Look Forward, Look Backward [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 13, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It stood stark white against the umber of the brush and forest. “A wishbone,” Kerri said.

Furcula. My new word of the day. I also learned that the tradition of breaking the wishbone is brought to us via the Romans. It’s an ancient game of luck and fortune divination. I imagine fowl across the ages had and continue to have no idea that they carry within their feathered bodies an augury. Chefs everywhere caution that the wishbone must be dried before it can properly snap. Pull too soon and the power may not be turned on!

I confess that, standing in the woods, I did not immediately see a wishbone. I saw two diverging paths. It brought to my mind a collision of the Hopi prophecy and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. It made my head spin and I was grateful that Kerri stopped to take a picture. When my thought-vertigo calmed I realized that both the prophecy and the poem are a call to take the road “less traveled by.”

I see metaphor everywhere. I can’t help it. And so, it is impossible for me not to project this poem and prophecy onto the place we stand in these firmly-divided-united-states. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.” I read that the theme of the poem is “that we want to believe that our choices are unique, brave, and life-altering when they really are not.” It is a backward glance at life.

It seems to me that the choices we as a nation make at this particular crossroad, despite the poem’s theme, will be life-altering. Nation-altering. Some interpreters suggest the poem is a celebration of non-conformity, that the real wealth of life is found when breaking away from the well-traveled-and-well-known path. I can only hope that the politicians draped in red, attempting in their blind conformity to minimize a president-inspired-insurrection, find the courage to break from their dangerous orthodoxy.

The Hopi prophecy is a forward look. One path leads to destruction. The other leads to balance and harmony. A “head” path and a “heart” path. Or, a “two-heart” or “one-heart” path. Two hearts are in conflict, a split-intention, and lose all trying simultaneously to chase two goals; a tale of cross purposes. One heart, one intention. One purpose. Unity.

A forward look. A backward look. A wishbone in the forest. We have the luxury of backward-looking and know the path the Romans chose. They are gone. But, they have left us with a rich tradition of chicken-bone-augury.

I wonder what story future-backward-lookers will tell about us? I wonder what path we will take as our road diverges in this yellow wood? I wonder what fowl tradition we will send rippling into the unknown future?

read Kerri’s blog post about the WISHBONE

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Pattern, Perspective, Story | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Stop The Chase [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 12, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

It’s difficult, seemingly Pollyanna-ish, to write about love when our nation is now officially divided and living in two combating realities. When Kerri took this photo on our back deck, I knew it was going to make an appearance in the Melange. “It will be tough to write about given the events of this week, the realities of our divided nation,” I said to no one listening.

I was wrong. The more I pondered this heart in the snow, the more I saw a simple theme, the thing we always miss. It is at the core of almost all spiritual teaching and personal revelation: stop the chase.

Krishnamurti wrote that “Love is a fact, not an emotion.” It cannot be found precisely because it is omnipresent. It is everywhere. It is everything. However, it can be easily missed, especially when covered in a blanket of righteousness. Love will sit patiently and wait for those who believe love to be a separate thing, something to be earned or discovered in the eyes of an other. We recently, through Zoom, sat Shivah for someone dear who had passed. The Rabbi read these words from a poem, “Love doesn’t die, people do. So when all that’s left of me is Love, give me away.”

Viktor Frankel wrote that “Happiness ensues.” It follows. It cannot be pursued or attained.

I can’t tell you how many countless hours I’ve spent with groups who desire to attain presence. To achieve mindfulness. It is nigh-on impossible to convey to achievers that presence cannot be pursued. It’s simple if you think about it: presence comes when ambition disappears. Presence and love. The desire to be anywhere else, to achieve anything, to become something other than what you are in this moment, precludes presence, interrupts love. Allow it; it’s already there.

It is anathema to suggest to modern seekers that they will find what they seek by ceasing to seek. Ha! It is the ultimate collision, in a culture steeped in achievement-as-a-central-tenet, that love, happiness, presence, mindfulness are unachievable – but infinitely available when standing still.

“You can love me most by letting me live in your eyes, And not on your mind,” the Rabbi read. See beyond what you think.

