time | The Direction of Intention

One Brief Moment [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on November 14, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“But time has many dimensions and in the end, time opens to timelessness.” ~ Peter Brook, The Quality of Mercy

One day I realized that I was like a sand painting: a bit of unique beauty created in the moment and meant to blow away with the winds. That is not a despairing thought. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Late at night we watched a short documentary about the scale of time. It was eye-opening. The filmmaker was so overcome with realization of time that his model revealed that be broke down and cried. We are but a blip, a blink of the eye. The enormity of life. The impossibility of life.

Those who wish to have monuments erected for themselves are missing the point entirely.

Barney, the piano in our backyard, is slowly, over time, returning to dust. That is also true of Kerri’s Yamaha piano in her studio, only a fraction slower. Breck the aspen tree that came home with us from Colorado in the back seat of our car is now taller than our garage. If typical, Breck will live approximately 200 years. Twice as long as me, though the measure of time, the comparison, is arbitrary at best.

Breck and I each have our one brief moment in the sun.

Kerri’s music is available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about BRECK AND BARNEY

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Filed under: Identity, KS Friday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, enormity of life, impossibility, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life, Peter Brook, story, studio melange, the melange, The Quality of Mercy, time | 1 Comment »

For As Long As It Takes [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 12, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

Dogga lays in the doorway and snoozes. When he hears me coming his little Aussie-dog tail wags. It is a siren call, impossible to pass without kneeling and giving him a pet. And, in those few moments my world becomes a better place.

During the time that my life was coming apart, suddenly without a place to live or the resources to rent another apartment, Carol showed up. I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She found me. She tossed a set of keys to me. “You’re staying with me,” she said. “As long as it takes.” In that moment, my world became a better place.

I have hundreds of those stories. They are ubiquitous and happen every day. I see them all around me when I pay attention.

“I love the sunshine on the quilt,” she said a moment ago. A tiny thing. The warmth of the spring sun a welcome visitor after the cold days of winter. In the sensual beauty of sun on the quilt and her deep appreciation of the moment, my world was made a better place.

Yesterday I read Marion Milner’s words in The Marginalian about the narrow focus of reason and the wide focus of sensation. The narrow focus, purpose-driven, is always seeking happiness in some other place. The wide focus, sensory, is always present in the moment – where happiness is found. She wrote, “I did not know that I could only get the most out of life by giving myself up to it.” Her words made my world a better place. An affirmation.

Touch is a word of the senses. Touch a life and, in return, life with touch you. Touch with simple appreciation and the world becomes a better place.

In the wide focus of the sensation there is no end, no goal, no achievement, no measurement. It is end-less.

In the narrow focus of mind our clocks would have us believe that we are in a race to a deadline. It is a dedication to ends.

In the vast field beyond purpose and gain there is wonder. It is time-less. Touch life with appreciation, with eyes or ears or fingers or taste – and life will fill you with appreciation.

Someone once told me that the world does not need healing. We do. And the healing we need is right at our fingertips. It is the sun on our faces, it is to feel the pull of the wagging tale, to kneel down and fall into a rich loving pet of appreciation. It is to open our very narrow focus, feel deeply, and toss keys to someone in need, saying, “For as long as it takes.”

read Kerri’s blogpost about HEALING THE WORLD

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Filed under: Gratitude, Identity, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: affirmation, appreciation, artistry, attention, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, healing, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Marion Milner, sensation, senses, sensory, story, studio melange, The Marginalian, the melange, time, timeless, touch, wonder | 3 Comments »

Nothing More Beautiful [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on September 17, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

I make it a practice to take notes when I have calls with Horatio. He says the most extraordinary things. This morning I search-and-rescued this Horatio comment about aging: he said, “It only felt like an ambush because I hadn’t been paying attention.”

I went looking for Horatio’s quote because Kerri and I had a spontaneous-hysterical-conversation about the abrupt changes in our bodies over the past five years. “Look at this!” she bellowed, “It just happened!” Of course, I was too invested in horror at my own creeping-decrepitude to notice what part of her body she was disparaging. “It never used to be this way!” she muttered, spinning slowly so her disdain was a full 360°.

I made the rookie mistake of asking what age she was comparing herself with. Because her glare signaled that I was about to spend the rest of the day in the doghouse, I quickly added, “I don’t look like I did when I was thirty, either.” Rookie mistake number 2. Dumb. Stupid. Brainless. Dense. Not to mention dangerous. Had she killed me in that moment, no jury in the land would have found her guilty; “Her act…,” the jury foreman would report to the judge, “…was justified”.

We make a practice of paying attention. It’s why we often choose to walk slowly. Rather than walk through the woods, we try to be in them. To notice. The consistent miracle when walking slowly is that there is always something new to discover, something that we’ve never before seen. For instance, the portal in the ancient tree. We’ve walked past and admired this tree a hundred times. We’ve placed painted rocks in its nooks. Kerri’s photographed it dozens of times; age has made it beautiful. Photogenic. And, today, for the very first time, we noticed the portal, a peek through the tree to the other side. “How did we miss that?” we exclaimed.

