Switcharoo

"'Changing the Face' can change nothing. 

But 'Facing the Change' can change everything."

-- Unknown

Self portrait refrigerator magnets 11-1-13

"To keep our faces toward change, 

and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate,

 is strength undefeatable."

-- Helen Keller

"My refrigerator is powerful.
In fact, it has a direct link to my overall well-being."

-- Kris Carr

Self portrait magnets (2) 11-1-13

Self portrait magnets  (3) 11-1-13 

I made refrigerator magnets of my face!


I shot a bunch of different pictures with different eyes, glasses, mouths, facial hair, etc.

I can change faces around any which way I want in endless combinations.

It's pretty addictive.


Make your own and stick them on the fridge, or the filing cabinet, or wherever!

Self portrait magnets (4) 11-1-13

Hours of fun for the whole family!

Well, maybe not hours, but at least it will give you something to do while you're waiting for your toast.

Turn, turn, turn

“Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope 

-- a slight change, and all patterns alter.” 

-- Sharon Salzberg 

Kaleidoscope self portrait 7-5-13

"Our days are a kaleidoscope.

Every instant a change takes place.

New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort."

-- Henry Ward Beecher

Kaleidoscope self portrait (2) 7-5-13

“There are patterns which emerge in one's life, 

circling and returning anew, 

an endless variation of a theme.” 

-- Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

Kaleidoscope self portrait (3) 7-5-13

“Perhaps we can recognize our way out of patterns 

rather than repeating our way out of them.” 

--Patti Digh, Life is a Verb: 37 Days to Wake Up,

Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally

My paternal grandparents didn't have many toys for me to play with.

What they had was a little collection of vintage toys leftover from my father's 1940s childhood. 

The toys lived on a bookshelf behind my grandfather's recliner: a barrel of monkeys, a ViewMaster, a floppy cloth clown that did flips on a wind-up wire contraption, a metal Slinky, jacks, a red and black musical thing that was kind of like a horn but with piano-style keys, a jack-in-the-box, and a kaleidoscope.

The kaleidoscope was my favorite, by far.

It was just a simple cardboard tube with an eye-hole in one end, and a few colorful bits of plastic in the other. Nothing fancy. Until you held it to the light and the magic happened. 

It was like a montage of intricate stained glass, or jewels, but all in shatters. Turning the tube made the shards tumble and fall and reassemble and morph and bloom and collapse. I was captivated.

"Grandpa, look at this one!" I'd say, holding my breath, carefully trying to pass the kaleidoscope to him without disrupting the little miracle that had assembled itself inside. But by the time he held it up to his eye, the pattern had shifted. He oooh'd and aaaah'd, but at another view, no doubt just as marvelous.

During my 2012 "No Day Without Art" 365 days project, I did a little research and learned how to make my own kaleidoscopes. On the outside, they don't look like much. I make them from cardboard mailing tubes or PVC pipe. Inside is an arrangement of cheap craft mirrors duct-taped together, and at the business end, a handful of plastic beads, marbles, plastic bits -- whatever I can find. They cost pennies to make.

I've made several, mostly for me, but I've given a few to my most special friends. I love that moment when they hold their new kaleidoscope to the light and look through it for the first time. They see something magical made from almost nothing. 
 

The thing about looking into a kaleidoscope is that only one person can look through it at a time. You can't really share the experience. So I figured out how to take pictures through my kaleidoscopes so that I can capture the fleeting images before they shift, so that I can share them.

As an experiment, for today's face I tucked a tiny self-portrait in with the beads and marbles of my newest kaleidoscope (look closely). I could have shared a hundred views, but that seemed like overkill, so I am only sharing three.

 

It's my first kaleidoscope that looks back.

Serenity now!

"We can be serene even in the midst of calamities."

-- Swami Satchidananda, The Yoga Sutras

 

"Let reality be reality."

