scuba dive | The Direction of Intention

Pull The Weed [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 6, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

One of my favorite simple pleasures each day is watching Kerri go out in the early morning and tend to her tomatoes. The world is quiet. The coffee is brewing. Dogga makes sure the yard is clear of marauding squirrels so the path to tomatoes is safe. An extraordinary ordinary moment. A tender ritual. A wonderful world.

Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary. It is one of my favorite “rules” of improvisational theatre. It is also a good credo to live by. Trying to be clever will take you out of the game every time. It is as true in all aspects of life as it is in art. The beautiful little secret: power, presence, flow…these live in the province of the ordinary.

When I was learning to scuba dive,Terry tried to teach me one central concept: get neutral. After several dives, fighting for control, trying “to do it right,” burning through my oxygen with my dedicated stress, I simply relaxed. I found the neutral that he advised. It was as if I joined the current. The colors sharpened. Time seemed to slow. My breathing definitely slowed. What was a struggle only a few moments before was suddenly easy. I’d picked up my ordinary. I got out of my way.

I delight watching children draw. They are free in their ordinary, not a shred of clever to be found. They lose that. We lose that, trying to be…something other than what we are. How many of us shudder in the notion that we are inauthentic? How many of us invest in the notion of low “self-esteem?” The circle of ordinary comes back around though it is cloaked in words like “self love” or “acceptance” or “wholeness.” Get neutral. Put down your clever.

Ordinary, not clever. It is a discovery that ought to stick early in life but generally lands much later. There’s very little distance between the child that freely colors and the adult that one day remembers that nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. It is ordinary to color with abandon. The riches are in tending the tomatoes. “Clever” is merely a weed that needs pulling. In the ordinary, a wonderful world is waiting.

PULLING WEEDS on Kerri’s album RIGHT NOW is available on ITunes or streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blog post on TOMATOES

pulling weeds/right now ©️ 2010 kerri sherwood

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Release Into The Current [on KS Friday]

Posted on May 8, 2020 by davidrobinsoncreative

adrift copy

There is a truth about change and it is simply this: if you know where you are going then it is not change. It is re-creation in a different form of what already exists. Deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are in a bonafide period of change. It seems the stars we once used to plot our course have gone dark in the sky. It is only human, when adrift to demand the return of the stars, to insist that we can go back in time and nestle in the comfort of the known and soak in the warmth of what we once knew. In the midst of our insistence we forget that, with this new experience of pandemic, we are being changed, too. Even if we could go back in time, with our new knowledge and experiences, we would not be the same. We will not be the same. The known has become an ill-fitting suit.

When I was learning to scuba dive, Master Terry took me to a place where the current was strong. The learning that day was in letting go and allowing the current to carry me. A drift dive. When I first entered the current I struggled for control and quickly exhausted myself. Finally, understanding that control was not an option, I released myself into the current. I’ll never forget it. It felt like flying. That day I went where the current carried me. It was surprising and powerful. After the dive Terry said, “Now you know. You can never go back.”

We are in a drift dive. Adrift. This current is intense. Where we go will be surprising and powerful. And the only certainty is this: we can never go back.