Be Like BabyCat [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 30, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

We had a difficult time choosing our Melange this week. The final week of the year is overwrought with reflection and, let’s face it, 2020 is not like any other year. There is too much. For the first time in our 151 consecutive weeks of writing, on Sunday night we published an almost empty slate; one solid decision and four placeholders. We knew our prompt for Monday because, well, it was Monday. The curtain was rising.

It is tempting in a year like no other to write about the tragedies, disgruntle-ments, mountains to climb and we’ve certainly done our share of that. The pandemic has merely served as a baseline to the other palette of poo that populated our 2020 experiences. As we rounded the trail on Monday we decided that filling-out the Melange week with DogDog and BabyCat might be the respite that we needed. Our boys keep us laughing. They bring us back to the moment, to the real stuff of life. More than once this year, lost in the stormy sea of my mind, I’ve joined the boys on the rug, ruffled ears and stroked chins – and in a matter of seconds I’ve been awash in the thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” They are wizards of transformation.

BabyCat is a study in contentment. Scratch that. He is a master of contentment. While DogDog runs circles through the rooms of the house or barks at imagined intruders, BabyCats seeks stillness and sleeps. While we wrestle with fears of the future or sort through the wreckage of our stability, BabyCat finds the most comfortable place in the house and occupies it. He is not ashamed of his inactivity. He revels in it.

I watch him. He is my first cat, an alien being, a mystery that I can’t help but study. Yesterday, as he moved from one nap into the next, I thought that, if BabyCat was an artist, he would be in a constant state of conception. He sleeps on his ideas with no imperative to actually make them happen. He loves an idea for its own sake. In that deep-state-of-fulfillment, he specifically and successfully rejects all forms of self-criticism. He is a hedonist, shameless in his love of pleasure, his ease of enjoyment.

There were days in 2020 that pounded us into mush. If Kerri or I found ourselves in a fit of despair, without fail, in a matter of moments, BabyCat would crawl into our lap. He’d plop his hulking contentment in the center of our darkness, stop all movement, and purr himself to sleep, taking our despair with him into that netherworld. There are few more effective soul-balms than a contented cat on your lap.

Wizards of transformation. Contentment in a storm. No words necessary.

read Kerri’s blog post about BABYCAT

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Look Into Their Eyes [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on December 21, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

I joke that my experience of moving to Wisconsin was akin to a brake-less semi-truck hitting a runaway truck ramp. I plowed into the sand and pieces of me flew off in all directions. My work, my artistry, my orientation to life. Also lost in the rapid deceleration were my defense mechanisms, my armor, my “status” and “role” as I understood it. Full stop. Bumpers, bolts and bits of me strewn all over the place. It seemed that I was no longer useful.

I recently read a story about African porters, after days of hurrying to keep up with the team of explorers racing to get through the jungle, the porters refused to go another step. They simply sat down. The exasperated explorers appealed to the porters to no avail. “We have been moving so fast, ” the porters said, “we must now wait for our souls to catch up to our bodies.”

I have learned that, amid my wreckage, I am like the porters. Although my abrupt stop was largely unconscious, my soul needed some time to catch up. Wonderment takes time. Depth of experience (otherwise known as relationship) requires a good bit of standing still.

It’s a lesson I have learned more than once. During my time in Bali, if I wanted to walk with Budi, I had to slow way down. It’s actually possible to walk-in-presence rather than walk-in-purpose. In slow walking I learned I could breathe. My mind slowed. Direct experience (also known as relationship) and imagination filled-to-the-brim my new found space.

In our world, so addicted to speed and achievement and possessing and lists and “getting there,” we flatten our experiences to the mechanical. In nuts-and-bolts there is very little meaning to be found. Worse, there is no inter-connectivity. There is no experience of togetherness in an expectation of quotas and cubicles.

When I was consulting with organizations, the most profound experience I could provide my clients was simply to have them stand and face each other. No words. Presence is utterly terrifying to people who are dedicated to never being present. Once through the terror, however, there is no better balm to the horrors of a “business-is-business” wound.

Flat world phrases like “bottom line,” “human resources,” and “business-is-business” are ultimately the language of abdication of responsibility. It is the language of separation. It is the language of cowardice. As we know, it is possible to do all manner of violence on people and the planet when they are reduced to a “resource” or considered an obstacle to business.

We can forgive ourselves anything when we refuse to stand still and look each other in the eye.

The eyes are, after all, the window to the soul.

