A curious new year

http://www.outbackonline.net/rookery/Day23_HeatherBlakey.html

Excerpt from ‘A Cabinet of Curiosities’ by Heather Blakey

A cabinet of wondrous curios
A delightful collection
Objects,
Carefully placed
Lying, seeming unconnected
Next to each other
Evoking,
Triggering memories
Permitting the mind to
Wander to faraway places

Yesterday (New Year’s Day, Australia) I heard a man on the radio talking about how curiosity keeps our minds alive and active.  Trying out new things, exploring by ways we have not taken before and allowing our minds to ask ‘what if’ questions are all ways to excite our curiosity.  Our minds become engaged and our enthusiasm for life is renewed.

Reading Heather’s poem about a cabinet of curiosities where unconnected things lying next to each other permit the mind to wander to faraway place led me into a series of ‘what if’ questions.

What if I used my new camera to take pictures of things around me and played with the images in Photoshop?

What if I combined digital photos with photographs and scans of art work I’ve done?

What if I used these images to create a kind of digital journal – a kind of virtual cabinet?

I quickly realized the idea would work best if it had some kind of thematic framework.  I went back to Trains of Thought and wandered about Soul Foods looking for inspiration.

I followed links to the Sanctuary of Dodona http://www.dailywriting.net/imagery17.htm

and read ‘On the advice of Athena you come to Dodona to sit within the sanctity of an Oak-tree and ask a question of the oracular spirit.’

I then read:  ‘Demeter welcomed me with tears of joy, the leaves sang happily, a butterfly danced, skipping lightly above the delicate cyclamens that grow amid the old ruins…..
from the diary of Heather Blakey 2001.

Demeter in the garden - digital - Jan. 2010

My New Year’s Resolution is to nurture my curiosity.  I’m liking the places it’s taking me.

Posted by Suzanne (Almurta)