In These Fast Paced Everydays by Estrella Azul (FreeSpace #2)

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In these fast-paced everydays, also think of…

 by Estrella Azul

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It is considered a virtue to love the people around us, but self love should also be considered a virtue. All the more because we ourselves are the objects of our own feelings, thoughts and attitude.

Treasuring ourselves, treating the self with care, respect, looking inside to gain self knowledge is all interdependent. The more we treasure ourselves, the more we will treasure others. So, we should love ourselves enough to do the things we love, too.

During our “left over” 8 hrs, are we going where our heart leads us? If we follow that lead, what would we be doing, who would we be with, what would we be eating, how would we be helping, creating, living, loving, learning?

After answering honestly and realistically (I’d love to travel to Paris and spend every afternoon there crisscrossing the Seine, but that isn’t possible), we should follow through with practical “gifts” to the self to express self love.

What will make the self happy? Would we be in the park, would we be walking around aimlessly in town looking at the buildings and our surroundings through a tourist’s eyes? Would we be with a dear friend, an old acquaintance catching up on each other’s lives, or simply alone trying out that new restaurant we’ve wanted to try ever since it opened two months ago, ordering Baby Spinach, Mandarin and Red Onion salad? Would we be helping out in a soup kitchen, creating written/doodled/photographed art? Would we be living truer to who we are, loving those we met ten or twenty years ago and never openly admitted to our feelings? Would we be learning new skills in a class or simply through reading anything and everything we can get our hands on?

As a closing, I’ll leave you with the following thoughts. Back in March 2013, I wrote someone a letter. After I finished and reread my thoughts, I realized I might as well have addressed it to myself.

“Dear Self,

I know how acutely the sadness of life can be felt. I’ve felt it. I feel it myself. It has the ability to numb one’s mind, to keep one from moving along. It makes one cry themselves to sleep.

But we have to get out from there. Walk out and follow our own yellow brick road leading us to where we should be: in the present. I think that is where Dorothy was heading. From a place of sadness, through the world of her perceptions, imagination and dreams. Into the present.

Where wonderful things can happen if we allow them to unfold. We have to wake up to being right where we are supposed to be.

There truly is no place like home; the home provided by leaving behind worries of the past and future!

Love,

~E.A.”

Go on, write a love letter to yourself. Then follow your own yellow brick road, your heart’s advice, and give yourself a “gift” of self love.

 

Estrella Azul

Estrella Azul is a writer, passionate about reading, floral art and photography, with an artistic personality and a soulful outlook on life, who shadows well. Estrella shares with her readers some of her thoughts and daily happenings, along with her creative writing on Life’s a stage – WebBlog©.

https://twitter.com/EstrellaAzul

You can find Estella’s Weekend Showcase here and her last FreeSpace here.

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Estrella’s third FreeSpace will be on Monday 19th May, and tomorrow you can catch up with what’s afoot with an ArtiPeeps Update tomorrow.  As always, thank you for your interest. 

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*FreeSpace offers 3 post slots on ArtiPeeps to any creative or group. They can be taken in a cluster or over a period of months for showcasing, projects (encouraged) or self expression. If you’re interested in FreeSpace do get in touch via the reply box on this post or the contact form on the What’s On page. 

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14 poets, 15 artists, 1 Contemporary reworking of Ovid’s Metamorphoses

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A Glance Under the Surface by Estrella Azul (FreeSpace #1)

A Glance Under the Surface

 by Estrella Azul

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As the house quieted down, the kids’ giggles muffling into soft whispers and then peacefully slipping off to dreamland, she swept through the rooms trying to tidy up their lives just before bed.

Reaching the kitchen she paused in front of the fridge, its door full of notes, drawings and haphazardly jotted down gems her kids have said over the years.

A couple of them stood out from the rest. She smiled as she read them once more.

Her little boy was upfront and unafraid.

“Thank you for the amazing water pistol bday present. I will have a lot of laughs using it.”

What the note didn’t explain was the hours and hours of fun he had had squirting water at her and his sister when ever she was researching something. She recalled her desperate attempts of getting the laptop out of harms way.

Her sweet little girl was full of great advice.

“If the sweater I got from Santa fits, I will love you for eternity.”

Behind these words hid the resolve to make her mom buy the sweater for her in every color as she refused to wear anything else for the following two months.

Thinking about these sweet episodes, she cleared the table, turned her laptop on, opened a new Word document and started typing next week’s article for her weekly column:

“For those of you who recently got a seemingly sweet card from your family on a Hallmark-created holiday that looks and feels authentic? Look under the surface. It’s what you can’t see at first sight that will really trip you up if you’re not careful…”

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Estrella Azul

Estrella Azul is a writer, passionate about reading, floral art and photography, with an artistic personality and a soulful outlook on life, who shadows well. Estrella shares with her readers some of her thoughts and daily happenings, along with her creative writing on Life’s a stage – WebBlog©.

https://twitter.com/EstrellaAzul

You can find Estella’s Weekend Showcase here

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Estrella’s second FreeSpace will be on Tuesday 29th of April, and tomorrow you can catch up with poet Lauren Coulson’s 3rd residency poem. If you missed the first two you can find them here and here.

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*FreeSpace offers 3 post slots on ArtiPeeps to any creative or group. They can be taken in a cluster or over a period of months for showcasing, projects (encouraged) or self expression. If you’re interested in FreeSpace do get in touch via the reply box on this post or the contact form on the What’s On page. 

Weekend Showcase: James Giddings (Writer and Poet)

Every Friday, 1 artist/poet/writer, letting 1 piece of their work speak for itself.

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Featuring

James Giddings

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Crane

by James Giddings

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I remember how you started with just a simple square: four sides, each of equal length, plain white like our tablecloth. I hold it now in my hand, the wings still strong from the tight creases you folded; the small tear still there at the neck from when I pulled it taught by its beak and tail.                                                                                          It was beautiful how you worked: the precise measurements you made with your eyes, the flat of your hand ironing each fold into place, then your nimble fingers manipulating the paper like clay until it was crane.                                    ….. I drop it out the window sometimes and watch it fall. It reminds me of you; your white dress flapping in the wind, arms spread out like wings ready to welcome the ground.                                   …..I’m still amazed when I walk downstairs, open the door and step outside to collect it; amazed at how it can fall so gracefully from such a height and land unscathed, completely intact.

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Biography: 

 

James is 22 and is currently studying his MA Writing at Sheffield Hallam University where he has been awarded a studentship from the AHRC. He has been published by Myths of the Near Future, Kumquat Poetry and Crooked, among others. His grandfather invented the peppermint, and he is living off of the royalties; sometimes James makes things up to sound slicker than he really is.

https://jamesgiddings.jux.com/

https://twitter.com/giddingstweets

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Do get in touch via the Comment box or @ArtiPeep if you would like to be showcased. You’d be more than welcome!

 

Weekend Showcase: Estrella Azul (Writer)

Every Friday, 1 artist/poet/writer, letting their work speak for itself.

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Featuring

Estrella Azul

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‘In the past, people have described me as pensive. As proof of that, and of how my mind works, below is this little slice of life flash fiction piece which came to life as I was thinking of writers, of bloggers and their blogs, and of how short-lived some blogs are or how quickly they disappear without a trace leaving us wondering what might have happened to their owners’.

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Please find below the text from Estrella’s flash image

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The Closet of Dreams

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She sat under a window and let her words flow:

I should probably say something explain or reason.

The closet is empty. Closed most likely forever.

It may return, in a different form. It does not even know itself ‘if’ or ‘when’.

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Things are good acting on life’s stage, moving furniture.

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Life’s more beautiful in reality, the writing seems to flow better in private.

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Wishing for you growth dear ones,

live, love and only come across wellness on your paths.

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Have a golden Autumn!

