You Cannot Use This Card
My camera turns on with this strange message. I am trying to use the camera not the card. What card? There is another camera around, or there was. After cleaning the entire desk, unsuccessfully going through drawers, and even looking in the car, I gave in to the fact that I am without a camera until the trip to the big city this weekend.
Its ok really because I have been working on the same two projects for the last couple of days, and while I made progress, all pics are essentially the same. I also continued working on a Halloween 12" block for a swap and am hand-quilting it. I haven't reached that moment when they are all completed.
There was a time in my life when something mechanical or electronic would fail and, because I am inept at fixing such things, I would panic. I mean really, really panic to the point of sobbing, going all drama-queen on everyone around me, and in short, feeling like it was the end of the world.
Now I know that there is always an alternative if I just step back, take a breath and listen for some inner guidance. Usually people who tried to fix things for me had little success anyway. Those were my life issues, my soul-triggers, my path to figure out solutions.
I continue with my projects even without my camera. And even if my sewing machine should fail, there are things in my quilting bins that are meant to be hand sewn or hand sorted, pinned, or hand cut. I missed this lesson when I was younger and really believed that the one thing that became a big challenge was going to stop everything I wanted to do. Then, some where along the way, I started to see how I could chose to do things differently, chose to keep walking, or running, or working, or playing.
When I started quilting, some of the first thoughts I had were that I would never finish them in time, or that I would never make the ones I planned to give to members of my family. I got scared because some of the quilters I knew passed away with closets of fabric and bins of unfinished quilts. I worried that my quilting wasn't good enough, or the people I gave them to wouldn't like what I did. It was like the Universe was telling me, "You Cannot Use This Card" and to go on, my entire attitude needed to shift. And so it has.
I'm already thinking about what I might post the next few days without complementary photos, yet, I have a lot of photos of earlier projects and stories behind the quilts and the people I gave them to. I might even find the other camera.
A couple of decades ago when I was a drama-queen-in-training, I decided to go through one of my favorite books and underline the number of times the word "Hope" was used. Red lines were everywhere in it and then I realized that must be why I love the book so much. Hopelessness is simply not a healthy way of life. The story line plot in the book takes the protagonist to very dark places and yet the mission is clear. Do the deed no matter what tries to stop you. Keep going until you can't take one more step, and then get up and do it. I do like that book.
