enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Joy spreads like a sunrise

With a little bit of food and some red wine, my headache is miraculously fleeing.

I read over that entry from a little bit earlier and can't believe how stilted it is. Sometimes when I have a headache I lose the capacity to use language. It's a strange thing.

But I suppose it's no more strange than any of the other vagaries of the body and mind.

What I had wanted to say is that since I bought the ticket to Florence it has been as though a veil has lifted from my life. I was already feeling happier once the apartment thing was settled, but this is in a whole 'nother league.

There are so many things about being there that make me happy. The food. The lifestyle. The craziness of Italians. The way in which the place is completely opposite to here. (Here is ordered, fair, clean, reserved, reliable, and cold...) Mostly, I think, however, it's the craftsmanship that appeals to me.

When I was a little girl I used to card and spin wool with my grandmother. I took art classes at the Royal Ontario Mus3um, where I would sit for hours on end drawing bones of dinosaurs. In school I loved map-making. In university I loved books and paper restoration. And of course, I've always loved libraries.

When I was about eight my grandmother bought me the materials for calligraphy, and so I went about becoming a self-taught calligrapher. Same with painting. And my sweaters and their finishing my mother cannot wrap her mind around, since I can finish anything much better than she can, in spite of her 20 years of additional experience. My step-father can never believe that I didn't buy the sweater. And it's the same with the dresses I used to make when I was young and didn't have money to buy.

When I painted as a girl my mother would get angry, because I'd be at the table for ten hours sometimes without eating or even going to the bathroom. I have a deep, deep interest in minute work and deep concentration. It's why restoration interested me so much when I took the first art course in Italy.

I mean, at work I use these skills to develop models and figure out how to balance the national fudge-it. How to generate money in an economy and how it will be spent.

But of course my soul isn't in that. I want to make quilts, paint pictures, make boxes with wood (did I ever mention that I had a business in university to make extra money, carving and painting wooden birds?).

I don't know why I didn't figure this out before: detail + beauty. I've got detail in my life right now but not so much beauty.

Happiness unfolds like the origam! that I used to do. :)

8:31 p.m. - 2009-09-28

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