Tip The Cup [on KS Friday]

Posted on June 2, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.” ~ Ray Bradbury

My grandmother famously hid a horse in her kitchen when the truck from the glue factory showed up to take it away. What makes that story remarkable to me is that my grandmother was 4’7″ tall when she stood on her tiptoes. Although her physical size was diminutive, her spirit was grande.

Another detail of the story that confounds me: from the backdoor, there were stairs up into her kitchen. And then a hard left turn. It was no small feat getting a horse into the kitchen. Sometimes I ponder what it must have looked like, watching this teeny-tiny woman hurriedly coaxing a big-big horse through the backdoor, up the stairs and into the kitchen. I wonder if she shushed it as she peeked out the kitchen window, waiting for the truck to drive away. I can’t help but laugh heartily every time I imagine the scene.

Once, she and my mom drove me to college in Santa Fe. On the way we stopped to have lunch. I was grateful for their efforts, driving me several hours to school, so I reached to pick up the check and my grandma pinned my hand to the table with her fork. We burst out laughing. She was fast and left no room for debate.

The sun streaming into the farmhouse brought grandma to mind. Standing in the kitchen, looking at all the food we’d prepared, the mountain of snacks and beverages Kate and Jerry hauled from Minnesota, the bins of cookies and sweets, I thought, “This place is just like grandma’s purse.” Her purse looked like a punching bag and she could produce anything you needed at anytime from that bag. Screwdriver? Yep. Saltines? Yep. Duct tape. Of course! Water? How much do you need? It was the clown car of purses. Were I to be lost in the desert and had one precious wish to be granted, I’d wish for my grandma’s purse.

Tiny woman. Endless supply of love and support. She knew how to fill our cups. She knew how to tip herself over so all the beautiful stuff could rush out.

where i’m from/blueprint for my soul © 1997 kerri sherwood

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora & iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about SUN IN THE FARMHOUSE

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Keep The Connection [on DR Thursday]

Posted on June 1, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

A Haiku: Sun bathes the hilltop/Green grass, stones etched, dates with names/Here, we meet again.

Carvings in stone. I’ve read that among the first evidence of human-made-art is associated with funerary rituals. Send the soul on their journey with the proper talismans. There are petroglyphs, too. Scratches in stone. A message? A journal? A reach to the “beyond”? A handprint on the wall of a cave.

The earliest Greek theatre was a religious ceremony. A portal for the gods to come through and speak. Can you imagine the role and responsibility of the playwright?

I watched a Rangda ritual in Bali that shook my world. Priests with knives ran at the Rangda, stabbing and stabbing. The knives bent, the Rangda taunted. One of the priests fell into a trance and began channeling a voice from beyond. The entire community leapt to surround the priest and hear the ancestor’s message. As introduction to the ritual, the only English speaker in the village told us something akin to: “What we have of value to share is our art.”

Can you imagine? An entire community that held their art and artists as sacred. Valuable. As the means to connect to their ancestors. It was so profoundly moving that I couldn’t sleep that night. What I had known and experienced personally was, in this place, alive in the public heart. I mourned the art-poverty of my nation and community. We tape bananas to the wall and lose ourselves in a made-up-maze of the conceptual.

I was taken aback in the pioneer cemetery. Most of the headstones were homemade, a red-brown sandy-cement with shells or rocks pressed in; a name scratched in the surface with a stick. Families doing their best not to lose their kin. Moving forward in time, we found a few stones made of marble and decorated by a stone carver. More substantial, perhaps, but the purpose remained the same. Keeping connected to what has come and gone. Attending to the ancestors. The story of us etched in stone.

shaman. 36x48IN. Oil on canvas. nfs.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CARVING

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Accept The Gift [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 24, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Years ago Tom gave me a bit of career-advice that I’m still trying to take: “Unlike most people,” he ominously said, “your path will never be about plugging into life. Rather, you must find how life can best plug into you.”

