“So much life lived this week,” Heidi said to Kerri. Yes. So much.
It is, of course, true every week. Some weeks it is simply more apparent. The happenings seem bigger. A wedding. A graduation. A passing. A new job. A birth. A week of life.
Last week? A walk on the beach. Both children under the same roof; something that has not happened in years. Travel to another state. Staying present with my dad for those moments when he’d forgotten who I was. Staying present with my mom as a wave of fear washed over her. A job lost. Taking his keys and truck away. The deep gratitude of sleeping in my own bed, even for a night. So much life lived.
I have taught myself, in my waking moments, to think, “Make this day a discovery.” I have given too many weeks of my life away, too many days, too many hours, too many minutes, believing that I knew what was going to happen. Dulling myself. Blinding myself to so much life happening. ‘Discover the day’ is a much better approach than ‘Get through the day.’ The truth: none of us really know what is going to happen.
I am a sturdy proponent of The Paris Theory. I made it up so it only follows that I am a stalwart adherent. The Paris Theory goes like this: if you try to get to Paris you will end up in Kansas City every time; the fastest way to Paris is to shoot for Kansas City.
A quick read of The Paris Theory implies that Kansas City is a lesser destination but that’s to miss the point entirely. The point? Adventure, rich vibrant experience, is available everywhere. And, most often, the richest experiences come along because “the plan” collapsed, the plane was diverted, the seat reassigned. In The Paris Theory, Paris is not a place. It is an orientation to experience. The quickest way to Paris is to recognize that there is no greater or lesser place – especially when you are standing in it. Open. Look around. Art and life and love and danger and interesting people, food…vital experiences are everywhere.
Artists steal ideas and I must now confess that The Paris Theory is ancient. I slapped some shiny new lipstick on it to make it my own.
We are here for such a short time. The winds blow us here and there. Sometimes it feels like we are in control, bobbing along, but then strong winds come and push us in new directions. How much time do we spend wishing we were some other place and miss where we are? How much time do we delude ourselves into thinking there will be a firm and lasting resolution? An arrival? The winds never stop blowing. As Kerri said [and so beautifully composed], “We are part of the wind.”
PART OF THE WIND on the album BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL is available on iTunes & CDBaby
If I was stranded on a desert island and could only have two books, they would be Think On These Things by Krishnamurti and The Actor And The Target by Declan Donnellan. If I was teaching a class on leadership, a beginning or advanced class in acting, a seminar on entrepreneurship, a master class in spiritual living,… I’d only need these two books. I go to them often. They remind me to remain open and appropriately adrift.
“The fact is that truth is life, and life has no permanency. Life has to be discovered from moment to moment, from day to day; it has to be discovered…” ~ Krishnamurti
“We cannot control reality, but we can control our fantasies. Except our fantasies don’t exist; so we are not controlling anything at all. But the illusion of control is deeply reassuring. And the price we pay for this reassurance is unimaginable.” ~ Declan Donnellan
Peaking through a triangular keyhole from 1996, the woman who would someday be my wife smiles at me. Neither of us knew then where life would take us. Neither of us know today where life will take us. Some days we know for certain that this spinning globe is beyond our capacity to control. Some days we delude ourselves.
One evening, shortly after we met, I went with her to a Taize service. She was playing the service and I had no idea what a Taize was. I sat in a tiny pew just off the chancel, just behind where she was playing. Something mystical happened that night. It was and is beyond my capacity to explain. After the service we sat in the tiny pew for hours. Completely stripped of our control fantasy, we sat spinning with the earth, listening, completely content to discover the moment. Appropriately adrift. Completely alive.
ADRIFT on the album BLUEPRINT FOR MY SOUL is available on iTunes & CDBaby
Arnie’s mom was wise. She used to say that when one life-door closes another door will always open. But, the time in the hallway sucks. There’s nothing to do but enjoy the hallway.
Once, in a seemingly endless period in the hallway between life-doors, I wrote my friend Rob and complained that I felt like I was completely lost in the forest. He told me to sit down and enjoy the forest.
Sometimes it seems that life is one big location joke. Doesn’t it strike you as odd how much time we silly critters give to trying to locate ourselves. Who am I? What is my purpose? Where am I going? Life as one long episode of House Hunters. Gut job! In looking for location, in trying get somewhere else or be someone else, we miss the obvious: I’m right here.
