Paint Therapy

I think I have just found my new therapy... it has just TOTALLY superceded the zen i get from washing dishes (I know how thrilling my life must seem now, I won't live down the expectation...), the tranquility of being out in the bush and the serenity I experience within whenever I step onto a basketball court, with no opposition but the hoop itself. Yes, you may have guessed it already, PAINTING... like, renovation painting... you know... the one when a friend or family member try to organise a working bee just so they can squeeze out a few hours (or days!) of free labour from you, hoping that a free meal and some drinks may surfice your hourly or daily sacrifice!


I have always enjoyed some form of visual activity in my life, whether it was drawing jurrasic park monsters making dinner of their unwarry and unfortuate guests or sketching my ellobarte ideas of my fantasy aircraft, which somehow always seemed to look like the back to the future car infused into the elongated shape of a rocket! Drawing gave me an avenue to get away from the realities of my mum and dads hard working life, the family problems sometimes associated with being a Papua New Guinean (only a lucky...if we can call it that... handful of you will know what this means LOL) and the competition in the household between my siblings for parental approval and attention. Drawing and sketching came naturally to me, which may have been influenced by my left writing hand. I also think it may have been influence by many of my uncles who were all quite skilled at either drawing or painting. My weakness however was filling in spaces with colour, maybe because i was so used to picking up a pencil and just scribbling on the nearest piece of paper i could find... which can lead you into all sorts of trouble, especially if its on the back of a very important contract for daddy... but who could blame me? maybe dad got that contract because they saw the human side of him... thats another story.

Colouring in in many of its forms, including painting, just seemed too time consuming, too tedious and evoked too much thought into it for me to really enjoy. But it really hit me as of late while I was helping my parents paint a new room how much work it actually takes to paint a room to perfection. It also gave me a very interesting perspective on how painting actually poses close resemblance to starting a fresh chapter in your life. Firstly, there is the preparation... this, as you have come to learn in your past or will likely learn in your future painting endevours, can MAKE or BREAK the masterpiece in which you are so enthusiastically about to embark on. If you do not prepare your surroundings, your equipment, your surface and your state of mind, then you will lose cencept, clarity and vision of what you want to achieve in the picture... much akin to preparing and paving a new direction in one's life.

Then there is the choice of colour that will consume your old surface. This is a very crucial process, for if the colour does not fit its surroundings, it will surely leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth. The choice of colour must also reflect the mood and emotions that room wants to convey, whether it be bright and luminous to communicate warmth and happiness, or darker, cooler tones to create themes of cosiness and nurture. Colour is a powerful stimulus which can pull hair triggers of mental activity and emotion. I like to make the connection of colour choice with embarking on a new direction in life; the choice of a person's life-colour can correlate with type of emotional tone that one must experience in order to achieve stabilty and security on their new born journey.

Its all well and good if you have prepared meticulously and scoured the ends of the earth for the right colour... the most crucial part happens now. The actual painting of the surface, bringing about a milestone in the events leading up to this very moment. Now the theories and mental jaron are but a guide to this process; for it is all down to the hand to be the vital instrument of change. There are many brushes and rollers that a person can choose and even more methods and techniques that one can employ to get the job done and if your preparation has been thorough, then you will have a greater grasp of the brushes, rollers and techniques you may need to employ. The practical aspect of painting can be related to much of the processes and activites that we must do in real life in order to encourage progress in our new direction. The choice of brush relates to the resources an individual would use and the brush technique correlates to how they would best utilise those resources to reach the end result; a fresh, rejuvinated and invigirated wall or, individual.

The pace at which the paint is applied is also crucial; apply the paint too thinly and quickly and the surface will not be covered soundly or apply the paint too thickly and slowly and it will take longer to dry as well as being asthetically unpleasing. Managing your time on your new journey best fits this process. There is also the danger of letting the paint sit too long in tin or in the painting tray, which could allow it to dry and spoil. This could be considered a metaphor for procrastination. For if you let the process of painting your new life sit and procrastinate for too long, then their is a greater chance of the overal vision and goal of your new direction spoiling, and you may have to start all over again.

Now we wait for the paint to dry. This can be quite a pain staking process as you will be so eager to view the final result... You may feel that the paint is taking too long to dry or that you have not applied enough paint to hide the old, dilapidated surface that was once a way of life... but if you trust in the virtue of patience and the processes you have employed to undertake the change that is needed, then there can be no lesser result than success or in the painting world... perfection.

Gravity

Ewww, so tis friday and I start work at 4pm... A little nervous considering that the working bug has been dormant in me for almost 6 months! It has been quite a busy 6 months though, Uni work has kept my pants down past my knees and bent over... not encouraging to say the least :-S

I wanted to put my thoughts down about the notion of gravity, because I'm in a situation in my life at the moment where gravity, in all its literal and metaphoric forms, could not be more real. Gravity, as Newton may have described it himself upon the occurence of the great apple-on-head scenario, can be described as a natural phenomenon by which objects with mass attract one another (courtesy of wiki... and I don't need the lecture on proper sources people)... Such a simple and concise definition for such a complex and yet so little understood force,that one must understand, life is dependant on! I talk about gravity not in the sense of physics formulas or free falling objects though, I speak of the gravity we all feel in our day to day life... the gravitational field between human beings.

Like a universe, we humans are surrounded by objects of mass... objects being other human beings and the mass that makes up these objects being the personality, mental, emotional and physical state of these people. And perhaps sometimes, if we're lucky, a gravity field between a certain pair of objects can be greater than any other object; weilding and drawing them closer until the point of seperation becomes a falice theory. But then, sometimes, a natural force of nature, perhaps inflicted by a higher force which can not be seen nor heard, may dislodge this carefully orchestrated attraction of the masses... sending each object that was once so bound and taught by the wrath of gravity, in to free suspension and sometimes, universal chaos...

And then the real event begins... most of the time, this dislodgment is a temporary event and may be experienced throughout the course of the objects' attraction with each other. They may lie in suspense momentarily, before being pulled back together by a stronger, much more clarified gravitational field. Sometimes though, the fairy tale outcome doesn't happen and we cloesly watch the the fate of these two now free floating, renegade objects detatched from their gravitational trance. Some possible scenario's may occur from this complete severence of gravity; They either continue in suspension, become drawn to greater gravitational fields from other universe's or objects... or, hopefully not, detatch and accelerate on a path towards inevitable self destruction.

Gravity in all its forms, must be respected, understood and appreciated... if not, then the liklihood of a "Big Bang" may be more realistic than you could ever expect.

.... Off to work now and I'm really hoping that gravity won't pull me down tonight.