meh!

tomorrow morning my friend L goes home.

It's been 10 days of chatter, bears, learning how the busses here really work, food tea and 3rd rock from the sun.

more later.

I'm not dead just occupied!

until then be excellent to each other

Intel - hearts of the machine

hearts
Originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

At the center of each of these pieces is a Pentium CPU chip from a notebook. Most of the chip is embedded under the acrylic paste only the mirrored square peeks out.

The Central Processing Unit is for me, the beating heart of the machine.

The works are painted with acrylic paint, normal colours and irridescent colours as well to match the iridescence that one can see in the tiny chip at the center of it all. My fascination with computer bits and colour finds a home on canvas.

These hearts, as cliche as they may be are important for me. Love is the counter balance to fear. It is the hope that we cling to, seek out and yearn for. With Valentine's day just passed it seems approriate to talk about it, after the fact.

I create these works of art, in part, to take a miniscule part of the electronic garbage we produce and do something constructive with it.
These Intel chips that I have in my collection are really beautiful things. Especially the notebook ones, even though they are tiny they are vital. I am just showing them off, surrounding them with colour and vibrancy, instead of them being tucked away in the hidden folds of the machine. When their lives are working parts are done, they are things to be honoured and admired, not tossed away on a dump site some place to polute and poison.


Until then, be excellent to each other.

me

me
Originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

This is me. It's been a while since I looked like this. The kid that was and the person that is are very different but this is where I came from!

Today is my birthday. It was one of the best Birthday's I have had in a while. Friends and family called, and wrote. My husband started my day off with a candle, a cup of coffee and a wonderful present! An Ipod shuffle. (wheee) It's so cute!

So to all my friends, my family and everyone else out there who thought good wishes and happy thoughts, thank you! It worked. I had an awesome day!

Here's to many more!

Until then, be excellent to each other.

great big clouds!

great big clouds!
Originally uploaded by _Merlyn


Today we actually sorted out the den. Removed the smelly carpet. It felt great to finally achieve something we been talking about doing but never seem to get around to it. The parquet floor looks so much nicer and the room has suddenly become a lot 'bigger' looking.

We have been watching '24'. This show makes me crazy. It's so tense. But so far we're sort of enjoying it.

In three days it's my birtdhay. ( yay me!) I never thought I'd reach 40, but here I am about to tick over to 41. This year in difference to many /most others I plan to celebrate. This will be a ME day. It will be a fabulous day.

And on Friday FL comes to visit! I am so happy!!! It's going to be fun! I hope the weather holds. It has been beautiful here. Sunny, warm and lovely.

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These clouds are formed by föhn winds. Pretty aren't they?

balance

balance
Originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

Some days my world gets so off kilter. I get lost in the mad grip of anxiety and panic attacks, my body betrays my brain which tricks my body into thinking it's broken.

I feel as though I am broken.

I must admit it's rough. But it's getting better. I slowly coming to grips wit the fact that I create this messy reality that spirals out of control so that I am so terrified of breathing all I want to do is crawl under my favourite quilt on the couch and vanish.

Today didn't start out so well, before I had even made it through my second cup of coffee I was frantically trying to help a friend fix his computer via msn. Now anyone who has done any computer support knows just how hard this is.

It's even harder on me because I am relaying answers from my husband and I want to help, I want to fix the problem because if I don't I feel as though I have failed. ( this goes back to childhood and I won't get into that here, therapists get paid to listen to this whinge, you all don't.) I also pick up his distress and it gets to me.

So my day started with a massive over load of anxiety.

I get through these episodes better now. I know they will pass, and because I begin with that knowledge they actually get shorter and shorter in duration.

I need to learn to balance.
No easy task for a neurotic nut job like me but trust me I have come A LONG way. And I am working on it step by step, day by day.

This painting sort of symbolises that. Yin and yang, out of earth green and sky ( or water) blue. Gold leaf on the corners to symbolize wealth, prosperity of spirit and it just looked nice. The 'dots' in the center points are DPT chips.

