Learn The DogDog Way [on Merely A Thought Monday

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DogDog is an Aussie and takes the job of herding his people very seriously. We are a tough bunch. Two artists (one A.D.D. and the other O.C.D) and a BIG cat are not easily collected or moved in a consistent or singular direction. It is not an understatement to say that DogDog was not given an easy task in this lifetime.

On top of the endless challenge of gathering the un-gatherable, he is a hyper sensitive boy; he knows what we are feeling before we do. He runs all of our emotions through his filters. The Dog Whisperer says that dogs are masters at reading energy and DogDog must have graduated at the top of his pooch class. Anticipating our every move is made more complex by his innate skill in surfing our full palette of turbulent and uninhibited feelings. Were he human, he’d be a nervous wreck.

His days are full, chaotic, and active. And so, at the end of the day, when we at last settle, when the perimeter is safe and we are secure, he collapses. It is almost as if someone disconnected the cable to his battery. He hits the floor. His sleep is immediate and sound (unless, of course, we move).

I realized, in watching his deep and peaceful sleep, the kind of sleep that I rarely experience, that he is teaching me to love the impossible task. In fact, he simply loves the task before him with no regard to its achievement. He engages the impossible with joy and a hearty wag-a-wag. He participates. He delights. He loves. He, therefore, has no need for either the possible or the impossible. Those are abstractions and he deals with the reality of the moment.

Neither does he resent the turbulence we toss in his path. He takes no ownership for how we feel and, so, is not compelled to control what we feel. He simple reads the color of our mood and loves accordingly. He does not deflect or dodge or manipulate. He does not ignore or pretend or deny. He stands without judgment in the daily bedlam of his humans as if there was no better place to be on earth.

I desire the peaceful sleep he experiences. He shows me the way everyday. Admittedly, I am a slow study but he is a patient and generous teacher. “Tomorrow,” I tell myself, “I will love the impossible task.” Or, perhaps, if I really learn the DogDog way, I will give up the notion of possible or impossible altogether and simply attend with joy to the task at hand.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about DogDog Sleeping

 

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Mark It [on KS Friday]

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I am marking the coming of fall. Each day on our walk I see a bit more red, yellow and burnt orange. A week ago I pulled on a sweatshirt. There was a chill in the air that penetrated the afternoon sun.

The fall brings a sweet melancholy, an inward look. We are moving slower on our walks. We can see deeper into the woods. The deer are everywhere. The apples are down. Last night at dinner, Steve had a fire in the stove. I sat beside it and let the warmth find my bones.

It is my favorite time of year. We make soup with friends. The air sharpens. I yearn for my studio. I write really bad poetry. I remember vivid yellow quaking aspen leaves. I secretly look forward to raking the front yard.

Tradition awakens with the harvest. The fruit and leaves have had their time, now the root gets its nourishment. Reaching down. Letting go. The wind encourages the resistant to release. It’s this deep ritual of return that beckons in Kerri’s Millneck Fall.

 

MILLNECK FALL on the album BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL is available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read kerri’s blog post about MILLNECK FALL

 

 

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millneck fall/blueprint for my soul ©️ 1997 kerri sherwood

Capture The Beauty [on DR Thursday]

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The day was stormy, the lake was unsettled, steel grey and roiling. Kerri walked to the water’s edge with her camera. I opened my sketchbook and caught a quick sketch. Perhaps a notation for a someday-painting. Perhaps a gesture with nowhere to go.

A few days later I looked at this quick sketch and laughed. It is a metaphor for our time on island. Standing at the edge of a storm not of our making. Witness to the turmoil. It blows us to and fro. It messes our hair. The sand stings our faces.  We are taken by the colors of its violence. When the winds grow too powerful, we retreat to the safety of our littlehouse. We wait for the latest flurry to calm, the waves to soften.

It is tempting to want to be done with it. To rush through a month of life. Each day I remind myself to be in it, not simply get through it. Life on this day may be stormy. It might be upsetting. Stormy and upsetting are colors on the palette. They are worthy experiences. Amidst the chaos there are instances of utter beauty –  like the moment Kerri walked to the edge of a roiling lake and I looked up, caught my breath, and reached for my sketchbook so that I’d never ever forget.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about A SKETCH

 

 

 

 

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Give It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

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Janus is a Roman god with two faces. He looks to the future and peers into the past. He is the god of beginnings and endings, transitions, doorways, and passages. He is the god of gateways, the liminal spaces, the between.

