da blogs da thang

… and a re-install is in the cards for me where the editing machine is concerned. It was last Summer that I last did it but it has since gone glitchy again. Case and point… editing (video) is fine but rendering can take forever. Seems like not all cylinders are all firing at once or that something is clogged so that the flow is erratic.  Ah well… such is life, eh?

My last edit was a really good one too. A steep but rewarding learning curve that yielded the desired results. I’ll post something as soon as I get the rendering out of the way.

In other news… “living your life as art for a day” was quite the success. (If you click the link you can see that tons of folk reported in.) It does seem that a good time was had by all who participated. Even if folk didn’t… just sharing the awareness that living life as art… and giving folk to pause at the thought is what I’m probably most satisfied with.

I suppose I should make my neighbors happy and mow the yard… tomorrow.

Hope this finds you all well and reasonably happy.

Cheers!

… so many years ago… an afternoon I recalled late one night a couple of weeks ago. I was about 10 years old at the time. My father wasn’t well again. After a sponge bath he lay on his side facing the window as I applied talcum powder to his back.

“Do you hear that?”

“What?” I asked as my 10 year old hand spread the powder as I evenly could across his shoulders.

“Listen… ”

“The bird?”

“A magpie… she has a nest on the tree behind the house… two chicks… the eggs hatched 3 days ago.”

Later that afternoon I went out back and squinted my eyes looking up the tree. Sure enough there she was feeding the hungry gaping beaks bobbing up and down in the nest.

Apart from going to the bathroom, Dad had not left his bed for about 2 weeks, yet he was acutely aware of the life teeming around him. Be it the birds, or the cow herder who walked his 23 cows to and from the nearby fields of grass or the comings and goings of the entire neighborhood.

I didn’t think much about this when I was 10. But in recalling this incident I couldn’t help but marvel at the detail my father could share… not just what happened but also where it happened.

He may have been interred in bed but he utilized what he still had… his senses to take in life in all its detail. It seemed as if his physical limitations at the time did not hamper him from being up a tree as that mama magpie fed a freshly caught cricket to her young. I am convinced this is what helped make the stories he told my cousins and I from his sickbed that much richer.

It struck me that despite sickness he made art out of life. Culling from it… molding and shaping… then sharing… and in so doing, affecting.

This got me thinking and motivated me to create an event called “living your life as art for a day” on April 14… he would have been 94 on that day.

Think of it as an invitation to create… from and/or for your life… simple or grand… profound or silly… You are all invited.

Where weeks go this will be a busy one. Lots of video editing involved… especially early in the week. Believe it or not I’m actually excited by the challenge of this. Excited because I get to explore both technical and creative options in this craft. Plus, there is the challenge of creating a quality end product in the process.

But it will hardly be video editing all the time… gardening will factor into the mix. After many years I am moving the vege bed to the west side of the homestead. The reason being the east side got way too much sun. So much so my crop would be fried by mid-July robbing me of at least 3 months of possible produce. So, there you have it.

It’s cultivation either way. One creative the other nutritional. That’s the long and short of it this week.. at least for my week. Here is wishing you a good one for yourself.

… in a week. The 2012 Rogue Fest that is. Just thought you’d like to know that and if you are in the area you should totally check it out… local and out of town performers… check out as much as you can. UPDATE: Check out the promo for my friend Blake’s show at the bottom of this post.

IN OTHER NEWS: I’ve been having strange sleep cycles. Of late I’ve been waking at 2:30 AM (my usual time is 4 ish) then falling asleep an hour later and re-awaking at 6 ish. Of course, that means that my normal sleep cycle is totally thrown off and I wake tired and lethargic. No fun. I really need to adjust this so that my day starts in a more sprity mood.

There is some spring cleaning that needs to be done around these parts. Some of that has already begun… but more needs to happen. Though it is not as major an undertaking as it has been in previous years. Does this mean I’m a little more organized? A little.

The weather has also been friendlier for biking… so, i really need to get that going again. It will be nice to tool around on a bike once more.

Yeah, it is a pretty mundane post… but not everyday can be a spectacular extravaganza, eh?