THANKFUL FRIDAY

It’s that time of the year when I think I have a giant list of things I need to get done before Christmas only to realize that I have tackled 97% of that giant list already. Most likely, the other 3% of that list will get tackled over the weekend. Then I will be back into a twiddling thumbs situation that my brain never really knows how to handle. This makes it hard for me to be present. My mind keeps floating off and into the next year, already calling it for this year. I’m basically phoning it in right now.

So, in some of my free time, I’ve been sorting and organizing photos I’ve taken this year. I’m starting to run low on postcards and uploaded some new prints to be made into cards. This week, I had friend who I had sent a postcard too a couple of weeks ago, tell me how professional and perfect my photos look as postcard. I asked her to remind me which one I had sent and she described a picture of a view finder pointed out towards the ocean. Then she said that if she had seen that postcard in a shop, she probably would have bought it. I thought this was the sweetest compliment and I was grateful to hear that the card had brought her joy.

This is a habit that I started late in the year. Every Sunday, I sit down and pick out two postcards to send out to two different people. There is no rhyme or reason to who I write a note to. I usually just skim my Christmas card list and randomly make a selection. Often, I try to pick out someone who I know to have been having a particularly hard week and if someone sends me a card in response, then I send another one back. This is how Amani and I have become penpals, penning each other short but sweet postcards. Amani has taken up water colors and I have a small collection of watercolor postcards of her art. My favorite one so far is the most recent one, filled with brightly colored jelly fish. The note on the back was damaged in transit and I can’t read the last part of her note. It has something to do with me “seeing beauty almost….” Which makes me laugh. It’s like I almost have an eye for beauty…almost. Not quite. This has been a good habit to start and as my brain starts to build a plan for the next year, I hope it remembers to leave space for postcards.

Something else I noticed while organizing photos is that I managed to capture a lot of joy in this year. Recently, I had to fill out a description form for an old photo that one of my online photography groups wants to feature. It was taken so long ago that I couldn’t tell where or why it was taken and it’s just a simple photo of a wild yellow iris. One of the questions on the form asked what had inspired me to take this photo. I wrote the following.

I am an amateur photographer with the sole purpose of seeking out beauty and joy in the every day. It's almost my meditation practice.

This still holds true for me, but I find great joy in getting out my camera with purpose and intention. I am grateful for these habits and practices.

And my brain is already leaving space for more of it in the next year.

PICTURE PAGES

Found print

5 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Found print"

I started a project early this year that involved organizing my pictures into some kind of an album with notecards and descriptions. I did four pages and the set all of it in the roller cabinet under the TV. It's been sitting there ever since. Meanwhile, the pile of pictures that need to be organized just keeps growing. Sunday morning, I got up and went through my usual Sunday morning routine: breakfast, CBS Sunday Morning, laundry. Whenever I would settle into the couch with a mug a of coffee, I'd end up with animals laying on me. Not such a bad thing, but they made it difficult to want to move. It was raining and dreary outside and it was just easier to turn the couch into a raft and play a movie. So that's what I did, but I also pulled out the photo project and worked on it some while I watched the movie. 

I started with a stack of pictures I had found while cleaning out the attic of my childhood home. They had been in the bottom of a box lid that was inverted and holding old bits of notes and mostly trash. I started to just toss the whole lid into my garbage bag when I paused and decided to flip through the debris. I was surprised to find these particular pictures in with a pile of trash. There was an old picture of my Grandmother, Nellie with her sister and one of Pepaw in his Navy uniform. There were several old square black and white prints of my brother when he was a child and three photos from his wedding with Katrina. There was one of all of us sitting around the dining room table. My Dad's parents, Mom, Janell, Randy and Katrina. This was before J and it looked like Thanksgiving. I recognized the Pyrex dish of sweet potato pie and the tan Tupperware pitcher that I am sure was filled with sweet tea. The table was blanketed with the red calico tablecloth that always adorned that table. It is present in the picture of me blowing out candles on my third birthday cake, another picture from the stack of salvaged pictures.

