Stream of scriptural thoughts today

 

What are values vs what are defense mechanisms

I see the shadows of peoples issues very quickly and clearly, but where it comes from is a question mark until there is further insight or intuiting. It can take me a while to figure or find it out, and sometimes the answer is better than uncertainty, more forgivable or fixable, or other times it is less forgivable or fixable.

If we take our behaviours that are defense mechanisms at face value, we instead end up with a picture of values that are radicalized for survival, instead of the big picture of our values.

Two types of panic

I think sometimes people panic because of feeling intense need to show something matters to them, as opposed to because the matter is directly panic-inducing itself.

And by people, I think I do. Because I am more predisposed to calmness, I often risk coming off as uncaring to difficult situations that arise, and my real panic is that people may feel that I don't care about something important to them.

When I Became Sad for the Rest of my Life

(Video above: what was I made for - Billie Eilish official lyric video)

Something happened in my life, something terrible. One of my best friends killed herself. 

And since then, I've never been not sad again. 

It has been closed to three years now but my life just stopped there. Personally, professionally, my life is unrecognizable.

Something important in life I think is the ability to be happy and sad at the same time. I have felt happy moments, I have found happiness with my boyfriend. Our emotions mix and coexist with one another. But that sadness since my friend died, Every moment, every second, every breath, that immeasurable grief has never left for a second.

And I believe in God. I believe her memory is safe with him, but it doesn't change that I miss her with me while being all the time, and that this will follow me for the rest of my life.

In my language of gestures

Drawing portraits is 9ften a very sad affair for me, as that is how I say goodbye.

Not always, but often.

Perhaps this is part of why that experience of not recognizing the faces of people I knew was so shaking. Because it stopped me from saying my goodbyes.

When overwhelmed with emotions, it is a natural tendency to go with not what is easy to feel per se, but what is explainable.

So long as the world isn't a perfect place, I'm not me without the pain, at least a little bit of it.

Oopsy daisy

 

Wildflower bouquet

I like wildflowers

And don't tire of golden hours

Please don't make me

Leave fall behind

The smell of the ocean

Its shells though they're broken

More than its memories

More than its tokens

The sky through it's waking

And hearts through their breaking

Ahhhhhhh

Ahhhhhhh

Please don't make me leave them behind

Don't forsake in betweens we may find

I like wildflowers

You like lemonade

We both walk hand in hand

Although we're not the same

Resting in the chorus

Sitting in the forest

Spaces with nothing

But dreams waiting for us

The moon through its setting

A boat and it's heading

Ahhhhhhh

Ahhhhhhh

We won't leave them behind

Sitting in the in betweens we may find

Let's find wildflowers

Pictures of old clock towers

Make a bouquet

Daisy hours

Hazy hours

Oct 2 paintings

 

Open letter to my first love 💌

Sometimes things are going bad but then I think, "at least I had a good first love." And that's something I'll always be grateful for.

Thank you for keeping my standards high. 

Even though we were not for eachother, you changed the rest of my life. 

In every heartbreak, thinking of you made me feel better, hold my head a little higher. Thinking of you have me high expectations for myself, and for how I should be treated.

Even though you were not physically present in most of my life, you were the example I needed. 

Thank you for helping me hold out until I found the one for me. Thank you for being my first love, so that I could find my last.

The saddest generation

 We may be the saddest generation yet in human history.

As in, in spite of having all we need to survive still not having what we need to be happy, and being so sad that one of the most commonly relatable things we joke about is actually wishing we were dead.

(You are, after all, on my mind enough, deep enough, for me to speak to you when you are not here.)

((You have become become an entity my mind speaks to into the darkness, the vastness, the otherwise emptiness. And an entity of love and presence that my mind chooses to speak to many a times instead of to the entities of pain and loss))

But not always.

Perhaps, I don't speak to you so much when you're not here because there isn't so much unsaid.

Because of the freeness to express myself to you, because of the respect you hold for me, I am not left brewing unspoken thoughts alone only.

I am not used to this. I am stuck on a mental state of being lonely even when I'm not alone, even though I have people in my life now who love me even when I speak my mind.

I love you all but I keep you at an arm's length 

(Because I am tired of getting hurt)

There is a type of loneliness that has been haunting me even around those I love the most

(And it terrifies me)

Like they are just not like me

(Those who are like me I cannot make stay)

((And it makes me worry that it means I don't love you as much as I think I do)) 

Or perhaps,

It is just because I am not letting you in.

She told me the news gently. After she walked away, the room got a little colder.

Nightmares of finding pictures of you followed

I saw someone who walked like you,

In a place we used to go.

I'm not afraid of silence outside,

I'm afraid of this silence in my mind.

It is a night for sitting by the window,

For being beside the blue black.

A night for thoughts to echo,

And the warm summer air to get caught in my lungs.

"Are you primarily motivated by positivity (eg. Desire) or negativity (eg. Fear)?"

 A question that changed my life was "Are you primarily motivated by positivity (eg. Desire) or negativity (eg. Fear)?" 

It made me realize how much time I personally spent on considering what isn't, as if figuring out what's wrong on a multiple choice question, whereas when I considered what is and drew my conclusions primarily from there, it made it much easier to be clear on why I do what I do

Published Dec 29, 2024

I loved first,

And I loved last,

And it kind of makes it feel

Like you never loved at all.

What is missing (excerpt)

Missing the silence and slowness of being a dreamer,

Inspiring me to write with happiness and pain and everything in between;

Something is wrong.

The fact that what is wrong can be more easily turned to poetry than what is right, may be something these words cannot properly express,

And yet,

I must find a way.

For something feels wrong. Something has changed ever since...

