It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A very merry Christmas to you!  And I hope you haven't been too put off by the snow being bothersome.  I certainly haven't been.

Christmas is meaning something different to me this year than in previous years.  I'm trying hard to dodge the bustle of shoppers, and the sugar coating of the nativity story.  I'm not even that fond of some of the carols, 'Away in a Manger' among them, it's just to pretty, too unrealistic in comparison to what actually happens in the Christmas story. 

Each year it seems to get more and more watered down, described more like a fairy tale.  I almost want to duck out of it altogether, and back into past years before there was a red-cloaked Santa.  I enjoy the family-orientated side of things as much as the next person, but I just want to take it back to how it was years ago, when there was a little less consumerism, and a little more awareness of good and evil, light and darkness.

I see why we layered the celebration of Christmas over the old yule festivals, and the winter solstice too, since they do have some strong thematic similarities between them.  The idea of hope entering the world during it's darkest time, the promise of a new future, a milestone of change.  The act of deliberately celebrating winter's end during the darkest, iciest days of the year is one of definace, of planting light amidst darkness, knowing it will shine out.  The Bible describes Jesus this way, as the 'Light of the World' that the darkness cannot overcome (John 1:4-5)

For me this time of year, when the cold sets in and we abandon exploration in favour of bundling up indoors, is a time for retreat, introspection, and looking back into the past -rather nostalgically I'll admit.  Folk songs and traditional tunes start to take over my playlists -many of my Christmas songs have a darker edge to them. 

I love the bare brittle nature of winter too.  The beauty in the stark bleakness that falls over everything.  The natural end of the year, and the harmony that still exists in the death of the world.  So naturally I've been out with my camera. 

With all this snow my usual routes were transformed and some photos came out more like Christmas cards.  You can view them all on my Flickr page, but theose up here are one or two of my favourites:

Projected imagination

Check out this wicked example of video mapping, used on the 600 yr old Astronomical Clock in Prague's Old Town (I've been there! but I wish I'd been able to see this)  It was a pretty amazing clock to begin with, but this animation technique takes it to a whole new level


The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.


Quoting from the Makula website (translated from Czech):
Video mapping using current technology available in the entertainment industry, a whole new way. The main contents are the projections to cooperate with the selected object and try to break the perception perspective of the viewer. With the projector can fold and stress any shape, line or space. Evocative play of light on the physical object creates a new dimension and changing the view of the seemingly "normal thing". Everything becomes an illusion.

Good hair day

A candle-lit dinner

We had a powercut the other day, only for an hour or two but it took out over 850 houses.  The whole estate went dark, the streetlights went out, all the way up the main road almost to the university.  Fortunately I'm a hoarder so I had 2 large candles my Dad gave me and a box of long thin ones that I use for wax resist drawings, which I snapped in half and set in glasses.

Of course I realised I couldn't heat any food since our oven is electric (I knew there was a reason I preferred gas hobs!) so took my torch and walked into town towards the lights where their grid was still on.  It's literally a 1min walk or I wouldn't have chanced it, but it was lovely walking down the street without the street lights on.  Of course everyone else was out too, wandering round outside their houses trying to work out if all the streets were down.  Amusingly everyone's first respnse was to phone everybody else and tell them about it!

I bought myself some crusty bread for sandwiches, juice and a whole lot of biscuits.  I enjoyed a very uncomplicated dinner, lit by a cluster of tiny lights.  A nice surreal break from the usual.

Jumpers and... and...

I love autumn.  I mean, who doesn't, but I really do.  There's something about the crispness of the air, the mist, the biting chill, the golden light that you just don't get at any other time of year, early in the morning or when the sun's coming down, that makes everything glow against the sky.  And everything's dying but man is it beautiful.

Maybe it's that whole Death is a Part of Life mentality that just clicks everything about our place in the world back into it's proper perspective, or just nature being phenomenal, but even though we all moan about cold it is how can you not love it?

Still jobless, curled up on the sofa in my favoruite jumper -it's a kind of ruddy orange knitted thing I found in a charity shop and took the sleeves in on.  A proper cold-weather jumper.  I'm watching 'Into the Wild', which I've wanted to see/read for a while now.  It's not done yet but so far I'm loving it, enjoying the vaguely sad feeling that if I went into the wild like that I'd just die (much as I still want to take a road trip someday), but that there are other people out there too whose skin crawls at the idea of a life rules by work and objects where everyone has everything they want and it's still not enough, they still don't treat each other right.  It's something I worry I'll lose once I get a job, once I have money and the temptation is really there.

Looking for work is weird.  I can get by on JobSeekers Allowance but I only get that if I'm looking for a job.  I'm more concerned about what I'll do once I get one than whether or not I'll find one, how it will change my life, my time, what I do with myself, what I care about, even the way the contents of my wardrobe will change.  But in the meantime applying for work and not getting it can be just as bad.  It's hard to stay motivated sometimes, harder to keep a routine going (especially given my preference of late nights over early mornings but it's pretty necessary if you want to avoid a serious case of apathy) and to be on time for things.  The last 2 weeks in particular I've been late for almost everything, despite having nowhere else to be.  You forget what you are capable of when you try, of working hard, of drawing well, of drawing at all in my case. 

But then sometimes it's fine.  I enjoy all the time I have, the fact that I can go see people and spend time with them, that I can drop everything and do something else if I want to.  And then I wonder if I even want a job.

