I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.

― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?  Bill Watterson

Do you have a day of the week that’s more stressful than others? Is this kind of stress all in your mind, or is there really a particular day that causes some people get more whacked out than others on certain days?

Around here, Tuesday is the day from Hell

From a working girl perspective, you would think that day would be Monday. You’ve had a great weekend, slept in, went jogging, had a good time. Your first day back to rules and regulations can be very stressful.

But for many of us, for my friends, Tuesdays seem to knock our legs out from under us. It’s like a full moon full time around me. Crabby people, tired people, overworked people, lost people. All trying to get it together and not really caring if they do so. It’s stress and misunderstandings and bad weather. It’s like someone knocked your coffee cup and some of it spilled on your nice white shirt. And you have to wear it the rest of the day.

I myself don’t have a real cure for the Tuesday Blues — it’s more an endurance thing. Get through the day and the night will play out differently. Of course, it often doesn’t. It’s usually a continuation of my crabby old lady self. It usually turns out that the dog has gotten into the garbage or there is still tons of laundry watching me walk around the house or I burned my grilled cheese until it looks like a wrought iron gate.

But at least I have my own form of salvation waiting for me when I get home.

I have wine, I have my dog, I have a couple of cats.  I have a story I need to continue writing, a few shirts I want to sew beads on, and a couple of books waiting for me to read. I have an enjoyable TV show (Downton Abbey) to binge watch if I so desire, and I have milk and cookies if wine isn’t for me.

What kind of stress relief do you have on the other side of your rainbow?

You need something, you know. Maybe that’s why I push arts and crafts and writing and the esoteric things in life. There is relief in the evening breeze, in sitting down and writing a poem. There is hope for tomorrow in watching TV sorrows and successes, and worlds to explore in someone else’s writing.

It’s okay to have Terrible Tuesdays.

It’s also okay to to have your own world to retreat to when the day is done.

Ice cream, anyone?

These Monday creativity posts are getting addictive. Both writing them and, I hope for you, reading them.

So tell me…what are some of the problems you come up against in your craft? Not the I-don’t-have-enough-time ones, but the technical ones. I’d love to hear of others’ struggles.

Me? Today?

Lately I’ve got two problemos — the first one is I’m a baby, the second one is I’m not a man.

Let me explain.

Problem #1. I have a psycho in my book. It’s 1895, so that in itself is rough. But what do psychos do back before the turn of the century? Murder, arson, rape. The usual. I want my bad guy to set a livery on fire, killing one (or a number) of horses.

And I can’t do it.

I know it’s all not real, that the horses are nothing more than letters on a computer screen. But horses are important to my hero and no better way than to get his ire on fire than to destroy one or many of his horses. I know how I would feel if I read that. I would hate the bad guy tenfold.

But it’s so cruel to the horses.

I’m such a baby.

My second problem is that this third book is really the same story as the second book but told from the man’s point of view. A man of the turn of the century.

I’m an emotional modern woman to begin with. I hated the play “My Fair Lady” because of the awful things Henry Higgins said to Eliza Doolittle. My hero can have a little forward-thinking in him, but he is not a modern man by any means. Every writer wants their lead man to be rugged and bold with that soft center of melted caramel. I too want that, but I just don’t think that’s a real man in 1895. They talk different, they think different, they have different morals and values than today’s men.

So I don’t know how to write him either, without him being me on the page.

I did want this book to be different. To be a challenge. To be more literary than a romantic novel.

Beware of what you ask for.

What are your problems? Have you solved them? Any advice? Need any advice?

All of creativity has to be easier than me murdering an innocent barn of horses by fire….

Friday’s day is full of dreams And expectations of what the weekend will bring. It is a day of transition. A day that is at the end of the week, and at the start of the weekend. It lives in both worlds, yet, it doesn’t belong in either.
― Anthony T. Hincks

Saturday evening was going to be the time.

I hadn’t written, edited, daydreamed for a couple of days. So once hubby was off to his every- other- Saturday evening job, that was going to be the time.

