I stopped drinking coffee more than 15 months ago, but I still dream about it. I still feel its tempting scent and still imagine its full and bitter taste. If you ask what is black hell and great heaven at the same time, my clear answer is coffee!
To feed my watercolor practice while satisfying the virtual coffee addiction, I tried to paint it. Staying home due to the virus becomes more bearable.
Hope you are doing well. Happy Holidays!
Love, Ivana
As I have already mentioned in the article Seasonal clock, I work with four elements on many levels. It keeps me fascinating how several basic principles can be applied to something such complex as life.
Speaking of the 4-element system, the players are fire, air, water and earth. Each of them has its own spirit and each of them is needed. If we learn how to identify them in our lives, we can find a way how to reach balance more easily.
Although many say that water is the main player and without water it would not be life, I will start with the fire because only the fire warms the water to the temperature suitable for living. And this is also a nice example how the elements affect each other and cannot even exist separately.
The fire is the first spark of life and the feeling we are still alive. It is a small flame that may become a torch. Depending on conditions and our will, the torch brings the light and heat as long as we feed it. To keep the fire we need to supply oxygen (the element of air) and fuel, for example wood (the element of earth). On the advanced level, we also need to make the fire safe, having some shelter for it. And this belongs to the earth as well.
The fire represents everything that warms or burns or what brings the light. The fire means interest, curiosity, joy, laugh, activity, competition, excitement, passion, enthusiasm, etc. For simplicity I would call interest as the core of the others. People like the fire, being attracted to it by invisible forces, but they are also afraid of being burned. Then they build the shelters in the name of safety, too tight for life. And then, they complain that there is not enough joy or success in their lives. Or that they miss the sense (light) in their lives.
How to solve it? Anything that arouses your even small interest is a flame whose future you have in your hands. Is there enough oxygen and suitable fuel for it? Which kind of oxygen and fuel is needed for your particular case of interest? And are you willing to feed it? Then just try! No fire is dangerous from the very beginning. And only when you taste and like the first fruits it’s the time to think about the shelter, no earlier. So you avoid many disappointments and energy losses.
The fire itself isn’t positive or negative, it is neutral or better to say natural force whose priority is to shine and warm. No good or evil inside. It is our will and experience which make the fire either a tool or a weapon. Trying to separate from the fire means the same like to separate from the life, dying alive. It is only fair to accept it, just as the fact that accidents happen.
Finally, I must say that having a lack of fire is just as dangerous as having it too much. Imagine how difficult is to keep living in desert, how much suffering it costs. So if you don’t balance the fire of your excitement and desire, your life may turn to desert. In my case, I tend to be too enthusiastic sometimes and forget to eat, drink and even go to toilet. The subject of my deep interest can claim the fire so urgently that simply switches other requirements off, including basic biological functions. So I know that I have to be careful because all kind of addictions work on the same principle.
What to do? If you have too much fire inside, find a way to let it out. It is better to diversify methods and make regular breaks across your activities. Never hold the fire back! You would create a volcano with uncertain date of explosion.
I will bring the fire topic throughout the other elements again, speaking about their mutual influence.
Looking forward to your questions and comments,
Ivana
As many of you have predicted, I am starting to suffer from a slight addiction of knitting socks. I watch myself robbing time from other activities (including writing and reading here) just to save it for knitting. Please tell me that the craziness will end as suddenly as it started!
The problem is that I am still discovering what to improve, so I have to knit more and more socks to apply it. And I like my knitting developments.
At the moment I am working on the first pair of socks for somebody else, so I put extra attention on it. Naturally, I wish to succeed but on the other hand I do not wish to create a geometric range of new socks requirements and support my knitting addiction.
I hope to keep my balance and cool head!
Ivana
vikaherbs 