Constancy

Oh, it feels good to be here. Rarely during these past weeks and months have I had the time for my art or for this. There just wasn't time. That has been tough because Art is the means I choose to be myself. Fortunately I have the life and works of Georgia O'Keeffe to serve as wonderful examples of maintaining an artful life whatever the circumstances.

She chose every day to practice art, to live art. It takes a lot of fortitude to outlast such pressures. You really have to want to live it, to practice it, to withstand that. One of my favorite anecdotes from Ms. O'Keeffe's life involves her stint as "supervisor of drawing and penmanship" in 1913. "She was responsible for the art education of hundreds of pupils in Amarillo's half-dozen schools." She was a proponent of the teachings of Arthur Wesley Dow and "fiercely opposed the old-fashioned teaching technique of 'copying,' and she told her pupils not to buy an expensive drawing book ... that had been recommended by the educators. In the spring of 1913, however, the Texas legislature passed a law requiring the use of textbooks chosen by the state commission ... A tense, lengthy struggle between Georgia and the state of Texas ensued - but when the school year ended, the books had not been bought."

Why art? Why does the practice of art make such a difference? See, it is not just art - not 'just' a painting, not 'just' a photograph, not 'just' a sculpture, not 'just' a song, not 'just' a poem. It is art from the heart.

Ms. O'Keeffe saw this so clearly and communicated it with her work entitled "My Heart," stones rendered in pastels. She had a visual reminder before her in New Mexico of constancy amid change, the Pedernal, birthplace of the Navajos' 'Changing Woman.' The heart Ms. O'Keeffe saw, like the Pedernal, is the constant in human life amidst whatever change occurs. The heart is the constant. Years before her pastel rendering of her heart Alfred Stieglitz, her husband, had shown her work with that of other women artists to declare to the world his assertion that "women could reveal a new and uniquely feminine perspective on modern experience." I feel Stieglitz was only partially correct in that assertion.

Rather than revealing a new perspective on modern experience alone, anyone practicing, anyone living, an artful life can reveal through their work a new and unique perspective on Human experience. How? How?

The practice of art is the practice of mindfulness. It is the practice of being here now. It is the practice of connecting to the Everlasting through the heart and channeling the tuition received there to the mind to inform the art. There are no short cuts here - no painting by the numbers, no storytelling by special software, no drawing by textbook copying. The only way to art is through the heart. The beauty of it is, to me, that just as Ms. O'Keeffe's heart could have been part of that Pedernal, her art, anyone's art, offers a perspective on the human experience.

The vision and knowledge of human experience that comes when heart and mind are tuned to the Everlasting in the here and now is vision and knowledge that sees above and beyond, beyond what is available to the senses, beyond the petty contrivances that may clutter our days.

This is brilliantly articulated in a review in The New Yorker of a 1930s show of her work, this portion of which will be my closing note:

Not only is it a piece of consummate craftsmanship, but it

likewise possesses that mysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soul, which distinguishes important communication from the casual reports of the eye ...

[Photos: Top: Weeping cherry, the author, 2010; Middle: detail from pastel by author's son, Dan, 1999; Bottom: detail from scratchboard piece by author's son, Sean, 2002]

[Bibliography: Lisle, Laurie. "Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe." New York: Washington Square Press, 1980, 1986]

Through a Glass Darkly

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

"The Second Coming"

William Butler Yeats, 1920

Passing homes in the darkness of early, early morning or of evening I see windows decorated with lights, beacons of welcome and hope for humanity in a weary world.

The image of people as light in the world has been with me for some time, most especially since my post for "Dia de Los Muertes" (please see previous post). That post, in turn, prompted reflections upon and contemplation of Be-ing one's Self, no strings attached, of gaining and holding that "privilege of a lifetime ... being who you are."

His Holiness the Dalai Lama asserts that "our primary concern is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering" as we meet what Bruno Bettelheim describes as "psychological challenges of gaining a feeling of selfhood and of self-worth and a sense of moral obligation." Bettelheim maintains, and I concur, that such is necessary if we "hope to live not just from moment to moment, but in true consciousness of our existence."