Division lives in the mind. What we seek, what we most need in this historic moment, cannot be found there. What we seek will become apparent – readily available – when we stop the chase, drop the destructive delusion of manifest destiny and its many separation-shadows – and, even for a moment – stand still.

read Kerri’s blog post about HEART

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

Do It For Yourself [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 11, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I have been writing long enough to know that there are sedimentary layers to my themes. The top layer, the most superficial, is the political layer, current events. I am not above shouting into the storm. When I run to the keyboard and ring the alarm or presume that my point of view is relevant enough to roundly criticize others, I know that, above all, I’m breaking the first rule of happiness: I can never determine what another person thinks or does or feels. On my superficial days, in my ranting, I write for myself.

When I was at my saddest, I set about looking for goodness. I walked the streets of Seattle with the single intention of counting acts of kindness. As you might suspect there were more than I could count. In this world where we story ourselves as aggressive, unthinking and unkind, we are remarkably compassionate. Good will is simply more difficult to see. It is not the focus. The deeper layers of my writing-archaeology emerge when I direct my attention, when I exercise the artist in me and attempt to see beyond what I think. Since these are the layers where I desire to live and work, I suppose it is also true that on those days I also write for myself.

It is a looping life-lesson for me: I have the capacity to choose where I place my focus. I will see in the dark ocean where I decide to shine my light. I will author myself according to what/where I decide to give my focus. It is, among other things, why the film ABOUT TIME is among my favorite movies.

Lately, as one of our get-through-the-pandemic-winter-strategies, we’ve taken to assembling jigsaw puzzles. Entire evenings disappear into our intense pursuit of pieces. Our puzzle sessions require absolute focus – all of the other nonsense and monsters that vie to plague our brains are banished. Our focus is so thorough that we rarely speak. We do, however, listen to the soundtrack of ABOUT TIME. Again and again. When it finishes, one of us walks to the CD player (yes…we play CDs) and play it again. Sometimes we don’t make it past the first track, Ben Fold’s THE LUCKIEST. “Do you mind?” one of us asks. It’s a rhetorical question. It warms us so a repeat is always welcome.

Sitting at the dining room table, hunting for bits of colored cardboard, with the soundtrack playing, all things come into focus. While the surface-layer is on fire with a circus of instability, a pandemic, a climate that is changing, all jobs gone, a broken wrist that is not mending,…the deeper layer beckons: DogDog sits under the table, BabyCat is asleep on the chair, 20 just called and made us laugh, a postcard from Jen made us cry, my phone dinged with a text from a dear friend. I look across the table at my wife, pursing her lips as she plucks a piece of the puzzle from the table and attempts to make it fit, and I know to my bones that I am the luckiest.

To see it or not to see it; it’s my choice.

read Kerri’s blog post about REPEAT

Filed under: Love, Merely A Thought Monday, Seeing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Say, “If Only.” [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 8, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

“God is silent. Now if only man would shut up.” ~ Woody Allen

If only.

We knew this was going to be a chaotic week. A run off election in Georgia that would decide the control of the senate. The counting of the electoral college vote as a president openly mounted a coup against his own government. The District Attorney in our town revealing his decision not to prosecute a police officer that shot a black man 7 times in the back [we knew the decision prior to the announcement. Our little courthouse was better protected than the nation’s capitol]. And, let us not forget the out-of-control pandemic cracking our already-fragmented system of healthcare. Record numbers. Record deaths. Record denials of reality.

The election in Georgia is decided. The rats are jumping off the national ship after the violent coup they incited blew back on them. The local D.A. offered a litany of sad justifications that boiled down to the usual sleight-of-hand: the man was black so he was, therefore, dangerous. No charges. Case closed.

The spin whirling through social media would be hysterically funny were it not so readily embraced by so many. The info-bubbles remain intact. The blame game is run amok. Personal responsibility for words spoken – and unspoken – is too much to ask. Systems usual.

It’s too soon to tell whether or not we really survived this week. It is too soon to know whether we learned anything from our national shame, our jousting realities. We do know this: we are yet incapable or unwilling to address the problems that plague us.

Unlike any other time in the history of humanity, we have so many avenues in which to blather, so many media into which we can scream. We delight in our echo chambers – who doesn’t want to hear, over and over again, their beliefs parroted back at them? The sound is deafening. So many words wielded with nothing really to say. It seems the only tool in the box is to shout down the other side. Competing filibusters. We hold ourselves hostage.

