A life more joyful

Mermaid painting about to incorporate some of the ceramic tile ideas from Winchester cathedral, which in turn reminded me of the amazing wall sconces in Italy along with the frescoes, earthy colours and decoration of the buildings. Also thinking angels and swallows, angels and snowflakes, angels as geisha, angel peg dolls...may suggest a wee greetings card pack to accompany the exhibition, which I think would be useful as a marketing tool too - send to potential customers and those who have already showed interest.

Back to my musings on non-prediction of future; logged onto the ESSA website to check out the catalogue for the auction I have a painting in, expecting a) to see myself listed and maybe be able to tell if anyone has bid for it, b) to not see myself listed and be consumed with worry, but not c) the actuality - not find the listings at all because the link does not appear to exist... The great unforeseen. It's 'my' full moon today as well so I have been hunting augers all day to the degree that I saved someone else's shopping list that was left in my basket in case it had hidden messages from the cosmic powers. Closer inspection reveals no such contact, but a nice illustration of a bird.

Message of the day for me was however one of the endless parade of slogan t-shirts that passed by my weary eyes this morning. Not only is it a full moon, it seems to be national text on your shirt day also; never seen so many wordy tees with not even a warning in Grazia that it is the Next Big Thing. Of them all the motto that smacked me in the face was: 'All I want is JOY'.

Besides summing up the demanding and expecting society in which we find ourselves, I couldn't help but smile at the audacity of it. Not a hope or a prayer, a 'what would you wish for'? but a demand, a gauntlet thrown down to those cosmic powers; what are you going to do about it??

Given that the first noble truth of Buddhism is generally translated as 'life is suffering', it made me pause for thought; how would life pan out if you existed in a state of the expectation of Joy? Deeply disheartened and possibly irredeemably crushed, I would imagine.

Not necessarily doing anything to attract or deserve in, I don't think this is suggested in the statement; just sitting waiting for joy to happen upon you. Doesn't quite fit with the laws of karma, which I have to say seem to be pretty solid. Funnily enough in my catering days I spotted a few brides on their 'big day' looking suspiciously as if they were waiting for joy to happen and wondering whether it had shot past like an over-full bus and they had only doggone gone and missed it...

I nearly missed a great connection there; near top of my film list is 'American Beauty', and top of the quotes is "When did you get to be so joyless?" - 'There's plenty of joy in my life Mr Smartypants..'

And so to the studio, with a new and very trusty book purchased in the St Columbas Hospice bookshop for a remarkable £2.50 - 'Art from Giotto to Cezanne'. An ambitious undertaking but it looks like a thousand inspirations in a softback to me! What joy!