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Writer’s Biography: 

Estrella Azul is a writer, passionate about reading, floral art and photography, with an artistic personality and a soulful outlook on life, who shadows well. Estrella shares with her readers some of her thoughts and daily happenings, along with her creative writing on Life’s a stage – WebBlog©.

https://twitter.com/EstrellaAzul

 

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Do get in touch via the Comment box or @ArtiPeep if you would like to be showcased. You’d be welcomed!

 

Two Strands: ArtiPeeps Mini-Relaunch

Well, as from tomorrow until the end of the year ArtiPeeps is back with gusto. We are now entirely driven by multi-form collaborations and Individual Showcasing (the two strands) It’s a real treat to say that over the next 3 months…

• We’ve got 12 weekend showcases * lined up featuring a real gamut of emerging and established creatives and forms every Friday (see below).

        *Weekend Showcase Initiative (Every Friday, 1 Creative, 1 Piece of Work, letting their work speak for itself)

• We’ve got 1  FreeSpace* creatives ( Michael Schmidt, Nat Hall & Lili Morgan, Shannon Pardoe, Eliot Winters, Holly Gibson and one of our lovely Transformers Karin Heyer) and 1 FreeSpace Group (Space2Create)

          *FreeSpace Initiative (3 consecutive slots for further showcasing or projects).

• There are also two mid-sized collaborations under our new strand ‘Supporting Mental Health’ ( part of ‘Creatives Making A Difference’):  The first collaboration bringing together 4 artists and 4 poets  examining the dynamics of fear and trust and the other collaboration (involving 3 poets, 2 artists and 1 photographer) on light, comfort and re-assurance. In each case poets, artists and photographers will be  working alongside each other on the themes.

The two collaborations above highlight one of the major threads of ArtiPeeps’ intention which we’re letting sit under the banner of ‘Supporting Mental Health’. The artwork and texts created in these two collaborations, alongside   ‘The Recovery Project’ will form an ongoing artistic and therapeutic resource for people in need and also provide an innovative access point from which people can engage with difficult psychological themes and issues. This I’m hoping to call  ‘ Comfort Zone’.  (This, I hasten to add at this point,  is very much a work in progress). And I also have in mind that these collaborations could be grouped together as external exhibitions , to increase public awareness.

I’d be very grateful for any feedback on these two collaborations. What you liked about them? If they helped? How valuable you think this strand is?

And….importantly

we are introducing our  Writer in Residence for October (Visitor Peep)  emerging writer and poet Lydia Allison. We’re thrilled to have her with us over the next month. Indeed, we have built a whole multi-form Halloween-style collaboration around 4 great poems of Lydia’s which focus on  a particular interest of her’s- notions of deformity. You’ll hear more about that tomorrow!

And here’s where our third collaboration comes in….because October leads up to Halloween 4 great artists are not only providing illustrations for each of Lydia’s  poems but also collaboratively creating a monster together. At Halloween you’ll be able to see the ghastly, terrifying  collaborative Monster they’ve shaped together and a new piece of writing by Lydia too.  We’ve also got a spanking new piece of Flash fiction with a Halloween theme coming out from emerging writer Jessica Cooke which we’re also very excited about which will pave the way to the Monster. 

We’ve also got ArtiPeeps’ 2nd Artist in Residence returning (Lydia’s predecessor) lovely neon artist Lili Morgan and her neons . Her monthly journal is back until the end of the year.  It will be a delight to have her neons and spirit back on show. And there will be the steady heartbeat of Transformations poems passing through too on a weekly basis.  All is well.

So over the next 3 months well over 30 wonderful creatives will have been individually showcased and have connected and collaborated together – making a difference and  creating new artworks and literary pieces whilst showcasing their talent and artistry. That’s the idea anyway.

I did a bit of calculating last week and I’m proud to say that since last May over 100 creatives have taken up ArtiPeeps’ opportunities. I know that’s probably small fare compared to some organisations, but it is a lovely firm foundation from which to grow.  It is my every intention to continue and develop these opportunitives further and provide concrete oulets like ‘Transformations’ our 2014 large scale art/poetry exhibition on a regular basis. Now we have found a home in the form of Hanse House for our events this can happen.

You’re feedback and support is much valued,  particularly in relation to this new strand. – So do come back both physically and with your comments and ideas. There’s lots on,  and much quality and talent.

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The other Creatives and there work featured over the next 3 months will be  as follows:

Monster: 

Gary Caldwell (Illustrator & Artist)

Diana Proubst (Artist)

Amanda Santos (Artist)

Sara Mena (Artist)

Fear/ Trust

Ryan Atkins (Artist) Richard Biddle (Poet)

Rob Fitzmaurcice (Artist) Robin Sounder (Poet)

Mat JimDog (Artist) Tom Murphy (Poet)

Ray Bentley (Artist) Melissa Diem (Poet)

Comfort and Reassurance

Hugo Smith (Artist) Lenka Monk (Poet)

Ken Fasimpaur (Artist) Lauren Caulson (Poet)

Atalina Marie Homan (Artist) Candice Buchanon (Poet)

Weekend Showcase:

Heather Mary Burns (Artist)

Eliot Winters (Writer and poet)

Em (poet)

Estrella Azul (Writer)

John Austin Brooks (poet)

Jenny Bailey (Writer)

Tony Adams (Photographer)

Mina Polen (Poet)

Virginia Clarke (Artist)

James Gidding (Writer)

Anil Godigamuwe (Poet)

Jeremy Mosley (Photographer)

And maybe more….

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We hope you enjoy the diversity, talent, quality and creativity.

All the very best.

Nicky

P.S. Today, I’m going to be hopefully inaugurating an ArtiPeeps online calendar on the ‘What’s On’  Page so you can see ‘what’s occurring’ throughout the month more easily.

Flash Fortnightly #21

My name is Laura Besley and I’m an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Over the years I’ve met thousands of students of all ages from many different countries in the world. This job really suits me as I love meeting people and learning about different languages and cultures. After working in England for a couple of years, I moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, where I taught Business English for two years and now I’m living in Hong Kong. This small pocket of Asia is a perfect blend of East meets West and is rich in colour, noise and inspiration.

That brings me nicely onto writing. I’ve been writing on and off since childhood and did my degree in English Literature and Film Studies. When I was in Germany I started writing a bit more regularly and in Hong Kong I’ve really had the time to dedicate to my writing. In 2011 I joined the Hong Kong Writers Circle and a critique group which allowed me to start looking at my work with a more critical eye. On 4th May 2012 I embarked on a project to write one piece of flash fiction a day. I’ve always seen myself as a novelist, but actually I’ve found that I really love writing short pieces as it gives you plenty of room to experiment with style, voice, characters and settings. And each day I can write something new.

I hope you enjoy this last ‘Flash Fortnightly’ entry. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Artipeeps for their support and I wish them all the best for the future. Also, many thanks to all of you who have read, liked and commented on my pieces; it means a great deal.

A HUGE  ‘thank you’ Laura, for all your great flashes over the past months. I have appreciated your writing, your care and your conscientiousness enormously, and I look forward to working with you in other collaborative ways in the future. 

Like Laura, I’d also like to thank all the readers of ‘Flash Fortnightly’ and I hope you all will continue to follow what we’re up to on ArtiPeeps as we move forward and develop.

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Sugar Rush

Maisie looked at the floor. “Good evening everyone.”

“Try to look up, dear,” a voice said from the back. “Let’s see your face.”

