Creativity - Muse - Inspiration

It is the urge to creating something out of nothing. I suspect that feeling comes to us, I mean, we have it, because we're not just merely 'stardust', but we were created from the 'image of God', or Imago Dei. We may call it creativity, artist's call, muse, inspiration, or any other identical vocabs I might not be able to mention all here. 

I once, or twice, or thrice or sometimes, struck by the symptoms of, whichever you want to call it, creativity, muse, inspiration. Sometimes, at the right moments, many times, at the wrong ones. But if I should describe the feeling, I'd like to describe it this way:

• It's the ticklish feeling on the tip of your fingers when you are sitting in front of piano with your hands  beneath the 88 black and white keys, and your mind starts wandering with new notes and chords combination that you've never heard before; waiting for you to tap your fingers on the keys, to translate what your mind keeps whispering on and on in your head.

• It's the joyful euphoria in your head when you think of a certain combination of colors and shapes, bright and shades, lines and  curves, rounds and rectangles, lights and shadows..dancing around, and you feel like you want to catch them, capture them, put them on a sheet of paper (or canvas if applicable:) with pen, brush, pencil..anything.. You just want them turning from unleashed wild unclear objects to a steady, static picture that you can pin into a 2-dimensional form, forever (or at least until that sheet of paper damaged).

• It's the disorganized words horde in your mind..alphabets, words, ideas juggling in your mind, painfully waiting to be spread out from there..into a sheet of paper, into computer screen, just to provide some spare  spaces on your poor crowded brain cells and tissues factory. Just for you and others to be able to look back at them, I mean, read them, in those mediums, and not to let them back and evaporate into the micro cells in your brain.

It's this, the urge to write about this topic, while you are working on so many deadlines. Yeah, I think I did the blasphemy to the glorious word called 'creativity', I degraded the meaning, I lower it now it is as low as the meaning of procrastination.

That, my friend, is another story... ;)

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Note:
pic taken from: http://binauralbrains.com/creativity-binaural-beats/ 

Love which never fails - from Our Daily Bread November 2012

Nowhere To Hide 
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I smelled something burning, so I hurried to the kitchen. Nothing was on the stove or in the oven. I followed my nose through the house. From room to room I went, eventually ending up downstairs. My nose led me to my office and then to my desk. I peeked beneath it and there, peering back at me with big eyes pleading for help, was Maggie, our dog, our very “fragrant” dog. What smelled like something burning when I was upstairs, now had the distinct odor of skunk. Maggie had gone to the farthest corner of our house to escape the foul smell, but she couldn’t get away from herself.

Maggie’s dilemma brought to mind the many times I have tried to run away from unpleasant circumstances only to discover that the problem was not the situation I was in but me. Since Adam and Eve hid after sinning (Gen. 3:8), we’ve all followed their example. We run away from situations thinking we can escape the unpleasantness—only to discover that the unpleasantness is us.

The only way to escape ourselves is to stop hiding, acknowledge our waywardness, and let Jesus wash us clean (Rev. 1:5). I am grateful that when we do sin, Jesus is willing to give us a brand-new start.

From the wondrous cross on Calvary
Flows the stream that still avails,
Cleansing hearts and bringing victory
Through that love which never fails. —Elliott

Sin’s contamination requires the Savior’s cleansing.

http://www.odb.org/

Life as We Know it

Life, I believe, is a series of bizarre, puzzled events. I remember three years ago taking picture of me and three other friends back in Melbourne. We gathered to cook together in one fine lazy summer day in our bright and sunny kitchen. The day was beautiful and we thought of having some traditional chicken meal, full of herbs and spices. So there we were, ready to cook. While cooking, I took their pictures with some funny, bizarre poses, like the act of one of them holding a knife and ready to stab the other, scolding each other like a landlord to their slave [in a funny way of course], etc. I put the pictures on Facebook and everyone was laughing and thought the pictures were really funny.

Now, three years later.  I work in this city, the other was just got wed yesterday, very happy with life, the other is taking doctoral study in Melbourne again, and the other, unfortunately have just passed away three weeks ago. I remember when a friend of mine, who is a mutual friend of us, called me one Sunday afternoon, that A just had his last breath an hour before. It came as a shock to me. I called T and other friends to tell the bad news. He wast just at his early thirties, 31 perhaps. God, he's just too young. Too cheerful, too lively, to die. He was such a vibrant, bubbly, helpful person. He helped everyone with smile and sincere motivation.  Just to imagine that A died, quiet, sick, struggling to breath, and finally silent forever, is too hard to do. He had none of those qualities, because he's always full with life. Anyway, he died. All of us were crying til the next morning. We did not really speak each other, but all were in grief. We felt the pain of imagining that a life was taken from someone so cheerful, at a very young age. Tears were running down from our eyes, we could not control.  

Three weeks after that,  it's time to feast.  The wedding day of our friend. Our close friend, a friend of A too. Friends, family, everyone, gathered in festivities. Happy, smiley faces around. Food and beverages were all around. The joy of the two families celebrating their newly bonded children. Sharing stories, sharing dreams, sharing life, sharing future. Life is good. Everyone danced till the party's over with nice songs on the background. So freely, so warm, so full of life, the happy crowd was. Such a nice wedding party. Sorrow was swept away under the carpet. It's time for celebration!

