Life at the Lemonade Stand Part 2

Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be. 

--Sharon Salzberg

If you believe in Karma, or even entertain the idea that it is possible given the way that physics works with laws of energy, then you eventually arrive at the conclusion that you and I are responsible for everything that happens to us in our lives. 

So this whole situation I find myself in with my drivers license is about something that I set in motion at some point in time. Hard to swallow sometimes.

Yesterday at church I found myself in a conversation with another church member who reminded me that Karma is released when you forgive the person "responsible" and of course forgive yourself. 

Tomorrow, June 30, at 10 am, I am going in for a Waking Maintenance Test. 40 minutes in a room with low light, no noise, no distractions, nothing to do. The object being to see how long I can stay awake. Then I have a two hour break, the the 40 minute test, two hour break, 40 minute test, two hour break, 40 minute test. with all the monitoring in place so I cannot leave the building to go for a walk. I have to bring food, and something to do. By the time it is all said and done I will be done around 6 pm.  My Friend Patricia is giving me a ride to and I am having ParaTransit come and get me.

Today my background "noise" is about forgiveness. tomorrow my thoughts will be about forgiveness. What I really want is my drivers license back, so if it means forgiving someone to do it, and since God is watching it has to be real, then I have some emotional and mental work to keep my mind busy tomorrow. 

To be continued ...

Doodles

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.- Anais Nin

  

I think Anais Nin hits it on the head. I certainly don't realize that is what I am doing most times, but none-the-less I think it is true. The first thing I remember drawing was in Kindergarten. I divided a piece of paper by folding it in half long ways and short ways, then corner to corner. For a long time I colored the areas created by doing this right around the rainbow, mind you there were only 6 colors that I understood then. I  remember coloring all the areas, just not sure exactly what I did about those two extra areas. 

By the time I was in 6th grade, I was aware I could draw, and that I enjoyed being creative and moved away from the pure geometry to drawing what I saw, or interpreting what I saw.

The geometric designs are doodles from sitting listening to the phone ring when I call farmers and ranchers at work. As simple as they are, when you divide them into 30 second blocks they take about a week. The first one, begat the second one, and it is easy to see the similarity. The third design, which is much more organic, is based on what bled through the paper from the second one. It took a while to create, but again, 30 seconds at a time and drawing on breaks. Black ink and felt tip pens.

The two landscape drawings are from Two Day Town In Livermore at the end of April. Drawing and listening to music. For an artist there are few things better. The first one is pencil and ink, the second is just pencil. The orange kitty is for my friend Patrica who has kindly taken me to doctors appointments, picked me up for church. and listened to me bitch about the Drivers License situation. This is a mixed media piece of Black ink, felt tip pens and colored pencil. As you can tell it combines geometric design with rendering. 

How does this tie into the quote? Well, I tend to look at the world and see patterns, and patterns use geometry for cohesive repetition. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a predictable result. I try to be creative in a somewhat predictable way.