This blog is pining away

I decided I had to write something here because it's been almost 3 weeks since I posted anything, and if I let too much time go by I'll get all self conscious about it and not want to write, and so forth and so on.
I think of this blog as the journal where mostly I record stuff I do, with photographs. That's so I don't have to write in the mixed media journal in which I mostly drew, painted and glued and did not like to write in, and in which I suddenly stopped doing anything at all.
The last thing I did in that journal was this double spread.

I had watched in rapture as Teesha Moore demonstrated this technique, then ran out and bought more supplies - surprised that there even were any supplies I might still need - made the freaky creatures above, never did all the doodles and writing I had intended to do on the pages, and that was it. It was the beginning of November and I haven't picked up a paint brush or a pair of scissors since. I worry myself sometimes. After that I completed an online altered photo class (or was it two?), threw myself headlong into books and retreats on Christian mystics and yoga philosophy, and now just scribble illegible summaries of my dreams in a notebook, with an occasional line about an important event or emotional state.

My work table with all my expensive tubes of paints, stencil supplies, jars and jars of gel medium, pens, pencils, oil sticks, rubber stamps, and who knows what, sits in the hallway, with what was left of its work surface now hidden by four tall stacks of books that I intend to read. Every time I walk by they whisper to me, "fickle, fickle squanderer of money, you couldn't live without us and now where are we? collecting dust, that's where...".

I could think about the jewelry-making supplies I have that could last several lifetimes, and that live in the same room with an armoire full of yarn, needles, and knitting books, not far from quite a collection of essential oils and aromatherapy books; and I could think about the dried up jars of ceramic glazes in the basement, that keep a cabinet full of silk dyeing supplies company, but I won't. It would just be too disturbing.

I know I am not alone in this. I know there are others out there like me. From their blogs I have glimpsed their world of passions found and forgotten, of stashes gathered and abandoned. Do you feel guilty too?

Since my intention for this on-line journal is that it be a photographic and written record of the stuff I do, this is what I have been up to since the retreat at the San Damiano Center a month ago. Two weekends ago I participated in a three day webcast conference held at The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, N.M, entitled Following the Mystics Through the Narrow Gate, more or less on the lines of the retreat at San Damiano, and last weekend I attended the Yoga Journal Conference here in San Francisco. A little side note here. I don't actually do yoga. I signed up for the conference a few months ago, when I had every intention of "really getting into yoga", but then not being able to because some kind of stuff is going on with the nerves coming from my cervical vertebrae, and maybe carpal tunnel and whatever. Fortunately 5 of the 6 classes I signed up for were mostly lecture and chanting, so I was still able to move at the end of the weekend! In any case, both events were pretty much mind blowing, but I have no photos of either.
I do, however, have a couple of photos of this mellow, sunny Sunday, when the rain finally let up, the skies were blue and the blossoms pink.

Mesmerized by the rain

Click twice on the image, not the play arrow, to watch on Youtube.

It's feast or famine here in San Francisco when it comes to rain. I was really enjoying it until I remembered how hard it is on the homeless and on those who have been putting up sand bags since yesterday.

Sunflowers are amazing

They are SUNflowers, and yet they bloom even in my back yard in one of the foggier neighborhoods of San Francisco.

Next year, if I still have a patch of dirt available for gardening, I want to plant a forest of them!

A Stranger in a Strange Land

I have often used the expression "a stranger in a strange land" thinking that it was simply the title of Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 best-selling novel. Now I discover it is a quote from Exodus 2:22.

I read Alisa Burke's most recent posts today and they reminded me of how more and more I have had the uneasy sensation of not belonging where I am. That I am "supposed" to be somewhere else. But where?

I have lived in San Francisco for 30 years, an amazing fact given that in the 30 years prior to moving here I lived in 22 different homes in 17 different cities. The odd thing is that although this is an undeniably beautiful place on Earth, and although I have now been here for half my life, I have never felt a sentimental attachment either to the city or to the Bay Area. I don't think it comes from moving so many times in the first part of my life, because that would not explain the fact that I have longings for other perhaps less beautiful places where I have lived for much shorter periods.

So I often have these moments where I feel out of place, like I should be somewhere else, but the problem is I'm not sure where that is.

Do you ever feel like that, or are you "home"?

P.S.

It is now a little over an hour since I published this post and in visiting my regular blog "reads" I have found two posts about places where people love or don't love living, here and here. Weird. As in "mysteriously strange or fantastic".