At a seminar I heard a participant complain, “I thought I learned that lesson! I thought I was done with it. It keeps coming back!” The facilitator laughed and said, “That’s why it’s called a life lesson.”
Have you ever noticed that all of these life-doors only open into other hallways? No one promised that this maze would be easy. If I were me (and I am), I’d listen to Arnie’s mom.
When you pull up Kerri’s page on iTunes you’ll notice that they have a hard time placing her music in a category. New Age? Easy listening? Classical? Country? One does not easily fit into the filing system until one can be clearly labeled. How can you be effortlessly labeled?
It’s a challenge all of us face. What’s the label? How do you fit? And (here’s the rub), it’s bad enough that the greater-world-filing-system needs a label to locate you, the real confusion comes in the labels we impose on ourselves. Are you a dentist? A liberal? A conservative? A mother? A foodie? Self-made, dependent, injured, Christian (which branch?), Muslim, agnostic, vegetarian, cowboy, rich, poor, retired, globalist, nationalist, capitalist, socialist? Do you “know?” Are you the righteous? Professor? How do you place yourself in the greater-world-filing system? Never mind how the “the system” attempts to squeeze you into a role, what’s the little box that you try to squeeze yourself into?
Is that who you are? Is that little box where you belong? Is it the totality of your being?
Sometimes I think we spend most of our lives dividing ourselves so that we might fit into a very small box. And, what we do to ourselves we most certainly do to others. They. Them. Not us.
Divide. Label. Locate.
Reduce. Contain. Shelve.
Although there is a certain amount of safety-feeling when living in a very small box, there is also very little vitality. Little things look big from the vantage point of a tiny box. Little things look threatening from the confines of a too-tight label. Little boxes are petri dishes for big fear.
We bandy these words about and paste them on the walls of our too-little-boxes: mindfulness, wholeness, vitality. “This life is not a dress rehearsal.” “You are infinite potential.” “Today is day one.” Maya Angelou, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Peace.
These ideals, all of them, wonder, magic, love, artistry, unity, harmony,…truth…crackle beyond the label. They are there – outside the box – and they are never found in the direction of division. They are always present if you care to put down the label-maker.
Get out of your box and turn around. Maybe spin around and around and lose your balance like you did when you were young and less needy of location. Look at the mystery that chases you and chase it. Play tag with this life. Remember how you laughed just because? Reach.
Kerri stood on the edge of a canyon and, although afraid of heights, she threw open her arms. Kirsten called me to tell me. “Mom’s on the edge,” she whispered into the phone. “I’m really proud of her.”
note: this composition has nothing to do with what I just ranted about except for maybe this: the only locators that really matter are the people who love you and show up for you. Your friends along the way. This is the label I am most attached to: Kerri and I are very rich in friends.
OLD FRIENDS REVISITED on the album RELEASED FROM THE HEART is available on iTunes & CDBaby
Today is a special day. After reading what Kerri wrote on this Not-So-Flawed Wednesday, I decided the best I could do is silence and point you to her words. Here’s a link to her thoughts on turning 60. Happy Birthday, my most beautiful wife.
Posted on February 15, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
Many years ago I was lucky enough to see a sand mandala created by Tibetan monks. It was intricate and vibrant. It seemed impossible to create something so complex with sand. The day after I saw the painting the monks ceremoniously destroyed it. The process, the painting, is a mediation on the impermanence of all things.
Yesterday was my birthday. I am now 58 years old. More and more the transience of all things is less a metaphor and more of a reality. If there is wisdom that comes with age it is at least partially attributed to the awakening reality of our transitory lives. As the monks remind us, we are, in truth, a beautiful intricate sand painting.
Kerri and I took a walk yesterday through our beloved and soon-to-be-passing Bristol woods. A sizable ropes-adventure-course is being constructed that will cut through the center of the woods. More than ever we appreciate our walks through Bristol because we know these are probably among the last. We stopped along the path to catch our breath and, laughing, found ourselves spontaneously rolling balls of snow to create a snowman. Permanence is not a high priority in making a snowman.
Later, sitting together in the nature megaphone, we were being silly and howling with laughter. I realized that, because it was my birthday, we’d granted ourselves a free pass for the day. Nothing need be achieved. Nothing need be created. We had no agenda so, therefore, no time constraints. There was no attempt at permanence or investment in importance or thought to fill-up-time and so, in the absence of a purpose-filled-day, we found great open space for play and laughter. Pure enjoyment of our fleeting moment and of each other. I found myself in the mandala, appreciating the passing moment of vibrant colored sand.