Words matter until they don’t. Words, words, words.

If only.

read Kerri’s blog post about WORDS & SILENCE

Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Language | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Raise The Bar [on DR Thursday]

Posted on January 7, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

I just spent a few minutes reading quotes about expectations. The overwhelming message in my brief survey of expectations is this: expect nothing and you will never be disappointed. Or, said another way: lower the bar and you’ll always be able to clear it.

Expect nothing. Lower the bar. Shield yourself from disappointment.

Context is everything in the game of meaning-making. Humorists, philosophers and poets alike recommend with great humor and good hearts the disavowing of expectation. Expect nothing. My context is January 6, 2021. To expect nothing seems profoundly sad. And, with a nod to the wisdom shared through the ages, to expect more from our leaders seems to court nothing but disappointment. What a low, low bar we witness on this day. A low bar that seems to have no bottom.

MM wrote, “I don’t know about you but I found that the monumental sadness of this largely preventable pandemic coupled with the heartless, ignorant, half-assed, sociopathic drivel from our national leader and his apologists and sycophants this last four years – but especially this last year – just too much.”

Monumental sadness. Preventable pandemic. Heartless drivel. Sycophants and apologists.

Like MM, I do not wish to shield myself from disappointment. I am not capable of dropping my expectation of my nation or those we elect to office. As of this moment 352,464 of my nation’s citizens have died, many needlessly. The simple adherence to wearing a mask would have cut this number dramatically. That is not opinion, it is science. As of this moment, many members of congress are going to knowingly and willingly support a lie that undermines the very foundation of our democracy. In a circus of sedition, they are going to betray their oath of office and the country they vowed to serve.

Why should I not expect more?

Why should we not expect more of ourselves? At this moment, thousands of angry citizens, too lazy to check a fact, too gullible to ask a few obvious questions, are amassing at our nation’s capitol. They are assembling to protest unfounded-and-repeatedly-disproven allegations of voter fraud in which they themselves create as willing participants in a bevy of lies. Why should we not expect more of them?

There is a simple reason we do not see eye to eye. Many citizens of this nation do expect more. It is precisely why we voted in record numbers. Many – including some of our leaders – can’t be bothered to expect anything at all.

read Kerri’s blog post on EYE-TO-EYE

Filed under: DR Thursday, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Sort [on Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on January 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

As I type this morning, concrete barriers are being set to block off the streets downtown, fencing is going up around the courthouse, plywood panels are once again screwed into place, covering the windows of businesses. We are hunkering down for an announcement about whether or not the officer, who shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times, will be charged. Also, the little kid with the big, big gun who murdered two people blocks from our home is being arraigned. His bail was posted by the My Pillow Guy. Truly, you can’t make this stuff up.

Also as I type this morning, the party wrapped in red on Capitol Hill is choosing personal gain over principle. Despite placing their hand on a holy book and swearing to serve the Constitution above all else, they’ve chosen – they are choosing – to serve their ambition above all else. Apparently, the holy book and the Constitution are useful props for photo ops but any real dedication ran away with the fox.

As I write this I’m suddenly flush with a revelation that I blame on Horatio. He once told me that every challenge we face in these supposed-united-states is a tension between dueling philosophies: Every-Man-For-Himself vs. I-Am-My-Brother’s-Keeper. My revelation: To believe, again and again, that leaders-wrapped-in-red who are committed above all else to personal gain should honor an oath to something larger than themselves, like their holy book or The Constitution, makes us the fools. It is the natural end, the path of least resistance, for adherents of the philosophy of selfishness, to believe in nothing greater than themselves.

And, after today, why should we expect them to represent with integrity our best interests? They are demonstrating just how incapable they are at leading. Leadership, by definition, requires a concern about something other, something greater, than your self.

Why should we expect more? Red is the new yellow. To twist a bit from Forrest Gump, “Cowardice is as cowardice does.” It is nigh-on impossible to write a farce of these conflicted-united-states. Such is our dedication to the ridiculous, the mad-fantastical.

2020 was the blue ribbon winner of miserable years. Our picture was blown to bits. So, as part of our new years invocation, we did a jigsaw puzzle. 1000 pieces. We brought order and sense and, finally, a completed picture together from so much disarray. It is what we hope to do for ourselves in 2021.

