January | 2025 | The Direction of Intention

Basking [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 31, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Just now, even as I write this sentence, the sun cleared the neighbor’s roof, streaming through our window onto the exact spot where I am sitting. On a cold winter day there are few simple pleasures more satisfying than turning your face to the warming sun. I am basking.

Yesterday, late in the afternoon, we took a walk, our usual loop south through the neighborhood, turning east to follow the lake north. It has been bitter cold these past weeks so it’s been awhile since we strolled at sunset. The rocks along the lake were coated in ice. They looked like bad bakery rolls covered in gooey thick frosting. The sky was electric blue, orange and purple. “Sometimes I forget,” she said, “Look where we live!”

Rob asked us to read his play. He entered it into a 10-minute-play-contest. He is a prolific playwright and I marvel at his output. It takes me many many months to complete a draft that he could produce in a weekend. His play is a husband and wife reminiscing about their life. We learn in the final moments of the play that it is their last moments on earth. An asteroid? A nuclear explosion? They know that it is coming. The wife looks out the window. The husband tries to find ways to keep her distracted and buoy her spirits. It invited a conversation as I’m sure Rob meant for it to do. In our last moments, what might we do? What would be the heart of our reminiscence?

I recently read – I can’t remember where – that love is paying attention. Giving attention. To give.

I thought of that sentiment-of-love while we chopped sweet potatoes and onions, sipping wine, preparing for dinner. We talked of the day. We gave treats to the dog. There was nowhere else I’d rather be. It was like the winter sun streaming through the window. Basking.

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Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Love | Tagged: artistry, attention, awareness, bask, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, giving attention, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, paying attention, presence, story, studio melange, the melange, winter sun | 1 Comment »

Get Your Snowman [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 30, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

From his position on the raft he can look out the bedroom window and see the Dachshunds in the yard next door. He knows he’s not supposed to bark so he moans and twirls, groans and suffers, stifling his natural impulse, until a single bark escapes from his muzzle. That’s our cue to feign shock and to say with mock disapproval, “Get your snowman!” Dogga dutifully jumps from the bed and returns moments later with his snowman in his mouth.

The theory goes, with snowman in his mouth, he’s incapable of barking. It mostly works. Well, until recently, it worked like a charm. And then, our too-smart-dog discovered a technical work-around. He retrieved snowman on cue, as usual, but when he returned, he stopped just shy of the raft to show us that he’d done as he was told. Then, he dropped snowman on the floor, leaped onto the raft, and barked with abandon.

Game. Set. Match. Dogga outsmarts us. Again. Were he a sarcastic teenager we’d hide our laughter but as a gray bearded Aussie who’s spent his entire life studying our every move, we’re certain there’s no hiding anything from him. He often knows we are upset before we do. We laugh and laugh as he barks and barks at the marauding Dachshunds.

We’re not alone in being outwitted by our pooch. 20 is Dogga’s favorite human. Dogga has thoroughly trained him to drop snacks on demand from the dinner table. When Dogga begs, 20 employs a stern voice, telling Dogga to “Lay down!” and then, as if he is suddenly hypnotized by Dogga’s compliance, 20 slips a bite of dinner into Dogga’s open awaiting mouth. When we laugh at Dogga’s command over him, 20 grabs his chest, suffering mock heart-palpitations and asks, “Why do I come here?”

Rituals of laughter. Expressions of love.

Now more than ever, it’s important to remind myself each day, beyond the chaos and ill-intention swirling in the e-stream, that these are the real moments, the stuff-of-life that actually matters. The daily rite of the plastic snowman. Dogga manipulations. The tangible everyday moments to be savored and shared that make our life rich beyond measure.

(this post is my version of stuffing snowman in my mouth so I stop barking about the horror-story unfolding in our nation. Rest assured knowing that I am groaning and twirling and suffering as I stifle my natural impulse to bark – but I figured we could all use a break;-)

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Family, Gratitude, Love | Tagged: artistry, Aussie, celebration, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dog toy, dogga, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, laughter, ritual, snowman, story, studio melange, the melange | 3 Comments »

Become The Raft [David’s blog on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 29, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

It was during Covid that we started calling it “The Raft”. Our warm bed. With two broken wrists, all jobs lost and no work to be found, the heat turned down to save a penny, we felt like we were hanging on for dear life, afloat in the turbulent waters of the spinning universe on our tiny refuge. With Dogga asleep at our feet, we searched the horizon for hope, we launched our messages-in-a-bottle.

