December 16, 2022 Weekly Musings

Musings:

Wild Cards

Featured image: Sky, Earth, River

Where is your card? In your artwork? In your life? Do you have a wild card?
I sure have one. It’s my spirit, my unconstrained spirit, which is also my sense of freedom. These exist in the individual. Whenever I am challenged, I bring up my wild card, the individual.

A constrained vision for others is moral. Why? Because constrained visions usually come from others who want to control, govern the individual and put them in order.

Constrained visions for others hold others back and from reaching their full potential.

My unconstrained vision is a moral vision that leads to an individual’s vision for themselves. If an unconstrained vision is held by an individual who wants others to be constrained so that they, the individual, being constrained cannot reach their full potential – this I believe, is simply immoral. They are restricting an individual of their individual rights and their personal sovereign self.

The constrained vision limits high ideals. For me, high ideals include exploration and discovery that lead to better lives for all.

Most of my growing up years were constrained which is why this is so important to me. I wasn’t able to recognize my individuality until later in life. All of my teachers, with the exception of my kindergarten teacher, thought that they knew what was best for me and how to work with me based on their training. They were all wrong and it affected me for most of my growing up years. I just learned differently than most people did. Once I figured this out, learning was a piece of cake.

As individuals, we need to realize that we are all different in many ways. We need to keep that in mind when we think someone is wrong.

How Do We Know?

Featured image: How Do I Get There?

I have asked this question before. I’ve never come up with a good answer to my satisfaction that isn’t political.

I always wonder, “How do we know things? Really, how do we know something?”

Experience?

Well, experience tells us that we know a diamond has high value because it costs a lot. Does value determine how we know something? And, if so, does experience determine the value of art and how we know art?

Shoreline

Featured image: Boreal Forest Shoreline

Silence greater than that of my backyard at home.  

I was fishing in Northern Canada at a remote lake with one cabin on it, miles and miles from anywhere. Untamed shorelines, no piers, boats or people. 

Shorelines with uprooted twisted bleached trees and roots. 

Large rocks that have been left here since the glaciers.  

Backgrounds of tall jack pines and reflecting gracefully on the glassy water. 

Tall horsetail reeds, and yellow lily pad flowers.

Fox Squirrel

Featured image: Leaves