These chips, the most expensive part of a projector, look like a mirror mounted in a gold casing. There are actually over a million tiny mirror like bits that go into making up the single mirrored surface, they all shift and move individually to give that fabulous image you beam on the wall, or screen. I think they are beautiful. A perfect balance of modern technology and aesthetic beauty in something useful.

So after a morning of anxiousness, the afternoon was spent getting some tidying done, productiveness counter acts the negativity generated by my worrying.

Now I can breathe again.

Until then, be excellent to each other.

stories

stories
Originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

I ran away to sea. I worked on tall ships and boats for a while. I needed to find myself. I knew what and who other people wanted me to be but I wasn't sure about who I wanted to be.

It was a hard journey and I discovered that there were some serious things I needed to change and some things about myself which are amazing.

The things I needed to change I have and still am. This is hard work and it takes a while...actually it takes a lifetime.

The things that are amazing I strengthen and hold on to. They are what make my life extraordinary, which it is.

While I was on this journey I had a dream, well I had many actually...but this particular dream which I don't remember ended with me waking up to a voice in my each which whispered..

Be thou a blythe spirit, of bright and cheerful countenance.

Never were more truer of fitting words spoken. It is the best bit of advice I have ever heard and I do try to follow it.

On my sea journey I came to see that I dictate my own fate. I create my own reality and my own universe. I have pretty much always known this but it's one thing to subconciously know this, and another to actually realise it and use it.

The things I recall the most about this time in my life are the people I met, one of which has remained an extraordinary friend, a person I love dearly and am eternally grateful to have in my life.

Also I recall the nature. The world around us. Being on a small boat in the middle if the Atlantic at night looking at the stars which had never seemed so bright...thinking it is pretty amazing that I am a part of all of this. Swimming in the deepsest part of the ocean, in water that was bath warm, with rolly polly waves and salty to the taste.

I do remember being sea sick...but like most things it passed.

I also remember how wonderfully wild the ocean can be. ( The boat goes UP the waves go down...the waves go UP the boat goes down...)

This is my life, which unfolds it's secrets like a book. Telling stories, making believe, making me believe.

I do.

This magical world whispers its wonders to us every single day in every single way. Do you hear them or do you tune it all out as white noise?

I love the stories I hear. Every day is a gift.

Until then, be excellent to each other.

This is a test...

bomb shelter, originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

Okay, so who among us here remembers those TV commercials that came on the CBC alerting us to the fact that the alarm that had just sounded was only a test of the emergency broadcast system...

Well I have not seen one of those things in years...do they even still exist???

The answer is in Switzerland a resounding loud YES!
Today is the day when all the emergency sirens that every town / city / village has will go off. It's quite peculiar. Of course this is the land that by law requires all homes, apartment buildings and cities / towns to have a functional bomb shelter. I kid you not. In our beautiful basement there is a room with reinforced walls, and submarine like door and window. It's a little scary.

I am not entirely sure what a country like Switzerland wants all these bomb shelters for, after all does anyone actually want to survive a nuclear war?- not really. It seems odd to me that this very small country in the middle of Europe, not actually being a part of the EU, wants its citizens to have bomb shelters. Also allows it's members of the army (those who do their mandatory army duty to take their weapons home.)

So Switzerland is a scary little place, in amongst the cows and the chalets and the ski resorts are bunkers, hidden military posts and a whole lot of closet paranoia.

I don't need any more paranoia, fear or angst thank-you very much. I can create enough of that in my head all on my own.

Still I sit here, after having a bit of a rough morning, listening to the sirens of doom wailing away, the CBC news talk about the non war in Afghanistan wondering what a world where bomb shelters and blowing people up did not exist would be like.

Fear will keep the locals in line. Well fear has us all wrapped up like idiots ( just look at Boston and the lite-brite scare) .

I think it is time for a nice hot cup of tea.

Until then be excellent to each other!

People who live in glass houses...

Glass roof, originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

This is the roof of our house. It is partly the reason why we decoded on this house to rent rather than any other.

The house itself is very modern and very well designed, although there have been some serious building flaws cropping up as of late...

But this roof... Even on the dullest day the stairwell is bright and cheery. When it rains it makes me think of camping because man it's loud! At night if the moon is full, its light pours into the house, I can see the stars from the inside.

So while maybe chucking stones is a bad idea... looking up isn't.

It's only draw back? Man, oh man does the house ever get warm in the summer... Phew!

tied to the land, salt in the blood

beachrock, originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

When I was ten my family moved from Scotland to Canada ( again). I left my strange life in the suburbs of Glasgow to discover the world of the back of beyond.

St. Anthony. The largest town on the most northern part of the Island of Newfoundland, you know... near where the Vikings landed. There's not much up there folks. When we arrived the road out of town, down the Northern Peninsula was not paved all the way, there was a post office, a co-op, a hardware / general store a small stadium, a gas station three schools ( elementary, Junior high and high school), a fish plant and the Hospital.

It was the hospital that brought us there.

Six months of winter, cool summers and short seasons in between . The local people were not happy about outsiders and in my life I have never felt less welcome in a place ever. I had my finger broken by a guy named Eddie Patey because I spoke with an accent. ( A Scottish accent) 'You talk funny and I 'ates you!" he said.

Now anyone who knows anything about Newfoundland will know that throwing stones about accents is pretty hypocritical.

My brother and sister and I didn't have many friends growing up, outsiders all the way. Nothing like being different and told that pretty much every day of your life to put you in your place. I was glad to escape.

The strange thing about this is that Newfoundland is home. Not St. Anthony, but rather St. John's. The town that taught me anything was possible. It is beyond magical. With amazing people, amazing everything!

The Island in general is nestled in my heart and when I left it the last time after visiting my mum who also now no longer lives there now, I cried for a long time, much to the dismay of my then fiancé.

So while I have some unpleasant memories about my childhood in St. A. I don't have unpleasant memories of the land.

The land...

what can one say about a place so hard and unforgiving it shapes you to its will not the other way around? How can I begin to describe the scent of tuckamoor on the warm south wind in what passed for summer? Or the peppery smell of ice when there was a berg grounded off the Point?

The look of the sky just before the weather turned and a blow came in to sock us all in our homes for days on end. Wind so fierce it howled through the woods in the back yard like a lion and ripped the screen door off in its wake.

How to describe the unbelievable splendour of the Northern lights? Or the brilliance of the milky way, which you can see because there is next to no light pollution?

My father was a man who loved the land, so we as kids learned how to camp, how to make fires and cook on primus stoves. In the winter I along with my brother and sister got to help out building an igloo in our back yard after a three day blizzard because the snow packed just right.

We went tobogganing in the moonlight, ski-dooing for hours. Walking over hills, berry picking, beach combing, ice pan jumping, fishing, and pretty much everything in between.

I may not have had the greatest relationship with the people of this small town but boy I loved the land. I still do, sometimes I find myself yearning for it in a way that is painful, like an old wound reopened, like a lost love's ache.

The last time I was there I took a lot of pictures, mostly it turns out of beach stones. Newfoundland isn't know for its sandy beaches though it does have them. Still who needs sand?

This picture was taken at Middle Cove. One of my favourite places to be. It was a cold grey day, and it was perfect.

The text was added as part of an art project, a 'book' of memories.

I have slept with a small rock in my hand, something about the cold hardness grounds me when I am at my most flighty. As an air and water element stone, earth, is my focal point. When I need to come down from the electrified stratosphere I touch the earth, I hold a rock. I remember not where I was born but where I was shaped.

Growing up in St. Anthony made me strong. The people I went to school with taught me about cruelty and unkindness, some of my teachers taught me about humiliation so that I might know how it feels to be on the wrong side of popular. The land taught me that I am small, insignificant in the scope of the universe and that in the end nature usually does what it wants.

