I was never far away I just had to take a break .
Been working on some new projects and wanted to show each and everyone of course they’re always for sale but with my carpal tunnel I will have to do drawing for now and perhaps some clay work.
Also I’ve been working on making some fibre arts.
Here’s an example of one it’s a reversible beanie very soft and warm let me know if that interests you
Sincerely Jen
Dang it Korea, I come from North America where no table setting is complete without salt and pepper shakers. I hate it that I go into a Korean restaurant and there are no salt and pepper shakers. I really want something salty. I don’t care for sweet food all the time. It seems that most of the food in Korea is on the sweet or bitter and fermented side. Salt is apparantly a no-no here. Now here is the conundrum, if you go into any local Korean market you can find any kind of salt you want. There are so many kinds of salt up to and including bamboo salt, natural salt, rock salt, crushed salt, pink salt and the list goes on….Why don’t they put some of that lovely stuff on the tables? I don’t know why. Apparantly it is used in Kimchi making. So there is an extensive market for salt in the use of Kimchi. If you buy Korean made Lays brand chips they are on the sweet side. Those of us who appreciate American made salty chips end up spitting out the K (Korean) brand. They have honey butter chips that are super popular. However good luck finding good old Sour Cream and Onion, Chedder and Sour Cream, Salt and Vinegar, and My personal favorite Dill Pickle. Only the International markets or Costco carry them. So…
Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com
thank you Korea for keeping my salt intake at a minimum, I love you for being super health conscious, but I hate you for forcing me to do it at the expense of my need for savory chips!
Now that I am coming to the end of my gap year that has been extended (to include another year plus 6 months)….
I am deeply reflecting on the time I have been here. I was so excited and fresh faced when I stepped off the plane on April 17, 2016. After a week of Jet Lag, training, sharing an apartment with 6 other people literally crammed into our 3 BR apt with beds jammed up next to each other….it was quite a culture shock. After a while I began to see that this would become the new normal. People everywhere, sharing spaces, small spaces with even smaller dimensions. There seemed to be no apparant rules to movement on the side walk, no following the rules of walking on the left passing on the right. I can’t tell you how many times someone stopped literally right in front of me to talk on their phone. Hey how about pulling over to the right or left? No. No such courtesy rule exists here. People who are used to it just flow around the obstacle like water.
Photo by Tranmautritam on Pexels.com
The architecture and beauty became my saving grace. I began to love ‘the Land of the Morning Calm”. I am sure it was like that at one time. In the city the last word I would use to describe Seoul is ‘calm’. If I could step back in time before the hustle bustle, the industrial growth and all that is South Korea now, I maybe could experience the calm. In the country exists a quiet and calm. One time I was in Yangpyeong it was truly restful and calm. The journey has been an interesting one. This is my first trip across the ocean outside of my native North America.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
“Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar…So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through…”-In the circle game
Songwriter: Joni Mitchell
Taking some huge baby steps in the path of recovery. I had a huge awakening this morning as a I read in the very popular book by Melody Beattie “The New Codependency”. It turns out that most recovering alcoholics and addicts (of which I am one) have codependency underneath. It caused me to question if I am addicted or pseudo addicted. I don’t need to drink and I have flattered myself for thinking that I didn’t have a drinking problem. When I attended AA meetings , I did not feel as if I belonged there, and felt more at home at the al Anon meetings.Eventually it led to me realizing there was a spiritual problem that I was grappling with. I realized I was drinking and taking drugs to deal with emotional pain caused by codependent behaviors that hurt. It looks like I am drinking alcoholically , and drug seeking, but I am drinking or using drugs to medicate pain that really hurts. When the pain is adequately medicated or stops , my drug seeking and alcoholic drinking stops too. The easiest way to decide is if we can stop with no problem. If we can, we are not addicted. This is how to tell if we have a healthy dependency or an unhealthy addiction, according to Dr. Forest Tennant an addiction and pain management specialist who understands codependency and chronic illnesses: a) healthy dependency on anything improves while addiction destroys our quality of life and ability to function. b) loss of control accompanies addiction.
