A short basic description of what Lazure is:

"Lazure is layers of paint prepared nearly as thin and transparent as watercolor, consisting of water, binder, and pigment. It is applied with a rhythmical movement using large brushes. The final color is achieved using varied colors applied in several layers, over a white surface."
https://lazurebylogsdon.com/

The Nitty-Gritty

I just finished my first coat of yellow Lazure on my kitchen walls.  As I was struggling through it, I wondered, "why didn't anyone tell me I couldn't do it by myself?"  Or, maybe if I had, I would have done it anyway?

I don't know.  But the basic technique I learned in a workshop with Charles Andrade could not be replicated by me, being as I'm working alone.  I'm talking about the technique of painting the wall with one brush and coming up behind it with another, "dry" brush to sweep up the drips and spread them on the wall again, so that it glistens before drying.  The only humanly way possible (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit!) for me to do that alone is to concentrate on one small area, picking up one brush and painting with it, then picking up the other brush and spreading it around.  Meanwhile, the areas adjacent to that spot don't get paint spread to them, and a line will show up later, after subsequent layers of paint are applied.  Yet if I include a larger area to paint, then don't have time to work one small area before the rest dries.

I went with painting a large swath to avoid differences in paint intensity, etc. between one area painted now and the adjacent area painted later.  So not using my "dry" brush yet.  This may get easier once several layers are down and I can see what I'm doing.  Right now, the paint is going on almost clear with a faint yellow tint.

Oh, there's also been me taping as I go -- not a recommended practice.  And finding nail holes to plug.  Same caveat.

But on the positive, I DID mix the formula correctly -- 3/4 cup water to 1 tablespoon Accent Base, plus a smidgeon of yellow Light Hansa Acrylic paint (Liquitex).  And used my 2 lovely brushes (available online), though they had small bits of errant hairs in the bristles before I cleaned them thoroughly.

Also, I needed to modify the large sweeping motions so I could paint narrow areas only about 1 foot wide.

That's it for now.  Back to my next layer.  Probably yellow again, and then want to come in with blue, so that the result will be blue green (?), yellow green (?).  I want to taper to a rose color as I get closer to the kitchen sink and stove.  But for now, that's all hypothetical since part of the process is that I don't know how it will look on my wall.  I only have seen other walls painted by other people.  So this is MY experiment and at some point I have to let go of trying to make my walls look like theirs.  Maybe I'll come close.  I don't know.  The only thing I know is that I have to try, and make my own attempt.  (I know I'll learn lots, but that's a subject for another time.)  Thanks for reading and be uniquely who you are!

Hi everybody,

I'm going to attempt a lazure painting of my kitchen, so thought I'd start this blog back up.  I put it on hold for several years because it seemed overwhelming to do by myself, but I have decided to put myself into it, in a limited form - one wall in my kitchen, to see how I do.

Over the years, I spent time exhaustively studying and researching the process, rewriting notes from a workshop I took in 2013 and also notes from other participants in another workshop.  I went over every detail of what to expect and what to look for.  I google "Lazure" a million times to see what people were up to with it.  I was just googling Lazure images just now and remembered this blog.

The kitchen wall I'm going to paint has been primed and painted white.  I used Zinsser Primer on practice panels and  Benjamin Moore Natura Eggshell on the walls.

For the Medium Water for the glaze base, I'm using Glidden Accent Base/Base 3.  (My workshop teacher used Aura Clear/Neutral.)

I have more details if you're interested.  Just leave a comment or check my Twitter.com address @Lauradeanneh.

Thanks for stopping by!

Lazure-painted walls at Charles Andrade workshop, Summer 2013

I will post some more about lazure soon.  Thanks for reading.

Lazure!

I have started learning how to paint lazure!  I've wanted to do it for years ever since I first found out about it when my close friend and her paint mentor painted her living room, dining room, kitchen, and front hallway (which I helped with, incidentally).  I just had to wait til I bought a house.  I had a mobile home at the time with wallpaper on the walls.

Because there are not a lot of sources online for info, I want to share what I learn, and maybe it will inspire someone else to take the leap.  Since I believe in my heart that it will be well worth the effort!

