liminal | The Direction of Intention

Bitter Sweet [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on December 21, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

And isn’t that the point of a tradition? To connect the memories of the past to the celebration of today in order to pass them into the future? As Jean Houston once wrote: we are the burning point of the ancestral ship. In our ritual we honor the ancestors en route to joining them.

Conservation and progress need not be at odds.

Today is the Solstice. I just read that the Latin origin of the word “solstice” is “the sun stands still”. “This is because the sun’s apparent movement north or south stops before changing direction.”

In this moment, all of us, regardless of religious tradition or to which date we assign the light’s return, in lighting our candles, making our meals, singing our songs…we stand still with the sun. Just for a moment, in the pause between far and near, we acknowledge that we are the connective tissue between yesterday and tomorrow, bearers of the ritual, missing those we no longer see yet grateful beyond words for those we hug, hold close, and send into the future with leftovers from the feast. Bitter sweet.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BOTH/AND

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: ancestors, artistry, celebration, conservative, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, future, holidays, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light, liminal, past, pause, progressive, ritual, solstice, story, studio melange, the melange | Leave a comment »

Happily Blank [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on October 22, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Rob gave us the perfect word to describe our passage through COVID. He called it stubborn. It does not easily let go. Fortunately, we’ve been having brilliant autumn days so we entertain our stubborn guest by sitting in the sunshine. We have the energy for sitting and not much else.

Sitting in the sun for days on end has afforded ample time for reflection and random rumination. My thought-trail returns again and again to our southwest trip-COVID combination and how it feels like the end of a chapter. A portal into the new. I recently wrote about the number 9 – spurred by our 9th anniversary – as a significant number of completion. Our anniversary came the day after we returned home and neither of us remember it because we were both fevered, achy, and miserable.

Life passages are often marked by liminal spaces. Neither here nor there; in-between places. My favorite words associated with liminal spaces are uncertain, insecure, unsettling. They can be dreamlike. All are perfect descriptions for how we feel in our seeming eternal COVID zone. Life has stopped. I can no longer remember if I once served a purpose or not. It all seems made-up. The fever zone was preceded by a journey into sacred land, dreamscapes. I dare anyone to visit Goblin Valley and not feel as if they’ve entered another dimension.

A younger me would have tried hard to get grounded, to force a move beyond the discomfort of disorientation – essentially reaching backward to grab hold of what was known. This older version understands the wisdom of insecurity. It is a mistake to reject the liminal. Any significant step into the “new” chapter requires a loss of the known. An open hand, a blank slate, is sometimes uncomfortable.

Holding on to what is no longer useful will in the long run prove to be much more uncomfortable; this amazing universe is in no hurry to deliver its lessons and is quite capable of amping up the discomfort until letting go is recognized as less painful than holding on.

We’re moving on to the next…and, from our chairs in the sun, with achy bodies and no energy to speak of, we have not the first clue what will be written in the next chapter. For now, we do not need to know. In fact, we need to not-know. For now, the blank page will remain happily – if uncomfortably – blank.

read Kerri’s blogpost about TUNNEL ARCH

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Filed under: Awakening, Body, Gratitude, Identity, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: arches national park, artistry, comfort, completion, covid, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discomfort, goblin valley state park, insecurity, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life passage, liminal, liminal space, not knowing, passage, portal, reflection, story, studio melange, the melange, Tunnel Arch, uncertainty, wisdom | 3 Comments »

Incant [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on April 12, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

It reads like a love poem. “Puschkinia blooms in the empty moment between the fading of the snowdrops and the blooming of Chionodoxa.”

Despite their desire to be understood otherwise, botanists are poets, too. Taste these sounds: siehei, sardensis, forbesii. Spoken together they form an incantation worthy of Macbeth’s witches. There are three witches in the play: Category, Sub-category, and Group. Chionodoxa, we are told, is commonly called “Glory Of the Snow”. The poet-botanist would have us know that, in the empty moment between the fading of snowdrops and the blooming of the Glory-Of-The-Snow, tiny Puschkinia reaches through the soil and fills the void with cobalt and white.

