Meditative Art

Life has been challenging over this past week. Sometimes things happen that are difficult, if not impossible, to process. Such has been our …

Meditative Art

This post by Judith on https://artistcoveries.wordpress.com/ was a serendipitous find for me when I was casting about for a distraction from the on-going disaster that is the world out there. I had already weakened and thrown a train of the ongoing grief onto the page (previous post) when I recalled how soothing painting can be and thought that I should get back to it.

There’s nothing I can do about the ongoing train-wreck but keep myself sane and … I just don’t know what we as individuals can do.

Painting these miniatures my whole attention needs to go into every step of the process. They offer me three stages … I sketch, trace the important lines with black waterproof, and I paint. Six miniatures per A4 page, with two more to serve as a front door into the space and backdoor, or gate, out of the space.

Unfinished sketch of a corner of a living room. A few more elements before I can call it done. the flowers need a touch of color, for example. And so do the bricks in the fireplace. 10 x 9.5 cm or 4 x 3.7 inches.

Before I put pen to paper I need to set the scheme out, and it’s easy to make a mistake. As I did with this series. To put the booklet together with the least number of cuts and gluing, the six inner elements need to be positioned facing upward, facing downward, facing upward. That didn’t happen here:

… and I will need to do more cutting and more gluing to get a successful outcome. My fingers are crossed.

It’s Hard Work …

It’s hard work to stay well to say hi you good couple more days and I’ll be well again hard work to talk hard to live as if hoping is still worthwhile work. For my childrens children. And for all children

It’s hard work to hope with the deluge reaching and over-reaching and we’re all still standing in the ankle-deep sludge downstream, arguing.

So much oil under the bridge, so much coal floating downstream, so many poisons soaking into our soils no it’s all good we can make it tech will save us

So much worry, words words words, worry beads and plastic bangles plastic nodules. Nerdles accreting barnacles as they float wither weather wind-driven across an ocean of plastic film and ghosts of sea life

So many islands shores coasts mangroves maldives rocks and reefs atolls and bird sanctuaries buried

So much delay anxiety about the future deaths of children bombings wars steel splinters and torn molten metals looping and lunging

So many floaters that the dead shoal under the bridge where finally the ocean receives us and our molecules and receives our ashes and our atoms

The ocean? No more than an elemental soup

But our souls? Where will theywe rest?

Is there a purgatory wide deep aeonic enough to gather us all in to stew gestate lumpify petrify turn us into crystals of negated promise?

You see why it’s difficult to decide to be well?

Why it’s difficult to want to turn up? To say hi with a smiling face, make bright talk, a cheery welcome?

The ‘Dikke Koek’ Pan

So called in my birth family. A wedding present to my parents, it’s been in use, mostly, for more than three quarters of a century. I may have had it sitting decoratively on a shelf for a few years but is now back in almost daily use.

And still going strong, though the enamel is a bit worn at the edges. I trust this eroding enamel on cast iron a lot more than eroding teflon and modern stone wear.

I do stir fries in it, and also fry-ups which are a more elemental and robust fare than the meticulously sliced and diced former dish.

For a fry-up I like to start with a tablespoon of oil. Throw in roughly diced cooked chicken, precooked sausage or other meat, about a tablespoon’s worth per person. Fry till meat starts to get brown. Add in about the same amount of diced capsicum. Give the mass a bit of a stir.

People not on a low FODMAP diet might’ve started with onion and garlic. But next in for me are a few tablespoons of cooked rice, or cooked pasta, or a root vegetable. I’ll hold back the carbohydrates if I’m having this on toast.

Pile the pan full of washed and dried green leaves … I use half a bag of prewashed three leaf salad from the supermarket … and stir to melt down. Break an egg over the pan and half stir that goodness in too. ( Yes! Discard the eggshell!)

Empty into a bowl or on toast on a plate. Salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

The ‘Dikke Koek’ of the title is something else entirely. if you know any Dutch or Afrikaans you’ll know already that Dikke means thick or fat, and koek means cake.

If you were going to say koek means biscuit or cookie … they are brothers and sisters of the same ilk. Baked goeds. Koek.

Dikke koek was a favourite birthday dinner dessert.

The savoury part of such a dinner often consisted of capucijners—in English known as marrowfats or grey peas—with bacon/spek, a green salad, fried potatoes and appelmoes (smashed apples). Yum!