The first step was to sort, to turn over the pieces and see what was really there. Find the edges. Colors. And, so it is. Today we sort.

We’ll again pack a “go bag” in case the expected violence spills into our street. We’ll witness the antics of a failed state as performed by the privileged, sacrificing the greater for the lesser. Seeing what is really there. Accepting what is really there. “The problem with you, Robinson,” Doug delighted in saying, “is that you want it all to make sense. None of it makes sense.”

Red is the new yellow. Where, oh where, will we ever find our edges?

read Kerri’s blog post about the PUZZLE

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

Balance The Opposites [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on January 5, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Skip told me that the only problem Kerri and I would face is that we are both CEO personalities but come at it from entirely different directions. Truer words were never spoken! For instance, when we walk, my eyes are generally in the sky pondering the greater meaning of the universe while Kerri’s eyes are on the ground looking for a cool photo op. I see big pictures and she is a master of detail. I am easily lost in thought and she is snagged in nuance. Most of our wranglings are hysterical arguments for the same thing but from diametrically opposed points of view; we are quite capable of making agreement sound like dissent. Word magic.

Our walks, with my eyes in the sky and hers on the ground, have become a metaphor for why we are so good for each other. She pulls my eyes to the ground. I pull her eyes into the sky. I’ve recently been awed by a nurse log covered in ice crystals, the lines running through a tiny rock, the composition of a fallen pine branch in undisturbed snow. She helps me see in life what I easily miss. It’s a paradox – from my view at 30,000 feet – pulling my eyes to the ground is expansive. I see more. I appreciate more. I stop and look. It is my favorite paradox that, in our house, I’m considered the visual artist but she is teaching me to see.

Balance. It comes from opposition. Like a yoga pose, energy sent in opposite directions creates stable grounding. It creates space, creative tension. Center.

When Terry was teaching me to scuba dive he often instructed me to “get neutral.” He was Buddhist and his teaching was as much spiritual as it was practical. “Getting neutral” meant not to struggle. Maintain or change depth with breathing. Inhale or exhale. “Getting neutral” meant not to swim through the dive like a tourist but to be in it. Be in the enormous power of the ocean. Balance the opposites. Begin with your breathing.

On the trail, Kerri often stops, kneels close to the ground, focusing her camera. “I love this,” she whispers. “This is beautiful.” She carefully frames her shot. “Do you want to see?” she asks, standing after taking a few shots.

“Yes.” I say. “Yes, I do.”

read Kerri’s blog post about UNDISTURBED

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

Witness The Generosity [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on January 4, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

You know the ritual is over when the sacrifice is made. Sometimes the sacrifice is literal, an offering of thanks to the greater powers. A life given for life received. It’s the elemental story cycle with gratitude as the final act.

Sometimes the sacrifice is unconscious and, therefore…unconscious. Unseen. Not felt.

In the weeks before the holiday, the delivery trucks were ubiquitous, zipping this way and that. The deliverers-of-packages worked overtime to ensure all good things arrived on time. We tracked the good people hauling our packages to remote destinations, a luxury of the modern world. As I stroll down my street this week I see, post-holiday, the garbage collectors are working overtime, mechanical arms groaning and methodical, clearing the mountain of debris, boxes, empty bottles (I contributed my share), wrapping paper and remnants of our ritual. Our offering of thanks to the greater powers leaves a mighty litter trail.

The day after Christmas, at the mouth of the lot where we park to hike our trail, the discarded trees were already stacking up. Kerri speculated that the people who enjoyed the trees must certainly be going on travels. Why else would they discard their trees so fast? “Or,” she speculated, “maybe they’ve had them up since the first of November. Maybe they are ready to move on.”

The sacrifice is too easy. It’s piled on the curb. It’s hauled away.

Despite how this reads, it is more meditation than criticism. This holiday season was one of my favorite precisely because we could take nothing for granted. 2020 was brutal for us as it was for many. With our patterns blown to bits, with our security nowhere to be found, our community fragmenting, with no easy choices, we were – and are – conscious of every single step. We are grateful for every moment of heat in the house, for every kindness that has come our way, for every small kindness we’ve been able to offer. We imbue our meals with a deep thankfulness that we did not a scant one year ago.