As I look back I see these lessons not as poor sad me tales of how life was hard but as guide lines for how to become a better person. How to know what it feels like to be singled out for being different, we are all different. Embrace that don't fear it. I learned how it feels like to run around free as a bird with no worries at all, that wood smoke and water in the middle of a dense forest makes tea taste so good you'd never want to drink anything else.

Now I live, once again in a small town, I look out and see ruggedness, but this is a comfort not a sorrow. The house is decorated with stones here and there. Most of them from Newfoundland, because I need a piece of the rock to ground me.

I sleep with a beach rock clenched in my hand... so that I might dream of a place that I called home...

Happy Birthday from the Crow Boys

The Crow Boys, originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

Flatland Quilter!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

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These crows were part of an art class on casting / sculpting. They are made from bronze usingthe lost wax casting and were done in two pieces then soldered together. Eventhough they were all made from the same cast, they each have their individual personalities. They are full of mischief and fun.

They currently reside on the balcony of our house where they watch the world with bemused delight!

Crow on Red

Crow on Red, originally uploaded by _Merlyn.

To talk about the recycled project is to talk about my love of many things. Crows, colours and computer innards.

When I took apart my first harddrive it amazed me that this collection of shiny bits held a person's virtual life. It looked like a futuristic record player...and the reader looked like a crow's beak. Yep my thought process such as it is...

Anyway, I don't sketch, as a rule, despite all the urgings to the contrary from my various art college instructors, I create small paintings instead. This one is about 8"x10".

I liken this to the way sculptors make maquettes. I paint small so that later I can paint big.

This painting is one in a serious of computer crow paintings.
It seemed fitting that the shiny things corvids like would go into making up a virtual corvid.

Watchingthe news is bad for your mental health

Day two in the new virtual home. Like most new homes it has its “issues”. Like setting up a feed. I don’t actually understand this feed thing so bear with me on this if it doesn’t work. I am a geek who disassembles not a geek who codes.

It’s Sunday, and we are sitting at our computers, reading the various forums we subscribe to, watching news casts via itunes or websites ( RTL (German) and CTV (Canadian). Not sure if watching the news is healthy or not, it seems to me that mostly it is gloom and doom.

I am astonished at the general stupidity and cruelty of the world at large. Mostly this comes from the reports about the environment. I love it when fat cat politicians sit and say “It’s not our fault, we don’t contribute that much to the problem”

*sigh* - Dude do you drive a car? If the answer is yes then YOU contribute to global warming.

The messages is IT IS YOUR FAULT, it is ALL of our faults. But if we all just stop thinking about our own gain and concentrating on our greed then maybe we could actually do something positive about it.

-you know- just a thought!

The title of the blog comes from my desire to help rather than hinder. The recycling aspect is from my use of DEAD computer bits to create art…
re-cycled paintings

The use, abuse and throw away attitude has got to end.

Recycle, turn down your heat, or your Air conditioning, don’t run water while you brush your teeth, don’t idle your car while you are waiting for something, choose smart packaged items over stupid packaging. Don’t junk your old electronics ( especially computers) take them to be A: repaired, B: to a place that refurbishes and resells, C: or donate to red cross or other causes if the thing still works.

What ever it takes, just do it!
Every little bit helps.

Be positive that we can make this change.


Until then, be excellent to each other.

Moving house

So I am trying something new. After several years at Tblog I finally bit the bullet and shifted to blogspot.

Why? Well because Tblog, as nice of a home as it has been is a complicated mess to use, the rss feeds didn’t work properly and you could not mess about with the html plus features that were supposed to work didn’t seem to work all that well.

So here we are. Moved into a new space on a familiar place. I use Blogger for the daughter of the empire books and the dragon’s scribe blogs, half of my friends blog with Blogger and the other half ( bar 1) blogs on Live Journal ( I have a blog there too, but it’s mainly for ranting and silliness and just sort of hanging out.

I am sure I’ll tweak this new home of mine, but for now I am kinda happy with how the messing about with the html worked. I just have to add a few things ( like a proper image import thingy, and some features that are fun…like feeds maybe?)

Until then, be excellent to each other!