Our raft. It was one of the few places we felt safe and warm. Comforted. It was, during those scary and chaotic times, with the world in isolation, a haven where we might approach making sense of the senselessness. And, we survived.

I feel as if we are now back on the raft. The adults have left the capitol and the feckless man, the same nincompoop who suggested that we ingest bleach as a cure for Covid is now shoving Project 2025 down our throats – the ultimate aim is a Christian Nationalist Authoritarian State, a fate for our democracy that is far worse than swallowing bleach. He has returned with his clown car of bad clowns. Incompetents all, picked for their dull loyalty rather than their knowledge, experience or expertise. They know nothing of governing, or of creating or of problem-solving; they are solely capable of destroying.

Afloat on the raft we know that this time there is no refuge. There is no bubble thick enough to protect us from the virus that now infects our nation. There is no vaccine capable of minimizing the damage. There is no shot of courage available to legislators who have lost their moral compass and abandoned their spines along with their oath to protect the Constitution.

The isolation that helped saved us from Covid will now harm us. Of course, we necessarily practice social distancing from those contaminated by maga and made stupid by the fox but for the rest of us, the vast majority of the nation, we will eventually need to step outside, find each other, lock arms and become the raft for one another.

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, comfort, community, Constitution, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, experience, expertise, governance, hope, isolation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowledge, refuge, story, studio melange, the melange, togetherness | 3 Comments »

Everything There Is [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 28, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Sometimes she takes pictures when she is driving. “What are you doing?” I cry, my life flashing before my eyes.

“It looks like a feather!” she retorts.

“Oh, great” I say, reciting the last line of my obituary. “If only the cloud had not looked like a feather, he would be with us still.” She rolls her eyes. Apparently she survived the imaginary crash and went on to build an extensive catalogue of interesting cloud photographs. For all I know, having perished for a feather cloud, she gained world-wide fame for her interesting shots of condensed water vapor.

As I lay in bed last night, the window opened ever so slightly allowing the cold air to circulate above the warm-warm quilt where we lay pretzeled, Dogga sleeping at our feet, I had a single moment of presence. I know it because I was completely overwhelmed with intense gratitude. Falling out of the moment, I took a snapshot in my mind and heart so I would never forget how profound life is in each and every passing moment.

This was the thought that washed over me: Beyond the dance of giving and receiving, there is only this: being-with. That’s all there is. That’s everything there is.

read Kerri’s blogpost about the FEATHER CLOUD

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Filed under: Awakening, Gratitude, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, being, clouds, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, heart, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, presence, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Spell-Words [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 27, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Wow. Siri so easily sent to us something that Kerri and I are struggling to send: good vibes. Warm little boosts of joy and confidence.

A few months ago I started writing a picture-book featuring Chicken Marsala, our imaginary child who pops in at inopportune moments. The struggle to send warm-boosts-of-joy in the midst of a national dumpster fire brought this Chicken-snippet to mind:

I confess. I am sometimes hard on myself. On a day that I was feeling particularly hopeless, Chicken appeared behind me, mimicking my gloomy face and sad posture. His arrival startled me. I was about to shout at him not to scare me like that, but then I recognized myself in his sullen rendition. It made me laugh. “I don’t look like that!” I protested. He giggled and I have to say, as a side note, that his giggle always kills me. He giggles like a chipmunk. At least that’s what it sounds like to me. “Adorable!” as K-Dot says.

Later I thanked him for helping me lift the dark cloud on my brain. “Everyone should have a Chicken that arrives just in the nick of time to the break the dark spell!” I said.

“What’s a spell?” he asked, not at all interested in my gratitude.

“Well, it’s a kind of magic,” I said.

“Magic?” he asked, alarmed and confused. “Magic made you feel bad?”

“A spell is magic made of words,” I tried to explain. “And sometimes words make people feel bad.”

“Who made spell-words on you?” he asked, alarmed.

I admitted, “I guess I did.”

There’s a distinction between the spell-words we cast on ourselves and the spell-words cast upon us by others. By media. How else do we explain maga-mind other than as a spell cast on otherwise good people by a pathological liar, magnified by a malicious fox? How else do we make sense of those who voted for the nation’s suicide all the while proclaiming themselves as the saviors of democracy?

