To my readers…

I just wanted to say to the people that read this blog whether you found me randomly while searching for something or whether you read this blog when I post things. Thank you. You all keep me inspired and feeling connected. You are amazing, wonderful and filled with beautiful souls. Keep being you and don’t let anyone think that you are anything less. 

Buckets of Love.

Mumford and Sons

Yesterday I was walking home from a local cafe and was listening to Mumford and Sons, as I have been since acquiring their album Babel. Well their song “Below My Feet” was playing and it gets to the chorus “…Keep the earth below my feet. For all my sweat, my blood runs weak. Let me learn from where I have been. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn. Keep my eyes to serve, my hands to learn…” and I am not sure why I hadn’t picked up on the lyrics before, however it reminded me of a poem I had written back on 10 May 2009 while sitting in church. I realize that makes me seem as if I wasn’t paying attention to the church service, maybe I wasn’t, maybe something wasn’t keeping my attention, I probably had something else on my mind. I wrote two small poems that day… maybe not poems but a string of words. Well here is the poem I wrote that I was remind of while listening to “Below My Feet”

Give Love

Give Peace

Give Hope

Give Faith 

Give Heart 

Give your hands to work

Give your feet to walk.

 

It is possible I was thinking of walking in Crop Walk back in September or October or I was thinking about TOMS One Day Without Shoes, either are completely valid thoughts. Crop Walk that year I had walked with a friend barefoot for 5 miles in Abington, Virginia. Walking five miles barefoot on cement, gravel, brick and grass (delightful temporary relief) is an eye opening experience. Maybe if I had trained my feet beforehand by walking barefoot more often it wouldn’t have been as bad and I wouldn’t of had two and a half inch (?) blisters on my heels, however I don’t think that would have left the same impression on me and my thoughts towards the causes that TOMS and Crop Walk support. TOMS supports the world and the need people have for simply one pair of shoes to keep feet protected and Crop Walk raises awareness for world hunger their motto is “We walk because they walk.”. Did you know that in many places around the world people have to walk up to six miles most of the time barefoot to get their supply of water for the day? Stepping on sharp rocks and many other things getting cuts on your feet and all without access to even simple medical supplies to keep cuts from getting infected. Just imagine having to do that everyday just to get water. A lot of my friends asked why I would walk five miles barefoot when it wasn’t necessary to the walk, they also asked what would it prove or what did I gain by doing that. We no longer seem to have the ability to do something just because we wanted to do it, according to society we have to have a motive or a reason. Okay, if that is the case, my reason for walking Crop Walk barefoot is simply because there are millions of people out there that have no choice but to walk barefoot and risking infection and injury and having to suffer through that, if I had had worse than blisters on my feet I could have gone to the doctors and would have been given the proper treatment to keep me from getting an infection. The next time you have the opportunity to do something that supports a cause and do something that causes people to ask you questions about what you are doing, you take that opportunity, because it means getting the word out there about something that you support. Lastly, always take the opportunity to do something that is humbling, it makes you look at the world around you with a new perspective.

This blog post was inspired by Mumford and Sons and Tom Hiddleston for also mentioning the song mentioned earlier because it reminded me of writing about a poem I wrote.

The eyes are a window to the soul.

I am not sure how many of my friends know this or how many people I have spoken about this to… but I think all of you should know the multitude of which I find inspiration in music and sounds. Everywhere I turn, every quiet forest, every bird, every gentle breeze, every storm, every rainfall, every snowfall, every story I hear… those are my inspirations. I find some form of inspiration everyday… but it takes years to gather enough moments of inspiration to create art that I can truly be proud of and the last piece I was excited about happened to be my senior exhibition project which was almost four years ago. That was up until Sunday night… well before that but Sunday I finished and sent in a design to Threadless for one of their challenges. Yes for people reading this and that have been loving keeping up with the posts on facebook. And if you are thinking this is silly or a pathetic way of getting people to vote, you can think what you want. But I want people to really understand that my art, when I am truly happy with it an excited to show people, that it’s important that everyone in the world has a chance to see it. Many people have said this: “Your eyes are a window into the soul…”. Well this design I am giving the world a chance to see into my soul a bit, at least for the moment the joyous and inspired part of my soul. My soul takes me into galaxies far beyond our own and allows me to dream up things in my imagination that I can never get quite right on paper… That was until I read the challenge presented by Sony and Threadless and my hands and imagination immediately figured out how to work together.

So if you have read this far, I thank you with every morsel of my heart. And I ask that you if not before this please vote for my design and make sure to leave an awesome comment on the design page, and if you have voted but decided to not leave a comment please think about leaving one. Comments are another way a design gets chosen. And then if you could share either this blog post or the link on my designs page with all of your friends, I would be eternally grateful. This isn’t really about winning, it’s about everything I wrote before this, winning would just be an added bonus and to say that I actually won something (which I’ve never been that good at anything). Yes, this may be a bit of a bribe..(but also a brilliant idea from a lovely friend) every comment/ vote I get I will bake a cookie. At the moment for comments (6? cookies) and votes (140 something?). I also bake really delightful cookies. =]

Here’s the link: http://thrdl.es/~/x3h