Inner Landscapes Blog

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

A collection dedicated to the spirit

of the feminine in each of us . . .

In the following nine posts you will be able to view my most recent show at Loomis Hall in Blaine WA. The exhibition opened on Mother’s Day weekend and will continue through the month of May. I included a written piece accompanying the paintings based on my impressions and experience. I hope you enjoy both the paintings and the writings . . .

To learn more about Loomis Hall . . .

http://loomishallgallery.com/index.php?page=gallery

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:41:00.001-07:00

. . . Uniqueness

It is true that not one of us is alike in all ways, and I find that to be a curious thing about life. Often we seek to normalize ourselves, thinking this is what is needed to truly belong to our human family. I had a lot of practice in attempting to be like everyone else until one day I made the decision to give up and be myself. I like this quote I picked up some time ago, author unknown . . . “Be yourself. Those who mind don’t matter and those who matter won’t mind.”

Living into awareness of ourselves is sometimes uncomfortable, always valuable. The journey of self-discovery takes more than simply breathing and going through the motions. It takes courage and tenacity to show up in your fullness no matter what anyone else has to say about it. This painting is a stark example of my commitment to be me and only me. I set out to paint and after one throw reeled myself back. It felt complete, finished, done. An essential part of the expression of my art is knowing when to stop. Can I really have the ‘audacity’ to claim this single, provocative throw as a finished painting? I do. I look at this piece and can’t imagine what else it could need. I call it “Essence,” for it is a visualization of that which is truly and purely, uniquely, just ME!

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

. . . Home

It seems to me that no matter our age, education, family, or geography, something we women share is a sense of home. We create home in our work, by giving our dwellings of all sorts a sense of haven and welcome. “Anam Cara” speaks to a deep expanded meaning of home. It’s a Celtic term for the spiritual belief in soul connection, and for me that’s what is at the heart of the concept of home . . . A concept that women seem to embody effortlessly whether they are single, married, rich or poor, young or old. I believe this is one of the wonderful gifts of the feminine.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:32:00.001-07:00

. . . Destiny

Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going? Big questions . . . big human questions asked of both women and men. Sitting in my living room in the early morning hours I often find myself looking up through the sky-lights into the dark sky just beginning to show the light of dawn. There with the blush of my dreams still present in my thoughts I have passed many hours pondering these big life questions . . . In the moments that rolled into minutes I would sense a common thread running in all and through all: all life, all time, all space.

The questions of our destiny here and beyond are something we women all share whether we are nursing our babies in the middle of the night or daydreaming out the window of a high rise in New York City . . . My “Immutable Perception,” in this visualization is a sense of the oneness of life here and beyond into the universe . . . A oneness that to my astonished and mystified heart and mind incorporates not only mine, but all of our thoughts, desires, dreams and actions . . . Amazing . . .

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:28:00.001-07:00

. . . Sacred Partnership

The spirit of the feminine is deeply rooted in the desire for meaningful relationship. Looking over the landscape of my life I see a highly textured, colorful, animated mosaic of unique individuals with whom I have a relationship. Whether casual as the bank teller, or intimate as a lifelong friend, child or spouse--they all play a part in the fabric of my existence.

My intimate partner is one of a handful of people that have great impact on me, the one with whom I share all aspects of life. Our partnership is both my haven and source of the stuff of life that gives me opportunity to grow and develop. Our commitment to each other involves working through all the challenges in life as a team . . . The kind of alliance that I consider sacred to my journey here and beyond life on this earth.

At it’s best, this partnership is a little like pair-skating . . . We are on the same ice, aligned with values and compatibility . . . We skate within easy range of each other, delighting in our individual creations . . . Coming together we share our individual contributions, creating a magnificent synergistic dance . . . We are fully functioning on our own,

marvelously enhanced by the other . . .

The paintings “Soundless,” and “Esprit” are visual representations of a pair that are similar and synergistic together, while individually unique and interesting.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

. . . Joy

I am pleased to say that my connection to art began in joy. As an adult I had a series of dreams that called me to paint. When I responded to this call, I had no expectation other than pure expression, very much like the child I once was, my small fingers holding on to chalk, crayons, finger-paints and clay. My brushes, pots of acrylic paint and canvas became my new field of delight.

I believe that where pure, inexpressible joy exists in our lives we can find a key into the heart of our deepest desire and life purpose. The journey into art brings me a meaty joy offering up a complex matrix of destiny in and beyond this life . . . That intense joy is compounded by an abiding delight lingering long beyond the creation of a painting. Today, I look at “Almost Candy” and still have only smiles.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:18:00.001-07:00

. . . Community of Women

After I came home from a retreat celebrating women several years back, I attempted to capture the spirit of those days in the high desert in the painting, “Sacred Circles.” Though we began as strangers, I marveled at how quickly we fell into laughter and easy conversation that opened up into heart-felt sharing as naturally as a rose opens it’s petals in the warmth of a summer day.

In time past women lived in the same household . . . Grandma baked while mother rocked the little girl in her arms and the older sibling studied her reader. Those days are gone, and the structure of modern life encourages a kind of isolation. What hasn’t left is our need for each other. We women share a common journey of the heart. I have suffered loss when I’ve isolated myself from the community of women and conversely have found rich reward in remembering and creating a space in my life for relationship with fellow female travelers.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Maid . Mother . Crone

This June I will turn 60. I find myself approaching this new trip around the sun with internal delight. I am sensing that with this birthday will come the opening of an entirely new chapter of my life, and I’m excited. I recognize and have much contact with me as a little girl. The ‘maid’ I once was in physical form is still vividly alive in the wonder and joy I experience in living. When one of my four children now grown to adulthood pulls into the driveway, I welcome them as a special kind of close friend. I treasure that friendship grown over the years of caring for baby ducklings together, washing sticky jelly faces, participating in snowball fights and engaging in lengthy talks when little hearts were wounded. What will the years ahead hold for me as I move toward the ‘crone,’ the wise woman I will become?

“Becoming” reveals the progression in the life of women, the movement toward a wholeness through embodying our totality . . . The ‘maid’ we once were, the ‘mother’ who has given birth to children, to her own identity, children, or to a thriving business . . . And then, the ‘crone,’ her fully realized feminine presence seasoned by the fully engaged life she has lived up to now.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T10:09:00.001-07:00

. . . The Caretakers

A quality I find almost universal with the feminine is the capacity to take care of others. I suspect I am not alone in excelling at this wonderful ability, and I shower it upon those I love. In the thick of the years of mothering small children I exercised my caretaking muscles vigorously and they were strong . . . And, I left someone out of the benefits of my labors--me. The paintings you see here reflect the feelings of losing contact with my personal vitality in service to my family. I forgot that I needed the same care I was giving to those I love.

It took time and courage to carve precious resources for myself in the face of the demands of family, and remains one of the most important choices of my life. Including myself in my own energetic budget gave me more authentic energy and joy. It was counter-intuitive at first . . . What on the outside looked like taking from my family actually gave them more. I learned that exercising my caretaking muscles for myself was far from selfish, it was the act of generosity for the good of all. “Color Drain,” “Acquiescence,” and “Where Did I Go?” serve as a reminder of this difficult and worthy lesson.

May Exhibition Honoring the Spirit of the Feminine

2010-05-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

. . .Balance

One of the dynamics of my life has been the dance of balance. This painting, “Dynamic Quiescence,” is a visual demonstration of my work with balancing my very strong right-brained ‘feminine’ energy with that of my lesser developed but innate left-brain, linear, and ‘male’ energy. I’ve found that dynamic at play in my thinking, in my emotional and physical life. I aspire to a centered balance, a wholesome, fully operational interplay between the polarities existing within and around me . . .

Travelers & Homesteaders . . .

2010-03-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

Haven’t been here for a while . . . I’ve got what you would call a, ‘good reason.’ Since I’m inherently suspicious of ‘good reasons,’ I’ve taken this one out, snuffling around it like bloodhound following the juicy scent of a bleeding rabbit. It seems to me that often ‘good reasons’ can sometimes be nothing more than a slippery little trick of the mind to avoid or procrastinate something that requires more than my ordinary courage and life energy. On the other hand, there are times and passages in life that occupy more than their fair share for a while . . .

I’m packing up to move out of my home where many years accumulations have been stashed in boxes in the attic, plastic tubs in the closets, drawers, shelves, under bed bins . . . The stream of stuff and decisions to be made about it has felt endless, even though I know there is a limit. What seemed like a really grand idea when buying this house many years ago boasting oodles of storage space now shows up as a tremendous deficit in those terrifying moments when I discover yet another untouched pocket of place mats and embroidered napkins from an older friend now gone, multiple boxes of feathers, sea shells and odd bits of paper and ribbon . . . I don’t care much for clothing or shoes, but I’m simply thrown to caress a smooth round stone, shell, twisted piece of wood, or an old rusted skeleton key that I find along a beach or woodsy path. In my backpack they go like the treasures they are and at some point they move from the window sill to a receptacle somewhere in the maze of ample storage space in my soon to be former home.

As I’ve been sorting, purging, and packing I’ve been thinking a lot about value . . . I mentioned place mats. In truth, I don’t care for them, but I have some for the simple reason that a loving soul now gone embroidered little images of fruits and vegetables on them. I doubt they are of any value to anyone else other than a collector of kitsch, and they tug at my heart. It’s Her I value, Her memory I tap into when I hold them. It’s a way of connecting to Her again. It’s really the same with the stones and photos and theater programs and the copious mother’s day presents like popsicle stick pen holders, clay turtles and paper bird nests. These things have value for they are the crumbs that have been scattered along the trail so I can find my way back . . . and I’m finding out I’ve got a lot of crumbs.

I think there are two different kinds of people . . . the travelers and the homesteaders. The travelers are those able to be transplanted, the ones who never put down deep roots in any particular location, more like they’re heeled-in. The homesteaders are those solid immovable types like the grand old trees that throw roots into the earth reaching for its core and they, ‘ain’t goin’ anywhere.’ I think we need both in this world, another facet of the yin-yang dynamic of life. Me? I suspect I’m a traveler at heart and a homesteader wannabe. I adventure and drawn to movement like a traveler and I confess I collect like a homesteader! I suspect this for the simple reason that while I’ve been packing up . . . perhaps a clue? . . . I’ve been pondering the journey of my garden . . .

I have a backyard garden room. When I moved into this home the backyard was completely sterile--grass surrounded by green hedge . . . Boring? Yes, and also, a blank canvas. Every spring I have chipped away at my garden, digging out beds for roses and lavender, as well as beds for ocean washed brick I’ve collected from countless walks on the intriguingly rugged beaches of the NW coastline and Puget Sound. I’ve created an alcove in the shade where ivy, bamboo and ferns hum a steady little tune and form a pleasant place for my lovely Buddha to sit peacefully over-looking the round stone path that meanders around to another bed--this one for the birds. The birds have low hanging branches from Japanese maples to give them protection while bathing in one of the several water vessels I’ve ‘planted’ for their enjoyment.

In the stone stream I included one larger pool that some years ago caught the attention of a particularly tenacious local raccoon who was convinced I put it there to serve as his toilet. I’ve had serious conversations with him as well as the audacious deer family who munch on the tender shoots of my precious roses. In the end I have to say that our negotiations haven’t gone as well as I would have liked--deer and raccoon have won every year. In spite of hungry, toileting wildlife the garden is lovely, and something quite unexpected happened last summer. It was something like a magnetic pull to another chapter in my adventure . . . the garden so many years in the making felt complete, finished, done.

After years of digging and planting, weeding, hauling stone, hauling sand, pruning, re-planting, watering, amending the soil with compost, waiting for trees to grow, beds to fill in, birds to come, flowers to bloom . . . it’s done. This is how I know I’m a traveler . . . now that I’m done, it’s time to move on. You see, a homesteader would say it’s time to sit back and enjoy, have the friends and family over and share the garden. For me the heart of the value of the garden was in its creation. It’s lovely and I enjoy sharing it immensely . . . and some enticing new tune is singing in the wind. This spring I walk around listening for something that’s screaming or even just whispering a visual imbalance to correct or a lonely space to fill, something that needs attention other than regular maintenance, and nothing speaks. The garden is quiet, yet from an entirely different direction I do hear a song emanating from beyond the top of the hedge, a song drawing me to a new horizon . . . Time to move on.

This is no different than painting. I’m traveling there too, questing for something that I get a little closer to with every canvas. It’s an aching inside me, a fire that burns and demands fuel. It is a journey not unlike the journey of those who climb mountains . . . Every painting is a few steps up, a few steps closer to a summit that reigns in my heart as it does in the heart of a climber. It’s the thing that for most of the journey remains elusively hidden behind tall trees, rocky out-croppings blanketed away from sight under cloud-cover. Sometimes I get a peek at what I’m journeying after in a brush of color or a throw of liquid gold that crosses the canvas like the pointer of a compass revealing my north. Mostly, I’m slogging through dense forest, convinced by a strong internal drive that while I can’t see the summit, it’s there. Most of the time all I can see and have access to is the next step.

The value for me in all that I do or think is to bring as much of my presence as possible to the moment. From there I engage my courage to take the next step as intuited by deep listening to my inner compass. I often move toward something I cannot clearly see from my current vantage point, just as I can’t always see where the paint will lead . . . and I keep on painting. There will come that moment on the canvas when the painting screams or whispers, “Stop!” Then I stop. Or, a similar moment standing in a garden when an odd sensation comes over me and I realize my garden is complete, and I stop . . .

Breathing deeply of this morning’s cool, moisture laden air the scents are different. Something new is leading me out of my garden and down the road a few miles to a funky old house on a lake where I will soon live. I’m taking a few pots of my favorite plants, the ones who, like me, transplant with relative ease. I’m not sure where this leg of the journey goes, I only know it is the next step . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

PS . . . More about roots . . . My grandmother traveled to America in the early 1900’s, a young woman who used to hang with the gypsies in the forests of Slovakia. She traveled the ocean and then settled in the midwest to raise her family and some of her children’s children. I knew her as a homesteader, not in her days as a traveler. We had a very special connection, she was my image of woman. I think I made the assumption somewhere long ago that it was best for women to be homesteaders . . . best for children if Mom was a homesteader like my grandmother, and god knows I tried . . .

What I didn’t factor into the picture was the traveling gypsy she had been and left behind in the forests of Europe. As the years have gone by I have come to believe that the same blood runs in my veins and what’s best for me and consequently my family and anyone I touch in this life, is that I own my true nature. Perhaps there’s room to experience both in our lives, and that’s another thought for another day. In this moment I’m inhabiting my rich colorful traveling legacy and gettin’ on down the road . . .

