Stories from My Grasslands

About the roundness of a circle

I don't do new year resolutions. I don't live in the spur of the moment promises, nor am I good planner. 

I do have a list with things I want to do during 2017. It's a hefty list, with the little things, as well as the bold and daring dreams. The key word here is "do". Not achieve.

They are all things that mean a lot to me; I want to do all these because they are things I believe in, or things that make others - and me - happy.

Whether I achieve anything by doing them, that is another story.

I haven't set that expectation of me, this time.

In fact, I haven't set any expectations at all for 2017. I want to look at it as a clean, crisp Canson paper where I can play with my pastels as long as I like, add the colours gradually and see what comes out of it. No rush, no pressure. 2016 has been a very challenging year for many. For me personally, it meant a lot of self-search and reflection. And at times, it felt like going around in circles.

Therefore It seems fit to leave you with this text I wrote a while ago, when a friend challenged me to think about a circle of reflections. I was never thinking of publishing it, but by the way our year has been hitting all the wrong notes, it makes sense to write it down again.

To all my friends in all four cardinal points: before the year leaves us, I wish you Love, Strength, Unity and Patience. May your circles stay round and may love reflect onto you.

About the roundness of the circle:
Nobody ever saw the face of God yet I am sure he is everywhere, at every step and can take any shape; in fact, I am sure creation has the form of a circle. Life starts in the roundness of a womb. Or an egg. Planets are round; we all live enclosed in a big round circle and people died for their belief in its roundness. 

I am sure as hell that lines and rectangles have been artificially made so we can be easily put in a corner, forgetting about our own wholeness and about the roundness of our circles.
We live in all kind of circles - and the most miraculous of all, we call it circle of life. We surround ourselves in more of these concentric circles: circle of friends, circle of trust, circle of love. The lucky ones even get to intersect these circles. Their tangents are a joke though; they are merely lines.
Coming full circle is not a coincidence either, is it? We start as helpless babies, learning everything and then we come around, forgetting, getting weaker and ending up just as helpless as we started.
We round up: our wealth, in rounding up amounts, we round up the cattle, the sheep, we round up the family for news. We gather around the table.

And all around and inside these circles, our world is made entirely of reflections. Each object, each colour is more or less defined by the amount of light absorbed, emitted or reflected. We are reflected - yet we are also reflecting.
I find it amazing that the English language gives the act of thinking the same word as the act of throwing back the light without absorbing or retaining it. And it is also amazing that the eye globe is round; the iris through which we filter these reflections has a circle shape too.
Unfortunately we are unable to retain the light but we are able to retain a thought. 

Sometimes we skip around these circles, without giving it too much thought or even without being aware of it all. And then again, we seem to come to a full circle. A circle of reflection.

 

 

 

Perspective

It is superfluous, perhaps to talk about perspective. But perhaps it's not. This morning, Mother Nature decided to remind me one of life's most important lessons, by putting things in perspective.
We get carried away and it's easy to forget this one,simple thing: always remember to see the whole picture.
We get to a point where we're stuck and we think we're going around in circles at a snail's pace,without achieving much. Look closely and it seems that way. But if you take a step back, perhaps your perspective will change. The snail is the most tenacious creature I know.
So, if you're ever feeling down, here is a timely reminder to please remember to look back. Always remember where you have started from and then you'll never overlook again how far you got on the way to your goal. You might be really surprised.

The Bird Fairy

 

She spent all night talking to the bird. “You’ll see: one day your wings will take you high up to the skies. And then you’ll never be afraid again. She told her about her own wings: once upon a time she was the tiniest fairy in Fairy Land. She spent years wishing for her special power to reveal itself - until one stormy day. The sun was just coming back and she was watching it shine through the leaves of the gum tree she was under. “- I wish I could have wings like that” she thought.

“- I’ll make your wings” – said a young sapling next to her. And ever since then, she never stopped flying. She finally found her special power and she was roaming, setting all the birds free. The little white bird said nothing. Her plastic blue wings were sad and listless. But she had the most amazing song. The fairy shook her head. She was too young; she didn’t know yet that some birds have never known freedom outside their cages. She cast a spell and set the toy bird free. After all, she was the Bird Fairy.

On 105

For the uninitiated, 105mm is the focal length of a macro lens. It is a lens that I absolutely love using to collect a few shapes and colours impressions.
While I had a bit of fun playing with movie maker, I am also slowly working on building up an images portfolio based on my eternal search, trying to better understand Synaesthesia.

Blanc

"Blanc" is about being blanc-minded, when you just want to let your senses make whatever they feel out of a particular moment in time, without you putting any cognitive effort into it. It's about detaching yourself from anything negative, about finding the love within.

First try at doing a slide show in a long, long while. It can do with some improvements but overall I have enjoyed working on this little project. If you know me personally, then you probably know how passionate I am about Synaesthesia and how much I love combining images, words and sounds.

The Promise

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's going to be a long, stiff climb;
So you better steel yourself ahead.
Some days, we'll run against the time
Some others, our limbs will turn to lead.

Some days you'll feel as strong as ever.
Some days you will be weak and shaking;
Some others we will be silent and demur
Some days we'll look at all the dreams that you were making;
Some others, you will loose it in the dreamland
And I'll be right along to hold your hand.

Some days you'll hate the sight of me and everything on earth.
Some others, you'll enjoy my hand on yours.
There will be days of long despair - unsaid, unheard.
Days of evading on cooler, misty shores
And others of high hopes and endless hours.
For now, just take my hand and dream of Autumn colours.

 

 

 

The rain

It feels like we have lived through thousand kinds of summer
Searching for words of truth where there were none.
'Been craving for a shelter in some thoughts of wonder
But where there's shelter, there's no room for sun.

'Been waiting for that rain since thousand seasons;
This falling rain kissing my salty lips
I craved its frozen blues since eons.
But nothing good comes out of howling winds.

Untitled

This Paradise is broken
So we’ll invent a new one
This time we have to be careful who populates it
Or we’ll end up again
With guns - left, right and centre.

Not Enough

We have too much of everything:
Too much food to throw because it's past due date;
Too many cars dotting the roads,
Too many Winters and not enough Sun.
Too many wars decided by fate
And not enough trees.

Too many lumps of coal, too much smoke
Too many books, too many hours to work
Too many worries,
Too much money to waste
On too many illusions
But not enough peace,
Not enough love.

El Bardo

Un pobre diablo sin zapatos
Ni los tiene, ni los quiere.
Pero su música a todos los tiene locos
Y ellos se olvidan de todo lo que duele.