Two new cards: The Journaler and The Window into Eternity

[pegkerr]

The Journaler I am the One who records my life each day in the pages of my journal. I gain wisdom and perspective through self-reflection, carefully observing events and people in my daily life and distilling them down into words, through the filter of my feelings and thoughts. A day is a page; a year is a journal book; a shelf of journal books is a lifetime which may be opened and read by those living after me when I am gone from the world. I make the ephemeral and transitory permanent. I am the guardian of the repository of memory.

I put a lot of my thoughts about this card into my previous post this week about my history with keeping a journal. I liked the fact that the figure actually writing in the journal looks (to me) like a young teenager. As I said, I was fourteen when I began writing in my journal. I make my entry while reclining across my bed, which makes the other figure right, too. I like how the pen seems to "draw" the line of the head of the bed. I have never used a nice fountain pen like this one, however. I use cheap Bic pens.

The Window into Eternity - Council Suit I am the One who opens the view from the mundane to the eternal. I am the boundary between the familiar and every day, and that which is unknowable, mysterious, and infinite in time and space. There are few who can gaze through me comfortably for long, but those who do will learn to perceive the numinous within the ordinary.

I made this card and like it, sorta, although I'm not 100% satisfied with it aesthetically. The picture of the window frame is quite dark, which makes it a little difficult to see. It got much more interesting when I added the cat, and I rather like how the cat's attitude mimics (in mirror fashion) the shape of the Horsehead Nebula seem through the window. The cat is a bit of a guardian (in a way, this reminds me of haloquin's Guardian of the Gates card). Certainly a cat seems to me to be the one animal most like to have such a blasé attitude that it can turn its back on a view like that, completely unimpressed.

This card is my fumbling attempt to get at something I have thought about/felt often throughout my life, and I have a terribly difficult time putting into words. In fact, when ever I have the flash of feeling, I always think that it's impossible to put into words. It's the sense that you get when you go along living your life, wrapped up in your petty concerns, and then once in a while you'll get a flash, a glimpse of the enormity of the universe, that while you have your life, all that you are concerned with, there are actually billions of other lives--not just on our planet, but throughout the entire universe. Sometimes, when I get that flash, my mind teeters, dizzy at the contrast between the mundane and narrow with the cosmic infinite. And then I forget for awhile because I have to cook dinner and drive the girls to karate again. The mind isn't able--except in miniscule flashes--to be able to grok that all at once.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Sounds rather like the "flash" LM Montgomery describes in the Emily book, and that CS Lewis talks about in Surprised by Joy, the moments of transcendence he got from some images or poetry. (IIRC, Lewis ended up implying the whole thing became childish and irrelevant when he became a Christian - I could never figure out why anyone would *want* a God who didn't give them those flashes of glory. He specifically mentions his reaction to the line "Baldur the Brave is dead, is dead!" Giiven his experiences I'd've gone Norse.)

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I love these -- really cool, especially the journalling one.

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I really love that last paragraph - it's a beautiful card, too.

It reminds me of Bruce Cockburn's song "Mystery" (http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/mystery.html):


Infinity always gives me vertigo
Vertigo
Vertigo
Infinity always gives me vertigo
And fills me up with grace

[aome.livejournal.com]

I like your words for the journaling card, but I especially like the image collection you used for the "window" card. Really neat, to look out the window on the nebula, and the cat being so indifferent.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I especially like the imagery of the Window into Eternity card - the cat on the windowsill makes it.