Author Archives: A Painterly Life

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About A Painterly Life

living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.

The Year of My Participation…or, Bringing Forth The Emerald

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The practice of being present is called into this new year. It is far and away the most difficult thing I have ever needed to learn…but it requires only that you give up thinking that you know anything. The Kingdom of Heaven is all that is at stake here. Only your health, your sanity…your life.

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The past few months have been an ongoing near death experience! And I die hard…now life requires that I PARTICIPATE. The word, the concept haunts every meditation, every train of thought.

I don’t profess to comprehend what it means, but I’ve decided to give myself the year to explore it…and every day I seem to stumble deeper into the remote jungle of my mind, through the grueling pain of dis-ease and self doubt.

It feels like I am fighting my way through the overgrown landscape with only naught but a feather…only a virtual machete…and the progress is S L O W goin’…

noperfectdayforbananafish:    ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’ (by Rich007)

There is no time to revisit the past… I need to participate, to show up to my day and what is presented…to begin anew this moment..
and this moment…

Beginning to write here is one form of my participation. My life has become too small and isolated, and this calls me out.

Getting my house in order – literally!- is another. As I said recently, I want to immerse myself in GREEN…I want to paint the house green, The Rules of Staging be damned. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Pantone chose Emerald as the Color of the Year. I think I will participate in Emerald.

layers are always betterCloverLovely!

As silly as this may sound, the idea of participating in life and immersing myself in green makes perfect sense. Green symbolizes life. In many Asian cultures it is believed to bring healing.

This is certainly a time for healing, for myself, and hopefully for my human community. Please join me in Bringing Forth the Emerald this year. You will be hearing from me…

…not the grey

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“Grey is the new black” in the design world. As I am preparing to market this property in the spring, I withdraw my consciousness from thinking “home” to thinking “house”.
So I paint the kitchen (no longer “my” kitchen, but now “the” kitchen) GREY: Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter to be exact. It is a beautiful warm neutral.

Described as the best paint color ever. Benjamin Moore revere pewter...must remember

Staging a home to sell is the antithesis of personal satisfaction. By it’s very nature – business – it is about DE-personalizing. It requires a change of mind and heart. Nobody said this would be easy…for me, it follows a divorce, and comes with a slew of complicated decisions that still have my stomach in knots.

Winter is a brumous sea here in northern Michigan. As I always strive to bring the outdoors in, grey seems a natural choice. The setting here is pine forest with a few dozen deciduous hardwoods for variety. Just today I realize that the hardwoods have made summers palatable and the pines do the same for winter. The pine trees offer a gift that soothes me through the darkest of days…GREEN.

pine trees

Green has always been my favorite color. I don’t just like it, I CRAVE it. In combination with the surrounding waters it excites the senses, but in contrast…oh…in it’s contrast, it is life itself.

Winter Birds. Nature's own decoration.

Red berries on the wintergreen draw the Cedar Waxwings to my front door…A Cardinal visits…The Pileated Woodpecker arrives like clockwork at the morning feeder. Replicate these elements into your interior and you are honestly in a LIVING environment.
Let’s face it – grey is a survival color. I’ve managed to survive here long enough: I want to live! And life is nothing if not COLORFUL…

Original & divine decadence by Ho-Boan introverts space

“In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus