When Kerri first showed me this photograph, it read to me like a minimalist painting. A subtle field of color with two splashes and a brushstroke. So much said with so little. A meditation of movement and the immovable.
The lake is different every day. Its color palette is as changeable as its moods. Each day upon awaking, Kerri walks onto the deck and snaps a picture. So far, no two days are alike. So far, no two hours are alike.
Once I stood in La Sagrada Familia and the enormity of it made me quiet. The lake is like that. Immense to the point of stillness.
On island, we often hear phrases like, “throwback community” or “another, simpler time.” It’s a place with no stoplights. People leave their keys in their cars. Locked doors are a rarity. People wave when passing on the road.
It is not without its feuds and divisions. The conservative impulse meets the wheels of progress with creative tension, just like everywhere else in the world. Things change through a tug-of-war, albeit slower, perhaps at a more human pace.
We moved into our summer home and found that Deb told us the truth: the dryer doesn’t work well so it’d be better to put up a clothesline. We did.
I am no stranger to mindfulness meditations, I’ve read more books than I should have on presence, attention, and awareness. None of them are as useful or transformative as carrying a basket of freshly washed laundry out to the clothesline and pinning the clothes up. It cannot be done quickly. It must be done with care. The sun warms your back. The clothes smell fresh and the breeze is heavy with lavender and lilac. The grass swooshes beneath your feet.
Efficiency and convenience can sometimes be great robbers of the moment, and too easily reinforce a life of getting-through-it or, at best, getting-on-to-the-next-thing.
After everything is hung up on the line it is nearly impossible not to turn around, breathe deeply, and take in the day.
Roll this description around in your thought-bowl:
“The Spoon River Anthology, a sequence of free verse epitaphs spoken from [the occupants of] the cemetery of the town of Spoon River. When the collection first saw publication in 1915, it caused a great sensation because of its forthrightness about sex, moral decay, and hypocrisy…”
We saw a snippet of Spoon River performed last week at our new artistic home, TPAC. It’s almost impossible to see even a bit of Spoon River and not realize how fragile and temporary is life. It’s a not-so-subtle poetry-reminder that most of what we think is sooooooo important is, in fact, a tilt at windmills. In its forthrightness, its perspective on hypocrisy and moral decay, we found Spoon River to be remarkably contemporary.
Tom told me that he always used Spoon River to teach his beginning actors. “It’s all there,” he said, “All of it!”
He read a piece from the anthology at his great aunt Bunty’s funeral. It takes life to love life. After Tom’s death, Kerri and I performed the same piece in my play THE LOST BOY, a script derived from interviews with Tom. Words that end the first act. Words that described Bunty. Words that Tom adored:
It’s the best of paradoxes. Kerri and I remind each other everyday that our work, our artistry is not nearly as important as we think it is. We remind each other to hold it all lightly. And in holding it lightly, we open the door to experience it richly. To laugh rather than resist. To know, that we will, one day, populate a plot on the hill, and the only thing that will have mattered is that we paid attention and participated in our moment, that we loved the little bit of life that we had.
I suspect Kerri chose SCATTERED because it is how we feel right now. A new place. New work with no definitive direction. We will create direction and intention later. Our job is to watch. To listen. To study. To learn a culture and all of the layers of relationship and nuance that implies.
I was encouraged when I listened this morning to SCATTERED. It is hopeful. Bright. Playful. It is filled with determination, like a child racing through a spring meadow. It lifted my spirits and encouraged a good old fashioned exploration trip.
The first really fun step in making any good puzzle is to scatter the pieces. To make an intentional mess, a deliberate challenge. That is the sparkling theme driving Kerri’s spirit-lifting composition, SCATTERED.
SCATTERED on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes & CDBaby
Meaning is made through a frame of reference. Concepts of time, of nature, of community, of the divine, are not universal. They are local and they provide the distinct frame through which individual and communal experience is interpreted. No one reaches the age of 2 without the installation of a frame.
What we call truth is largely a result of the frame we see through. For instance, is it best to protect the rights of the individual or the needs of the community? The preference largely depends upon what kind of society is asking the question, individualistic or communal.
Frames pop forward certain aspects and make other aspects retreat. Put a frame on a painting and various colors and shapes seem to stand out. Put another frame on the same painting and entirely different shapes and colors dominate. The same is true of every lived experience. Mood is a passing frame. Expectation is a made-up frame.
One day, for grins, Kerri and I took a few paintings to the frame store to see how they might change. CLASSIC was one of the paintings we took that day. I had an entirely different vision for what would make it sing. I’m generally not a fan of big frames but, when Kerri placed CLASSIC in a heavy, slightly ornate choice, I nearly fell over. Not only did CLASSIC sing, but it surprised us with an aria. Gorgeous. Grounded. The frame brought forward the simplicity.
I love it when my paintings blow back on me and I see them again as if for the first time. That is the gift of a frame: the opportunity to see again.
At the end of his life, Tom told me that, when reviewing his time on this earth, what he most valued, what made his life rich, was not the triumphant play openings or any achievement, title, or status symbol that he’d accumulated. It was the ordinary moments, the infinitely unimportant moments that gave color and shape to his story. Sitting on the porch with his aunt Bunty. Teaching his second grade class. Burning trash with his grandfather. As a boy, racing across the unplowed fields.
