”I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking a moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
—-Gilda Radner, It’s Always Something
Thanks to Barbara for being the voice of my Higher Power and the inspiration for today’s post.
“‘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
“The mistake of utopia is to assume that all will be perfect Perfection may be the definition, but we are human, and even into utopia we bring our own pain, error, jealousy, grief. We cannot relinquish our faults, even in the hope of paradise, so to plan a new society without taking human nature into account is to doom that society to failure. –The Glynn Queen’s Words, AS COMPILED BY FATHER TYLER”
–Erika Johansen, The Fate of the Tearling
“It’s easy to blame, the media, our culture, or our community for perpetuating unrealistic images of what it expects of us. But at the very core of these expectations, there is no one to blame; because a commercial, like self-judgement, has no power over us unless we agree with its message. It is only when we willingly attach ourselves to these images and distortions that our happiness is compromised.
We do not need to take the blame for these self-judgements. We can simply become aware that they have been developing in our lives since childhood through the process of domestication.
Once we are aware of our self-judgements, we can regain our freedom by choosing for ourselves to transcend the reward and punishment model that has been imposed upon us and eventually arrive at a place of self-acceptance. We have a choice. That is our power.
Practice: How many of your ideas and beliefs about the world and yourself are results of domestication and outside influence? Do you assume things should be or look a certain way because that’s what you’ve seen on TV or in your community, and it seems normal? With awareness question those assumptions today. Ask yourself if things might be otherwise and if you could be happy without these rigid ideals of perfection.”
Taken from: Living a Life of AWARENESS Daily Meditations on the TOLTEC Path by Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. ISBN: 9781938289231
“God is more glorified by a man who uses the good things of this life in simplicity and with gratitude than by the nervous asceticism of someone who is agitated about every detail of his self-denial….His[the latter’s] struggle for perfection becomes a battle of wits with the Creator who made all things good.”
–Thomas Merton
“Life is a progress, and not a station.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I wanted a perfect ending…Now I’ve learned the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end…[L]ife is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.”
–Gilda Radner
I NEVER talk around my images. Now, since I said NEVER, I can now break the rules. I forgot to say YET. Today I am going to post two images. I reaaaaaaaaaaaaally dislike it when people writing try to grovel and apologize and to smear their defects of character all over while appearing to be larger than the defects. Sharing the shit right out seems to be more direct and honest for me, though I would question the wishes of a reader to read a journal-like sharing of someone’s cleaning of their side of the street. Caring about it at all, causes me to laugh at myself as it causes the I’m sorries and the trying to slide things in sideways that I claim to detest. Isn’t that funny (or not depending on perspective and amount if ingested tea)?
So, here we go. My one camera, that I am ever so grateful for, it was GIVEN to me, simply handed over!!! This camera has a few broken bits, it has a few things that caused it to be viewed as a bit strange and it stopped being made. It has all sorts of bells and whistles. I used it like point and shoot. Some people see the images that I get from the camera and they appear to wish to speak technically about focal whatsits and depth of water, I mean field and f-something, no not a tornado. I don’t know about those. The motor on the lens that I choose to use most often is broken, so I do that myself. I see things that I like and I do my thing.
The camera fix-it guru says…hmm this is the third time I’ve had to fix the white something or other–I can’t recall, wait! balance maybe?!?! Anyway, either I am bumping buttons or…something perhaps unpleasant. He just has me bring it back to ‘fix’ it. He is also learning the ‘errors’ in the camera that I like, and not fixing those to frustrate me. For some reason the camera turns reds into fuchsia! It’s a BITCH! Sometimes, the Sigma raw is OK, but when put into the Sigma software so that I can get the images off of the camera and open them–which involves converting from raw to jpeg, THE REDS AND SHIFTED TO FUCHSIA!! There are many many times that I do NOT alter my images. Thus, the Lilac Project that I am doing hasn’t many posts because they are NOT the RIGHT COLOR!!!!
I simply cannot post crap. I CAN post imperfections and remembering many admonishments about certain works and sacred items having a bit of imperfection left within them or worked in on purpose, I rather like to do that myself. But. IF lilacs are a soft lilac shade and the camera turns them fuschia, not even color temperature and saturation will EVER allow me to get it right. Right and Wrong can be dreadfully and utterly amazing for me, or a living Hell. (important to note, my other camera doesn’t exactly get the shade either and recalling the red tulip experience, I believe all cameras can have a red, yellow, blue issue) I don’t know enough about it to know if that is valid or just a nice way to get around telling me that I screwed up. Ok, so here is the original image.
And this is what I did to it, the colors are better or more true to the bush, and then I simply played with it.
Does anyone know why the fuschia? I am frustrated. I might require Help. (or a hosing off)
Elisa's Spot 