Julie Wong - BLOG -

MOODLING

caffè artigiano, vancouver

"The imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.  These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: 'I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget.'  But they have no slow, big ideas.  And the fewer the consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and down stairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.

If you write, good ideas must come welling up into you so that you have something to write.  If good ideas do not come at once, or for a long time, do not be troubled at all.  Wait for them.  Meanwhile, put down the little ideas however insignificant they are.

Ideas come with the dreamy idleness that children have, and idleness when you walk along for a long, long time, or take a long, dreamy time at dressing, or lie in bed at night and thoughts come and go, or dig in a garden, or drive a car for many hours alone; or an idleness - and this is what I want you to do - where you sit with a pencil and paper or before a typewriter quietly putting down what you happen to be thinking, that is creative idleness.  With all my heart I tell you and reassure you: at such times you are being slowly filled and recharged with warm imagination, with wonderful, living thoughts."

- BRENDA UELAND

HOME

   
cracked paint, bowness

I'll admit that at first it was difficult to stay away from the studio.  A couple of weeks ago, my oxygen concentrator (the machine that delivers oxygen to my torch so that it burns hot) died, and I'm waiting... patiently.... for a replacement to arrive.

The first week or so, I was antsy, distracted, irritable.  No evening trips to the studio to relax and unwind and create.

uggggh.

But then I started to think about what else in my life needed doing, what else had been neglected in favor of those evenings at the studio.

The thing that came to stand out most was that my living space had become a place to sleep, a place to store food, a place to shower.  Unpacked boxes and disorganized piles of stuff everywhere!  No art on the walls, no table to sit at for a meal.  Not exactly the sanctuary I imagine when I think of my ideal home.

I've always thought about how I might change things, if I had a bigger apartment, if I bought a house, if... if... if...  And I started to think about how in so many other ways, I'm learning to be present in THIS moment, to stop putting it off.  Work to be happy now.  A simple idea - but so hard to practice.

So I started to sweep, mop, move, rearrange, recycle, pack, unpack, fluff, cook, sit....

And let me tell you - it's nice to be home.

"To live spiritually, is to live in the present moment."
-BKS Iyengar