Joyce, a healer and mystic, got that look in her eyes, and told me that I was never going to pursue a single profession. Mine-to-do was to see into hearts; mine was to guide people to their truths.

These days, their words ring loudly in my ears. In the past 24 weeks, since the start-up collapsed, I’ve applied to over 100 positions. Each morning I open my email and find the latest thanks-but-no-thanks. And, each morning I ask myself the same question: How do I – this time – once again – at this stage in my life – find how life might plug into me? I’ve received plenty of ideas-for-jobs and more than a heaping spoonful of advice. “Seeing into hearts” and “Guiding people to their truths” is not stellar resume fodder, even when it includes owning businesses and fixing businesses and coaching people all over the world and painting paintings and directing plays and repairing broken theatre companies. Those “ways” feel finished.

I’m working very hard to find ways to plug into life.

It was a great relief to unplug from the fruitless pursuit for a few days. To gather with my family, to say good-bye to my dad, to eat and drink and play at a farmhouse that will forever represent the time and place an era ended and a new age began. Sitting on the porch in the morning sun I felt spacious for the first time in many months. Standing in the yard watching the sunset, I was quiet inside. Rooted. Easy.

I hadn’t realized how compressed I’d become. How air-less. The farmhouse served as a gift from my father: take a deep breath. Nothing more. Nothing less. This life is quickly passing. Relax. It will find you.

I stepped into the morning sun and practiced my tai-chi. These words from the Buddha came to mind: “Joyful participation with the sorrows of the world,” The accent is on the word “joyful.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about FARM SUNSET

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Forward The Story [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 22, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

A Haiku

A new era dawns./A chapter closes, fresh earth/forwards the story.

Bellaruth Naperstack often ends her meditations with the phrase, “…and so you are.” As cousin Kate guided us through the forgotten cemetery on the other side of town, she led us to the gravesite of my great, great, great, great grandfather and grandmother. The writing on the stone was nearly washed away with time. As Kate read their obituaries, Bellaruth’s phrase popped up in my mind. The summation of a life, punctuated by the survivors. The children and grandchildren. The next generation. And the next and the next.

It took me by surprise, this meditation on life. The phrase popping into my head was not a reference to the end of the lives of distant grandparents, but to me. “These are your people. This is your root.” They lead to me. I am the next chapter, the continuation of the story.

“And so you are.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about AND SO YOU ARE

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Practice Letting Go [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 19, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” ~ Rainier Maria Rilke

Kathy Bates has a great line in the movie P.S. I Love You: “The thing to remember is…if we’re all alone, then we’re all together in that, too.”

It’s our aloneness that propels us to reach. Our aloneness can drive us to grab. To hold on with all of our might.

Mothers learn the lesson of letting go. Fathers, too. Children would suffocate otherwise. In time, children must also learn the lesson of letting go of their parents. It’s not an easy lesson. It’s counterintuitive.

Couples learn this lesson if they are lucky. They recognize the line between reaching and clutching. Growth is always a process of opening. Open hands. Open minds. Open hearts. Growing a relationship never comes from controlling it. And, don’t we all know the feeling when a hug lasts a bit too long?

And then there are memories. Slippery devils, they tend to fade. Even in this era of ubiquitous photos, the feel, taste, touch, sound, sight flattens and dims. Three dimensions becomes two. I grab at the memory. My hands close around air. Ephemeral-something.

Tonight I will look into the night sky and make my peace. Alone together. Together alone. I will sit on the porch, grateful beyond words to reach and hold Kerri’s hand. Together in this, too.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about BARNEY-TWO-NAILS

the box/blueprint for my soul © 1997 kerri sherwood

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Swim Upstream [on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Today we travel. Family, like salmon swimming upstream to a place of origin. We’ll meet at the farmhouse. We’ll eat dinner. We’ll discuss what to do tomorrow at the inurnment. I think he mostly would have enjoyed our gathering together. Food and laughter. That is the ritual he would have appreciated.

