The Direction of Intention

I Am Like That [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on August 6, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

She saw it in the shop on the river road and fell in love with it. A coneflower sculpture. Asymmetrical. Beautiful in its imperfection. It came home with us and immediately found its place in our garden. Each morning as I look out the kitchen window, waiting for the coffee to brew, I recognize that it is the perfect symbol for us.

A coneflower is a symbol of strength, joy, resilience, endurance, and optimism. Perseverance. Healing. Prosperity. That’s quite a list!

Most symbols are many-layered yet point in a singular direction.

One of the few choices we actually have in life is which symbols we choose to embrace. To choose or align with a symbol is to say, “I am like that.” The symbol becomes both a description of the path already walked and a guide-star for choices to come.

Kerri fell in love with the coneflower. She wasn’t thinking about symbols. I was. And I couldn’t imagine a better symbol for her – for us – for the landscape we’ve just traversed and for where we intend to go.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE CONEFLOWER

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Filed under: Identity, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, beauty, coneflower, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, direction, endurance, Guidance, healing, imperfection, inner peace, joy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, optimism, peace, perseverance, prosperity, resilience, story, strength, studio melange, symbol, symbolism, the melange | 1 Comment »

For A Moment [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on August 5, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The distinctive human problem from time immemorial has been the need to spiritualize human life, to lift it onto a special immortal plane, beyond the cycles of life and death that characterize all other organisms.” ~ Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

We waited until the oppressive heat of the day passed to take our walk. The air was thick and still but it felt good to be outside, moving. Because the humidity teases forward every former injury, we talked about our ubiquitous aches and pains. My back. Her wrists and fingers.

Kerri stopped and said, “I get it now.” We laughed at the memory:

One day, years ago, Beaky looked in the mirror and declared, “I look like an old woman!”

Kerri said, “Momma, you’re 93! You are old.”

Beaky stared at herself in the mirror and added, “But I don’t feel old!”

“I get it now.”

As we walked we talked about feeling young in a body that hurts when it’s humid. A new experience on our path through life, a growing dissonance between body and spirit. The spirit steps a few feet away and looks back at the body, declaring, “What the heck! That’s not what I look like!” It is certainly not what I feel like.

There’s a surprising gift in the dissonance. Perhaps, like all good paradoxes, within the discord, the first real harmony of life becomes available. The “supposed-to-be” drops off. The social face is less useful and set aside. The striving to be somewhere-else-in-some-imagined-future-achievement ceases, becomes so much dust. Suddenly, the miracle of life is not somewhere else. It is found in the here-and-now. Flexing achy fingers. The evening sky made pastel by humidity.

The growing realization that this ride is limited makes it all the more precious. Grounded.

Life – spirituality – becomes uncomplicated. Unapologetic. Authentic. Spirituality that requires no cathedral or book of rules. No incense or intermediary. No searching or appealing prayer. Spirituality that is borne of the simple appreciation of the moment. Feet firmly planted on the ground. In the Buddhist tradition: joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. Here and now.

In joyful participation, holding hands with achy bodies on a humid evening, for a moment at least, we get it. We arrive at uncomplicated, unapologetic, and authentic.*

(*thanks to the Heggies Pizza truck for the post inspiration!)

read Kerri’s blogpost about UNCOMPLICATED, UNAPOLOGETIC, AND AUTHENTIC

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Filed under: Gratitude, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: aging, appreciation, artistry, authentic, consciousness, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Ernest Becker, Heggies Pizza, humidity, identity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, miracle of life, paradox, paradoxes, presence, spirituality, story, studio melange, The Denial of Death, the melange, Unapologetic, Uncomplicated | 1 Comment »

Nod And Nod Again [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on August 3, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

We took a mini-vacation. Two days that felt like a total getaway and, in those two days, we relaxed. Completely. Totally. On the trip home Kerri said that it felt like we’d been away for weeks.

We are not generally nap-takers but since arriving home, each day without fail, a tidal wave of exhaustion has rolled over us. In short, we have become champion sleepers. “We must’ve needed it,” she slurs, struggling to sit up, as we emerge from our daily knock-out nap.

“What just happened? What day is it?” I mumble, fearing we are modern day Rip Van Winkles.