This is a picture of my first practice board which is a tempered hardboard from Home Depot, cut into thirds from the original 4' x 8.   I started with a primer and then a coat of white base paint (eggshell).  Then using special brushes (more about that later), I and a friend who had done the technique in her house, used an accent base (without added paint color) and a smidgeon of acrylic paint (I started with blue) to a bucket with about 12 parts water to 1 part accent base, stirring it around til you get it all dissolved and have a thin consistency of paint color.  I think I applied two coats of blue (letting the first dry for 20+ minutes), then a yellow coat, then blue again.  We were experimenting to see how to get a gentle green in the blue.  We could also have added green color directly from a tube of paint, instead of painting blue, then yellow to get green.  This board has 3-5 layers of acrylic paint on it, which I'm just showing you so you can get an idea of the graduations that are part of the technique.  And, remember, this is just my first try, so hopefully I'll get a better effect as I get more experienced.
More details coming.

Endings

 

Say what you will, endings are hard.  I went to three groups this past week, all of which were the last meeting til the Fall.  Let's face it, schedules are erratic.  Given that and the fact that I just retired last week made the occasions especially poignant.  and telling.  We don't like endings.  At least, I don't.  They have a disconcerting way of shaking up your routine and if there's anything I love, it's a good routine.  I am a Taurus after all.  Stable.  Down to earth.  Maybe that's too much of a reliable thing, though, after a while.  Everyone neesd to do something to break it up  once in awhile.  And me, too, even as I am also trying to see how it would fit into my "usual" schedule.  How can I do something different, but not so different that I notice?  How can I accommodate my need for growth and newness without disrupting the status quo?  I can't.  Got to suffer the slings and arrows.  Got to face the doubting monster.  Got to brave the dizzying  heights and doldrums and panicky lows.  But, I know I will come out the other side.  Plenty of people have and I'm going to become one of them.  Like that ninety-year-old woman who jumped out of an airplane as part of her bucket list.  I may not do that, but I will do the things that matter to me and so challenge myself out of my comfort zone.  Out of that disorienting state of no routine to fall back on.  No routine to remind me who I am.  Or who I thought I was.  Because I'm not my routine.  I'm not my job.  I'm not even my sensibilities.  There is much possibility here.  And that possibility, that potential, that being-ness doesn't want to be jammed into a routine.  At least not right now.  Too much energy and light wants to escape.  I will use my routine like a handy stairway bannister.  And skip off the steps when I need to.

Top 10 Mistakes Managers Make Managing People

Avoid the Top 10 Mistakes Managers Make

By Susan M. Heathfield, About.com Guide

Many managers lack fundamental training in managing people. But, even more importantly, managers lack the values, sensitivity, and awareness needed to interact effectively all day long with people. Skills and techniques are easier to teach, but values, beliefs, and attitudes are much harder to teach - and harder for managers to learn. Yet, these are the underlying issues that will most make managers successful - or not.
How important is it to help managers succeed? Beyond description. Managers and how they manage their reporting staff set the tone for your entire business operation. Managers are the front line representation of your business. The majority of communication about the business is funneled through your managers. When employees resign, the top reason for their resignation is their relationship with their manager. People leave managers, not jobs or employers.

Select Managers for Managing People

In a job description for a manager, core job functions, traits, and abilities are listed. With this as a guide, manager selection should focus on both the management skills and the candidates’ cultural fit. Within the cultural fit component of your interview and selection process, a candidate for a manager position must demonstrate that he or she has beliefs, values, and a work style that are congruent with those of your organization.
In a people-oriented, forward looking organization, you’ll want to select managers who exhibit these characteristics.

• Value people


• Believe in two-way, frequent effective communication and listening


• Want to create an environment in which employees are empowered to take charge of their jobs


• Able to hold people accountable and responsible without punitive measures


• Demonstrate leadership and clear direction


• Believe in teamwork


• Place the customer at the center of their reason for existence and regard reporting staff as customers

Mistakes Managers Make Managing

With all of this in mind about managers, preventing management mistakes and dumb decisions is paramount for a successful organization. Do you want to become a better manager? Here are the managing mistakes you most want to notice, prevent, and avoid.

• Fail to get to know employees as people: Developing a relationship with reporting employees is a key factor in managing. You don't want to be your employees' divorce counselor or therapist, but you do want to know what's happening in their lives. When you know where the employee is going on vacation or that his kids play soccer, you are taking a healthy interest in your employees' lives. Knowing that the dog died, expressing sympathy, or that her daughter won a coveted award at school make you an interested, involved boss. Knowing employees will make you a better manager, a manager who is more responsive to employee needs, moods, and life cycle events.


• Fail to provide clear direction: Managers fail to create standards and give people clear expectations so they know what they are supposed to do, and wonder why they fail. If you make every task a priority, people will soon believe that there are no priorities. More importantly, they will never feel as if they have accomplished a complete task or goal.
  