Loving the Non-Dairy Diary   It's charming and lovely and makes me smile.  And there are pictures like this to the right :

See?  Doesn't that just make you want to have a nice day?

Of Tents and Cathedrals

So I was at a friends wedding, turned up early for the reception so drew this to pass the time

It came out really well and Al (the groom at the back there) stood up at just the right time.  One of the kids at the wedding managed to identify three people in there, so that's got to be a good sign!

Something else I'm liking right now is 'The Pillars of the Earth' they're showing on Channel 4 at the moment.  I read the sequel book, 'World Without End', without realising it was a sequel, but I enjoyed the way all the characters lives twist together, and the long period of time it covers.  Both the book and the series cover at least 30 years, something you don't see a lot of, and I liked it.

Plus the title sequence is pretty cool.

Pillars of the Earth - Tv-series Intro (title-sequence) - The Pillars of the Earth

That warm fuzzy feeling...

Well I've been a busy little body lately, partly because I've finally made the official start on my first 'proper' project, by which I mean one where it actually matters that I perform to a professional standard, and also one where I will recieve money at the end.  So hoorah for that!  Maybe once it's all done I'll put a few things up here, along with some links to the final video which will be viewable online, but until then I'm going to have to sit on it.

Also a busy weekend because two of my friends got married on Sat 23rd (to each other!) so a little flotilla of cars made it's way down the M5 to Oxford for the wedding.  I managed to get a little drawing done too, but more on that in the next post.

Rather ironically, or at least dichotomously, I found out that my Grandad has suffered a heart-attack while at the reception party.  Obviously everyone was a bit scared but he's doing fine.  It does kind of throw up the dualistic nature of life on planet earth -these two drastically contrasting events can happen right next to each other.  When I told my friend she said (meaning well, bless her) "Wow, it's almost like Four Weddings and a Funeral" to which I rather wryly replied "Sure, except there was only one wedding, and no funeral at all."  But I know what she meant.

In addition to all that excitement, I've managed to carve out a little time for some reading and also some arts and craft time!  Yeah!

Based roughly on these instructions from the {NewNew} blog I felted a jumper I bought from a charity shop by putting it in the hot wash (and accidentally shrinking it because I forgot to take it out before the spin-dry started), and after some cutting, sewing and generally seamsressing, I produced this:

My hot water bottle fits neatly through the turtleneck and once I tie it closed it is a lovely fuzzy bundle of warmth to rest on during those specially chilly nights -which has been pretty much every night for the past week, so good timing there!

My friend Anna Purver is going to make me a little bird to sew onto it since my own sewing is actually not that pretty.  Sturdy, but not pretty, and I can't use a sewing machine either :)  

You can see examples of her lovely creations over at her blog, Needles and Buttons, and I think a little fabric bird will make a great finishing touch and add a splash of colour.





A man who knew where his towel was

"From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie."

~Hokusai

Wearing the Clever Trousers

I seem to be interested in prodigies of late. Geniuses, savants, people of unusual intelligence. I always like to see characters with a brain being appreciated and explored since a lot of attention is usually given to the more athletic and therefore more physically attractive characters.  My current favourites are Spencer Reid of Criminal Minds and the boys from The Big Bang Theory but I seem to have picked up a pattern in the films I've been watching lately, and discovering more in them than just admirable intellects.

My favourites seem to deal with the dichotomy of genius, which is that a mental ability in one area can be accompanied by a deficiency in another. Sometimes it's a simple lack in social skills from too long spent outcast from the popular kids, or a mental illness that counterweights their genius, and sometimes is what makes it possible at all (e.g. Reid shows mild signs of Asperger syndrome, and Rain Man's Raymond is autistic)

So here's this week's playlist:
(Titles link to trailers)

Good Will Hunting
When I read the summary I assumed it would be the classic case of 'Lonely Nobody discovers he has Supernatural Abilities. He is now a Hero!' Almost like a superhero, Spiderman maybe. But instead it focussed on something I hadn't considered before- unfulfilled potential.

Will, the protagonist, is incredibly gifted. He can work out problems overnight that took his professors years to solve, he understands mathematics the way Mozart understood music, and can recall hundreds of facts at a moments notice, yet he spends his time working as a janitor in MIT and getting into pointless fights.

When one professor discovers Will's talents he decides that such a great mind cannot be wasted and bails Will out of jail with great ambitions for him, including formal lessons and therapy. However as Will slowly begins to speak with Sean, the only therapist to survive his vicious repartee, we see that it isn't that he is unaware of his own intelligence -on the contrary, he is so aware of it that he deliberately and antagonistically runs mental rings around anyone he meets just because he can- but that he has been so emotionally damaged by his life so far that he refuses to attempt anything he really wants, for fear of losing it.

There's a lot in this movie; the desire for success versus the perceived shame of failure, what happens when the need for recognition takes over, the assumptions we make about other people's lives, how fear can paralyse and isolate us, the effect cruelty and rejection has on people, the cost of abandoning troubled youths to the judicial system, the merits of intelligence versus empathy, and why we need to know ourselves and examine our actions carefully. It's a very moving film in places, funny too, and surprisingly profound in the aftermath. I highly recommend it.


Proof
Catherine Bryggman struggles to make sense of her life following the death of her father Robert, a great mathematician. When a proof is found in her father's study that may resolve an important theory in the mathematical world, and which Catherine claims to have written, she has to come to terms with the fact that as well as inheriting her father's brilliant mind, she may also be carrying the mental illness that haunted him until his death.

