Love | The Direction of Intention

Decide To See [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on September 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

My thoughts while watching the wedding:

Oprah asked Gary Zukav this question: Where is soul? His response: Where is it not?

Exchange the word ‘love’ for the word ‘soul.’ Where is love? Where is it not?

In the English language, words like ‘love’ and ‘soul’ are nouns. Things. And, things must have limits. It is a remarkable misunderstanding, a miracle of minimization. Love, the single hardest ‘thing’ to define, in fact, impossible to define, is undefinable because it is without limit. The best we can do is point toward love-made-visible. A newborn in the arms of its mother. The moment the couple, standing before their community, stares into each other’s eyes and promises, “I do.” Watching a sunrise on an anniversary. A mother dancing with her son, the groom.

Love is. Where is it not? That means, of course, that it is “in” everything, everywhere. The air we breathe. The thoughts we think. The actions we take, big and small. It is in how we treat our neighbors. In how we see ourselves. In how we report our news. In how we tell our lies and our truths. Love is.

It is the province of no-single-religion. In fact, it is where every religion on earth goes off the rails. To claim to be “the way” or “the one true…” is to attempt dominion over love. To place rules and boundaries on the boundless.

The question Oprah didn’t ask: if it is everywhere, in everything, in war and in peace, hate and acceptance, does it have any meaning at all? If it is ubiquitous, unchangeable and indescribable, why bother? Gary’s answer, I imagine, would be something like this: we choose the form we give to our love, do we not? We can choose to put the accent on unity. We can choose to put the accent on separation. Love is. We can choose to put the accent on division or we can choose to offer our support.

There is never more or less love. Isn’t that the point? Love is beyond definition. What changes is not the love or the amount of love. What changes is what we decide to see. What changes is how we decide to see, especially how we decide to see ourselves in this world with so many “others.”

read Kerri’s blog post about JUST LOVE

Filed under: Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Seeing | Tagged: choices, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, decisions, Gary Zukav, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, language, love, Oprah, seeing, separation, story, studio melange, symbol, the melange, together, unity | Leave a comment »

Welcome Home [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on September 1, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The people that bought my parent’s home flipped it in a few months. They remodeled the bathrooms and updated the kitchen. They refaced the fireplace. They pulled up the carpet and refinished the hardwood floors. It was gorgeous. It was a surprising chapter of what has become my unintentional 2021 mediation: home. At the beginning of the summer, after days of hauling and cleaning, as my last act before leaving for good, Kerri suggested that I crawl into the cedar closet of my boyhood bedroom (I loved sitting in that closet as a boy) and sign my name. A sweet goodbye and thank you. Home is a memory.

It was only a few months ago that we moved my mom into her “new home.” She wanders the halls and we know that time is the only cure for what she seeks. Home, for her, will be a feeling that finds her, at last, only after the wear and tear in the rooms is of her making. Her pacing is wearing a trail, carving a path. Home is a feeling.

In the past 8 months my dad has moved three times into his “new home.” Memory care facilities are surprisingly inept at caring for elders who’ve lost their memories. High price. Low care. Everything is a business: a theme/rant for another post. In his current home, finally, he feels safe and, after a trip out, wants to return to his room. Home is safety.

Before his memory was gone, we took my dad back to his hometown, Monticello, Iowa. His primary need was to show us the tiny Home that his grandfather built. It’s the place where his dad was born. It is across the yard from where he was born. His tales were glorious in their hardship. They needed very little to make good memories. Today, the tiny house built with no money and huge heart is a storage shed but through my father’s eyes it was nothing short of a castle. I will always savor the image of him standing in front of his Home. Home is an origin and an anchor.

When we pull into the driveway, after a long trip or a jaunt to the store, we always greet our home, “Hello, happy house!” Our home feels alive, a presence or being. The walls carry our story. The rooms remember and replay the voices of her children. We’re packing a lot of story into the walls of our old house. It is packing a lot of story into us. Home is a relationship.

When we came upon the woodpecker-condo-tree, Brad said in jest, “Why don’t you stick your hand in there.” We laughed. “I told him I’d be like the monkey with its fist in the coconut, I wouldn’t be able to let go of the critter inside and also wouldn’t be able to get my fist out of the small hole. I’d be stuck on the trail forever. The woodpecker condo would be my new home. Kerri and Jen were inspecting the perfect circles. It felt good to be on a walk with them. It had been a long time since we’d had the chance to just hang out. Home is a friendship.