It sounds like a cliché’, doesn’t it? We hear it over and over again but rarely heed the wisdom. It is in the ordinary that the extraordinary is found. Pay special attention to the utterly normal and life will burst open and flow.
The film ABOUT TIME has ascended to the top of my favorites list. We watched it more than a few times this week. The quote says it all. Live everyday as if it was the final day in this extraordinary, ordinary life. It reads like a cliché’.
And yet, a few weeks ago I stared into my father’s eyes, and for a few moments he did not know who I was. Dementia is leading him away. I know that soon there will come a day when he will not come back. On that day, what might I give to simply sit and have a chat with my dad? Something so ordinary. Something beyond price.
When I first saw them I thought they were leaves growing like ivy on the post office wall. And then, one of the leaves fluttered its wings and took flight. It took a moment for my mind and eyes to adjust. Not ivy. Thousands and thousands of…dragonflies?
We stood for a few moments marveling at the sheer number of them. An older woman, an islander, pulled up and caught us gaping. “Bayflies,” she said in passing. “In all my years I’ve never seen so many.”
Later, in the theatre, we stared out of the window at another mass of…bayflies or dragonflies, clinging to the warm wall just outside the lobby. Pete came up behind us. “Mayflies,” he said. “There are a ton of them.” Pete is given to understatement. What he called a ‘ton’ I’d call a ‘plague.’ Alfred Hitchcock would have had a heyday with this story.
And the next day they were gone. Just like that. Had you told me about the bayfly-mayfly-dragonfly invasion, I might have wrinkled my brow and smiled at your exaggeration. A fishing story; a massive bug infestation? No one really knows what they are? Yeah, right! Here and gone. Uh-huh.
But it happened. Blink and you would have missed it. Just like life.
When I was young and upset about an issue I can no longer remember, Tom tempered me with this question: “Is this the hill you want to die on?”
Another time, still young, I was very angry, and on a warm spring day in the central valley, Arnie sat with me on the grass and listened to my tale of woe. I wanted to write a letter expressing my discontent. He nodded and, in his gentle way, taught me that sometimes it is sometimes necessary to express yourself because you need to express yourself and for no other reason: “Write it because you need to say it, not because they need to hear it,” he said. This morning, as I write this, I can’t for the life of me remember what made me so angry.
Quinn taught me that there are seven billion people with me on this earth and not a single one cares about what I look like or what I think. Like me, they are invested in what they look like, what they think.
They do care, however, that I listen. Isn’t it the case so often in this life that the opposite of what we believe is actually where the power lives? Aren’t we under siege in a raging war of opinions, a constant bombardment of competing points-of-view? So many mouths and not a single ear in the mix.
For the life of me, I can’t remember what made me so angry on those days so long ago. I can’t remember the hill I chose not to die on. What seemed so important was, in truth, not even worth remembering. I do, thankfully, remember the sage advice of so many mentors, teachers and friends. I’m so grateful that in the midst of my red hot self-righteousness, I was capable of listening.
This morning, sitting on the steps off the back deck, sipping coffee, DogDog sniffing around the yard, I watched the eagles fly across the bay, dodging seagulls protecting their brood. I fell into one of those moments, those precious few moments, of profound appreciation for my life. This part of my journey is surprising and as orienting as it is disorienting. Both/and.
I like to travel precisely because it throws me off center. Even the simplest things require attention. Which side of the road am I supposed to drive on? Oh my god, where is the corkscrew? What did I just order (I couldn’t even pronounce it)? Once, in a barter culture, I failed miserably because I bartered myself to a higher price. The merchant and I laughed until we cried and then he patted me on the back and only accepted half of my money. Laughter was my coin. That part of my journey changed the trajectory of my life entirely.
Read the order of the tracks on Kerri’s album, THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY, and you notice that the final two titles on the album are This Part Of The Journey followed by The Way Home. She is hyper-intentional so I believe she did that on purpose. Sitting on the deck this morning, I knew without doubt that this part of the journey, no matter how complicated or lost-feeling or unnerving or uncomfortable…or peaceful, is a great gift. It is a step on the way home. And, it will someday make for the best stories, perhaps the best part of my story.
THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY sparkles like the sun on the lake. It is as abundant as DogDog’s curiosity on his discovery trip around the yard. It is as full of laughter as a merchant in Bali who, to this day, tells the story of the tourist who had no idea what he was doing.
THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY on the album THIS PART OF THE JOURNEY is available on iTunes & CDBaby
The 4th of July is DogDog’s birthday. Today he is six years old. He is generally nonchalant about his big day. No fireworks needed. No parade necessary. He was appreciative of the special rawhide bone. I suspect he’ll receive more than the usual amount of belly-bellies and a long walk is in order (his favorite thing in all the world). Mostly, he will hang out and love the world just as it is, just like any other day. He’s a happy spirit, a contented soul.
Six. That means he was two years old when I painted JOY. It’s a big painting. It is, in fact, the first painting Kerri named. It was a spontaneous naming, her initial response in seeing the finished painting. I was, at first puzzled by the name she chose. And then, I caught sight of two-year-old DogDog, relaxed in his pose. Quiet and fulfilled in his posture. Joy.
The Direction of Intention 