Perspective | The Direction of Intention

Know They Are Watching [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on February 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

deer tracks converge copy

We go to Bristol wood to return to center. It is a place of peace. It somehow breathes serenity into our overactive minds.

Sign of deer are everywhere in the woods. We rarely see them but we know they are there. I imagine they watch us. I imagine they silently encourage us to walk slower, to catch our breath. To listen to tree song. We delight when we walk a path where they recently tread.

Deer are a symbol of gentleness and intuition. Balance and peace. This summer, on the Island, we saw deer everyday. We would retreat from the contentious community back to the littlehouse, pour some wine, and take a walk. A deer would inevitably appear and we’d stop talking. We’d breathe. We’d watch. It would watch us, too. After a few moments it would leap and disappear and, with it, our day’s concerns would also disappear. The deer would shift our conversation, from a lengthy list of disgruntlement to the beauty immediately surrounding us.

I’ve decided that, in our broken-wrists-time-out, our goal should be to make the whole world Bristol Wood. That we shouldn’t retreat to find peace but should invite peace and balance and serenity into the rest of the day, no matter where we happen to be living it.

Things I used to know. Things I once practiced.

Know that they are there, everywhere. Watching. Silently encouraging us to walk slower, the breathe, to focus on the beauty immediately surrounding us and not on the other stuff. It turns out that balance and serenity are practices, not pursuits. They are choices. Peace-of-heart-and-mind do not exist in the woods exclusively. Peace comes to the place where I decide to allow it. To practice it. To make it a priority.

read Kerri’s blog post on DEER SIGN

deer in woods copy

Filed under: Perspective, Possibility, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: balance, beauty, bristol woods, center, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, deer, deer medicine, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, peace, serentiy | 1 Comment »

Get Serious [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on February 3, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

er or uc copy

Looking back on the experience, I see a map of choices.

Kerri fell. Both wrists were painful. We knew it was bad. In the ski patrol hut, the medic’s advice was to go get x-rays. Choice #1: To get x-rays or to not get x-rays? We had a conversation in all seriousness with the medics, that, given the nature of healthcare in America, it might be a valid option to skip it. To go home. To ignore it and let it heal as it will. The problem with ignoring it: the loss of motion that comes with ignoring what might be broken or torn in her wrists.

So the choice was not actually to get x-rays or to not get x-rays. The choice, the real choice, was financial ruin or loss of motion. Kerri is a pianist. It is her livelihood and her life. So, choice made: financial ruin.

We pulled into the medical center and saw a sign. To the right was the emergency room. To the left was the urgent care center. We sat in the truck and debated the option. While Kerri writhed in pain, in all seriousness, we sat in an idling truck and discussed the merits [or lack thereof] of our insurance policy. If we chose the right hand path, we would meet the vast, gaping deductible. Like Evel Knieval attempting to jump his motorcycle over the Grand Canyon, we’d have to gun our engine and run at the edge. No parachute. So, we chose the left hand path. We went to the desk of the urgent care and asked if they did x-rays.

Choice #2 was not, in truth, the emergency room versus the urgent care. The choice was which canyon did we have the best chance of surviving?

A few days later. An appointment with a great orthopedic doctor. She, in all seriousness, told us that she ignores the part of the patient file that speaks to their health insurance. She explained that there is dilemma that doctors face: do I advise my patient to do what is best for their health or do I advise them to do the thing that might keep them out of bankruptcy? She ignores the file because she wants her patients to hear what is best for them. She told us that she needs to keep herself blind to the financial reality that her best advice might necessitate. “Yet another untenable choice,” I thought.

Our choices reminded me of an experience we had a few years ago. We were shopping for a new washing machine. The salesman, an older man, was embarrassed by the products he was selling. He, in all seriousness, took us down the aisle of appliances and told us what was wrong with each machine. He was convincing us NOT to buy his appliances. Mostly, he told us, they were designed to fail. He said, “We used to know how to make things in this country. Now we make crap on purpose.”

The healthcare in the richest country on earth is just like the appliances sold in the richest country on earth: Designed to fail. Making crap on purpose. The way I am certain that I see clearly? Sit with your wife, a world-class pianist, who has just broken both wrists, and listen to the choices you are considering. Clarity, in all seriousness, comes when the crisis hits.

As we shake our increasingly obese and unhealthy bellies, wave our angry signs and shout about making America great again, it seems we are falling further and further behind. We saw it this week in our senate, did we not? At least our capacity for denial of the truth [in our post-fact, low-information frenzy] is running in front of the rest of the world. I can only hope, as a nation, we break our collective wrists sooner rather than later. In our pain, perhaps we will look at the sign and have a real conversation, in all seriousness, about our choices, about what we can and cannot survive.

