“‘I want these people to experience beauty and prosperity. I want them to have it now. Not tomorrow, not in the future, but now, because their lives are short.’
‘If you remove adversity, you remove ingenuity and creativity with it. There is no need to strive to make something beautiful or better if it already is.'”
–Ilona Andrews, Magic Binds
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them. For such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere, except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.”
–Thomas Merton
“Emotions drive the threesome of attention, meaning, and memory.” In essence, that just about sums up what we know about learning: attending to information, constructing meaning, and lodging it in our memory. Brain researchers have shown that emotions are critical to patterning, which is the way that information is organized in the brain, how we are able to retrieve that information. Emotions assist in both evaluating and integrating information and experiences.
However, as we know, not all emotions facilitate learning. Stress, frustration, anger, fear – all can overwhelm the brain with hormones and thought patterns that totally shut down one’s ability to learn. When major emotional flooding occurs it is true that one literally cannot think straight.”
– Eric Jensen
Teaching with the Brain in Mind
“I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.”
– Temple Grandin
“Generalised [sic] anger and frustration is something that gets you in the studio, and gets you to work – though it’s not necessarily evident in anything that’s finished”.
– Bruce Nauman
“Rips out hairs!”
– Elisa
Moving Forward
The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
[translated by Robert Bly]
What is it like to be sitting on a shelf? Ok, so I really do NOT want to know that. I like to be in action! In front! Flaming! Splashing! Primal! Did you know that you can be all of those things sitting silent??!? Ok, I’ve gone off onto a think….
I’m posting to say that for the third time now, my computer has a virus. This time, the computer is sitting on a shelf at the repair place, as the repair guy has many helpful contracts and duties and is over-run by storm damage to repair, doctor’s office computers virused and locking in all patients’ ever important information by a virusbook (I mean facebook i swear) virus from a surfing at work employee!! I am a little bit more glad to be simply sitting on that shelf, than to be one of those patients! Well, the way that I write and create has a lot to do with what I am near and what I have at hand to utilize for material. While I LOVE LOVE LOVE the library at the college soooo, it is cold steel, mortar, and very bright lights that trigger neurological events–unpleasant ones. So, I wait…I am very careful NOT to be patient nor to ask for patience. I hiss at those uttering such words at me and have them quickly flush the words down the nearest toilet or garbage disposal orifice! WAITING is acceptable, patience brings to me the MOST horrid of demons! YIKES! So, I’m waiting and not writing. I am not yet comfy with not having access to my access, but I’m not yet ripping off my skin in horror! Progress not perfection! See you all again when the computer is fixed!
How to Make a Snowball...
Step two...
Step Three...
Yay! I did it!!!
I’m posting. I am annoyed. Ok I’m not annoyed in general, only about certain things. I am that way, very joyful over one thing or things in general and quite snarky indeed about another. This concept seems a bit difficult for others to grasp, so, I generally do not try to do so.
Back around Thanks for Giving Day, my computer had a nasty illness, at least one virus and all. I freaked out with worry–I can be very good at worry about certain things. The brain and the body have not seemed to have allowed the understanding about how worrying does NO good at all, in relation to these things. Sooooooooo…I have decided to check worrying about worrying that I worry over certain things, and well then I’m still me, and everyone else is much less inclined to want me to be buried in a deep hole (make that soundproof hole) somewhere.
Well, the day after Christmas my lovely son, virused the computer YET AGAIN. (go ahead sigh a few times in identification and commiseration) I kicked myself in the hiney for not having accumulated enough funds for a back up drive for my books and images, but having just been through the worry it seems that my worry quota was filled. The computer is back at the fix it up chappy place. This time, I am feeling very stagnated in the creativity zone. I express quite a LOT of energy in this manner. I suppose one might equate this situation with a daily long distance runner ending up stuck into a wheelchair and unable to use legs for a bit. I know I do. Perhaps this really was what was behind what I labeled worry the first time around and I was so lost that I couldn’t or didn’t, or maybe wouldn’t recognize it.
I hadn’t realized that I had become so comfortable being me, whoever I am, and whatever I wish to express in any given moment. It keeps me honest with myself and with others. It isn’t so much that I always feel comfortable expressing to or with others, however, I can write here feelings and emotions and even actions trying each out for size and watching from a distance making better choices. Ok, maybe not always better choices but for the most part then I’m always clear that I DID see it and make a choice anyway. Parts of me are muttering and wondering if I really had to be that forthright….YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!! 🙂
Ha! Now just look I have in some ways thwarted that thwartation of my creativity. Feeling sneaky is FUN!!!
Until next time!
Elisa
Elisa's Spot 