Generosity

Today's prompt for REVERB14 is:

Look back at last year and consider: How did generosity open your heart?  How can you cultivate generosity in the coming year?

"Let us forget, with generosity, those who cannot love us."
-Pablo Neruda

I think, that of all the things you could give a person, time is the most precious.  Time is one thing in life that you can't get more of...you can't hoard it up to use later...when you go to sleep tonight, today is gone...you never get it back.

I'm going to be selfish here and tell you that what opened my heart this year was something that was given to me.  Not that I'm not a giving person...I think that if someone needs something I'm capable of giving to them I will...but it feels wrong to me to talk about whatever my own good deeds may have been.

Instead, I'm going to tell you the truth: the generosity that has opened my heart this year has come from what others have given me...from discovering that there are people out there in the world who are willing to invest their time in me....people who willingly want to be a part of my life.

I'm sure that this year isn't the first time it's ever happened, but it seems like it.  Maybe stopping to think about generosity today caused me to be a bit sensitive to the generosity of others...or at least to take the moment to name it and to really appreciate it.

Maybe this will sound silly, but one of the most generous things that happened in the past twelve months was, on more than one occasion, a friend of mine remembering things that I said in passing...things that I didn't suspect anyone was really paying attention to, let alone taking note of.

Life is busy and most people are so busy focusing on getting by that they don't stop and look up at the people around them.  I'm guilty of that myself at times.

The fact that someone looked up and took notice of me is something I deeply treasure.

I am hoping that in the coming year, I can cultivate this same type of generosity toward others, as well as working on another form of generosity, one that is very difficult for me: forgiveness...towards other people as well as myself.  

Here's hoping that 2015 will be the year of freely giving.

Can You Help It?

First off, let me just say that I am a psychic...I will get back to this later.

My brain likes it when things circle around...as was the case for my two "MUST DO" art journal pages this week.  It was totally unintentional, and they may only connect in my head, so, as I tend to do, I may have to explain my thought process.

The prompt for this week's JOURNAL 52 is to "incorporate the alphabet into your page in some way"

"I put them together like I know I should, but I still don't know if I say what I mean."

The alphabet prompt gave me pause for a while...the only thing I knew I wanted to do was to incorporate two letter stencils that Jackie, my honey, sent me in a care package a while back.  So all I did was to grind up a little bit of Inktense blocks, add water and splatter with a paintbrush over the stencils...you can see at the top of the page, that stencil came out well...I covered over the other stencil with the face...but it was glorious too, if I do say so myself!  

Then I sat there and stared at the letters while they dried...they were being very mysterious as to what direction they wanted to go...so I stopped staring at them and went on to do my Documented Life spread.

For DOCUMENTED LIFE (DLP), the prompt was to "add a face to your page".  Here's where I tell you that my psychic ability has been confirmed, because Saturday as I was walking to my computer to look up the DLP prompt, I thought to myself, "You know what would be funny?  If the prompt this week was faces..."  And then it was...  I know I draw faces all the time, but I swear to you this is the first time I have ever thought 'yeah, the prompt's gonna be faces'.  So there you go, I'm a psychic now...off to play the lotto and whatnot...

...but first, here's my spread:

Totally a psychic...
Also, this picture is the most true to color.

You want to know something weird?  I do faces ALL the time...but when the prompt was to do a face, I got a little nervous about it...what a dork!

Anyway, I finally just shut up and started drawing, using THIS girl as a reference.  I've actually used this picture twice now (I can't find the other piece though...perhaps I didn't post her? ...that's weird...)...I don't know what it is about this girl, but I like her.  

"You can cut all the flowers but you can't stop Spring from coming"
-Pablo Neruda

Everything but the writing was already on this page (it's from a Reflections paper pad called Regent Street).  I found that Pablo Neruda quote, and it immediately made me think of love.  I don't know what the poem is actually about (I can't even find it in full), but to me, it's talking about love...as all of Neruda's poems tend to do in my eyes.  

That quote brings to mind the helpless inevitability of some things.  No matter that we deny them, twist them, try to change them or uproot them, there are some things we cannot help but feel.  

And I'm no good with things that are like that.  I like my reasons.  I like rational thoughts.  I think that most things must have a logical explanation, and if I can find that explanation, I can change how I feel.  I can be in control again and put those things to rest.

But the truth is, that's not always so.  That's what the journaling on the page is about.  

"I can't help it...you make me want to be a much better person."

I've got this situation going on that I can't logic away.  

Ugh...feelings...  

There's a person who I feel pulled to...strongly...uncontrollably...inexplicably.  And no matter how much I distance myself mentally, physically, emotionally, I find myself getting snapped back by forces unseen...  (ooh, so mysterious *eye roll*)  It's like sliding down a steep hill, no matter how much I grasp at things to slow the progress, gravity keeps pushing me down and I can't stop.  I can't get a foothold to climb my way back up again.

This connects back to the Alphabet girl at the beginning, because of what I journaled on her page: "I put them together like I know I should, but I still don't know if I say what I mean."  Just a few posts ago, I was talking (out my butt, apparently) about being upset that people in my life couldn't explain why they loved me, even when I needed to hear it.  And now here I am saying something similar...I can tell you why I like this person, but I can't explain why I care so freaking much.  I can't explain why I feel like I do.  

The Alphabet girl is the thought that I talk so much but how much of it do I really mean?  Maybe I'm just a person who has to think out loud, and I say things that I'm not quite sure about in order to find out if I'm right or not...like a question I need someone else to answer too.

We put letters together to make words and words to make sentences to try to describe something in a way that someone else can understand.  I do that with my thoughts and feelings.  I try to string together these bits and pieces but sometimes I use the wrong letter and, in the end, I end up with something that I didn't quite mean in that way.    I try and I try again and suddenly realize I can't finish telling the story because there is no word to tell you exactly what I wanted to say.  Speech is limited.  So am I.

There are things, I suppose, that I can never put into words...things that I cannot justify or explain in any way other than this is how I feel.  A friend of mine likes to say "you can't help the way you feel".  I don't know if that's right...I want to say it must be true, because here I am telling you this little brain fart that seems like it agrees with that statement.  But I wonder if it's kind of a cop out.  Are feelings really these little monsters that we have no control over?  Wild beasts that we will never tame?  Or do we just say that because it's easier to assume it?  We can use it as an excuse and not have to try to change...is that the case?

As you may know, I'm a little new to the feelings game...so maybe you have some thoughts that could help me?  Can we control our feelings?  How?  Can you have feelings and as long as you never act on them, is that ok?  Or are we just biding our time until the right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) situation happens and we can make our move?  Disney movies have us believe that we should follow our hearts, no matter what...but wouldn't it be a good thing to take the brain along for the ride too?