a rainy sunday afternoon

it's raining at last, after an entire month of sunshine. we've never had an entire month of sunshine in a row, so it was very welcome, but so is the rain. the rain has made me slow down - i can't be in the garden, picking strawberries or weeding or mowing or hoeing, so i'm in the plant-filled front entry with a cup of creamy coffee, a book, my journal, my camera and the kittens. i must admit it's bliss and precisely what i needed. i've been reading some more of knausgaard's small autumn essays. it's a book i've had on the nightstand for some time - you can just pick it up, read one or two as you wish, and then put it down again for some weeks. it lends itself to this slow way of reading it; each essay is shining, deep and luminous and i must get the rest of the seasons to savour as well (as you might guess, there are four volumes in all). they are small musing on single words - words like badger, war, labia - very diverse - written by knausgaard to his unborn daughter, as they awaited her. they're not exactly micro-memoirs, which i've also been pondering since hearing about them on the bittersweet life podcast, more like little perfect essayistic musings on being human. in looking for more small, perfect essays, i came across brevity, an online magazine filled with them. check it out if you're looking for something to read on a rainy sunday afternoon.

100 happy days :: day 80

cloudy, windy, blustery, but the sun broke through a few times and i was ready with my camera.

definitely a happy. 

rainy day ponderings

early mornings like a painting. the rest of the day, one wonders if one probably shouldn't have gotten to work on that ark. the wind yesterday was crazy, whipping leaves and loose branches from the trees - leaving the road strewn with debris and husband's half-finished sawmill a bit in disarray. today, there's just steady rain, but not so much wind. and we battened down the hatches of the sawmill, so it will be ok.

after a busy few weeks, things have slowed down a bit. i'm writing proposals and developing new ideas. and even writing a press release for my local photo walk that's a part of scott kelby's worldwide photo walk october 13! it's interesting, getting used to the rhythms.

i'm participating in stephanie levy's creative courage course. it just started yesterday and already it makes me feel both peaceful and purposeful. there's a link to it on the sidebar if you're interested, i think it's not too late to join in. i haven't been making anything lately and i can feel that's not a good thing. why is it that the creativity (actual physical creativity) is always the first thing to go when i get busy? i know that's bad for me and yet i let it happen.

the first exercise in the creative courage course asked us to write down what we'd like to create in the coming weeks and what we'd like to release. we should actually physically get rid of the piece of paper with the things we'd like to release...a sort of symbolic release of the words. i think these are powerful acts. and while i haven't done it yet (i'm still pondering and wondering if i can fit everything on one piece of paper), i will. i think i'll burn up that piece of paper when i'm done - what more cleansing way to release than fire? tho' i have an image in my head of a rain-spattered piece of paper as well, with the ink rinsing away. goodness knows we've got plenty of rain.

one of the things i want to release is negativity - yesterday, i ended up coming across several articles (i will admit to a certain fondness for the phrase rugbrød fascists) and blogs about expats living in denmark who were very unhappy and after reading them a bit too long, i found myself feeling negative and unhappy as well. and tho' some of what i read rings true, not all of it does. and even tho' i do occasionally despair that i will ever understand the danes, largely, i like it here and it definitely doesn't do me any good to read a bunch of arrogant, bilious ranting from someone who doesn't.

what's interesting is that one of the proposals i'm working on is for a program which helps alleviate some of the things described on that blog, tho' i do have my doubts whether danes will ever behave nicely in a queuing situation. and i have little hope for my little troglodyte buddy (who behaved even more abominably than ever last evening). i do think there's hope in other ways.

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do you have a method of physically getting rid of the negatives in your life?

do you burn or rip up or bury or scribble them out or release them on the wind?