The wisdom of no escape.

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
– Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape.

Caught in time.

This is a really spontaneous piece that I am quite fond of..

I was talking to a friend of mine over coffee about “making” and how some times pieces can take months to make sense and become real or the complete opossite.

I’ve lost plenty of hours of sleep thinking if what I did had any sense at all and then working to see how I could make it clearer. In all truth I believe in being honest and making from your gut and heart, the only thing I am certain of is of the comunion between your subconcient and hands.

All my questions are not answered yet and maybe there is no answer to them at all..but I live for the explosive beautiful moments of making, concentration, losing track of time, of truly not thinking at all and just moving your hands,when there is that rush to finish and then holding a finished piece, your idea in a tangible form for the first time.

As for this piece, she simply invites you to look closer.

Casa March

A while back I did a post about “Ateliers” 

Well this weekend I had the chance to visit the real thing… 

 

Let me just say, this place is a combination of things I love, history, tools, goldsmithing, enameling and woodwork.

For an hour an a half I had the joy of listening to stories, of seeing rooms filled with inviting corners, so many tools! 

 

 

This is a live in workshop, so there is a beautiful antique house to go with it, where some looms where placed and he mentioned how when it was active, he remembers his aunts threading gold for the costumes of the Saints, while the men made jewelry for priests, enameled pieces for churches, etc.

We are talking of hundreds of years, making this place so magical, so intriguing .. would you like to see it in action? I recommend the blog: http://valenciarte.blogspot.com.es/

 

You can see all the photos I took over here

Needless to say I had a pretty good weekend 🙂

“The Day The Saucers Came” by Neil Gaiman

That Day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find out what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
the land and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day, the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.