Ellen Anne Eddy's Thread Magic Studio: Life in the Garden of Time

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Life in the Garden of Time

8:32 AM |

Posted by Ellen Anne Eddy |

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All games are a metaphor for life. I think that's why we play them. They give us ups and downs, the wheel of chance, the successes we can celebrate, and what life never gives us, the reset button.

Lately I've been captured by a
Facebook game, Gardens of Time. My game choices are limited by several easy rules. It must, unlike Jungle Gems, be free. It must, unlike Angry Birds, not make me flinch. It can loop endlessly, like Fluffy, but it must offer achievable goals. As you can see, I've gone through most of them.

They surely are a way of turning off. Endless amounts of time get swallowed. Gardens of Time is a found object game. You win by finding lost and odd objects in unlikely spots. Then you build your own garden with all kinds of odd but necessary artifacts, buildings and decorations. Just like home. But it is, in a way, symbolic of my life.

First off, their housekeeping looks like mine. Yes I do have odd objects everywhere, including the banana peel on the couch. Sorry. I want to say the dogs do that, but some lies just aren't believable.

Secondly, you need to do thing over and over and over again, until you learn them. That's just reality. Everything worth doing is worth doing badly. You will do it badly until you do it well. So you might as well just do it.

Thirdly, you put in every silly thing they tell you to. After having filled in a quilt show entry, I can see how that relates.

Finally there are gifts people give each other.
At first I didn't get that. I think they didn't have it hooked up so you could see what the gift was and who it was from. So I sort of left them sitting around with the rest of the clutter.
Then I realized how much of my life is unclaimed gifts. The real gifts we get given, have no meaning if we don't claim them. I'm not talking about the lovely physical things we give each other over time and space. I'm talking about life gifts. A friend. A talent. A love. An opportunity. A chance. A space.

Within the spiral of life we go past these gifts like the golden ring on the merry-go-round.We may not even look up and see it.But there it is. If we don't reach for it, we cannot have, even though it's presented to us,time after time.

I can't help but wonder what I might accomplish if I walked away from my computer games an extra two hours a day. But my golden ring for today is that I'm going to find that out.
You'll find Gardens of Time on Facebook.
You'll also find the Ellen Anne Eddy Thread Magic Studio page there. Like it and you'll see what's happening in and out of my studio.

Labels: life as an artist, lifestyle, lunatic fringe

1 comments:

bohemiannie! art said...: Wow Ellen. It really is amazing when we start to realize who we really are and see all the gifts there for our taking. Your blog post is a gift to me today...so thanks a bunch! I've been through my Tetris, Jewelit (or some such name) and Solitaire phases so I know what you mean about time spent...but as I love to say...and you mentioned above...Just DO it!; August 24, 2011 at 11:36 AM