“It only felt like an ambush because I hadn’t been paying attention.”

Horatio, of course, is right. There is no ambush. The river keeps flowing and somehow we are surprised to find ourselves in places we’ve never before imagined. New stages of life. All the time I tell Kerri that she is beautiful. She cannot hear me because she expects herself to be in another part of the river entirely. I am guilty of the same false expectation.

Looking backward in life is like looking through the tiny portal in the ancient tree. The view is blurry and limited. Ask me if I would like to go back to the time when my body was thirty and I will howl with laughter, “No way!” This day, this moment, as hard as it can sometimes be, is the best time of my life. I am learning to appreciate my aches and pains, my ever-changing-body, to pay attention to where I am and not where I imagine I should be.

Here and now. There is nothing more beautiful.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PORTAL

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Filed under: Awakening, Body, Gratitude, Metaphor, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: aging, artistry, awareness, beauty, body, body changes, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, expectations, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, pay attention, paying attention, story, studio melange, the melange, time | 1 Comment »

An Echo [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on August 15, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“…repetition as a means of physically marking time, memory, loss, transformation, and ultimately, transcendence.” ~ curator’s statement for the exhibit of Idris Khan at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Repetition. A mantra. The hours of practice of a musician. A commute to work. Ritual. We walk the same looping trail again and again, season after season. The same is never the same.

We journey to the Milwaukee Art Museum to replenish our spirits. Mostly we visit Richard, Ellsworth, and Mark. I stop by and visit Georgia and Pablo. Not knowing much about him, we were for some reason drawn to the Idris Khan exhibit. Repetition. Stacked images. Words printed on top of words. Pages of musical scores layered and changed into a powerful visual statement. Symbols iterated until garbled and transformed; I leaned in close, then stepped back, again and again, becoming part of the repetition. A dance!

Such a simple star to follow, repetition. And yet…How many letters in an alphabet? How many notes on a scale? From the limited letters or available notes – symbols repeated and mixed and matched – an infinite array of possibilities. Every page of the Quran photographed and stacked. Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello.

Wandering through the galleries, his work made me ponder how our inner lives are entirely symbolic. Our days stacked one upon the other. We look though the stack called our past and somehow, through the noise, believe we arrive at understanding. Meaning. An echo.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE MUSEUM

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Filed under: Art, Creativity, DR Thursday, Identity | Tagged: artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, echo, Idris Khan, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, MAM, mantra, meaning, meaning making, memory, Milwaukee Art Museum, repetition, story, studio melange, the melange, time, transformation, understanding | 1 Comment »

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 »

Beautiful And Prickly [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on June 21, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

Thriving in an unlikely and inhospitable place, this thistle served as a sign, a testimony to possibility, the rugged beauty available only through dogged perseverance. Stretching up through a tiny crack in a busy sidewalk outside aging buildings in a bustling city, these thistles stood nearly five feet tall. Their colorful flowering heads brought us to a full stop. We set down our knitted-brows and absorbed their vibrant pink and purple stick-to-it-ed-ness. “Gorgeous,” she said, reaching for her camera.

More than beauty-through-resilience, these hardy thistles spoke to me with the veracity of an oracle. As I watched Kerri take photographs, the oracle whispered in my ear “Both beautiful and prickly,” she said, “Her prickles protect her against herbivores and others.”

“Ahhh,” I sighed. A well-rounded plant, indeed. No shrinking violet could possibly survive in this environment, let alone thrive. Bloom.

For a moment I stood watching the passers-by. Few took notice of the gorgeous thistles. Some scurry-ers glanced sideways at Kerri cooing and snapping photos of what, I imagine, they thought of as weeds for someone else to pull. No time for beauty. No time for responsibility. On-to-the-next.

“I’ll bet those people think I’m crazy,” she said, tucking her camera inside her purse.

“Yep,” I agreed. “You are definitely more like the thistle than you are to the people passing-by.” She gave me a sideways glance but decided to accept the compliment.

I winked and whispered to the thistle-oracle. “All the time in the world for beauty. All the time in the world for responsibility. Nowhere else more important to be.” Beautiful and prickly. Resilient to the core.

Kerri’s music is available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora and iHeart Radio

read Kerri’s blogpost about THISTLES

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Filed under: Gratitude, KS Friday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, beauty, composer, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, divine intervention, hardy, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, oracle, released from the heart, resilience, responsibility, singer songwriter, story, studio melange, the melange, thistle, thistles, time, truth, veracity, weeds | 1 Comment »

Step Out. Step In [David’s blog on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on May 27, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes: so it is with time present.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

I might say that, in the mountains, in the sanctuary, we stepped out of time.

