Human Zoo

I am so over urban shelter in place! Especially with respites in nature cut off, my well-being is now affected despite all immune building and boosting practices. Defiance is rising inside.

Naturally, my thoughts turned to zoos which contain collections of wild animals for study or display to the public. Conservation is an element too, although questionable how much of a driving force.

Feeling pent-up, sluggish and increasingly anxious, I wonder - how do these caged animals feel? Is captivity a compassionate practice to continue?

Integration Of Oops

I started this work focusing on gently squirting lines of acrylic gouache colors onto claybord. Running low on white, I held the small plastic bottle close to the surface and started squeezing to get as much out as possible. To my shock and dismay, it slipped out of my hand and plopped smack dab in the middle of the most concentrated section of colors. Not knowing what to do, I just said screw it, I’ll roll with it and see what happens. Literally, I started rolling the bottle across the claybord, sideways, up and down. It was an amazing tool in that it easily merged and spread the acrylic colors. Letting go of expectations and judgments, the process became exciting. I found myself giggling because of how it so unexpectedly turned out. Yet another instance of integrating an “Oops” moment, thereby allowing for discovery and new awareness.

One World: Together At Home

Creating this new work was part of my participation in Saturday night’s televised Global Citizen event. The title that comes to mind at the moment is COVID Easter because of the tangled quality and similarity of colors in my Easter bouquet.

Wholehearted Agreement

Some good points, Bill Maher, especially about unnecessary headlines like war zone, apocalypse, terror and the importance of the media treating us like adults. I have chosen to minimize how much I view MSNBC, CNN, and other news networks, as well as read printed publications. As an HSP, the repeated promotion of hysterics and fear day after day, under the guise of delivering information, is non-helpful and can be an immune system suppressant. If there ever was a time to strengthen the immune system, this is it. I understand that a certain amount of alarm was needed in the beginning for an understanding of the gravity of this illness and to shore up shelter-in-place and safety measures. However, we need to be very careful of media manipulation and potential propaganda whether the outlets lean to the right or left.

A Welcome Relief

Ah, my bustling urban, high-tech neighborhood is finally quiet from morning to night. A COVID interlude blessing perhaps? High-rise construction, street construction, and traffic are quelled as well as the crows. It’s indeed an understatement to say that the last, unexpected 5 years of extreme, surrounding chaos and noise have been challenging.

With regards to my last post on gaslighting, I do not need to think deeply about what I want to put back into my life. It’s been gnawing at me for a while to move to an area nestled in nature.

Restore Sanity