We had tacos at Jay and Charlies with the Up North gang. Jay showed us her new porch. We sat in the shade and drank margaritas and laughed. I told Jay that her porch and yard felt serene. She smiled and told me that it was her sanctuary. I was, for a moment, completely overwhelmed by how much life we’ve walked with these special people. Passages. We’ve shared and received so much support – immediate presence when need arose – from our stalwart gang. Sanctuary. Home is a community.

It’s just as the needlepoint declares: Home is sweet.

read Kerri’s blog post on Home Sweet Home

Filed under: Family, Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Love, Story | Tagged: anchor, childhood home, community, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, friendship, home, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, meditation, memory, origin, passages, relationship, safety, sanctuary, story, story. sense making, studio melange, support, woodpeckers | Leave a comment »

Make Life Better [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 23, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Lately, the universe has pitched me headlong into a master class on efficiency. Maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort. A useful concept in certain arenas and an intensely destructive concept in others. For a person who’s spent his life in a study of curiosity, art, and the creative, it’s an unexpected study at this stage of the game. It is sometimes uncomfortable but I consider it an opportunity for balance. Artists rarely meditate on efficiencies. We’re more of a discovery clan and efficiency is generally the enemy of discovery. No one ever sailed to the edge of the world with efficiency-on-their-lips.

Once, I made the argument to a school board that daydreaming was highly productive. It seems a no-brainer to me that exercising the imagination should be highly valued in a learning environment. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity came to him in a dream about cows. It is not an accident that many insights and revelations come in the shower or while driving or peeling a carrot. Newton’s apple did not fall on his head while he was exercising maximum productivity. The mind, to be efficient, needs space to breathe, fields to roam. It is the most elegant of paradoxes but mostly lost on worshipers at the altar of efficiency. In the modern business world, efficiency is all about time since time is billable. You know the mantra: time is money. Do more with less. Somehow, we’ve turned that nonsense into a virtue, a thing to be desired. A reason to squeeze.

There’s another, more admirable side to efficiency-seekers. How to make work less arduous. Grease the wheels and remove the friction. Relieve the burden. Not faster but easier. Ann used to say, “Find a need and fill it.” She’d look at people toiling and ask, “How can I ease their struggle?” Beaky was that way, too.

Near our home there is a stretch of shoreline with an ineffective seawall. It was built with stones and debris that become projectiles when hit by forceful waves. The locals know to avoid that stretch during a storm. It’s deadly. After the storm, it has become our ritual to walk the path to see the destruction. It’s always impressive. How far can a wave throw a heavy stone? The answer: farther than you think. Mother Nature yawns when we think we can control her. The seawall has become my metaphor for human hubris but also masterful inefficiency. It would cost money to build a proper wall. So, instead, after each storm, crews collect the rocks and pile them back on the shore, readying them to be hurled by the next storm.

We saw a double-rainbow and turned toward the shore. Kerri never misses an opportunity to capture a little miracle or a slice of beauty. We parked in front of the seawall-of-inefficiency and I laughed out loud. A budding Banksy sprayed a message on the rubble: love. The secret message-maker could not have found a more appropriate word: Love. Can you imagine anything more inefficient and, at the same time, more potent? Love moves mountains but is not billable. It transcends time. What better reason to do anything? Well, perhaps reason has nothing to do with it and never has. Reason has the worshipers-of-the-efficient perpetually re-stacking stones.

It’s easy to be seduced but let’s face it, life reduced to billable hours is not life at all. On the other hand, there is nothing more inspiring, nothing more curiosity-invoking than asking, “How can I make life better for everyone?”

Love on a rubble pile. What could be better? On second thought, what could possibly be more efficient?

read Kerri’s blog post about LOVE ON A ROCK

Filed under: Art, Edges, Identity, Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, Banksy, bottom line, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, daydream, education, effectiveness, efficiency, find a need and fill it, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, little miracles, love, Mother Nature, productivity, sea wall, stones, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Pack! [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on August 21, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

There is no greater torture for Kerri than having to pack for a trip. Her packing-panic begins weeks before we leave. The stress of trying to plan for and cover multiple clothing scenarios – infinite possibilities given weather, unknown and unplanned formal affairs, nail polish color and shoe requirements… all to fit within the limited space of a suitcase (or the back of the car) is unbearable. The torture lasts long after the trip begins, long after the trip actually ends. “I should have thought to bring…” is a common refrain, sometimes weeks after we’ve come home.

On the other hand I pack in a few minutes with almost no thought. My formal clothes and my ratty clothes are often one-and-the-same. My unintentional packing strategy has been to reduce my choices to one: black on blue jeans. As 20 says, “Easy Peasy.”

I have learned that it is sometimes helpful to pretend that my packing is more difficult than it actually is. I fret over my choice of t-shirts. Do I bring both pairs of boots or just one? Sometimes help looks like indecision. After all, no one likes to suffer alone.

read Kerri’s blog post about PACKING

smack-dab. ©️ 2021 kerrianddavid.com

Filed under: Love, smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, easy peasy, indecision, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, marriage, middle age, packing, roadtrips, second chances, support, the melange, two artists | Leave a comment »

Refresh [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 17, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s been true since we met. People stop us in airports and on the street, they give us thumbs up or take a faux paparazzi-photograph. They tell us that we are cute or “lookin’ good!” Once, a shopkeeper came out of his store to tell us that we made him smile. When we walk the neighborhood, we are often met with people who tell us that we make their day. It always takes us by surprise and it always makes us smile.

What are people seeing? We are older and link arms when we walk. We hold hands. Our clothes are unintentionally the same. Black on blue jeans. We walk slowly. We talk to each other. We stroll; a walk without a destination. We don’t know what inspires the comments but always appreciate them.

Kerri always coos when she sees a horse. In our imaginary life, she has horses, a donkey, and an old truck. We were walking on the trail in our flip flops (that always gets a raised eyebrow or two) when the cowboy came around the bend. “A horse!” Kerri whispered, and squeezed my arm. The cowboy sat up in his saddle, nodded as he rode passed, then said, “You look like you like each other.”

“We do.” I replied.

Perhaps it is that simple. We like each other.

We’re fortunate. Our work allows us to be together all day. Every day. That would, I’m sure, be the end of most relationships. We like it. When I need feedback on a painting, she is my best wise-eyes. “What do you see?” I ask. We read our posts to each other before we publish. We edit together. We cook together. We create together. Our list of joint projects is growing. Lately, our once-weekly-cartoon about…well…us, Smack-dab., is giving us tremendous energy. It is fun. We poke fun at ourselves. We capture the ridiculous and the poignant. We pay attention to the marvels of simple relationship.

Picasso said that, “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.” He also said that, “Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.” Those thoughts, placed side-by-side, I believe, holds the reason a cowboy sat up in his saddle and a shopkeeper ran into the street. We are refreshed. We practice the elimination of the unnecessary – on canvas, at the piano, and in life.

We didn’t try to make 24/7 togetherness. There was no rule or expectation. It’s what we wanted. It’s what we want.

I am on jury duty this week and was at the courthouse most of the day. When she came to fetch me I got in the car and we said at the same time, “That was weird!”

“Tell me everything!” she said.

“No. You first! What did you and Dogga do?” Our conversation took us deep into the night. There’s so much life and so little time. Perhaps that’s it. We know this day is precious and fleeting and act accordingly. It must show.

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU MUST LIKE EACH OTHER

Filed under: Art, Gratitude, Love, Navel Gazing, smack-dab, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, artists, collaborator, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, middle age, necessary, Picasso, presence, refreshed, relationship, second chances, smack-dab., studio melange, togetherness | Leave a comment »

Smile With Pete [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 10, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It is a hot and humid morning as we sit to write. The sky is dark and rumbling. A storm is moving in. Dogga doesn’t like the thunder. He stays close. He studies our responses. Kerri jumped up to close the windows against the rain.

News of Pete’s passing came yesterday. And, although I have not seen him in a few years, it sucked the air from my lungs. His path through life was not easy. He was the first truly free spirit I met in my youth. I’d met lots of pretenders, cape-wearing artists that fancied themselves to be free. Angry activists. Pete was different. His protest against the Vietnam war meant that he simply refused to fight. Peace made him a criminal so he went where he could live as he believed, a hippie, living off the land and off the grid. He understood that his actions mattered. He understood that his choices impacted everyone so he was dedicated to making sustainable, non-violent life-choices. Pete was way ahead of his time.

He was a beekeeper and, occasionally, when he needed help, I rode in his old truck and helped him lift the heavy hives, moving them to the next field. He collected the honey for sale and made beeswax candles. If a puritan work ethic smashed into a Buddhist mindset, Pete was the result. He worked hard. He relaxed hard.

