A Mindful Life

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
–T.S. Eliot

In 2004, I posted briefly about the firing of Deborah Voigt from a role at the Royal Opera House. The reason? She was considered too fat for the role, particularly because she couldn’t fit into a little black dress that was part of the contemporary production.
She had gastric bypass surgery and has now returned [...]

Take another five minutes and enjoy another kind of human creativity. This short video is winsome and light.
And here’s the url if the video isn’t embedded: An Eye for Annai.

Even ordinary sprinkler droplets become interesting in morning sunlight.

Since Claire was born, very little else has captured my eye, and I’ve not taken the time to learn all the tricks my new camera offers. However, I was out this morning watering our backyard plants, and the new light coming in (one benefit of the Oleander removal) inspired me to grab the camera. I [...]

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
–Henri Matisse

But I made this instead.

Claire is fascinated by buttons. If she’s crying and you show her buttons, she immediately stops and begins examining them. I have a collection of buttons (some inherited from my Mom), so I sorted through for interesting ones. Then I cadged an old shirt from Husband and constructed a pillow cover [...]

I originally knit a baby hat and an adult hat. Decided to see if they’d felt and firm up well, even though it wasn’t bulky yarn. It was good ol’ Cascade 220 on size 8 needles. I used starch to help firm them up a bit. They are now felted bowls! These will be donated [...]

Claire’s bedtime ritual includes saying goodnight to the Mirror Baby in her room. (Her closet is a sliding glass mirror.) Then she says goodnight to the Mama Moon drawing I made just before her birth (actually, it’s a small framed photo of the work).

Tonight, she waved at Mirror Baby as she said goodnight.
She’s so [...]