Did you enjoy the soundscapes? Have you listened to your own? If I close my eyes right now I can hear the breathing of the computer, and the little sound of a log moving slightly on the fire,

I can hardly believe this coincidence, but, literally, as I wrote that last word 'fire' my husband came in and said 'Can you come to the back door?'  When I got there he said 'Listen' (he didn't know I was blogging about sounds!) and there through the mist was the strange and haunting sound of whooper swans out in the bay. How I wish I was clever enough to record them for you!

One day I might learn how to do this, but not today.

Today I am painting.



You can see a much better photo than mine, and hear whooper swans at
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Whooper_Swan

I loved these simple and clever 'soundscapes' created by Pia Jane Bijkerk..go to

                                    http://blog.piajanebijkerk.com/WordPresss/category/soundscapes

My favourite is the one of the sounds around her houseboat, and I also liked the rainforest, the cathedral and the Paris musicians....felt like I was there.

Enjoy!

..you sometimes have to scroll down a few pictures to click for the sound....

I was at the christening recently of a three year old girl (who was with difficulty persuaded that her Fireman Sam outfit wasn't the best thing to wear on the day!). Her Grandma wrote this inside her bible:

'If I had influence over the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world would be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.'

It's by Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring.

Isn't that a beautiful thing to wish a child?

If thou of fortune be bereft
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves, sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.

                                                                 Moslih Eddin Saadi

Another variation on this idea, from China I believe, is that if you only have enough money for two bowls of rice, you should buy one so that you can live, and a lily so that you have something to live for.....

What nourishes your soul?  And can you do it today?

In Dostoevsky's The Idiot the house of Rogojin is decribed as 'like a burial ground' - 'Such a full life as he leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests that he has no need of assistance from his surroundings.'

I think I do need 'assistance from my surroundings' and my home is  one of my absorbing interests.

I treat this alcove in our sitting room a bit like the alcove, known as tokonoma in a traditional Japanese house, which is set aside for the display of beautiful objects. I believe the Japanese way is not to have all your treasures out at once but to change the display with the seasons, something I love to do.

I try to have something beautiful on this shelf, and to keep it simple. Flowers always, a card, a candle, a favourite bowl....I change it often. It makes me feel calm and relaxed to look at it.

It feeds my soul.

Google 'tokonoma' and click on the words 'images for tokonoma' (not the pictures) for lots  of exquisite examples of these beautiful alcoves....

I tried focussing on contentedness yesterday, and what I found was that it brings you into the present moment in a really nice way.

I didn't have time to iron the t shirt I wanted to wear so I thought 'OK I'll be content wearing the one I wore yesterday.'

I just missed a ferry - by seconds - and thought 'OK I'll just be content sitting here while I'm waiting for the next one.'

Finding my thoughts rushing off at tangents on what I mightdo/will do/should do (a frequent occurrence) I remembered, and thought 'but I'll just be content with what I'm doing now, for the moment.'

Just by saying 'I'll be content' I found that I was content, and guess what?

Life just got simpler!

....thanks for that phrase Julia - I find myself using it all the time!

Leo Babatua on his mnmlist blog recently summarised his philosophy in this very simple way. He suggests -

Learn to find contentedness

Get rid of unecessary stuff

Spend your time doing inexpensive and free things instead of shopping

Go car-lite. Do things in your home and neighbourhood much of the time

Cook for yourself

Don't try to impress others


Sounds like a very relaxed person, yes?

....today I'll focus on contentedness.....

It's so easy to lose a sense of perspective about money, don't you think?

One day it occurred to me that if I give money away (and I do, to charities) then that very fact must mean that I have enough!

It was very nice to realise this.

'I have enough money' is therefore all I'm going to say about money, for now....

                                                            There's no present like the time.


Give yourself some time off! Go on. Half an hour, a couple of hours, a day, a week-end, a week, a month, a year, or two!

Plan it now.

The sky won't fall in. Promise.



(thanks to both inspirational Liz's...)

I'm celebrating,with flowers and a new painting, while reflecting on a year of blogging about trying to live more simply.

It's hard to be simple in a complex world, with so many things competing for one's attention.

I'm taking a little blog holiday while I decide just how I am going to navigate my painting path.

Tonight at dinner I will raise a glass to you all and thank you for listening.

Slangevar!

I find that if I start the day in the studio, the other things have to fit in, and somehow do. But if I say 'I'll get this done first and then paint', the 'then' has a way of not happening.

I don't know quite why this should be, though I've written at some length on my arty blog about the processes of getting down to painting. (www.fredawaldapfel.squarespace.com )

I think I need to re-read what I've written. Excuse me while I go over there myself......

Starting the day with a drawing of a palm tree, accepting that there will be imbalance and that a certain ruthlessness is necessary, and finding that if you take 'down time' things just come - creativity is a fascinating thing - thank you all for sharing! 

Yes, it's as I thought. I've got seriously sidetracked. I've been feeling restless, (and a bit irritable) and saying to myself 'Well, I always feel like this just before spring arrives'. But the fact is I'm not painting enough.

This morning I got up, put the heater on in the studio, washed and dressed, put on some coffee and my painting jacket, and cleared the clutter from the studio. Positioned as it is, just inside the back door, it tends to get cluttered up with boots and shoes, things to go to the shed (you've seen the inside of my shed!), logs, bird food, magazines to be passed on, things to be recycled....

Cleared it all. Cleaned the worktable. Put out a fresh palette, stretched a fresh piece of paper.

Calm.

Order.

Quiet.

Discipline.

As Julia said, 'Life just got simpler.'

How hard it is to live simply!