You’d hardly think that after a first course as sturdy as that, anyone would still be able to fit in a serve of dikke koek met cinnamon sauce! But, you know, teenagers? They have hollow legs.

In the years when these birthday meals were cooked there would often be three teenagers at the table, plus an equal number of slightly younger kids.

Dikke koek is an old recipe—I’ll be very surprised to learn whether people in the Netherlands still eat it. Its formal name in the cookbook we get it from (published in 1939) is ‘broeder’… Why? A mystery to me.

The cookbook was my mother’s home economics textbook in secondary school.

Product Presentation

Carry Bag Handles

One of my ongoing interests is how products are packaged. This began when I was about fifteen and my birth family hosted two Japanese engineers who were in Australia to install and test a huge new Japanese generator (or transformer) at the power plant where my father also was an engineer, and who brought us lots of presents.

During the week these men lived in a boarding house, and weekends Saturday or Sunday, they came to our place at Berowra, in the outer northern suburbs of Sydney in the 1960s.

At the time we had a garage which served as living and dining room and my parents bedroom, while kids had two bedrooms in the house built by my father on weekends, one room for three boys and one for three girls.

I don’t recall the power station. It could’ve been Lidell and that would’ve been a family shorthand nickname.

Lol, getting mired in backstory there!

Japanese packaging has always been superb! Classy! Stylish! Rave rave rave!

I saved all the wrappings of all the presents they gave us and kept them for years. And when I was in Japan, in 1976, I saved all packaging from vending machines and the like. I think at the end of my four months travel through Asia, Siberia, Russia and Scandinavia, a good bit of my luggage was souvenired packaging.

All to no avail, of course. My first night in London, the house where I was staying was robbed. All my precious collection was trampled through the mess left by two perpetrators breaking through the plasterboard ceiling, and getting away with all cameras, the family’s silver and jewellry. They even nicked my feather-down sleeping bag.

But. Getting back to the subject. Packaging. Enduring interest.

These cardboard ‘zippers’ fastened the lid of the box to the underside and nothing was torn taking them off. Bet they can be used again.

The laptop was covered with this simple envelope. The paper of similar weight to greaseproof paper. And similar to greaseproof paper, is coating-free, safe for recycling in the composting bin. (So called ‘baking paper’ is NOT safe!)

Several other bits of cardboard and paper wrapped the cord and power plug. All of it calm, plain, and functional.

People will say we pay for all that. True. And I’d rather pay for good design than bad. I’d rather pay for paper than more plastic bags. The bag handles in the first image are probably the only non degradable parts, but will be re-used as long as the bag lasts. And possibly after that if I can find a reuse for them.

Flickering Touchbar …

I’m on my mobile phone … cell phone to some of you! So I can’t insert the 5 second video clip illustration of the above … either because I can’t find the instructions to achieve it or it’s not available.

Have to make do with a still photo of the problem

So you’ll need to imagine it. The whole touchbar—at the top of the keyboard in certain models of Macbook Pro—is now flickering the whole time the laptop is being used. For all that I know it continues to flicker when the lid is closed.

I’ve been putting up with it since about September 2022, when it began with a couple of centimetres or an inch. After trying to have it fixed, the malady extended to 5 or 6 centimetres, which was when I stuck some blue electrical tape over it. This year that spilled into the rest of the bar, and became unbearable to use.

Hence went out Monday afternoon to purchase a new laptop … thought I caught Covid that day … but it was probably earlier.

Covid

Finally have it. Four years of obsessive isolating and six vaccinations were not enough protection.

I got sloppy, I guess, went shopping for a new computer not wearing a mask. Couldn’t face talking hi tech through a mask.

Hopefully the vaccinations will help prevent a full blown attack, though I am in the highest category of danger, being old, sick and immune compromised.

Trying to get some anti virals now, there’s misundestanding between the med clinic and the pharmacy.

Watercolour Painting …

I’ve been doing booklets using free form paintings for a while … producing these for eventual sale at a residents open day.

After two or three, it became difficult to replicate methods while staying original.

So—big think later—decided to paint structured pre sketched scenes where I could practice perspective, and revise different techniques on a small scale.

Also to be made into little books eventually

A front door … a couple of things that can be improved on next time …

A back gate next, where I did a bit of wet on wet …