Emotional Musculature . . .

2010-02-04T14:09:00.001-08:00

I just moved into a new studio. By Dec. 31st I was moved out of my former studio without plans going forward, and now, just one month later I’m moved into another. That was fast. I had thought I would be taking some time to transition all the emotional content related to leaving a place where I had worked for so many years. I thought I would be grieving, re-evaluating my work and offer to the world. I thought this would take some time, and was prepared for months of reflection. I did pull back in the first half of January, and it was enough. At the end of December I couldn’t have predicted what is now a reality . . .

I couldn’t have foreseen that a couple of trips up to the Canadian border and a few conversations would net me a studio in Loomis Hall in Blaine WA. I moved in on Feb. 1st, just in time for an all building show this Friday on Feb. 5th. The show is featuring small and large sculpture as well as the varied creative work of visiting and resident artists of many disciplines. I’ve hung my art in my studio space, and sit here dazzled by the effortlessness of it all.

I’m not suggesting that I haven’t made an effort. I responded to a invitation, had conversations, made several trips 20 miles north of my hometown to get a feel for the place, met some of the other resident artists, and in general, gave it my consideration and attention. I did put effort into this possibility . . . so how is it that it ‘feels’ effortless?

To answer this question I think I have to back up just a bit and look into my relationship with struggle . . . my human striving and suffering. I cut my baby teeth on a healthy dose of that. I suspect that decades later, having lived my life committed to my healing and development of consciousness, suffering is simply more familiar. I’ve faced into life with well developed behavioral muscles attuned to struggle. If I pause and really think about it, I’m surrounded by evidence to the contrary--that life has been a generous benefactor on my behalf. I think I need to re-align my emotional musculature. How do I do that?

Perhaps it’s about noticing, like I’m doing right now, more than anything else. Noticing that . . . an email showed up at just the right time to make me aware of Loomis Hall . . . one of two available studios was just the right configuration for my large canvasses . . . I fell into easy conversation with the gallery director . . . the collaborative effort of like-minded artists that exists there is exactly what I had been trying to create in my former studio . . . the pieces I picked out to hang fit the space beautifully . . . and, every time I go there I feel more and more at home . . .

What if re-aligning my emotional musculature is a matter of where I put my attention? I think I’m really talking about living with conscious ease. Maybe I can focus my attention without labeling or evaluating the effort. There is the very real possibility that my lifelong relationship to striving and suffering is less necessary than before . . . That I can join my efforts with an energy waiting to manifest, and together, seemingly effortlessly paint the canvas of my life . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Laziest Celebrity of All Time . . .

2010-02-04T09:01:00.000-08:00

It’s Groundhog day. I know the weather is hard to predict, becoming impossible here in the Pac NW. In January for instance, one day I wore my down coat and all the accompanying garb, and the next day a t-shirt with my coat wrapped around my waist. We’ve had more sun than rain and a snowflake hasn’t been seen. My roses are beginning to send out green shoots, crocuses are poking through and robins are singing in the morning. It’s always a bit of a game of chance and lately that’s a gross minimalization.

I want to be the Groundhog. I want his job. He works one day a year--ONE DAY A YEAR, gets national attention and probably all kinds of book deals, and to top it off, gets a mention on all US calendars! In Pennsylvania I’ll bet dollars to donuts there are stuffed groundhogs, groundhog internet cafes titled something like, The Underground Connection--Come in a Hog a seat! There have to be t-shirts, keychains, shot glasses, hats, lunch boxes, postcards, oven mitts that open up and display the rodents two big front teeth intended to grab your hot casserole from the oven, bumper stickers, sweatshirts, pens and beer mugs . . . all honoring the groundhog--the universally laziest celebrity of all time.

One day a year, come on, what does he do the rest of the year? Sleep, eat, sleep, eat, procreate-maybe, sleep, eat, walk a little-maybe, sleep, eat . . . this has to be his pattern-look how fat he is. Are we so hard up for holidays that we go nuts over a large rodent whose annual feat is to walk outside and, check this out--look for his shadow. Well, that’s hard. I’ve got a newt that could do that with more flair and he isn’t overweight! Enough of Bill Murray . . . now on to Andie MacDowell. . .

It’s cute, right? With all the global trauma of living in 2010 we need cute. Maybe we need a day to honor a groundhog for no apparent reason at all. Maybe we need to spend money on t-shirts and groundhog paraphernalia that will eventually end up in the donor pile and hopefully cloth someone in the world who really needs it. Maybe we need to ponder ridiculous questions like . . . Will there be 6 more weeks of winter? Oh the suspense! You want to know about weather, I’ll tell you about weather . . . Walk outside. Done. Do you really need more than that? Will it really do any good? In the Pac NW these days it’s a weather game show--what’s behind door number 1 today? Could be anything, spin the dial and if you get lucky you might win a toaster.

So I guess the groundhog thing is a bit of a mind frolic and I guess we need to frolic a little, drink some beer and toast the rat! But if we’re looking for weatheranimals I’d like to put in a word for my newt, he’s trim, responsive and is willing to work at least a 4 day week . . . Surely that could net him a bumper sticker . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

PS . . . I know it’s a bit odd to post this blog on Feb. 4th. I did write it on Groundhog Day and chickened out when it came to posting it . . . It had NOTHING to do with art, so why post it? This question has been bugging me ever since, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my initial assumption wasn’t true for me--EVERYTHING has SOMETHING to do with art for me. All that I am, and all that I experience eventually shows up on canvas whether it be a streak of red, a field of green, or a brush of glistening black . . . Everything shows up. I live art--My art is my life on canvas, every bit of it. There is no separation, no place to draw a line.

My intention for writing this blog in the first place was to offer up ‘what this artist is thinking about today’ . . . Apparently on Groundhog Day I was the one who needed a little mind frolic that I am confident will, at some future point in time appear as a little wiggle of paint. So, I changed my mind and am posting this, for it truly was what I was thinking about on Feb. 2.

Ta-Ta

2010-01-30T11:47:00.000-08:00

Recently made my semi-annual trek to Facebook. Gotta get with my techno hip buddy on this to sort it all out. I need a geography lesson where I map it out on the floor--social media for kinetically aesthetic synesthetes! Gotta sniff it, stand on it, move around it--basically stalk it like prey, growl at it a little, and then I’ll get it. Right now it’s a lot of Ta-Ta! Come to think of it, though, isn’t everything a little bit, or a lot of Ta-Ta?

Maybe it’s just my wacky little world, or maybe I’m actually on to something with this Ta-Ta thing. How to define it? Ta-Ta is a little like, well, the whole thing, the entire experience--is that clear enough? When I’m driving my car, I’m moving in Ta-Ta land with my Ta-Ta thoughts and reactions. When I’m deep in my shit over some fear that I’m not good enough--Ta-Ta in my head. When I’m crying, laughing, insecure, reactive, bored to tears, highly energized and feeling on purpose . . . it’s all Ta-Ta. I’m not saying it is or isn’t important. I think Ta-Ta is connected to why we’re here, and we each come in with our own unique configuration and work it through all kinds of circumstances and situations that are attached to others in their particular varietal of Ta-Ta in time and space. The real question is . . . What color is your Ta-Ta?

It’s the stuff of human drama, the endless cycling of wounded emotion and attachments that grip, and often run our lives. It’s influence is more addicting than any substance and sticks with a tenacity that rivals David Blaine’s obsession with holding his breath under water for 17 minutes . . . or like some label adhesives on glass jars that I’ve concluded are welded to the surface. That’s what our human drama is like. Is it necessary? Apparently so, or we would have shed it like our gills a long time ago. It’s been with us as long as we have been upright. Maybe we’re deep in the middle of the process of shedding it, of evolving, and transforming. Maybe at some future point in our species development we simply won’t need it, and we’ll be on to something else . . . Maybe we’re becoming human without Ta-Ta . . . What would we be like?

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Thought Experiment

2010-01-28T09:19:00.000-08:00

It’s clear and sunny on this January morning in the Pacific NW. . . It should be raining and overcast, that is, pre-global warming it should be raining. All bets are off now, I guess the days of weatherly shoulds have permanently joined the ranks of the endangered. We’ve had spring-like conditions all this month with plenty of sun. Reminds me that the one sure thing in this life we can all count on is change. Change is squawking stridently in the rising temperatures, the melting ice, and the howling storms brewing over earth’s distant seas.

Instead of hopping out of bed to take myself and my dog to the trail for an early morning walk, I took myself back to bed. The only energy I expended was to make a pot of tea and pick up my computer in my other room where it’s been soaking up energy all night long from the long white cord that travels the length of a glass countertop that holds my TV and speakers. I snatched my pulsing black MacBook from it’s little spot in my compact tech center and hauled it to my bed. Now I’m ready to settle into a time of exploration . . . It’s another day. Imagination kicking in, tea in hand, fingers ready to respond . . . Here I go.

First stop, a thought experiment . . . What would it look like if I tipped global warming on it’s side and looked at it from another angle? What if, (remember, this is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!) global warming was exactly what was supposed to be happening according to earth’s destiny? Before I’m thrown off the planet, let me explain how I understand a thought experiment . . . It’s an exercise in creative, free thinking very similar to brain storming--no judgments, no values. In a thought experiment an idea is drawn up and pursued without censure.

I work with thought experiments a lot, they help me go outside the box of my normal everyday experience, assist my process of freeing my mind. I am drawn to liberating my mind like a moth to the flame and this is an exercise that I find helps loosen the tight grip of well worn neuronal pathways and impulses . . . Those voices in the dark recesses of my cranium that say, “This is good, this is bad, beware, be quiet, be still, be this, be that, go there, say yes, say no, get angry, get sad, jump up, sit down, get embarrassed, be shamed, be buoyant, be brave . . .” The endless, never ceasing, always chatting mind ready to fill in the blanks of my experience with pre-approved information, like those Hot & Ready pizzas all boxed up and ready for you BEFORE you walk in the door . . . Who really made the decision to walk in and out with a pepperoni pizza--was it me, them? If me, what me? The one I’m in touch with now or those voices in the dark prompting my every step into Little Caesar’s? Creepy!

In my many thought experiments I’ve wiped out entire populations of people, left all that I know to pursue volunteer work in third world countries, given away all I own, held open auctions for my entire body of art, written the book of my life, gone back to school to study architecture, lived in complete seclusion-something akin to Walden for an undetermined amount of time, lived on a cattle ranch in Montana, stood on the moon, and freely become a human subject for time travel experimentation . . . In a thought experiment the subject matter isn’t the real point.

The real benefit of a thought experiment is the practice of loosing the mind from the sticky pre-programming. It’s like our thoughts are little feet lined with velcro and our mind the receptive surface--one step and we’re stuck. If we’re persistent enough to pull free of that little move, the next one will be sure to anchor us back in the familiar. That’s not all bad--it’s nice to know where the light switch and car keys are. It’s just that’s it’s so damn easy for our human vitality to go to sleep by the routinization of our neuronal pathways . . . We don’t want to wake up when we have already lived through our lives and discover we weren’t awake, we were sleep-living.

Back to global warming. It’s happening, right? Our unenlightened exuberance for the consumption of natural resources, CO2 emissions, multiple progeny, and the resulting pollution of industrialization has landed us a situation that is, for the most part irreversible. I’m NOT advocating throwing our hands up in the air and indulging further since the damage is already done--far from it. I strongly believe that to the very best of our ability, each of us take responsibility for the impact of our lives with global consciousness, right where we are, in this very moment.

The thought experiment is something along the lines of . . . How does it inform my life if I looked at global warming as an awkward, messy birthing in our human and planetary evolution? Who says we’re supposed to go on anyway . . . I’m not advocating we shouldn’t, I’m wondering how we can be so sure we should??? What if there’s some sort of cosmic hand-off going on here? What are we moving toward as a species on a time limited planet? It IS time limited, just like us . . . only a considerably LONGER frame of reference. What do I learn from my speculating by ‘be-friending’ global warming as an inevitability?

First thing I think of is my own death. It’s hanging out there somewhere in space and time. I will die, so will you, by the way. My personal take on death is that it’s an extraordinarily good counselor that informs me of living, keeps me awake, so to speak. The eventual slumber is, oddly enough, my wake up call, my life alarm . . . “In light of your undetermined, time-limited experience here . . . do you REALLY want to be worried about things you can’t control anyway? Is that a good use of a perfectly wonderful day to be alive?”

I think we live like a people bent on living at all costs. We pump our elderly full of drugs and tubes and processes that keep their lungs operating, heart and kidneys from failing as they exist in sterile environments surrounded by strangers. People are beginning to have a harder time simply dying that surviving technology and legalities keeping them from letting go when their bodies are . . . I know of a dying man whose family over-rode his ‘no death watch’ order, and suffered on until at long last he was alone for a few minutes and simply died. It’s the way he wanted it. Why is this? Why do we fear something so common as death?

The one thing we can be sure of is change. In our present form we will all die, as will all life on this planet, as will all vegetation if we do indeed kick into another ice age that might start the whole process all over again. Would that be BAD? Is death BAD? Can we really say anymore than . . . It’s unknown.

We, each of us, are infinitesimal specks in the swelling mass of humanity from the moment the primate lifted his torso toward the sun to some point in the future where the stuff of homo sapiens could become crystalline, pure light, or bio-engineered beings fit to withstand any number of planetary conditions that would today crush our fragile, gravity bound beings. We are like the one grain of sand on an endless beach, unrecognizable from anything other than a microscopic perspective. Is that all we are? I don’t think so. For as miniscule as we are in light of the sway of geologic and conscious evolution, we are a particle. That’s important.

I think we tend to overlook the influence of the small, the less perceptible in preference to the grand and obvious. Perhaps we could liken ourselves to the mosquito in the ear of the universe. It’s a fantastic thought that, as seemingly unimportant as we are, we influence. The energetics and thought content emanating from the one impacts the all. I believe that. It’s a paradox I choose to live with, that while my life is, to all appearance insignificant, I influence the course of evolution. Fantastic thought! I am planted here along with you and many others to move this course of evolution along, and all that I am and all that I do matters. And that goes for you too!

It matters that I learn to contain my emotions and develop strong conscious muscles through the material of my life. It matters that I consider the state of the planet in all my doings, whether we’re already on a crash course with an ice age or not. It matters that I inject kindness and compassion into a world where people are hurting, and it matters that I live every moment to the very best of my capacity. It matters. I matter, you matter . . . global warming is--but none of us can say what that really means. Face it, the planet is warming. Face it, you are on a time-limited experience, you are going to die. Face it, you only really have this one moment to live . . . and, as the German poet says so much more eloquently than I . . .

