journal spreads. I fully agree with a quote by Ruth Perla: “A journey through the senses may well be the swiftest way to the soul,” and this is what it is to me..a journey through the senses. But it is also the meeting with individuals, near and far, that fill me with light. Please accept my gratitude for joining me in so many beautiful ways. 

Although it is a fundamental right of every human being, freedom doesn’t come easy. With the events taking place in Iran these days, I cannot take my freedom for granted. I ought to remind myself each and every day, of my expansive freedom to feel, think, say and do, to be creative with all of that, and the freedom to be at peace. It is every human being who hungers for freedom, sweet freedom. I have it. Being gratefully aware is the least I can do.