A New, Unique Personality [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

It really does not take much to transform a room. New furniture, accent walls or refreshed paint, area rugs…are all viable options. However, none of these work as well or as effortlessly as two googly eyes stuck on the wall. Try it. Your space will immediately have a new, unique personality. It will have an undeniable focal point. It will immediately fill guests with questions. It will, just like your conscience, look back at you. You will wonder what your new room reveals about your personality. You will catch yourself pondering what your room is thinking. Someday, inevitably, you will find yourself talking to your wall.

All of this transformation with the simple addition of two dime store googly eyes.

Keep in mind that three eyes are not better than two. One eye will confuse or irritate rather than illuminate. Eyes on every wall will cancel the magic. If personification is the goal, then two eyes are requisite. No more. No less.

It takes very little to personify, to project human qualities and traits onto – into – something as abstract as a wall. It’s why we find deep comfort in teddy bears or reach for the wisdom of the man in the moon. They look back at us. We endow them with compassion or quietly listen to the messages brought to us by the wind.

Conversely, it takes very little to dehumanize a human being. As easily as we assign humanity to objects we just as easily deny humanity to people. We make them objects. It’s easier to scoop them off the streets and put them into camps if we objectify them, if we downgrade their humanity. If we blame them for what ails us.

It’s simple. All we need do is project onto them our cruelty. Keep in mind, to be successful dehumanizers, it’s especially necessary to avoid opening your eyes. Opening your eyes will immediately fill you with questions about yourself. It will ignite your conscience; you will see “their” eyes looking back at you. You will wonder what your projection onto “them” reveals about you.

It really doesn’t take much to transform a culture. All you need do is close your eyes. It is just as effective to look the other way. It will serve to stifle questions especially the self-reflective variety. Averting or closing the eyes is especially useful when it is necessary to deny the obvious or to endow fiction with substance or abdicate personal responsibility. Choosing blindness you will become an easy mark, effortlessly misled.

All of this transformation with the simple condition of closing the eyes.

Rest assured, in the absence of sight, your community will have a new, unique personality.

read Kerri’s blogpost about EYES

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Life Spilling Out [David’s blog on KS Friday]

If this beautiful winter skeleton of Queen Anne’s Lace was a sculpture – my sculpture – it would be titled The Impossibility of Containment. Trying to hold on to the magic movement of life. It spills out in every direction.

I once had an espresso martini in Aspen, Colorado. It was the single best drink I’ve ever had. It was so good I did something I never do: I had two. I savored every sip. Occasionally since then, in other watering holes on earth that offer a drink by the same name, I’ve tried to replicate the past. To no avail. The bar in Aspen no longer exists so, like a good sand painting, my espresso martini revelry lives where it belongs, on the wind and in my yearning.

This week I completed another trip around the sun. I look in the mirror and am sometimes surprised by the face that stares back at me. My eyes remain consistent, yet what my eyes are capable of now seeing has changed dramatically. Although I occasionally yearn for my younger face, I would never exchange my current eyes for my former sight.

I see possibility spilling out in every direction. Simplicity. I see extraordinary friends all around. Each morning I open my eyes to the one face that fills my heart to bursting. I am, as Nietzsche suggests, loving my fate. Every pothole, every mountain-to-climb, every seeming obstacle, every frustration, a magic moment, a heart-seed leading to who-knows-where. Life spilling out in every direction.

I’m practicing the skill of opening wide my arms, welcoming the impossibility of containment.

Sweet Ballet/Released From The Heart © 1995 Kerri Sherwood

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read Kerri’s blogpost about QA LACE

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buymeacoffee is a possibility cast onto the winds of time.

Make No Sense

Untiltled Narrative by David Robinson

Untiltled Narrative by David Robinson

The cliché: life is a cycle. Order begets chaos and chaos begets order. Both are necessary. Just as spring is not possible without winter, order without chaos makes for only half a life. Safety without uncertainty makes for only half a life and a very boring life story.

Ann passed away last night. Her battle with cancer was long and nothing short of heroic. Kerri said, “She was such a bright light! Damn cancer. This makes no sense.” Too true.

Last night, John came back into our lives. We sat for hours talking of the events and changes of the lost years. He told us of the necessity to finally stop trying “to make things work” and how he stepped into the discomfort of uncertainty. Now, standing solidly in his uncertainty, he feels both lost and found. That is a great description of how change feels. We got the news of Ann’s death while John was visiting. We had a glass of wine and made a toast to her life. And then we made a toast to appreciating life in all of its textures. John said, “At the end of the day, all that really matters is a bottle of wine to share with friends.” Too true.

More clichés: rejuvenation necessarily begins in the province of disorder and the unknown. The journey back to self winds through miles and miles of uncharted territory.

Each journey is made beautiful by the monsters and masters we meet along the way. Both are teachers. Both bring gifts and force changes of direction. The Cyclops is as necessary as the sage and both serve new sight and the refocusing of the eye. Both are necessary to strip away our resistance to the cycles, to peel away the protective layers we pile on to life that obscures what truly matters.

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