I'm having to re-think my life (again) as I'm not finding - make that 'taking' - enough time to paint. Painting is the reason I came to this part of the world, and built a studio, and I believe that my best painting was done at a time when I reduced all other commitments and concentrated on just staying home and painting.

Now I'm involved in committees, book groups, teaching drawing, writing two blogs, redesigning the garden, redecorating the house, writing the novel, trying to exercise, see family and friends and travel - 8 trips of one kind or another planned for this year!
 
And paint.

A beautiful life! I'm so fortunate to do so many things I love.

But I have definitely lost sight of the motto that served me so well for so long - PAINT FIRST.

Back to basics it is.

Are you good at prioritising, at finding a balance?

Praying is what I do when there is nothing else I can do, and there is nothing else I can do right now about the terrible suffering of the people who are the victims of earthquakes, tsunamis and civil wars.

As I sit writing this I am also watching a little red squirrel on the rowan tree. This is my reality, and I am grateful for my beautiful, safe life.

I can make a small difference where I am, and I can try in these difficult days to alleviate what suffering I do see closer to home: kind words, thoughtful gestures, extra contributions to charities, a commitment to action for causes I believe in. Not much, but something. And better than becoming distraught and adding one more to the distressed of the world.

Sadly, this is the inside of pretty shed! So maybe I'll stick to cafes and palaces....

I've fixed the glitch on yesterdays link to famous writer's sheds. I love Thoreau's Walden Pond one, and Michael Pollan's.  Pollan wrote a book called 'A Place of One's Own' which I enjoyed very much.

Do you have a special place of your own to retreat to, to think or to write or just relax?

This is our shed, looking pretty in May - that's the cutting patch in front where I'm planning to put four wigwams of sweet peas this year. For a look at some famous writers' sheds go to www.re-nest.com/re-nest/email/famous-writers-small-writing-sheds-and-offthegrid-huts-140587 .  Hmm....I wonder..

The flowers are a thank you to you all for staying with me through my crazy attempt to write a novel in a month, and for all the encouraging e mails and kind comments which helped keep me going!

 Here is my fantasy critic's review! This is what I would like my novel to be:

        Personal tragedy strikes and Jon struggles to look after his family and still preserve his creative self: a moving and insightful account of an artist's life, and the sustaining power of beauty.

I shall print out every word and then put it out of sight for a few weeks.


Whew!

So, what about the novel?

Well, I am astonished at how much I could write (25,012 words) given the push of a truly mad deadline.

The rest of my life took over towards the end, but I've found great consolation in Chris Baty's letter 'for you to read upon reaching 50,000 words. Or at the end of the month, whichever comes first.'

He says, encouragingly :

                   'One of the things month-long noveling does is get your sense of scale all out of whack. This is done intentionally, because anyone with a realistic sense of perspective wouldn't try to write a novel in a month.

As the month ends though, I feel it is my ethical responsibility to bring some perspective back into your life. So listen closely: if you 'only' wrote 15,000 words over the past four weeks, you invented 50  (that's five-oh) pages of book fiction. Those of you who made it to the  25,000-word point wrote 83 pages. In a month. Hello?

This is something to write home about.

And in this letter home, you should include a few things. One of them being the fact that you chose to try.'


...and he writes more in the same positive vein. I love this guy! I must write him a fan letter.

One thing is certain. I couldn't have done it without this book. No Plot? No Problem! is brilliant for a beginner writer, both funny and genuinely helpful.

Tomorrow, Liz - the blurb!

I really liked this one. A five minute walk from Kember and Jones (still the favourite cafe) is the Kibble Palace in the Botanic Gardens. Warm on a chilly day, with an exotic array of both plants and people, and scented with lemon blossom, this is a very good place to try to write.

Beats T S Elliot's shelter, and Roald Dahl's shed doesn't it! A Palace - what a find!

        'Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing
        I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other.
        I always have to feel I'm bunking off from something.'

                                                                                                                 Geoff Dyer

Around the corner from Vanilla Black (see 25 Feb) is The Glasgow Film Theatre, a little art deco gem with its own chic cafe.
 
I had a short lived career as an usherette there when I was at Art School. I can still see in my mind's eye scenes from the intense Italian film in which, in a remote, rural community, a young and innocent girl was accused of being a witch. I was watching it twice nightly, then going home and having nightmares about it all night....I lasted two weeks and had to give it up from exhaustion....

Nice cafe though. (I sat there and wrote the hypersensitive usherette into my novel!)

   
   Pinkish evening.
   Still light at six o'clock.
   Spring must be coming, hurrah!

Kelvingrove Art Gallery has a reading room and study centre, but the lights are too high, the tables too low, the bookshelves too empty, and it is often roped off.


I found a spot much more conducive to writing, between the rear end of an elephant, whose name is Sir Roger, and a running cheetah (do you know they can run at 63 mph?)

Still writing(!) but I need a change from 'The Novel', and so I'm sure, do you.

The sun shone for about half an hour the other day, so I read over all my Simply Grow postings and stirred myself to get the seed box from the cupboard and start planning what I will grow this year.

Very scented sweet peas. Gwendoline, Honeymoon and Matucana and one other - any suggestions? Matucana on lime green canes was lovely as you can see. I think I might do four wigwams this year in the cutting patch, with one type on each, and will paint the canes on each wigwam a different colour too, just for fun. I love those little sample pots of paint you can buy now for jobs like this.

Also - night scented stock and Shirley poppies all round the wigwams.

It makes me feel happy just thinking about it.

Much of the pleasure of gardening is in the armchair planning and the anticipation, don't you think?

..will bash on with the novel and not obsess too much about the word count - thank you for the helpful comments!