The cast is small which makes it very intimate to watch -the play it is based on only has four parts and they mostly keep to that- and the relationships very tangible. I like the quiet of it, the long pauses, the silences it leaves, and the math joke (I'm a sucker for a nerdy pun). While Proof deals with the same topic as A Beautiful Mind, that of fearing your own mind, I think I prefer Proof for keeping it small-scale and personal rather than going for the career-spanning grandiose air that A Beautiful Mind has, although each is justified in it's filming style for the story it tells, it's just a matter of taste.



A Beautiful Mind
John Forbes Nash Jr. is one of those guys whose ideas and discoveries are behind a lot of the processes we take for granted today. His work as a mathematician focussed on using maths to describe and analyse human behaviour and strategies, and the patterns and effects caused by variations in the environment (please excuse my Laymen's, all those with better understanding of it). He also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Many people get schizophrenia confused with multiple personality disorder (I did until I looked it up), where the sufferer switched between personalities, but schizophrenia is more like switching between versions of reality. The sufferer experiences things that simply are not there, hallucinations and delusions, while often appearing perfectly normal in all other ways.

For most of his career Nash struggled against the advance of the illness, and the film (based on the book of the same title) shows him trying to reconcile with the fact that his most treasured possession, his mind, is also the source of his greatest suffering.  It's a window, albeit a decorated and slightly Hollywood-ised one, into the fascinating life of one remarkable man, and just how resilient humans can be.


Rain Man
This is supposed to be one of those films that 'Everyone Has To See', so I gave it a go. For the impossible few that haven't heard of it the story revolves around Charlie Babbit, a young man very bitter towards his estranged and recently deceased father, who discovers that he has an older brother, Raymond, who is autistic and living in a care home. Their father bequeathed three million dollars to Raymond in his will, only leaving Charlie his old car, so in an effort to claim 'his share' Charlie hits the road with Raymond, hoping to use him as leverage. However the more time he spends with his brother, the more his attitude changes towards both Raymond and himself.

Rain Man doesn't really fit my genre since it's more about Charlie learning how to be loyal, compassionate and generally less of a selfish ass than he was before than it is about his brother's genius, Raymond is just the catalyst that begins that transformation and it is his disabilities that are the real focus.

In that sense Raymond's mind isn't really explored much, but the portrayal of autism has been highly praised and that's important because this is the other way of approaching the topic. The other movies (Proof and A Beautiful Mind in particular) show highly intellectual people holding the fort of cleverness against the onslaught of mental illness or emotional trauma and for the most part succeeding. Rain Man approaches it from the other end of the spectrum. Raymond has never fought as John and Catherine fought, because from the moment he was born he was already lost to autism, but rather than portray him as someone to whom mental illness represents a long fall into darkness Raymond is shown as a complete person, and not a lesser one for being autistic. He is eccentric and bound by the need for routine, but he is complete. Moreso than Charlie in many ways, and as he learns to recognise Raymond as a valuable human being he has a connection with, Charlie is humanised in turn.

Bowing and scraping

Hello hello, I'm still alive.  Apologies for the long absence, up here in the university town of Loughborough we have been having Freshers Week (fortnight!) so a hundred and one things have all been crying out for my attention. 

As a peace token I offer you this picture of a funny man.

I drew it as a commission for a friend, and she was very specific about what the style, colours, everything was going to look like, right down to the exact tone of red for the background.  It's just a straightforward portrait but I rather like it.  He changed a bit from the sketching stage when he was a lot more angular and stylised.  Billy Connolly is a very funny guy, but darn it when you break his face down into it's constituent parts he has got some scary features!

Here he is in sketch stage and a different style that got rejected for the final version, with his squinty little eyes, big black eyebrows and some pretty awesome hair.  I do like drawing longer hair, it's just more fun.

Mushroom City!

Home of the Mushroom People!!

I went walking in the woods again.  Most of the fruits, seeds and berries are gone by now, but everywhere there are mushrooms.  Massive massive mushrooms of infinite variety, in clusters and standing on their own like miniature trees.  I know better than to touch any of them, but I took lots of pictures and have been having fun trying to identify them.

The Problem of Pain

Street Pastors again.  Tonight made more sense to me, I got to go out with some of the guys I trained with, which was fun, and despite some spitty rain the night had a really good vibe to it.  We met a lot of people; Sylvia the Big Issue Lady was out as usual, selling roses, some groups of lads who thanked us for being there, and some girls who were stunned by the fact we were giving away flipflops for free.  Oh, and check out our new stash.  It's a bit swish and very warm due to the big fat fleecey layer on the inside.

And one lady, who is now engraved in my brain.  We bumped into her when the lads we were talking to started involving her in the conversation and told her who we were.  She muttered something about Christians being fake to her friend, then looked at us, straight-mouthed, and said "Okay, I'm going to ask this to all of you and see if you all answer the same.  I've had eight miscarriages."  My demeanor changed instantly, blocking out the lads round us.  It was time to be serious.  "I've got six kids, but I've had eight miscarriages.  So tell me, what kind of a God does that?"
"Yeah," one of the boys chipped in, "how come pedophiles and murderers can have families, but good people always die."

