Four?

I have more ATCs!  I am enjoying them.  I like that they are for swapping.  It gives me a deadline and sometimes a theme and I don’t have to figure out where to store them.

Food-coloring-dyed tissue, with “Fire burns” printed on a tissue that I glued to paper and ran through my printer.  The tissue disappears when coated in mod podge, which is very useful.  The info on the back is actually upside-down because I discovered that the background looked better upside-down.

Found a seahorse I liked (on wikipedia), played with it and cleaned it up, then traced it in inkscape to make a contact paper sticker.  There was an eye, but the hole was too small for the paint.  Oh well.  The background is metallic green paint, stamped with a hand-carved eraser stamp, painted over with watercolors.

For a “Something Geeky starting with G” swap, this is Lt. Cmdr. Geordi LaForge.  I’m quite pleased with him.  I traced the main lines from a photograph and painted over it.  I have no idea why he got a glitter background, but it seemed appropriate somehow.

Emika posted in the swap-bot forums, looking for someone to do a one-on-one trade with her and send her an ATC with the number four.  I gather she’s collecting the entire alphabet and letter set, and was missing four.  I’ll admit I find this a bit puzzling, but I suppose she enjoys it.  Anyway, I volunteered.

The card is collaged watercolored phone book pages, with paint on top.  The font for the reverse stencil was…drat.  akaDora, I think.

This one is a surprise for Emika, because why not.  Watercolor, gelly pen doodle, reverse stencils, sponged-on paint.  I’m not sure what I think – I like the lettering to be clearer, but letting the background show through is nice.

Logically this should have gone before the last one, but it’s awfully pretty so I saved the best for last.  Since it seemed silly to make and send just one ATC to Hungary, we decided it would be the 4 ATC and one other typographic one.  And ampersands are pretty.  Font is CAC Champagne, stretched some to make it fit the ATC proportions better.  Background is watercolor and stamped gold acrylic paint (the same stamp as the seahorse, actually.)  Once the stencil was on, I smeared it with black paint.  But that was too black so I smeared it with red paint.  Naturally that was too red so I grabbed a baby wipe to take some of it off.  In doing so I accidentally let some of the gold show through in one corner, and I liked it so much I went around and did the rest.

Bezalel

This actually follows remarkably pat after yesterday’s post.  Pure coincidence as far as I know, though I suppose God may have had other ideas.

This morning at the ladies’ bible study thing we listened to Jonathan Cahn‘s message at the messianic rabbi’s conference this weekend.  It was mostly an encouragement to expand visions and be bold and things like that.  Overall a good word, actually.  Sometimes he’s a bit out there for my taste, but this was right on.

At one point…well, I keep saying that he talked about the importance of finding your parallel in the Bible and using his or her life to shape your vision for your own, but he didn’t actually say that.  He just gave a bunch of examples and let people notice the overall idea or not.  But someone who felt old and worn out would look to Moses, and someone who felt young and intimidated would look to Jeremiah or David, and someone who felt tainted by sin would look to Isaiah, and so on.

So on the way home I considered who best fit as my parallel.  And the best answer I’ve come up with is Bezalel.

Bezalel was selected by God to build the first tabernacle.  God told Moses that he had been anointed with wisdom and knowledge and skill in many areas.  He could draw plans, work gold and silver, carve wood, cut stone, and instruct others in these skills.

I see two parallels between him and me.  The first is the skillset.  My training is in engineering (the drawing plans bit), but these days I’m mostly doing writing and visual art (the artisan bit) and I do love to mentor others.

The second is based more on guesswork.  If Bezalel was just a normal guy and God zapped him with all this knowledge, the second parallel falls through.  But God is outside of time, after all, and it’s just as possible that Bezalel possessed knowledge of at least some of those skills before they ever left Egypt.  If that’s the case, it means he went through several apprenticeships, never settling into one profession and sticking with it.  In which case he may have been a bit like me – good at a lot of things, none of which ever seem to be especially practical, and having trouble feeling actually useful.

Even if this all matches up, I’m not sure where the vision for my life goes from there.  It’s not like we’re in need of another tabernacle.  But it’s still a cool thought.

Engineer

My degree is in mechanical engineering.  More precisely, in Engineering Sciences with a mechanical concentration, because Smith College is insane.  It makes them happy.

I’m not entirely sure how much input I had into that decision.  My mother occasionally berates herself for pushing me into engineering, but I doubt that’s fair.  I loved the majority of my classes, after all.  And I had a couple older friends who were engineers and also really cool people, and they influenced me as well.

Mind you, there was some pushing going on.  I was…well, I admit it looked like laziness, but I think in retrospect that it was probably mostly anxiety.  Either way, it was kind of a problem.

And yes, I might have been happier in a lower-pressure situation (though I don’t think that bothered me much) that was closer to home (though our reasons for me going out-of-state were good ones.)  And I might have been happier in a writing or art program, but I did enjoy my engineering classes.  (And the anxiety was cropping up again: I didn’t think I was good enough at writing or art to do either professionally.  I suspect I was wrong, but I didn’t know.)

The thing is, although I liked my classes, I did not like my classmates.  They were too…engineer-y, really.  Overly serious.  Performance-oriented, detail oriented, boring.  And several of them treated me like a slug whenever our paths crossed.  With one or two exceptions, I pretty much avoided them as much as I could.

This was highlighted today when I learned that one of them is currently in hospice care.  Somebody sent out a mass email about it.  I almost didn’t leave a message for her family because I just don’t want to be connected to any of those people.  (I did leave a message, in the end.  Anonymously.  We were never in the same group or anything, so I doubt she remembers me any better than I remember her, which isn’t very well.)

It’s just an odd place to be in.  I loved what I learned so much, but I couldn’t connect with the others who were learning it.  They seemed to think it was all just numbers.

One of the girls in the class above me once told me that she chose her major because engineering is philosophically sexy.  No idea what that means, but it rings true.

Serpent

The Cthulhu ATC I showed you the other day was for a swap-bot swap.  The host is doing a series of mythical creature ATC swaps.  I missed yeti/bigfoot, I did cthulhu, I am choosing not to do the kraken (because that’s far too many tentacles for one month) and the next one is the Rainbow Serpent from Australian aboriginal mythology.

But when I clicked on the link she provided with information on the Rainbow Serpent, I felt a very strong check in my spirit.  (That’s a christian thing – really just an evangelical thing, the other groups call it something else or don’t believe in it – and it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.  Sort of a feeling of warning or restraint in the back of my mind.  It’s usually not hard to tell which ones are from God and which ones are just me being neurotic.)

At first I figured it was just the site she’d linked to.  That happens sometimes.  So I switched to wikipedia and read more and it was really quite interesting but whenever I tried to plan the ATC the restraint came back.  Don’t plan this.  Don’t paint it.  Don’t join the swap.

Weird.

I’m not sure what the problem is.  Things I paint can’t have bad spirits attached to them because there aren’t any inside me.  (We rooted out the last of the generational spirits a couple years ago, so I know there’s nothing there.)  I doubt that learning about aboriginal mythology is the problem, though I think I’ll steer clear of it anyway rather than try to sort out the details.  It’s not like I’m dying to know more.

Obviously it could be a problem for me to receive an ATC that has spirits attached to it, but since partners are randomly assigned I don’t see why God can’t arrange for a clean partner.  Or I could just get rid of the ATC that came.

My best guess is that there’s something going on with the host of the swap that’s muddying the waters.  She’s Australian, so that at least fits in.  I’m not really sure what she could do that would be problematic, but if the swap is under her authority I suppose there’s something.

I don’t have a point to all this.  I just thought it was odd and interesting.  And I signed up for a seahorse ATC swap instead.

Lo

Behold, my very first ATCs!

  

For those not in the know – ATC stands for Artist Trading Card.  It’s a little artwork the size of a baseball card or a poker card that people send to each other for little or no reason.  It is surpassed in silliness by inchies, twinchies, and thrinchies, which are bits of cardstock one, two, and three inches square, which also get decorated and flung about.

Anyway, I have started doing a few, and they are quite fun.  The dragonfly-things are silver pen on melted crayon (put paper on hot surface and draw slowly – terribly addictive fun, though nothing sticks to it afterwards and it’s a pain to work with), and the cthulhu is my own design (more or less) in pen and watercolor, and the abstract thing is a doodle with a Silhouette-made cutout in front of it. They are all getting sent out for swaps, which means that I’m not creating clutter!  Yay!  Except then people will send me their ATCs, but those I can chuck in a box or something.

And I attempted to do one featuring James Clerk Maxwell, which was less of a success.  Maxwell discovered the equations that govern the movement of light and other forms of EM energy.  He was also the first person to figure out how to make ellipses and things with string, which is pretty cool.  I’m not totally pleased with either ATC (the main difference is that one is a dry transfer, and the other just got sent through the printer a second time) but they’ll do.

 

I better hit the post office.  Two of the ATCs are getting mailed to someone in Spain.

Another Word

I seem to be hearing that a lot lately.  Beauty received an Aquadoodle for Hannukkah, and it’s probably her favorite toy of the season.  It’s a play mat with a thin white fabric over the center, so that the color shows through when you get it wet with the included sponge-pen-thing.  And she loves it.