Janus must certainly be the god that we dance with on this island, a community defined by divisions, married to its conflicts but also, at least rhetorically, desiring peace.

Kerri and I are the stewards of a performing arts center that is, as Julian Dawson said, punching above its weight. It is the symbol of division in the community, the epicenter of discord, the rope in a very ugly tug-of-war. All of the fault lines run through it. Yet, as Janus would remind us, it then must also hold the path to unity, the potential for common ground.

All in the community want the doors to be wide open; none want the responsibility that comes with access. They want the center, the art, to serve them. They do not yet comprehend that any alive and vital art space is, in fact, the opposite: a place of service to others. Arts spaces and the artists the enliven them are keepers of the commons, the stewards of the stories that unite.

In another life I ran an educational theatre company. It boomed into life the day that the artists, the students, grocked that art was in fact a gift given to others, something they brought to people, not something (like attention or fame or a spotlight) that they got from people.

This island, this center, will someday boom into life. They will discover that the rope in the tug of war goes slack when they walk toward each other. Pulling in opposition exhausts everyone. They will come alive when they cease asking, “What do we get?” and start asking, “What do we bring?”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about EDGES

 

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Contrast [on Two Artists Tuesday]

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It is the ultimate cliche’: we only know light because of dark. 20 calls this the contrast principle. Images juxtaposed illuminate. It’s how stories are told in film. Once. Upon. A. Time. It is how images pop off the canvas, blue next to orange, green meets purple. Contrast makes the eye move. Contrast makes shapes emerge. Movement has no meaning without stillness.

It’s relative. Related. Relationship. Without relativity, without contrast, nothing makes sense. Or, more to the point, nothing is sensed. Difference, in fact, is the secret sauce necessary for knowing anything. Category. Class. Classification. Group. What is like what? What is related? What is unrelated? Cubicle. Caste. Lines on a map.

Contrast can be wielded like a sword. They are not us. Division.

Or, contrast can be used to unify. A crossroads of diverse perspectives, innovation.

Nature is dynamic at its edges. Water meets beach. Earth meets water. Air breathes fire. Hot meets cold. Convection current. Contrast. Changing energies. Creative movement.

Kerri stopped during our walk. “Look!” she exclaimed. Her eye was drawn to the lone daisy in the midst of the sea of black-eyed susans. “Beautiful,” she whispered as she approached with her camera. “Look at the contrast.”

So similar. So different. Yellow meets white. Black meets yellow.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about CONTRAST

 

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daisy in the black-eyed susans ©️ 2019 kerri sherwood

See Your Wealth [on Merely A Thought Monday]

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Not only does 20 take care of DogDog and Babycat while we are away, he always has a hot meal waiting for us when we arrive home. He is our anchor, our safety net. Our brother.

Once, a week before our wedding when we were harried and exhausted, we sent Linda a text. “Can we come to your house for dinner?” She fed us a feast. She and Jim made us laugh. We drank wine. They feast us to this day.

John and Michele watch out for us. They are the source of a thousand kindnesses. They tell stories that make us cry with laughter. They live with intention and inspire us.

When I was sick Russ showed up at our door with food. MaryKay plied us with brownies.

I call Horatio, Skip, or Arnie to stir my thinking, to seek perspective, or just because. They are always available. Always.

Dan helps us fix things, protect things, make things better. He is always on the lookout for ways to make our lives easier.

The Up-North-Gang comes to find us when we’ve been out in the canoe too long. “It’s time for snacks!” Jay says. We laugh with them and go on adventures. We drink special recipe Long Island Iced Teas and then have to sit down.

We call Jen and Brad for advice. We call them when we want to bounce ideas off sensible minds. We call them when we want to hear loving voices. They rejuvenate us. They lift our spirits. We look forward to every ounce of time spent with them.

Fact: it is the people in our lives that make our days some kind of awesome. Ask me if I am rich and I will smile and say, “Yes. Oh, yes. More than you can possibly know.”

