Tag: imagination

The Present of Being Present: Awareness

I started writing this post exactly 4 months ago today. At that time, I was working at a job that was wreaking havoc on my health. It’s rather curious that I would return to this post on the exact same day (on the 23rd of all days – more about that another time). It’s also rather curious that my mind would be concerned with being present. My present (yes, pun intended) circumstances lend a lot to what is happening.

I will say this now and probably will say it again and again:

There are no accidents,
only lack of awareness of what is happening.

Here is what I wrote on June 23, 2017:

The word for today is present. Every single day, not just this one, that is, if we are truly present.

I’m in a very difficult situation. I work at a back-breaking job and I’m reaching my personal breaking point as Humpty Dumpty in regards to my joints.

I have arthritis in my fingers, wrists, neck, back, hips and now possibly in the knee. Pain is par for the course.

I just came back from the doctor. I wanted relief. He said I’ll just have to live with it.

I refuse to accept pain as a way of life.

Today, October 23, 2017, I am experiencing severe pain in my joints throughout my body. There is a low-pressure front and it is causing swelling.  On days like today, the stiffness makes me move extremely slow like an Ent.

I’m not complaining about this. I am trying to illustrate what it feels like to have widespread arthritis with a bit of humor. I’ve been doing a mental exercise to alleviate the pain by just observing it. In time I hope to be in a pain-free life, but that is not today.

This morning when I woke up an old poem I wrote years ago came to my head:

After we see
the beauty
of our own pain
then we begin

The image of a painting I did that was based on that poem also flashed through my mind. Here it is:

“Beauty of Pain” by Ginny Gaura

I created this mixed-media piece about 15 years ago when the arthritis was localized to my lower back. I didn’t create this painting because of physical pain. I was experiencing emotional pain back then.

But pain is pain whether it is emotional or physical. It is not pleasant.

Back in the early 2000s my fingers were just beginning to develop osteophytes, bone spurs that disfigure my joints. Back then, I didn’t have pain in my hands, I just had a few swollen joints. Now the hand pain is sometimes so severe that daily activities such as typing can cause pain. Also, my fingers are crooked on my right, which is the dominant hand.

I am only 55. My mom developed bone spurs in her hands later in life. When she passed at 77, her joints were not as disfigured as mine are now.

I have had back issues since I was a teenager and was diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the spine with bone spurs in my thirties, so the illness has had a long time to progress.

Someone in the public eye claimed that his bone spurs got better. At least from my experience, bone spurs only get worse with time.

Sometimes there is a gift within the pain if we allow ourselves to see it. For me, it is awareness. I am aware of what is hurting but I am not letting it overpower my life. I am listening to my body, moving it slowly and treating it with care. What is happening is allowing me to open more fully in awareness, to see things in a more intense light, to be more present in the moment.

What new awareness have you had recently?

Always,
Alice Always

 

Thank You, J.K. Rowling, For Reminding All of Us that We are Magical Beings

On the 20th Anniversary of Harry Potter, I would like to honor J.K. Rowling and her creative contribution our collective imagination by introducing us all to Harry Potter. An entire generation has grown up with Harry and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley.

Thank you, J.K. Rowling. Thank you for shining your light and sharing your gift with the world.

I remember seeing the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in the late 90s. I was at my brother’s house and the book was on an end table in the family room. My niece was reading it and I asked her about it. She told me it was about a boy wizard who went to a school called Hogwarts. The next few months I kept hearing about it, committing to read it someday.

Unless you have kids of your own, other things take precedence over reading children’s books and I never got around to reading it until right before the first movie came out in 2001.

I enjoyed both the book and movie so much that I went on to read more of the novels, though regretfully, I never finished the series. I hope to someday.

The thing that struck me most was that J.K. Rowling had brought forth a magical world that has become entwined in our consciousness in a purely imaginative way. It allowed us to see the world differently from how we experienced it up until that point.

You see profiles of people on Facebook who say they are Hogwarts graduates and professors. Some adults are using their imagination to change how they view their childhoods. Instead of reliving unpleasant memories, we can reframe our past and see it in a whole new light. We can create happy thoughts.

When young children play, they can go deep into their fantasy and really feel that they are the characters that they imagine. Why do adults forget to play like that? Why do we call it pretending? Is it because we are afraid of what other adults will think?

What if we allowed ourselves to be whatever awesome playful character we choose to be at any moment? Our playfulness might spread to others and everyone could lighten up, smile and laugh. Wow! Life would take on a whole new level of magic!

We are all magical beings with abilities to create worlds of wonder. J.K. Rowling showed us where her imagination took her. Where does your imagination take you?

Always,
Alice Always

Playing with Imagination and Where It Can Take Us (To Infinity and Beyond)

Let’s play Rorschach Test. You know, that fun psychological evaluation exercise where you are shown an inkblot picture and you get to decipher what you see in it? Before you read any further, look at the above picture and think about what it says to you.

This is an experiment because I don’t have any idea what people will see.