He believed in the illumination of human consciousness. He meditated and practiced presence. We talked endlessly about the nature of…nature and what it was to be of the earth and not on the earth.

One night, after a long drive and a long day of moving hives to a farmer’s field, too late to drive home over the passes, the farmer gave him permission to camp overnight. Pete rolled out his sleeping bag and fell asleep under the stars. Two county ditch riders, seeing a hippie in a farmer’s field, decided it would be great fun to run their truck over the hippie. Pete’s hair got caught in the bumper. He was drug behind the truck for a long, long way before his hair finally released from his head.

No one can explain how he survived. His body was broken, his brain was damaged, but his spirit was unharmed. I’ve never seen another human being go through so much, lose so much, and come out smiling. In my middle age, years after the “accident,” sitting with Pete at family picnics, I’d ask him how he was doing. “Greeeeaaaaat!” he’d say, smiling his famous smile, closing his eyes again, turning his face to feel the sun.

No one I’ve ever known had more reason to be bitter yet had less capacity for self-pity. A peace-lover who became a survivor of horrific violence, an independent spirit who became impossibly dependent, a man of nature who was rendered incapable of doing any more than looking at the mountains and the fields, and his response was to smile.

Pete was rendered present. He embraced a simple gratitude for every day of life. He was capable of being no where else and inhabited his limitation with appreciation.

Even in his wreckage he managed to live fully his convictions. Isn’t that the mark of a great person?

read Kerri’s blog post about GRASSES

Filed under: Gratitude, Heroes, Love, Transcendence, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: appreciation, convictions, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Gratitude, greeat man, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, limitations, nature, peace, Pete, presence, spirit, story, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Share The Sketchbook [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 27, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Bruce came through town with his son Ben. Ben is a budding Renaissance man, an artist and philosopher. A quiet deep thinker. We marveled at the drawings in his sketchbook. Faces and hands. Figures in motion. A bold sense of color. I remember the terror of sharing my sketchbook and was moved by how eager and easily Ben shared his. A sketchbook, like a diary, is vulnerable, a place to work out ideas, make mistakes, record pain and joy and confusion. We were touched that he was so generous in opening his diary to us.

Big changes are coming Kirsten’s way. Kerri and I laughed at her news, at the ease and enthusiasm she brings to her step off the edge of the known. “I suppose it’s easier to make big changes,” Kerri said, “when you have the bulk of your life still ahead of of you.” I suppose. Or, perhaps, after so many big changes, you come to realize that the real transformations are not in location moves or new jobs. They happen on the inside and don’t seem to be changes at all. More, it’s layers falling off. Discovery of what was there all along.

Bruce and I have known each other for a very long time and have not seen each other in a very long time. Sitting on the deck, a humid hot day, we sipped cold wine and talked about the people we once were. We talked about some of the layers that have fallen off. We laughed at our foibles. There were too many stories to pack into a single visit. There were too many questions to ask and notes to share. I hope we will have more time to sit and share our life-sketchbooks.

Each morning, opening the house, I enjoy the small fountain in our sunroom. The water runs. As a Buddhist would say, “You can never step into the same river twice.” Our fountain reminds me that time runs. Each day is a new sketch. That is true especially if I think I know what will happen that day. I am always surprised by day’s end. Life takes some surprising turns. Some big. Most less noticeable. And, time runs.

I watched Bruce’s face as Ben showed us his drawings. A proud father. Ben looked to his dad, still anchored to some degree in his dad, just as it should be. I remember looking to my dad in just that way. This trip across the country, father and son, will be a good story for them. It is already. It will be told many years from now. A son rolls his eyes. A dad laughs. An old friend and his new wife delight in being part of the day’s sketch.

There is no higher art.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE FOUNTAIN

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Family, Gratitude, Love, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: artist, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, father and son, friends, friendship, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, parenthood, passing time, roadtrip, sketchbook, stories, studio melange, Surprises, time | Leave a comment »

Say It Anyway [on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on July 24, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

And so, we age. Together. Our bodies are changing. Our minds are changing. We met in our 50’s and often say, “I wish we’d have met when we were younger.” I wonder if that is true. I am a better person now than I was then.

She is Teflon when I tell her that she is beautiful. My words slide right off. I tell her anyway whether she can hear it or not because it is so deeply true within me.

My body aches. I am looking more and more like my grandfather and less and less like the man I expect to see in the mirror. But I know that the essential thing will remain intact through our entire apple-doll-becoming: jowls or no, she is beautiful to me. All the time.

read Kerri’s blog post about JOWLS

Filed under: Love, smack-dab | Tagged: aging, beauty, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, middle age, real beauty, saturday morning smack-dab, second chances, smack-dab, studio melange | Leave a comment »

Come To The Table [on DR Thursday]

Posted on July 22, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Duke and Eileen sat at this table for many years. And, because St. Vincent de Paul wouldn’t take it for second hand sale because the top had dings in it, it rode around in the back of Big Red for many months. We forgot it was there.

When Covid roared in and the world shut down, we wanted to put a table in our sun room. That way, we could sit and look out at the day. We thought it would help buoy our spirits while in isolation. In the middle of wondering-out-loud where we could possibly get a table in a world-shut-down, we remembered that Duke and Eileen’s table was camping out in the back of Big Red. It was a perfect fit.

It began the transformation of a room that has become our favorite place in the house to sit and hang out. We’ve populated our former work table with plants. Duke and Eileen’s table is also home to many succulents and a Bonsai Gardenia sent as a birthday present from Kirsten and Chris. We resurrected an old fountain so the sound of peace is the sound of gurgling water. There are candles. Special rocks from special places. Water, earth, fire, and air; lots of air. We’ve created a sanctuary.

Watching Kerri and 20, Duke and Eileen’s son, sit at the table filling out paperwork for Eileen, I was struck by the circle coming back around, the story that this table might tell. 20, sitting at his mom and dad’s table, now center to our sanctuary, doing the work of a son to care for his mom.

It also occurred to me, standing outside, looking in at these two siblings-from-different-mothers sit at the table filling out forms (Kerri and 20 are truly brother and sister), that in the midst of “living in interesting times,” our response to the pandemic, to civil unrest, to our town literally being on fire, amid job losses and wrists breaking, has been to create a place of peace. A center of quiet around which the chaos spins.

“Make all the world your studio” was once – and still is – a mantra for me. And, now at the center of my spinning-world-studio is an intentional space, a bright and happy room bringing together all of the elements, built around the long history of comfort etched in the top of Duke and Eileen’s table.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE TABLE

Filed under: Art, Awakening, DR Thursday, Edges, Gratitude, Love, Story | Tagged: artistry, center, chaos, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, elemental, elements, history, intentional space, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, peace, quiet center, sanctuary, story, studio melange, sun room, transformation | Leave a comment »

Live Life At The Pace Of A Letter [on KS Friday]

Posted on July 16, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“…what we feel is always larger than our means to express it.” ~ Declan Donnellan

Ruby, like Columbus is winding down. The forwarded-email let me know that she enjoyed my letter but also that she was not getting out of bed. Over the weekend she did not want to eat or drink. Pete is in hospice care.

I’ve not heard from Mike in months. Like Ruby, she is in her 90’s and I often wonder how she is doing. She is made of sturdy stuff and has a curious mind but even those powerful forces are no match for the running sands.

Although we live in the age of email and text, fast communication, these dear ones are solidly old school. A letter. A stamp. A mailbox. News comes at a different pace.

Ruby wrote a letter. It was dated last October and was mailed sometime in April. She typed it because she feared that I would not be able to decipher her handwriting. I typed my reply because I knew for certain that she would not be able to read my scribbles. Although it was lost on my young ears, time is different when you age. Both more meaningful and less. I’m living my way into hearing the simple wisdom of elders.

Tom Mck and I used to sit on his porch and watch the sunset over the fields. One evening he told the story of a letter mailed to his great-grandfather Lak. The pony express took six years to deliver the letter. It had to come all the way across the country. It was from his siblings telling of his mother’s passing. Although six years in the past, the news was fresh to Lak. His grief, therefore, was timeless.

It is always a time of transition but, sometimes, it is simply more apparent than others. This is one of those times. There is a pandemic. There is civil unrest. Moral upheaval in the nation. I feel none of that as acutely or potently as I do Columbus taking a labored breath or Ruby no longer interested in eating. It is the reason we sit on the back deck each night, light the lamps, and, often in silence, we enjoy the evening as it wanes. Living life at the pace of a letter.

It’s not that there is nothing to be said, it’s that no words – no matter how quickly delivered or slow – can properly capture the enormity of this time, this inevitable rolling transition.