  Within your clear expectations, if you are either too rigid or too flexible, your reporting employees will feel rudderless. You need to achieve an appropriate balance that allows you to lead employees and provide direction without dictating and destroying employee empowerment and employee engagement.


• Fail to trust: When managers don't trust people to do their jobs, this lack of trust plays out in a number of injurious ways. Micromanaging is one example. Constant checking up is another. Treat people as if they are untrustworthy - watch them, track them, admonish them for every slight failing - because a few people are untrustworthy. Are you familiar with the old tenet that people live up to your expectations?


• Fail to listen to and help employees feel that their opinions are valued. Active listening is a critical management skill. You can train managers in listening skills but if the manager believes that listening is a way to demonstrate that he or she values people, training is usually unnecessary. Listening is providing recognition and demonstrating your values in action. When employees feel heard out and listened to, they feel important and respected. You will have much more information when you daily open the flood gates.


• Make decisions and then ask people for their input as if their feedback mattered. You can fool some of the people. but your best employees soon get the nature of your game and drop out. Along the same lines, create hierarchical permission steps and other roadblocks that teach people quickly that their ideas are subject to veto and wonder why no one has any suggestions for improvement. Enabling people to make decisions about their work is the heart of employee empowerment and the soul of employee engagement. Don't throttle them.


• Fail to react to problems and issues that will soon fester if ignored. Managers have a habit of hoping that an uncomfortable issue, employee conflict or disagreement will just go away on its own if they don't provoke it or try to resolve it. Trust me. It won't. Issues, especially among people, just get worse unless something in the mix changes. Proactive intervention from the manager to coach and mentor, or to make sure employees have the skills necessary to resolve the issue, is imperative. Drama and hysteria do interrupt productivity, motivation, and employee engagement.


• Trying to be friends with employees who report to you. You can develop warm and supportive relationships with employees who report to you. But, you will have difficulty separating the reporting relationship in a friendship. Friends gossip, go out together, and complain about work and the boss. There is no room for their manager in these kinds of relationships.


• Fail to communicate effectively and withhold important information. The best communication is transparent communication. Sure, some information is company confidential. You may have been asked to keep certain information under wraps for awhile, but aside from these rare occasions, share what you know.
  
  Being a member of the in-crowd is a goal for most employees and the in-crowd has information - all of the information needed to make good decisions. Ask for feedback, too. Ask people for their opinions, ideas, and continuous improvement suggestions, and if you fail to implement their suggestions, let them know why, or empower them to implement their ideas themselves.


• Not treating all employees equally. You don't necessarily have to treat every employee the same, but they must feel as if they receive equal treatment. The perception that you have pet employees or that you play favorites will undermine your efforts to manage people. This goes hand-in-hand with why befriending reporting employees is a bad idea. Employees who are not in your inner circle will always believe that you favor the employees who are - whether you do or not. This perception destroys teamwork and undermines productivity and success.


• Throw employees under the bus. Rather than taking responsibility for what goes wrong in the areas that you manage, blame particular employees when asked or confronted by executive leadership. When you know the responsibility is ultimately yours if you are the boss, why not act with dignity and protect your employees? When you blame employees, you look like an idiot and your employees will disrespect and hate you.
  
  Trust me. They will find out and they will never trust you again. They'll always be waiting for the other shoe to fall. Worst? They'll tell all of their employee friends about what you did. Your other staff members will then distrust you, too. Your senior managers will not respect you either. They will question whether you are capable of doing the job and leading the team. When you throw your employees under the bus, you jeopardize your career - not theirs. And, it won't remove one iota of the blame from your shoulders.

http://humanresources.about.com/od/badmanagerboss/a/mistakes-managers-make-managi