I would love to send you warm little boosts of joy and confidence. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I will continue to ask my angry fearful brothers and sisters across this land to consider the question Chicken asked me: “Who made spell-words on you?”

Like Chicken, I am alarmed.

“Everyone should have a Chicken that arrives just in the nick of time to the break the dark spell!”

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Filed under: Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Power | Tagged: artistry, chicken marsala, confidence, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, democracy, good vibes, hope, hopeless, joy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, magic, Siri, spells, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Serve Chicken [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on January 25, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“As wealth moved upward, lawmakers chipped away at the postwar government that defended democracy. And now, since the inauguration of President Donald Trump on Monday, the dismantling of that system is happening all at once.” ~ Historian Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From an American January 24, 2025

All this week, in honor of the nation’s Republicans, we served chicken to our guests. But not just any chicken, we offered rubber chicken as sustenance.* The kind of chicken used in jokes. The kind without bones, particularly spines. I’d suggest a change in the Republican Party mascot since a chicken would seem more appropriate than an Elephant, but I just read that both mascots were the invention of cartoonist, Thomas Nast. It’s from his name that we have the word “nasty”.* Get this:

“It’s a little weird that both of the major American political parties have embraced their mascots so enthusiastically, considering how poorly the two animals come across in Nast’s original cartoons: how stupid, how pliable, how easily confused.” ~ Jackson Arn, Artsy, Why Democrats are Donkeys and Republicans are Elephants (republished by CNN)

Stupid. Pliable. Easily confused.

Appropriate. And utterly exhausting.

*I lied. “Nasty” doesn’t come from “Nast.” I lied again. We didn’t serve rubber chicken. But, in this brave new world, my newly found dedication to lying-about-everything makes me not only eligible but very attractive for high public office.

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: artistry, cartoons, chicken, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, easily confused, Heather Cox Richardson, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mascots, pliable, republicans, spineless, story, studio melange, stupid, the melange, Thomas Nast | 2 Comments »

Choose A Side [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 24, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“It’s snowing in our yard!” I exclaimed.

“It’s snowing in our neighbor’s yard, too,” she smiled. True. The snow loves all yards equally.

Barney-the-piano’s most recent photo shoot revealed that he has only one remaining fragment of a white key. The facade has mostly fallen revealing no difference at all in the make up of the white or black keys. Barney grows more beautiful with age and humility. He reveals his truth as he travels toward his source.

Our nation’s history has mostly been a tug-of-war between those who feel equality should be like snow, available to everyone – and those who feel equality is a privilege reserved for the elite few. Evidently, reconciling twelve generations of slavery with a founding ideal that “All men are created equal” requires some serious struggle and, one would hope, soul searching. It is our history. It is the tension in our present moment.

After writing my post yesterday I decided, as part of my survive-the-next-four-years-strategy, I would find some of the unsung bright lights in our nation’s history. Some guiding stars. Maybe they might help us make sense of our present moment. I happily bumped into Frances Wright. A feminist and “freethinker”. She came to the United States in 1818. She was an abolitionist, a believer in equal rights for all people. She spoke her mind. She wrote, “Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.”

A woman with the courage of her conviction. Just like the courage exhibited this week by Bishop Mariann Budde, speaking truth to power. Bright lights, both; connected across time by the side they chose in the tug-of-war.

As we witness the attempted strangling of DEI in the United States by those who reserve equality for the few, we are also witness to the abolishment of liberty for the many. There goes the baby with the bathwater!

In the example set by these two freethinkers, these powerful courageous women, I find hope. Our history is proof: the facade is slow to fall yet, with time and strong voices, freethinkers, it always does. And, when it falls, it reveals the layer beneath the thin white plastic: equality for all is the epicenter of the American dream: it is not the absence of difference, it is the celebration of difference in all its diverse beauty and flaws. Out of many, one.

And isn’t it the promise of our nation that we – all of us – every single one of us – enjoy the power to think freely. Isn’t it necessary to call out the injustices we see, pulling back on those who believe that equality is reserved for the privileged few?