Stand still. facing another human being, and you will at first pull up the drawbridge and man the parapets. Guards will rush to the towers. But, after a few moments of eye-to-eye-looking, the castle falls apart. The pieces come down. It’s like laying in a hammock on a dark starry night, gazing into the Milky Way. You will either clap your hands and laugh with wonder or you will weep with the profound recognition of belonging.

read Kerri’s blog post about TRAVELING TOGETHER

art prints and more at society6.com

Filed under: Identity, Language, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Savor The Simple [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 16, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

If there is a single reoccurring lesson rippling through these days of pandemic, it is this: appreciate the small things. Savor the simple pleasures.

With our plate heaped with job losses, backs stabbed, broken-and-not-healing- wrists, parent-worries and COVID restrictions, there is ample fodder over which to fret. We do our share of midnight staring at the ceiling. These are the circumstances, the storm that whirls around us.

In the center of our storm we attend to the moment. We step on the back porch and breathe the cold air. We check the pond for sightings of Epic and Tiny, our frogs-in-residence. We watch the crows chase the hawk from the neighborhood. We laugh at the lengths DogDog will go to get a treat. With care, each night before retiring, we make-up Uncle Mortie’s Hotel, a blanket on the couch where BabyCat loves to sleep (our ample cat snores like a champ so it is no small pleasure that he chooses to check-in to the Hotel over crashing at the foot of our bed).

The smell of coffee. A close-up photo on the trail of pine cones and needles. A special rock. The color of the sky. Deer leaping through a field of sunset grasses. A 45 minute drive to Simple Bakery (a big adventure!) just to get a few pieces of flourless chocolate cake. And a macaroon to share on the drive home. Friends who go out of their way to send encouragement, to touch base, to say, “We are here.”

Life reduced is, in fact, a discovery of riches. Expansion in another direction. A practice of appreciation of “what is.” Sharing a single piece of flourless chocolate cake, the bounty of our adventure, just so we will have anticipation in the morrow, another piece waiting, a double- savor to share.

read Kerri’s blog post about FLOURLESS CHOCOLATE CAKE

IN SERENITY prints available at Society6.com

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Gratitude, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Turn To The Center [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on December 9, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

I read in my morning horror trawl that 80% of republicans think democrats are socialists and 80% of democrats believe republicans are racist. There you go! Socialists and racists running amok. Society reduced to elementary school antics. Blame games, name calling, stereotyping and over-adamant claims to know-the-truth-the-whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth. We see each other by gaslight.

There’s a little secret about truth. It is very patient. It will sit and wait until all the shouting and belief-flinging arguments are exhausted. It is quiet. It will not prevent us from diving head-first down the rabbit-hole-of-conspiracy. It will let us claim that we possess it – that we are the single owner of it – no matter how ridiculous the face we attempt to paint on it.

Truth will not intervene. If lie and madness are what we desire, truth will, like a good parent, let us learn our lesson.

Truth honors choices. It is the still center and will wait until the whirling stops. It will wait until the lies spin off and we desire to once again turn our gaze to the still-calm-center.

Truth is not an enabler. Truth will let us put our hands on the burner. Truth will let us choke on COVID even as we cough-and-claim that it’s no worse than the flu. It will sit quietly while we protest and profess and propagandize. It will not intercede when we discard evidence or demonize other points of view. It will watch patiently as we give away the farm.

Truth cares not for what gossip fills our bubbles and brains and bank accounts. It will not stop us from acting as the termites to our very own timbers.

Truth watches as we bicker on the playground. It honors our choices. It is patient. It knows that someday we will tire of snarling-fearmongering. It knows we will, one day, lose enough to at last shut-up and once again turn together and listen beyond our noisy protestations.

We will of necessity turn to the quiet center. Truth will be patiently waiting.

read Kerri’s blog post about TRUTH DECAY

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Get Close And Look [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on December 1, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Get close and look. Really look. Raindrops on the screen. Distortions. Light bends. The shock of organic shapes colliding on a grid. “What do you see?” she asked.

Last night, somewhere in the vicinity of 2am, we were wide awake. We ate rice Chex and reviewed the stressors of the year. It read like a biblical plague. We laughed when we realized that there were/are so many stressors that we’d actually forgotten the local riots, the curfew, chaos. and murder that happened a few blocks from our home. “In any normal year,” she said, “that would have been the top of the list. This year it didn’t even make the cut.”

Get close and look. What do you see? Future PhD’s will apply their magnifying glass to our time and find the tail wagging the dog, the greater falling to the lesser. A political party cowering and conspiring with delusion. They would rather see the system fall than risk their power seats. A populace jousting over wearing masks in a pandemic. Many would rather their neighbor die than have their imagined rights restricted. Propaganda networks, posing as news, peddling fantasy as fact. They would rather worship at the altar of the advertising dollar and feed the division (division sells!) rather than hold fast to the mast of journalistic integrity. It’s all entertainment when the necessary is swallowed in a mouthful of superficial. Gossip and conspiracy are so much tasty sugar!

