Thinking About Different Things…errr…the Same Things
Reporters, yesterday, described “relief” as the primary emotion experienced by those interviewed at the World Trade Center site about the capture and killing of bin Laden. I live right next to the World Trade Center site, and a part of me does feel a kind of relief over these events. There’s another part of me, however, that can only put the words “relief” and “the face of terrorism” into a single sentence if I also add in the phrase “just not think about it.” Example: ‘the only way I can feel relief in the face of terrorism is to just not think about it.”
The fact is that if you live down here, and pass the site every day, you really do have to make an effort to banish past and possibly future events from your mind and to just go on with your daily activities.
In my case, these activities have lately involved goofing around on the iPad or iPhone, especially with the great painting app “Brushes”, and more recently with the photo app, “Photogene.” Above is a painting of lilacs that I made with the Brushes App using a real photograph as a visual model. I then deleted the photograph (it had been a separate “layer” in the painting), and saved my own painting as a photo. That’s what’s above.
I then pulled the painting/photo up on Photogene, which offers a bunch of cool filters to adjust it. Below is the same painting, filtered as a “comic.”
Not perhaps a great art, but a great way of occupying the mind.
P.S. – These pictures got cropped a bit weirdly in the upload to WordPress! One of the hazards of working digitally.
Explore posts in the same categories: iPad art, news, UncategorizedTags: arranging on-screen flowers, Brushes App, filters on Photogene, iPad art, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, painting of lilacs, Photogene App, relief in the face of terrorism, thinking of other things
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ManicDDaily 
May 10, 2011 at 6:00 am
I like your lilac painting. Do you worry that it comes too easily to you?
Hooray for you if it comes easily; I think it lovely.
More importantly, I deeply appreciate your thoughtful range of pacifist feelingss. To hear of the killing of Osama Bin Laden is to move further
away from a spiritual path.
How do we comprehend the damage inflicted on ourselves? Of Public interests ignored while money was diverted toward the costs of war… Airline ticket holders in long check point lines… The individual loss of privacy… the young injured while serving in the military…
I am so small with purpose, if I can breathe compassion into my thoughts…
if I can meditate on equanimity and loving kindness…
thank you Karin for words responding to the killing of Osama Ben Laden…
I heard someone say when the Arab spring happened the people choose peaceful means to create/forment change; what a thought. I am inspired.
Go lilacs! Go!
May 10, 2011 at 6:39 am
Thanks so much, Savannah, for reading and for your thoughtful comment! So far this year I have unfortunately had little contact with actual lilacs (sigh) but I am really enjoying the art. The whole thing is really fascinating to me because it’s not something on which I’ve spent much time in the past. I hope you are well. I really appreciate your thoughts here.