Had it all planned. Wine. Music. Outline. Images. First a walk. Maybe a bubblebath.

Then I would go dancing with my writing.

Yet there I was Friday night. College basketball in the background. A half drank glass of milk. Dinner dishes still in the sink. In my jammies.  No bubble bath. Didn’t even wash my face.

And I was dancing with my writing.

I love when creativity comes knocking. I don’t bother — I just go dancing.

Martin Marcisovsky is a 36-year old Slovakian photographer and artist currently based in Dublin, Ireland.

Martin’s photography captures some interesting silhouettes fixed in equally engaging landscapes.

The person often seems out of place, but unquestioning of the environment they are in.

Marcisovsky’s images lead us into a fairy tale, catch us within a blink of an eye or take us on a journey to our inner ego.

The surreal imagery leads one to believe that these worlds are perhaps within the minds of each subject.

Perhaps his images are nothing more than a reflection of our own center of creativity.

More of Martin Marcisovsky’s creations can be found at http://www.marcisovsky.com/.

Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers.

~Hans Christian Anderson

Sometimes it’s the first influencer who is the true artist, not the artists who come later..Born in 1927 in Nashville, Tennessee, Margaret Keane has always loved to paint and draw since an early age. She first made her paintings famous in San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s.Margaret’s work drew little accolades from art critics but was loved and admired by the world.Margaret went on to become one of the most successful living artists in the early 60s to present day.Margaret’s art gained wide favor and started a big-eyed movement in the early 60s, influencing a large crop of big-eyed artists who may have become more familiar with the public.Originally recognized by their wistful and sad-eyed children, Keane’s works now feature happy children, animals, or both, all with her signature large-eyes, in delightful places and situations.“The eyes I draw on my children are an expression of my own deepest feelings. Eyes are windows of the soul,” explains Keane.More of Margaret Keane’s delightful work can be found at https://www.keane-eyes.com/.

It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.

~Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Often times, when I feel like actually writing my post, it comes off as a rant or a dejected viewpoint of myself or the world around me. As I age, be it not as gracefully as I’d like, I have learned not to hit “post” right away. As emotional as I may get at that moment, I’m trying to remember that was, indeed, only a moment.

And readers might not be interested in that “moment.”

I try not to blabber on the positive moments either, for one’s lemonade is surely someone else’s lemon. Even if there’s a little sugar sprinkled on top.

But when it comes to encouraging creativity I have a hard time not pushing the “publish” button. For I am living proof that if you want something bad enough, practice something long enough, good things, good emotions, happen.

I’ve been writing for most of my life, more actively the last 20 years. I’m not published, but that hasn’t stopped me from creating new worlds and poetry and an occasional novella. To me it’s therapy; the more it evolves, the more it’s like homework.

To do a really good job at writing something new you have to do your homework. You have to do research and maybe do an outline and dig into your characters. You have to give them a background and scars and highlights, even if those points will never see the light of day.

You have to see what makes them tick so they can tick around others.

I have written two novels about a middle-aged woman who time travels through time. Kinda like Outlander but not really. It is 3rd person, she did this she thought that, she wondered such and such. They were pretty straight forward, discovering those worlds from a modern point of view.

Now I’m attempting something new for me. I’m trying the third book in literary style. I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that it’s not easy for me to analyze feelings and write them; to dig into psychological conditioning and more “now” moments than generalizations to move the plot along.

Well,  the last couple of times I sat down to share the man’s version of the story, it was almost like I was channeling him. Very weird, very out-of-body.

I’ve heard other writers say their story took a life of its own, that their characters went somewhere the writer wasn’t expecting. I haven’t been moved quite like that, but the literary style, the long wrapped-around images and sentences, seemed to flow easily through me.

To say I was shocked is an understatement.

I found … still find …. myself saying, did I write that? Did I really write that?

We all have that ability to try something new. To experiment with what we know. To try…and sometimes fail…at a new color or point of view or emotion. We always downplay our potential, saying “I can’t do that” or “that’s not me.”

The point of this quicky blog is to tell you that all of that is you. We are all and we are everything. It’s just that life and time and others push down those parts of you that aren’t as popular or talented, pigeonholing you into who you are today.

You want to paint people instead of landscapes? Crochet a jacket instead of a scarf? Write a murder mystery instead of a poem?

Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t. Don’t let that little demon voice inside chuckle at your attempt.

As the shoe company says, Just Do It.

You just might find that your creative side expands ten times its size. Like Alice in Wonderland and her potions, you will be amazed at what you find.

It might not be literary fiction…it may not be good at all. But I’m having a great time impressing the hell out of myself…

“You must first understand,” said I, “where Fairyland is: it lies a little way farther than the farthest hill you can see. It lies, in fact, just beyond that hill. The frontiers of it are sometimes a little doubtful in any landscape, because the landscape is confused, but if on the extreme limits of the horizon you see a long line of hills bounding your view exactly, then you may be perfectly certain that on the other side of those hills is Fairyland. 

~Hilaire Belloc

The wall is silence, the grass is sleep,
Tall trees of peace their vigil keep,
And the Fairy of Dreams with moth-wings furled
Plays soft on her flute to the drowsy world.
~Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

Jamie Winn is the owner and operator of Ghost Light Gallery, specializing in paintings and amazing woodworks.

Winn’s  automated sculptures are both eerie and humorous, often reanimating deceased creatures and depicting nighttime animals.

Often using watercolor on wood and custom lighting, there’s also a vintage quality to much of the New Orleans artist’s work. 

There is always a moving part to Winn’s creations — something that always catches the eye.

Her works are unique, whimsical, and sometimes a touch eerie. 

Which is how she likes it.

More of Jamie Winn‘s magical works can be found at her website, http://www.ghostlightgallery.com/

At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.
― H.P. Lovecraft

Come cuddle close in daddy’s coat
Beside the fire so bright,
And hear about the fairy folk
That wander in the night.
For when the stars are shining clear
And all the world is still,
They float across the silver moon
From hill to cloudy hill.

~Robert Bird

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was a prolific yet perpetually troubled artist preoccupied with matters of human mortality such as chronic illness, sexual liberation, and religious aspiration.He expressed these obsessions through works of intense color, semi-abstraction, and mysterious subject matter.

Munch came of age in the first decade of the 20^th century, during the peak of the Art Nouveau movement and its characteristic focus on all things organic, evolutionary and mysteriously instinctual.

A majority of the works which Munch created, were referred to as the style known as symbolism, mainly because of the fact that the the paintings he made focused on the internal view of the objects, as opposed to the exterior, and what the eye could see.

Emotions such as love, terror, and loneliness were depicted by the contrasting lines, the darker colors, blocks of color, somber tones, and a concise and exaggerated form, which depicted the darker side of the art which he was designing.More of Edvard Munich‘s art can be found at https://www.edvardmunch.org/.

When you first look at Oleg Dou‘s  work, you may think…..no.

The monochromatic look, the androgynous style, is something strange and unusual.But take a moment and look closer.Dou transforms photographic images of human faces, manipulating them with computer software to produce stylized features and airbrushed skin.Dou is interested in producing images that are both alluring and unsettling.“I am looking for something bordering between the beautiful and the repulsive, living and dead,” he has said. “I want to attain the feeling of presence one can get when walking by a plastic manikin.”

More of Oleg Dou‘s beautiful artwork can be found at http://olegdou.com/.

This is the second day of my weather-imposed sabbatical. Yesterday the temperature was -16 (without wind chill figured in), this morning they are -26 without windchill. Not the weather for the faint of heart. My car won’t start so here am.

Of course, I was wrecked with guilt yesterday until I went out and bought some bird seed. I would be afraid those little guys would be feather pops unless I got them something to warm them from the inside.

I can see why the weather effects emotions so much. 

WoMan fights her/his whole life to be in control. In control of their life, their thoughts, their direction in life. And sometimes we half-way succeed. Then we get hit with something that keeps us from exerting that newly found control, and it’s frustrating. 

Hey! I just made plans to go to a museum by myself! I just bought new kicker shoes for work! I just got out of a bad relationship and I’m free!

And here we sit frozen into the house. All this positive pumped-up energy bouncing around our living room walls.

Of course, you could spend your freeze days and rainy days inside, cleaning, organizing, reading that book you bought two months ago. You could waste your time watching TV or not waste your time making cookies. 

There is a universe inside your universe that works for you every day, too. 

You don’t need to slay dragons every day. 

You can take assurance that there are bigger and more powerful forces around you that own you plain and simple. And your job is to work with them to continue moving forward.

So on this frozen Thursday morning I bow to the power of the Freeze and think I’ll go through my WordPress reader and read some fellow writers. I’ll make some cookies today and make sure the bird feeder is full.

And I shall charge up my turbo spaceship to the stars and try again tomorrow.

This is the forest primeval.
The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Frank Stella i(1936-) is an American artist best known for his use of geometric patterns and shapes in creating both paintings and sculptures.

Arguably one of the most influential living American artists, Stella’s works utilize the formal properties of shape, color, and composition to explore non-literary narratives.

For those of us trying to get a grip on modernism, Stella’s paintings  expand the initial monochrome palette to bright colors….

….and later brings his paintings into the the third dimension through the incorporating other non-painterly elements onto the canvas.

He ultimately creates large-scale freestanding sculptures, architectural structures, and the most complex work ever realized in the medium of printmaking.

Stella’s virtually relentless experimentation has made him a key figure in American modernism.More of Frank Stella’s modernism paintings can be found across the Internet.

I have purposely avoided writing blogs lately, as I feel I don’t really have much to contribute to the universe.

Do you ever feel that way?

Do you ever feel that, no matter what you have endured, what you have experienced, it just doesn’t matter in the long run?

I don’t know if you believe in an afterlife. A reward for everything you’ve been through. An ending to your sacrifices and bliss. I don’t know what I believe, but I do know that I want to make the world, life, the future, easier than I had it.

How do I do that?

Again, I don’t have many answers. I try to listen to what my family, my friends, say. What they are going through. And find a way to bring them to a peaceful place. 

I do the same online. 

I don’t know if anyone online has ever benefited from my experiences, from my point of view.

But I always hope that someone gets the gist of what I’m saying and starts to believe in themselves. That they realize that not everything is their fault. That the world goes on as it will, smashing and crushing and sprinkling its darkness to whomever is in the way.

We all get hit by adversity.

What makes humans magical is that we have the ability to rise above all the shit and make the world ours. Bend it to our desires, to our needs. 

I guess we all have an intention of where our blog goes. Your thoughts and projections are different than mine, than your friends, than the person who has a blog that sounds just like yours.

You need to claim your stance and make it your own.

Whether you have 15 followers or 10,000 followers, it doesn’t matter. Be yourself the whole time. Whether your expertise is music or poetry or pottery. It doesn’t matter.

You will find friends everywhere. People who “get” you.

Write when you want. Share what you can. If you change one single life, you are better off than when you started.

That means everything in this world.

And that’s why we’re friends.

Art comes in all forms, in all materials.

It all comes down to whatever pleases the eye.

New Jersey-based Adam Hillman is often referred to as a “master organizer.”

He pushes his precisely organized patterns of everyday objects into increasingly more complicated designs.

His tightly controlled symmetrical layouts take hours to measure, cut, and arrange.

The New Jersey-based visual artist sifts through multitudes of colorful everyday objects and foods which he organizes into zen-like patterns, towers, and gradients.

He has lifted everyday objects into patterns of beauty and mathematics.

More of Adam Hillman‘s amazing arrangements can be found on his Instagram account.