One’s Craft
The artwork I create has to do something to ones spirit. Otherwise, it is simply decoration. While I am a craftsman, I am not just a craftsman. The same goes with being an artist: while I am an artist, I don't want to be just an artist - to be "just" anything is to be simply performing the mechanics of the thing - going through the motions - without partaking in the spiritual component of whatever action one might be engaged in. It is to be just a mechanic. However, the mechanic as well can transcend his own position to be not just anything; I do not mean to disparage mechanics. Does what you do uplift others? Does it challenge them to step beyond ordinary perception and push expand boundaries and, while you are engaged in your art, do you push yourself to be more open, more expressive and more aware of where your own edges are?
The Train, The Mummy, and The Mountains
Riding along the Amtrak on my way back to San Diego passing mountains and fields in afternoon golden sunlight. Rocky red mountains tinged with green, laden with it, draped over them. At the same time, Hard to tell if i am going south or north- the sun is to my back but the land passes me from left to right. This makes no sense to me.
Egyptian pyramids and kitchy lines of "The Mummy" play out on the screen of my laptop while my mind drifts to thoughts of the Casa Barranca Tasting Room in Ojai and the work I'll be painting a bit of detail work along the archways, stained glass looking motifs like tiffany windows or frank lloyd wright squares and rectangles or C. R. Mackintosh floralisms.
Hot Springs
Sitting in the hot springs this afternoon, sunning in the sun, warm waters washing over my being. Cool breeze over perspiration laden skin. Red dragon flies buzzing through the air describe curved spiraling lines that linger in my vision. Reflected ripples of water, on the underside of a boulder overhanging the pool of sulphuric hot spring water, intertwine in accordance to the motions and intimations of the breeze, my movements, and their own echoes. A bead of sweat drips off my chin and taps the surface of the pool, forming concentric circles that merge with the larger ripples. Silence resounds around me in the form of bird songs, rustling leaves, water rippling and rolling, sounds of life drifting through everything: the trees, the rocks, the water, me. I breathe everything in deeply and exhale everything just the same. I twist and stretch and sit still. I smile and relax. I sigh. I surrender.
Train II
Station in mexican adobe tile style with
octagonal cupola atop, curved windows
and mosaic designs along pillars and archways
palms and old men
looking like the building has built up around them
standing leaning against the support for support
oblivious to the kids running and playing
and yelling about trains or who said what
maybe you get old enough
you either no longer care who said what
or you care all too much
i'm working on being the former
old women who read magazines
and tan teenagers maybe on their way to LA
or further
to see a friend go to a party
always something different than the story they tell
on their way out the door to mom and dad
we've all been there
done that
the old man and
the little kids
the woman with the magazine
who told a lie about going to the store but instead
drove around the corner to cry
and while i study the congruous angles of the sloping roof lines
and how they interact with the clouds that tuft along in the sky
others lament on phones
wondering when
their train is going to arrive
Train I
train in the summer time along the california coast
passing an endless beach of turquoise blue water.
endless curls of waves and endless sand - miles -
people dot the beach then exist in swarms then fade
away again
beautiful girls in bikinis
tan fit boys riding waves
sitting like seals doting the snowy white surf
people fading away again and the beach is too short for even people
only odd people remain
little kids wearing black and red wetsuits like a little line of seals
walking along follow the leader don't get washed away
a pile of rocks
a discarded table
another lifeguard tower
small trailer homes along the beach front
very expensive trailer homes
blocking the view of sea
palm trees and bougainvillea
and that endless endless horizon line of blue
punctuated now and again by a speedboat, a freighter ship
an oil drilling barge (now that they open it up again)
and then people again in droves, in front of
houses that get battered by the wind during storm
but warmed by the sun and surf
during these endless
summer days
I love this state.
On Marriage
Marriage is a spiritual contract not just between two people but between two souls with the whole of the world as witness to their union. This spiritual contract, this union, is based on trust, commitment, admiration and, most of all, love. This love has no fine print, no conditions, and no murky sub-clauses. It is exactly as it is stated. The two souls entering into this union share a trust of each others intentions and motivations. They are committed to each others spiritual growth as well as to their own. They admire the life that each other leads now, has led and will continue to lead. And they love each other as they are, wholly and completely, not as they could be, as they would like them to be or as they once were. When we love another person fully, we extend our boundaries to include them within our sphere of existence. Their growth process becomes our growth process, their failures and triumphs become our own. We allow that their process may be different than ours and that it has gone on long before we ever entered the picture, but as long as that process is healthy and valid, as long as it allows for love, growth and change and does not create discordance of spirit both within and without, we support and engage it with them. When the growth process closes, when the door of the heart seems to shut, we do not turn our backs but, again, offer support, compassion and the challenge to move beyond such obstacles to a more harmonious and loving existence. There is strength in numbers and in the spiritual union of marriage, a container is created for greater growth and deeper spiritual connection, for a broader experience of life than the two spirits here before us have experienced on their own. The goal of a spiritual life is to live in harmony with the world - to rise as the world rises and set as the setting sun, allowing that all things are one, are dependent upon each other and come from and go back to Spirt. It is wise to enter into a union with one who seeks to support such harmony, to spread love and wisdom and to create a wise and compassionate world. The two spirits, Michael and Violet, have deemed it wise, each other fit as well as themselves, to enter into such a union.