Why is it that gratitude is so easy when everything else is hard – and why is gratitude merely lip-service when everything is easy? It is, I suspect, why our congress can’t move to help a struggling populace; they have it too easy to identify with the people they represent. We are too easily taken to the curb, to readily swept away.

It has been my role in this lifetime to walk the margins and look inward at the mechanics of my community. To see. It’s the role of the artist to see the patterns, the shapes and colors of their culture and reflect them back, to make conscious what is too easily ignored. To bring the heart, the eye and the mind to the ugly as well as the beautiful.

By the backdoor of our house are bags we’re filling with crackers and peanut butter, socks and sweatshirts. The bags are for the army of people appearing on our streets with signs that read “Homeless” or “Hungry.” It’s not that I am a fan of hard times, I am not, but I’m grateful for what these times are evoking in me – in us. It’s waking us up, helping us reach to others rather than push them away. It’s moving us to see and wildly appreciate our simple abundance.

In the early days of this new year, with the glitter all but swept up, the champagne bottles hauled away, I am moved to tears at the acts of generosity I’m experiencing and also seeing pop up all around me. The holiday is over, the sacrifices made, but the generosity-of-spirit continues. It’s rising in hard times. It’s there. It’s everywhere, if you care to see it.

read Kerri’s blog post about DISCARDS

Filed under: Art, Awakening, Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Pursue The Quiet [on KS Friday]

Posted on January 1, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

If I were going to write an autobiography I’d call it IN PURSUIT OF QUIET. Drawing has always quieted my mind. The simple act of descending the stairs into my studio has the same effect. I’ve learned that it is not the picture on the page or the image on the canvas that I’m chasing, it is the quiet mind I enjoy.

When I was a teenager, Mahlon and I drove into the mountains, hiked through the snow and set up camp. It was so quiet, the cold wind whispering through the treetops, the only meaningful voice in the conversation.

During the first winter that Kerri and I spent together, the snow was a siren call. We had to go into it. More than once, late at night, we’d bundle up and walk and walk and walk. The sound of our feet crunching newly fallen snow, the wind off the lake – no words necessary.

I reread what I wrote on this day last year, the first day of the new year. I vilified the previous year. I spouted hope for a better year to come. I know better now. It’s best to be quiet. It’s best to reserve judgment, to stay far away from “should-be” or “might-have-been.” It’s best to stand on the back deck, face to the sky, feel the flakes hit my face, and appreciate…all of it. Every last bit of it.

read Kerri’s blog post about SNOW WHISPERS

find Kerri’s albums on iTunes

Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Chase Out The Spirit [on DR Thursday]

Posted on December 31, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

Let’s just call it intentional superstition. With apologies to DogDog and BabyCat, at midnight tonight, we will fling open the back door and bang big pots and chase all of those bad 2020 spirits away. And then, we will rush to front door and open it to let in the new good spirits of 2021. It makes no difference whether the good spirits or bad spirits actually exist, whether the ritual is ridiculous or not. It makes no difference. We want 2020 out of the house. We want to invite some positive change into our lives. We’ll do whatever it takes.

2020 made me feel like Lieutenant Dan strapped to the mast of the shrimping boat shouting at the storm. Bring it on. It’s you and me! 2020 was a violent storm. It was a reckoning. It is a reckoning.

We know there will be a new day. Calm waters. Peace. This storm will pass. Perhaps with banging our pots and flinging open our doors we can speed it up a bit.

Years ago I had a student who was about to boil over. I bought a box of ceramic plates for him at the thrift store. We took them out back and he hurled them at the brick wall. At first he was timid. And then the storm took him and he smashed plates and screamed at the universe and wept. And then he laughed and laughed and laughed.

We are at the laughing stage of things. Thus, intentional superstition. Imagined causation. 2020 has been utterly irrational so why can’t we meet it on its own ground? Play by its rules? Fear the big pot, 2020!

We just changed our menu. Kerri read a list of Irish folk wisdom for the new year. It recommends pork. Pork it is. Black-eyed peas. Great! Also, if you have red hair, we will not let you over the threshold until someone with dark hair enters. Sorry about that. Our Celtic magic must be honored. There’s a good-and-ancient-story in there somewhere but we don’t really care what it is.

Goodbye 2020. See ya’. So long.

read Kerri’s blog post about 2020-BE-GONE

Filed under: DR Thursday, Metaphor, Random | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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