Posts made in June, 2010
Writing Workshop/Gallery: Joy
Welcome back to this week’s special Gallery/Writing Workshop. This week we challenged you to combine words AND pictures to create something different. Something unique. Just one prompt: Emotions.
Don’t forget to link up your post below and/or over at Sticky Fingers, so as many people as possible have a chance to read your post.
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A couple of months ago I wrote a Gallery post about pride. It was about feeling stuck, paralysed. It was a very grey picture – I was in a very grey place.
Today I am re-writing the words of that post, for a new me.
Life is hard just now, very hard. But in between the things that make me sad there are increasingly bright flashes of a deep joy that take my breath.
Things are changing. I am changing. And I love the way it is making me feel. I love the colours it is opening up to me.
I am not being held back now, not ever again. It is joy and it freedom and just a touch of fear that feels a little like taking a running jump off a cliff, and just keeping going. The pure belief in it making you fly.
These are my emotions right now.
And it feels pretty good.
She opened up her hands
and there sat joy,
daubed onto every line and crease.
Like sunshine rich
it drenched the pores,
feeding potential underneath.
Hands that DO write
beauty out
in free uncensored streams
and paint many a masterpiece
no stroke begrudged,
and no need to wash them clean.
YES, she says, and spreads-out wide her joy to show:
rainbow skin, with widest grin
as finally she lets go.
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Now it’s your turn. As always try and visit as many as you can, to offer words of support, or encouragement, or just to say hello. Let’s make something special happen today.
Alchemy
There is something
so
delicious
so
sensual
about
mixing paint.
It happens slowly, and so describing it happens slowly too.
Just seven or eight colours in tubes. But from them the potential for infinite richness and variety.
It is a way of looking. Looking to work out the exact shade you need, to catch the shadow of the cloud or the depth of the sea.
An internal squinting.
Eyebrows, furrowed.
Fingers, poised.
Waiting. SEEING.
And then, hesitant splodges from tube to pallet. Varying amounts, instinctively sensing the hints of red or blue or yellow in a specific shade, teasing them out, to add them to your mix. Something never taught, never learned. Just FELT.
It is like alchemy. From the basest of bases creating richest hues, the subtlest shades, never again to be replicated, unique in its moment of creation. One mix breeding another, transferred to a new pot and lightened, darkened, tiny specks of white and black dripped in, to create the whole spectrum of light and shade.
Until
THERE
you have it.
And internal ‘snap’. And then the careful daubing, the hesitant first stroke as brush meets canvas. Building up layer after layer, drawn in to the extraordinary living rainbow you are creating.
My brushes soon forgotten. My fingers working the blends, dipped and dabbed. My fingerprints creating texture and movement as the colours swirl and meld together. Energy building, buzzing in my ears and crackling on my skin.
Lost to it. Pulled in. Riding every line and soft crease. Every pocket of light and dark.
Only periodically pulling back
to watch
as something beautiful
takes shape
and is given life.
Image Credit: Palette by Lolo
P.S. I know I have been a bit of a ‘bad’ blogger lately in terms of all that ‘engagement’ business. I do apologise. Mostly I’m enjoying being out in the sunshine, creating beautiful things, falling back in love with the process I describe here, and spending time chatting with my wonderful friends who help make my days shine brighter and brighter. But if you can catch hold of me long enough, then PLEASE do so. Send me a post you love, that you’d like for me to read. Say hi. You have my full permission to demand my attention a little bit, before I run off back to lie in the grass x
Writing Workshop #29 – Emotions
So. You know how in Glee they do those brilliant mash-ups of two genius songs?
Well, that’s what this is.
Because this week the brilliant photography Gallery over at Sticky Fingers is joining forces with our Writing Workshop here to do something a bit special. Lots of you do both every week, words and pictures in separate posts, but this week we’d like you to try and combine the two. And for those of you that haven’t discovered the Gallery yet, well it’s a good chance for you to branch out and do something fun, and maybe find some lovely new blogs to read on the way.
Just one prompt this week, one theme: EMOTIONS
Take, or find, a photo that represents and emotion and then write creatively on that theme. It’s doesn’t have to be ground breaking, just something a bit different. It could be something descriptive, or a story (real or made-up). It could be a poem, or just a sentence or two. We’re not looking for award-winning photography OR writing here. Just something that tells us something about you, or your life. Who you are. Something that gives you a chance to express yourself.
We”ll be linking up on WEDNESDAY this week, both here and on Tara’s blog, so feel free to add the link to your post to one or the other, or both, to give as many people as possible the chance to read your post.
If you’re new to our Writing Workshop, come and have a look at last week’s to get a sense of how it works. We’d love to have you join us.
See you Wednesday! I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Read MoreGetting to know yoooooou – Cybermummy
I’ve loved seeing these Cybermummy meet-and-greets popping up all over the place thanks to a great idea by Carly at Mummy’s Shoes.
So the idea is that all of us going to Cybermummy next week post a short bio so you know who to avoid who everyone is. And I am going! I’m quite ridiculously excited about it too. I’ll be talking on the first panel of the day all about about how to create good content for your blog, along with some names that make me feel a little dizzy to look at, which is a little, wow, *insert nervous twitching here*, but there you go. Really quite hugely honoured to have been asked and shall be attempting to rise to the challenge no doubt rather awkwardly but with flair. You can be expecting a lot of rather impassioned talk about ‘soul’ and ‘authenticity’. Just to warn you, like. I will probably fall over at some point, too. I do that a lot.
Anyway.
As usual I’m all late joining in, but, you know, I did at least manage BEFORE the conference. It could of been worse.
So here’s me:
Name: Josie George
Blog: This one
Twitter ID: @porridgebrain
Height: 5ft 2 and half inches
Hair: Very short, brown.
Eyes: Dark brown. Probably looking at the floor or out the window.
Likes: Words, light, cake, painting, singing, trees, wine, daydreaming, Twitter, yoga, being weird.
Most likely to say: “Yes, I ate your biscuit”,”oops”, “Sorry”, “Where are my shoes?”, “It’s all about SOUL, and AUTHENTICITY”.
Will be wearing: Something fabulous. A slightly bewildered air.
Ways to be my best friend forever: Bring me chocolate. Make me laugh. Come and hide under the buffet table with me when it all gets too much.
What NOT to do: Dare me to do something stupid. PLEASE.
Will be the person at Cybermummy most likely to: Spill something on somebody important. Forget to print their ticket off.
I am quite friendly though. And I would, genuinely, really love to meet you. So please come say hello.
I may hug you though. Just saying…
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