Canvas

Jul 2021

Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet are my favourite painters. I’ve been dreaming of yellow lilies recently - a symbol of happiness, remembrance and cheer. How apt to be reminded of the good times.

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue

Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

From “Vincent'“, Don Mclean

I’m also dedicating this post to @Hyunginprose, what an inspiration and more importantly, thank you for sharing your heart 💙🤍

Why I write

Whether finding a place to share my stories with others or writing for myself; no words are too heavy to be put onto a page, and no words too small (but contain your heart) to be left out.

Written words draw people closer. Love is clarified, drawn through a veil of language and refined into something pure, simple and honest. These stories are woven from fabrics of emotions and thoughts without any censor and apology. And shared to spark a connection with others.

Writers live everything twice: once when it actually happens and then again when they put it on the page.

Writing, painting, and other creative processes allow the conversation that begin in life Before to continue in life After. The stories we create a continuation of love.

The writing journey set me off to a path where I’m more conscious of my time/emotion/energy. Each week, I jot down my “New/Best/Worst/Looking Forward To” moments: be it quality time with family, catching up with friends or working intensely on a project. I treasure each moment as they come. As I find those moments (seeing them and recording them) - time begins to slow down. The pace begins to ease into your own rhythm.

I cloth these endearing moments with language, making them visible and tangible, and it made me conscious of little things. I’m living fully and purposefully in the “here and now”.

The reason for penning these moments down is fourfold:

• By putting these words onto a page, we relive the experience once more and also continued (as an epilogue and as a continuation). As we move forward with “Life”, these precious moments can be retrieved and accessed at any time, and shared with other people too.

• Penning these stories down and sharing them is a simultaneous act of tenderness and defiance that gently breaks down barriers. There is freedom to paint these pages with your own palette of colors. Writing builds patience - not just in the idea generating, waiting, refining process, but it teaches me to be waiting here at the edge of becoming. Our lives unfold and we are becoming, just like painting on an empty canvas.

Try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, a house, a field, or whatever. Merely think, 'Here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow,' and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives you your own impression of the scene before you.

Claude Monet

• Last, I’m thankful to others have responded (resonating with these stories) or even sharing their own. Your stories and journeys touched me and are my inspiration. Writing has become an extension of the friendship we share.