Kat Eye Studio

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Follow your Bliss

This may not look like a blissful photograph to you, but it is to me. Photographing Venice in the day is wonderful, photographing Venice at night is blissful. I’m so excited to be going back for a one night visit for a special session of night photography, I’ll be absent here for a couple of days. After the last visit I knew I had to get back for this while I’m here in Italy. It called to me.

What about you? Do you follow your bliss? Do you feel the little tugs on your heart that pull you in a certain direction? How do you respond?

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At the Doorstep

As I mentioned last week, when we were in the Cinque Terre I was just drawn to doors with peeling paint. Here is another one from Riomaggiore, I love the green paint, against the grey of the door and the chips of it on the red brick of the doorstep. It must be the light, the texture, or as one person commented on that post, “I would like to chunk them off and mash them in my palm with my thumb.” I realized that I feel the same, there is an interactive nature to these photos, a desire in me to participate in the removal of paint from the surface, to pick off flakes and crumble them to nothingness.

Now, I could not have said any of that at the time I took the photo. All I knew at the time was that I was drawn to these spots, compelled to take a photo or two. After the fact, I see that this desire to take pictures of peeling paint is coming from somewhere other than my rational brain. The theme this month for the Creative Every Day challenge has been intuition, and it’s really caused me to sit back and look at how I use and follow my intuition in different areas of my life. I realize that when I take photos of a subject like this, it’s my intuition talking. I can’t explain it rationally in the moment, but I act on the feeling then and there. And, usually, it results in images that I like, and that have something to show to me later.

Even if the message is just that I have an obsessive urge to crush paint flakes.

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Intuition and Gratitude and Joy


This is me. A funky self-portrait of me in our apartment building elevator last Thursday morning. You can’t tell, but I’m full of gratitude and joy at this moment.

You see, on Thursday I got a hair cut. I’ve been toying with the idea of getting my hair cut shorter for the summer, but as I headed across the street to see Claudio, my parrucchiere, I resolved to get the usual. A shoulder length, layered, reliable haircut. But after he washed my hair, as I sat in the chair I said, from some deep down desire, un po’ corte, which means, a bit short. So Claudio gestured to me about how much, I answered Si and then I watched him snip away. I let go of any angst or idea of the results, just watched and waited. It was fun to observe him working, without expectation or worry.

The amazing thing is, I walked out of that salon feeling like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders with that haircut. I was buoyant. For some reason, I needed this hair cut, needed to listen to that little voice inside me called intuition.

Before heading back to the apartment, I was filled with the creative urge to stop at the newsstand to get a couple more magazines for my collage class. So I did, and reveled in the feel of the breeze on my neck and savored picking out the magazines.

I returned to the apartment and grabbed my camera and went to take pictures of the spring flowers under the trees in Parco di Monza, which I had been wanting to do for over a week and kept putting off, and was filled with this wonderful creative energy that hasn’t hit for a while. You can see the result in my blog post from Friday. I was filled with joy, and gratitude for the creativity and playfulness that came upon me, the moment with my camera and the flowers, for a beautiful spring day, for being where I am in life.

In the elevator on my way home, I snapped this picture to see if I could get an interesting shot of my new haircut, and to capture the moment. It came out kind of funky and not what I would consider flattering, so I didn’t think more of it at the time. Saturday I looked at the photo again and it felt different, a little more intriguing, so I played with it a bit to get a retro feel and posted it on Facebook as my profile pic for fun. And that, in turn, sparked interesting comments and creativity from my friends, even a short story starter. I am filled with gratitude and joy that something as simple as an image can turn on people’s imaginations for a moment. That something I created in turn created a little bit of fun in their day, which then reflected back into mine.

So you see, this whole cycle of creativity and gratitude and joy started with me following my intuition with my hair cut. Since that time, I’ve been aware of all these delightful moments that connect one into the next. Ideas are flowing and I just can’t stop them! I’ve found that I need little notebooks everywhere because the ideas keep coming, from all angles, on all topics, and they won’t leave me alone until I record them some where. Maybe it’s because I’m finally listening to that little inner voice, my intuition, and since it has my attention now it doesn’t want to stop talking.

Truly, I am filled with gratitude and joy for it all. This creative energy has been amazing. Now, where’s that notebook? I have a few more things to write down…

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