Rome fell when the chief-toga-team guarded their luxuries rather than attended to the essentials. Millions of people line up for food. The market soars.

Really, get close and look. Little miracles are everywhere. “You were plucked out of the snake-pit,” he wrote. “Get the water boiling and get out the corkscrew. It’s time to celebrate.”

We found wine by the front door. Twice.

“I will sit with you in the dark,” she wrote.

“Do you need anything?” they asked.

Slushy came with smiles. “We thought you might need this!”

“Stand above your circumstance,” he suggested.

A special delivery of vitamin c and zinc brought tears to my eyes. True friends emerge from the pack.

The boys join us on the raft every morning for breakfast. Dogga comes running every time tears fill her eyes.

The shock of organic shapes colliding on a grid, raindrops on the screen. Hard lines, soft shapes. “We’re very lucky” she said, stooping to take a picture of a pine cone, a fallen branch with wispy needles. The day was cold but the sun was warm.

“What do you see?” she asked, turning the camera so I could see her photograph. “Really look.”

read Kerri’s blog post about RAIN ON THE SCREEN

Filed under: Pattern, Perspective, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Make It Flexible Again [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 17, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

This is a tale of two quotes. They collided in my brain while I pondered this wacky year, diverging realities, repeated historical patterns, and why I have yet to rake the leaves. You might conclude that I need to relax or that I have too much stuff wafting through my noggin and, as Thom taught me to say, “you might-could” be correct on both counts. Quote #1:

“Sometimes the best way of caring for you soul is to make flexible again some of the views that harden or crystalize in your mind; for these alienate you from your own depth and beauty.” ~ John O’Donohue

Kerri is a series photographer. She has dozens of photos of heart shapes found in nature. Heart rocks, heart leaves, heart water stains. Lately she has started two new series: 1) Trains through trees, and 2) Horse poop on the trail. I rarely bring my phone on our walks or I’d inundate you with images of my artist-wife kneeling to get the best poop shot [I’ve been instructed to tell you that the horse poop series is for use in commentary and not merely aesthetic].

I am an artist and given to looking at my world, but Kerri constantly surprises me with what she sees. She opens my eyes to what I might miss: the beauty all around me. If I could give a gift to the world it would be what she gives me: to see beyond what I think I see. We see what we believe – often without question. There is no better way to atrophy the mind/heart/soul than to see only what you believe. “To make flexible again some of the views that harden or crystalize in your mind.” Can you imagine better medicine for what ails our angry, divisive nation?

Quote #2: “Creativeness is finding patterns where none exist.” ~ Thomas Disch

We stopped at IKEA for 20 to pick up some furniture. In the few moments that it took us to run in, pull the boxes, move through the register line, and run out, Kerri took a series of series photographs. IKEA is a gold mine of pattern. There are patterns within patterns. Her love of shooting photos set up for me a dichotomy, a social observation. She came alive finding patterns, capturing patterns, breaking patterns. She climbed over ropes, into shelves, crawled into tight spaces, and wriggled between stacks to get the shot she wanted. The rest of the people in the check-out line were either bored, impatient, or otherwise lost in their minds. For them, waiting-in-line was the only pattern that existed. I laughed at the contrast, the utter vitality of Kerri’s enthusiasm played against the dulled-cart-pushing of the crowd.

Sometimes there is a sea of pattern dancing right before our eyes. It exists. It surprises. It inspires and challenges. Creativeness, the vitality of living, requires nothing more than opening our eyes and engaging the world that sparkles beyond our burdened minds and worn-out belief.

read Kerri’s blog post about PATTERN

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, Pattern, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Walk In Circles [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on November 10, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

The breeze like a puppeteer had the trees waving their limbs so the leaves whirled down all around us. It was a moment of trail magic, the kind that stops all inner-thought-rambling and pulls you to the surface, into full presence and delight.

Life lived in circle-time is much more gentle than the hard-time line we are accustomed to embracing. That is why we walk. We leave the line and step into the circle. Precisely because the circle goes nowhere and can only arrive at here. It pops like a soap bubble the illusion that life might be found elsewhere. The leaves rain down. Life is here. It is autumn again. It is familiar and mysterious, both.

It is very possible to think that life passes, a mile marker on a road. It is equally as possible to experience life as a single moment, the center of a cycle. Both/And. I will pass but the cycle will remain.