In TRANSIENCE, Kerri builds a snowman, she takes us on a stroll through the passing woods, a mandala of rich musical color, and, if we give over to it, she knows, we might just find that great open space teeming with play and presence and the simple enjoyment of being alive.
TRANSIENCE on the album RIGHT NOW is available on iTunes & CDBaby
“…no one can tell us because life is not something which can be understood from a book.” ~Krishnamurti, Think On These Things
My sketchbook is part diary, part thought-catch-all, part quote repository, …and part sketchbook. And, sometimes the disparate rivers run together. A thought inspires an image, a sketch and a quote collide. Occasionally, on a day that the muse is sleeping or if I stumble into an experimental mood, I paint one of my collisions. And then, generally, I paint over it. The point of any experiment, in art as well as science, is to find out what works by discovering what does not work. Trailing behind me is a long line of mud, mess, and poor composition. Much of my finished work is the visible layer of a sedimentary strata of experiments.
Like the rest of humanity, I am a seeker. Seeking is the point of a sketchbook or a diary. Reflection. Capturing. Exploration. Elusive mastery. Fickle contentment. Status. Safety. Agreement. Peace.
We seek these things as if they were destinations. From my long line of mud and mess I’ve learned (and continue to learn) that none of what we seek is achievable. Seeking implies finding but that is a misnomer. Life moves. Meaning is fluid. There may be answers for a moment but they will, as they must, open greater questions. Or, they will be a borrowed answer, a truth found in a book, lived by the author, celebrated and shared but unincorporated in the reader.
It is a bird that you hold for a moment. A relationship with something wild. A relationship with yourself. The meaning flutters in your hands, opens you to an experience, and then will die if not released.
A sketchbook, this painting, No One Can Tell Us, is merely a trace left by that fluttering relationship. The top layer.
And so the story goes that one day, deep in the forest, Parcival was knocked from his stallion by a warrior who wore no armor. His magic sword, the object that he believed carried all of his power, was shattered. He lay on the ground like a turtle on its back, trapped by the weight of his shiny armor. He was tired of fighting. He was sad that, despite all of his victories, – he’d never been defeated – the world kept getting worse and worse. And so, laying on his back, exhausted from the fight, he stopped struggling. He gave himself over to his death. He let go.
But the nature-warrior disappeared. Parcival, alive but shattered, for the first time in his adult life, stripped off his armor. He dropped what remained of his sword. And, sitting amidst the wreckage of his life, the fragments of his power, he wept. He let go.
There is a path out of the wasteland. It necessarily leads through weeping. Through loss of illusion. P-Tom would call this a sacrament. Joseph Campbell would call it a threshold.
In any case, letting go of the illusion is necessary before the next chapter can begin.
Posted on January 14, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative
Navigating a transit system can be confusing. The skill is knowing where you are relative to the end-of-the-line and which end-of-the-line is the direction you wish to travel. It’s a process of orienting. Here I am now. There is where I want to be. Inevitably, learning the system comes from of getting on the wrong train a few times.
It turns out that navigating life requires the same skill. Knowing where you are relative to where you want to be. Getting lost, getting on the wrong train is a necessary part of the process. Who hasn’t looked out their window and thought, “This isn’t where I wanted to go.” Or, “I’m not doing with my life what I wanted to do.” The real challenge, so I’ve been told, is not in the knowing of where you want to go but in being honest enough with yourself to recognize where you are now.
Recently, climbing the stairs to catch a train in Chicago, we saw this helpful guide. Loop. This train will take you to the downtown loop. I laughed. Transit-Life-Lesson #2: whether you recognize it our not, learning lessons in life happens in loops and not lines. They call them “life lessons” because they come back around again and again and again…. There is no wrong direction in a loop. So, I suppose, whether you know where you are going or not, it’s best to enjoy your ride. Your unique life lesson will most certainly come back around.
Of course, in any case, in every case, asking for help is always…helpful. So, if you don’t mind, please tell me again, where am I?
It is a bird that you hold for a moment. A relationship with something wild. A relationship with yourself. The meaning flutters in your hands, opens you to an experience, and then will die if not released.
The Direction of Intention 