So go ahead. I’ll wait.

You can post in the comments what you thought if you’d like. I’d love to see what everyone has to say.

If you said that it looks like an air hockey game, that would be correct. But if you never had any knowledge of air hockey, you might not say that.

I was going to title this post “The Goal of this Blog” but that seemed so generic and I’m not a very generic kind of girl. When I think about the word “goal” the first image that comes to my mind is an old air hockey game from the 1970s. You might picture a goal chart, a mountain, your own personal goal, a star or something that is significant to you. I see air hockey, a game from my childhood.

As I said in my last post, I have this outrageous idea that through using our imagination, we can create a peaceful and loving world. It is outrageous to me because I am still working on personal issues such as self-love and self-worth. Maybe you are also.

Most of us have something in us that we need to overcome. Sometimes it is a limiting belief that has been handed down from our parents, who had it handed down from their parents. Maybe someone said something negative to us as a young child and we took it to heart. Our hearts need to be healed. Our inner children need to be healed.

I look at this blog as a social experiment to help myself and others restore our innocence through imagination and play, and to see where it takes us. Hopefully, it will go far, like Buzz Lightyear always says: To Infinity and Beyond!

It’s my sincere hope that I continue on on this path of healing and that you join me.

Always,
Alice Always

Please comment below if you see something different than an air hockey game. I’d love to hear about any different perceptions of this picture.

I’m On My Way, I Don’t Know Where I’m Going

I wake up and it’s a new month: May! What happened to April? It raced by like a road runner! Where is that adorable cartoon coyote when you need him? I had so much to do last month but I slept through most of it. This blog was originally planned last year for March 20, the Vernal Equinox, the first day of Spring. You know, that’s a good time to start something new. Everything is so pretty with all the pastel Easter egg colors. Also, marshmallow Peeps are available in a store near you. Now, if you happen to be reading this in Australia, things are a bit different from here in the good ol’ USA. You know, because you have koala bears and kangaroos and we do not. Not to mention it’s Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.

But I digress. Get use to that phrase as digressing is to me what digesting is to a finished meal – it’s part of an endless cycle or as I like to say, a loop da loop, or with my lousy French accent: loop ze loop. (You may need to imagine an old Pink Panther movie with Inspector Clouseau, if you get my drift.) But I digress. Yet again! I have to tell you. I take digressing to a whole new level! If speaking was a spectator sport, I would win the Olympic Gold Medal of Digression. I could even teach a college course on it. Yes, I digress that much.

I also have a tendency to use words in ways that other people do and sometimes in ways that no one does. In another world, I played the role of a nonconformist English major. I rebelled against the Establishment and used “me and…” instead of “… and I” on a term paper. In my defense, I insisted that if Paul Simon could say “Me and Julio down by the schoolyard”, then I could too. Well, my English professor was not convinced and gave me an extremely low grade. I wonder if e.e. cummings got an F- for not using capital letters.

They have such silly rules in the English language, I don’t know how a non-native English speaker trying to learn the language could possibly master it. I mean, the language itself is constantly evolving. When I was a kid, yeah, back when “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” was a song played in rotation on radio stations across America, people wore thongs, not flip-flops, on their feet. Now, people wear flip-flops on their feet and thongs as underwears. Yep, I said underwears with a ‘s’ at the end. Get used to it. I like to play with words.

Maybe I should get around to telling you why I’m writing a blog. Well, I have this outrageous idea that through using our imagination, we can create a peaceful and loving world. I intend to explore various topics such as creativity and reality in a playful manner that expresses my personality. Hopefully, I’ll make some sense or a great deal of nonsense. I want to inspire people and show them how to use their imagination to transform themselves and in doing so, help to transform the world into a joyful place.

As Alice, I bring the sense wonder that is Wonderland to this reality. I may ask you to participate on projects or make up your own. Together we can make a difference while having a lot of fun.

Always,
Alice Always

Who is Alice Always and Why Does This Alice in Wonderland Look Like A Peanuts Character?

When it came to writing this blog, I wanted to adopt a playful theme, something that people would immediately recognize as childlike without being too childish. I wanted it to exude that innocence of childhood and for me, that is typified by the Peanuts cartoon strip by Charles M. Schulz.

I really can relate to each of the characters in Peanuts.

Snoopy is my wonderful imagination, and like his escapades, I often find myself in my own reverie. Sally is the little sister that I have always felt like, even though I am a big sister to my little sister. Linus with his security blanket and philosophical temperament, is my the ultimate dreamer self, believing in things that no one else does like the Great Pumpkin. Lucy as the psychiatrist exemplifies my fascination with psychology and her own self-absorption is something that makes me reflect upon mine. Schroeder is the artist in me, creating art for art’s sake and truly immersed in the world of music as I immerse in painting as my art. And like Charlie Brown, I am prone to depression and anxiety and tend to over-analyze both myself and whatever situation I find myself in.

I could write entire books on each character and how each of us can relate to the Peanuts gang in our own way. Perhaps someday I will write more on this blog about them.

You can tell I have a fascination with Peanuts. I obviously also have one with Alice in Wonderland. So what better way to celebrate this by creating a mashup? Before The Peanuts Movie came out, the website peanutsizeme.com was created to promote it. I’m glad it’s still up because I really enjoy playing with it. I created a character there and I Photoshopped it a bit to make it appear more like Alice In Wonderland. Because I didn’t want to infringe on copyright, I emailed the people at Peanuts about using it on my blog, but I never heard back. So, no news is good news, right?

I am currently writing two books about Alice in Wonderland. After these are finished, I anticipate more. One book is entitled Alice Awakes, which is about spiritual awakening and imagination. The second book is a children’s book that is about Alice returning to Wonderland. There is more info to come on these books and I hope that you will enjoy them someday.

Alice Always is a facet of myself. She is a persona that is me as a curiouser and curiouser being in the world of imagination.

Remember when you were a kid and you would pretend to be whoever you wanted to be? Well, I’m here to tell you that you can still be that person.

I am . . .

Always,
Alice Always

Spring is Springing Up All Over

I loved the Google Doodle from the Fall Equinox that I had to post the one for Spring Equinox. I was just going to flip the graphics on the page but I decided to lookup the one Google posted for 2017.

This Spring Equinox 2017 Google Doodle has magical quality to it. A mouse wakes up in his underground home and goes above ground to get a daffodil to put in a vase, then he goes back to sleep and the flower disappears from his home and grows above ground. Magic!

Don’t you think its odd he has a broom? I mean he lives in a hole filled with dirt! Does he sweep all the dirt under the doormat?

Perhaps a future Google Doodle will show him spring cleaning and the dirt will magically disappear. It reminds me of another mouse named Mickey who had a broom and well, things got a little out of hand. But that’s a story for another day.

Always,
Alice Always

We are Live on the Equinox but Which Equinox is It?

Is it the Fall Equinox or the Spring Equinox? Let’s see what Google is showing:

First Day of Fall 2016 in Northern Hemisphere

First Day of Spring 2016 (Southern Hemisphere)

First Day of Spring 2016 in Southern Hemisphere

I gotta say it: aren’t those rocks cute? Here’s a shout-out to the creative minds behind them. Thanks, Google Doodle team! Keep up the good work or goo(d) play!

My blog was scheduled to debut 6 months ago on the Spring Equinox 2016. I don’t know if we got caught in an Interdimensional Timeline Loop if there is such a thing. Maybe Interdimensional Timeline Loops are yet to be discovered in the Quantum Mechanical-Physics World, or QM-PW as a few call it here in Wonderland. We’ll explore that phenomenal world together some other time or in no time at all. It’s all relative, my dear Watson.

I have to throw out the possibility that Interdimensional Timeline Loop (or ittles as I call them) might be something that I just made up. If that is the case then I have to buckle down on my theory and write a grant to study it so I can sit down and stare into the endless formless void to do the extremely important task of daydreaming for research. I have weirdly erratic sleep patterns so I might be doing some of my research at night. As I’m staring into the endless formless void, the space between the stars, my eyes might be drawn to a star or two. It’s just natural. And you know what happens when a star shines back at you, don’t you? Well, that’s another blog post for another day.

But anyway, back to the subject at hand. It’s the Fall Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere of Wonderland. On the other hand, it is the Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere of Wonderland right now. So it’s all relative to where you are standing in the world. But what if you are standing on the equator with one foot in both hemispheres? Or what if you are a fish like Nemo or Dory and you are swimming in circles around the equator in the ocean?

You know, technically, you could be in both hemispheres on the same day if you travel from one latitude to the other on the other side of the equator.  Then you could see leaves fall and flowers blossom on the same day! That would be so cool, wouldn’t it? It might be cool or not, depending on the weather. Today it was warm where I was and I had to use the air conditioner. It felt more like the first day of summer here except for the occasional warm yellow color of leaves on trees and the rice-crispy brown ones on the ground.

It’s my hope that you enjoy this blog and find it amusing, life-affirming, insightful, creative, educational, puzzling, motivating, uplifting, brain blowing, inspiring, mind-numbing, boggling or just plain silly. Maybe one or all of them at the same time. Kind of like a mix-and-match smorgasbord of thought patterns. I like to make people laugh and/or think or think about laughing or laugh while thinking. I’m an overly creative sort of person who likes to mix metaphors as I dance like a duckie (because I’m not at all graceful like a swan).

Sometimes you can be so overly creative that you really can’t tell what is imagination and what is reality.

And that, my friends, can be a good thing.

Because as one kooky-haired intellectual named Albert Einstein so aptly put it years ago, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

And that is what I intend to do with this blog, to take you everywhere.

Just as the late great Gene Wilder took us on a journey as Willy Wonka, I hope to take you to places that you can only discover with your imagination.

Come with me and you’ll be
In a world of pure imagination…

Always,
Alice Always