 

read Kerri’s blog post about AWESOME

 

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Drive [on KS Friday]

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Very early in my career I drove from Kentucky to California, an epic drive that the current version of me is utterly incapable of considering. The younger version of me reveled in the drive. Windows down, music roaring, sunrise to sunset, I passed through thunderous storms, coasted down the western slope, the temperature rising as I descended. Snow, salt flats and canyon lands. I’ve rarely felt more alive and carefree.

I’m certain Kerri wrote All You Can as the soundtrack of my drive. The miles of adventure, the wildly varied landscapes rich with color and transcendent. Plains to mountain to high desert. Farm land, ranch land, no-man’s land. And the epic and endless sky! Mostly, the joy of the drive. All you can feel. All you can experience. All you can see. All you can live. It’s all there in her joyous composition. Listen. Discover the magic place, memory or not, where All You Can transports you.

 

ALL YOU CAN on the album AS IT IS available on iTunes & CDBaby

 

read Kerri’s blog post about ALL YOU CAN

 

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all you can/as it is ©️ 2004 kerri sherwood

Give Over [on DR Thursday]

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It’s called Surrender Now.

I chose it for this week’s Melange because, from this vantage point, surrender seems the only path forward. Giving over rather than giving in. Nonresistance to the forces fighting all around us.

Nonresistance is a scary word. In modern parlance is presupposes tyranny. Unjust authority run amok. It is a path of exposing suppression en route to peace. Ghandi and Martin Luther King.

The surrender in the painting, the surrender of which I write, is a much more personal variety. It is the surrender of aging. It is the surrender of pushing for outcomes and achievements, the release of long-held loss and disappointment. Giving up old stories. giving over to unknown paths and definitions.

Surrender the push-away of life as it comes. Rather, embrace the day with all its surprises. Held in grace. Surrender now.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about SURRENDER NOW

 

 

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held in grace: surrender now ©️ 2016 david robinson

Open To It [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

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I stood gobsmacked on the deck. The horizon, the straight line bank of clouds. It was a piece of contemporary art worthy of Richard Diebenkorn or Ellsworth Kelly. A study in grays and greens and purples. Monumental.

Sometimes I forget that the very best art can only approximate what already exists in nature.  Try to capture the totality of a sunset. We simply can’t do it. We can approach the feeling but our scope will always be smaller, less dimensional. Our work is to see it – to see beyond the thought of it. To dance with it. To be vulnerable to it. To share the dance.

Last night we saw author/musician Michael Perry on stage. He closed his performance with thoughts about gratitude. He told his audience that, as an artist, he is vulnerable every time that he takes the stage or publishes a book. Opening himself to the thoughts and judgements of others is not an easy thing to do. It is, however, a necessity for an artist. But, here’s the gift: vulnerability becomes gratitude. If you are never vulnerable, living in a fortress, you will never arrive at gratitude. Gratitude is forged from the fire of vulnerability.

Openness begets openness. There is a full spectrum of color, an embarrassment of riches that vibrates between vulnerability and gratitude. Grays and greens and purples. Stand on the deck and open to it. Stand on the stage and open to it. Stand with your neighbor and open to it. The best of contemporary art. Monumental.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about GRAY

 

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See The Shore [on Two Artist Tuesday]

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There is an eagle family in the neighborhood. The parents fly by daily. The young eagle, sporting its mottled feathers, visits less often.

DogDog and I went out to investigate the yard after the intense series of storms. We walked the perimeter, he sniffed the ground, I breathed in the fresh air. The storm altered the shape of our little mini beach. The carcass of an enormous fish rolled in the waves against the shore. DogDog, ever brave, was repeatedly startled by the breaking waves, jumping back, leaning forward, filling me with mirth.

Returning to the house, Kerri hush-shouted, “The Eagle!” It was the fledgling. It had found the fish. Quietly, Kerri slipped from the house with her camera and ninja-ed her way toward the shore. Just as she prepared to snap, the eagle flew.

Krishnamurti wrote that to be religious is to be sensitive to reality. DogDog and I sat at the window and watched Kerri watch the eagle as it soared against the angry sky. In that moment, there was nothing more real. DogDog, the turbulent water, the irate clouds, Kerri exhilarated, the fish rolling again and again against the shore.

 

read Kerri’s blog post about THE EAGLE

 

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