Heat wave

How the weather got to be such an interesting (boring) topic... or how many days can they say it's not going to change much...plus how the other states are doing it (the heatwave) and how others in your town are doing it (surviving the heat wave), and has anyone lost their sense of humor over this thing?  I liked the piece about the steak cooked in someone's car on the dashboard in 2-3 hours.  Aren't there other places/ways to experience the heat differently?  Like the moderating influence of a cool shower or bath, the delights of ice cream, or the appeal of a big fat, cold watermelon?  And how's that doing for your health?  Are you slowing down more?  Taking it easy?  Being gentle with yourself as you waft with the heatwaves moving outside?  Feel like a langorous, ponderous hippo yet?  Or  a huge, bloated elephant?  Are you attracted to the ponds the alligators hide in...and would do anything just to get in there with them?  It all looks so appealing....to enjoy the heat and take the day off...  Is your head off somewhere in the wild blue yonder, dreaming about God-knows-what, while you lay back limply in your easy chair?  Is trying to get your mind to focus about as hard as getting your kids to eat vegetables or cleaning out the refrigerator?  Do you feel like life has sped up 120% and you've slowed down that same amount?  Does watching the trees wave in the breeze make you dizzy?  Are you getting sleepy...sleepier....your eyelids are getting heavy...your eyes are closing and you feel so sleepy...you just want to drift off to sleep....more and more relaxed....just let go....

(see you in that first cold front in October...)

why I'm writing today and what it's about

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to write about, but have definitely decided to sell my mobile home (about the 13th time), but this time, it's it!

The main reason I think I'm going to write about it is because I seemed to have stalled out on writing about anything else.  Anything at all.  I no longer feel 'news-worthy,' whatever that means.  What it does mean is that every time I thought about writing on my blog, I would think that I didn't really have much to say and that everyone else seemed to have so much more and so many better ways to say it.  So why should I bother? 

I do have something to say, but it's often more complex than just spouting out a short easily-packaged blurb.  So I edit it, ignore the impulse, discount it, muffle it, criticize it, and end up saving my voice for the truly vexing times when I have to vent or I'll just explode. (!)  Meanwhile, life is passing me by and I  mean that the life that consists of consistent blog posts and hopefully increasing readership - that life is passing me by.

Which reminds me that my purpose in writing this blog is not to get fantastic numbers of readers to follow me.  No, that's not it.  My purpose is to be heard, to share my voice, to express myself (as trite as it sounds), and to discover what I've chosen to write about at any given time.  A form of exploration and fun even, for you and me.

I just do want people that do happen to wander by here unexpectedly, to have a good time when they read my post.  That's all.  They don't ever have to visit me again - that's okay.  Of course, I wonder what they thought of it....but I'm content if I can churn out half-way reasonable prose that has the potential to entertain, educate, and enlighten.  Or even just grab your attention, though I mine for depth and seek to go deep.  So I guess I can say that I don't want to grab your attention.  Because when I try to be witty to grab attention, I end up nine times out of ten thinking twice about what I'm going to say and then deciding not to say anything.  Too high a standard.  So let's just be real.  I think that'll work.  Because then if you drop by, and even leave a comment, I'll know it's for what I've written naturally, not what I wrote to try to be like everyone else (witty, cool, famous, etc.).  And even if it's just the dog who pays attention, I'll be out there in the ether somewhere.  Better than inside my strange mind, all cramped up with too many thoughts and no where to go.

"...everything in life is writable about..."

TEDxHouston - Brené Brown

Women make men and men make women

I know I haven't written in awhile.  I had things in my "real" life overtake me and my interest in writing noteworthy copy took a backseat..... but I am up again and on my way......

I ran across this quote and it spoke to me.  I hope you like it too.

Strong Men and Strong Women

“Men have been afraid of women and have therefore dominated them, unconsciously, for very much the same reasons I believe they have been afraid of their primary processes. Remember that the dynamic psychologists are apt to think that much of the relationship of men to women is determined by the fact that women will remind men of their own unconscious that is of their own femaleness, their own softness, their own tenderness, and so on.

And therefore, fighting women or trying to control them or to derogate them has been part of this effort to control those unconscious forces which are within each one of us...

Only as men become strong enough, self-confident enough and integrated enough can they tolerate and finally enjoy self-actualizing women, who are full human beings.

But no man fulfills himself without a woman, in principle.  Therefore,  strong men and strong women are the condition of each other, for neither can enlist without the other.  They are also the cause of each other, because  women grow men and men grow women.  And finally, of course, they are the  reward of each other.  If you are a good enough man, that’s the kind of woman you’ll get and that’s the kind of woman you’ll deserve."

A.H. Maslow

Emotional Blocks to Creativity

Thanks to:

Lynne Namka, for posting this quote in her newsletter.

www.AngriesOut.com
Photo thanks to:  http://birthofanewearth.blogspot.com/ 

YouTube - Free Hugs in Sondrio, Italy

YouTube - Free Hugs in Sondrio, Italy: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

It is as it is

The semester's just about over. Classes are out. And now it's on to packing and getting the house ready to sell.....and getting ready for Christmas... when I wish I had the energy of a twenty-something and the wealth of a banker (though not a Wall Street Banker), and the charisma of former president Clinton.