And then, party's over. I came back to my life as I know it. Thinking of unfinished reports, papers, articles, tickets, Christmas, New Year and so on. Feels like things are getting their way to their normal places again in my brain, occupying my mind, right at where they were when I started putting make ups and left for the party. 

And life...it gets back to its normal mode once more for me. With the anxiety of the future, with the curiosity of what it might bring me.

And it's November, almost the end of the year. Time for reflection, time for looking back what we have done this year, to see what we'll be doing next year.

It's just life as we know it. With its sorrows. With its pain. With its happiness.

Life indeed, as I know it,  is a series of bizarre, puzzled events.

     

Crashed plane

Here's another horror story of my nightmare. This time again about airplane crash. It's getting much, getting more frequent. This was really a nightmare about airplane crash, as the previous one that I wrote before in this blog, it's just that that one occurred because of Sukhoi crash (too overwhelmed with the incident's news), while this one was a mix of: 1) too many flight searching during the day time (saw too many airlines' name)
2) watching Sriwijaya Air plane stranded in an alien airport because of poor navigation system (?).  
3) hearing too many jet fighters flew upon the sky in this area.

As a result, I dreamt of me and some friends standing in a place looked like an airport runway, watching for many different planes to land on it. They looked awesome, I could not recall other airlines, only Garuda's blue mascot that I could recall. They landed smoothly. Until one Batavia Air plane came to touch down. But it looked strange. It was just too big, and too fast. And the sound was just too thunder-like. I looked at it with horror. I said to a friend 'No, it would not crash, would it? It's just too fast isn't it?' My friends have not replied yet when we heard that thunder sound, and smokes from where the airplane touched the runway. We said each other, 'It's really a crash!' With pale horrific faces, we ran into near the Batavia Air plane. Grey smokes all around, and we heard sound of siren here and there. People were screaming. I was frozen. 'This is nightmare', I told myself, 'This can't be true'.

And I woke up, perspired. My back was wet wit sweats. Thanks God, it was just a dream. A nightmare.   

I want to know what makes you happy

It's been quite sometimes since I wrote something here. I wrote many other pieces of writing: reports, emails, minutes of meetings, diagrams, charts, structures, blah blah blah, here and there at work. I've almost suffocated I feel like I almost lose my clarity on the most important topic: life itself. 

This morning, a friend posted a question on her Facebook status: "I want to know what makes you happy".   An intriguing question indeed. Some of her friends have put many different interesting ideas like 'to be loved by someone', 'to have everything', 'still breathing', etc.  

I popped in and answered: 'the fact that I'm alive now, and knowing where I'll be heading off afterlife'. Oh well, I know this is not an interesting sentence at all to some people. Too serious I know. But no, I was not joking around. I'm trying to tell the truth. I love to tell the truths because it's true. Call me not creative, but that's exactly the answer I've been thinking about. I cannot think of something else that "I am happy now, while I'm alive, and happy knowing where I'll be heading off afterlife...." 

The seeming unfairness of life

The seeming unfairness of life demands that we keep our eyes on Him and His Word—not on others.

Lord, I admit that my focus at times gets drawn
to others and what they have. Forgive me and
help me to stop grumbling. You are good to me
and provide what I need. Thank You. Amen.

All you need to know to be content is this: God is good.

Our Daily Bread, 18 October 2012

Let this remains a reminder for me, today, that I should not envy what others have. God has HIS own way to show HIS grace and justice.

When I finally encountered Aida

I watched Aida, the popular opera show in Melbourne, back in 2010 or 2009 in the Arts Centre. It's beautiful, though I sometimes missed the points, as it was played in Italian, not English (was there subtexting? I can't recall).

Why in the world a person from Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia, -not so artistic one, would eager to watch Aida in her lifetime? I mean, spending dozens of dollar to purchase the ticket was something considered a waste for a poor student like me at that time. But, why I was so keen to do so, spending some of the money I collected with sweat (well, working as a cleaning service could cause someone to perspire), to watch an opera that I bet, not so many people would have the interest to watch? 

Easy, I tell you why. I used to fill too many crosswords in Kompas Sundays long long time ago back home. Many times I found (by learning week by week), that "the name of the opera written by Verdi", is AIDA. Who's Verdi? Who's Aida? What is opera? I totally had no idea back then. I was just happy that finally I would not have to leave the space for the four letter boxes empty anymore. I knew the word: AIDA.  

I wasn't that obsessed with Aida, but indeed I was very hungry about any kind of information: I didn't have many books, I read my father's books; I read newspapers; I read magazines, anything I could get in my sight. So when the internet era came, I was soooo.... relieved, imagine, the world of information, all unfolded in front of me, on the screen of a computer! That's where I started to learn about Aida further. That it's about the story of people in Egypt. Below is the short synopsis from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aida):

"Overview: Aida, an Ethiopian princess, is captured and brought into slavery in Egypt. A military commander, Radamès, struggles to choose between his love for her and his loyalty to the Pharaoh. To complicate the story further, Radamès is loved by the Pharaoh's daughter Amneris, although he does not return her feelings".

Well, to short the story, I watched Aida that cold winter night in Melbourne Arts Centre. I loved it. It's like, one of my childhood dreams came true. The dream was revealed to me that cold winter night.