When I am on the line I cease seeing the full spectrum of color because my mind is blending the miracle into an elsewhere. When I am in the circle, the spectrum of color explodes, greens in yellow, warm purples and cool blue.

The line pulls life out of me. The circle fills me up. It is why we walk the trails, to refill.

The Ditch Trail in Colorado. The aspens radiant in orange and yellow. Snow was clinging to the shadows. Vibrant green grasses. “Concurrent seasons,” Kerri said, as she stooped to snap the photograph. There was water rushing in the distance, wind quaking the tree tops. The sun warmed my bones. “This is what hope feels like,” I whispered to no one, eyes closed, face to the sun.

“I don’t want to leave this place,” Kerri said, completely captured by the sense of her senses. Refreshed.

“Me, either.” Color popping and hopping all around me.

read Kerri’s blog post about CONCURRENT SEASONS

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Gratitude, Seeing, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Try, Try Again [on DR Thursday]

Posted on November 5, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative
shared fatherhood

This morning, as I looked through my stacks, I could find no more relevant painting for this day, for our times.

Ironically, I made two runs at this painting. Both times it evolved into something else. It started in violence and ended in shared fatherhood. In the final paintings, you cannot see is the inception, the original impulse, the story that made me pick up my brushes. Polynices and Eteocles. Brothers fighting for the control of the kingdom. Both die. They kill each other rather than share.

The story is ancient. Like all Greek stories, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s a story of fate. Oedipus’ children. An original sin playing to its inevitable conclusion. It’s been one of my metaphors for these now-ridiculous-united-states. Brothers fighting for control, forgetting that they are brothers. It’s a lose/lose story. Hubris kills all.

The mystery to me is why – in both attempts – did my if-wishes-were-fishes subconscious kick-in and transform this horror story into something positive? Out of the fire, I argue in the naive recesses of my being, we will forge a union.

I’ve always known that I am an idealist but, this morning, listening to the trickster fox whip its gullible crowd into an election fruit-smoothie, amplifying the bloviated rants of a shyster, creating fraud-fantasies from thin air, I recognize that I am perhaps the most foolish of all, the blue ribbon winner of witless. Perhaps not.

I will make a third go of this painting. I have the drawings. This time, my realist might punch through the wall of hopeful idealism. The tale is cautionary. It is ancient. It is worth telling. To look with clear eyes at “what is” does service to “what might be.”

Kerri just reminded me that, on our walk yesterday, I waxed poetic about how what we focus on matters. It’s true. Possibility needs to be firmly rooted in reality.

Bubbles always burst.

The brothers kill each other rather than share a kingdom. Is it their fate [our fate]? Is it inevitable – human nature – to be so blinded by the lust for control that we plug our ears to possibility, that we refuse to see the promise we lose in our petty penny struggle? Do people always need to sacrifice the greater for the lesser en route to waking up?

The pandemic rages. The Fox feeds lies to hungry-angry listeners. The brothers fight over something as silly as a mask. The map sprouts virus-red. The populace dies in the struggle.

Is this merely a chapter in the story of becoming? I guess we’ll see.

read Kerri’s blog post about SHARED FATHERHOOD. With any luck, her thoughts will be more hopeful.

this is my second run at my subject. Shared Fatherhood 2

shared fatherhood 1 & 2 ©️ 2017 david robinson

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity, Metaphor, Possibility, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Simplify [on Flawed Wednsday]

Posted on November 4, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Well, here we are. Counting all the votes. It is our practice, our right and our tradition. While we await a final tally, one thing remains abundantly clear: we couldn’t be more deeply divided. Maybe.

In the months following the 2016 election, Ken Wilber published a small book positing that our division was an evolutionary course correction. We’ve swerved too far into the fields of relative truth – so far, in fact, that there are only personal truths which means that there is no centrally-held value set or moral framework. Thus, we are awash in nihilism and narcissism.

This morning that seems undeniable. The road to integration must pass through a pull in the opposite direction, a course correction. The return to simple truth (make america great again) is what drives the folks in red hats. The irony, of course, is that their chosen champion is one of the great liars of all time. You can’t make this stuff up. The age of relativism and the age of reason are relegating themselves onto the dusty shelf of history and evolving into…

People always recoil when the pace of change announces a new world too fast. Think of this: the Wright brothers first flew a few feet above the ground in 1903. The moon landing happened a mere 66 years later in 1969. In the span of a single lifetime, the entire notion of what it meant to be human changed. We left the planet and looked back at it.