She likes drawing on it herself, but her favorite is when we write words on it and she picks out the letters.  And then another word.  And another word.  We could be at this for a while.

(Even cuter is when she scribbles and then finds letters that she wrote – usually lots of I’s and J’s, with the occasional W, X, or K.  They’re usually more or less recognizable, too.)

Also adorable was when I asked her yesterday whether if had pooped, and she put her hands on her bottom as if to check, and answered “Uh….no.”  She hadn’t, but I suspect that’s just coincidence.  She says “no” to everything at this point.

But she also gave me a hug this morning when I put her in the car to go home from the grocery store, so that makes up for it.  (Admittedly she added “I’m going to miss you” but that’s just cute.)

Visible

The worlds (or ages) were framed by the word of God, and what we see was not made out of things which are visible.

Hebrews 11:3.  I read it yesterday.

I like that word framed, for one thing.  The Greek is katartizō.  It doesn’t just mean made, it means made perfect, structured and equipped and designed to fulfill a purpose.  Which is not to say that this world is perfect.  It isn’t.  Only that this world is part of a larger design. This world, and our lives, are part of an infinitely complex master plan to bring creation into harmony.  To mend the rift that formed when evil first existed.  We’re getting somewhere.  Someday, all will be restored.

Then there’s the last bit.  What we see was not made from that which is visible.  Something out of nothing.  Even with the advances we have made in understanding what matter is and how it is built (and we’ve made plenty), we haven’t found what came before matter.  We can’t.  It’s out of the range of our comprehension.

Which is just as well, since what we see is not very satisfactory.  To know that God sees us, and knows us, but also knows far more than we do, just as an artist knows far more of the world than the creatures in the painting he creates…that’s a thought I find comforting.

Amy’s Neverending Story

It’s my turn to add to Amy’s Neverending Story of Awesomeness.  Go read it if you want anything resembling an explanation.

The mermaids led Red and Blue to the edge of an underwater cliff.  ”We don’t exactly know why you are here, but we’re pretty sure you should meet Pompy,” one of them explained.  ”He lives at the very bottom.”

“Okay then,” Red responded, and she leaped onto Blue’s back and got ready to swim down off the cliff.

“Wait!  If you go down too fast you’ll get hurt!  You’re going very very deep, and there’s a lot of pressure.  We’ll come with you.  Swim slowly, and zig-zag downwards, and take deep, even breaths.”

Red and Blue looked at each other.  How far down were they going?  Blue smiled at Red, as if to say “Come on, where’s your sense of adventure?”  Red grinned.

They set off down the cliff, keeping pace with the mermaid sisters.  The water got colder and darker.  The sisters gave Red a beautiful new scarf that looked like it was made from sea-foam and black ink, and she wrapped it around them both to stay warm.  They took deep breaths to let the pressure equalize.

As the light dimmed, Red saw glowing spots in the water below her.  The mermaids explained that some fish glowed to provide light for everyone in the deep ocean.

Blue was getting tired, so they took a break.  Red saw a dancing ring of Firefly Squid a little way off, swimming lazily in hypnotic patterns. It was very beautiful.

didn't feel like painting an illustration, but they're quite pretty

Once Blue was rested, they started off again.  They left the Firefly Squid above them, and the water got darker and darker.  Red could still see the lights of other glowing fish, though.  The beautiful gem-like lights danced like stars in the water around her.

Red gestured to Blue, and they chased a few of the glowing lights.  But the fish immediately ran away and would not come nearer.

“Why can’t I see those fish?” Red asked.  ”I want to know what they look like.”

“Nobody ever sees them up close,” one of the sisters answered her.  ”They believe that a creature’s true beauty is the light it creates, and that is the only part of themselves they will show.”

They swam on.  The water was almost black now, and it was getting very cold.  Suddenly the water started getting warm again, and the lights were obscured by a purple haze.

“Careful!” one of the sisters called.  ”Come back out of the smoke! It’s very hot!”

Blue turned and swam back to the sisters.  Red looked around and saw billowing purple smoke rising through the dark water.

“We’re getting close,” one of the sisters told her.  ”The smoke is muddy water from a hydrothermal vent.  It’s a crack in the ocean floor that allows water to get heated up by the heat at the center of the world.”

The sisters turned to go on. “The smoke is hot enough to burn you at the center.  Stay close enough to keep warm, but don’t go in it.  Shout if you can’t see us or the other fish-lights.”

Red and Blue swam carefully.  They got closer to the ocean floor, and then the sisters stopped.

“Pompy is there.”  One of them pointed to a red creature below them, swimming slowly in and out of the smoke.  ”But we shouldn’t go any closer.  He’s sad, and he’s been sad, and we don’t know why, and he won’t let us talk to him any more.  We’re very worried about him.  We think you might be able to help.”