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Filed under: Edges, Heroes, Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, Bishop Mariann Budde, courage, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equal rights, equality, Frances Wright, guiding stars, history, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liberty, story, studio melange, the melange, unity | 1 Comment »

A Legacy of Hope [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 23, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Tom was concerned with what would become of the ranch after he was gone. His concern was not the land so much as the family legacy. He felt as if he was the last, the keeper of the history. Who might carry the story forward? Who will re-member the steps walked by his ancestors?

I was moved to tears when the Balinese explained to me that, according to their belief, every child born was an ancestor returned. After seven generations, the ancestor comes back wearing the funny new face of the infant descendant. The important point is this: A community makes fundamentally different choices when they understand that the earth they leave behind is the earth that they will also inherit. The ancestor attends to the descendant because the descendant is the ancestor.

Through a translator, the Chinese master-acupuncturist explained to the students that the challenge he perceived in them was that they were rootless. The U.S. culture too easily plows under the sacred to erect a mall. We have very little connection to, understanding of, or respect for the past. He explained that eyes blinded by the shiny-new or obsessed with the algorithm will never access the ancient art of healing a human being. The whole being. With so little concern for what came before there is little awareness or care of the tracks made by marching forward. How is it possible to help balance the health of others when the healer is rootless and unaware of the impact of their actions?

“But what do we do?” It is the ubiquitous question asked by those who reject the malice and indecency that recently swept into power in the USA. The question thrust me back into the single challenge I faced as a DEI consultant: my clients were protected against the very thing that might help them. They wanted a solution – a fix – and saw no value in attending to relationships. The gods of efficiency and effectiveness had no time to waste. Eyes would roll when we suggested that they cease trying to fix problems. They’d panic when we proffered that a to-do list would never create the better culture they envisioned. In fact, it would prevent it. Cultivating “the space between,” paying attention to the quality of the relationships, would bring about the transformation they desired: a culture of mutual support grown from a history of ugly division.

This morning I was struggling to articulate my thought and Kerri stopped my mind-wander with this encapsulation: “What you are trying to say is that It’s not solution-based. It’s process-based.” Yes. Exactly.

“Solution-based” focuses exclusively on what-we-do. It is transactional and, after all, isn’t that the epicenter of what ails us as a nation? If the prevailing philosophy is the-ends-are-worth-the-means, then lying, cheating, grifting, demeaning, debasing, bullying are acceptable behaviors. We are currently witness to the amorality of attainment-of-power-by-any-means. It doesn’t matter who gets hurt or why. No one in power cares about the legacy, the traces left behind. Rootless. Unethical. Out of balance.

“Process-based” is concerned with who-we-are. Together. The opposite of transactional is transformational. Mutual support. Reinforcing connection. Paying attention to the growth of the whole as a means of attending to the growth of the individual. It’s a radically different philosophy in which the ends-are-the-means. Actions matter. Words matter. Choices matter. Roots matter. The legacy, the tracks we leave behind, matters.

And so we ask the question, “But what do we do?” We speak out. We use our voices for good. We begin by looking to the legacy of hope those who came before us left for us to follow. Perhaps we begin by linking arms, focusing on the space between, and continuing a legacy of hope and courage for future generations to follow.

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Filed under: DR Thursday, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: ancestors, artistry, balance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, hope, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, legacy, process, relationship, story, studio melange, the melange, the space between, transaction, transformation | 5 Comments »

An Open Hand [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 22, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Keep something beautiful in your heart to survive difficult times and enjoy good times.” ~ John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

Several times over the past few days I’ve read or heard variations on this theme: I will not let him (them) take from me my peace.

Although we recognize the necessity of pushing back against the maga-hatred worming the heart of the nation, we also know it is more potent and powerful to walk toward a better vision. Maga is a black hole and will suck the light out of all that enter its gravitational pull.

Kerri and I are taking John O’Donohue’s advice. We are intentionally and consciously incubating something beautiful in our hearts and minds.

Right now resistance and focusing-on-the-positive seem one and the same.* Perhaps they are. Saul-the-tai-chi-master used to say, “Look beyond the opponent into the field of possibility.” Even though we are reeling by the vote for salivating corruption, even though we are disoriented by the collapse of the government’s moral center, we know that obsessing on the muck and mire will only serve to begrime our spirits and bog down our lives.

To recover balance I daily remind myself of a simple truth: overcoming the obstacle is not the goal. The circumstance-of-the-moment is not the center.

The goal is presence – a woo woo word for a very basic intention: deal with what is actually in front of you rather than wrestle with the fear of an abstraction. To be in “what is” rather than struggle to get through “what should be”. Therein lives the capacity to see all the beauty of the moment. Therein lives the capacity to see and share goodness, to magnify kindness. Choosing to live in the moment is choosing a path of heart. The only requirement is to choose where we place our focus.

It is a necessity in these dark times, more than a survival strategy it is to learn how to thrive.

I delight each time I see the message float by in my stream, “I will not surrender my peace…” Each one a mantra from someone who feels as I do; an ally in sanity. A reinforcement to stand solidly in the clear center and not get pulled into the ugly circumstance. Each one a reinforcement of another truism: peace will not abide a closed fist; it cannot be held; the best way to grow peace is to share it. To give it. To spread it far and wide. Peace always finds an open heart, it flourishes in an open hand.

*(Peace, like love, need not be soft and amorphous. Peace, like love, can be ferocious. As we are told in our mythology, it can move mountains. It is not the absence of conflict, it is what we do in the face of conflict. Peace is the light brought by everyday people in dark, dark times. Peace is the light we shine on corruption, indecency and malice.)

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Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Possibility | Tagged: artistry, balalnce, center, circumstance, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, equilibrium, heart, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, peace, presence, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Connective Tissue [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 21, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I literally watched the ice crystals blossom on the glass. I was Jack watching multiple bean stalks stretch and reach into the sky. They feathered and connected, the light behind them making the ice-miracle color-lush.

It brought fascia to mind. That is not as arbitrary a thought as it might as first seem. I am reading about fascia. Don’t ask me why. I won’t be able to answer. My reasons are not random, just hard to articulate.

Fascia is the connective tissue of the body. It not only wraps around muscle, organs, and bones, it also embraces every ligament, every joint, every nerve, every artery and vein, every cell of our bodies. Every thing. It is a paradoxical wonder: it is flexible but provides structure, it is soft and loose but provides support. It literally holds our bodies together. It gives us shape. Most amazing of all, it is continuous, a an unbroken tissue-web from the tippy-top of our heads to the farthest molecule of our big toe, from the outermost layer to the innermost core.

When fascia is stressed, it tightens. It grips. It holds down the fort.

It responds to sensory stimuli. It feels. Trauma, physical or psychological, can cause the fascia to lose flexibility; this loss is called “restrictions”. In other words, too much stress makes fascia grip and not let go. The restriction creates an energy eddy that solidifies. A hard spot. A place where toxins congregate.

The good news is that the eddy or restriction can be released – but never through force. Pressure only serves to make the grip tighter. Gentle oppositional touch, fascia yoga, will eventually send the message: you can let go now. Relax. Trust.

I remember watching Koyaanisqasti, the 1982 documentary composed of slow motion and time lapse footage, no spoken words, that explores our relationship with technology and nature. Koyaanisqasti is a Hopi word meaning “life out of balance.” I was awe-struck by the interconnectivity it revealed. We move as one whether we realize it or not. We are not separate from nature or the world in which we live. We are nature. Out of balance with ourselves.

My long lost pal Roger used to say that it is a trick of language that fools us into compartmentalizing our experiences. “When you hurt your toe, it’s not just your toe that is injured; your whole body is injured,” he’d say.

Every “thing” impacts every other “thing”. Separation is an illusion.

The second day. The fascia of the nation is stressed. Hard spots have formed. Our faith in the populace is strained. We tighten our grip. We isolate, circle the wagons and hold down the fort. It is early so we can do little more than shake our heads in disbelief. 77 million of us chose the path of hatred and gross indecency. We fracture. We necessarily emphasize separation, “I am not them.”

And yet, we…The whole body is injured.

Perhaps the fascia has some lessons to teach us about how we might deal with the trauma to our national body: the election of indecency, the elevation of a confederacy of dunces. It certainly provides clues for how we – those of us who did not vote for hatred – might regain a healthy equilibrium. Gentle touch. Send the message to one another, “I am here.” Not only are we more than opposition; we are the carriers of the spark of the ideal of democracy. We are the movement forward. Even though an abomination currently sits at the resolute desk, we are the connective tissue, the shape givers of our nation and of the future.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ICE