What do you say when faced with a question like that?  This is the kind of problem that has been a major sticking point about the idea of God with a lot of people since it first came up; why do bad things happen?  C.S. Lewis wrote a book about it, The Problem of Pain, after the death of his wife.
I know many women who have suffered miscarriages, my mother is one of them, and even the idea of it is awful to contemplate.  In my life so far there has been and is an answer to pain, and God is it, but it's not something you can explain to someone.  Rather it's something a person has to experience themselves, a journey they take on their own, and the reason for this is that it's so intensely personal.  No one, however much they might want to, can feel another person's pain, can understand it fully, or can heal it for them.  It's a long conversation, often a fight, between man and God to try and make sense of the world again.

So here I am, faced with this woman who is clearly hurting very badly, and I know that nothing I can say is going to fix this for her.  In fact all I can think of are things I very badly want not to say:
1)  I don't want to try to tell her that it will get better eventually, or about these women I know who have come through miscarriages (one couple, six of them) closer to God than ever.
2)  I don't want to patronise her with meaningless platitudes about how good God is when right now she probably hates his guts.  That would most likely just make things worse.
3)  It's probably not the right time to point out that miscarriages aren't just a smiting, there are often numerous and complex reasons for them including genetics, biology and her own life choices.  How much more insensitive could you get?

Worst of all, with all these lads around us yelling and cutting in, even if I had the time this isn't the place, not for something this delicate.  What can I do?
"It must be so hard," I said seriously, trying to keep eye contact with this boys jumping around everywhere.  "I'm so sorry."
She asks me essentially the same thing again, and I reply the same, adding that it's not really something I can explain for her.  The lad from before chips in again.
"Is it maybe to inspire the rest of us to try and be better, or to make us appreciate life?"
I said "Maybe."

I'm getting a bit of this at the moment from various places.  People have troubles in their lives from day-to-day, I have troubles (somewhat smaller just now, thankfully) in my own, the Pope is visiting which is making a lot of people cross and they want to tell me so (although I didn't invite him!  I'm not entirely keen on it either), I recently saw a televised debate on the Catholic church and whether or not it's a Force for Good.  (Anne Widdecombe says it is -she is always fun to watch and I like her hard-headedness in debate- and Stephen Fry says it isn't -he made an excellent arguement and I have a lot of time for his opinions- I found Hitchens a bit arrogant and Onaiyekan a bit simple, bar his closing statement, and the outcome should give everyone a lot to think about) 
Additionally my housemate is reading the God Delusion (which I do not think is watertight from the section I've read) and I want to borrow it from her when she's done and go through it properly myself, but I am not a fan of Dawkins; not because of his atheism but because I find him to be antagonistic and a whinger (sorry, Richard, but I do). 
All in all, a lot of people seem to be telling me how rubbish Christianity/Christians are lately, and how rubbish various churches are, and not many of them are being polite about it.  And I'm not sure they're all wrong either.

I'm one of those people who tries to see the good in things, even if there's not much there to start with.  It's not blind faith, I made sure of that, but I started considering that side of things because I want to live with a certain attitude to the world around me.  It's what gives me my underlying joy about life, but it doesn't mean I'm blind to problems.  There are a lot of them.  Everywhere.  Yes, in the church, in this town, in me.  Maybe because I make so many mistakes myself I can appreciate how easy it is to let fear of reprisals and people's opinions stop even large organisations from doing the right thing, but that doesn't change their actions.On the news I see nothing but problems, many that I cannot fix except to be indignant and angry on behalf of people I've never even met, which does them little help. 

My instinct is to defend the good and try and bring it out, but sometimes there is nothing to defend.  Because when someone is angry about molested children and the institutionalised denial of it, there is nothing you can say.  And when a religion loses it's heart to putting human beings in a hierarchy and the practise of mere tradition, there is nothing you can say.  And when a hurting woman mourns her unborn children there is nothing you can say.  When they shout at you and insult the God you love because they feel wronged by his people there is nothing you can say.  You represent the institution of the international Church in their eyes, and God, and every other Christian on the planet.  For just a few seconds you are all of these people, and you must answer for all of them.
Sometimes you shouldn't say anything.  You shouldn't defend and you shouldn't fight for it.  Because it is bad, and you can't make it better with words.
Sometimes you should just acknowledge the problem, let them hate you, and shut up.

The woman berates us a bit more. I nod and don't smile, and I tell her "It must be awful. I'm so sorry."  When she left she seemed less angry, but I don't really know.

Another day in paradise

Street pastors was a challenge this week.  Sometimes you turn up really excited to see God do stuff, some days you're a bit more nervous ("What can I possibly bring to the table?") and then sometimes, like this week, you suffer from a little streak of arrogance.  ("Yes!  I will go out this evening and do some good!  My presence is clearly important to the success of tonight!"  Or something like that.)  But God, in all his great wisdom immediately says "Oh no you don't, you cut that out right now.  Deflate that big head of yours; don't you forget who's really running this outfit."

So I went out, maybe feeling a little more puffed-up than I really should have, and met the following people:

1)  Two homeless guys that work as a double act, sitting in a shop entrance with a board propped up as a wind-breaker and blankets round them.  Hedley bought them a cheesburger and chatted with them for a while -me and Steve were on the other side of the street at the time.  Now we're heading into autumn there's a definite chill at night and it's only going to get worse.  These two hang out together for company and one of them writes poetry.  He recited a couple of verses to them about his life which were apparently pretty good.  It's easy to forget that just because someone's time is taken up surviving, they still have an urge to express themselves, to create things.  They just don't have the outlet.