Red nodded.  She would help Pompy if she could.  She and Blue swam down towards Pompy.

As she got closer, she realized that Pompy looked like nothing else she had ever seen.  He had a long red body with what looked like a thick coat of tendrilly white hair, and instead of a face he had a group of feathery pink tentacles.  But he looked so sad as he swam that she could not be afraid.

not my best portrait, but Blue and Pompy came out well I think

“Who’s there?”  she heard a voice say.  She knew it was Pompy, though she couldn’t tell how he made the noise.

“I’m Red, and this is Blue,” she said.  ”We came to meet you.”

“May I see you?” he asked, extending his tentacles.  She said yes, and he gently brushed her face, feeling her shape.

“May I ask….what are you?” she asked.

“I am a Pompeii Worm,” he replied.  ”I am a creature of the deep places of the world.”

He sounded so sad as he said it.  ”Why are you so sad?” she asked.

to be continued…

(You can see pictures of more awesome hydrothermal vent animals here, by the way.  At least, I think they’re awesome.)

Prude

So a funny thing happened on my way to adulthood….

I was a prude as a kid.  Not sure why.  I just was.  The idea of other teens having sex and getting drunk and things was just…no.  Only stupid people do that.  Stupid people also cared about clothes, had emotions, celebrated monthly “anniversaries” with their significant others, wore makeup to school, spent more than about 30 seconds on their hair….Yeah.

My parents, understandably, did their best to combat this.  My mom tried to steer me towards flattering clothing.  And she spent quite a lot of time explaining how social dynamics work and how it might be a good plan to try to fit in just a little bit for the purpose of acquiring friends, even if fitting in was stupid.

And my mom told showed me Grease and, when I was upset by the ending, she pointed out that Sandra had made a decision to do what was needed to get what she wanted, and that high school is a time for “experimenting with different personalities.”

And when I came to my dad in great distress and told him that some other teens were smoking pot, he shrugged and said that it mostly makes you hungry.  (Come to think of it, I should ask about when he acquired that knowledge.  I don’t think I ever have.)

And so on.  Given how uptight I was, it was probably very sensible to downplay that sort of thing.

Then I went to college.  And at college I discovered the internet properly, especially the fact that online forums don’t require mysterious social skills that I did not possess, and therefore allowed me to start overcoming the social anxiety and start making friends.

And having discovered that it was actually kinda nice to have friends (who would’ve thought it?) I tried making friends with my housemates.  And to my surprise, that was fun too.

The problem, of course, was that now I had all these friends, and a background of parental encouragement of social experimentation.  (I also knew that I’d be moving home and getting married after college, so if I wanted to try anything this was the time to do it.)

Parenting.  Darned if you do, darned if you don’t.

I actually didn’t experiment that much.  I wore short skirts a couple times, but it was mostly just with girls anyway.  (Admittedly most of them weren’t straight, but they knew I was.)  I rarely had more than one drink at a sitting.  I did have more on occasion, but never enough to have a hangover the next morning.  I didn’t try smoking pot, mostly because one of the other girls insisted it didn’t work on her and nixed the suggestion whenever it was offered.  (It has only recently occurred to me that she may have made that up to cover some other qualm about getting high.  I don’t know.)

(I’m rather hoping they legalize marijuana at some point.  I’m curious to try it.)

And when mom recently commented on how I would have been willing to try pot, and I pointed out that she had said that adolescence was for experimentation, she laughed and said she took it back.  Kids are funny that way.

Am I Weird?

Okay, yes, I know I’m weird.  Well, not as weird as I used to be.  But it’s still there.

More to the point, is it weird to hang out in the library?  Beauty was antsy last night and we were both tired, so we took her to the library to hang out for an hour.  We do this every so often.  The kids’ section has a variety of toys to play with, and of course there’s books to look at, and mostly it’s a nice interesting space for her to trundle around in.

She loves books, but at this stage she isn’t all that interested in new books, so she usually lets us read one or two with her and that’s about it.  She’ll also pull some older-kid books off the shelf and “read” them.  We supervise her carefully, reshelve the books she takes out, put away all the toys before we leave, etc etc etc.

Anyway, as we were leaving last night the librarian commented that we’d been there a very long time and that she’d been very good the whole time.  I don’t think our behavior was inappropriate, but I wonder if the librarian thought so.

I’m probably overthinking the whole thing.  I do that.  I guess it’s unusual for people to take advantage of the library’s evening hours like that (it is true we were the only ones in the kids’ section the whole time) but unusual isn’t the same as wrong and everyone knows it.  I hope.