The Great White Trillium produces “a single showy white flower atop a whorl of three leaves.” The flower opens late spring to early summer. Right now. They are abundant on our trail.

Whorl: a pattern of spirals or concentric circles.

Five years ago we strolled with him through the cemetery. He told stories of his friends. We will, I am certain, tell stories about him.

Kerri and I walked our trail on the ten-year-anniversary of our first meeting. We talked about how we’ve changed in the decade since I stepped off the plane. “I’m more connected to the impermanence,” she said. I nodded my head. Me, too.

Impermanence. A short season. Generations, a whorl. Patterns. Concentric circles. We tell stories and then we join the story.

Today we travel, like salmon swimming upstream.

rest now, 24×24″, mixed media (sold)

read Kerri’s blogpost about GREAT WHITE TRILLIUM

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rest now © circa 2016 david robinson

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Consider The Fact [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 5, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

In writing yesterday about the frogs arising from their eradicated landscape, I realized our front yard has become a bit of a metaphor. It, too, was eradicated. In the past two years it has been blasted to bits, trenched by too-large machines, huge mounds of earth and debris left behind to molder. After a prolonged battle, the digger of trenches and leaver of mounds returned with a different batch of too-large machines and quickly scraped away the mounds and all the living things, tossed some seed, spread some hay, and tacked some netting to the ground to keep the seed from blowing away.

A metaphor of our life. Eradicated landscape. Willy-nilly seed.

Yet, just as the frogs filled us with awe at their resilience, we are amazed watching determined shoots of hardy green reach through the disruption. Each patch of green perseverance fills us with giddy hope. New life is coming!

“We are like that,” we affirm.

We are not alone in our renewal. We are surrounded by a mighty community. Dan shares his grass-mastery and guides us toward lawn renewal. Dwight shares his wisdom and encourages us toward soul regeneration. 20 keeps us laughing and our hearts light. Brad and Jen walk each step with us. There is more support than we can count, more friendship than we can believe, both near and from afar. Abundance.

Abundance. Beyond metaphor, it is the fact of our life.

read Kerri’s blogpost about GREEN

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Settle In and Listen [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 20, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

Columbus would sit by the stereo for hours and listen to his records. His collection of styles was all over the map: classical, jazz, country, pop…The vinyl itself was wide-ranging: 45’s and 33 1/3 rpm’s, thick records weighing 180 grams or more. One of my favorite memories is of a dark night, sitting with him for hours, as he played selections for me. “I wonder what this one is,” he’d say, pulling a record from its sleeve. Or, “Oh, you’ll appreciate this one. It’s really odd!”

His enjoyment of music was as much an exploration into the unknown as a return to old favorites; he listened to discover. He’d study, laugh at the quirky and savor to sublime.

Growing up I did not know of his love for music. I suppose with four kids there wasn’t space in his life for his passions since he was an avid supporter of our dreams. I knew he thrived in the mountains and liked nothing better than throwing a fishing line into a lake. His deep appreciation for music came as a surprise.

We brought his records home with us to Wisconsin. They aren’t worth much monetarily. Occasionally I thumb through the albums, pull one, and play it on our little suitcase record player. Over the holidays, Kerri brought out her parent’s LP’s and I pulled the Christmas music from Columbus’ collection. We listened and told stories of Christmas past.

Recently we wandered through an antique store and came upon the boxes and boxes of old vinyl records. Kerri quipped that her CD’s would someday show up in the antique store with my paintings stacked against a wall. I looked a the boxes and wondered what I should do with my dad’s albums. They will, inevitably, end up stacked next to my paintings and Kerri’s CD’s in some moldy old antique mall. So, perhaps I need do nothing with them yet.

Really, I am waiting for an opportunity, a night that I will settle in with the record player and pull Columbus’ vinyl from their sleeves and ask, “I wonder what this one is?”