Why is all my poetry these days about doubt and fear and wondering, 

Instead of warmth and bliss and wonder?

I know you can be brave.

I know you'd leap through fire for me. But all I really want is for you to stand with me in the rain.

Can you slow down and love the sound of rain on the window with me?

My favourite thing about myself

That I appreciate the little things.

 Feeling like I have to give up the parts of me I shared with you leaves me feeling empty.

Thank You

Thank you for not only the sun but the light,

Not only the air but breath,

Not only the water but life.

 I survived

 Nichelle, you keep me here

My Art IG

Recent sketches are on Instagram via @pinto604.

In case I never said it enough, I love you all <3

Siracha - playing with acrylics

The brush I used barely scraped paint onto the paper but I liked using it so much anyway

Sketch of Luna

I love her so much and hate how painful this is to look at

Landscape painting

Whitehorse, Yukon

A memory of watching mountain goats

this painting went through a real ugly phase

Teal and blue

Today I made a painting and made the sky a little more like your favourite colour.

Oh, we were so much like eachother.

~~

How could this be happening.

Recent sketches

 

This was Luna's favourite spot <3

Looking at your back

When I sit behind someone

I look at their back and imagine an ache in their chest.

Oh, how could I cause that in them?

Whether one's frame is strong or frail

The crumbling of a heart like paper is crushing the same.

How could I do that to him?

 Wearing white was my way of celebrating she was with me in my life.

I haven't even been able to look at the moon since.

Published December 27, 2024

More riptide lofi release announced today,drinking coconut water to

This takes me to a place where we're all here again.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cj8LsQTvp2A/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Pop goes ambient (Vancouver Sleep Clinic) Riptide Lofi

Riptide lofi (not my own)

Vance Joy - Riptide (Alphasvara Lo-Fi Remix)

 https://youtu.be/3KMbl3u0SoY

I remember when I could be all the details of myself with you.

A commentary on AI art arguments from a traditional artist

I think that anti-AI artists need to stop making such reactive, emotional arguments, and that the AI-defenders need to stop comparing apples to oranges.

They keep comparing AI programs explicitly made to rip off one single artist's style to a person being influenced after looking at art. I think there is a good pro-AI argument somewhere but equating these two things are not it.

It is more like one artist deciding to make a career off of copying one other artist's style. 

We don't need to dance around this issue with false equivalencies. I also find most of the pro-AI side to generally lack empathy, which disgusts me. (And that's not my argument, just a statement).

But at the same time, there is a difference between being a criminal and just an arsehole and I don't think the anti-AI people have a legal leg to stand on. As much as in my heart I believe we owe artists' feelings consideration, I don't think that there is nothing we can realistically do about it without causing more problems than we are solving, as it could pave the way to infringe on others' rights to a greater degree.

Personally I believe it is in artists' best interests to focus on adapting instead of fighting. If they can ride the wave they could even stand to benefit from the rise of art generated by artificial intelligence, and that if it could be seen as a tool for artists instead of a separate competitor that in tandem with creative human beings it could also create some wonderful things. 

As a mainly traditional artist I remember worrying about left behind when digital art became the new standard. But aside from its initial big boom, it didn't end up being as bad as I thought. To my surprise people still like my unpredictable watercolours and scratchy sketches, and I feel like there is an extra layer of admiration people have knowing it was done without an undo button. 

To my surprise, people value my art for my process. And maybe that surprised me so much because I didn't value my own efforts enough; I focused too much on products. As it turned out, the very human act of me scraping materials on paper is apparently a story that in my fears is something I had become guilty of devaluing, but I am now grateful to audiences for keeping alive and well.

So digital artists especially, I don't think you will be replaced. In fact, I feel like AI art gives you the title of "leader". For the record, I disagree with the practice of modeling algorithms that target any living, individual artist's style when they have explicitly expressed their disagreement with it. Just like respecting authors who say they do not want fanfiction of their work made, no matter how much I might wish they felt differently I believe in respecting their feelings. However, I think that the more gracefully, or at least diplomatically, artists handle this transition the sooner some sort of meaningful, and impactful etiquette will be established, and one that does in face impact business.

Missing Luna too much.

Wearing white was my way of celebrating she was with me in my life.

I haven't been able to look at the moon since.

Or eat popcorn. That was her favourite. I just ate one kernel for her. She loved food 

I don't know what to do without her. It's like without her I'm not me.

I miss talking to her. Our special ways of communicating with eachother, saying so much with just a look.

I miss giving her popcorn and belly rubs and taking her for walks, and cuddling.

I always cuddled her so much knowing that someday I won't be able to anymore. Now it's here and I hate it.

I know she is with the Creator, safe in his memory. But I miss her too much.

 I am not a moderate person

I cry not every day not just once in a while, my room isn't just a little emssy it's a disaster, and when I remember bagels exist I don't just go out to a cafe to eat it I immediately go to the nearest store and buy a whole bag, cream cheese, and make it my new lunch of choice.

But I also go the extra mile

I talk to strangers who seem like they need help but don't ask, much too much for my own good

I have too many sponsorships and

If someone says they are cold I tell them they can use the extra scarf I brought, just in case

Published Dec 27, 2024

Canada's Can on Single-Use Plastics In Effect

"Starting on December 20, 2022, with the prohibition on the import and manufacture of single-use plastic checkout bags, cutlery, foodservice ware made from problematic plastics, stir sticks, and straws; the prohibition on the sale of these items will come into force in December 2023"

- Government of Canada, December 17, 2022

Why is my life so life and death

 Life is a horror movie where everyone dies

My OCD has begun to search for a new hostage. It doesn't like the way it has been silenced; and for once, neither do I.