 

...and how about the skill set of a team of handymen! That'd set me up great!

 

 

 

Strange story-dream (really dreamed it!) titled Little Fellow

I had a little fellow attached to my side – a kind of misshapen, half-formed other self, a twin self, who was so small and misshapen that I forgot about him, hid him under my shirt until he spoke to me suddenly one day on the way home from the store.

He spoke in a really tiny voice and it would’ve sounded cute if it wasn’t so insistent.  Hey! Don’t forget about me down here.  I need some looking after too!  And I looked down at him and I was shocked, astonished, once again, at his tiny features and misshapen form, and yet he spoke!  He had intelligence!  I covered him with my hand to reassure him that all was okay – and reassured myself too, if you want to know the truth of it, and went on my way.  I was going home, and this part of me quieted down.

I could never forget he was there though, because he was connected to me on the inside and when I lay down at night, I always lay down on my left side so as not to disturb him.  And he didn’t move, of course, but I could feel him connected to me and was very careful of that side of myself.

At home, with my friends, I tried to find a place to get comfortable and take a nap but my friends were all up and talking.  I couldn’t get comfortable and someone noticed me and announced that it was time to cut the bugger off me.  I replied with horror that it wasn’t that easy, that he was connected to me on a deep level, that we shared the same blood even and that to cut him off wouldn’t just be a flesh wound, but would leave a gaping hole in my side where blood would run out.  They began to get interested in the idea anyway and they were all stirring and coming around to me in excitement.  I became more alarmed and jumped up to get away from them.  I tried to reason with them but they seemed only interested in making things better or removing so-called defects and weren’t interested in what could happen as a result.

I ran to the outside of the building and climbed up to the roof, trying desperately to get away.  When that seemed hopeless, since they were still coming, I decided to throw myself off the roof, and I did – and gently floated down and down, past the many stories, to land on  the ground below.

Later they found me and I felt a pain and an ache in my side, and a bandage covering where my “little guy” used to be.

As I sat in my spot in the big room with the friends, I felt the blood seeping out and wetting my shirt.  I had told them and they hadn’t believed me.  But I knew.

I was still feeling dull and weak and it would probably take awhile til I could fully come to terms with this, my form changed so deeply and the hole it left behind. 

What was that part of me?  What did it mean?  And where did it go if it was cut away?  Was that a good thing, after all?  Or needless suffering?  Was it a drain on my life force?  Did the hole of bleeding leave my life force to run out or create movement and flow where there had been only stagnancy?

Was something feeding on my life force that I had to be careful with and mindful of?  Something that had no use but was merely an appendage?  Or a useless hopeless thing that had worth nevertheless?

Were my friends my friends, or hooligans? Was the dull ache of the knife to be feared more than the ever-present nagging and insistent presence of "the other?"  Was the wound more important than the taking care of that part of me?

Was it more important to create the wound from the dis-embodying of the little self, and thus to free up stagnant physic energy which before had been bound up in maintaining that self, even if that meant the blood would flow freely, at least for awhile, and thus would cause concern in and of itself, as a wound that may not heal?  We have no proof that it will heal.  We have only evidence of its opening and flowing, and a dull ache within.  Surely it will flow onto the ground (of being) and nourish the roots there.  For a new life.

See with me.  See within.  Go within and feel your way through.  Throw out your prejudices and make your way in the darkness of mind, the darkness of soul.  Get to know the lay of the land inside your own psyche, inside yourself.  Become familiar and decide where to make your home.  Watch the comings and going and be the tree, fixed in the garden, aware and strong and rooted deeply in the earth and the ground of your being.  Deeply rooted in your own being.

When midnight comes to you

And petals lose their flowers

Dropping silently in gentle

Repose around the hours

Stalking visitors impose

Their demands upon your wishes

Replacing joy with Everests to climb

And choking seaweed for the fishes

The shocking calls ring out

Deafening and senseless

Monotone and monosyllabic

Wasteland without fences

Freed and wandering, you pass

The signs of many splendor

In and out of coils of hope

Your break and then engender

It moves within you, spirit comes

A shadow of your life

Rising up and filtering out the noise

Its own truth like a knife

Cutting through the bonds of past

Miscarriages and labors falsely keeping

Opening up old wounds to free

The love that lies there weeping

Your soul has truth, potency

Obscured in light of day

It waits til lines are blurred at night

For what it has to say

When lines to outside pleasures’ gone

In the midnight hour at last

One can commune with one’s self

And hear the voice of soul broadcast

In the dark, I tumble down

To a lost reverie and pain

Quiet dreams and lost horizons

Given up for security and gain

Here I open up my heart

For there’s nothing left to do

With silent peering in, I hope

To discover something new (true)

Something I’ve lost or forgot about

thrown upon the heap

Of once-bright treasures left behind

And toys that never weep

Useless and hopeless, they all seem

Dolls and toys flung away

The flower petal dress and dew drop hands

Still, they sing to me this day.

