a gift instead of a transaction (a question about how you're choosing)
summer blue (beaches #7) in soft morning light, during the hand stitch phase
(click image to see more details)
Thank you for being here for this week's quiet little conversation...making a space for peace, grace and serenity with words, thoughts and images. I so appreciate you spending your time here connecting with what I've made for you.
I've been thinking alot about the phrase 'pay attention'. The concept keeps showing itself in my life (during lectures by a spiritual teacher, in blog posts both by a Stoic practitioner I follow and by the inimitable Seth Godin).
The idea of paying attention is instilled from an early age, and reinforced during our years in the education system. But this characterization of attention is highly transactional, and places the heaviness of obligation on that transaction. Our attention is our own...well obviously if we're doing something that involves the welfare of others like driving a car, or flying an airplane, that's where our attention needs to be, but still it is our choice to operate the car or the plane. When we purposefully choose where to give our attention, where to place it, where to direct it, it enlivens what it is we focus on. I believe making this practice part of our daily life can also help us bring more calm, more serenity, more peace into our lives.
Our attention is a gift, one that is incredibly potent. We have a chance in every moment to choose where we place our attention, or we can let it drift along captured and buffeted by what's popping up on our phones, what the noisiest thing in our sphere is, what we allow to consume our attention.
Knowing that we have this choice gives each of us tremendous agency and opportunities for awareness around what we are choosing. Can you choose towards experiences and activities that enrich your life, and away from ones that simply consume the precious moments of your life? What is the price of letting someone or something else divert your attention? Are there places where you can choose a few moments of solitude, to relax the breath and ease away some tension instead of the alternative?
I really noticed the impact of doing this when i left social media last year. I had let my artist presence on Instagram have too much influence by focusing on how can i post about this, what can i say about this, what should i be posting in order to be seen favourably by the Instagram algorithm. Choosing to remove my attention from Instagram, and place it here instead has changed more parts of my life than I expected. It has given me room to focus on creating these words for you, making the dynamics of our connection more unique and meaningful. It has removed a layer of unnecessary urgency and obligation which hijacked my own voice and creative process.
I'm excited for you to feel the qualitative change in your life experiences when you begin to notice where you are choosing to place your attention and begin to purposefully guide where you give this beautiful gift.
There is more hand stitching to come on the fourth juxtapositions painting shown below once some additional hand dyed threads arrive in the post. Meanwhile the final section on the first juxtapositions painting will be done this week, ready for the work to prepare it for mounting on it's metal frame.
I'll leave you today with this image of the bottom section of the fourth painting. The subtle colour change in the thread as it moves gently across the painting is mesmerizing, soothing, grounding
And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples.
until next time,
Mardell