Adele's Big Adventure

My sister, Adele, came down from Indiana for a visit. From what I gather she is on a solitary sojourn. In times past our relationship has been rocky. I think we have received restoration.

She climbed Pinnacle Mountain and took this picture of the Arkansas River and sent it to me. It calls to mind Psalm 23; "...He causes me to lie down in green pastures and leads me to still and restful waters." She weathered a storm in her van and her tent got blown down. I guess that's how life can be. Usually things are pretty quiet, but inevitably there will be storms to weather.

Psalm 23 goes on to say, "...He restores my soul." That is the true restoration and the restoration that is my line of work. One time my soul was broken and I sojourned for sixteen, lonely years. My true testimony is that when I look back and reflect on what I went through those years I must say my soul was restored. I knew the worst was passed when I experienced a vision of Jesus showing me a scene like Adele's picture from Pinnacle. I realized I was in green pastures by the still and restful waters all along. I felt that spiritual exhilaration of the vision. "Lord, I believe!" is what I exclaimed. However that spiritual high was immediately tempered by Jesus' answer to me. In the vision he said, "Do you love me? If you love me you will feed my sheep."

There is nothing so private as that conversation. With that belief came the realization that my conscience alone judges whether I am faithful or not faithful. I am held to the law of love of my own self. Yet in this there is great joy and freedom. This is the secret, that thoughts become things. Often overlooked in organized religion is the great reward for dwelling on thoughts of a positive nature and excluding the worthless negatives. I don't see why people are so afraid of Jesus. He expressed this great truth in all he said and did. He said, "Do unto others..." Make every deal a good deal and become rich in all things. Be generous. Think of the good you would have in life as you can only have all the good of this life with a positive mind set and by doing for others.

People who know nothing of Jesus can live the law of love. This law is like the laws of physics, yet greater than the laws of physics. The law of love is power, power meant to be applied. Like the laws of physics, there is cause and effect. Unlike the powers in nature, the law of love cannot be applied for harm. "...love never fails."

Dreams of a Lifetime

One summer, several years ago, I was up at Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Dave's floating sheetrock in their new addition. In the evenings after supper we sat in the cool, tile floored den under the fans. Uncle Dave always had a movie picked out for us to watch. I am sad to say Uncle Dave is gone now and missed. He is remembered by all who knew him as ever cheerful. Uncle Dave was a hard working man with a happy soul which inspired me to be upbeat and to love my work. I cherish the memory of every minute of the time I spent up there with them working on their house. They were awfully good to me. From the time I was a kid, some part of their house was under construction. It seemed awfully ironic that when Uncle Dave died, he had to be interred in a temporary crypt until construction of the mausoleum they had purchased was completed. I think it is a "Condo of Eternal Rest" sort of thing. I think he would have seen the humor in it.

Aunt Rosemary has a large yard and I think she still puts in her garden. She has the whole place nicely landscaped. She has several real nice landscape picture books and I used to thumb through them on those warm summer evenings while digesting her fabulous cooking. I dreamed of having myself a yard to keep. Of all the books' usual pictures; the beautiful, flowering gardens and the acres of lush, green lawn, and of all the essays, of shrubs and trees and flowers and grasses and garden pests, the article that stuck was the one about development of a landscape plan.

I remember a particular author suggested a set of simple, colorful drawings to lead to a comprehensive, overall plan. The first drawing was of the existing area. Orientation of the sun, types and variety of the existing plants and overall lay of the land are noted there. After a discussion of the existing situation, the author leads you to another drawing of a construction plan where specific construction details, like walks or gates are shown. Lastly, a drawing of the finished landscape plan.

Based on the landscape design book I perused years ago, I produced the two drawings of this post. I found a glass shelf in the bathroom that was large enough and taped the black and white photo I printed to it. Then I taped a sheet of drawing paper over that. I sat in a chair with the glass pane on my knees and with a lamp between my feet and traced the outline. Simple and direct, huh? For the scale drawing I measured everything and drew it in on graph paper with each square representing 2'.

This method of blending the real and the imagined came together for me with relative ease. The hard part in this endeavor, and maybe any endeavor, is for Becky and me to sit down, imagine our desired garden, then put it on paper. For some reason there is always resistance to taking action. After all these years a big, deeply held dream dances in front of me. So why the hesitation? Maybe it is just plain laziness. Once the dream is given life on paper, the great universal power energizes matter and energy and starts to make the dream real.

I've been told that the great secret in life is that thought becomes things. Some great universal power energizes the deeply held thoughts which are believed and they begin to become real. That I am sitting at this computer blogging about our yard is this law of attraction at work for me. I sat alone in the dark for sixteen years, sighing and crying, dreaming this dream. Lo and behold my dream came to life. What was I crying about? I can't remember.

