Executing an Idea

We tend to accept every belief that pops into our head as the absolute truth.

A visual pun on a healthy life practice.

Boiled, Fried and Stewed

I'm Fucking Done Now

For Single Frame Stories Challenge. Prompt, "pot."

My First Atomic World Work on Identity

Entry in Single Frame Stories Challenge. The prompt was "identity."

All Mystical and Shit

Entry in Single Frame Stories Challenge. The prompt was "creativity."
There's still time to submit an entry and be part of our SL10B Exhibit.

Community

Entry in this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge

(Click image to enlarge)

Identity

Identity is the prompt for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge.  Entries for this and the next two challenges will be included in our SL10B exhibit in Second Life. Here are takes on a concept I'm playing around with for this week's challenge. I'm still not sure which one I prefer.

Disengaged

Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge

Three Takes on the Invisible

On theme of artists versus their work. I'm posing live in front of some of my prior image work.

Self Centered

Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge

I found a dozen decades old journals the other night that had been hiding in a box on a basement shelf. As I skimmed through hundreds of pages of deep thoughts and passionate opinions, it felt like I was reading someone else’s diaries. I had no memory of writing them and only scattered resonance with the ideas and opinions expressed.

Although there’s a correlation between the person I am today and the author of those journals, if I could teleport through time and meet him, the only thing in common would be our name, shared memories and a passing resemblance.

The Art of Balance

An entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge

The art of balance is all about managing weight. At first thought, taking on the lightest possible load seems the best strategy. It’s not.

Gravity requires sufficient mass to ground us within its stabilizing embrace. Without enough well-arrayed ballast, a stray gust of wind would send us flying topsy turvy; a passing fancy could shanghai us into insensible service; or a glancing blow from the hand of fate might knock us down into dark despair.

Over time, a well-weighted garland of burdens strengthens the will, opens the heart and fosters an equilibrium that’s immune to misfortune or boon.

Why Me?

Underlying crowd scene photo courtesy James Cridland

I’ve lived a pretty charmed life for the past fifty years. I’ve never known hunger, grew up in a loving home, always had a safe place to live, worked at jobs with opportunity for growth and learning, had a lifetime of satisfying creative pursuits, enjoyed twenty years and counting in a great marriage, and have two children who are thriving.

I got some unexpected bad health news recently and thought for a moment, “Why me?” It only took an instant to realize that the better question was “Why not me?” No one is exempt from the radical uncertainty of life.

Transmuting Poison Into Medicine

When the experience of personal suffering
opens the heart to compassion for others,
poison becomes medicine.

The image above is my entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge. The prompt was "weapon."

Here's an accompanying 100 word story:

Some medical treatments work by attacking the body. Vaccines include a dead or weakened germ to trigger the production of antibodies.  Allergy shots inject minute amounts of allergens into our bloodstream to elicit desensitization. Chemotherapy eliminates cancer by killing fast growing cells. In each case, the weapon of poison is used as medicine.

One of the most pervasive psychological afflictions humans suffer from is self-centeredness. The poison of personal pain, illness and misfortune can act as a medicine if we use it to generate compassion for the countless others around the world who experience similar or even greater suffering.

And finally, the video version:

Hyperlapse

I created this video using Hyperlapse, a service that animates Google Street View. I ended up using a still shot from the location as the background for my entry in this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge. The prompt was "Hero."

Watch Your Back

"Watch Your Back" Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge

I can remember as far back as Junior high, comforting myself in the face of bad situations with, "At least I'll get a song out of it." Over the years I've run into a few circumstances in life where that approach wasn't even close to being a consoling trade-off. But there's almost always a way to take a calamity and use it for some positive purpose. One method I've found helpful is Tonglen. It's a meditative practice that helps you rise above your personal struggle, see it in the context of the suffering of countless other people, and turn your mind and heart to love and compassion.

Vanilla in Context

Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge. The prompt is "vanilla."

Trial Balloon

Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge: Edge

The metaphor bursts. Taut silicone skin straining under the negative pressure of an utter vacuum of meaning. 

Now What?

Entry for this week's Single Frame Stories challenge: Climb

Laughing at a Funeral

Entry for "Service," this week's Single Frame Stories Challenge.

This week's Single Frame Stories entry is based on a true story. Not one I'm proud of. Something that still makes me cringe fifteen years after the fact.