I wonder, is it rude to nod-off atop the podium while receiving our latest gold medal?

read Kerri’s blogpost about SLEEP

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: aarp, artistry, bloggers, cartoon about middle age, cartoonists, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, exhaustion, gold medal, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, nap, naps, olympics, painter, relaxation, rip van winkle, sleep, sleepers, story, studio melange, the melange, two artists | 1 Comment »

Walk In Joy [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on August 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Imagine our surprise when we saw the street was wearing a name tag. Grace. I wondered if the street chose her name or was it given? Was she tired of being referred to as a number? Third Ave. Did she want the world to know her name?

I found the street’s choice of name to be hopeful, an aspiration for how she wished to be in the world. She intended to be courteous. Elegant. Or perhaps her chosen/given name is a desire for those who travel along her way. Polite. Moving with ease through life. Hers is a wish for humanity.

Imagine if the road we choose to walk each day could infuse us with the attributes of its name! I would stroll on a road named Grace every single day! I would make time to take a walk on Hope. I’ll bet Peace would get a lot of traffic.

Imagine if we, like Grace, brought to the street the attributes we desired to infuse into the world. Light heart. Good humor. Civility. Imagine putting it on a name tag for all to see. “Thoughtfulness.” Or, “Generosity.” “Courtesy.” Imagine walking in this world with name-tag-intention. A declaration of goodness. An exercise in actively creating the world we desire to inhabit. “Today I am empathy.”

In my children’s book mentality, what we bring to the road is what the road gifts back to us. Hope. Grace. Peace. Generosity. Kindness. Is it so far-fetched?

Joy is right in front of us… if we choose it…if we choose to vote for it…vote for her.

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

read Kerri’s blogpost on GRACE

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, attributes, civility, courtesy, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, empathy, generosity, grace, hope, humanity, humor, intention, joy, Kamala Harris, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, kindness, light hearted, love, peace, story, studio melange, the melange, vote | 1 Comment »

Be Better At Bad [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 1, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am painting very badly. It’s not a surprise. It’s been a while since I have consistently been in the studio so it will take a while to loosen up, to stop thinking about the next step. Artistry is not so different from athletics; it takes a while to get back into shape.

Previous iterations of myself would have felt badly for painting badly. That guy would have hidden his clumsy images and too-tight-brush-strokes. These days I’m better at being bad. I like the dance. I’m more interested in cultivating a healthy process so I’m less invested in how I look. How “it” looks. “Bad” is a process step, an opportunity to learn or laugh rather than the judgement that it used to be.

It’s easy to write about the necessity of throwing many pots or writing ten-bad-pages-to get-to-one-good-page. It’s another thing to do it. Celebration of the bad is a necessary step in finding flow. And, after such a long studio hiatus, flow is nowhere to be found. Artists do not train to clear a hurdle or master the pommel horse. Artists train for flow.

We nearly lost Breck-the-aspen-tree. We kept her in a pot for too long. And then we planted her in a place that was less than optimal. She withered so we quickly moved her to another spot. It was a guess since we thought the first spot was prime. That was three years ago and today she is thriving. She is as tall as the garage and growing fast. Her trunk is no longer pencil thin. It is robust, sturdy. Birds perch in her branches. Last year she was like a gawky teenager and produced weirdly sized leaves. This year she has come into her own.

Last week, after painting especially bad, suffocatingly tight and small-brush-clumsy, I sat outside with Breck. She asked me to remember her freakish leaves. She reminded me of the strange unwieldy branch that reached like a beanstalk above all the others. It was so unusual that we worried for her survival. We worried a giant might come looking for a goose. “Growth is tricky,” she said and quaked.

Yes. Growth is tricky. Sometimes it takes a chat with the aspen tree to remember to take a breath, reach for the sun and celebrate right where you are on the path.

County Rainy Day…in process. Too tight too soon…a step on the way to flow…

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read Kerri’s blogpost about BRECK

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday | Tagged: artist, artistry, celebration, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, flow, judgement, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, opportunity, painting, process, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Steep! [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on July 31, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.” ~ Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

After I finish reading my latest book, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, I have decided to steep myself in life-affirming reading, the likes of John O’Donohue, Philip Gulley, Pema Chödrön, Mary Oliver, Krishnamurti, Rilke, Rumi, Thomas Merton…I meditate on what I read -whether I want to or not – and in our angry chaotic times I’m feeling the need to wrap myself in the warmth of poets and other lovers of life. People who’ve transcended their small lives and looked into deeper space. I will begin my steeping with Thomas Merton’s The Way of Chuang Tzu – a Catholic Monk translating the voice of the Tao.