Maisie’s large brown eyes moved slowly from the black and white floor tiles, to the rows of shoes. They were black and brown, made of leather or suede. Not flat turquoise plastic pumps like hers. She looked at trousers, skirts, tights in different shades of black, grey and blue. Not like her pink and purple striped tights under a light denim skirt. Torsos were clothed in shirts, jumpers and jackets, all plain. Not like her off the shoulder white t-shirt with a print of Marilyn Monroe on it. She searched the faces for something that looked familiar, something that she could relate to. Something, anything. One man had thick tortoiseshell glasses on and looked like an architect. One of the women had such pinched lips she looked as if she was sucking on a lemon. But she was wearing a fabulous shade of plum lipstick.

A smile danced on Maisie’s lips and she focused on the rich lipstick. “Good evening everyone. My name’s Maisie and I’m an addict.”

Laura Besley

If you’d like to check out more of my writing, flash fiction and non-fiction, check out my  blog: Living Loving and Writing. Or you can follow me on twitter @laurabesley or connect on facebook Laura Besley Writer

Flash Fortnightly #20

 Welcome to Flash Fortnightly!

My name is Laura Besley and I’m an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Over the years I’ve met thousands of students of all ages from many different countries in the world. This job really suits me as I love meeting people and learning about different languages and cultures. After working in England for a couple of years, I moved to Düsseldorf, Germany, where I taught Business English for two years and now I’m living in Hong Kong. This small pocket of Asia is a perfect blend of East meets West and is rich in colour, noise and inspiration.

That brings me nicely onto writing. I’ve been writing on and off since childhood and did my degree in English Literature and Film Studies. When I was in Germany I started writing a bit more regularly and in Hong Kong I’ve really had the time to dedicate to my writing. In 2011 I joined the Hong Kong Writers Circle and a critique group which allowed me to start looking at my work with a more critical eye. On 4th May 2012 I embarked on a project to write one piece of flash fiction a day. I’ve always seen myself as a novelist, but actually I’ve found that I really love writing short pieces as it gives you plenty of room to experiment with style, voice, characters and settings. And each day I can write something new.

I hope you enjoy this ‘Flash Fortnightly’ entry and I’ll be back on Wednesday 21st August 2013 for the last Flash Fortnightly…

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A Casual Drink

“Give me another, will you Jim?”

“Sure thing.”

Matt threw back his shot of whiskey and reached for the freshly pulled pint before the liquid had had a chance to warm his throat, let alone his stomach.

“You okay there buddy?” A hand clamped down on his shoulder and then a face appeared. A face he recognised, but couldn’t place. He sat down next to him and ordered a dark ale. “You look like you’ve settled in for the night.”

“That’s about right.” Could he be a regular? No.

“Don’t usually see you here on a Wednesday. You know tonight’s-”

That was it. Wednesday was fucking-

“-quiz night? Are you joining in?”

“Don’t think so mate.” This was the god-awful compere, Dick. Dick fucking Tracey. No-one actually knew if it was his real name or not.

“That’s a shame.” He picked up his pint and shuffled off the high bar stool. “We’re starting in ten minutes.” And he walked off to a table near the back.

“I’d best get off as well,” Matt said to Jim. “Can I settle up?”

“Course.”

“How do you put up with that crap every week?” he said, handing over several notes.

“With difficulty.” Jim laughed. “But I do learn a thing or two at the same time.”

Matt sighed. “Lucky you.”

“Hey, you sure you’re ok?” Jim leant on the bar.

“Rosie’s pregnant again and it’s rubbish timing. She was gonna go back to work full-time now that Stacey’s at school and we were gonna save up to buy a bigger place. Now we won’t be able to. More bods and even less space.”

Jim stopped polishing the glass he was holding in his hand. “Man, I don’t know what to say.”

“I know. It’s lousy. I’m happy, really I am. It’s just crap timing.”

“Sure thing.”

Matt stuffed his wallet in his back pocket. “Night, Jim.”

“Night. Say hi to Rosie for me.”

“Will do.”

Laura Besley

If you’d like to check out more of my writing, flash fiction and non-fiction, check out my  blog: Living Loving and Writing. Or you can follow me on twitter @laurabesley or connect on facebook Laura Besley Writer

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