When I was a child and humans were first stepping on the moon, television was black and white, a phone was something with a dial that had a long cord attached. Both needed to be plugged into a wall. People had to gather around “the set” to watch the news. Now, I carry my “phone” in my pocket. It has more computing power than the lunar module. More importantly, I can personalize this magic device. And, to-really-get-to-the-point, my screen is my own. My screen is my own and need not be shared. My truth is my own and need not be shared. In the space of half a lifetime, what if means to be a human community has changed.

The folks in red hats want to pretend that they can go back to simpler times, black and white television, cords on phones, a car in every garage: a world that worked for straight white men but not the rest of the nation. A world of tradition and values. And, need I point out (yes, I do) that their chosen champion is void of anything resembling a value. He assaults our traditions at every turn as he attempts to interrupt the counting of votes, discredit our election process. You can’t make this stuff up.

Simple truth. Simple times.

I’ve learned a new phrase through this election cycle: the diploma divide. The difference between the reds and the blues, as the phrase implies, is education.

Consider this: the simplest of farmers is dependent upon the latest technology. No one is out there harvesting crops with a scythe and mule team. No scientist in the lab or engineer in the factory is growing their own food. Take a stroll through some of the poorest communities in this nation and you’ll find advanced technology. My grandfather could fix his car with a screwdriver and wrench; car mechanics in 2020 fix cars with a computer.

If we can, as Ken Wilber suggests, pull our camera back into outer space and take an honest look at ourselves, we are not as divided in practice as we are in perception.

We need each other. We depend on each other. We are stepping through a transition time, wrestling for our future-identity in rapidly changing times. We can’t go back. We can’t go forward without a shared truth. We need each other now more than ever. We depend upon each other more than ever.

It is that simple.

read Kerri’s blog post about TOGETHER APART

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Consider The Circumstance [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on October 26, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Easy Way Down. We laughed. The sign only makes sense in the context of winter and deep, ski-able snow. Just out of the frame of this photograph is a chair lift. There is an easy way down because there is an easy way up. Later, as we knew we would have to do, we matched our easy walk down with a breathless slog back to the top.

Circumstance is everything. Sense-making requires a context. Stories only make sense within a specific context. Plunk a choice or a story line into an unrelated context and it seems like madness. Or stupidity. Yank Romeo and Juliet from the context of a society deeply divided by conflict and there is no story. There is no obstacle. It becomes the story of two delusional self-absorbed teenagers. Their choices would seem ridiculous without their circumstance.

I’m certain that Captain Obvious is yawning at my pedestrian observation. Circumstance is everything to sense-making. “So what!” the good Captain sighs.

Well, stop for a moment and consider this: we are in the grips of a worldwide pandemic. That is our circumstance. On this day in these once-united-states, roughly 8 months into our pandemic circumstance, over 220,000 of our citizens have perished from the virus. More than 8 million Americans have been infected. There are 42 million cases world-wide with more than 1 million deaths.

I might agree that a mask mandate – absent the circumstance of a global pandemic – might seem like an infringement on my personal liberties. It would make no sense. However, within the context of a global pandemic, railing against simple public protective measures – mask-wearing, social-distancing, washing hands – seems like so-much-lunacy.

The pandemic is our circumstance. Despite whatever noise and misdirection is being circulated within the fox-bubble, the pandemic is our circumstance. Denying the existence of a pandemic while the rates of infection break records daily is the madhouse equivalent of dumping Frodo and his mission into a Hallmark movie [a Hobbit with a mission finds himself in Christmas town where nice looking citizens offer him hot cocoa and the opportunity to find love in a tree farm]. It makes those within the fox-bubble crying “HOAX!” seem angry, petulant, delusional, and self-absorbed. It makes their dedicated resistance to mask-wearing and social-distancing infantile. It makes their gun-toting, testosterone-riddled protestations puerile.

The pandemic is our circumstance. It is the circumstance of the world. Denying it does not make it go away. As Doug might have said, “Wow! Every goddamn country in the world is pretending to have a deadly pandemic just to throw an election in the USA! I’ll bet that took some serious diplomacy!” [note: his language would have been much more salty]. Denying our circumstance creates worldwide incredulity at our utter stupidity and, above all, facilitates the spread of the virus.

I’m certain that theatre companies across this land are planning productions of Romeo and Juliet set in America 2020. Romeo is a child of the Blues, Juliet is the child of the Reds. The two youngsters, for a moment, with hearts full of new love, transcend their circumstance. Their society’s dedication to division will, of course, kill them both. Remember, too, that other cherished family members die along the way. Mercutio. Paris. It’s an old story asking a current question: how many will have to die, what [or who] is the loss so great that it/they will finally and at last open our eyes?

The pandemic is our circumstance.

read Kerri’s blog post about EASY WAY DOWN

Filed under: Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor, Perspective, Seeing, Story | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

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