2)  A 50-something year old Romanian woman.  I see her a lot selling the Big Issue on the street and we never do more than the usual "How much is that?"  "Thank you" exchange, but this night was really quiet so we stopped to chat with her.  Turns out she, her husband, and her five kids (4 girls, 1 boy) came over here from Romania 3 years ago looking for work because they couldn't find any at home.  Her kids are all grown up now and they and the husband work washing cars in Tesco's car park.  She and the daughter sell the Big Issue during the day but at night, when they're all sleeping at home, she comes out and wanders round the town centre, selling roses to couples on a night out.  They all share a house, up past Tesco's, but no one who sells Big Issue is especially wealthy or can get a different job.  And yet when she said she went to a church and we said so did we, she immediately started telling us how good God was to her.  That she prayed all the time, that he made her happy.

3)  A guy sitting outside MacDonalds, watching people walk past very quietly.   We asked him if he was okay, and he asked if we were Christians.  When we nodded he immediately started talking about his life without any prompting at all. 
His name was Darren and he was a soldier, recently in Iraq.  He was back in England on sick leave after being shot- he pulled up his shirt and showed us the six-inch scar left across his stomach.  We asked him what he was doing sitting out there and he said he was just watching life, trying to get his head around it.  Since coming back he was finding it very difficult to integrate back into the life he'd had before.  Watching everyone walk past on a night out, drinking and getting in fights, he said everyone just seemed so selfish.  All they thought about was themselves when there were men out there dying, and how could they do that?  They would squabble over the tiniest things and get in fights over nothing, when he had seen people shot on their behalf and they didn't even care, weren't even aware of it.  Ever since he came back he'd been given a really hard time by people who said he shouldn't have gone out, he'd had counselling but it hadn't done any good since the counsellor really had no idea what he'd been through.  His partner had left him and he didn't see his two kids much any more, and he'd taken to drinking.  Although Darren had hope that in the future when he had healed he would be able to turn his life around, what he had seen and done on his tour of duty had fundamentally changed him, as it does a lot of soldiers, and speaking to him in person was a very strange experience.
These men are simply following the orders they have been given.  That is their job, and a job that most of us would never consider doing -could never even attempt.  They risk their lives, away from home and family, in conditions none of us would put up with, and many of them return home both physically, emotionally and psychologically damaged.  We take our freedom so much for granted in this country.  Whether or not we agree with the leaders that sent them out there, surely the least we owe people in that kind of situation is sympathy and compassion, because a lot of them have dealt with things that we never will.

4)  At the end of the night there was a ruckass when a guy was apparently seen hitting his girlfriend on the street.  She was pretty hysterical but also a bit drunk so there is no way of knowing whether he really did or she intigated it, but there was running and yelling and threats.  Steve told the police TV crew what was going on, and eventually they reported back that the two had got in a taxi together, having sorted out the worst of it.  Of course, as Street Pastors we are not the police, and if things had got nastier I don't know what we would have done.  Of course we have a duty to the rest of our team to try and keep ourselves out of harm's way, we certainly aren't bouncers, but it's very difficult (for me anyway) to stand there and hear a big fight like that, and not be able to do anything to help.

All in all it was a very humbling night, and a confusing one.  Mainly because I was faced with so many situations that really I could do nothing to help.  I can't home those two guys, I can't improve that woman's financial situation, I can't solve domestics and I definitely can't do much for men like Darren.  It was like I'd had the carpet pulled out from under me, and I went home asking God "So what am I doing this for?  What is the point of me going out there at all when there are so many different kinds of people struggling and suffering in so many different ways, and I can't change any of them.  Is this all just a pipe dream?  I don't understand."

I had to wait until Sunday for an answer, when we were singing some worship.  It's funny how half an hour focussing on God's goodness shrinks all the other problems you thought you had, but I still had all this at the back of my mind.  Then the chorus to a song came round:
Our God saves.  Our God saves
There is hope in your name
Mourning turns to songs of praise
Our God saves, our God saves
and it hit me.  God saves.  There is hope in him.  The Romanian woman had spoken about it, even Darren had mentioned it; that the knowledge of God brings hope, and hope is the source of life and joy in difficult circumstances.  Where God is, wherever God is, and despite people's struggles, they still have this sense of something better beyond themselves.  And he does save.  He is the one that brings that woman joy, and he is the one that cam heal men of their scars.
It very much put me in my place, and reminded me of how much I still have to learn about the world, but I went out that afternoon praising God for his goodness to us, which is exactly as it should be.

Oh dear...

I was listening to a track from James Cameron's Avatar on Youtube (I'm a bit meh about the actual film, but the soundtrack is great) and browsing through the comments when I came across a fantastic one. 

People have lots of ideas as to what Avatar is really about; is it Pocahontas in disguise?  Is it a comment on the Iraq war?  America's expolitative tendencies?  The suppression of native people groups in third world countries?  It's definitely got something to do with respecting the cultures of other people and not screwing them over simply because you have a bloated ego and superior weaponry.

But someone on Youtube seems to have a slightly different idea as to what it was about.  This is probably the most accidentally insulting thing anyone probably could have said, and as such I find it very funny:

"megaminer101
3 weeks ago 12
james cameron is sending a message we are killing the animals and taking what we want. im on his side we are greedy we are taking what we want we are killing the animals thumbs up if you want to help the world "

We are killing...  the animals.  The Animals.  Oh my gosh...
Not another race of people (albeit blue people), whose lives have equal value to ours and whose way of life should be respected and preserved but... the animals.