Then I came across a picture of no people. There's nothing written on the back to hint at where or when the photo was taken. I took a photo of it for Instagram and my mother later commented on it saying that it looked like the lake Pontchairtrain Bridge. When she said it, I knew that she was right. I figured that someone had taken it the year we traveled to New Orleans for Randy's senior trip. I have no memories of that first trip to New Orleans. I was way too small to form lasting impressions. Not like Disney Land. I was small then too, but I still have hazy images in my head of the Dumbo ride and our odd encounter with Donald Duck. I only have memories of stories told to me of that family vacation. My mother tells a story of how she made me a harness with a leash so she could keep track of me. She said that some old man yelled at her and gave her grief about putting her baby on a leash. He followed her the length of the French Quarter Market before she turned around and yelled back at him to leave her alone. 

That's the only story I know from that trip. I remember coming across a picture of the my brother, sister and I posing next to a cannon. My brother is sitting in the photo, his long legs made longer by the bell bottom jeans he's wearing, and he has his arm wrapped around my middle. It is obvious he has been put in charge of holding the toddler still for the picture. I know this picture was taken in New Orleans only because at the time of finding the picture, my mother looked over my shoulder at it and said so. Yet the picture tells more of a story than that. I suppose that is why I am drawn to photographs. Each one tells more of a story than just "we were in New Orleans" or "that was the time we visited your great Aunt in California."

I suppose that is why I feel such a need to get my photographs and stories in order. 

NOT AT THIS RATE

I'm stuck. Stopped up. Creatively constipated. It's not just words. I'm always stuck in writing. Nothing new there. Sometimes I just type letters in no particular order in hopes that when I look at it later, I can unscramble it into a sentence. I think this is an actual writing technique. It for sure explains a lot about my poor, poor grammar. Sometimes it works and sometimes I delete a lot of words and sometimes I don't even write any words. Most times. Most times I don't even write any words. I'm hard pressed these days to tell you about my mundane lack luster life. I bought a new 8"skillet, the last one I'll ever buy because it came with a lifetime warranty. I bought a new iPad because half my apps stopped working on my old first generation iPad. Sunday, I reached behind a box in the garage to grab what I thought was going to be another baby bunny only to realize by the flapping wing against my arm that it was a bird. I'm probably more tired of the stories about what Albus has brought inside than you are. 

I read an article recently, maybe in this month's Yoga Journal, that listening to the sounds of nature helps with creativity. This was followed up with a series of creativity inspiring asanas which were a bunch of hip openers. In the yoga world, your hips are the luggage that carries all your troubles and grief and stress. Emotions. Emotional luggage. That's your hips. I feel creatively stunted most of the time and since hip opening poses are easy for me, I can only assume that my luggage is broken. The latch is busted so that it just hangs open with both sides of the case full of shit spilling out all over the place. I just spent the last thirty minutes listening to the sounds of the forest and twenty minutes of listening time wasted on nothing creatively smart on the internet. It is taking me days to write this entry. 

It's not the blogging I'm all that concerned about though. Blogging ebbs and flows. I have brief glimpses of ideas for things that don't even make it to paper these days. I need to do some creative things with printed photos because they're starting to pile up. I was thinking of an old school photo album. I'm not the scrap booking type, but I did see myself sitting down each evening and writing a bit of something next to each picture. Anyone follow Ali Edwards? I picture creating books like that, not nearly as creative or elaborate as Ali's, but neatly telling a story. Then I worry it will just be one of those things in the stack of things on my end of the coffee table. There's two coloring books sitting there with a set of colored pencils that have been sitting there for ages, untouched. I mean, not completely untouched. I did pick them up when I was cleaning on Sunday and considered finding them a new home before setting them back on the coffee table. Leaving them out at least gives me the illusion that I'm going to pick up a book and color. 

Maybe that's what I need to do with those pictures. Maybe I need stop stashing them in different desk drawers and just leave them out on the coffee table. At least then I'd have the illusion of doing something creative with them. At the very least, the clutter would drive me so insane that I'd have to do something with them.

Like put them back in a drawer.