A balloon on its way up

Jim and I were just in time to see this balloon being prepared to fly. It was a bit of a dodgy take-off... it was tethered to a Landrover and the wind was gusting quite strongly... at one point it looked like the Landrover was going to go up too... but in the end the balloon went up properly with everyone aboard and just gave the Landrover a bump as it was rising... unfortunately causing a dent to its bonnet (hood), and a crack to its windscreen (windshield). I asked the ground crew if this was normal and they said no...

Sorry about the slightly odd photo I was shooting into the sun.

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Yesterday after an accumulation of synchronicities I made my first two SoulCollage® cards in a year. I've only just noticed how close that was. On April 14th last year I made this:

Collaged from these: lotus flower by wayfaring stranger silence by Mario Scorza On the pink by hexion

I put it up on flickr but didn't blog it. And yesterday, April 15th I made these:



For more about them, including all the relevant attributions see this posting on my card blog.

I've no idea why I've not made any cards for the last year except that I just wasn't motivated to. I love making them when its time to make them.

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In one of her comments Joy Eliz seemed surprised that I'd finished Wyrd Allies... and yes it would be a surprise if I'd done all the exercises... I'm still working on the loops... more and more keep on revealing themselves to me.

When I'm in the mood for reading books I tend to have more than one on the go. I'm still slowly reading 7 Years in Tibet, I've got Positively Wryd started but currently stalled whilst I'm processing the loops from Wyrd Allies, most of my reading attention is going to the book about the history of Trance that I mentioned before - Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind - which I'm finding very interesting but needs to be taken in smallish bites to relish it. Then there are the New Scientists that we have lying around the house. Who else reads like this?

Back to the Trance book - did you know that in trials with women who wanted to increase their breast size most managed to using hypnosis. Indeed one stopped before all the scheduled sessions as she'd got sufficient increase. A completely drug-free, pain-free way, and relatively inexpensive too. Not something that the cosmetic surgery industry would want you to know...

Quick check-in

I just realised I hadn't posted in over a week... sorry. Its probably that I've not got anywhere worth reporting with Carla's challenges and somehow I've been forgetting that there is more to this blog than those..

Maybe its time for a more general where am I and what have I been up to sort of post...

I've not been up to much... a little painting (and no I'm not showing on here yet... though at last I think I know what they are about!)... the odd walk in Bristol's various nearby green spaces... collecting Jim from the airport and getting horribly lost (how? I've no idea... I was the one that got lost...) but still getting there sufficiently early that I had to pay to park... you only get 10 minutes free parking there and it takes most of that to walk to and from the terminal... so hard to avoid at least the £2.50 charge for the next 20 minutes. If I hadn't got lost I'd have been much too early and been stung for the £4 charge (30 min - 1 hour) instead. I was a little impatient to see him after his adventures in the snowfields of Norway :-)

I've been reading a book: Trance: A Natural History of Altered States of Mind by Brian Inglis - its fascinating. I haven't finished it yet but am both appalled and amazed at the way scientists were reluctant to investigate hypnosis in the 19th century because of the damage it would do to their reputations!

Sharp Twists of Fate

Image: "Clerical Workers Sharpen Pencils in the Death Star Library" by ShellyS
Quote: "Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
John Kenneth Galbraith

I'm getting behind in doing Carla's exercises on wings4you... on Sunday she posted: You are on a Mission. I've been having a hard time even beginning to do this... I used to work for the kind of company that had mission statements... and as an employee I saw no value to them whatsoever. They were too abstract and took too much time, far too many meetings, and no feeling of direction or other benefit came out of them.

I do realise that doing my own mission statement the only person I need to have a meeting with is myself and as Jim is away this week I've no interruptions. I can also choose what level of abstraction to pitch it at.

Then I found this image of the pencil sharpeners. It puts all that past stuff about the future into context. Provides a wyrd twist on it all...

I've finished a first read through of "Wyrd Allies" and although I've only done a few of the exercises I think I've already noticed some effects... the first was bumping into one of my neighbours - she was the only person who lives around here that I knew before we moved in 12 years ago - and yet during that time we've hardly seen each other, not got to know each other any better at all.

When we met on Tuesday she apologised for being so focused on her own stuff and said we really ought to get together... so we arranged to meet at a local coffee shop the next morning. Later that day I was on my way to a hot stones massage and of course I bumped into her again... and she was off to a massage too... We met up the next morning and had a lovely time.

The reason I connect this with the book, is that to go to the shops I have to choose which way to go, I specifically felt for which was the wyrd way to go and then she popped into view - both times. Of course before reading the book I'd have called this following my nose... or my heart... or whatever part I was attaching the feeling to. So this isn't really new, just a different way of looking at what already is.

One of the more emotionally draining aspects of the exercises I have undertaken is in looking at the things which repeat over and over in my life, where I end up in the same role, the same position, even though I'm with different people each time it happens. I'm finding this useful but tiring! Some of the patterns are very frequent repeaters and definitely weird... by which I mean the things that are happening are not ones I could possibly have consciously arranged... so although I'm the only common element it is odd that the world, the wyrd, the whatever has put me into this situation over and over, given me the chance to replay it over and over... with enough variations to keep me guessing of course... like my very own Groundhog Day (the film)... though mercifully not quite so predictable!

For instance, when I went to my first school I knew no-one there - I lived 5 miles away from it - the others were all local and already mostly knew each other and could see each other after school and at weekends.

By the time I was 10 the year I was in was ready to go up to the next school. However you couldn't do that unless you were 11. All my classmates went up to the next school and I had to stay on an extra year at the primary school. This was all the more difficult as I was already 5' 6" and more woman than girl... I looked like an adult (couldn't get child fares!) but was held back because my birthday fell a month after the cut off date.

The next year I went to the next school. I'd made a good friend during the year stuck at primary but she was put in a different house from me and a very different timetable. I was all alone again.

For a more recent example of this continuing pattern see IF - Wind & more on Zero Balancing where despite the fact that we all started off as strangers and there were only 3 of us - I was definitely the odd one out.

Have you got any situations that repeat in your life that do seem strangely familiar but also ones you couldn't possibly have caused consciously?