I'm not a churchgoer. Just weddings and funerals. This particular funeral was for a co-worker’s stillborn baby. Sad. Truly sad. The service was held at one of those modern suburban mega-churches. The bereaved had been very active in the congregation. The football field size parking lot was packed.

It started out as one might expect. Prayers. Sermons. Heartfelt speeches by friends and family. Although I wasn’t comforted by assurances that the baby was in heaven with Jesus, the sincere love expressed by community members was heartwarming. It was all going well until five middle aged guys with matching suits and haircuts walked onto the stage to do a song.

Damn. I felt a flashback coming on. Not an acid trip. A Simpson’s episode. The acapella quintet started singing an uptempo gospel song. Right out of the fifties. Complete with a doo-wop bass singer. I began to lose it, struggling to suppress the maniacal laughter that threatened to burst into the mourning hall.

I stole a quick glance at my wife for some grounding. Bad idea. She must have seen the episode too and was also fighting for control. We cast our eyes down, gritted our teeth and covered our faces. We prayed for the performance to stop before we embarrassed ourselves and ruined the moment for the five hundred other people who were clearly moved, swaying their arms in born-again ferver.

No luck. It went on and on. Verse after verse. Chorus after chorus. Jamming every stereotypical Sha Na Na riff in the book. The absurdity of their white bread unconsciously retro exuberance for a glorious heaven was killing us. Finally, they stopped. The service concluded. We snuck off to our car.

I hope that if anyone noticed our choked back giggles, contorted red faces and tear stained eyes, they thought it was due to cathartic grief. Maybe it was.

Unplugged

My entry in this week's Single Frame Stories challenge

I'm one of "those people" who perceive their avatar persona as a vital and active presence. Like ventriloquist Jeff Dunhan said "I know the dummies aren't alive, but they certainly live in my consciousness." (And what could be a better endorsement of sanity than a quote from a ventriloquist?) Anyway, when I contemplated "unplugged," Whiskey's prompt for this week's Single Frame Stories challenge, the line that came to mind was "My Muse doesn't turn off with the electricity."

You may be wondering why I posted this less than a week after swearing off virtual identity as a focus for the blog. I can explain in one word: Metaphor. Okay. Maybe a few more words than one. I experience the avatar persona as a personification of creative genius.

from L. genius "guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation, wit, talent;" also "prophetic skill," originally "generative power," from root of gignere "beget, produce" From Online Etymology Dictionary

When I looked that up, I was surprised and gratified to find that the root meaning is related to begetting and producing rather than high intelligence. Avatar persona seems to act in that way for many people. It taps into latent creative potential and actualizes it through creative work.

Truth Hurts

WARNING: You are smaller than you appear to be in the mirror of your ego.

Humility has been haunting me. It's this week's Single Frame Stories prompt. Strange thing is, my initial reaction was a yawn. No spark. No inspiration. Nothing. It's not an issue I've thought about much before outside of the Buddhist concept of Bodhicitta. Nor one that particularly bothered me in other people. But since I was committed to the process, I plugged on.

My first go was a typical snarky comic on social network celebrity, poking fun at both my own occasionally Klout-inflated sense of worth and our culture's obsession with celebrity. Cheap shots both.

The challenge's obligation was fulfilled. I could move on to juicier issues. But I woke up the next morning with humility on my mind. A half dozen threads of thought were dancing just beyond reach. I turned to The Church of the Blank Page, opened up Tweetr and started transcribing. I didn't much like what came out:

"I understand humility like I know juggling. I like the idea, but never practiced enough to keep going for more than a minute at a time."

I experience the world as if I'm the center of the universe. The importance of my personal interests are vastly inflated. The edge of my wit seems razor sharp and perfectly on target, while my concern for others ebbs and flows on a whim. I know it's not real, but that's how it feels. The world that I see revolves around me.



The next dagger was even more painful, because it attacked the illusion that my constant creative expression was an enlightening activity:

"I often misuse my creativity as a defense mechanism to shield myself from intimate engagement with life."

Fuck! Where did that come from? Truth hurts.

There nothing wrong with quick and witty sketches. Or satire. Or naughty fun. But living on junk food isn't healthy. It doesn't nourish. Its pleasure is short. It stunts healthy growth. It makes you fat. It deadens the senses. My infatuation with wit is undermining my quest for wisdom. Looks like I'm in for a contemplative holiday weekend.