                                                 -- Lao Tzu

Stone garden statue in my backyard 5-18-13

Frank:      "Serenity now! Serenity now!"
George:    "What is that?"
Frank:       "The doctor gave me a relaxation cassette. When my blood pressure gets too high,
                  the man on the tape tells me to say 'serenity now!"
George:     "Are you supposed to yell it?"
Frank:       "The man on the tape wasn't specific."

-- Frank and George Costanza, Seinfeld episode 159, "The Serenity Now"

I am trying a new approach.

Instead of lying awake all night struggling for sleep that never comes, I have decided to stop fighting against my insomnia and start cooperating with it instead.

The first step is acceptance.

Insomnia is my "calamity." It is the card I've been dealt. It is my reality and it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. 

So we're going to have to find a way to co-exist.

I think it's called coping.

I did a dry-run of the new plan last night. It went like this:

I went to bed at 11:30 p.m.

I was still wide awake at 2 a.m., so I got up and lifted weights for an hour. 

I know, I know. Trust me, I know. All the sleep advice says not to exercise late in the day or in the evening, because it might disrupt normal sleep patterns. Well guess what? My sleep patters are already abnormally fucked and I'm not sleeping anyway. Also, I've been wanting to work some strength training into my routine. And, 2 a.m. is neither late in the day nor is it evening. It is technically early, early morning. So I was actually getting a head start. Look at me being the early bird. Getting that worm.

I was wider awake (and sweaty) at 3 a.m., so I baked molasses cookies.

My very wise friend Jill suggested this tactic. In an email (all the way from Chile!), Jill wrote:

"Do you ever cook at night? 

I used to do that a lot. Actually, baking, more often. 

You can just make tons and tons of things, because it doesn't require a lot of concentration 

and it gives you something to do that has a tangible outcome. 

Plus you live with guys, so they can eat your stuff." 

She was right. 

It didn't require much concentration and I wound up with a satisfying pile of 5 dozen delicious cookies that made my not-sleeping seem not-so-futile. Plus, the house smelled amazing -- spicy and welcoming and homey. Jill was also right that the guys I live with would eat my stuff. This morning, my husband went back for thirds with his coffee. Even my paleo, carnivorous, carb-hating weightlifter-of-a-son gobbled a few. As he was chewing one cookie and reaching for another, he told me, "These are really good cookies." Bonus mom points.

While the cookies baked, I watched an interview from 2009 with Jason Bateman on "Inside the Actor's Studio," in which Bateman said there would be a film version of  Arrested Development. Wait, what? Did I miss something or is Jason Bateman just a big fat liar?

At 4 a.m. I was still pretty awake (and salty about Jason Bateman being a liar and all), but I went back to bed anyway. I drifted off around 5 and dreamed that an old friend and I were de-hoarding her mother's house. So it appears as though I accomplished that, too.

I slept about an hour and a half. 

I was awake again at 6:22 a.m. and got up for another day. 

This day. 

And even though my eyes are puffed like Mr. Magoo, and even though I am really tired and will probably be pretty much worthless for the rest of this day, at least I managed to sidestep a lot of the negative, toxic, self-loathing, dark, emotional and psychological turmoil and anxiety that usually shits on my sanity while I'm lying helpless and hopelessly awake for hours and hours on end. 

Also, my shoulders look pretty buff.

Beginning again. Again.

"The beginning is always today."

                                                 --Mary Shelley

Polymer clay face with egg shell 3-17-13

Scaredy face

“If we stay where we are, where we're stuck, where we're comfortable and safe, we die there ...

Eyes in a box 3-16-13

... We become like mushrooms, living in the dark, with poop up to our chins. 

If you want to know only what you already know, you're dying. 

You're saying: Leave me alone; I don't mind this little rathole. 

It's warm and dry. Really, it's fine.

When nothing new can get in, that's death. 

When oxygen can't find a way in, you die. 

But new is scary, and new can be disappointing, and confusing - 

we had this all figured out, and now we don't. 

New is life.” 

-- Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers