Enough!

[Click image to enlarge: bottom image is updated version, can you see the difference ?]

These days I've been stressing about all sorts of things and it is time to put the breaks down on all this irritation and anxiety. I feel like a locomotive with too much steam barreling through the landscape. At times like this, I feel that the only way to relax, is to do yoga breathing exercises or just going for a long walk or a bike ride. Simple, yet I forget so often.

Reversing punching dots on a line..

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The obvious solution, I know, would've been to continue the series with the inventor as the main subject matter. The reason I chose to depict these two boxers, was for 1, to put more action into the invention/fish series, for 2, to reverse, somewhat, the weekly subject to an absurd one and to make it a bit of a baffling combination and there is a 3rd reason, perhaps the most obvious one, to let out some steam... and for those of you who are still puzzled: "What does the imagery have to do with the text ??!?" Little, but yes, there is some reference to the text..
;D

The braille system, devised in 1821 by Frenchman Louis Braille, is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write. Each braille character or cell is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four (2⁶) permutations, including the arrangement in which no dots are raised. For reference purposes, a particular permutation may be described by naming the positions where dots are raised, the positions being universally numbered 1 to 3, from top to bottom, on the left, and 4 to 6, from top to bottom, on the right. For example, dots 1-3-4 would describe a cell with three dots raised, at the top and bottom in the left column and on top of the right column, i.e., the letter m. The lines of horizontal braille text are separated by a space, much like visible printed text, so that the dots of one line can be differentiated from the braille text above and below. Punctuation is represented by its own unique set of characters. The braille system was based on a method of communication originally developed by Charles Barbier in response to Napoleon's demand for a code that soldiers could use to communicate silently and without light at night called night writing. Barbier's system was too complex for soldiers to learn, and was rejected by the military; in 1821 he visited the National Institute for the Blind in Paris, France, where he met Louis Braille. Braille identified the major failing of the code, which was that the human finger could not encompass the whole symbol without moving, and so could not move rapidly from one symbol to another. His modification was to use a 6 dot cell — the braille system — which revolutionized written communication for the blind.

The seed of growth and development or Helen Keller's "Aha!"

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“Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.”
--Helen Keller--

From the moment early humans created words, the seed of the library was there, in the beginning, with the word.

The Miracle Worker, the classic play [and film] of Helen Keller's life, depicts this seed at the moment of sprouting. The six-year-old Helen, deaf, blind and locked for years in a silence of darkness and almost wild with frustration, stands at the pump, her hand under the running water. Her teacher Annie Sullivan is spelling "water" in sign letters repeatedly into Helen's little palm - - probably for the hundredth time.

Then there is that stark moment of epiphany when the child, for years bereft of any way to communicate, makes the sudden connection between the cold water and the fingers insistently making shapes in her palm. In that moment, a human child skips over eons of human history, leaping from the inchoate and languageless state of man's prehistory into the world of signs.
Later, Helen Keller wrote that she wasn't fully conscious until she had language:

"It was the third of March, 1887, three months before I was seven years old. The morning after my teacher came she gave me a doll. ... As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten--a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that "w-a-t-e-r" meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. .."

Source : here

At the shrink's office.. :a fictional garden

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"Oh, what is he saying?'
[collage, gouache, pencil,ink]

Goal getting

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Notes to myself:
A new year, a new number, new expectations, hopeful wishes and dreams.

Looking back on this past year, keeping certain resolutions were easy,
maybe too easy because it just felt like a to do list[?] and others were
difficult to retain. How many times have I wished or said "This year will be
a great, the best year!" [or did I already secretly give up on the greatest
and best ?] Oh, the power of negativity!

I like to sit down with a list of items I like to accomplish for the year,
what to do every month, what to do every week, day.
What are the things I did in the last year and how do I continue, update and improve ?
What are the things I thought I needed to accomplish and see that they
really take away from the ultimate goal ? What are the things I like to
change in order to come closer to my goal and what steps am I undertaking
to get there ?

Goal setting really feels like cleaning up a messy room. Finding some sort of
order in an imaginary letterbox with little departments. Departments
ranging from High Priority to Important to In Progress...
Personal clutter-cleaning always makes me perspire, makes me nervous to set a
hierarchy, what if I fail, will I be able to do it ? What if that dream I always wanted,
I no longer want when I finally get there, or what if that dream I always aspired
to when I finally get there I no longer want and took me so long to get there..?
What if..?

Goal-getting is being extremely concrete with action steps and an action plan. Even if you have no idea how or when you may be able to put your dream into motion, you still take some forward movement in an effort to see this goal through. So that may mean that you put dates on a calendar (even if they are fictional dates) that pertain to your action steps. It may mean you visualize this goal nightly or journal how you would like this goal ideally to play out. Personally, I believe visualizing is very important because it not only allows you to "see" the goal but it allows you to "feel" it. This feeling part of goal-getting is crucial because it makes the goal very real; it no longer seems like just an idea,it is a bit more tangible.So, I encourage just five minutes of visualization a day to bring your goal your way!" -Laurie Santos-

Recycling old paintings

"tea time ... disturbed"

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Before the race

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So what does this have to do with the subject "visitors" you say.
Really at first sight I would say absolutely nothing or ..
perhaps the swimmer here rehearses just one more time before the race starts and before the fans and visitors arrive.

Since water is the underlying subject here combined with a swimmer in dreams this may indicate :

"Water represents your feelings, a river, the flow of our feelings and energies, and the sea the whole personality from outer surface to the depths of the unconscious, so swimming becomes an ability to cope with your inner feelings and energies. Inability to swim in a dream means you have not learned the skill of keeping afloat in the depth of your own feelings and mental life. To swim easily is to have confidence in yourself, and a trust in life to support your activities and efforts. To be at home in the waters is to feel at ease with your sexual urges, ambitions, desires and instincts. To be threatened by the waves or water, is to be afraid of yourself, of your own feelings, to doubt your ability to face life and its experiences. To feel threatened by your desires and energies." [Dream encyclopedia]

Some of the elements in this illustration could be seen as the Ace of Cups, Cups relating to feelings, water, the action, the start as the ace.

The missing link..

A while ago I made this illustration inspired by the book "Life of Pi" by Canadian author Yann Martel.

In this scene the protagonist, "Pi" Molitor Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, is pushed further and further off a lifeboat by the dangerous Bengali tiger, Richard Parker, until finally he resorts to his makeshift raft to survive.

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Childhood Memories: color sketches

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28/04/07: It's been awhile that I experimented with color and realism.
It always astounds me how much the color of an image effects the meaning of it.
29/04/07: Today I included the original sketch [top]

Wired

She wades through the landscape of history, attached to an umbilical cord,..
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