I read the quote above and wanted to alter it slightly: “The beginning of self-love is the will to let ourselves be perfectly who we are, the resolution not to twist ourselves to fit into another’s image of who we are supposed-to-be.”

The real challenge in letting ourselves be perfectly who we are is that most of us have no idea who we are. Few of us fit into a box called “me.” Who we are is dynamic and ever-changing. Self-discovery is a life-long affair and we are most fortunate if it is a life-long love affair.

Kerri says that we don’t really-really change as we move through life, we just become more of who we are. The outer layers of illusion and social concoction drop off until the core is revealed. I don’t know if I agree but I love the image. And, I confess that these past few years have felt like a ferocious layer-stripping. If she is right then I have to be…we have to be…close to the core.

In the wake of the layer-stripping I’m finding that the simple things in this life bring me great satisfaction. We found the old sun-tea jug in the cupboard. With the mint growing in the yard and slice or two of lemon, each day we smile and drink the summer sun from a jelly jar. We tell stories of sun-tea from the past.

It’s the sensual things, like the taste of tea brewed from the sun. On a hot humid day, the sudden shift of cool wind off the lake. The sound of cicadas. Fireflies. Laughter at dinner. The taste of good wine. The stuff of poets. The witnesses of “the eternal now.”

It’s as simple as sun tea, this desire to steep my thoughts in the awe-of-life (as opposed to the awful). And, as the ancient saying goes, as I continue the quest to discover myself: where I place my thoughts my life-energy will follow.

read Kerri’s blog about SUN TEA

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Filed under: Awakening, Energy, Flawed Wednesday, Identity, Metaphor | Tagged: affirmation, artistry, awe, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, energy, Ernest Becker, John O"Donohue, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, krishnamurti, love, Mary Oliver, pema chodron, Philip Gulley, poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, self-love, sensual, story, studio melange, The Denial of Death, the melange, Thomas Merton, thought | 3 Comments »

Return To The Origin [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on July 30, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

On the way home from Minnesota we drove the river road. We pulled over several times to gape with awe at the Mississippi River. We marveled at the bluffs and searched the sky for eagles.

It was more than a scenic choice. It was an intentional return to our origin story. When we packed up my life in Seattle and moved it to Wisconsin, we entered the state through the river road. Kerri wanted it to be the portal to my new home. We stopped in the little town of Stockholm just as we had eleven years ago. We visited the same shop that caught our eye on that day in the past. The shop has since passed on to the owner’s daughter. She’s making it her own. She told us that the metal sculptors we’d admired, the reason we originally stopped, were retiring. It was getting too hard for their hands to do the work.

Just beyond Stockholm we pulled off the road to get some photos of Farmer Don’s place. Tripper-Dog-Dog-Dog’s birthplace. We hoped there’d still be a sign for “Aussie Pups” so we could stop and tell Farmer Don how much we love our Dogga. There was no sign and it looked as if the farm had changed owners. The driveway into the farm and the white fences were the same. We took photos. We sat in the car and recounted the story of the day we got a dog when we didn’t mean to get a dog. We whispered a quiet “thank you” to Farmer Don.

We pulled off the road a few minutes later to get another view of the Mississippi River. Timeless. I imagined I heard the voice of the river. It was akin to the low rumble of a didgeridoo.

The stores have changed hands. Old buildings are restored and new shops are constructed. Farmer Don is most likely no longer with us. He was older and not in good health that day in the past, when he needed to find a good home for a puppy that no one wanted, and two strangers driving a Budget truck saw his sign and decided to stop. I suspect he knew that stop would change their lives.

The names on the political signs lining the outskirts of the villages are different. We are different after eleven years. So much life, or so it seems. So much water under the bridge. A blink of an eye to the river.

The opportunity to return and relish our origin story. To travel through time. For us it was as simple as taking a drive along the road runs beside the mighty river.

read Kerri’s blog about THE RIVER

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Filed under: Gratitude, Story, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: artistry, Aussie, Australian shepherd, change, changes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dogga, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Mississippi River, origin, origin story, Stockholm, Stockholm WI, story, studio melange, the melange, The River Road, time, time passing, timeless, WI | Leave a comment »

Infinity Squeeze [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on July 29, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

When Dogga comes back into the house he always gets a “thanks for not running away” treat. It’s a serious sentiment. In this life he was strapped with herding two artists. We have not been the easiest to contain. Each day we are glad that he chooses love over the easier path.

Twenty four hours before we were to hit the road and travel to their house for a short visit, we wrote Kate and Jerry that we were so excited that “we were already sitting in the car waiting for morning.” It was only a small exaggeration. We were THAT excited. Kate suggested that we go back in the house because we were making the neighbors nervous. I assured her that we always make the neighbors nervous. “I would not have expected less of you…” she wrote. Banter is one of my favorite love languages.

I yelled at Braden. He was three years old and started running toward the busy street. When I yelled at him he stopped in his tracks and burst into tears. There was authority in my voice – more than I knew I possessed. Love sometimes sounds like an alarm. It booms.

We drive into the city late at night to find the club where Craig is performing. It is waaaay past our bedtime but we are giddy each time we go. We are the oldest people in the club and everyone affectionately makes fun of how we dance. Old bones do not move like young bones. The first time we saw him perform he gave us earplugs. “You’re gonna need these,” he said, smiling. Sometimes love looks like earplugs, funny dancing-delight and a foray into the unknown.

One of the greatest gifts Kerri has given me (and me to her) is the understanding of how to fight. I did not know how to do that before we met. Dogga hears the coming storm and slinks into the bathroom to get out of the way. Great love sometimes requires a mighty tempest. A heart-cleansing rain. Sometimes choosing love sounds like thunder.

It’s why we give Dogga a treat every-single-time he comes back in the house.

Our love-of-life is a full color palette, banter-filled, adventurous and many-textured. Life lessons: sometimes love is very loud. It rarely looks like a Hallmark card. Always it is a choice to support, to help, to nurture, to guide, to recognize, to acknowledge and appreciate this very complex infinity squeezed into a tiny four letter word. It’s worth the choice every single time.

[“Choose Love” flag is from Penzeys Spices, one of our favorite shops and Bill Penzey, a favorite positive voice trying to make the world a better place]

read Kerri’s blogpost about CHOOSE LOVE

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Filed under: Gratitude, Love, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: artistry, banter, choose love, complex, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dogga, EDM, Hallmark cards, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, love, love language, Penzey, Penzeys Spices, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Load The Snacks! [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab.]

Posted on July 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

We wrote a play entitled The Roadtrip. It is comprised of the many months of emails we wrote to each other before we actually met. Like Love Letters only with a happy ending. In it, as is true-to-life, Kerri is the wise character and I am the character without a clue. Note: the best part of being clueless is that you don’t know it.

If we were to write a sequel there would be less words and many more snacks. As the audience, you’d have to watch us eat. Kerri is a Twizzlers girl and I am a peanut M&M man. The snacking begins before we hit the end of the driveway. It doesn’t end until we arrive at our destination – and even that is a momentary pause.

There’s usually plenty of room in Little Baby Scion but you’ll not be surprised to learn that when we pack for a road trip, after the snacks are in the car, there’s barely any room for our clothes, which is a good thing because after all those snacks we can’t fit into our clothes.

Let’s just say that we have our priorities straight.

read Kerri’s blogpost about ROAD SNACKS

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: A.R. Gurney, aarp, artistry, cartoon about middle age, clueless, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, destination, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Kind bars, Larabars, Love Letters, M&Ms, Munchos, painter, road snacks, roadtrip, Scion xb, snacks, story, studio melange, the melange, The Roadtrip, travel, Twizzlers, two artists | Leave a comment »

Pioneers [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on July 26, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Never in my wildest dreams did the younger version of me imagine that I would someday research fun facts about wildflowers. But, because Kerri has a camera attached to her right hand and because we walk trails surrounded by meadows and because we use many of Kerri’s photos as prompts for our Melange, wildflowers and not-so-wild flowers have caught my attention.

Inevitably, one tidbit of information captures my imagination and today’s tidbit about Daisy Fleabane is this: it’s considered a pioneer species which means it is among the first plants to move into an area that has been disturbed – by natural disasters like fire or man-made like plowing or construction. They improve the ecosystem by accumulating nutrients and breaking up compacted soil, opening the way for other less hardy species to follow. Sub tidbit: because they are the first, some people treat pioneer species as weeds, invaders.

It is never easy to be the first. Ask Rosa Parks or Jackie Robinson.

Ask Barack. Ask Kamala.

People who know what they are doing, people attempting to restore health to devastated ecosystems, purposefully introduce pioneer species into a devastated landscape. They know the value of the pioneer in preparing the foundation for healing, breaking up hard-packed-minds and closed-angry-hearts. They know the necessity of the first, of the pioneer, to rehabilitate and nurture a healthy, unified ecosystem.

Ask Joe.