Filling Up a Blank Wall

new project: creating a ship 

supplies: paper, watercolors, yarn, quill & ink

{suggestions welcome}

Kick off your shoes and dance.

Swan Lake is My Sanity

I've been listening to the ballet suite for days. I just love it. 

You can hear the story of the girl-changed swan, of her falling in love, and of the plot thickening until tragedy strikes.

They Ask Me, What Is Reality?

    When I examine myself to answer this question; I find many answers. There is a reality that I believe is based upon the senses. The common phrase runs through my head “what you see is what you know”. I believe that what is real is what we can detect with our prime senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Every human being owes most if not all of their understanding of reality to their senses. They are our gateway to the world around us, they are the portals through which reality enters and takes its form in our comprehension. 

    However, I do not personally think that reality stops here.  There is a reality that resides largely outside of our five senses. It is a reality of an unseen world, I have most often heard it called The Spiritual Realm. Now this title can mean several different things, but for me it is a world where there exist angels, demons, a divine and omnipotent God, a fallen angel called Satan, and perhaps even spirits of humans who no longer live in their earthly bodies. 

    I believe the Spiritual Realm can be anywhere and everywhere on this earth, and I believe that it extends beyond earth into the heavens and farther away than we humans could or ever will comprehend. I also believe in the human soul as a separate entity from the human body. The body may age and fade away with every other organic material on this earth, but the soul is a mysterious and spiritual being that resides inside a body and only leaves the body when the body can no longer house it. A soul is what makes me, well, me. It is not something I can see, though many people believe it to be visible in the eyes. “The eyes are the window to the soul”. It is a common phrase that I believe to possibly be true. When a person is dead, their eyes look obviously different. Perhaps the eyes are the only hint we have at the depth of our own selves. Perhaps it is in the eyes that we may glimpse an almost completely hidden spiritual world. Ironic much?

    I believe that reality is in two parts, it is a world that I have around me that I can perceive through my human senses and it is a world beyond the ordinary senses that I cannot prove. I could further this thought by saying that reality is what a person believes to be real. But I don’t believe that. And now I’m thinking myself into confusion.

Strep Throat Has Found Me Out In Ireland

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning. 

It's Your Local Ballymacash Flower Club. Have a Biscuit.

A spontaneous invitation from the friend of a professor this morning, and by seven o clock this evening I was on my way to my first ever flower club meeting. I was accompanied by several other unabashed flower loving females, and we sat for an hour or two watching a demonstration for several unique "Autumn Glory" arrangements. 

As we were about thirty years younger than the average Ballymacash Club member, we stuck out like sunflowers in a Christmas bouquet. 

Quick tea and biscuits, and it was back to the manor. 

My hair smells like roses.

Today In Belfast

I bought a dress. It looks like this, only pink. 

The rain is coming down, not in fat Texas drops but in misty sheets. 

I helped Sarah a little with dinner- Salmon and Risotto. 

I'm hungry.

✉

Salvador Dali Must Have Had Rather Large Tonsils

I am afflicted with a very sad condition. It is the condition of extraordinarily vivid dreams and nightmares. As a very small child I remember several reoccurring nightmares, one in particular where I stand helpless to watch a little girl about my own age who comes upon a demon and is dragged screaming and crying into hell. My parents were protective and loving, I only ever exposed to age-appropriate movies and books. Why did these kinds of dreams plague my innocent mind? I would never know.

In high school and college they persisted. Almost every night it seemed I was subjected to watching loved ones commit desperate suicides, pulling dead bodies of children from dark waters, being covered in thousands of spiders, running from tornados and dinosaurs, and finding dismembered body parts of dear friends on my doorstep.

Waking to scream and cry never helped, the only method I found to keep my demons at bay was to whisper the verse that begins “Love, is patient and kind…” as I willed myself to fall asleep again.

I also suffer another, less dreadful, condition. Or as of a month ago I did. I have always had very, very, large tonsils. This would lead naturally to persistent and antibiotic resistant bouts of strep throat. When I finally went to see an ENT specialist (Ear,Nose,Throat) I found a few answers that I hadn’t been looking for. The real condition I was suffering, other than the obvious strep, was sleep apnea. Sleep Apnea is a problem in which for a number of reasons, an individual will never complete a healthy sleep cycle because they continually stop breathing as they sleep and wake up many times during the night, sometimes without even remembering it. My reason for waking up was simple; my tonsils were so large that they made it nearly impossible to breathe steadily while sleeping. My nightmares were a product of my fickle sleeping pattern and a body that was rarely allowed to regenerate and rest during the night.

