Dreams (that come in the night) – Page 7

Attitude of Gratitude

August 21, 2013January 18, 2014 Katharine Asals13 Comments

Today I was painting and printing some photos, and I kept thinking about how Symbol Reader had said she liked that shot of the seagull, and in fact, maybe I could imagine a series of blue summer postcards using the seagull, the sky, the beach, and maybe another series of orange summer postcards using the sand castles, the paddlers, the kids, and as these ideas, these possibilities opened and unspooled in my mind, I realized how much I’ve felt buoyed by all the kind words recently of so many of the people who stop by here – Symbol Reader and Dawn and John and Sofia and Fat Bottom Girl and Uzoma and Ashley and my new friend Emmy at unbuttoned or undone and my heart started to overflow with gratitude for all the support and kindness and generosity of all these people, I felt so very very blessed…
And on that note I should include one more shout out, as I’ve been participating in a Create Positive Change Program (it’s free!!) by the delightful Nicole at Cauldrons and Cupcakes – and more than anything it is about practicing gratitude.
And man, am I ever feeling grateful…
Just one paragraph (or two)

Just one paragraph

July 21, 2013March 3, 2015 Katharine Asals11 Comments

Too many things to do today.
Too many projects half-started, semi-finished, due, overdue, pending, and promised.
Yesterday, rather than do any of things I should have been doing I read a book for most of the day – a flawed book, with many digressions, yet with vivid characters and a layering of culture and personality and psychology and even a tiny bit of suspense that I just read and read and read and thought yes, yes, this is what it is to read, to dive deep inside an author’s imagination.
And so all the things that should have been done yesterday are also added to today (including grocery shopping, but hey, crackers are okay too) and the pile grows higher, but rather than do all those most urgent things I begin a deep cleaning out of closets and boxes in the basement, looking for old negatives (they must be somewhere, they have to be here), photography I used to do decades ago before digital, searching partly because I’d promised a blogging buddy I’d try to write something for him and maybe if I could find that old photo of the chair it would work with the post, and partly because yesterday I’d come across that dream I’d written up a year or so ago when I was looking for the description of that other dream, and realized that both dreams had images of paints and drawings and charcoals and pastels and thought how interesting, how wonderful, the subconscious drive in this direction, the apparently irresistible movement towards drawing and painting, given the growing pile of play things on my bedroom floor…
…and for the 2 hours that I can’t find any sign of old photos or negatives I wonder also if I took any pictures of the drawings and paintings I used to do, but when I finally find the box, Oh, look, there’s a couple of old sketches at least –
and I think, gee, I used to be able to draw, so hopefully it’s kind of like riding a bicycle and the memory of How To is still somewhere there in my fingers, or tucked away in some room in my brain, or buried deep in some level of viscera.
And in a fit of gleeful determination to take on yet more and more, to open up the doors wider and wider to what might be possible or might possibly get done, I sign up, I commit to write one paragraph a day for 30 days.
Here on the blog.
Just one paragraph.
A day.

No mind

August 17, 2012August 17, 2012 Katharine Asals1 Comment

Early this morning a dream of a deer, come to the door of a house I was just leaving. I thought he was an unusual sighting in a suburban neighbourhood as he turned and ran away revealing a fox tail rather than the little white cotton puff. Excited, I turned to my host, who seemed non-plussed, as though deer were frequent visitors in his neighbourhood. But when I went out again to the street, the deer was back, his expression deliberate, gesturing with his head for me to follow him around the corner, where it turned out an old friend was giving birth.

Today on Facebook, I see that a photo I took up north weeks ago is featured on the Ontario Travel page.

I took a lot of photos while I was up north.

I loved the experience of it. Of getting up early, heading out into the morning light and feeling a kind of no-mind creative process – different from writing. Different because it seemed like the best way to connect with my surroundings was to be empty, to just be present in my body in the space…..waiting, feeling, breathing, sensing.

Riding and walking the trails around Collingwood, I found it easy to get very quiet inside myself. I’d heard in the past about “walking with your power animal”. It sounded faintly pretentious and I wasn’t sure really what was meant by it.

But I started to feel it. I started to feel like that’s what I was doing. Walking as if. Walking inside the animal. Walking AS an animal – listening, smelling, feeling the light shifts in the air.

Rustles and snaps of twigs in the brush, in the forest made me stop and listen, waiting to see who was there. All senses poised as carnivorous predator, hunting for the next shot.

Strangely enough, sometimes it seemed as though the hunted waited, wanting to have their picture taken.