8.12.: snowflight, momentsketchers, a quantum poem, and two colds

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Back home… but with bad luck. Unfortunately, I caught a cold just at the end of the island stay. So arriving back in winter also meant arriving in the cold with a cold…

“It started snowing here just an hour ago”, the taxi driver happily explained to us on our drive back. But the snow made the flight stunning. I could see the snowy landscape from above since the plane crossed the Pyrenee mountains, the border of Spain and France.

Of course we knew that there would be winter waiting at home. Which made the island days double precious.

For the island stay, we had luck with the weather: there was an unusual southern stream of wind that carried warm air with it. And the wind also brought huge waves. One day was special, I drove along the scenic route along the lava coast, and it felt like driving through the history of how islands are shaped – stone and water and waves and sun:

While there, I mostly took a break from social media and also from the news, which is easier in such a place than at home.

Yet I still continued the daily-creativity initiative on Instagram that I already had joined, #navigatingthroughnovember. And from there, I moved to #decemberreflections.

The daily prompts, they are a good impulse to look for a different theme and angle than my usual ones. And it’s intersting to see what the others come up with, and to notice similarities and contrasts.

One of the prompts was „Red“:

„RED – funny and interesting how a color prompt changes the spin of a day: i keep noticing red things/moments today. Like the 2 red cars crossing paths today, on the final island tour.“

From photo to aquarelles:

Like I wrote in the previous post, I brought a sketchbook, and my aquarelles, and enjoyed the sketching. In a nice coincidence, or rather: in a domino-effect of the other initiatives, I came across this lovely painting group on Instagram while there: #momentsketchers.

On the first weekend of each month, they do a roundabout  of sketching / drawing and posting. So I could directly join them on the final island day. I like it, when things turn out that way. One of my fav places on the island is the lighthouse, and I sketched it several times. Here’s a more abstract version:

 

For the momentsketchers, I tried a second version, one that shows the place with the walkway towards it. Turns out, Candace Rose Rordan, who who hosts the challenge also puts a collection page together, which is so vivid and good, reaching through 5 continents: momentsketchers – december. In it, my lighthouse is #50.

There also is a thoughtful quote at the start from her:

I like to think that every time we sketched this year, that was our way of standing in the endless stream of life, staking our claim, and saying to that particular day:This is one moment that will not pass me by.“

So the island time was also a time of encounters, and inspiration, and discovering creative places. Oh, and a nice thing: Stephen Hawking put a call up for science haiku, to celebrate 4 million facebook contacts on his page. The call made me read an article about quantum mechanics, and then piece a quantum haiku together, to contribute:

Here’s the link to the page with the call and the contributed poems – the page also gives an impression what editors receive when they put up a call with specific guidelines.

And there was one more creative surprise, an invite to contribute to a virtual art exhibition. I hope it works out. Will write about it when I heard back.

This post started with a look from the sky to the ground – and ends with a look upwards: a quote from Stephen Hawking with life advice:

„Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.“

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