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about VINYL

it’s a long story/this part of the journey © 1998 kerri sherwood

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Celebrate Renewal [on KS Friday]

Posted on December 23, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Rebecca reminded me of David Bayles and Ted Orland’s remarkable book, Art & Fear. I flipped it open to this quote and laughed heartily. We discuss what we desire but do not yet possess.

On the opposite page I read this tasty bit: “Once you have found the work that you are meant to do, the particulars of any single piece don’t matter all that much.”

Years ago, watching me draw in an Italian Street Painting festival in San Luis Obispo, Roger commented that making art was what I was meant to do.

The other day, Kerri asked me if I wanted to hear a carol. She stood at her piano and played. There was no doubt – it was visible and electric – the carol she played was one of her compositions. I watched a brilliant artist do what she is meant to do.

Art is born of a service motive. Banking is born of a profit motive. It’s hard to explain a life of artistry in a world that exclusively values the profit motive. It seems foolish until you consider this: bankers, in retirement, play golf. Artists, in retirement, make art. There is no greater gift in this very short life than having an inner imperative. It tips contemporary valuation on its head.

Rebecca sent this quote from Art & Fear. She’d just asked me if I was still painting and I stuttered. “What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don’t, quit. Each step in the art-making process puts that issue to the test.” I am currently challenging my fear.

Last night the Up-North Gang gathered for dinner at Jay and Charlie’s house. Jay is a remarkable artist. Everywhere I looked in their house I saw her artistry. The meal she made was a bold step into the unknown and it was delicious. She is doing what she is meant to do and it spills out in every room.

At dinner, we talked about our children coming home for the holiday. I was the only person at the table who will never know the full depth of the desire of parenthood. I am a step, not a birth father. The joy of their children glowed in the faces seated at the table. All else seemed irrelevant.

There is a place beyond service and profit motives, a lovely dinner conversation where artists and bankers come together at one table. Family. And isn’t that – in the end – what we are all meant to do. To sit side-by-side and celebrate our renewal?

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE HOLIDAY

i wonder as i wander/the lights © 1996 kerri sherwood

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Two Sons and Two Fathers [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 5, 2022 by davidrobinsoncreative

The original contractor arrived with heavy machinery and an army of men. It was November. Our waterline broke and water was bubbling up in our front lawn. He was the only contractor available and willing to do the job so late in the year. By the time he was finished, he’d busted out portions of the city sidewalk, trenched a 5-foot-deep moat from the street to our foundation, broke out a piece of our front walk, and drilled a sizable hole in our foundation. It was the equivalent of performing open heart surgery for a toothache. Look up “overkill” in the dictionary and you’ll find a picture of this man.

The wreckage that he left behind was prodigious, though he was obligated to return in the spring to fix or replace what he’d broken.

To say we had to fight is an understatement. The city forced him to replace the sidewalk. The burial mound that was our front yard, after weeks of wrangling, was finally leveled and the grass reseeded. He promised to return to complete the final bit of repair work, the last of the pieces: a single square of our front walkway. We knew we’d never see him again.

This story has an extraordinary ending. A series of companies were contacted. None wanted to do the job. It was too small. It was too complicated: the original walkway was scribed with lines and no one knew how to match it.

And then, one day, I looked out the window and saw Frank, hands on his hips, standing on our driveway, staring at our sidewalk. “I remember this job,” he said when I came out to greet him. “I was a kid. I was with my dad when he poured this.” He scrutinized the house. “I’m certain of it.” He smiled, adding, “I think I still have the tool he used to make those lines.”

We talked for several minutes. My dad worked in concrete so we swapped dad stories. He was excited to restore the walk that his father installed. Scribing the lines would not only be easy, but a way to connect his work with his father’s. His connection to his father provided a mainline connection to my father. I was suddenly extremely grateful for the disappearance of the original contractor. Into the void he created walked a heart-legacy, a special opportunity.

Now, the final steps you take approaching our house, will be the place two sons met with their lost fathers, a stone of remembrance and pride. What could possibly be a better welcome to our home.

read Kerri’s blogpost about CEMENT

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