I awoke alarmed and sat up. Dogga was not sleeping at the foot of the bed! He’s always there! Where was he? And then I remembered. We were “up north” for a few days. Dogga was safe at home with 20. I lay awake feeling deeply his absence. Disoriented.
A few days later we were home. Because of my up-north-late-night-moment-of-bewilderment, I was hyper-aware of how “right” our world feels when we are all together. I adore our daily patterns and rituals. Dogga’s enthusiasm, his Aussie quirks inform every move we make.
Sometimes we think we hear BabyCat thumping around upstairs or awake feeling as if he just jumped onto the bed – we call it “the raft.” When we are all together on the raft, there is nothing better on earth.
It’s such a simple and yet profound thing. Presence. With it, all is right in the world.
“Creative people are driven to periodic symbolic self-annihilation and rebirth, much like the mythic phoenix.” ~ Alex Grey, The Mission of Art
I loaded my truck with my paintings. I drove to the beach where there were large fire-pits. I burned the paintings, bonfire style. I had so many paintings that it took three days, three truckloads, three successive nights. People helped, strangers who held vigil for me. Only one tried to talk me out of it.
Those nights on the beach were over 20 years ago. All along I’ve understood the conflagration. What I only now understand is the necessity of fire to release the seeds. Not just one seed, but hundreds. Thousands. And not all the seeds found rich soil. Only a few. And, once rooted, most of the seedlings were trampled, overshadowed or eaten. They never made it to the sun.
But the one seed, the single seed, released in fire, without will, intention or knowledge; the fortunate seed, flung into the air by heat and flame, caught the wind at just the right moment and fell to the earth haphazardly in an opportune spot. It took root. It drank in the sun. It survived the hungry deer nibbling close-by. And over decades, through harsh winter and sunny drought, it slowly, ever-so-slowly, grew.
A thousand seeds. One strong tree. New cones, loaded with millions of seeds. Ideas ripe for the wind.
A cycle that cannot be rushed. Each loop, lovingly and faith-full, takes time.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
In the summer, it is a place of frogs and turtles perched on rocks, drinking in the sun. We stop and watch until the wary turtles slip into the murky water, the frogs halt their croak-symphony. Respectfully, we move on. Behind us, the symphony resumes.
In winter, it is a different scene. Sienna and ochre rather than a million shades of green. Silent, the musicians are on hiatus. The turtles sleep, having disappeared beneath the earth some months ago. They will return in several weeks without fanfare. Without formal announcement we will spy them on a log. Kerri always marks the first sighting in her calendar. “Turtles!” Some winter days we cross the long bridge and look into the river at their usual spot. We know it is too soon but such is the way with hope.
I’m getting a taste of the life my grandfather lived. One place. He lived in one town his whole life. My dad’s dad. I was with him one bright sunny day in the park when he stopped, sensed the air, and said, “We’d better get in. A storm is coming.” I thought he’d lost his mind. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
The clouds rolled in. Thirty minutes later, safe inside, we watched the heavens open and dump buckets of rain. Somedays on this trail we love, I sense the air. I know what’s coming. Having lived so many places, until now, I never understood the power of place, the relationship with the reeds, yearning for the symphony, knowing in my bones that the sun is not quite right for the turtle’s return.
“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” ~Kurt Vonnegut
Yesterday I applied for a job that is all about narratives told from the edges of society. I’m not sure why it surprised me to find such a cool-to-me job; our community seems addicted to shattering so there are plenty of small edges to be found. Small edges are fallacious and serve a myriad of false centers. Our survival will depend upon whether or not we can awaken from the shatter-narrative and make the decision to direct our broken focus toward a common center. No small feat.
It is the role of the shaman, the explorer, the artist, the researcher to stand on the edge and report back to the community what is seen and unseen. The voice from the edge is rarely welcome since the report is capable of popping delusions or pulling the sheep’s clothing from the wolf. Page one of the autocrats’ handbook instructs the elimination of artists and educators. Making an enemy of the eyes-that-see, demonizing educators and thinkers – the people who recognize pattern and metaphor. The game of Us-and-Them necessitates silencing the voices capable of calling out the wolf. Autocrats require blind sheep that follow without question.
Some famous edge sitters: Galileo. Cesar Chavez. Rosa Parks. Nelson Mandela. Susan B. Anthony. Albert Einstein. Frederick Douglass, a former slave and leader of the abolitionist movement, wrote extensively about what we call Critical Race Theory; it was clear in his view from the edge. It’s not a new theory. It’s an old pattern with a new name. I think he might denounce his Republican party affiliation were he alive today; they would certainly silence his voice. He would be fired were he a professor in Florida today. As would Martin Luther King, another famous voice from the edge.