*sigh*
I despair of mankind sometimes, I really do :)

Today is a day of marvellous wonders!!

Most days are, but today especially.  I shall list the reasons for this, now:

1)  JobSeekers Allowance meeting was this morning.  I can breathe a sigh of relief for another two weeks.  It's not that I don't look for work, but I always worry I'll fill the form in wrong!  Yes I am a paranoid little android.

2) I finally got my pictures framed!  I eventually gave in and bought a sketch from the incomparable Rima Staines, owner of  The Hermitage.  Her artwork and sense of storytelling always blows me away, so I bought this little trinket, entitled, 'There's a Stair in Her Hair'.  It's less finished than most of her work which tends to have layers of texture and colour painted onto it ( and which I intend to go back for once I have the money!) but I love the dreamlike quality of it.  My print arrived within the week and sat proudly on my desk until I could find a nice wooden frame for it.  But also in the envelope was a little postcard; two figures cunningly hidden in a wash of watercolour, and I liked it so much that I decided to frame that too!  Fortunately I had an empty frame I bought from a friend just standing by, so with a little bit of trimming the two fit perfectly.  Here they both are on my desk, although the photo doesn't do either of them justice.

Sitting behind them is Jeremy, my pet rosemary plant.  Which leads me onto Number 3

3)  I have a rosemary plant!  I wanted one for ages because I love the smell, and fresh rosemary is so much nicer than buying it from the supermarket, and now I have one.  His name is Jeremy (yes I named him) and he lives on my desk.  I tried to grow some from seeds but they didn't come up for such a long time I thought I had killed them, maybe through over- or under-watering, but I'd been so careful, I just couldn't figure it out.  BUT I DIDN'T KILL THEM!  Just this week they have suddenly sprouted into tiny green things in their little pot.  There are a few of them so I think when they grow up I will move Jeremy to a bigger pot, then to the garden in the spring, and they can have his old one.

4) I made flapjacks!

And...

5) I am finally getting some drawing done!  I'm still at a point of being a little scared of the work I know I need to do to make something of myself illustrator-wise, so I have a bit of a backlog but this week I've finally started working through it.  Getting done those things people asked you to do (and generally won't pay you for) so that I can get onto bigger and better things that will actually earn me some money.  Hoorah for proactivity!

Jubilee Woods

Not the best start to the day -woke up crying after a disturbing dream which pretty much messed up my morning, so to cheer myself up I decided to take myself off for a walk somewhere.  The good thing about Loughborough is that you can drive for 5 minutes and be in a field, or in this case a wood.  Jubilee Wood has a couple of walks and I took the Red Walk (1 hr).  I'd never been there before but it was all signposted and a really lovely place to be on a breezy end-of-summer day.  It will be spectacular in winter, when all the branches are stiff and bare with frost.

It's not a huge wood, about 10 hectares (25 acres), but a lot of it is native Oak, which just happens to be my favourite tree, so this is my ideal walk really :)  I love everything about oaks, I love their age, their strength, the thick rough grooves of the bark, the way their branches always resemble lightening forking skywards, and how good they are to climb.  They are very solid reliable trees, but also very dramatic.

Of course it's at this time of year that most of the fruits and berries are ripening.  I came across some elderberries, and the last of the blackberries, which are almost all ripe by now. 

This fine looking plant below I'd never seen before, but a passing walker informed me that is was the Rosebay Willowherb.  It grows in recently cleared areas and wasteland, has some traditional medicinal properties and many people consider it a weed, but, not willing to take the thing on face value, I decided I like it!  If I'm going to have weeds grow in my wasteland, they should all be as pretty as these.

I'm being forced to reconsider weeds a lot this week, since I've been trying to sort out the garden.  For some reason I really want to grow things but before I can do that I have to tidy it up, and most of it is weeds, or rather 'Plants that Grow in Annoying Places' which is all a weed is.  I've been pulling down ivy, which I like generally but it runs riot and it was blocking the sun from the smaller plants and stifling them.  A lot of it was dead.  Also I've been digging up brambles, since ours is small and weedy, with no blackberries, and I know if I let it stay it'll grow crazy fast and get out of control like the bush I had to battle with in my last house.  We now have a pretty impressive heap we're hoping to compost.

And finally, we have dandelions. 
Oh sweet dandelions, how I hate you, you WILL INSIST on growing through the patio slabs because you KNOW I can't fork you out from there.  I'm currently trying to kill ours with a mixture of boiled vinegar and salt, since I don't want to pour chemicals on the garden if I can possibly help it.

But now I'm wondering, because I passed a full-grown dandelion plant while I was walking, about a metre high, and actually I don't know why it's a weed.  Yes it's hard to get rid of, it's annoying, the leaves are ugly and you get syrup on your hands when you pull them up, but the flowers themselves are very beautiful.  They are thick with petals, a lovely sunny yellow, and they smell amazing, nicer than a lot of store-bought flowers.  You can use them in medicene, making drinks, salads, and cordials, and they look very pretty when you have a bunch of them altogether.
So why is it a weed, just because it likes to grow in inconvenient places?