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

And try to love the questions themselves.

Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given to you

Because you would not be able to live them

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will gradually,

Without noticing it,

Live along some distant day

Into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Out of Silence . . .

2010-01-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

I noticed something yesterday while attempting to create more order in my life by gathering up ALL THINGS LEFT UNDONE into one list . . . by category of course--that’s just how my brain works . . . Gather, Sort, List, Prioritize, and then? Procrastinate! No kidding, that’s the sad state of affairs I noticed staring down at this lovely and tidy list as if the words were written on a flashing neon sign before me. I procrastinate, and I do so selectively.

There are things I do the moment the need appears. I do them as willingly and naturally as I breathe. Despite my particular human neurosis, these are things like clearing clutter off surfaces, getting outside for a walk with my dog, painting when the muse calls, and hundreds of other large and small items that I can’t even recall at the moment for I hardly notice doing them at all! Looking over my list isn’t helping me identify them. None of those are on my list . . . I already did them! What is written out on my planning pad with tiny little boxes in front of them to check off when I do complete them are ALL THINGS LEFT UNDONE. Curious.

In reviewing the 17 items I find none of them off purpose or superfluous. All 17 things are actions to take on behalf of my best interest . . . so what’s the problem? Either I’m a really good personal detective, or just plain dumb luck that has me seeing with unavoidable presence that the majority of ALL THINGS LEFT UNDONE involve a phone call. In 12 out of 17 items a phone call is the first step toward completion. More curious . . . and not surprising.

When I was small I spoke of things and beings that were present for me in this 3 dimensional world and apparently NOT present for my family members. Whether you call these beings spirits, figures of a highly charged imagination, angels, soul companions, or any other name . . . I saw them, spoke to them and why wouldn’t I? While I never ceased relating to my other dimensional friends, I learned quite well not to talk about them. I was a sensitive child and quickly became a silent one. I went on living a rich interior experience without ever more voicing that which could be ridiculed.

I wouldn’t want anyone to think I am finding fault or blaming. The way I look at it, we’re all doing our best. I became a silent child which offered me an opportunity to have a deeper connection to my inner life that might otherwise have gone undiscovered. Since I have but one life to live, I’ll never really know if I would have found that connection in another way, and t doesn’t matter. What does mean something to me is to take up my life right where I am.

I can never know all that might be packaged inside the events, and interactions with others. Whether they be pleasant or not, they can all become possibilities to live into. I believe I can live into everything I need, right where I am . . . And, at this very moment, right where I am is staring at my list of 17 items all neatly organized on a prioritized list . . .

The silent child became the silent young adult, who became the silent woman who smiled and served. I ‘made nice’ and tried my best to fit in and be what I imagined a normal woman would be. Anyone who has tried to become something other than who they are can surely relate to the inevitable choice--be yourself, or lose your life . . . Perhaps not by immediate death, but by a slow rotting of the seeds sown in the soil of your being meant to grow into the soul your brought with you when you were ushered into this extraordinary experience of being human. Years ago I chose to break out of my inner chrysalis, and I began the journey of my life.

It was 20 years ago and I was walking up a logging road behind my home in the foothills of the North Cascade mountains. Tears were streaming down my face. I was in a loveless marriage and saw no way to amend the course of our lifeless, icy union. I had devoted myself to my children as my life, and even though I gave their care my complete attention I could not still the storm brewing in the very heart of me. It was as though a groundswell of magma was making it’s way to the surface and the tears were a herald of the eruption to follow . . . Internally, while volcanic forces agitated toward an inevitable explosion, I was silent. To outward appearances I was a dedicated mother, and I took my silent pain to the mountains. I could not have known that on this one particular day walking up the logging road, my life was about to change.

I had arrived at a familiar knoll where the logging road ended on the top of Sumas Mt. There, alone, surrounded only by tree, stone, water and air I felt free. There I could vent all that I held under careful watch. I began crying and begging the wind for help, and it was then that I saw them. Something was moving in the sky. It looked like a giant had been shaking black pepper in the air. The flecks were moving in a small cloud that came closer and closer to where I was standing. I was transfixed by what I saw, and before I could hardly draw a breath a murder of crows were circling above me. They flew around and around me, cawing loudly. Between the clamor of their loud calls and the hypnotic rhythm of their spirited wingbeats overhead, I found myself cemented to the spot where I stood. I had no fear, only a sense of a fortuitous encounter. I was entranced.

I can’t say how long I stood there with these magnificent birds circling me with wild, highly charged energy. I only know that at some point I heard a word through their cawing, over and over as they circled, ”Speak, Speak, Speak!” In my memory, as soon as I recognized the message they began to fly away. I watched them fly over the top of the next hill. Once again it was quiet and I was alone. My tears stopped and I began the descent down the mountain toward my home where the life I had been settling for, waited. I would go back, and I would never be as I was before that moment with the crows. I began to speak. I began to recreate and reclaim my life, and that has made all the difference.

That was a long time ago, and so much has changed. From my present vantage point I can’t even picture what my life would be had I not been receptive to the gift on the top of that mountain. The crow, the most cleverly vocal of all birds spoke deeply into my soul, leaving a shamanic connection that has been with me ever since. I have become my own advocate and live according to my true self to the very best of my capacity and awareness. It is also true that old habits wired into my being in my early days live on.

I believe it is quite possible that my procrastination to pick up the phone to get on with 12 of the 17 items neatly categorized on my list might have seeds in the silent child. Even a murder of crows can’t completely wipe out neuronal pathways etched deeply into my being forbidding speech. Only by creating new pathways in my neural net will the former shrink from non-usage. This I can do. This I have access to from days, weeks, months and years of showing up for my unique life.

I no longer even care if there is something called normal. I do care that I live my life authentically. Every morning a crow I affectionately call Joe, comes to a feeder on my deck. When he cocks his head and stares at me with those liquid black eyes I breath in a bit of the wind his wings have shaped as he takes to the sky. In every morning encounter with my corvid companion my spirit soars . . . I am more able to spread my wings and speak my truth into the expectant listening that waits just barely over the horizon . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

The Gift in the Crater

2010-01-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

I can tell it’s a new year. I feel it in the air I breathe, I sense it in my every step, and notice that my very thought processes have shifted. I don’t know how it is with anyone else, or if there is something dramatic afoot in the cosmos. I do know how it is with me, and something is different. If you knew me and knew all the events and changes in my life in 2009 you might well say that something HAD to be different . . . After all, you can’t just keep breaking bones, losing income, relationships, work, studio . . . etc. It has to stop somewhere right? Come on, life can’t just keep going from bad to worse and then on to more . . . What about balance?

The spring does follow the winter, babies are born into a world where the old are dying, the moon waxes after it wanes . . . Life is on the move, it’s regenerative, it goes on. Ian Malcolm from “Jurassic Park” said while discovering that the dinosaurs were breeding, “Life finds a way.” Endings and beginnings are as old as life itself, an end comes to troubling times as well as to joy. I think that’s the way it is. I think there is an intelligent order to things in the evolving universe of which we’re a part. There is balance threaded in and out of chaos and order, and back to chaos once again . . . A dance of sorts, grand and microscopic in scale. The question before all of us is something like . . . How do I fit in to this dance? What’s my part?

“Your work is to discover your work, and then with all your heart, give yourself to it.” Buddha

Right now I’m kind of thankful for the empty hole 2009 created in my life. Picture the desolation of a crater left behind in the wake of the massive destruction of a meteorite crashing into the surface of the earth. That’s where I am. I’m sitting in the middle of it, and all around me is a lot of quiet created by all the things, people and activities that are no longer a part of my experience. I’m beginning to see the gift in this . . . I have space, life space. At the moment I’m not rushing, exerting, planning, following through, delivering . . . my mind is more quiet, and I like it.

What is becoming clearer in the quiet I am enjoying is simply this--I’m not jumping up to fill in space, take on anything that comes my way to get going again. On the contrary. I’m liking the interval, the quiet margin in between the necessary activity of the daily stuff to stay alive. I am becoming content with non-doing and sinking deeper into being. We are such a doing people, I know this well. Our merit and worth is centered on what we DO. It’s like we’re a nation with our foot stuck on the gas pedal, we even vacation like do-addicts.

Having all this space to get comfortable with less doing and more being space allowed me to resurface an intention for balance in my life. I want to DO my work well on this earth and that implies being, knowing what my work really is. I can DO a lot of different things . . . What is my work according to the Buddha standard? In light of this question I have exhumed a process that I had begun years ago upon reading a very friendly and insightful book, Setting Your Genius Free. I’ve taken the book off the shelf. I want to see where I have come and how I lived in the intervening years since the initial illumination gained from that process of discovering my ‘genius.’

“You have a unique and special gift to give the universe. My shorthand way of referring to your gift is to call it your genius . . . ancient Greeks and Romans believed genus was a spirit born at the same time as the person to whom it was attached. They believed the genius was carried by a person throughout that person’s life and was a source of both direction and protection: a guiding star and guardian angel all wrapped in one package. Ancient Romans celebrated birthdays as the birth of a genius, not of a person . . . Make no mistake, you have a genius. Your genius is your natural power. It holds the potential to create joy and success or frustration and failure when used without awareness and choice. Like any power, you will use it best if you understand it well.” Dick Richards

I’m just not interested in messing around with this space where I find myself. It would be like having a long cleansing bath and then jumping into the dirt. Whatever I pick up will be in alignment with purpose and meaning . . . My work emanating from my genius. I look at this like a treasure hunt in a lovely forest where there are lots of grassy knolls to plunk down on and drink in the fresh air that brushes across my face for no other purpose whatever, save breathing in the moment . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Not Rocket Science

2010-01-12T10:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my soul was singing. I had all kinds of energy and put it to good use from sun-up to sun-down. (that is, of course, a metaphor, or what you take by faith here in the Pacific NW since we rarely SEE the sun at this time of year). . . Today my soul is swamped, slogging through the gray lands of low energy and distant vision.

When I reel myself back a little I can point to the logically predictable patterning of energy. High energy output is followed by the required low energy state to revitalize the system. It makes sense. This cycling is obvious in the natural world. I readily accept that my roses must go dormant all winter long. The canes must die down and energy must descend into the roots and lie quiet to restore strength for the heroic journey of growth to come in the spring & summer. Are we really that much different?

I know very well that following an extraordinary output of energy I will be fatigued, often in spirit as well as in body. It works best for me when I don’t fight it, when I surrender to the needs of my physicality as well as my emotionality . . . Like a lot of things in this human life, knowing it does NOT equal living it as gracefully as the roses in my backyard. I seem to go through this endless pattern of waking up grumpy, groggy-lost in a land of tasteless monotony. After a while of wallowing I remember where I was yesterday and then it begins to dawn upon my consciousness--Oh yeah, this is the natural repose needed after the exceptional expenditure the day before.

I confess that directly following this awakening my little monster called Mingis breaks into the scene giving me a hard time for not getting this right away. Mingis, affectionately named after a former math teacher, is like one of those hideous pop up windows we tolerate to get free access on the web. Mr. Mingis routinely threw erasers at his students when he perceived them slacking in anything less than complete and instant erudition of the world of algebra . . . This meant he had a vast number of erasers and many made their way to my desk. He was bizarrely skilled, had the aim of a major league pitcher. The funny thing is that I don’t remember anything about algebra, and I remember him, fondly in fact . . . Most likely because he had the bravado to be that outrageous. Oddly inspirational in my experience. Nobody was going to name him teacher of the year, and he ALWAYS commanded attention.

My Mingis shows up to throw a little salt into my wound . . . “Why did it take you so long to figure it out! You should know this by now!” Love this guy, right there to attempt stealing away my burgeoning awareness. I used to concede to his thievery. I would become very young, helplessly hunch over the internal desk and wait for the erasers to fly. I am pleased to notice that now when Mingis pops into my inner landscape I disable him just like the pop-up windows that show up on the browser of my mac, unless of course I’m amused by him and his antics. That didn’t result from knowing he was a little monster in my psyche . . . it took time and inner work.

I think that at the heart of all this is a malignant impatience, perhaps even an arrogance in the face of the awesome work it is to participate in our own human development and the evolution of our species. It takes time, and work. It is dependent upon our genetics, our early conditioning, societal circumstances, economy, education, and hundreds of factors, some of which I can see and other’s that I cannot. That is humbling.

We are amazingly complex, extraordinarily interconnected and affected by everything from butterfly wings to the northern lights, global warming, the war across the ocean, the love of friends, and the homeless in our town. In vain I have thought I will behave differently by knowing differently, and at some point I might . . . IF I do the hard work of development, self-confrontation and surrender to the painfully obvious right in my face and in my body. I’m tired . . . it’s natural--not rocket science . . . rest!

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

What this artist and her fingers are thinking about today . . .

2010-01-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

I don’t really have anything to say this morning . . . This artist isn’t thinking about anything at all! This artist is a protoplasmic blob, but let’s see what my fingers have to say. Crazy? Not at all. My conscious mind still feels asleep and thoughts sound like an old vinyl 45 record set on 33 . . . s l o w . . . So, why am I attempting writing this morning? It’s my practice.

I really meant it when I mentioned that I would see what my fingers had to say. My ‘fingers’ represent the physical manifestation of the intersection between years and years of rising early and putting thoughts & experiences, feelings & dreams into words on a page--the embodied practice of rising and writing. After all these years, decades even . . . they, my fingers, have a life of their own. Half somnolent I pick up my mac, open up to the next blank page, and begin to type. All that I am is focused in my fingertips, the conduit between me and the machine. After all these years, they start without me and sometime near the end of my first cup of tea I’m fully awake. Almost there now . . .

I started writing in the morning when my kids were small. I had an excessively exuberant first born with enough energy to power our neighborhood transformer. He broke me into parenting from the very moment of his explosive birth. Wham! New world order in my life. Sometimes I look back and wonder, “What was I thinking?” I didn’t really like kids all that much. I never babysat--there were other ways to earn money for the important things growing up like cigarettes, magazines, and movies . . . and here I was, producing a litter. I can wonder about that now, when I was in the trenches with my troupe there wasn’t any time. Hence, the writing . . .