Now to get to the point of this story. As an artist one of my most revered influences is the work of surrealist Salvador Dali. When I first glimpsed his paintings as a child (on a calendar in Barnes & Noble) I remember being frightened. His stuff had the eerie flavor of nightmares. It frightened me because it took me back to the moments of waking in the dark, alone and afraid. As a highschooler I became intrigued with Dali’s mixture of beauty and horror. It was like he knew what I saw at night, and instead of locking it away in fear he presented it to the world as his own reality. And Dali poured into his unearthly paintings a sense of wonder. To be faced with his “The Temptation of St. Anthony” is strange and creepy yes, but breathtaking as well. This led me to the conclusion that to glimpse into another’s mind would be an experience akin to finding a new world. 

I have no more tonsils, and my sleep is beginning to return to what it should have always been. But Dali gave me a new dream; to paint my own dreams. If I can I will endeavor to face the silky shadows of my mind. I will recover and reveal the beauty and the twisted memories that lie there. And perhaps another dream inflicted artist will see what I have done and face their own fears to give others a taste of the ethereal images and alien worlds we paint in our sleep.

First day of Philosophy. This is my subject.

"The heart has reasons that the mind knows little about"

Today is a rare day of Irish sun. Looking outside makes my eyes hurt, the color is so powerful. 

School is officially in session. And with it vague writing assignments. I find myself rambling on, trying to outwit writer's block. Maybe if I never stop to take a breath I'll never lose my words and end up staring at a blank canvas. I love to write, but writing five pages "about myself" is tricky. I can't fill five pages with superficial facts. I am forced to be personal, to write from the heart. And my natural reserve feels uncomfortable, the hairs on its neck stand up as it hisses. No one should know my heart until they've earned my trust.
I guess I don't fit the brash, uncouth, American stereotype. 

I Love To Arrange Flowers

I wish I could live for 200 years, then maybe I would have enough time to do everything I want to do.

I already miss the Texan Jargon

Howdy Ya'll. 

Hey Ya'll. 

What are ya fixin to do? 

I'm gunna eat some chili dogs an chug a couple buds. 

Ya'll Ya'll Ya'll Ya'll Ya'll.

There, it's out of my system. Even the Americans look at me funny when I say ya'll. Susan says I speak with a southern accent when I'm really mad. I wouldn't know. I hardly hear what's coming from my mouth when I'm upset.

Ya'll. Ya'll Ya'll. 

Okay that's it. 

✉

Welcome to the Land of Postcards

I'm glad I don't have a camera. 

Photos never do it justice. 

A photo can't capture the smell of salty sea air, the rumbling waves crashing against a cliffside, the seagulls floating above my head like fish in a current, and the sudden bursts of sunlight through the clouds.

A photo will never help me remember what it felt like to be on top of the world, to have noise all around and feel so quiet on the inside. 

I like to live in the moment.

Hiding behind a camera just isn't my style. Why should I be worrying about apertures and shutter speeds when I have a perfectly vivid memory to keep images in?

This is why I love painting. You can take a memory or an idea and translate it onto a canvas. No one but me would know the meaning of every decision that went into that artwork.  No one but me can show the emotions and the meanings behind what I'm doing. No one but me can see into my head. You can take pictures of beautiful things, but chances are another score of photographers have beat you to it. 

Open up your mind, and you'll find new worlds. 

                   --Some famous person. Maybe. I don't know it just sounded like a quote.

The Wee Island I Call Home

...or "home" for three months. I've been planning this day since I was a senior in high school and browsing through university websites. I found JBU, and I found a ticket to Ireland. And now the day is here. 

Erin Go Bragh.

✉

Goodbye Summer, you were alright this year.

I am a list maker. My list can include anything from what homework I have to what to tell my mom when she calls next. 

One of my favorite lists to make is the annual "Summer To-Do". 

The most common entries upon this list include various creative projects, extensive classic novels to read, and an encouragement to eat more vegetables daily. 

Needless to say, Summer comes to an end without half the list being accomplished. 

And I berate myself for my laziness. 

This summer, the first on my list was to perform a room overhaul. By this I mean, to reorganize, repaint, redecorate, and rearrange my bedroom. It is no small feat when you are working alone and on a very minimal budget. 

Here are a few proud before and afters.

Before

And After.

Now it feels like fall. 

A bit early for Texas this year, but maybe it's my home's way of trying to get me to stay.

✉

kate is it. again.

An entire summer of words have been sitting in my fingertips, swelling my hands to imaginary exorbitant proportions. 

I've said many times; my heart is in my palms, my brain in my fingertips, my soul connects them. 

I would rather lose my eyes than my hands. But I digress.

With a deleted blog and a red moleskine fit to burst, I needed to get these words out somehow.

So, kate is it is it again. 

And welcome to the first post of many.

✉