The Soul in Nature
Walking in the woods, sitting alongside a river, surrounded by tall mountains and blanketed by a silver layer of clouds I find myself once again. I find myself sitting, in a pause, loosing myself in the sound of a river rushing past- in the birds, in the reflections upon the ripples of the sky and the leaves of the trees. Walking, the sounds come into my head and leave again as if a thousand conversations. Approaching the river, I hear only the distant murmur. As I get closer that murmur is a sound that is definitely in front of me, significantly more distinct- like a thought coming clear. As I get nearer and nearer the sound becomes like a rushing torrent of words, until I are in the middle of it, standing on a rock, alone, in a valley, surrounded by green on all sides, with the rushing torrent of sound crashing about me and on all sides, tumbling rocks and passing right by with a thousand other places to go and, if I sit for a moment, even if just in my mind- if I listen for just a moment- immerse myself in that rushing crashing tumbling sound of thoughts cascading into one another and let myself go into it, forgetting that there is a destination, forgetting that there is any possible conclusion and simply surrender…. When we walk onwards, with the sound now behind me, there is an unintended cleansed feeling – a clarity and a sense of peace. With the sound of the river fading away behind me like a room of conversations with no conclusions, I feel refreshed.
I need this sense of escape into the mountains- into a world untended and unhindered. With bushes that have not been trimmed, flowers whose seeds were not placed by human hands. Surrounded by rocks that were not carefully positioned along rivers whose course was not chosen by discerning and engineering minds. To be surrounded by the holistic ecology of nature - that dynamically breathing, living being, is to step inside the outside, to embrace that which tries, yearns, to embrace us.
The Incessant Quality of Mind
All thru' the day I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
The Beatles -“I, Me, Mine”
All thru' the night I me mine, I me mine, I me mine.
Now they're frightened of leaving it
Ev'ryone's weaving it,
Coming on strong all the time,
All thru' the day I me mine.
What is it I spend all my time thinking about? I am pretty sure I’m thinking all the time. The only time I am not thinking is when I am full engaged in what I am doing (excluding things that require thinking; concentrated thinking is different than distracted thinking) watching a movie, listening to someone speak, painting, walking along the beach. There are these actions- all sorts of them. And I listen, I engage, each of them- eating, walking, yoga, painting, and there are moments of illumination, like a fish cresting a wave, jumping in the sun. These times arise when I am fully present. They arise when I am in the flow of life. Even if it is just sitting and I stop trying. I stop stopping. I stop.
How We Give
I'd planned on painting this evening but the current painting is finished. Instead, I found msyelf working on the second in the series, having finished the fifth. After drawing for a while and once again asking Fi (the cat) to graciously not curl up his twenty pound body on the drawing pad on my lap, I found myself reading up on some CSS manipulation for a site I've been working on and then looking into Rollingstone.com to see what was up there. I find interesting articles in amongst the music stuff, which I am less interested in than the journalism. I stumbled upon an interesting article about a fellow named Larry Brilliant - real name - and his philosophies and current station as head of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, or tentacle if you will.
I understand that all things that come across in writing, no matter how... objective they may strive to be are still subject to the conceits and filters of the writers and editors. Larry will come across through what he makes available to the interviewer and delivered to the reader through sound bites, snippets and word play, a few casual observations and some interviews with allies, associates and critics. Yet, the final feeling i get from it is "Why do we do what we do- for profit, personal gain, or... something more estimable?". Mr. Brilliant has found himself asked to head up Google's giving back system, and at that sitting upon a pile of cash to do something with. Not bad for an ex-guru-following-acid-eating-hippie (a highly stressed point as it were, as if to make the RS reader more sympathetic to him and to give him some street cred). But regardless of his history and his story, the point of the matter is that he is a guy who has tried to do a lot to help others and has, in many ways, succeeded, at least, according to this article and according to the perspective I'm left with.
The Song We Play
The silent stillness of late night surroundings finds me solitary and drinking a glass of red wine with a side dish of cheese and olives. It is a usual place for me on a late night Monday night these days listening to late night music like Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. What a weird collaboration of soundscapes and mental landscapes it is and yet, it was through this experimentation and willingness to go “out there” (and, incidentally, “in there”) that led them to great albums like Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. . The willingness to walk the edge, push the boundaries, leads us to find the new. In this world of the reinvented, the borrowed, the done time and again, it is that newness that stands the test of time.
The other day, I found a collection of music called Psychedelic Archaeology vols. 1-10. Interesting, I thought, I always wanted to see what I’d been missing in my collection. This montage, if you will, of Psychedelic rock from the 60’s didn’t purport to have any Beatles, old Pink Floyd or Jimi Hendrix. It was the underground. And rightly so- none of it held a candle to that which I already have. Much of it “sounded like…” or “seemed to borrow from…” or something and so was quickly forgotten, having never had an authentic and true voice and having never having had something really real to say. This is not to say that Ummagumma is a great album- it’s weird, psychedelic and distinctly of that era. Yet, because Pink Floyd went on to create bolder and more beautiful work (peaking out with The Wall) the early work has greater significance. We can see this with some artists. Early Picasso and Dali pieces or any great artist in fact. Although the early pieces may not hold the same clarity of vision (or confusion as the case may have been!) that the later works have, early works often show a passion and a willingness to push, to find the edges and see what lies over them. The challenge as an artist is to always be willing to push, to explore and to never settle into a “groove”.