Since I hadn’t really thought through this whole thing about motherhood I had some major surprises. Number one--they took all my time. Bam! Babies take all your time--Motherhood 101. If there were pre-requisites for this course, I missed them. Between nursing, bathing, nursing, dressing, nursing, playing, nursing, diapering, nursing, cooking, nursing, rocking, nursing . . . you get the picture, right? One prophetic morning while, you guessed it--NURSING, I was rocking my infant son. I had those lovely hormones floating through me, the ones you get as a major perk when when you spend a good many hours of your day in this ancient act for species survival. These hormones mimic nirvana, or at least a good high . . . “Oh, is the world coming to an end . . . OK . . . Are there any more cookies?” In this state of contented bliss I had the great idea of waking before my little bundle exploded into the day, and taking a little slice of time for me. Of course this meant rising at 5 or 5:30 . . . But, in that rocking chair under the hormone spell and all snugged in warm as toast with a sleeping baby, it sounded like a perfect plan.

This plan of rising early, hatched while in hormonal hypnosis that began as a survival for the integrity of self, became a practice that now, decades later, is as natural to me as closing my eyes when I’m tired. Somewhere in all these years some magical transformation has taken place. While I can’t point to when, I can point to what . . . What initially issued from my cortex alone, began to emerge from being. This is the shorthand explanation of why my fingertips can start, ‘without me.’

It sounds illogical, and so what? Lots of things are illogical, just pick up a newspaper on any given day and there’s tons of proof that we don’t exactly function like a coherent, congruent species while the rest of life on the planet looks on in great confusion. In the community where I live a 21 year old recently shot another 20 something 3 times in the chest because the victim wouldn’t get in the trunk of his car at gunpoint. The shooter rationalized his actions saying that he was a hillbilly and they get away with all kinds of things we in the city don’t . . . Wow. Clearly, we’ve got a way to go before we catch up and evolve into our cerebral cortex. Conscious human beings? We’ve got the equipment, now using it is another story, but I digress . . .

My fingertips are like mini-brains that have evolved alongside a practice of rising in the morning and writing. I initially wrote by hand. This was laborious for me. I’m a big motor skill gal, not a fine motor skill detail type. This is probably obvious for anyone who has seen my paintings. And, when I at long last I relaunch my website, they’ll be available to see! IT is NOT my strong suit! Back to painting . . . I use my whole body to paint, meaning that I hover around my canvas like a hunter, a large cat circling her prey. I splash, pour, scrape and growl until it’s complete. There is nothing tidy about my process. Handwriting for me is something that moved like molasses on the back porch in the middle of winter, and furthermore requires the tidy & tiny, and that . . . “Ain’t me babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me babe.”

When I got a mac laptop my whole world changed. I could understand this intuitive machine. I could move around--very important for a huntress, and it was FAST! Lightening fast. At long last my fingers could keep up with my thoughts! This was my new nirvana and suddenly I was thankful for that geeky looking tall and skinny typing teacher I had in high school who was more demanding than god. I learned to type like the wind and now I was soaring. My fingers, my wings, my thoughts the current beneath me.

The introduction of a mechanical counterpart that actually worked for me was key in unleashing a river running through me. The whole rising early, writing process took on a new up-leveling, became a kind of alchemical magic in my life . . . It has been like finding the missing piece that you didn’t even really know wasn’t there until you find it. It was like the first time you meet someone you will love with all your heart . . . It was like coming home when you didn’t even realize you had been homeless.

I have this theory that we can become all we are here to become through any doorway. A little like “All roads lead to, not Rome, but home.” Some roads we choose, other’s choose us and some are just dumb luck of the draw. Does it really matter what it is, as much as what we do with what is? Clearly, I wasn’t prepared for motherhood and I gave it all I had. I did a lot well and some things not so well, but always, always loved them. . . always, always believed in them. Now we get together as friends who have shared a wacky journey. I admire them, care for them and can’t imagine how I could have gotten such an all-encompassing life education without them. When they have heart break, so do I . . . When they have joy I share in that as well. We’re a family. We’re not a poster family for doing it conventionally, we’re just a family doing the best we can. I could never have known while rocking that first little baby for the first time, all that I would have an opportunity to participate in down that road.

I’ll never know who I would have been had I taken another path, and I guess that’s not important. I made the choices I made, and have the feeling that somehow out of all the myriad possibilities life offers, I am on course. Somehow my inner compass has navigated me through this journey, and what’s ahead? Who knows, and maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe all that really matters is that we stay present in this moment, fully be right where we are with the assurance that right where we are IS the road home.

This is what this artist, and her fingers, are thinking about today . . .

The One Sitting Across the Room

2010-01-05T17:25:00.000-08:00

I am officially in my new year. According to the iChing I threw it will be one of a, “Difficult Beginning.” The very last of everything that I had at my studio, now my former studio, is in a heap in my garage. My easels, paint jars, tubes & cans, brushes, scrapers, boxes of tarps, stacks of papers, canvasses, and all manner of stuff that caught my creative fancy are piled high. All of my paintings are stored in a warm clean room at a friend’s home. Done. Waking up this morning I feel it in my body, know it is finished. The last weeks of 09 were consumed with the thoughts and emotions surrounding that which today, this very morning, is complete. Now what? That’s easy--BE with the void, BE with the space of nothingness. For over 6 years I’ve had this other interest, this place to work, away from home to attend to with all it’s concerns and possibilities, and now?

It isn’t that I don’t have ‘stuff’ to do . . . I’ve got the small mountain of stuff in the garage to sort, and the regular activities of normal life--whatever NORMAL is. I’ve got ideas about possibilities for the future, etc . . . Life goes on, and I go with it, and . . . something more is going on in me--a true break with the past. There’s that word--break--showing up again, and in January no less . . . a BREAK with the past. I said it in my thoughts on the trail yesterday and just saying that startled me! Last January I had the feelings of breaking, cracking, and on the 27th broke my wrist. Since then all manner of stuff in my life has broken and now, a year later, I sit separated from the carnage . . . It is as if the breaking away from habituated patterning in my primary relationship, in my work, in finances and friends sits across the room as another being looking back at me through time--a ghostly reminder of all that has washed away in the turbulent, hungry waters of 09.

On this side of the room I sit in 010 like a warrioress who has seen the length and breadth of the battle through to the very last. I’ve had scrapes and bruises, broken heart and bones and still, I am whole. I am more than whole, I am stronger than before. I look at the figure of 09 and see confusion, wavering determination, and flimsy, faulty structure. I don’t see any ill will or deceit surrounding her frame, but much embodied dross. Across the room I can almost hear the one inside who begged and pleaded with life--”Help me find liberation, wring this ballast from me. Please! I need to be free!” In great kindness the universe colluded and the great battleship Destroyer 09 moved into my harbor . . . Moved in and stayed for the duration with a seemingly endless supply of ammunition, firing round after round after round of demands for my very blood and attention.

The campaign wasn’t endless. I didn’t know it at the time, and I do now. There was an end to the warfare waged in and around me, an end to the devastations. The bones healed, the tears dried, and the piercing pain of loss softened into acceptance. The rooms that once held my work are now bare on this morning in my “Difficult Beginning.” Empty they may be, but not I. I am full and strong and whole, though all around me might suggest the opposite. I, like so many, know that all I really have access to in creating my life is, in the end, myself. We know it, and yet at times become hypnotized into thinking and believing it’s in the stuff of our lives. The truth is that we enter and exit the world alone, one person at a time on their singular journey. We ‘can’t’ do it alone, and at the same time only truly have access to life through our own. I find a bittersweet taste in these thoughts . . .

I used to ward off being alone at any cost. I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I developed a strategy of care-taking . . . By attending to other’s needs in place of my own I had the feeling of living a vitally alive and fulfilled life. I was actually burning cycles of my own energy to promote the lives of others . . . it was sacrifice--not a wholesome life strategy.

I have come to recognize the distinction between being alone and loneliness. The one I now find wholesome, life-supporting and delightful . . . the other? A distant memory that I see moving in and out of the face of the one across the room, a ghostly reminder questioning my absence, wanting me back. I smile and appreciate her for she offered up the opportunity to inhabit this day, the beginning, difficult or not . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

On the Illusion of “Having Time”

2010-01-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

New year, new chapter in my journal, new day . . . same old me. Same old me, which means . . . a non-ending inquiry into life, a relentless drive to ascend, to develop and raise my consciousness within my human limitations. I think there’s never really much the same in me in terms of development while my embodied human is steeped in the routinization of living . . . I make the same tea every morning, quite happily, I might add. I sit in the same place to write, brush my teeth the same way, and find there are myriad details that I perform in much the same way upon waking and living through every passing day. All that sameness surrounding my interior thought world and emotional life which is anything but statically repetitive. Inwardly I am like an ever-moving machine spiraling around the seasons and cycling of the repeated activity with a seeking searching engine digging deeper and further in to the inquiries of meaning in our existence. Nothing same about all that.

I find a peculiar kind of solace in the inherent movement within the very pragmatic and completely ethereal realities of our existence. The truly interesting thing is that we can’t really have one without the other . . . The one provides the molecular/protoplasmic basis to house that which provides the meaning for the other’s existence. It’s a chicken/egg thing, resonating with our very bi-polarity in sight, ambulation and thinking. We are embodied yin/yang, the essence of the dynamic.

Where is all this going? I have no idea. I don’t know where this day is going, much less this year. It’s a new start--we all like that, don’t we? And, yet, when you think about it, it’s just another day and every one is a new start as is every breath that emanates from our lungs, every second that ticks on our clocks. I think this ‘new start’ stuff is really nothing more than a fabricated crutch we all seem to need and have co-opted for the BIG new start to happen on January 1st. Nothing wrong with a crutch when you really need one. Anybody with a broken bone in their leg will testify to that. It’s the crutch we get in the habit of using that we don’t need that might become problematic . . .

I do this thing myself, look ahead to an eventual new beginning and catalog certain activities and events for that time. It’s a useful skill for planning projects, etc. and very detrimental when postponing things that would enhance my life if I just did it instead of thinking about it and tucking it into a particular point on the calendar because it’s . . . the beginning of the week, the beginning of the year, and so on and on until the years roll by and an old woman looks back at me in the mirror. Who is that?

Costco and other savvy retailers know this and use it well. Why else would the warehouses and stores be full of organizational tools and storage containers as well as every fitness DVD, book, and body enhancing machine known to man on January 1st? New year’s resolutions . . . the, “I’ll get to it in the new year” hypnosis. Nothing is magically going to kick in to get all that stuff done that we’ve put off til, and here it is--the magical component in our thinking associated with a new start. For most people, most of the time, it’s bullshit, and very human bullshit--there’s an oxymoron for you! We all do it to a degree and for me there’s no shame in it, and there is opportunity.

I think it’s possible to recognize the patterns of magical thinking and clean out our brain activity and our emotional rodeos. We can take a look at the propensity to hold off engaging in that which is important for our lives in lieu of an external cycle, stimulant, ‘crutch’ that will, we hope, give us the impetus to work on our lives. My question to myself and others is this . . . If it’s not worth doing now, will it really be worth it just because it’s a new year? A new Day? A new month? The obvious fallacy of this reasoning is the dependence on that which is yet to be--time. We fool ourselves into thinking we ‘have’ time, that it will be there for us. I suspect this is the greatest illusion in our lives.

I tell myself the truth to the very best of my discerning capacities. The truth that I have for myself and perhaps others on this first day in 2010 is simply this--don’t wait to act upon that which you know is calling you. The only time to do my life is now. There just might be a day when I look into the mirror and see either a puzzled, regretful look on an old woman’s face, or an impish smile replete with memory. The moment of that eventuality is not down the road, it is in this very moment. If I were to have a religion it would be this . . . Living in such a way as to have no regret.

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Twas the Day After Christmas . . .

2009-12-26T11:11:00.001-08:00

Twas the day after Christmas and to my surprise

was one of the best since I opened my eyes,

and looked at the folly surrounding this day,

and said, “No more! I refuse to play!”

I refuse to buy into more presents is good,

and treating this day like a holy mom should.

If you’re not a Christian or here to consume

then what, may I ask, can Christmas presume?

The 25th of December’s already a feature

in the U.S of A--deal with the creature!

The day’s set aside by every and all

why not feast, and have fun, and stay out of the mall?

My little gaggle of kids I call kin

came over to eat, play a game and drink gin.

We had each drawn a name and on limited cash

replaced the mountainous under-tree stash.

With only one person this day to consider

the gifting creative, and much reduced litter.

All and all it was merry with so little stress,

and this morning I woke up, and guess what? No mess!

I now look at Christmas with differing eyes,

like Thanksgiving, I love it! what a surprise.

Instead of anticipating drudgery, and shopping

next Christmas I’ll smile while hanging the stockings!

A Christmas Story--NOT Currier & Ives

2009-12-23T12:24:00.001-08:00

One little slip. If it’s just the right little slip, that’s all it takes to bring your world crashing down around you. It could be that little package from a friend filled with peppermint bark that you put under your Andy Warholesque Christmas tree. Looks cute, harmless, a meager attempt to inject some ‘normality’ into anything but a normal end to an extraordinarily abnormal year. Take the Christmas tree for example.

I just couldn’t do it this year. I couldn’t pull out the tree, put it all together while remembering tramping through the woods with excited children in tow to pick out just the right tree, the one that was always at the very end of the acreage . . . It’s like the ripe fruit at the very end of the limb that I usually find myself going for in all corners of life. Added to that, it was always raining. By the time we found the tree, we were soaked and chilled--that was part of the adventure. With frozen cold fingers we sawed it down, hauled it back to our old air-cooled VW van and hoped that just this one time, real heat would come out of the vents. Once home it had to be fit into the stand and screwed in just right, and lights went on and then the ornaments. In between the fighting and screaming about who got to hung the sacred birds we’d have cookies and hot chocolate. Before this sounds so homey and sweet we’d better go to the birds.

Some relative of mine sent us a pack of artificially colored feathered birds when the kids were tiny small. For some unknown reason these birds took on a larger than life proportion and it was a sacred ritual to ‘hang’ them on the tree. Eager hands tore into the box of ornaments digging around for them. The birds were cherry red, brown & white, yellow-gold, and something that looked like a big white chicken--I think it was supposed to be a dove. It didn’t take many years before eyeballs fell off or drifted down the feathers as they went on and off the tree with regularity over the weeks they were out of their box to come alive for the season. They were always the favorite and just getting them on the tree without major battles and scratching and screaming took a lot of finessing with cookies on my part.

The tree took at least one whole day. Now, many years later, I succumbed to a tree in a box. I miss the smell and I don’t miss the tramping through the mud, or do I? It made sense then, and it doesn’t now. I texted my kids not long ago and said, “I’ll put the tree up if one or all come over and help.” It’s the 23rd and no takers-they’re all busy with their grown-up lives. What to do? I’ve had such a nakedly interesting year that doing without a tree felt like one more act of violence on my already shaken core . . . And, doing the tree felt completely incongruous--who was I kidding? Clearly another alternative was in order. It was then that I thought of ‘her.’

I haven’t actually given ‘her’ a name, but she has a personality. She is a wire frame curvy female form coatrack from IKEA. I got her years ago when I opened my art studio and over the years she has taken on a life of her own much in the same way as those singular birds. I have clothed her in many varying styles. At one point she resembled Charlie Chaplin with a black bowler hat, bow-tie, and a length of elegantly draped sheer black fabric. One summer she wore the tiniest bikini known to man with sunglasses hanging precariously on the wooden knob atop her wire neck that serves as her head. Recently, she wore the combination of black feather boa and a long string of plastic white pearls tossed over and around her feathers. I think she’s my alter ego who goes about wearing outrageous, scanty feathers without embarrassment. I never used her as a coatrack.

The idea dawned effortlessly like one of those helium balloons that get away from the bouquet you’re picking up at the grocery store for your friends surprise birthday party and floats on into the clear blue sky . . . Why couldn’t she be my Christmas tree? This was brilliant, perfect as a matter of fact! This I could get excited about and did. I had so much fun draping her in brightly colored lights in and between red and black netting with the signature feather boa and those marvelous white plastic pearls. She has the old Santa hat on her head that is in the same condition as the birds, and a plastic pink flamingo body without legs perched on her shoulder. I wound an unruly coil of rope lights around her base looking like a model of a hydrogen molecule. They give off an unearthly cool light that gives the impression she might just jet out of the room at any moment. She is awesome. Not only is she the perfect Christmas tree this year, she is my goddess divine! To this goddess I have made some offerings . . . one being a sweetly wrapped little package from my friend.

This is where our story began . . . that one little slip-remember? It was a box of peppermint bark . . . homemade, chocolate peppermint bark my friend had given me. It was actually a ticking bomb in disguise, all wrapped up in pretty paper. I was gone last evening to an event at my almost former studio. The soon to be new tenants were giving a presentation on the new vision for the space. I admit that I felt a bit awkward, even though I heartily support the vision of turning this large old warehouse loft into an urban longhouse. I sat and listened to the speculative future while remembering all the ways in which I have grown and developed as an artist in the many years that I have had my studio in the back corner among the old growth timbers and high ceilings of this 100 year old building. Many dreams and memories floated through the room like ghostly visitations coming to honor the past and usher in a time of change . . . Odd sensations and another chance to inhabit being at peace with, and in the face of the transience of life.

I was a bit solemn and tired when I got home and my dog was anything but that. I normally get an energized greeting from her when I’ve been away any longer than 15 minutes and this was exceptional. She simply wouldn’t calm down . . . what was up? Under the goddess divine that sweet little package chock full of chocolate lay torn apart and empty. Time to act.

The following hours involved emergency dog care. Chocolate can be poisonous to dogs with a range from mild discomfort to death, it’s doggie Russian roulette. I wasn’t taking any chances. I called the emergency vet and dosed her with hydrogen peroxide until she vomited and then with activated charcoal to absorb anything that didn’t come out when she hurled. I have to just say that I’ve never seen the full contents of a dog’s stomach and was amazed at the sheer quantity and the smell . . . lovely sweet peppermint and chocolate. Bizarre. After all the dosing and cleaning up the brown swamp on the floor and drops of liquid charcoal with the nasty similarity to India ink that she flung all around the room we were both exhausted. While this is to be expected in me, it’s an unusual state for a border collie on any day or occasion. The good news--this morning she’s back to her perky self. I’m relieved, and grateful, although not as perky, and noticing something else . . .

When I saw the empty package on the floor under my Christmas goddess I felt something rising in me like the resurrection of an ancient warrioress queen. It was like I morphed into giant sized proportion and looked 09 in the face . . . “This is NOT going to happen, get that? You are not getting her! You’ve had your way with me this year and gobbled up my livelihood, my savings, my studio, my friend, my Scottie, my partnership, my website, my ability to produce my calendar . . . You’ve broken my bones and did all you could to break me, and hear this--You are NOT gobbling up this dog!” It may sound crazy, but in that moment I felt that I was in a face-off with a year of loss, and I was going to win this round.

I haven’t felt this kind of energy but a few times in my life . . . Once when a doctor gave me an unacceptable diagnosis for one of my children . . . Another when I challenged my entire family by refusing to attend the funeral of my father . . . And another still when I stood up for my life feeling trapped in a relationship where I had all but resigned myself to death. In each of these cases I’ll never know what was truly at stake and what shifted the outcome. The daughter who was never going to walk runs like a gazelle. The hands of the one that threatened to strike me and keep me under control are now crippled up and withering while mine are strong and able. The life I almost surrendered in depression and despair has known healing and connection to my true self. What shifted the balance? Was it the inevitability of fate? Did I make a difference? I don’t know.

I do know that all along, every day there are moments when the road splits in front of me and I make choices. Often the options are confusing and frequently aren’t easy . . . And there are exceptional moments, when all the choices of the past seem to come along and gather round like eager spectators waiting to see what she’ll do . . . Will she learn from all that has gone by? Will she fall into old patterns? Will she be courageous or cowardly? I have felt these spectators breathing down my neck, and perhaps they do so to breath into me the energy willing me into the next step. Perhaps they come and stand with me, before the tide of loss after loss, and urge me forward to take up whatever strength I have left and scream, “ENOUGH!”

Last night it was enough. It was enough time, enough care, enough inherent health, and enough good fortune to reverse the potential damage by one little slip, one momentary lapse of consciousness. That’s all I really know this morning as my sweet little pal lies pressed up against my legs all furry and expectant of a good long walk ahead . . . That, and a new respect for myself. At this very moment I’m looking at my Christmas goddess divine and oddly enough . . . I see my own reflection . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

The Solstice & New Beginnings

2009-12-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the winter solstice. At 9:30 AM I stood on the bank of the north fork of the Nooksack River and threw Kip’s ashes into the raging waters. The river was high, water catapulting over logs and boulders like rockets launched into space--wild, raw, powerful energy. She's been gone for three years. It was time for me to release her, and this was a perfect place for her last remains. She was a high-spirited dog with a wild, raw, powerful energy . . . Kip and the river, a match. There was a match for me as well, releasing behavioral patterning and unworthiness that has invited a life-long struggle with dominance and aggression.

I held the cold, silty, sandy, gray ash that once was her. I let her go into the river, and washed the powdery residue from my skin in the icy waters. I watched as the ash swirled, clouded the water and then became absorbed and unrecognizable. It is finished, over. Standing there in the cold moist air I was aware of more than just her ashes drifting away. I have been feeling this thing moving away, dissolving inside me, and now, gone . . . Gone like the ashes are gone from the container which held them, absorbed into the greater field of life.

I have worn something like an internal body suit since I was so very small. This was a suit of unworthiness with no spine, built to absorb the shocks and blows driven into me by magnetic elements sewn into the fabric serving like a siren for aggression and dominance. This magnetic absorber suit was contained in me where it became toxic to my system as the ashes funneled into one small space on this earth would poison the soil. It was time for release, time for letting go.

The section of the river I call the clear channel was anything but clear yesterday as might be expected. It was murky, turbulent and most certainly NOT calm . . . It’s the season for heavy flow in the river. I threw the coins of the IChing at the time of the solstice, 9:47 AM. It is my habit to throw them at the winter and summer solstice, and for the first time in years I didn’t throw a changing hexagram. I threw only one, #3 Difficult Beginnings (as recorded in R.L. Wings, The IChing Workbook). It’s the season for churning turbulence in the river and the same for me.

Difficult Beginnings. This had to be written for me, and I find it oddly comforting. It’s like the arms of the river, trees and wildlife were all wrapping themselves around me in an embrace of kinship, speaking peace to my heart . . . “We understand, we weather it all too . . . Sometimes we crack and break and grew new limbs . . . Sometimes we flood and form new channels . . . Sometimes we go hungry and lose our dens . . . And, sometimes we thrive, grow, bloom and bring new life all around. We weather it all too.”

Standing on the banks of that river I felt a part of it all . . . a part of the entire forest. I was one with the seasonal swelling and turbulence, one with the cycling, one with the constancy of nature . . . Just another creature crawling around on the surface. I am the river, the tree, the beetle under the wet leaves and the stones on the bank . . . and they are me.

Now? Difficult Beginnings. This is the way of it. No Disney story here with a sunset and a kiss. No, this is a different film, more like a documentary on a surgical procedure. The tumor is gone . . . now, jump off the operating table and dance a jig? I don’t think so. We slowly come out of the anesthesia, and our bodies slowly heal the wound and knit back together after surgery. Sometimes we need to learn to move differently, eat differently and in any case . . . It takes time. It takes a step by step development into new growth and new habits and behaviors.

I’m in a time very much like post-op and there is a new life ahead. The time of gathering darkness has passed and day by day we will be moving to more light in the sky. It doesn’t happen all at once, it happens a little at a time, minute by minute. I will be gathering a little more light in my life day by day. A new life, not a magical instant fix, a new life with a new me, a conscious moving forward step by step, into an unknown future with a little more light with every passing day.

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Lingering on the Bridge

2009-12-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

I just returned home from a walk on a trail that runs along the edge of a deep glacial lake in the mountainous evergreen forest region of the Pacific NW. I frequent this trail most mornings of the week, arriving just as enough light is filtering through the typical gray cloud covered sky that all north-westerners are intimately familiar with . . . If you love those pallid skies you’re in paradise, and if not, consider moving. Gray skies are a feature of our lives here for many months in the year, gray skies and cold, clear water. I happen to love both.

Along the trail there are several waterfalls and creeks that empty out into the lake at various points and inlets. Every one is a fascination for me, every one stirs my soul. I have come to depend on contact with the falling water as much as I depend on restful sleep to see me through the day. It is as if the water tumbling down over rock and burbling it’s way through well-worn channels of stone is kin to the very blood in my veins making it’s way from my heart, nourishing my vitality. Going to the water’s edge amidst the moist air and babbling rhythms I am fed, comforted, aligned . . . Fit for the day ahead.

This morning I paused for an unusually long time on a little bridge that spans a creek whose banks are broad and impassible in December. As the year rolls into August the creek becomes a small trickle and makes the bridge unnecessary, but not so now. I normally slow down a bit and watch my steps on this bridge with it’s slimy surface. Many days rolling into months of rain in our temperate coastal weather turn this aging structure into the perfect breeding ground for the tenacious and slippery green algae clinging to wood and stone underfoot. I slowed, as is my habit . . . and today, I stopped. I rested my elbows on the edge of the railing and fell into something like a voluntary hypnosis, delightfully transfixed on what lay before me.

The water was tumbling down a rock face where large flows of ice from our recent arctic blast hung erratically like the enormous snow-white dreadlocks of an ancient sea god risen abruptly from his slumbering reverie. The morning’s rain was racing over and around the ice flows with tremendous speed enhanced by the imposition of the ice channels forcing the water into a tighter route down the hillside. It plummeted thunderously into a pool at the base of the rocky ravine and from there, slowed it’s course to make it’s way into the lake.

I stayed on the bridge, looking up to the falls, watching as the water approached me. Then I turned and moved to the other side to see it wind away. Looking back toward the hillside the water was rushing and ahead toward the lake it slowed, completing this leg of the journey. The bridge was in the middle of this little drama. The bridge, the ice, the rocky bluff, the creek, and lake took on a metaphorical presence. There in the cool early hours of the day all these thing became the pieces of my journey.

Looking back to the source of the flow, I was looking into my past. I saw the early years, and various phases of my life’s evolution roll out in the water. At one point it flowed exuberantly and confidently as in moments of my life’s history when I could see the plan ahead. It was then I had an abundance of energy to chart my course and see it though with high spirits, boisterous tumbling and energetic fury racing to an end. Then just as quickly, the water went under the ice and out of sight. I know this place as well, when disappointed hopes, love gone stale, or death’s final departure have brought an oppressive gravity, depression and confusion to my doorstop . . . Those days of dry despair having only enough energy to slip away to a cold place, hidden from view.

Along the banks in the shadows of the exuberance and diminished energies were swirling eddy’s, trickles in between stones and small pools dammed up by leaves, twigs and logs . . . the less remarkable, and no less fascinating. These smaller marvels like the mortar in between the bricks of everyday existence where wonder is available with attention given and the eyes to see. I might even suppose that in the more ordinary stuff of life lies the foundation for true enjoyment and engagement with the more extraordinary things that are so easily seen with voices that speak so loudly. Perhaps without attention paid to the smaller things, we fall prey to a pervasive dissatisfaction, shallowly expecting grander and greater pleasures to appease the aching despair in the hollows where the commonplace lies unnoticed . . . The simple joys of a cup of morning tea, the brush of a fresh breeze on your face, the smile of a friend, the squeal of a delighted child, the soft radiance of the moon’s light . . . all the ordinary in between mortar staying the bricks that support the more obvious structure.

Where am I in this winter drama? I am standing in the middle, on a bridge, at a particular junction of my existence in time and space. I am here, in the middle of a moment, a tiny slice of life where I am transitioning from all that lies behind to all that lies ahead. I am in the only piece I have access to on this journey--the present. I can remember, heal, and learn from the past, conjured up through the veils of memory and colored by personal story. I can speculate and dream a future without any real assurance of constancy in the parts and pieces of my hypothetical musings. It is profoundly true that this very moment is the only reality I have, and for me, it’s a bit slippery underfoot.

I am in a space of life transition where moving ahead means taking care with my steps. I am treading wisely, and giving myself the gift of taking time to pause and reflect instead of succumbing to the voices of urgency to have answers, the plan, the strategy, and own it! I hear those voices and they are quieting in the rhythmic pounding and bubbling water underneath . . . I need to linger on this bridge, inhabit the space in between. At some point I will breath life into dreams of what I can create with whatever time and energy is left to me until that unknown moment when the waters of my life flow into the deep glacial reservoir beyond. Now . . . I linger.

Being with transition . . . What this artist is thinking about today . . .

Lessons in Letting Go, Non-Fiction

2009-12-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

It’s Monday, and today is my Sunday, meaning--I’m taking a day off, a day to rest. Yesterday I literally dropped onto a couch with a beer, pizza, and chocolate ice cream and watched a couple of movies. It had been a long hard week. By yesterday evening I had nothing left to be anything other than a carb ingesting, movie watching couch blob. I had met my goal, the deed was done, and I was spent. I had packed up and moved everything out of my studio other than the paintings on the walls--they can stay up for the moment. All my supplies, easels, bricks, bird sculptures, papers, office stuff, tables, chairs, lights, tools, plants, and so on, and on, and on . . . are now crammed into the garage and any space that made sense for it in the house.

About a month ago I got the news that changes were in the air for the large lovely loft space in which I have had my studio for the past 5 years. A week ago I received the final word . . . the changes required re-allocation of space and I needed be out by the first of the new year. I looked at the calendar and decided I didn’t want to wait and be packing up in-between the Solstice, Christmas and the New Year. I’d never want to leave, and a week or so wasn’t going to alter that reality. So, I pushed hard in the last week and with the threat of snow yesterday, pushed harder still, and this morning--I’m done moving everything but the paintings . . .

How do I feel about it? I don’t feel much of anything right at the moment except fatigue. Although no studio space is perfect, this came close. I have enjoyed several years of painting, and hanging my work on the walls of this marvelous old warehouse with big timbers and extraordinarily high ceilings. I’ve had years of working there and sharing this space with others. Now this chapter is over and it doesn’t seem ironic at all that it’s coming at the end of this year . . . Only one more thing falling out of my hands, one more change in an incredibly long list of changes that have come to pass in the past 12 months.

This year has been like a book in my life titled, Lessons in Letting Go, non-fiction, a major work of great magnitude. The cover is an explosive crack on the ice that shattered my wrist, and the back cover is a giant-sized gong announcing the end of my connection to my studio/gallery space . . . the end of an era. All the chapters in between are stories of the friends, the work, partnerships, dreams, opportunities, and pets that have gone away . . . variations on a theme. All year long the same story of releasing that which I held close--over and over, same story in differing tones and shades of color.

At the end of this year I stand like a scarecrow in a field in late autumn. The field has yielded and the harvesters have come, and after them, the gleaners. Now the winds are howling, dry grasses are rustling and scavengers are eagerly gathering up whatever seeds they can find. Mice and rats below, birds from above pecking at what little sustenance is left. A scraggly crow is perched on my shoulder and even the straw inside my shirt is letting loose into the cold, bracing winds heralding the season of dormancy. Winter is setting in.

I know that deep in the heart of winter lie the seeds of new growth. I know all the seasons have purpose, and work together in harmony for a high-functioning eco-system. I know all these things and am confident that at some point in the days to come I will enter spring and new shoots will sprout from the dormant, hard, unyielding earth. I know all this, and at this very moment I am hanging limp on my frame, black button eyes staring into the back cover of my very real book now closed. Circling my straw-stuffed head the wind is bringing the resounding gong reverberating through the air, flipping the pages of my book . . . The finalities of so many things I held dear. The year began with a break and it’s ending it with one as well. 2010 lies waiting on the shelf, completely unknown and blank.

Letting go . . . What this artist has been learning in 2009 . . .

Wild One

2009-12-06T07:25:00.000-08:00

There is a wild one inside me, a wild spirited woman . . .

I am the horse in cantor, continually moving over the internal landscape . . . ready to run a full gallop to the edge of the cliff, halt in the blink of an eye, or break away from the edge unfurling strong wings to take to the currents.

I am the hovering hummingbird, dynamically static in the air, keenly aware and fiercely protective of the territorial domains.

I am the clever crow, the knower of secrets, the impish sage of the sky who follows the unswerving destination into the void and back again . . . The single mouth with many voices.

I am the loyal, genuine-hearted dog who lays down her life for her pack, nurtures and cares for her young, tends the den . . . The scientist of the air who sniffs the way before and keeps an enthusiastic wag in her tail.

I am the wild goose with courageous and strong heart staying the impossible course, flying by the call, navigating by moon and stars with equipment deep inside . . . The partner who remains when the wing of the loved one lies limp on the ground.

I am one of the little ones all furry and scurry . . . The light-footed phantoms stealing their way through spaces and dark places unnoticed . . . Wedging themselves into cracks and in-between places to take up an ancestral vigil in the stillness.

I am the wind silently invisible and powerfully noticed when stirred to tempestuous proportion . . . I refresh and enliven when I breath into a life.

I am the sun in my soul, I am the waters in my veins, and the earth in my bones.

I am a wild one . . .

Prescience & the Artistic Process

2009-12-02T10:55:00.001-08:00

Prescience--that’s what’s toggling around in my brain this morning. Real life example . . . Yesterday I came in contact with an awareness that started like a feeling. I was feeling like I didn’t want to go to therapy with my husband today. That really didn’t make sense. I said I would go 2 weeks ago when we made the appointment. We have been going to a wonderful therapist, master therapist for several years off and on. Right now we’re ‘on’ and dealing with critical issues that will impact the rest of our lives . . . and I didn’t ‘feel’ like going?

If you knew me, you’d know that I’m not a flake--I don’t flit from impulse to impulse like a butterfly on a hot sunny day in August. I’m the kind of person who stays a course, so much so in fact, that I often OVERSTAY a course. “If I’m guilty of anything your Honor, I’m guilty of excessive tenacity gone steroidal.” That’s me. So what is this ‘feeling?’ More about the real life example . . .

From yesterday’s feeling to this morning’s reality, an interesting event transpired. It just so happened that an, “It’s impossible to get,” 3 hour appointment my husband was pursuing that WASN’T going to happen, effortlessly opened up. Suddenly, it made sense for him to go to therapy and beyond by himself. Was the feeling of not wanting to go, which preceded the reality that it was best I didn’t go, a coincidence? Perhaps. If so, I have a LOT of these coincidences.

I can site countless examples of perceiving something that doesn’t make any cognitive sense in the moment. With astonishing reliability the logic of the whole thing rolls out somewhere along the timeline after the perception. For me, the channel for the perception lies in my emotions. As a general rule our society doesn’t lend credibility to human capacities outside of the standard accepted norms. Prescience, clairvoyance, and other psychic powers are considered para-normal, suspect at best.

Like anything else, including acceptable scientific research, mathematics, and philosophy--psychic capacities thrive when governed by consciousness.

As an artist I am continually listening, paying attention to the subtleties in shifts of energy that make their way into my consciousness through the portals of the land of the emotions, the senses, intuition. I am a student of that which I find most walk by. I receive a lot of information in a small muscle movement across someone’s face, a thin wisp of cloud vanishing before my eyes, a drop of water hanging from the end of a leaf, the wind rustling in the dry leaves . . . or, a feeling that shows up seemingly out of context. Over my lifetime I have developed a trusting relationship with this information cast into a moment like the fine line a hopeful fly fisherman casts into the river seeking that which is yet to bite.

I understand how living my life this way can look from the outside--a little flighty, a little crazy, a little unreliable . . . Standing in my own truth has at times felt like holding back the tide. I’ve found that it’s an illusion that it’s somehow easier to please, to maintain some level of accepted credibility by following all the ‘rules.’ I’ve tried that, and it’s never worked for me. I found myself bereft of life energy. Truthfully, I do care what other’s think of me and always will. I see the puzzled looks on their faces when I change course for what appears to be no good reason at all . . . However, I care more what I think of myself. I care more that I live from the core of my integrity. Engaging in art has required deep trust of my process. My work is raw, nakedly me. I wouldn’t have it any other way . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Lost and Found

2009-11-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday, November, 22, 2009

Back to a very familiar place, asking a very familiar question . . . What do I want? Why can’t I answer that? Why don’t I have at least a picture of that? Or, do I? I have a picture of a place, a rural, quiet place surrounded by the calming beauties and life in nature . . . I’m real clear on that, and not a whole lot more. Am I trying to know more upfront than is possible? Am I shrinking back from what I already do know for fear that I might be just dreaming an impossible, impractical dream? Am I afraid of re-creating a past experience of finding a place and then becoming so terribly lonely . . . What is it that I am seeking? It doesn’t seem like it should be so hard to know what I want . . . why is that? . . . I’m lost. I remember a poem titled

“Lost” . . .

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you,

If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you.

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

by David Wagoner

I followed the thread of this poem out into the rain to one of my favorite places here in the Pacific NW. It’s a trail that runs along a lake surrounded by mountainous peaks rising up from the water like a magnificent humpback breaching . . . perhaps, just because they can. A mile or so down the trail I stopped and stood still as the poet recommends, and you know what? I didn’t feel lost anymore . . . I could hear my own heartbeat, see clearly with my own eyes . . . I found myself. Right there, standing among the wet leaves and water laden limbs my soul was pouring back into me with every rain drop falling on my face. Or, did the forest find me?

I am like my border collie who gets pensive and a bit anxious when inside 4 walls for too long. She needs to run like the wind, leap in the air and let that nose of hers smell the comings and goings of all the passers-by that have left a trace of their scent along the trail. Like her, I need to be where the wind blows, the rain falls, trees creak and sway, and ravens call above my head. I need to stand still and be found, know that I am not lost, listen to this “powerful stranger.” I need to stand still and remember that the forest knows where I am . . . it can and does find me . . .

I can’t say how it is for anyone else. What I find on that lakeside trail and so many other wild places I am acquainted with, are spaces that make sense to me. Places where I can think and feel my way into living and making sense of my life. Taking good care of myself means taking myself out where I find opportunity for alignment . . . giving my intuition and emotional spine what it needs to straighten so that my empathic lungs and heart can breath and operate fully.

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Saying Good-By to Mr. Scot

2009-11-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

His name was Mr. Scot. He was a very small, black Scottish terrier who found us 6 months ago. Yesterday, I held him close, his tiny little body all wrapped up in a soft blanket while our veterinarian injected him with the lethal solution that would bring his fragile life to a close. I miss him. I really miss him. He was only with us a short time and I feel his loss, keep looking for him and finding yet again another layer of tears falling down my cheeks. I expect to feel this deeply, and have, at the death of a dog I’ve lived with for years--this has caught me by surprise.

It was back in early May. Our neighbor, a rat magnet, had once again informed us that he was seeing signs of the nasties. Rats seem to follow this guy around. He moved to the house next to us having left one where the rats literally drove him out . . . and, now . . . they’ve found him here. We didn’t have any problems with rats before he moved in and still don’t, even though, a few literal feet away they seem bent on frequenting his place. Two years ago rats entered the attic of his house through small openings under the eaves that had never been properly screened to keep that very thing from happening. As a result of that attack he has placed big rat poison feeding stations all around the base of his home. These stations look like dark, ominous gargoyles protecting him from the evil spirits that pursue him. I have a theory about this . . .

Roger (name changed to protect the disturbed) has an inordinate hate for rats. I admit that I don’t want to co-exist with them intimately, but hey, they’re doing their rat thing. We’re the ones with the frontal lobe and should know how to keep proper hygiene to avoid summoning them with our food supplies, and garbage. And, having said that, Roger most likely does all the right things, including giving us his high tech classy composter for fear the rats were going after that. We’ve been using it delightedly for years, only a few feet away from one of his enormous traps without any evidence of those clever little robbers. At the same time, they continue to make their way next door. They find him anyway . . . one has to ask why?

I’m a believer in animal allies, a shamanic and mysterious relationship with creatures. I believe in it for the simple reason that I have experienced this very potent relationship with many throughout my life. It’s quite a thrill to own a multi-talented and gorgeous hummingbird or loyal sturdy canine as an ally . . . Not so much with the lowly and mostly detested rat. But wait . . . rat? We are talking survivors, big time adaptors, cunning as hell, and, well, cute. They’ve gotten a deserved and not so deserved bad rap . . . Back to Mr. Scot and the rat.

This Spring when Roger informed us that the rats were back, we dutifully put out our Hav-a-Heart trap. After all, we feel the need to support this harried man while saving one little critter from his evil traps. Low and behold, we caught one and Dan drove it miles away to the country where he turned the frightened little guy loose. The next night at 3 AM we were awakened by a dog barking. Roger has a little nervous dog that tends to be a barker when left outside. It was a logical assumption this dog was out, trying to get Rogers attention to be let in. Groggy and not wanting to get out of a warm bed I kept willing myself back to sleep. After a good 45 minutes Dan got up and went to the phone, “Roger, how about letting your dog in?” “It’s not MY dog.” What? Dan went out on the deck with a flashlight to investigate. Right under our bedroom window two stories down, was a frantic little black hairy mess of a dog tossing and tumbling our Hav-a-Heart trap around wildly and barking non-stop. What was it? Mr. Scot.

Mr. Scot was a mass of matted, dirty black hair that hung over his eyes and touched the ground. I fed the little guy and made him a place to sleep in the garage while Dan drove the terrified rat to his liberation into the county. Once inside and away from fresh air I got a noseful of this unkempt mess of a dog. I’ll never forget exactly how badly he smelled.

The next day we discovered he had no collar, no microchip, nothing posted online or locally . . . a homeless, filthy dog. Dan wanted me to take him to the animal shelter that very day. I agreed, and added that no matter what--he needed to get cleaned up. He was too matted and dirty for me to do any good--he needed professional services. A groomer in town could take him that very day. When I dropped him off she said, “I’ll make him look like a Scottish Terrier again.” I had no idea what that meant, having never had anything other than a Labrador Retriever , an Aussie, German Shepherd cross, Blue Heeler, and now, my marvelous Border Collie. Never had a terrier before.

Hours later when I picked him up I was stunned. There was a dog under all that mess and a very little dog at that . . . but, the hair! Dan said he looked like a parade float! He did . . . and he pranced like one too! He was close shaved on his back and wiry hair hung down from his sides like a Scottish skirt/kilt. He had an impressive mustache and perky little ears that shot up from the top of a very long nose. All he lacked was a tartan splashed across his shoulders and a pipe. He smelled good and had a little blue ribbon on the collar he was borrowing from Billy, our Blue Heeler who had passed just months before. The groomer had to wash him 4 times along with a conditioning bath to get him clean . . . it was an act of mercy and generosity. I got him home and showed him around the house, introducing him to Callie the Border Collie. Dan took him for a little walk around the neighborhood to see if anyone recognized him, or if he showed any signs of finding home. None. By the end of day one I still had not called the shelter . . . I just hadn’t gotten to it!

By day two I was doubtful I’d ever call the shelter. I had the sense that Mr. Scot was here to stay . . . as long as he had left, that is. He was clearly very old, with a lot of hard miles on him. I didn’t want to see him sitting in a cage waiting for someone to come and give him a home. Added to that, I watched Dan walk this little Scottish terrier around and saw a fit. It was as if they belonged to each other. I had the strong feeling that he had come to us to make his passage out of this life, and added to that, he was borrowing Billy’s collar . . .

Dan had never had the chance to say good-by to Billy. He was away on business for the week Billy had massive seizures that left him disoriented, incontinent and immobile. Billy had been Dan’s dog before we got married and it was challenging for both of us when it fell to me to make the call for euthanasia. No matter how hard he tried, Dan couldn’t get home in time, and Billy was suffering. Prohibited by work, and a freak snow-storm shutting down a major airport, the best we could do was have him present by speakerphone. On a cold and rainy night in February my best friend, and my son Jeff sat with me while I held Billy and loved him into the next stage of his journey. This time, Dan would be there and perhaps bring closure to the missing pieces with Billy.

Almost from the very moment I picked him up at the groomer’s I knew this dog would be with us, and he had to have a name . . . This dog could be nothing other than, Mr. Scot. It was as though his name was written in the air around him, and it didn’t hurt that I’d just seen the new Star Trek movie! He had the stature of royalty when he pranced and a sweet disposition. He seemed to be at home wherever he was. He loved car rides, sitting in your lap, or curled up in front of a fire--he oozed personality. It was also evident from the very beginning that he had serious health concerns.

Mr. Scot suffered from an obvious mouth irritation, digestive, skin and eye problems. I felt as though he were a leaky dam and I the maintenance caretaker. Over the months he had shots, teeth extracted, anti-fungal treatments, antibiotics, and many dietary regimes. Through all the bathing, eye drops, face washes, pills, vomiting and retching he was a champ, never mean--a true sweetie glad to be rewarded with a bowl of food at the end of it all. We did all that we could for his health without the benefit of history or invasive extraordinary measures. I knew I wasn’t going to construct a new dam, but perhaps I could patch the obvious holes. That’s exactly what happened and for a few months it looked as though maybe he’d be around for a while . . .

It was in those few months that we had a chance to really get to know the little spark plug of a dog Mr. Scot was. He was feisty and sweet with a will to match the legacy of his heritage. Whenever I hear a Scotsman talking from here on out, there he will be in my memory, prancing up in his royal, “By God I’m here, I’m hot and I know it,” way! Even at the last when cancer was eating up all the calories we could get down him and he was hardly more than skin over bones, he never lost that attitude. It was subdued, and it was there.

In his final day, bleeding broke through the upper palette of that tortured mouth of his. The dam burst and with heavy hearts we knew it was time. As I said at the beginning, it had only been 6 months and yet my mind is full of images of this little character I had the privilege to love into the next part of his journey . . . His yellow and gray striped turtleneck sweater . . . His dancing and prancing for dinner with one front leg stretched out to the side I affectionately called his Jolson . . . The royal gait he assumed while under leash as he and Dan took their nightly walk to the pond . . . His love of riding in the front seat and looking out the window . . . His trusting insistence at lying in the very middle of the floor of the kitchen at any gathering of people . . . Walking down to the water’s edge at the beach looking as though he was on a mission to swim to his homeland . . . The way he melted in my arms and curled up in front of the fire when it was providing heat or not! So many memories in such a short time.

What a fortuitous day, that day in May when a rat in a trap summoned a stray little Scottie in our yard hoping for dinner. He took a lot of care and attention in end. We had gotten into a routine of meds, meals, cleanings and potty pauses throughout the day. I spent a lot of time and attention on him and now I find that I keep looking for him, thinking about the time and what he would be needing when, etc. He’s not here, and I am still here with him. There were moments I got impatient with him toward the end, moments I wasn’t as considerate as I could have been, and I did my best. One time I looked at him and said matter of factly, “Look, when you die, I want you to just do it, no more of this lingering.” Now the memory of those words feel like sanding sticking in my throat. Looking back I see that the last 4 weeks he began to implode, loose health and his sparkle at an accelerated pace. It was hard for me to see how much loss there was while immersed in the day to day reality of his care. The bleeding oozing from his mouth was the resounding finality.

This has been a year of losses for me. There have been so many that I would have to be blind not to see something is going on in and beyond me. What remains beyond the losses is yet to be discovered. Life is all about letting go from the moment we draw our first breath, we live and die simultaneously. I think we tend to forget that while our limbs are moving effortlessly and our brains are functioning at their peak . . . and then something happens, and the shocking reality comes into focus. We are fragile. We are fragile beings on a course to death and we never know how or when that will happen.

If we’re one of the ‘lucky’ ones we might just have our awareness awakened. We might get a sense of our fragility, live with death as our closest companion informing us that every moment in this extraordinary experience of being human is something to be treasured. Some of us are here for a long time in the metrics of our experience . . . some of us only a brief visitation . . . In the main, we don’t get to choose how long we are here, and all of our choices do effect that very outcome. We do have complete choice over our experience of being while we are here.

Even in the end of his long life, Mr. Scot was open to starting all over. He was looking for food and found a family, a soft place to land on his way out. He never resisted me once, while at the same time making sure I was quite aware of all of his needs and wishes with that unforgettably determined bark of his. It was like he was always saying . . “OK, so I’m going to be part of your family now, I can dig it. I’ll sparkle and dance for my dinner and plop myself right in the middle . . . because look at me--I’m hot and well endowed, and by god I’m a Scot!”

I bought a beautiful bouquet of flowers at our local Trader Joe’s yesterday. Bright red roses, deep orange Gerber Daisies, rust colored mums, and yellowy star flowers. I got them for me, in memory of the bright, warm and cheery character that was Mr. Scot. I’ll remember you always . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Callie the Border Collie

2009-11-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

I know she’s smart, it’s in her breed, and I can see it in her eyes. There’s a lot you can tell by looking into the eyes of humankind and beast. I’ve looked into the eyes of both, a lot of different people, and a lot of different animals of all sizes and species. . . .

When my kids were young we had a small little 2.5 acre farm. It was just big enough to have ducks, chickens, hamsters, guinea pigs, a goat or two, a dog, a cat, a very ancient and stubborn Shetland pony, a pair of geese, a runty steer who grew to be the size of Texas, and a few sheep. We must have had a sign that read--”Bring us any animal you find or don’t want anymore!” The reason I know this is simple--that is exactly what happened. We became an unwanted animal home for all comers . . . Back to eyes . . .

Sheep have to be some of the most brainless animals on the planet, at least ours were. Any one of our animals including the Loonies, a group of adolescent ducks imprinted upon and consequently devoted to my daughter would have outscored all of our sheep combined, on any occasion, using any measure. I would look into Dusty’s eyes, the enormous ewe who started it all for any sign of brain synapse, just a flicker of something attached to a brain stem. Nothing. She was like an enormous, hairy, smelly, frozen computer . . . the power cord is plugged in and no activity, nothing’s happening no matter what you do. Not so with Callie. I look into her eyes and wonder if she’s doing mental calculus just for fun.

Yesterday it was pouring down rain here in the Pacific NW. For all of you who don’t live here, it’s true about the rain, just so you know. When you show up here to vacation in July, August, or even September to drink in our magnificent mountains, hiking trails, islands and coastal wonders, you think nothing could be more beautiful. That’s true as well, you just have to live with the other nine months of gray skies and cool rains . . . How would it get to be so green here without them? So, it was raining, as it is now . . .

I took Callie out in the backyard for Frisbee fun and didn’t want to get soaked. I stood under cover of the awning of our back deck and threw from there. She would run like the bullet on legs she is, and catch the Frisbee mid-air. Then she’d run back, putting her front feet up on the deck to be level with me responding to, “Hand it to me!” This went on for a few throws and then she made a request. She brought the Frisbee back in the same way as before, but this time didn’t let go of it when I began to take it from her . . . odd.

Instead of releasing the Frisbee, Callie, Frisbee in mouth, keeping eye contact with me all the way, pranced over to the spot in the yard where I normally throw to her. Then, still looking at me while I stood on the deck, brought the Frisbee back to me as she had before. Again, she brought it up to me and didn’t release it, kept eye contact and pranced over to the spot. Three times she did this. It’s a little embarrassing to admit that it took me 3 TIMES to understand her request . . . “I would like you to throw to me from our usual spot please?” When I finally got it I stepped off the deck and into the rain--what else could I do? Callie rewarded ME by hopping and prancing around in a little happy victory dance . . . “Good girl, you did well!”

OK, I got wet. That’s not what disturbs me really. What I’m a little concerned about this morning is this . . . Is she looking into MY eyes the way I looked into Dusty’s? Hoping for some activity?

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Monday, 11-02-09 Lions, Tigers, and November--Oh My!!

2009-11-04T06:24:00.001-08:00

November’s here. Is it possible to have a relationship with a month? . . . It would appear that I do. Novembers past have included living 1/2 mile from the epi-center of an earthquake that rumbled through the house at night like a freight train throwing books, glassware and kids to the floor . . . Another included 100 year floods that filled the basement with 3 feet of nasty water . . . Other’s? A miscarriage, bouts of depression, and the end of a marriage. All this in November past.

I guess it isn’t any wonder that I enter this month with respect and a little wary caution of the kind I had when I saw “Jurassic Park” for the first time. Leaving the theater in a hypnotic trance I found myself automatically looking overhead to be sure a Velociraptor wasn’t about to jump on me from above, after which he’d knock me to the ground ripping my abdomen open with that solitary razor sharp claw. I’m in a similar hypnotic trance conditioned by Novembers past. Minus the claw, I’m looking around wondering what could potentially jump on my head this month . . . However, if 2009 is going to keep having her way with me, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts it will have something to do with LOSS.

Some people would tell me that I will manifest loss thinking this way . . . by entertaining thoughts in a pattern of cautionary remembrance I will materialize loss. Beware the conditioning. Here’s what I think about that--I know there’s a lot of buzz out there about keeping positive thinking and the manifestation thereof. By that line of reasoning, if I hold this caution as a hypnotic trance to any degree, I will manifest more of the same . . . I think I understand the logic, and there is a degree of truth in this . . . AND, there’s more.

Most certainly we are more powerful than we usually acknowledge. We are capable of greatness in thought. Thought is material, and we do manifest from our thoughts. And, it’s not a tidy formula as if life itself will bend to our will. It’s just like us humans to think we can manipulate life, as if it were as simple as a dualistic battle of either/or--”Don’t think negatively, think positively!!!” Isn’t this experience of being human more than that? What of a yes/and ____________ . . . How about leaving a great deal of space for the much, much more our minute bit of consciousness can take in.

I’m not in dreadful fear of what I might manifest by remembering time past. I am in an inquiry of cyclical recurrences in my life, spiraling through the seasons as I work my humanity and move toward my earthly completion. Something in this season has held great learning for me. I’m interested in that. By opening up a curiosity of what might wait for me in the November ahead I am not dooming myself, at the mercy of trance, or manifesting the past by my inquiry.

Life isn’t a magic trick to be wielded. There is no simple secret formula that will override the arduous human journey fraught with emotion of all kinds, and challenges to meet. At the heart, isn’t living a work of our individual and relational development we begin with our first breath and end with our last. Nothing at all ‘magic’ about that, and . . . Having said that, there is this quirky sensation that shows up after the work, the steps taken on a particular 1000 mile journey. On an ordinary day in an ordinary way, we wake up and realize that a previous challenge is simply no longer with us . . . how about that? There are no trumpets, no rockets shooting out of the sky, just a quiet knowing. It feels magical, like it just happened, and most likely? The result of an examined life, well lived.

I’m a champion of personal sovereignty, living it all to the extent of your very best efforts, being courageous in the face of fear, generosity, and taking life so seriously that you laugh much and hold lightly. That’s a ‘formula’ I can live with. So, welcome November!

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Friday, 10-30-09 Without the Sugar

2009-10-31T11:32:00.001-07:00

Woke up early this morning and realized yet another loss in a line of many this year . . . my website. It had been hacked into more than once several months ago. After a few attempts to fix the problems the web designer concluded that I needed a new platform. That was to happen in late August. I talked with him last night, (curiously another Dan H.), and I decided to let it go. Web designer Dan H. has a full time gig that is keeping him really busy, and as a result hasn’t had the space to be as responsive as I’ve needed. He admitted he had dropped the ball . . . I like the guy and it’s not enough. He’s just not what I need or want in a business partner.

I have a history of hanging in there with people beyond reason. I have done so by over-functioning when they under-function--exhausting for me, and a miss-guided use of my energies. Instead of doing my own work here on earth I have spent a lot of my life tracking people down, reminding them to do what they said they were going to do, and . . . doing their work, taking on their responsibilities. I’m over it professionally and as well, in personal relationships. I am interested in building a current reality populated by people and things that really show up for me, and make sense for my life. I know I’ll have to deal with my habituation of thinking of everybody and everything before myself, and conforming to what it is they need and want . . . And I’ll do it. For me change begins with clarity first, and moves into action. Meanwhile, on this road to the future I am desiring, I’m finding myself surrounded by loss . . .

Loss. It’s the theme of my 2009. The year began with my broken wrist that snapped more than bones in my life. The bones in my body have knit back together and healed . . . I can’t say the same about my Dan H.-NOT web-designer. The crack on the ice was a metaphorical match igniting a deep pocket of unresolved biological and behavioral patterning lying under the surface of his skin that came hurtling out at me in a climactic halt as I lay in our bed disoriented, and drugged. The care and trust between us was arrested in very much the same way my life was suddenly arrested while stretched out on the ice. My life went into stasis. The broken wrist, the broken trust began to weave a cord of a new color and texture into the fabric of my life . . . change and loss.

The irony of the beauty surrounding me on the day I fell on the ice still lives in me as something almost mystical. While cradling my distorted right wrist I could feel the thick sludge of pain moving through me. It was as if my blood had turned into a gel while my nervous system was firing off hot sparks of panic like the end of a broken power line flailing about inside me as it does in a wild stormy wind. While a storm was waging inside, all around me was this ice castle stillness with big magical crystalline flakes all fluffy white, falling down on my face. At the time I had no idea that only hours later I would live into a similar irony, a fissure ripping the fabric of our relationship . . . beauty and brokenness . . . the terrible and the tender . . .

From that day the losses have grown. Witnessing the pain of our relational situation was just too much for a beloved friend, she needed to step away. I have and do feel her loss continually. The general state of the economy changed employment and we have lost the savings put away for that rainy day that has lasted for a year. Since last November both Dan and I have lost a good deal of momentum in work and business life. Contracts and painting sales have simply gone away, evaporated like the morning dew in the summer sun. Add to that, another good friend of mine has recently moved away, and the entire constellation in the suite where I have my studio has changed. All this is deep loss for me. I now live in the downstairs of our home, and wake up alone. Now the website? Just one more domino in a long line crashing to the ground as I’ve made the long journey around the sun, so far, a year marked my losses, lots and lots of losses.

It’s just got to be very human to consider loss as a negative thing in our lives. At least, in America that is . . . More is better, tons is best, and loss--bad news. That’s how we have looked at things here in the USA, and we are living with the obvious consequences of our actions based on those beliefs. I’m living the losses on a deeply personal as well as communal level, it’s all around me, in me, in the air I breath and the steps I take. It’s just the way it is right now, and my best efforts don’t seem to be making much of a difference, like my little rudder isn’t going to move the Titanic just yet . . . and, maybe not before a fatal hole is dug into the side. It doesn’t have to play out that way, and it’s all I CAN see right now.

This sounds grim. I notice my tendency to want to make this picture a little prettier and it’s not. It is what it is, right now, grim. Sure, there is a lot to acknowledge on the lighter side, and I don’t want to ‘sugar-coat’ what the overwhelming theme in my life is right now--loss. I want to look at loss straight in the face and allow myself to be led and learn from this teacher. I am committed to embracing this life experience, it only makes sense to do so. When loss shows up, there’s something for me to learn. It showed up again. . . the loss of the website. Dan H. the web designer is out of capacity and cannot follow through on what he promised . . . Eerie . . . Dan H., my partner is out of capacity and cannot follow through on what he promised . . .

My Dan H. is coming home late tonight from the last of, up to now, booked work in 09. I’m watching as my energy starts to get excited, and I need to reel myself in. He’s not coming home to me, to his wife, partner, lover. He’s coming home to his life where he lives near me, in tandem with me, kinda, sorta. He’ll give me some time tomorrow before he heads over the mountains to help his friend move. It’s Halloween tomorrow and I’ll be alone. Not tragic, and yet, I’ll be alone. I’ll be without the partner I thought I’d have at this time in my life to do something with, something fun and Halloween-like. I’ll be alone, just like I will be late tonight when I hear our front door open and he walks upstairs to where he lives a life without me in the way we promised each other on September 22, 2002.

I remember Emma Thompson’s face in “Love Actually” when her emotionally unfaithful husband comes home from a business trip. He apologized and the affair ended it, but the schism remained. He comes home and she responds to her excited children and says, “Yes, Daddy’s” . . . and here the word falls like silently cold drizzle on an even colder day. . . . “home.” Dan comes home, well he comes here, and then he’ll be off again to be with people who matter to him. He comes home, but not to me, not really. I’m feeling sad about this and all the loss. It feels very important for me to be with this sadness, without the sugar . . . and, I have tears swimming in my eyes . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

Thresholds on the Journey of Artistry

2009-10-28T19:56:00.000-07:00

Waiting for the sky to lighten up so Callie and I can go for a walk at North Shore . . . It’s SO dark this morning. All I really want to do is to stay where I am and write. I can’t stop writing, I’m writing every minute of the day and night . . . Waking up with threads to put into words on a page. I don’t completely understand this, but somewhere along the way I’ve ben stung by the writing bug. I will find a way to become sustainable with my writing and my painting, and I’ll do it Nancy Style . . .

What is Nancy Style when it comes to financial sustainability? This is the question foremost in my mind these days, and as a result--I’m finding bits and pieces. I recently had two encounters with friends that are giving me insight into how I’m already following my energy on the path toward an organic, deeply female, thriving, wholesome financial sustainability. One of these learning encounters came from the sale of a painting named “Aperture” to Keith, an intuitive, bright and engaging friend.

Two years ago Keith was in town staying at our home while he led a shortened version of a workshop he offers to his clients in beautiful Banff. While walking home from a restaurant we were having a conversation about the edgy relationship between static and dynamic quality, control and chaos . . . I was struck with the way in which the content of the conversation synched beautifully with this particular painting. I had the strong sense this painting would find a home with Keith. I decided to hang “Aperture” in a place he was sure to see it and clearly remember the moment he stopped midway on the stairs. He was focused on the painting and said, “Don’t sell this.” I took him seriously, and brought the painting along on the next road trip to Calgary to give him a chance to live with it for a while. That ‘while’ was over a year in which financial challenges rained down on so many of us. Discretionary funds for art work weren’t readily available.

We kept in communication about the painting. I truly appreciated his honesty and concerns about spending precious cash on art. I understand this dilemma very well, as one in the arts in a time of financial downturn. Through the entire process I checked in from time to time with my intuitive hunch about the piece and all along I came back to the same place. From my side of the fence this was Keith’s painting. It’s a boldly abstract, highly sophisticate and thoughtful piece that demands a level of astute intuition. It simply had to land with someone like Keith . . . he’s one of a kind and so is this painting! In short, I was completely at peace with him living with “Aperture.” The time frame was not as much an issue for me as the integrity of the relationship between us, and between him and the painting. In the end it came down to one, or possibly two questions from me to Keith . . . Do you still want the painting? If so . . . What do you WANT to pay for it? He did and named his price and it was acceptable to me, and life is good.

What I truly care about showed up in this entire process. I paint by following an energy to the canvas . . . It’s not enough for me to end there, the painting is meant for someone, some group, somewhere . . . The work is not complete, cannot do what IT needs to do until it, following it’s own journey, eventually finds home. How long it rests in one place or another depends on the path of the painting. This is something that isn’t written in stone, it’s an organic, fluid, dynamic process, as is my development as an artist. That’s what “Aperture” is all about . . .

There are so many levels, passages and thresholds on the journey of artistry. For me, a life within a life . . . As a child I learned to crawl, stand, walk, run . . . As an artist I’ve learned to reveal and express my artistic vision and voice in much the same organically incremental way. I began to paint after a series of dreams . . . (another story for another day) . . . I initially painted in seclusion. Slowly, as my skill and confidence grew I included an intimate circle of family and friends, and then on into the community. I enlarged the sphere of exposure as I developed my capacity to contain the inherent risks in confidence and artistic development in doing so. Exposure too early risks contamination of the personal voice so essential in creative work, and valuable learning side-tracked or potentially lost. There’s a good deal of wisdom in tending to the inner workings and stepping out when the internal ‘muscles’ can support the movement. It’s a process, and it takes what it takes in time, energy, commitment and support . . .

I can’t say and don’t know how anyone else makes sense of their lives. Life for me is an organic process constrained by what I truly care about. This is a process can’t be pushed or conformed into something that looks a certain way to be more palatable with cultural standards. I need to live in a way that makes sense to me, no matter how unwieldy it may look to another. The road may be long . . . it may and usually does take a lot of turns and at times feels uncomfortable. I’m OK with that, as long as it’s my road . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

My Life is Changing Like The Morning Sky

2009-10-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

Gorgeously brilliant pink sky this morning . . . the clouds are forming a series of linear bars reaching out for the earth’s magnetic poles across the horizon like many thin, airy arms . . . a progression of ghostly filaments alive with color, spanning the globe. It’s breath takingly beautiful. From where I sit and write I get a small window into this magnificence, and for the moment my entire focus is on this sky . . . Soon, it will be gone, washed into the light of the sun. Changes in the atmosphere . . . and changes in my life . . .

To start off, my income level and stability has changed . . . Did I ever really have stability anyway, or was the ease I felt when cash was flowing a temporal illusion of stability? Sudden and unexpected downsizing of income is true for so many right now that I find some comfort in the communal aspect of this change . . . And, it’s still personal and with that, all the personal stuff that accompanies re-organizing my financial life. Changing income is enough in itself to turn life upside down, and in mine--there’s more, a lot more. . .

The constellation of people in my studio space has changed. The absence of some, and addition of other suite-mates, along with the concomitant energies they bring are all very different. I’m not at all sure how that will effect me, and it will, already has. Being an empath, it’s inevitable that shifting the energetic human dynamics in the place where I paint will present itself to some degree in my work.

At home I have re-located my personal living space within my household to accommodate major structural changes in my primary relationship . . . This is a big change emotionally and physically. In re-locating, I’m aware of many levels of embodied behaviors that suddenly don’t exist! For instance, groggy from sleep this morning when a bright light would sear my tender eyes, I don’t have embodied access to the dimmer switch. I just haven’t reached out for it enough in my new location for my arm to automatically give me just a little light at a moment when my being isn’t fully functioning yet. This morning I almost blinded myself with full on halogen . . . It’s the little stuff and the big stuff of moving . . . I can’t remember where I put my vitamins, and can’t figure out where to put the bills, car keys, computer charger, dog food . . . and where is that much needed cell phone car charger?? And this is just the physical aspect of re-locating, there’s the relational . . .

Caring deeply for another so close to my heart right now means giving space, stepping back from contact . . . That’s love in action in my life at this moment. This change shows up for me like a hole in the fabric of my life, a hole that I am looking through . . . Perhaps there’s something I will be able to see and live into on the other side of that fabric, something that I have visibility into only because of the space that now exists between us. The hole can serve as a window, and I don’t know what lies beyond. I certainly don’t know what lies ahead with or without the space. All I ever have access to is this very moment . . . In reality, a culmination of all the moments of my life here in physical form on this earth. I admit I feel disoriented at times, about to say something to someone who is no longer present when I’m brushing my teeth or running to the store for arugula and feta. Changes.

All the routines seemingly insignificant or not, have given, and do give me a sense of familiarity, a known-ness in this life. I’m not advocating an assessment of value, simply observing. I notice the opportunity to become victimized by the changes, crediting my behavior, my mood, my sense of ease to the external factors. It’s then I’m remembering MY life is MY creation. To the degree I am at ease--comfortable I feel in my own skin or not, is up to me. In truth, there’s something to be said for discomfort. When familiarity erodes into the vastness of possibility it’s life as one big jig-saw puzzle in a box that fell off the shelf. Suddenly all the pieces are scattered all over the floor with almost limitless new combinations to explore. No more business as usual--no wonder I can’t find anything! That’s the way it is right now.

How do I move forward with all the pieces of my known world scattered? I can look at it as tragic disruption to routine, and be miserably frustrated . . . Or, I can look at it as a treasure hunt affording opportunities for discovery on an amazing journey . . . And, somewhere, sometime in that journey, I’ll find the piece leading to my cell phone car charger . . . and maybe I won’t!

The sky is a soft gray-blue now . . . the brilliance of this early morning’s visual feast is gone--that’s neither good nor bad from where I sit. It’s simply different, it’s a change. Like the ever-changing sky reflects the rotation of the earth around it’s source, the sun . . . How I live into my ever-changing life circumstances will be a reflection of how I relate to and interact with my source--my essential energy deep inside. . . All the changes and shifting material of my life simply highlight a reality that nothing is static externally or internally. Day by day, moment by moment, life is in continual movement, always, ever, a dynamic journey that is mine to own, mine to live . . . living into change . . .

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

PS . . . Just noticed that some weeks ago, before the changes, I taped this Rilke poem on my notebook . . . Wild!

In Praise of Mortality

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame

where everything shines as it disappears.

The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much

as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.

Is it safer to be gray and numb?

What turns hard becomes rigid

and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.

Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking

finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation

it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming

a laurel, dares you to become the wind.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

2009-10-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

Suddenly, My Life in 140 Characters . . .

Have been hanging with my best friend . . . a maven extraordinaire, cooking phobe, riotously fun, bright as hell, engaging, and all around good tweeple . . . Ha! I’ve spent a few days with her, and now I know what tweeple means--cool, huh? Tweeple is Twitter People, a tribe to which I now belong. I’m a baby tweeple, still sucking my twumb, scratching my belly and for the most part, blurbing my babbling nonsense into this foreign country while looking for my blankie.

Like any infant, I’m sure this baby tweeple will make all kinds of messes before I get my twains working properly--that’s Twitter-brains--my lexicon. Suddenly everything in my life is tweeting . . . There’s my twingers--tired Twitter fingers, my tweyes--tired Twitter eyes used to a life of observing trees, lakes, the ever-green landscape of the Pacific NW, and birds in flight instead of the computer screen. The only birds I’ve been observing for a few days now are avatars . . . Wild!

Why am I so attracted to participation in Twitter? It seems illogical that a nature loving artist who happily devotes so much of her life to deep listening in the quiet wild places with, of course, the excellent company of Callie the border collie, would choose to participate . . . On the surface I don’t seem to be a fit for this fast moving, hip, constantly morphing, put your oar in with 140 characters community. I spend my time thinking, observing, painting, listening, and, up to now, have very carefully chosen my involvement in community. This move to Twitter appears antithetical, paradoxical, and yet . . .

I sense something of great importance here in this immense, at times confusing, and very human community . . . and maybe that’s it. Twitter seems to be not only a very human community, but a global very human community incorporating all the brilliance, creativity, good and ill willed energies we as a people are capable of. No matter who you are, where you live, how you were or weren’t educated, the color of your skin . . . If you walk on two legs and have opposable thumbs--you’re part of humanity. In joining the Twitter community I sense that I’m letting in more of this reality. It isn’t any wonder to me that any gathering of this dimensionality will potentially carry all our human family can create . . . We are a people of great caring along great abuses . . . a largely mixed bag of ever related, ever evolving DNA.

I clearly remember the time I saw the first picture of the earth from space. My breath caught in my throat and I was speechless. I experienced a deep YES. The YES was a recognition of the reality that we are one family as complex and varied as our earth, a human ecosystem. Separation is the illusory myth we must see through to evolve into a higher order of being. I think Twitter and social media in general are offering something like a technologically organic connective tissue into our human story to assist in dispelling the myth of separation. This is something I care deeply about . . . How we evolve and raise consciousness. This is what my art is all about, visual pages corresponding to my life journey as I extend my energy into this mix.

Wrapping this all up in metaphor . . . Twitter is providing something like a global get to know ya party. You enter and have a fair shot at extending your humanity into the mix along with everyone else, the good, the bad and the ugly of us. It’s the capacity to connect around the world in a fluid, dynamic conversation that intrigues me--all in 140 characters at a time. At the moment, a lot of my energy is going toward wrapping my brains around my relationship with the Twitter world. I’ll need to get back to the quiet wild places soon . . . But for now, there’s somebody I want to Re-Tweet!

That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .

PS . . . Now I’m really stoked about Twitter . . . just tried to re-tweet and got a screen that said . . . Twitter is over capacity! We’re on the same page . . . so am I!!