Footwork experimentation

So I just finished decorating a pair of shoes I promised my sister for her birthday.  It's the second pair I've done but the first shoes I did in Permanent Marker and there were a couple of problems with it as a medium, so this time I tried painting it on in Indian Ink instead.  Here's the breakdown now that I've finished them:

Permanent marker
+ Lots of different sized pens means a lot of precision and detail, so you can do some really fine work.
+ Easy to apply crisp lines
+ Hard to spill, or get on other stuff accidentally
- Limited range of colours (unless you are rich and can afford posh ones)
- Comes off/fades if you wash them -as I discovered after some guy trod on mine and I had to give them a rinse.  Yes there are tutorials all over the internet on sealing permanent marker drawings into clothing, but most of them involve heat and it's very difficult to iron a shoe.

Ink
+ An absolute devil to get out of any kind of textile, which in this case is a good thing, providing it's good quality ink.  I'm hoping it will stand up to a few gentle hand washes,
+ Soaks into the fabric, meaning it won't sit on the surface and crack when the shoe bends.
- Needs to be applied with a brush, which makes it hard to do a lot of detail and fine lines.
- When it soaks in it can spread a little
- Reacts differently to different fabrics.  You'll see this on the shoes.  On the canvas the ink stays pretty much where you put it, but cotton, such as on the seams and hems round the ankle of the shoes, soaks it up so the colour will shoot round it or soak through to the inside.  This is not necessarly a problem but needs to be known about so you can plan your work.

Anyway, here are the shoes:

She chose the design, and I think she probably based them off the shoes I did for myself, which is why there's a Day shoe and a Night shoe.  I love having a mismatched pair like that.   As you can (hopefully) tell it's a group of little autumn hedgehogs, having some fun before going to curl up for the winter.  Because who doesn't love anthropomorphic forest critters!!

This time round I made the design a lot simpler and less cluttered.  Like I said, I love my own shoes, but they really only work in close-up, since I put a LOT of stuff on them.  And surely you want other people to be able to admire your fine footwear without the aid of a maginifying glass, right? 

I was a bit worried that they'd look empty, but when you're standing up looking down at them, the balance is just about right.

I've stuck to black ink so far for reasons of time, money and... I just think it looks good. It can be easy to get carried away with elaborate colour schemes (especially when you're me) and just make a jumble of it.  I saw some painted shoes at a market that didn't look good at all, partly because people use bottle-colours rather than mixing their own, or they just haven't got a tone or colour palette worked out beforehand.  Also the trouble of controlling wet media on fabric pops up again, and the more colours you have going on, the easier is is to make mistakes you can't fix. That said, I'd love to start introducing some colour on the theoretical 'next pair' now I've had a couple of goes.

They took an evening to do, 2-3 hours per shoe.

And, for comparison, here are the first pair I did, the ones in permanent pen.  I de-saturated it to make up for the horrible tint my old digital camera put on it, but they are just black and white too.

See what I mean?  They are more 'me' (by which I mean weirder and with no unifying theme so a big jumble), and have more fine detail, but from far away it's all a bit busy, and as I said, the ink faded when I washed them.  See the mud mark on the toe?  Some guy stepped on my foot, on their first outing too!  Not that I care, I did those shoes for ME and I still love them.  They don't even fit any more and I can't bring myself to throw them away.  I love the way the monster is split across the two shoes, and the little lizards on the toe of the Day shoe.

I see positives and negatives on both ink and pen, but the positive for both is that the canvas soaks it up, stopping it from cracking as the shoe bends and flexes.  I want to try acrylic paint, for the colour more than anything else, but my worry is that as the shoe bends (especially as fabric shoes are so soft), the dried acrylic will crack and split so I may have to look into some kind of medium to get round that

Special doggy is special

I love our dog.  One of the nicest things about being at home is having a dog around to fuss over.  He's friendly, furry, and loves cuddles, but he does have this weird sleeping position I've never seen any other dog do.  I was doodling him with my Wacom tablet while he was dozing in front of the telly and he stayed that way just long enough for my to draw it.  I'm calling it The 'Seal' position.

SIlver lining

It was my parents 25th wedding anniversary about a month ago which, for those not in the know, is silver.  Now, I have nowhere near the finances to even think of getting them something really silver, so I tried to think of other things that come in silver and ended up making a (slightly last minute) little book that kind of documents their life so far.  It's just some line doodles and I printed and bound it myself but it came out quite nicely and they were really pleased with it.

Here are a couple of my favourites:

(Tin Foil refers to the star we put on the tree, which us kids made when we were really little. It's a pretty terrible star, just cardboard and foil, but we still have it and we still hang it on the tree)

Dawdle down memory lane

Feels like summer's coming to an end, although the last few days have been insanely hot, and worse, humid.  That sticky heat you can't escape from, that wraps you up like a damp duvet 24-7.  The cloud cover even meant I missed the Peseid Meteor shower, which I loved watching last year.

But tonight we had rain.

You can see it coming for a few days, and then it finally hit around midnight tonight when I was walking the dog.  I didn't even wear a raincoat, just enjoyed the coolness of it.  I'm really looking forward to autumn, and then the bare starkness of winter.  I always get a touch of 'Swallow syndrome' near the end of summer, when I just want to GO places and DO things, but by late September I've settled down to the cozy prospects of winter hibernation.  Woolley jumpers, apple and cinnamon crumble, frosty walks and slippers.  Oh yes :)

That said, it's been a fun and relaxing summer, despite the hectic-ness of entering the Real World.  There's still been time for drinks with friends (photo: The Wheatsheaf, Woodhouse Eaves), picnics in the country, and just laying in the shade enjoying the warmth.