Love poems and incantations. Love poems are incantations. “And because love battles not only in its burning agricultures but also in the mouths of men and women,…“ Neruda. Ahhhh.

“Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.” What will the future bring? Glory-Of-The-Snow, of course! Shakespeare would have nothing less.

All of this poetry came alive in our front yard this week. It was the empty moment, It was the space between the fading snowdrops and the blooming of Chiondoxa. Had we not looked up from our computers, had we feared the cold wind off the lake and stayed comfy and warm inside, we certainly would have missed it.

Love poems and incantations. Harbingers. Nature quietly whispers its temptation, “Puschkinia blooms.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about PUSHKINIA

Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Language, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, blooms, botanists, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, Glory of the Snow, harbinger, incantation, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liminal, love poem, Macbeth, Macbeth's witches, Neruda, poetry, poets, shakespeare, snowdrops, story, striped squill, studio melange, temptation, the melange, the space between | 1 Comment »

Turn The Shield [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on November 3, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

The rains have come. The light retreats. This is the time of year when we say, “I’m tired. Are you tired?” It’s the lack of light. The coming change of time. “It feels later than it is,” we rub our eyes and sigh.

I’ve always thought of this time as an in-between. Not-this-and-not-that. The leaves have dropped but the snow has not yet arrived. The sun and the wet clouds jockey for position and neither gains the advantage. Were we bears, nature’s indecision would signal that the time had come to look for a proper cave, a comfy spot to sleep through the winter. We are people and the signal is similar: it’s time to pull in, reflect, attend to the inner places, nestle into our bear-dreams.

Many years ago I took a class from an elder who taught us how to paint medicine shields. The exercise was not about the painting or the technique of stretching the skin over the willow, the exercise was about identifying the symbols. One side of the shield was the outer life, the sun. This face of the shield was seen by all. The other side, the inner face, was personal. The symbols were private. The moon. This is the season when the attention to the outer face shifts to the inner. The bear considerations turn to the owl, the lizard.

Just as each season is both a leaving and a return, both sides of the shield are beginnings and ends. Barney taught me that, in the winter, the energy of the plant retreats from the branch and, instead, goes to the root. Rejuvenation happens beneath the soil. I feel that shift in this time of increasing cold and rain, the shield flips. My eyes turn inward.

We huddle in the early dark and tell stories of the year past. We attend to our rest, move more slowly in our expeditions. We decide more often to stay in. We open the bin with gloves and scarves, prepare for a different rhythm of walking. We recount the past seasons, not yet ready to dream of the time to come.

read Kerri’s blog post about RAIN

Filed under: Body, Flawed Wednesday, Metaphor, Navel Gazing | Tagged: bear, cold, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, energy, fall, hibernation, in between time, introspection, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, light, liminal, medicine shield, rain, reflection, rejuvenation, rest, root, seasons, story, studio melange, the melange, winter | Leave a comment »

Be Inside It [on KS Friday]

Posted on October 4, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

inasplitsecond song copy

This morning I stood in the middle of the kitchen and tried to remember where we keep the pans. It wasn’t a senior moment. This week is a transition time. We are no longer there and not yet here. As we unpack our boxes from the other place, we are slowly reentering this place.

It’s a sweet limbo, these in-between times. They can be disorienting and they can also wake you up.

Among my favorite lyrics in Kerri’s song, IN A SPLIT SECOND:

Walk that thin line of the future and the past.

Linger in now.

As I was listening to her song a few minutes ago, my thoughts plummeted into a fit of images: splitting a second, as if a second was a thing that could be split. Cut a moment in half and what do you have? A smaller moment? A creamy center between two hard cookies? Walk that thin line like a tight rope; if you look down you must inevitably focus either on the future (one side of the rope) or the past (the other side of the rope). Don’t look down. Or, like the great walkers, lay on the rope and look at the sky. Drop the umbrella and let the rope support you rather than split your focus.

I could go on and on (and often do – which gives Kerri ample practice in rolling her eyes or sometimes in a fit of self-protection she glazes over). And while I chatter on and on, you should linger. Listen. And, rather than splitting it, be inside your moment. It only takes a second.