Read Kerri’s blog post [written with a cast and a splint!] on CHOICES

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective, Rants, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: crap thinking, crumbling nation, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, emergency room, Evel Knieval, healthcare, insurance, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, low information, post fact, urgent care | 1 Comment »

Stand Out [on Two Artist’s Tuesday]

Posted on January 28, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

you be you bus copy

You be you. If you think about it, who else can you possibly be? As trite as it may seem, this appeal on the side of a bus captures in simple marketing language one of the greatest paradoxes of living life in the most individualistic culture on the planet. We are reinforced to be hyper-unique but hammered repeatedly to fit in. It is the ultimate split intention. It is why we have such a ubiquitous self-help industry and so many preachers-of-purpose-seeking. Asking, “Where do I fit in?” is a terribly hard question to answer when the expectation is to stand out.

I suspect our current dedication to division is, to some extent, built upon this paradox. Split souls are generally angry souls and anger is an easy organizing principle to exploit. Tribes of anger need nothing more than enemies to bridge the split. A good enemy, real or imagined, can provide to an angry tribe both a sense of individual purpose and a place to belong.

I heard a term the other day that frightened me: low information voter. Years ago I heard an economist speak at a conference and his message was profound. A healthy democracy requires an educated populace. Without the capacity to sort through the heaps of rhetoric, pull apart the agendas to see beyond the manipulation, without some simple capacity for analysis, or a bigger picture, then votes will be cast from simple, uninformed and often angry belief. In other words, democracies fall when its members do not care enough to know what they are voting for. Power will always corrupt. The brilliance of a democracy is that the people are meant to be the ultimate check on power. In order to be the check, they have to look beyond the political party line and ask, “What really happened here?”

The leaders of angry tribes need low information voters. It’s the only way they can stay in positions of power. It feels good to fit in. But, in a culture known for its individuality, it feels all the more satisfying to stand up, to stand out and ask, “What’s really going on here?”

read Kerri’s blog post about YOU BE YOU

Filed under: Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: angry tribe, communal, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, individual, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, low information voter, manipulation, split intention, tribalism | Leave a comment »

Coalesce [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 22, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

in the woods copy

Sometimes, when we are walking through the woods, I imagine myself with none of the labels that I claim as important. What if “artist” did not apply? Or “teacher.” What if none of my opinions or ideas or justifications had any merit or substance? What if they were bits of armor or heavy clothing that I could drop as I walked? So much lighter, less encumbered, who, then, would I be? Divested of my made-up-meaning and my hard-fought-for stress, what might I experience?

These imaginings, my questions – at least to me – are not nihilistic. They are the opposite. When I am walking in the woods and all the clutter and noise and the oh-so-important-to-do-list falls away, when all of my investments in my-very-important-ideas and my-resistances-to-immovable-objects drops off, when my frustrations and anxieties evaporate, I come back to my senses. Literally and metaphorically. The cold air. The limbs waving and groaning in the breeze. The quiet chatter of the brook that ambles through Bristol Wood. I become the moment I inhabit. I inhabit the moment of my becoming. That’s it. My “meaning” takes on a proper proportion, no greater or smaller than life itself.

Listening to the brook, the sound of our feet crunching the snow, I remember something John O’Donohue wrote. “The river is a miracle of presence. Each place it flows through is the place that it is…In a river, past, present, and future coalesce in the one passionate flowing.”

read Kerri’s blog post about THE WOODS

Filed under: Emergence, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: bristol woods, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, experiences, imaginings, John O"Donohue, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, meaning making, nature, presence, present moment | Leave a comment »

Check Your Reality [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We parked the truck in the Kemper Center lot, far enough from the shore not to be hit by the flying debris, the chunks of seawall and pavement being hurtled from the impact of the waves. Kerri has lived here for over 30 years, “I’ve never seen anything like this,” she repeated as a towering wave engulfed the gazebo, took down a piece of the wall of the art center, a hunk of coastline disappeared.

Later, after the storm, we went back. Trees were down, encased in ice. Huge sections of the walking path were shattered and tossed into the flooded mess of the parking lot behind the center. Walking was treacherous. Like the trees, the ground, the rocks, the destruction was coated in a thick layer of ice. It was beautiful and inconceivable.

Words mask all manner of reality. We have a word, nature, that can’t even begin to touch the magnitude, the power of where it points. Mother Nature. I have been thrown out of bed in an earthquake that brought down freeways like they were so much satin ribbon. Go to Pompeii or Herculeneum, visit Mt. Saint Helens, watch with disbelief any of the news footage of any one of the tsunamis that have wiped communities off the map. Wrap your mind around it, if you can.