my melancholy deepens at a time when all I wanted was to be well. I’ve lost all sense of pride and have fallen into a deep well from which I cannot escape; nor do I want to. Once all I had was pride, now broken, I find no mend for these shards of a shattered cistern. Is this what it feels like to be truly free? Where is my happiness? From whence this deep sadness, this prolonged grieving for a life not lived? I have lived, I have enjoyed myself, is this a price that must be payed now for having felt happiness? Was I ever truly happy? Once by your side under the oaks I felt a deep and tender happiness…we shared a brief moment and time stood still… a time of secret ecstasy. Two hearts that beat as one I was so warm in your presence and so accepted let me be buried under those same oaks and know the peace it is just to be near you in death as well as life.
“It’s not for me to say you’ll love me, it’s not for me to say you’ll always care…as far as I can see this is heaven and speaking just for me it’s ours to share… Perhaps the glow of love will grow with every passing day or we may never meet again, but then it’s not for me to say.”
Is the happiness that I have known all that I shall receive? Can more be granted when I have frittered so much away and taken it all for granted? Am I missing it in my melancholy? I have not learned nor have i entered into the gift to be content in want and plenty. All around me is blue, my pictures my colors have turned to gray , ashen ghosts follow me. Too much use of vibrant red has spoiled the canvas now the painful process of scraping away working back into the white and ashen ghosts of the canvas of yesterday…
I think that is why women are sometimes better remaining friends with a man than a lover. A man asks to talk to a woman, she can make herself available to talk. What is the difference when she is in love with him or he with her? Well there is where it gets more complicated and intimacy can be challenging. If he is in love with her its easy I believe. He wants to come to her , to tell her all of his troubles and naturally so. Now if she is in love with him I think when it comes to talking she is willing to go more than halfway to meet him.
We all get tired sometimes and just don’t want to talk, we just want to ‘be’. Whatever that might mean to a person who needs to destress. Some people need to be with someone and talk it out. Tonight a friend of mine who I have been talking to for some time asked me if I was available to talk. I said yes, and as we talked for a while, I felt the intimacy slipping and so I wanted to leave the conversation. I see a pattern and there are silences getting more frequent between the replies. Instead of being patient and letting him continue to talk I cut him off and told him to go to bed. I failed as a friend and as a lover and I am sorry.
at 11:16 am you were born. I remember the day very well. Your journey began with me in the month of October. I remember the morning sickness the inability to keep any solid food down. My bodies violent reaction to the the smell of anything greasy in the form of fried foods. I lived on ramen noodles so it seemed, for the first trimester. I did not know you would be a girl, I did not know what you would become and that your journey in life would take you so far from me, so far across the sea , to an island in the pacific called Japan. That your choices in life would include serving in our nation’s service on the USS George Washington. My beautiful girl lent to me for just a little while. What a lovely lady you have become in such a short span of 26 years time . Today we enjoyed a bowl of Pho with Tofu & vegetables together for lunch. What a fitting supper and enjoyable time together. The gut wrenching ache I feel in my stomach at your departure is reminiscent of the time you came into my life. What joy, what pain, what exuberance!!! My love stays with you always. May you be comforted in your loneliness out on the sea with this thought. I say goodbye, but just for a little while.
to Sigma
from your loving Momma
dream awakens me at 1:30 am and I am terrorized. A man I know comes into my home unannounced he overtakes me and has me cornered in a lock and defeat is pressing on top of me. Fighting for my life , I break free from him and as I come to my feet beside him in a split second I grab a heavy metal object and bludgeon him to death; leaving nothing but a mashed pulp of a head for his shoulders.
As I lie in a pool of sweat , breathing heavy, heart racing, I have no idea what that dream is about. I pray for God’s sweet peace and I fall asleep again.
5:30 am, I am awakened and God’s answer to the dream is in my thoughts. Self has been vanquished. For the first time that dream ends in victory not with defeat. I am at peace within.
jengrabesculpture 