Voices of reason are often voices from the edges. Voices of the future are always voices from the edges. Galileo was silenced for suggesting that the earth circled the sun and not the other way around. Over time, the voices from the edge, when authentic, always make the center better, the community stronger. Susan B. Anthony spent her life on the edge, lobbying the center, to secure for women the right to vote.
Progress. Growth. They are rarely inspired from the tight grip at the center. Silence the edges and the community atrophies. Stop the movement and the body dies. That page was left out of the autocrats’ handbook for obvious reasons.
We stopped on the boardwalk. The sentinel tree stood solitary in the field. Its presence stopped us in our tracks. It was a bone keeping watch over the marshes. It felt forgotten. Unreachable. Made beautiful in its dedication. It inspired quiet. Suddenly, we found ourselves witness to the witness. Look-at-me-look-at-you.
Perhaps it was the boardwalk but I was thrust back in time to a pier. Long Island Sound. It was early morning. The sound and vibration called me to the pier’s end. I stood for a few minutes, eyes closed, and listened. Hundreds of birds, pigeons, chattering beneath the boards, their voices amplified by the wood and soundbox of the structure. I felt them through my feet. Kneeling, I tried to catch a glimpse of the cacophony-makers. They, too inspired quiet.
“Hawk!” Kerri said, pointing and bringing me back to the boardwalk. Beyond the sentinel a hawk threaded masterfully through branches.
I used to think that these magical moments took me out of the real world. Stopping time. Now, I believe the opposite is true. These moments snap me out of my mind-chatter and drop me into the real world. Achingly beautiful. Alive. No story necessary.
“We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.”Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
Open the door to the monster in the closet. Walk into the wound. Throw light onto the dark. Nothing is broken, nothing needs to be fixed. All stories of resistance released into flow. Deliverance of fear.
How many times have you heard or said, “I don’t know what to do with what I feel?” Or, the partner statement, “I don’t know where to put what I feel.” Feelings as spatial.
In an earlier chapter I dreamed that I was being chased by giant monsters. I quickly ducked into a warehouse thinking I could easily find a place to hide but, much to my horror, the warehouse was vast and empty. Open space. Nowhere to hide. No other door. There was only one thing to do: turn and face the monsters. Surrendering to my fate, I stopped and watched them come at me, certain they would gobble me. But, as they approached, they shrank. The closer they came the smaller they became. By the time they reached me, they were smaller than my toe. They dissipated the moment they touched me. When I looked up I saw an older version of me standing across the room, transformed.
It was a Rilke moment.
“How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” Letter Eight, Letters To A Young Poet
A shorthand phrase from my coaching era that I’m certain Rainier would particularly appreciate; a phrase well known to the older version of me now standing across the room looking back: Invite your dragon to tea.
There is a lesson I receive again and again but – for obvious reasons – the penny refuses to drop. The learning hits me and slides off my Teflon brainpan. The lesson is this: Listen, don’t solve. Especially in the middle of the night. Particularly in the middle of the night. My job is to nod, nothing more.
The reason for my late night ineptitude? At the risk of reinforcing a stereotype, I am a male. I am hardwired to solve. When I’m tired I have no editor. Okay, when I’m rested, I have no editor so imagine my predicament in the dark hours.
It’s shocking. Since so much of my career was built on my great capacity to listen, I am sometimes astounded at how quickly I begin my lobby for a solution.
Dogga looks at me and shakes his head. I know what he’s thinking. “He’ll never learn.” It’s true. I can say with the utmost confidence that last night’s lesson is already forgotten and I am fully prepared to learn it again tonight.
We decided to go off trail. There was a stand of birch trees that she’s always wanted to photograph but getting to them meant crossing the marsh. An untenable task in the warm months, but since it was a cold day, below freezing, the grasses and ice made a step-selective pathway possible.
We zigged and zagged our way toward the birches, my eyes cast down, carefully choosing the next step. I hoped that she was following my path but inevitably the crunching and crackling behind me ceased. I knew I needed to stop and prepare myself for a rescue. Something caught her eye. To get the photo she’d forget about the marsh.
Every artist needs a spotter. The dangers may not be as readily apparent as a gymnast but they are no less real. My friend Albert used to pull me from my studio when I was there too long. He saved my life more than once. Artists are given to self-doubt that congeals into dark despair. I’ve learned to be ready to throw light into the cave just as Albert did for me.
Artists are also myopic when the muse grabs hold of them. Before I met her, Kerri, looking through the lens of her camera, stepped backward off a cliff. Her muse is powerful. Her capacity for instant-hyper-focus is unparalleled. My muse clutches me in safer places like a studio or on a stage. Kerri’s seizes her in marshes and on cliff side. I am her spotter.
“Isn’t this cool!” she giggles as the ice beneath her feet groans.
“Maybe take a step to the left onto the tall grass,” I say. She takes a brief look at her feet, adjusts to slightly safer footing and then returns to the camera. “Maybe one more step?” I suggest.
Later, when we return to the car, she asks in all seriousness, “Are your boots wet? Why are my boots wet and yours are dry?” She studies her soggy boots, indignant.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “Show me your pictures,” I suggest, deflecting her focus from her wet feet and back toward the muse.
“Oh, you’re going to love this!” she sits next to me, flipping through the many close-up shots of cattails, narrating her experience getting the photographs. Her narration does not include cracking ice, sketchy edges and near missteps into knee deep water holes. “Don’t you just love it!”
“Yes,” I smile. “Yes, I do.”
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
I study the studier. She kneels, excited to capture the winter face of plants along the trail. It’s as if they call to her.
Where does it start? An idea. Broad and generic. Spontaneous. Studied.
For months I watched her take photos of the train through the trees. “Here it comes!” she’d laugh and pull her phone from her pocket, running to get the best spot on the trail. Each time as excited as the first. I took photos of her taking photos of the train snaking just beyond the trees.
Mostly she shoots close-up photographs. Spontaneous. She has an eye for detail. She helps me see what I overlook. I have an eye for the big picture, the metaphoric. I study. Pie-in-the-sky.
I think she would have been great pals with Georgia O’Keeffe. They’d have compared notes on the magic world of minutia. The dried flowers, the pattern in the petal. The amazing textures and vibrant winter colors. Some people see only brown. Kerri sees subtle changes, ochre, cream and an array of umber. A universe full of color. Just like Georgia.
This is where my studied painting started:
underpainting: train through trees.
Originally I intended to use a long canvas. The composition-in-my-mind was different, more spatially accommodating of the train. I was going to paint over something I didn’t like but she flung herself between me and the doomed painting, like the angel rescuing Isaac from Abraham’s knife. Needless to say, I shifted my composition. I had another canvas. Large and almost square.
It had been awhile since I attempted a larger painting so I made one rule: I had to have fun. Master Miller sent some cool tools for me to try. They are like large rubber scrappers and brushes. After a hiatus I have a tendency to go to detail too soon so I used his gifts to keep my strokes broad and light hearted.
Okay, I made two rules: I painted in 45 minute sessions. I generally have a 3 hour necessity but the realities of our circumstance make that dedication of time difficult. I start Dan Fogelberg’s album, Captured Angel, and when the last note is sung, I stop. I clean my brushes. It was a great way to stir my process-pot. It was frustrating and liberating at the same time.
This is where it may end. This painting has traveled a long way. Soon, I’ll turn it to the wall. I need to forget about it and will someday see it with fresh eyes. Right now, in a festival of irony, all I can see is the detail so I asked Kerri to come into the studio. Blinded by minutia I needed her wise eyes to tell me what she sees. Globally. The studier becomes the study. A perfect circle.
I just realized why the stripped forest is having such an impact on me. While opening the back door to let Dogga out, my dials spun and it slapped me in the face. I am like the forest.
For several minutes, staring at the photograph, writing then rejecting, then writing and again rejecting what I’d written, I decided to get up and let Dogga out. This picture was making me anxious. Moving around has always been good for me when I’m thought-wrestling.
I am like this forest. Exposed. Chips and debris are everywhere. Water is overtaking the trees.
I was writing about a question Justin asked one night at dinner. “What’s your stance about secular Calvinism?” he asked.
“I don’t think I have one,” I replied. Justin’s eyebrows hit the ceiling and I made a snap decision not to follow my reply with an explanation. He was sorting his belief and searching his heart. Empty space was more useful than cramming my erudite-and-empty justification into the moment.
Insight requires space. Lots of space.
I wish I could express how rare it is for me to keep my mouth closed when I have a thought on a topic. Kerri will laugh aloud when I read this to her. “No joke!” she’ll say. I wanted to say to Justin, “I don’t have a stance because I think it’s a given.” His question was akin to asking about my stance on the existence of the moon. No culture sees itself clearly.
No person (me) sees himself clearly.
Chips and debris. The river has overrun its banks. One half of the photo is the result of natural forces. The other half is man-made. Choices. Circumstance and intention. This landscape, once so familiar, will never be the same.
I’ve spent my life cultivating my capacity to see pattern and metaphor. It’s an artist’s prerogative to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. I am the forest. Familiar, yet completely unknown. Stripped for rejuvenation.
Insight requires space. Perspective requires distance. Perhaps the reason I left open space in my conversation with Justin is something I need do for myself, too. Searching my heart, I am the forest. Stripped of invasive plants I can see all the way to the river. So much space.
What is my stance? Right now, thankfully, I don’t think I have one. I’m holding the space for insight to come.
The Direction of Intention 