In Progress, An Unfinished Church

So I’m doing this:

My glasses are taped to the sugar canister in an attempt to stretch them. I’ve been doing steady at-home close work and so I’ve been wearing them more than usual…

I ended up with a swollen and very sore scalp, which is painful even to rest on a pillow. My elbows bleed if I rest them on surfaces too long so I wonder is this sudden reaction to my glasses autoimmune?

I hope this sugar canister method stretches them. Interestingly, I’ve never had this problem and I’ve had my glasses for months.

I have a backup pair which are also a little tight that I’m wearing now. If the sugar works, I’ll stretch these too. Maybe I just have a big head. I don’t want the hassle of mailing the glasses back to Warby for an adjustment.

I looked up the problem and helpful sites suggest “bending them,” yeah right I’d end up snapping them.

Haven’t written here all month. Had hoped to have an announcement by now. Fingers crossed; still haven’t heard back from a certain publisher. I’ll need the glasses when that happens for sure.

👓

So. As of late I’ve been doing “puzzle paintings” again and I should be sorting my 1000s and 1000s of pieces into color families right now! Shoulda woulda and coulda- sorting is fun and organization (being able to locate certain colors before the glue dries) is crucial: truly 1/2 the battle)…

I may use coral from a sea puzzle to glue and form trees. I may use a feather from the peacock puzzle to collage into a church spire. Recently I found this cityscape puzzle which will lend itself well to a Van Gogh inspired “puzzle painting.”

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bright city lights-will nicely mimic pointillism strokes.

I was given a Christmas scene Puzzle recently and found that the twinkling white Xmas lights across many of the light and dark blue pieces, works well as stars in one of my collages.

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e are faces peeking through the 'stars' because why not? I collect puzzles with eyes and faces for this very reason.

Here is the church spire I mentioned. I know it doesn't look like much now but isn't everything a work in progress? The projects, problems and obstacles we all face. Our bodies. Our selves. Our goals.

Works in progress; all.

The country? The pervasive narcissism, overrriding apathy and violence in society? I hope they’re works ‘in progress’ meaning I hope there will be positive results to these things but I digress. Here’s that unfinished church.

There’s an apt metaphor, for you.

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lady for Halloween. I hate the randomness of doorbell ringing but part of me enjoys the holiday anyway. I wish I could say I thought up this costume myself but I didn't. I saw it online. I pinned stuffed cats to my robe and wore toilet paper tube rollers. Voila! Free costume.

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kup costume under that robe. A ceiling fan.

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as a ceiling fan. Yay ceiling!

Something I did recently was: I contributed a writing piece to a guy who contacted me through my website. Richard Keys. The link to his photo essay is at the end of this blogpost.

I have been reading stuff; per my usual, and here is an interesting fact I picked up from Eban Alexander's Living in a Mindful Universe: <<<<<<<<
complex that IF the information contained in one cell of the human body were printed single space; in 12 point font, (with one letter for each dna nucleotide,) and was made into a book- the book would be the height of the Washington monument. That’s 350 feet in thickness with the info in book form from ONE cell.”

All this intricate minutiae contained in so small a space!

Like sacred geometry, zentangles, and Boontling language, there’s so much to know about the world we inhabit.

But those blog subjects are for another time. My scalp hurts. These glasses need to come off. The other glasses are still on the sugar canister, stretching, but I think I should give them more than an hour.

I just finished reading a library book on Audobon bird artist Roger Tory Petersen. As he approached his 80s he pondered that he wished all his accumulated knowledge could be transferred to one of those technological “round things” and preserved for future generations because he expressed that when he died, his knowledge would too.

Apparently Roger was gifted in a savant-like way about birds and he had extreme perseverance on the topic, talking of little else but birds except for when he was painting them.

A three leaf clover, perfectly preserved, fell out of the library book when I opened it. I put it on my shelf and by morning it had shriveled up into a dry little speck. It seemed, as I commenced to read, symbolic of Roger’s fear of his amassed knowledge shriveling away.

Here is but one of his paintings:

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eave you with a random thought I have often;

WHAT IF

Every wrapper, package insert, etc. was made to be biodegradable, this would have to be law and change would be slow as factories switched over, like the necessary shift to electric over gasoline fueled cars… and wind power replacing fossil fuels-this shift in packaging to completely biodegradable products makes so much sense—what a difference it would make!

Here's that link:

Richard Keys' Autism Out of The Box essay piece I contributed to- at THIS LINK.

Oh and before I forget, here’s a gift idea for the knitter/crocheter/punlover in your life: