Circles of Sound

This morning I've been listening to and meditating on Fabeku Fatumishe's CD "Remembering through Resonance". It's a Singing Bowl experience. A link to his wonderful site Sankofa song is here.

Surfing the rippling waves of the circles of sound that surrounded me while I was listening to the CD was a mesmerizing experience. It was a feeling of timelessness and deep relaxation and tingling feeling all through my body, from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. It brought me back to my Self almost instantly. And later it inspired me to take a photograph of my own singing bowls. The process of taking a true picture of them in the early morning sunshine made me wonder something. I wondered: are the rays of sunlight, the vibrations of sound, the sensation that runs through my body listening to it, the ripples on water: aren't they all part of One and the Same? I drifted into the ever widening sensation I get when I follow the singing tone of the bowl deeper and deeper into my inner self, broadening my inner vision, enlarging my inner space and I started to feel part again of All That Is...
The gong tone sounded - was letting myself slowly sink back into the realms of earth's gravitation ....

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Liesje

When I was very young - I think up to being about 5 years old I did not own any 'real' dolls. Just knitted and stuffed woollen or cotton dolls, sometimes with faces made of pressed paper pulp.

Of course there were porcelain and dolls of other materials but I only saw them at toy shops or at the homes friends that came from a wealthy family.
Later a Dutch factory that had gone out of business during WWII started producing polyethylene dolls. The brand was called: Wildebras (Tom Boy).

Dolls like these were popular when I was a child in the 1950's. I think it must have been about 1957 or so just after my little brother was born that my parents gave me my very own Wildebras doll - I named her Liesje (from Elisabeth), because I thought that was a sweet sounding name.

Liesje became my companion at night, in bed. OK, in my previous post I wrote that my dolls were in bed with me next to my pillow, but Liesje wasn't. She was cuddled up with me under the sheets and blankets. She was a great comfort to me by just being there.
I didn't play with my dolls like other girls did. I was too busy being outside in the open air, playing with my friends in the rural area that I grew up in.
I remember the cold small bedroom I slept in, alone and dark at night, Liesje being there with me. She was not warm - I still can remember how she smelled; that typical plastic smell she had and that only left her for a while after I bathed her and washed her face with soap.
Her face was always more or less cool and she always remained aloof, cool, a bit like my mother. She comforted me nonetheless if I was lonely or punished. I could hold her close and hug her. Put my cheek against hers.
We did not grow up in a warm, safe or secure family home. Liesje was there to comfort me at night if I needed her.
She stayed with me for a long, long time. I kept her until I was about 20 years old like I had seen a friend of my mother do when I was young. She had a doll that was over 20 years old and I was awed by that. I vowed that I would also keep my Liesje that long. And that's what I did.

Finally I gave her away as a present to a neighbour's granddaughter who was staying with her grandma overnight. It was almost like an impulse, it all went suddenly and swiftly. Somehow I thought g she might enjoy her more and actually play with her again.
I think I regretted it afterwards. In fact I'm sure I did because I adopted the small doll on the picture that is sitting down in the green flowered dress with the necklace about 10 years ago at a fair. Having a doll like Liesje again felt like coming home. She was smaller than my original Liesje, but I still liked her very much.

Now, at the same car trunk junk sale that I told you about in my previous post, I adopted two other naked, battered and dirty dolls that I cleaned up and clothed again. One had a severed arm that I fixed. I adopted the large doll now wearing the brown dress together with the doll now wearing the blue trousers and blue and white jacket.

She's standing next to the large doll sitting down and she is exactly the same size that Liesje was. Only this one has brown eyes, whereas my original doll had blue eyes. I like her this way. And I feel some of the old familiar love well up again towards my new Liesje doll.
True, she is not as gorgeous as the gadco doll I wrote about yesterday. But she is as close to my own beloved Liesje as I can get. And that's enough for me! She even smells the same way!

And the other dolls? Well, I'm sensing their personalities and getting to know them and they are welcome in my little -or rather extended- doll family!

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Dolls

I made this picture of one of my dolls today - and framed it following a tutorial (link)

I feel so blessed to have been able to adopt her second hand on a trunk sale two weeks ago. I think she's so pretty. I wasn't much into dolls as a child, I had one or two vinyl ones that I cared for but mostly left sitting on the bed. OK, they slept with me next to my pillow each night. But that was it. I was more like a tomboy when I was a child. Not until I inherited my late mil's old and ragged dolls to clean up and repair I started caring for them. About 45 years later :0)
So now I have adopted a ragged version of my first vinyl doll that I will show you later. But this one is really gracing my living room and radiating joy :0)
So here she is: Marlene, Rotraut Schrotts design in 1990 for the GADCO (Great American Doll Company) with her little doggy. And you may notice a similarity in her dog and ours. Maybe that's why she waited for us to adopt her that lovely sunlit summery Saturday afternoon next to the leafy canal... A lovely synchronity. And I love those little messages from above to guide me along and I feel blessed when I recognise them as such.
I wish you many little messages too today!

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Our furry friend Pixie

Today I would like to introduce our little furry friend Pixie to you.

Pixie is a Maltese -maybe not a thoroughbred, but maybe all the more adorable because of that! She is almost eight years old and has been with us since she was a puppy. She's going where we go as often as possible. She has her own doggy safety belt in the back seat of the car and is comfortably situated in her own doggy basket. I have to put the back side of my front seat in a backward position as I cannot sit upright. Pixie and I both love that as we can cuddle up rather close together ;0)

Pixie likes the rides in the car and we tend to think that she knows our destination upfront. She seems to like visiting our caravan on a nearby camping rather than visits to our family. However, she is happily trotting along if we stop the car and lift her out and carefully put her on the ground. She is friendly to everyone we meet - friendly but careful. She remembers people, especially the ones that also are adopted by furry friends, even more so if they carry dog snacks :0) Her groomers at the Pet Wellness Centre love her.

She's lightens up the lives of the elderly people that we meet when we visit in the nursing home where Wynsen's mother in law lives -the mother of his late wife that we visit regularly. She knows and is friendly with the cats of my brother whom we visit every other week. And she exactly knows where the cat feeding bowls are and is *always* there before we are. She manages to finish whatever is in them -much to our dismay at a later stage of the day when she has to go for her walk and has an upset stomach because of it ...

These are a few little bits and pieces of our life with Pixie. We feel very privileged to have her in our lives and hope to be allowed to share it together with her for many many more years to come.

For more cuddly pictures and the story of her little life: feel free to visit Pixie's webpage .

Welcome!

Good day and welcome to my Blog.


I intend to post my creative work rather than too many words, here. I feel I express myself better in images than with words.


I get inspired by all things bright and beautiful. Little everyday ordinary things, like flowers, my pets, anything. It can be a raindrop on a leaf, stucco on an old building - you name it.

I need to create or I burst *lol* I am physically handicapped in a minor but kind of unpractical way, I cannot sit down or stand long enough to paint, like I used to in the past. So I do my creative work on line - digital graphics, so to speak.

So here's a digital graphic I made for the CED Group on the July 2009-theme "Self" -which complements my introduction.


A few words on my collage:
the b/w picture is the hospital where they nursed my brother and me back to life in 1966 after our car accident. More about this here.

The picture on the top right has my brother in the background (with the cowboy hat) and myself in 2006.

The little girl in the middle is me holding folded paper little airplanes somewhere in Rotterdam in the late 1950s. I have to say that my elder brother folded them for me :0)

On the left you see my dear -and I mean 'dear!' hubby and below are our fur kids. And some of the things that inspire me.

Well, that's it for my now. Hope you enjoyed my little intro.

Have a good day/night!

Hugs,
Karin*CatMar