On the art front, the energy from the prednisone whopper was wonderful. I beaded my piece until 11:00 pm! Haven't done that in ages. Down to the last dozen or so shapes in it, then the finishing step begins, along with big decisions about what else will go with it. Voodoo figures dangling from it's extremities? Vines and leaves? Like an exotic archaeological discovery of some sort? Figures and bodies vs Mind? Not sure yet. Must let the brain work on that as I complete this step. It'll come. That's what I like about art -- often ideas that I do not think about directly come to good fruition, the ones I methodically plan with my thinking brain lack that spark that I need to have in an engaging piece. This one has a lot of spark. And beads! Used in new ways. Totally digging it.
Luckily, a new series of books has captured my attention and I am already on the third novel in the series due to my marathon beading sessions. The author is Louise Penny, who apparently I am the last person on earth to discover. Her books take place in the bucolic little Canadian village of Three Pines, which is filled with history, colorfully described characters, surprising mysteries, and always a death that brings Inspector Gramache to the scene to untangle it all. I liked the first book (Still Life) best in terms of it's humor content -- literally a laugh a line for much of the book. The stories are good, though, with richly developed characters who are both characters and caricatures of the worlds we all know and live in. There is a lot of art in the stories as well as several of the main characters are painters or poets. Really neat stories, and when sharing my new discovery with friends who already knew about the little village of Three Pines, they exclaimed "Don't you want to go live there?" Yes, I do!
While some people don't remember their dreams at all (my father was one of these unlucky people) I have extremely vivid and realistic dreams every night. Some are recurring, and the story just picks up where it was left off the last time I "visited." Some are good, some are not. They are so realistic it is like being dropped into a world and then pulled out, Matrix-style. The realism scares me, as do the dreams that contain elements of the real world that actually happen later on. We are not talking just de-ja-vu here, but actual interactions with people that I remember having happen in my dream and recalling a following morning. This has happened since I was a little kid. The older I get, the more it happens. I've read that some of the medicine I take can produce vivid dreams, and maybe it enhances what already happens in my weird brain. All I know is I've learned to not worry about it, and go with the flow. Anyway, I have one dream set in southern Canada, but in a city. There is a large courtyard with shops and cafe tables (incredible detail.) I am with a group of people I know very well, and they are waiting at a black cast iron table drinking something as members of the group leave and come back. There is an element of time -- like we are waiting for something -- a bus? an event? Not sure. I wonder if it will show up in a Three Pines mystery as I've never been to Canada, and most likely never will travel there. Time will tell! Oh, the unconscious mind, with all its dreams and artistic mystery, is a strange place to visit.
What will you make today?