Stolen from mskat and serenada

[arliss]

Three things that scare me
1. deliberate cruelty
2. loudness
3. crowds

Three things I don't understand
1. deliberate cruelty
2. the need to be in the midst of people
3. reality shows

Three things I am wearing right now
1. Henley from the embroidery place I worked a week
2. Knockoff Birkenstocks
3. cheap beaded bracelets

Three things on my desk
1. Planner
2. Stealth altar
3. Snoopy snowglobe--"It was a dark and stormy night"

Three things I want to do before I die
1. Travel & meet people I only know by correspondence or online
2. Goal weight
3. Back in shape for trekking

Three ways to describe my personality
1. Introverted
2. Bawdy
3. Sentimental

Three bad things about my personality
1. Pissiness with extraverts
2. Tendency toward wallflowerness
3. Occasional martyr issues

Three good things about my personality
1. Compassion
2. Toughness
3. Being able to see both sides of an issue

Parts of my heritage
(I have no idea of my ethnic heritage, so I'm listing things I've accrued)
1. Deep appreciation for open land and solitude
2. An understanding of the ties--and the bindings--of family
3. The emotional security to explore outside my immediate surroundings

Three places I want to go to
1. Italy--countryside, all regions, all cities
2. France--the same
3. Iceland

Three nicknames I had/have
1. Wendy
2. Bevvie
3. Natasha

Three screen names I had/have
1. Beverly
2. Arliss

Three people I miss
1. Dad
2. Aunt Juanita
3. Paula

Comments

[jesseh.livejournal.com]

I'd like to know more about "stealth altar," if you want to share it.

[mskat.livejournal.com]

Me too! It sounds like something I could totally fall in love with creating.

[fufaraw]

Ooh, your icon's so pretty!

This one (I have several scattered around my house) is a tin tray, about 6x9 inches, painted with flowers. There's a small pottery goddess figure with a pretty pebble in her lap, a small candle in a flowered ceramic holder, a frosted glass tea light holder, a tiny owl figurine (Wade pottery, free in boxes of Rose tea a year or two ago), and a little glass vial that holds a found bluejay feather--or can hold water and a single flower.

Another has a bit of driftwood, a shell or two, and a found gull feather. Or a rock with a fern fossil, a tiny photo frame with a dear face cut from a snapshot, seed pods or acorns in season. Rocks in a tiny tabletop fountain. Pebbles, m&m's, seasonal Peeps, ticket stubs to an event or a show--anything that means something to me. I arrange it so it appears as "decor," but I know what meaning the items, or their combinations, have for me. If you're doing it by "stealth" because of other people's observation and opinion, I'd keep it simple. Also, I change it up fairly frequently to keep it fresh, add things, subtract, rearrange. The act of arranging is part of the Zen of it--like raking around the rocks in a sand tray.

[jesseh.livejournal.com]

That is very cool. Thanks.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

Okay, that sort of sounds like my desk. I have a crystal swoopy clock, a lucky bamboo on one side, a dish garden on the other, my Wild Things picture, three chinese carved figurines: wisdom, age and wealth, micro-machine cars, the drum and candles. It makes me feel serene to look at them all.

If you'd like a themed journal, I'd be glad to design one for you. Interested?

[fufaraw]

Can I do it with an unpaid account? Cheapity--or cheapishness, if you prefer--is why I have only (the) three icons (you made for me!). Unpaid has served me well enough till now, but if I can do unpaid AND pretty, well, why not?

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

Yes, you can. The only thing I can't do with an unpaid account that I already do with a paid one is the see-through components thing, and the number of icons. I'll take this to e-mail. *g*

[fufaraw]

Your desk sounds like a household altar, all right. There are some good books about household altars you might want to find at the library. Denise Linn's Altars: Bringing Sacred Shrines into Your Everyday Life has gorgeous photographs (old Pepsi crates, tabletops, windowsills, garden paths) and a bit on Feng Shui. Peg Streep's Altars Made Easy: A Complete Guide to Creating Your Own Sacred Space is probably where I'd start, though. She has drawings of casual, fluid, spontaneous altars, a lot of practical recommendations, and a section on symbolism. Linn's Sacred Space is a bit more involved, and I haven't read much of it yet. I really like the idea of impromptu altars, not necessarily consecrated to any entity, just a collection of symbolic or representative items that are personally evocative. The arrangement and tending of such displays provide a certain type of meditation and contemplation for me.

A friend used to make "sand trays" as part of her therapy. She collected tiny items to symbolise people, objects and events in her life, and arranged them to work through past traumas, or to visualise a future course of action and a hoped-for outcome. The tray was a microcosm of her world that she could manipulate and control. I think my little altars serve a similar purpose for me.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

The sand trays sound wonderful. I had one until Kara found it. All that's left is the little rake. I've requested both books from the library. We'll see which one shows up. I love the sound of them. That's completely my decorating style.

My dining room windows have an eclectic bunch of cool things, journals lined up on the bottom with a hosta plant, a drawing figure, a teapot, a carven seal, things like that in one window, a miniature tea set and flower candle holder above, an aloe plant and some of Greg's books below in the other one.

I decorate like this everywhere in the house. It makes me feel good. I didn't know there was a name for it, though I know it makes my husband a little bit weirded that he can't use every available space for books.

[fufaraw]

I've always done this, until the last five or six years, when the cumulative psychic weight of all these treasures overcame my delight in them. So thickly clustered the eye couldn't single out individual pieces, or make a cohesive whole of a grouping of items. So I started giving things away. To a relative who'd always admired the paperweight, the neighbor's daughter who collected colored bottles. I culled ruthlessly through things which had lost their meaning, and donated some to yard sales, resale shops, Goodwill. Things I found I still loved I put away, out of sight, until months or even years later, pulling them from their storage places held a sense of joy and rediscovery. If a thing didn't spark after a long period in the dark, it was given away. And now I do clusters of objects, small places for the eye to light, with expanses of open breathing space between.

Well, that's the intention, and the ultimate goal. There's still far too much meaningless clutter, but it is ebbing.

[serasempre.livejournal.com]

I e-mailed greg and demanded the books. He brought me the Linn, a book called a book of women's alters by cunningham and geddes, and sacred time and the search for meaning by Gary Eberle.

I've got to get busy!

Oh, and I meant to tell you, you deserve far more than the piddly bit I've done here. I hope, though, that it makes you happy.