Maple Street Townhomes Update

Out with the old and in with the new; The Maple Street Townhomes are coming! These two pictures were taken from the same vantage on 5th street between Main and Maple, looking south. The top picture was taken last Sunday, April 13th. The bottom picture, I took this afternoon, April 15th. In the foreground is the man demolishing the old house that stood on the site. In the distance is the first Maple Street Townhome rising on that site. Way back there are the buildings of downtown Little Rock. As you can see this project is on the fast track.

I am all for this development. While I know for sure there are plenty of people who think this is folly, I also know for sure from my experience providing painting services for all types of people that this project would not now be arising if there existed no demand. You can link to this project's web site through my link to the Argenta Blog. I hear four units have been sold so far.

People from many demographics will be attracted here, but where I've seen the need is with the folks in transition from a large life in a large home, to a place like these. Out in the Suburbs there are several Townhome and Patio home communities, and for people with the need and the means, the choices are limited. A good real estate agent could probably show a client the available properties in a couple of days. What I heard a few years back when I did a lot of work in this demographic, was that they wished there were places like this closer to town. Well here they are, Pilgrim.These properties fill a specific niche. The empty-nesters may well find what they are looking for here, for those decades they still have, prior to moving into the more secure retirement centers.

The Townhomes should be good investments. They will be very well built. The price per square foot are not out of line with comparable units elsewhere, and, this is speculative, they should appreciate at a more favorable rate than in the suburbs on account of the location. Some of the best dining and entertainment anywhere in town are within easy walking distance or pleasant trolley ride from their front doors. The way to the airport is short and easy as well. This place is exciting and this neighborhood was here long before the suburbs, so it is well aged, like a fine wine. Cheers!

Unseen Wind

In mid life, Becky and I have come together again. Then, in High School as now, in mid life, Becky excites and attracts me still. We talk and we dream, we think about what would be great. We joined our separate lives into one, greater life. We cemented our bond in holy matrimony and here we are.

Becky has her mind and I have my mind. We have our mind. Our mind is greater than my mind or her mind. Some physicists have stated that thought is behind all combinations of matter and energy in some mysterious way. Albert Einstein wrote in one of his books that when he was a young arithmetician he searched for a fixed point on which to base equations. Instead he found the truth that in all of creation absolute rest is impossible. Life's a journey. There's no such thing as the status quo. Every particle of matter, every wave of energy is ever moving through space and time.

Middle age is a time of enlightenment. Because we journey we can look back on our youth. We can know the minds of today's youth. Sometimes this ability may tempt us to lament, "...If only I knew then what I now know..." Life is too short for long lamentations. We, like physicists, have the ability to create combinations of matter and energy in our minds. What we create with our minds are eventually made manifest in reality.

An unseen wind blows us all where our sails are set to take us. Becky and I have combined our minds and have set sail toward our dreams. Sometimes we sail under and over enormous waves. The wind roars and gathers the waters which rise to fearsome heights and crash to terrible depths. We are tossed to and fro like dolls. We are at our wits end. We get religion while the storm rages; we pray to survive. Then when the day dawns fresh and clear once again we remember our desired haven. Faith is restored. We are survivors and we are stronger. We acknowledge the power that brought us through as we make our way to safe harbor. We are thankful.

Filling in the Blanks

The scale drawing of our plot and house "footprint" at the top is my first drawing done for the purpose of improvement plans. So far, it remains blank. The middle and bottom drawings are, our architect neighbor, Tom's rendering of Becky's early ideas for our back yard. You may click on these drawings for a better view, if you wish. I came across these in my photo file. I wrote in an earlier post about Becky doing a simple drawing that led us to this house, it seems I have left off the follow through. I let the project out of my thoughts. Oddly, I find that some force has gently led me back to the beginning.

Give the thoughts concrete form and they begin to feel real. The law of attraction steps in with the miracle, the incomprehensible power of true transformation. Sit down and give concrete form to your thoughts and to your dreams every day. I give my thoughts expression in these ways. I write, I draw, I take pictures. In this blog I wrestle to sculpt my thoughts to my desire. My dreams and desires that pertain to the restoration of our house are given life in this blog. Thought becomes things and with a leap of faith I am creating a thing by first creating the thing in my thoughts by way of this media. I create for myself a new life to order as I create this new life in my mind and believe I have it presently.

My new life in this house means coming up with $433,000 to effect a complete restoration of this house, by my estimate. Old Bob the Painter was incapable of this achievement. Old Bob the Painter could hardly keep a leaky roof over his head or eat more than once a day. Old Bob the Painter struggled with all the bills and complications of the painting business. Old Bob the Painter was not happy. Don't be quick to ridicule or pity me, maybe you have impossible dreams, too?

Everyone applies the secret law of attraction that thoughts become things. I once was the sound and lighting "Guru" for an acoustic music venue held two Friday nights a month in a church. I would sit at my sound control table at the back of the performance hall dreaming about the show being on the radio. After about two years, someone from the public radio station, NPR, came along and made it happen. I think it still airs Saturday nights at 8:00. When I recall the happening I feel alive.

During the same time of my radio dreams I had a lot of negative thoughts and emotions on account of my allowing certain circumstances, the details of which I will spare you. In like form as the positive radio thoughts, I received negative fruits from my negative thinking. Attaining fifty years of age, my sons emancipated by reason of their ages, and most of all, uniting with my soul mate, my love, Becky, I have a clear understanding that I am not only privileged to create my life to order, but I also have the necessity to do so. I dispense with the negative, unhealthy thoughts, the source of negative circumstance and cultivate the positive impulses of desire, the source for positive circumstance. Unawares, I have applied the secret law of attraction negatively and positively and received either result accordingly.

The brain houses the most powerful force in the universe. The computer is the greatest tool brains have so far created. Rough, incomplete ideas can be refined into real gems. Thoughts and ideas are refined to remove impurities and compounded with sympathetic ideas easily on a computer. We, in our day, live with miracles all around.

The Imagination Sees Something and the Heart Quickens

We build up, we throw what was built, back down. Out of the ashes come ideas that change the world.

I fancy in my imagination how someone, many hundreds of centuries in the past, saw the broken shards of previous civilization, rising to the surface of the ground through the work of rain and nature's elements.

Maybe as this person passed to dump his refuse or to collect water he observed these shards over many years. One day in a flash of inspiration he realizes he may collect these shards and arrange them in an orderly fashion. Using his knowledge of lime putty he understands he may set these shard in a bed of clay which will harden and hold these pieces. He can take fine sand and mix it with powdery soil which will similarly harden and fill in the spaces between the pieces and clean it of with water. On that day humanity is given the art of mosaic tile.

The centuries pass, humanity grows, the next thing you know, you are in the home improvement store picking out tile for your bathroom.

The imagination can, in a flash, provide insights that can leap far into what cannot be learned with a lifetime of ordinary study. The imagination responds when exercised and made to produce insight.

BnB : A Toast !

When Becky and I got together and the sparks were flying, we were laying about in my apartment, dreaming. We were talking about what kind of house we would like to have. Becky could not adequately describe her dream house, so she took my work notebook and a pen and said, "Something like this...". "The front would look like this with something going on around the side." She drew the front of the house on the top half of the page. Then she said, "The inside would be like this, (SKETCH, SKETCH, SKETCH), with the kitchen in the back, the living room in the front... like this." This she did on the bottom half of the page. We studied her sketch and said, "Yeah, that would be nice."

We forgot about the sketch in the notebook and went on with life. After some weeks we actually began going to open houses, "...just to see". The idea of getting a house together grew on us and our search grew more definite. We enlisted the aid of, Joel, an agent with the real estate company that managed the apartment house where we both now resided. Excitement gradually turned to frustration and then to outright surrender of the idea. Over a period of several weeks we covered a large swath of town from the suburbs to downtown and nothing worked out. One Sunday afternoon after our tour of the open houses on our list, we just drove around talking and thinking that maybe getting a house was not the right thing. We wandered across the river in to Argenta, the last place on earth either of us ever thought we would live, due to it's reputation as "Dog Town".

It had been years since I had been there and Becky had not been there since High School days. I knew there was a restoration effort going on there as I had worked on one of the first Main Street restorations years earlier. We were stunned at how the neighborhood had turned around. We talked to a young couple with a baby in a stroller and they said the neighborhood was terrific. So we drove around and soon found ourselves out front of a neat, little Craftsman house that had been re-done. There was a little 'for sale by owner' sign tacked up above the porch. I had to twist Becky's arm to call the number as she was sure the house was beyond our price range. (It was.)

Long story, short, I came across her forgotten, little drawing sometime around the day she closed on the house. "Look!", I said. "Here is your drawing and see how it matches the house exactly!" We were stunned. I haven't been able to locate that drawing, it must have gotten mixed up in the move, but it is a piece of magic which is our touchstone when we need inspiration.

Last Sunday we were talking about our desire to enclose the back yard for Brody and the cats to play in. We would also like to have a more private and landscaped area when we cook out. Remembering the magic of the drawing, I took pictures of the back. We sat on the bed and I sketched in a rough idea of the back yard on the photos. Here it is. We believe that Becky's drawing and our mutual belief brought about the circumstances that have us living in our dream house. It's silly, but dreams do come true. May your dreams come true for you!