What can they offer you or me?

What can midnight bring?

If all the world’s a stage, then I

Must surely play the part within.

Clues abound, though overlooked

My stubborn mind ignores it

Still my softest of friends speaks to me

And tenderly implores it

Many soft things hang in the shadows

In the quietude, I’m feeling

Quiet rules me now instead

And a modicum of healing.

This reverie of knowing must

Permeate the day

To bring forth unknown qualities

Into the conversational play

So the midnight brings its own reward

A fulfillment and a pain

Dark and moody, fearful, present

To what is secret, again

Midnight is the dark of it

And fear of it, I think

Lurking in the shadows of life

Leaning on the brink

Til all my being’s tuned to it

My justifyin’s disappeared

My fear like a bad melody

Stuck and can’t get cleared

(My fear laid open for me to see

It’s not as bad as feared)

When midnight comes to you,

Listen to what I say,

be aware the dark’s not as dark

as what you feared in day

so sink into your favorite chair

let go of daily busy-ness

slow as the hour proceeds from here

to make contact with the is-ness.

astrological weather

From one of the my favorite astrological sites, 12House.com:

THURSDAY JULY 29 MOON in PISCES MARS enters LIBRA
Moon Void of Course 10:44 pm (CDT) – 3:42 pm Friday afternoon

Mars the god of war marches into peace-loving Libra this afternoon. As the ruler of Aries, the opposite sign to Libra, Mars is more aligned with our masculine, assertive, independent nature than with the feminine, mind-your-manners nature of Libra. Mars here directs our energy toward balancing the scales, looking at both sides of an issue and ‘fighting' for justice. When Mars moves through Libra, we may have more difficulty pushing our own agendas without first considering the rights and desires of others. Since being in relationship is an ultimate ambition for Libra, we will be highly motivated to find ways to get along and to please others, maybe sometimes at our own expense. We might become more demanding of relationships now, wanting to hold people to higher and more equitable standards.

http://www.12house.com/home/powerpeekhtml.cfm

design your own

only way to start is to start

I've let this blog lapse, as I often do, until something starts niggling at the back of my mind and I remember about it again.  I always wish I could write witty, timely prose and that expectation and challenge stops me in my tracks.  So I procrastinate, pushing it into the back of my mind until a little worm of a memory starts wiggling around back there....

I wonder if I should title this blog something that reflects that one step forward, two steps back approach.  There just seems to be so much else that is compelling on the web that I don't even think of what I might have to say.  I have the urge to just quote "them."  Ha, ha.  Like a news-gathering service of items that interest me.  But I want to be more than a relay system.

I long to be creative...in an erudite way.  In a cultured, yet spiritually-aware, sophisticated, though down-to-earth and personally-warm writing persona.  I long to be opinionated in the best possible sense of the word.  Opinionated in the grandest of spiritual traditions.  Like Rumi.

But so much of the time, it seems like I am but a sheep, following others' opinions, likes and dislikes, afraid of unearthing my own.  Afraid of identifying my own, and following my own.  If there's someone else that is "for" something that I am "for" also, then I can have it.  Then I can cherish it.  Why can't I just have my solitary love of something?  Without needing validation through others also valuing it?  Maybe because I'm always running up against my parents' opinions (long after they're gone), society's expectations and opinions, and the world at large (whatever that is).  The world at large, for me I think, is everyone I encounter in a given day, AND WHAT THEY THINK.

Hmmmm.  Time to retreat to Walden's Pond, or a facsimile thereof.  My own thinking woman's retreat from the cares (and opinions) of the world.  We all need one.

And we all need, I'm thinking, those with whom we share similar views.  But just not to require validation from them for their opinions so that we can value our own.  It's a fine line -- but the difference between standing on your own feet surrounded by caring others who share the same ground and leaning on them for where they stand.  Think about it.

more art

Happy Birthday to my nephew, Keith.