Balance is a process, generally. It happens, and then it stops and then I have to shift things around until it happens again. It feels more like brief shining moments of clarity than anything else. This is more of a reminder. More balance. Less shuffle.
Top two, left to right: Today's circle, yesterday's circle which is kind of doodly but has a whale in it (yes, a pink whale; see Nightbirds on Nantucket, and also Burt Dow, Deep-Water Man)
Bottom two: My mom's bionic knee (my apologies for getting it upside down mom, it was the direction you were in bed) and my outrageously, particularly wonderful nephew examining the February circles.
Take a deep breath.
I was thinking about the place where oxygen goes from air into the bloodstream, down at the bottom of your lungs. Little sacs called alveoli inflate, oxygen slips through the walls into tiny capillaries displacing carbon dioxide which is exhaled.
Except when I cut the piece out, I was looking at the back, and it looked like roses. See?
So you may take your pick: roses or lungs.
Brane is a mathematical term for surface. Which is interesting because the reason our brains fold and wrinkle the way they do is because all of the work a brain does happens on the surface. And the only way to increase surface area and still fit into a skull is to start folding.
Alternatively, in a zombie apocalypse, they (the zombies) stagger about and moan "brrraaaaiiins". I am kind of a zombie at the moment, but I am still amused at the confluence of branes and brains.
Neurons do the thinking, in the spaces between themselves. Synapses are where neurons come close, but don't actually touch. All the things that we think of, and about, and all our reactions, happen in the spaces between.
I don't know about your brain, but my brain can be really…. bossy. It wanted me to make 14 felted hearts. So I did.
I started by needlefelting a single large piece of mostly-red felt, with lots of other colors in it. I cut 14 hearts from the large piece. From the last week or so of scraps, I cut out smaller hearts to stick onto the larger hearts. Then I stitched things together.
Now I have 14 hearts to give to people!
So I wish you a heart-felt Happy Valentine's Day.
The Sketchbook Challenge this month is Close Up. Look at something very closely, and show what you see.
I was thinking about secrets, and pink things and the brain seemed the most mysterious of all the private things the body holds. The brain carries who we are and most of our dreams and thoughts and learning. It keeps, or doesn't, the secrets we have, both ours and other people's.
These are not the neurons that you think with, they are different brain cells. I saw an excellent poster of brain things, and these had a pleasing regularity to them.
I would like to point out that the canard that we use only 10% of our brain is dead wrong. For a while, doctors only understood what 10% of it did. Which is a very different statement. As we learn more about brains, we understand what more different parts are doing. So – please, the next time someone suggests we use only 10% of our brains, set them straight!