We are cavalier in our conversations about global warming. We impact, we do not command. We reduce it to questions of business, of protecting the beef industry. Which economy will suffer most? We make up these strangely insignificant divisions. We imagine that we are the center, holding all the controls. We imagine that it is all about us. So small, a chihuahua yipping at a forest fire.

Sitting in the truck, feeling the boom of the waves in my chest as they tore off chunks of the shore, I felt tiny. I remembered a snippet of film I saw about a man who wore a superhero suit and stood in the face of an oncoming storm. He flexed and stomped and raged for the camera. And then the storm hit. The best he could do was run for his life.

aftermath copy

read Kerri’s blog post about THE STORM

ice ©️ 2020 kerri sherwood

for prints of “ice” go here

Filed under: Awakening, Energy, Language, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday, Uncategorized | Tagged: climate change, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destruction, global warming, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerri sherwood on itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nature, power, storm | Leave a comment »

Look Beyond [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 15, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

cameras copy

“Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.” ~ Alan Kay

On the one hand, this could be a display of old technology. Shelf after shelf of what was once understood as a camera. Not so long ago a camera was a device that employed a once-revolutionary-invention, a light sensitive plastic strip called “film,” to capture images. These film devices, the miracles that populated my youth, are now antiques.

On the other hand, this could be an art piece, a commentary on the contemporary world. Many, many, many cameras, all with their lenses pointed back at us. There are cameras in phones, each a trafficker of the relatively new obsession known as the “selfie.” There are cameras at almost every major intersection of my town. Traffic selfies that come with tickets. In stores I am told to smile because I am on camera. There are cameras in doorbells. Many medical procedures employ teeny tiny cameras capable of fantastic voyages, inner selfies. The cameras shot into outer space transmit back to us images of a tiny speck in this vast universe, a dot called Earth. Our art piece reveals to us that we are the central object of our study.

Standing in front of the shelf, looking at the myriad lenses looking back at me, I understood with some sadness that the cameras on the shelf used to be understood as arbiters of truth. There is a now an antiquated term, you may have heard it: photographic proof. Proof. It is not so much that the camera – film – is antiquated – but it’s purpose is most certainly passe’. Truth is out of date. Proof has no reliable root. We have replaced ‘photographic proof’ with a new concept, a ‘post-fact’ world.

Buckminster Fuller once said that, “Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” Were this beautiful unintentional-art-piece-found-in-an-antique-mall one of my creations, you can bet that I’d scribble Fuller’s quote someplace on the shelf, though, you’d have to look beyond the cameras to find it.

read Kerri’s blog post about CAMERAS

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Navel Gazing, Perspective, Seeing, Uncategorized | Tagged: antique, art piece, buckminster fuller, camera, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, film, image, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, photograph, proof, technology, truth | Leave a comment »

Change Your Mantra [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 13, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

dont try to get it over with copy

It was only after the dive that I realized my folly. Rather than enjoy it I repeated to myself, over and over, to just get through it. I’d be fine once I was back in the boat. I was afraid.

It was a very deep dive, the deepest I’d ever attempted. There were sharks swimming beneath me. There were sharks swimming above me. The Blue Hole. The wall was gorgeous, an explosion of red, orange, and yellow. Looking up was a miracle of sunlight on water. Looking down was a study in the color blue, layers of turquoise, cerulean, disappearing into a bottomless (aptly named) ultramarine.

My mantra, just get through it, was a wall between me and extraordinary beauty of it.

Later, in the boat, I appreciated it. I also appreciated that my experience was unnecessarily fearful. Rather, I understood that the only real danger in The Blue Hole was my doubt in myself. The sharks were not man-eaters. The depth was the limit for amateur divers but not extreme. The dive master was world class. I had plenty of oxygen. I was safe everywhere but in my imagination.

The dive made me wonder how much of my life I’ve spent telling myself fear tales? Instead of having an experience of wonder, how often have I storied myself in fear? How often have I made up monsters and raced to the other side of the moment, raced to get it over with rather than be in it?

Sitting in the boat, I realized that it wasn’t the fear that I was wrangling with. Fear is natural, especially in alien environments like deep water, especially when sharks are involved. It was my mantra that plagued me. Get through it.

Next time, I told myself, I will have a new mantra. Be in it. Fear is an experience, too. It’s part of life and, at the end of my days, I will be sad if the story of my life was simply getting through it. Or over it. I want to know that I was in it, all of it; the fear, the joy, the ugly, the angry, the beautiful blues, the sad days, and the quiet wandering.

read Kerri’s blog post about GETTING IT OVER WITH

Filed under: Edges, Merely A Thought Monday, Navel Gazing, Perspective, Story, Uncategorized | Tagged: Blue Hole, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dive, experience, fear, fear tales, imagination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mantra, monsters, presence, safety, sharks, story, storying | Leave a comment »

Step Into The Light [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 1, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

luminaria copy

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~Plato

Sometimes, when I have too much to write about (or nothing at all to say), I poke around for a handhold. Today, Plato reached out and offered his hand.

2019 felt dark. I, for one, was glad to raise a glass to its departure. The word I would dedicate to the year-gone-by is “contention.” We felt like we were thrust to the ramparts, constantly under siege.

And, in the nation at large, it was dark, indeed. It was year in which conspiracy theories ran amok. Subpoenas were ignored. Evidence sublimated. Transcripts hidden. Tax records buried. Facts obscured with so much noise. Eyes squeezed shut to the climate. So much fear of the light. A tragedy.

So, my wish for this new year? Simply this: Light. So much light. And the courage to step fully into it.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE LUMINARIA

Filed under: Flawed Cartoon Wednesday, Perspective, Possibility, Uncategorized | Tagged: 2019, 2020, courage, dark, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, end of year, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light, plato | Leave a comment »

Look Before You Bite [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 30, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

where you stand copy

When John said, “Penny wise, pound foolish,” I would always stop and reconsider my options. John was wise. John was concise. He was a master furniture maker and spoke like a man who necessarily made exact measurements.

If I could slap a label on this era of the USA, I’d call it the penny-wise-pound-foolish-age. Perhaps my label would also apply to the human world at large? I think so. Short term gain is rarely a healthy criteria for determining long term health. Anyone who’s ever experienced a hangover, lashed out in anger, dumped their waste into the drinking water, or jumped into a get-rich-quick scheme will understand.

I read this phrase the other day: Fox is feeding misinformation to an angry populace hungry to consume it. In most mythologies, the fox is a trickster and I couldn’t help but grimace and chuckle at the layers-of-veracity implied. A maker of mischief feeding misinformation to people hungry to gobble it down. Of course, there are two points of view in every fable and it is true of our fable, too: there is the fox and there are those who eat the gruel to fuel their angry point of view. The fox is never without agenda. Control of the point of view of the angry populace is the fox’s agenda. In other words, the fox is not a friend. The fox is like the witch offering the poison apple. Take a bite; it won’t hurt you. Really.

Reds and blues. Post fact era. Foxes in the hen house. Tribes eating tripe. Penny wise, pound foolish.

read Kerri’s blog post about WHERE YOU STAND

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective, Uncategorized | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, fox, health, john avlon, john k, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, perspective, point of view, Trickster, tripe | Leave a comment »

Dance A Simple Dance [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 23, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

keep things simple copy

“Simplicity. Patience. Compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” ~Lao Tzu

“Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” ~ Steve Jobs

I am at home in my studio. Even during the times – like now – when my well is dry, I go into my studio and the world makes sense. It is quiet. My intention is pure: I seek an experience, an exploration, not an achievement. In other words, I enter into a relationship with something so much bigger than me. It is a simple dance with no end. The paintings are a map of this relationship.

Krishnamurti wrote that “stillness is the act of worship – not going to temple to offer flowers and pushing the beggar aside on the way.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately (thus, not being still;-) in our world of angry competing narratives. Screaming moral high ground. All the shouting down of others. All the static and noise and agenda-masked-as-righteousness. The celebration of the lie (the official term is a ‘post-truth world’). The difference between rhetoric and lived realities. We ask almost every day, “How does this make sense?”

Rome fell. Ask Google the question why? and you’ll get a list of eight simple reasons. Over reliance on slave labor. Military overspending. Government corruption and instability. The loss of values. Weakened and eating themselves from the inside out, they became exposed to easy invasion. Lots of noise. Loss of center.

We know there is no sense to be made so we walk in our beloved Bristol wood. We walk the trails next to the Des Plaines River. We walk the streets of our neighborhood. We hold hands. Simple. We talk about the leaves, the color of the sky. Kerri takes photos of things that catch her eye. Beautiful shapes. Geese flying en masse. An ancient tree. Radiant purple vines climbing from the ochre grass. We attempt to leave the angry noise even for a short while, to dip our toes into the quiet.

Yesterday we came to the end of the trail and heard a bagpipe playing The Water is Wide. It was lovely. Haunting. So out of place yet so perfect. It made sense. We stopped and listened as the music reverberated through the woods. It brought us fully into the moment. The cool air and sun. The music mixing with the rustling of the leaves. No where else to be. Nothing to change or control or get through. Simple.

read Kerri’s blog post about keeping things SIMPLE