We sometimes forget that time is a relatively new invention in human history. The mechanical measurement of our moments. So, when we say that we “stepped out of time”, I literally mean that we temporarily exited the quantification of our moving experience. Future/past. To-do lists and locators. It begs the question, “If we step out of time what do we step into?”

Everyone knows the word “present”. The present. It’s a very big little word. The English language would have us understand it as a place. An arrival. We look for it, strive for it and, paradoxically, we enter it by forgetting to look or strive. It is where we are – always – and yet we so rarely know it. It’s where meaning is found and connection. It’s where peace and beauty are realized.

A poet might write that to die is to step out of time. To be born is to step into it. It’s the epicenter of our mythology, this cycle of dying and rebirth. Into and out of time. Winter and spring.

We stepped into the sanctuary and stepped out of time. Our cares dropped away. We took a deep breath. Sometime later, we stepped back into time and both felt renewed. Of course.

read Kerri’s blogpost about THE PRESENT

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Filed under: Awakening, Merely A Thought Monday, Metaphor | Tagged: artistry, connection, cycles, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dying, experience, future, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, Leonardo da Vinci, life cycles, meaning, moments, mythology, past, present, rebirth, renewal, spring, story, studio melange, the melange, the present, time, time present, winter | 1 Comment »

Enter Happiness [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on May 15, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

The day brought to mind Avalon, the mythical island hidden from sight by the spells of the wise women who rule there or perhaps by charms cast by King Arthur’s sister, Morgaine. It is where Arthur was taken after he was gravely wounded in battle. To heal or to die. It depends on which version of the legend that you read. As I watched her take the picture I wondered if Avalon could pop-up off the coast of Lake Michigan. If it can be spelled and disappear from sight it certainly can be spelled to appear wherever Morgaine chooses. Magic is magic. Possibility is open-ended until doubt or belief renders it otherwise.

While I was studying the photo, pondering what I might write, Kerri played a song by John Denver. I didn’t recognize it and looked over her shoulder. It was the last song he wrote before he died. Yellowstone (Coming Home). He did not know it would be his last song. He had no expectation of dying on the day his plane dropped from the sky into the ocean. I have sometimes wondered what would be my last painting or the final piece I might write. In my imagining, I always know. “This is the last,” I think and set down my brush, one more step in preparing to enter the mist.

I read somewhere that the real key to happiness is to lose your self-importance. It’s counter-intuitive in a culture that identifies through individual achievement. Climbing the ladder. Top dog. Happiness as a by-product of achievement and possession. Yet, it seems simple if you think about it. Happiness, not as an acquisition but as as an aspect of presence. Happiness enters when we are present in our moment and, in order to actually be present in the moment, the eyes and heart and mind need to let go of the desire to be other places, future or past. Happiness finds us when enough is truly enough and everything else, all the imagined importance, the yearning and the lack, disappear into the fog of time’s illusion.

read Kerri’s blogpost about FOG

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Filed under: Awakening, Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: artistry, avalon, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, dying, future, happiness, heart, illusion, illusions, John Denver, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, King Arthur, magic, Morgaine, myth, mythical, past, presence, self-importance, story, studio melange, the melange, time, timeless | Leave a comment »

Beyond Words [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on May 2, 2024 by davidrobinsoncreative

“Truth, like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented.” ~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death

I’ve felt for months the need to apologize to J. We were having a conversation about truth – and notions of god – and in his current place-on-the-path he’s necessarily seeking absolutes. For him, relative truth smacks of falsehood or some loosey-goosey scary philosophy. He’s looking for a hard rock on which to build his house of wisdom. I was flip rather than helpful. How do you begin to discuss truth as a cultural orientation or a fluid marker that changes with time? When I was J’s age, truth could be established with a photograph. Not so anymore.

Breck, our little quaking aspen tree has come to represent a form of truth for me. Breck almost didn’t make it. We brought her home from the high mountains of Colorado and for a few years she lived and struggled in a big pot. She barely survived the first place we planted her. It was not a good location so we moved her to different soil where she’d enjoy more sun. And now she is flourishing. Last year she grew more than three feet taller.

Breck’s truth/health has very little to do with hard answers to abstract questions. For her – and me – truth is found in relationships; her environment. The right spot. Good soil. Rejuvenating sun. She brings an impulse to life: perseverance. Tenacity. Adaptability. We love her and I believe she “knows” that, too. Love is a truth that knows no absolute. I couldn’t explain that to J because I was playing with him, bringing levity to his seriousness.

And, in truth (what other word can I use?), I have become a doubter that any serious conversation about truth or gods can happen through something so limited as language. That’s what I should have expressed to J. I should have taken him outside to see the stars.

Now, when I want to have those conversations with myself, when I am seeking a better question, I walk on the trail next to the river. I turn my face to the sun. I try to detach myself from the clocks and lists and tv debates. I look at Breck quaking in the wind. I await each spring for the buds to appear on her limbs. There’s truth-beyond-words in her life-cycle, the return of her leaves and her captivating shimmer dance with the breezes.