Saturday Musings…

on winter, ordinary days, new computers, creativity and curiosity, and playing around for the joy of it.

On winter…

I’ve taken many photos of the prayer flags tied to our deck railing but never before with snow almost up to them. What started out to be a mild January with little snow has morphed snowfall by snowfall into a very snowy February with more snow predicted.

Yesterday as I looked out the window at all of the snow on our deck I wondered what it would look like from a lower angle. So I got down on the floor with my camera and noticed that the snow was almost up to the prayer flags blowing in the chill wind. I also noticed that the afternoon shadows of the deck railing’s balusters made interesting horizontal lines across the snow. Since the next photo challenge prompt for the list I’m doing with a photographer friend was Horizontal/Diagonal Lines, I laid down on my stomach on the floor and made the image above (and several others) with my camera.

Although the days are still cold you can see the sun’s power by looking out our southwest facing windows. A line of icicles has formed and even when the temperature is below freezing, when the sun is out, I see drops of water drip from the tips of the icicles. There is one enormous icicle hanging down from the corner of our house. I took three separate photos of it and combined them using Photoshop’s panorama creation tools to capture it’s full length.

I love looking out at the icicles in the late afternoon when the sun makes them glisten and glow. Icicle season is the beginning of the end of winter (I always hope). We are now half-way through February. I am hopeful that winter begins to loosen it’s cold and snowy grip soon.

On ordinary days…

My days have been somewhat quiet. Between the winter weather and hip pain I limit how much I go out and about. A friend of mine recently slipped on the ice and ended up in the ICU with a skull fracture and bleed on the brain. Thankfully she is now home recovering but the slippery conditions are causing lots of falls and injuries this winter in Minneapolis. We don’t often get ice and freezing rain in this part of winter. 

I go to physical therapy twice a week for my hip (getting in shape for hip replacement surgery sometime later this year) and while it’s getting easier, it is intense brain work trying to activate and retrain muscles. I come home exhausted (and often in pain) after a 45 minute workout. It makes me think of how hard it must be to recover from a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or limb loss.

On new computers…

I have replaced my iMac with a refurbished 2017 iMac. The old one’s graphics card failed and given that it no longer even supported the latest operating system I decided the cost of replacing the graphics card was greater than the value of the computer. I am thankful that I had an up-to-date complete backup of my computer that I could restore to my new computer. Still it took about a week to get everything set up and working as before. I am now thoroughly enjoying the speed and beautiful retina screen of my new computer. I’m still working on some of the amaryllis images I made between Christmas and the end of January.

On creativity and curiosity…

Last week we spent an afternoon with our grandchildren. (There was no school that day because of dangerous wind chill temperatures and our daughter needed to leave for work in the early afternoon.)  Some time ago I promised my granddaughter to spend some time watercolor painting with her. On Friday, she asked if I would paint with her. She pulled out a small Crayola set of paints, a brush and some blank printer paper. While not ideal, it worked great for our purposes.

I started by showing her how the paint flows and mixes on in wet on wet washes. She was delighted to play with dropping colors into a wet area on the paper and watching them spread. Then she began dropping in other colors and seeing how they mixed. As she painted she talked about how she wasn’t really very good at painting. I encouraged her to focus on how it made her feel when she painted and to simply enjoy the process. It was so rewarding to see her light up with delight and consider the idea that she could do something just because she enjoyed it and that there was no need to “be good” at it.

Playing around for the joy of it…

After playing around with colors and washes I showed her how to make loose easy flowers (you just swoosh this way, swoosh again, and again, and voila). She announced that she wanted to paint a flower in a vase, so we pulled out a fresh piece of paper and she began. She began by painting a vase shape and then added a single flower. Every once in a while she would ask me whether she should add something more to the painting. I always asked her back, “What do you think? Would you like to do that?” And then she proceeded. I encouraged her to be curious and experiment. There was no one right way. And she did experiment—with different colors, striped backgrounds, pink polka dots and more. Because she was focusing on “I wonder what happens if I…” she was fearless. Her resulting painting was charming and looking at it makes me smile with delight.

The next day my daughter sent me a photo of my granddaughter and grandson with the caption, “Still painting.” Both kids were holding watercolor paintings that they had just made.

“It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.”

― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

My granddaughter’s feelings and thoughts about needing to “be good” mirror thoughts and feelings that we all have at one time or another about creating. We often let fear of not being good stop us from creating. Or fear that we are not doing it right. Practice and exploration grow our skills.

When you follow your curiosity and let go of needing to “be good” a world of possibility opens for you.

I have been doing a lot of doodle paintings this week with no particular goal in mind other than enjoying colors, experimenting with different painting techniques and brushes, and seeing how different colors play together on the paper. My painting session with my granddaughter taught me as much as I hope it taught her about following joy, letting go of expectations, and being in the moment.

When was the last time you created for the sheer joy of creating?

May you walk in beauty.