Doodly roadtrip

Man, I never mean to draw fanart... maybe becayse I associate it with scary teenage girls making character pairings that border on the terrifying and squealing a lot (disclaimer: Out There does not mean to offend any genuine Fangirls... mostly in case you attack me and squeal at me) but if there's anything out there worth fan-arting, The Less than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal is it.  I plug this thoroughly awesome webcomic far too much, but it has made my Tuesday  :)

Not inked anything in ages, since one of my tutors told me I sucked at it, but drawing this was a lot of fun, and I DON'T THINK IT SUCKS!!   *sits down firmly*

So... is it a real book or just an imaginary one?

Picked up Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah from the second hand book stall in the market for tuppence, and if you're like me and enjoy having your brain stretched then I would highly recommend it. 

The story is narrated by a man who lives by travelling from town to town giving plane rides for a living, and Donald Shimoda, who is doing the exact same thing, having quit his two previous occupations; one as a mechanic, and one as a messiah.  Yes, you heard me -miracles and all.  During the time the two men spend travelling together, Shimoda attempts to explain to Richard why he quit, and how he can learn to see past the world presented to us as reality.

It's really a fascinating book, one of the ones that suddenly makes you aware of things that you had probably known, or secretly suspected, about life for a long time, but perhaps had forgotten or put to the side.  One or two parts are a little contrived, but the idea behind the story, the two main characters, and the setting more than cover for those moments, so I didn't really mind.  It'll probably be a tad hippyish for some people, but then I guess you only get out of these things what you're willing to put in.  If you don't want to consider anything new, you won't.  Personally I spent a couple of hours after I had finished it just thinking it all over.
My only real negative would be that, as with most books on the metaphysical, you shouldn't take it as gospel without questioning it, as some of the reviews on it seem to do.  It's engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring, but not infallible.  But nevertheless, definitely worth a read.  It's one of those books that, although not lengthy, makes you wish that the world could be better than it is, and to question the simplest of the things you do from day to day without thinking.

Mailable art

Did a little design for a card, to be sent out by my church, Open Heaven, to the students who have gone home for the summer, just letting them know we're still thinking of them and also to update them on what's going on when they return.

As my tutor Jemma said "Don't try to draw things that are invisible!"

Well if you've got to pick anything like that to draw, anything to do with God is probably the worst.  The classic fallbacks are all in Christian symbolism - crosses, doves, rays of light, and while all these things are good and communicate their purpose, I think it's better to not jump to use them automatically. 

So here's me trying to think of something a little different : )

I don't mind the font; it's good, but not great.  I know typography is one of those things I need to keep working on -maybe I should try drawing my own.  If nothing else it'll teach me patience!

Steady there, chuckles

"I love you, not only because you are deformed; but because you are low. I love monsters, and I love mountebanks. A lover despised, mocked, grotesque, hideous, exposed to laughter on that pillory called a theatre, has for me an extraordinary attraction. It is tasting the fruit of hell. An infamous lover, how exquisite! To taste the apple, not of Paradise, but of hell; such is my temptation. It is for that I hunger and thirst. I am that Eve, the Eve of the depths. Probably you are, unknown to yourself, a devil. I am in love with a nightmare. You are a moving puppet, of which the strings are pulled by a spectre. You are the incarnation of infernal mirth. You are the master I require. I wanted a lover such as those of Medea and Canidia. I felt sure that some night would bring me such a one. You are all that I want. I am talking of a heap of things of which you probably know nothing. Gwynplaine, hitherto I have remained untouched; I give myself to you, pure as a burning ember. You evidently do not believe me; but if you only knew how little I care!"

Victor Hugo ~ 'The Man Who Laughs'  p195:
 
I don't know about you, but I read that and get the shudders.  Literature is amazing :)  That said, you think this is bad, try reading his Hunchback of Notre Dame.  It's a good deal different from the Disney movie and rather depressing.  Hugo was, if I have it correctly, living in a time when more people were starting to believe that there was nothing more to the world than the immediately reality we see around us (this was when most people in Europe were still Christian by rote so this was quite shocking stuff).  No spiritual element, no God, no nothing, just cold hard math.  To be fair, some of them found some wonder in that, but a lot of them set out out to show everyone else how the world could function without a God -and others how they couldn't- and that this was the way they should live.  So they wrote this idea into stories. 
 
Unfortunately for those that reckoned mankind could function without God, in these books everyone usually ends up either dead, about to die, or horribly depressed. 
Kinda shot yourselves in the foot there, didn't you guys :)

Archiving Night Walks

I'm officially closing down my pre-grad blog, so this post is basically stocking up on all those knick-knacks I can't quite bear to part with.

The Tale of How:


Making Of video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRlZNIIjLU8



Little Dragon - 'Twice' music video



This silhouette based music video is ridiculously simple, yet somehow very charming.
The way the cloth moves to imitate wind, and how they make the rain fall, little details like that, are just a joy to watch, but it's the soundtrack that really makes it. A strong sense of narrative too
 
 
Tyger
 

 

 
This Is Limbo's Flickr Photostream
 
 
 
It's tree that looks like a rug!! No, wait, I mean a rug that looks like a tree. Oh bother *bangs head on desk* I meant to announce that so triumphantly and I screwed it up.
Anyway; rug, tree, you understand.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

  And finally, from the incomparable XKCD:

You have to admit, he makes a fair point.