Eastern traditions teach of paths to en-light-enment, to a rising toward pristine awareness. One important element of these teachings is that of examination of the person's mental processes, including their motivations. As previously noted our primary motivation in life is seeking happiness and avoiding suffering and "the chief influence for the foundation of motivations comes from the mind."

An examination of one's own mind to bring one's consciousness further toward en-light-enment is no quick or easy task. "Mental phenomena ... do not evidently have a location in space, nor do they lend themselves to quantitative measurement." How may we study our mental processes as forces of motivation affecting the quality of our Light, our lives? How do we do this, we who are everyday people with relationships and jobs and goals and worries? We are few of us monks or yogis or poets or quantum physicists. How do we do this?

Years ago I was presented with an image of light and life that has guided me through many of life's psychological challenges. Not long ago I realized I had received another image of light and life as a guide in everyday life. I sat in the World Peace Cafe one evening quietly waiting for my sandwich to be delivered to my table while my husband surfed the Web on his iTouch. From our table by the window I looked out into darkness and saw the grouping of over-sized Chinese lanterns hanging in the cafe projected onto the street scene outside the cafe.

I know those lanterns out on the street were illusions, some trick of optics, the light waves (or are they particles?), the properties of the window glass and who knows what else. I have now come to see that scene as a vivid lesson in the way illusion can and does influence us as we walk through our earthly life.

Indians, according to Joseph Campbell, teach that illusion (maya) holds 'A Veiling Power that hides or conceals the "real," the inward essential character of things; so that, as we read in a sacred Sanskrit text: "Though it is hidden in all things, the Self shines not forth."'

Someone tries to hide himself down inside himself.

Audioslave

Although the white light of Truth has been veiled from consciousness, our minds must engage in their creative function and evolve phenomena. So our creative function, our Projecting Power, projects "illusionary impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions --- as might happen, for example if at night one should mistake a rope for a snake and experience fright."

Now we come to the beautiful part, the part wherein it is possible to reach the Truth through the obscurity and illusion of these phenomena. For, "when viewed a certain way, the phenomena themselves may reveal what normally they veil ..." This demonstrates the "Revealing Power of maya, which it is the function of art and scripture, ritual and meditation, to make known." For the moment I suggest that we simply take some time for ourselves to contemplate whatever illusions present themselves as guiding forces in our lives.

Our "impressions and ideas, together with associated desires and aversions" have been formed by and large upon falsehood. We owe it to ourselves to look at these things. Many times a change of perspective eliminates the projected illusion and frees us to consider its source -- which is what we need to do. (As an example, when I shot the accompanying photo I could not see the reflection outside from another window, only that nearest the lamp.)

Here I turn, not surprisingly, to William Shakespeare - his "Hamlet" to be precise. The prince has just informed his one-time friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark is a prison. They disagree. They "think not so." Hamlet then informs them that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Think about it.

We can see the Truth of our Selves, just as we can see the light of a candle or a lantern "through a glass darkly."

Love after Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

[A bibliography for this post includes:

Bettelheim, Bruno. "The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales." New York: Vintage, 1989

Osbon, Diane K (ed.). "Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion." New York: Harper Collins, 1991

Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." New York: Washington Square Press, 1992

Varela, Francisco J., Ph.D (ed.). "Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with The Dalai Lama." Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997

Walcott, Derek. "Derek Walcott: Collected Poems 1948-1984." New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986]

Dia de Los Muertes

"And in the end the Love you take is equal to the Love you make."
The Beatles

Many years ago in the midst of one of my little family's moves I surfaced from a dream in that time between sleeping and waking, asking, "What was that?" As all four of us were sharing the same hotel room I looked around to see if anyone had been roused by my question. Everyone but me was sound asleep, so I snuggled back into the covers and held the dream close.

The dream was a comfort to me. Even as I was excited about moving to Williamsburg, VA, a city I thoroughly enjoyed, I was quite aware that I was moving on from special people and special memories and I was not certain how I felt about that. In the dream I seemed to see the continent of North America as if from orbit. Marking the area of Virginia wherein I lived I saw, well, what I would call a pearl of light, and from that pearl strands of light radiated out to other parts of the country wherein beloved family and friends lived. (I think one strand stretched to Scotland, too.)

"Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night."
"Romeo and Juliet," William Shakespeare, III.ii.24-26

As I contemplated this 'map of light' a voice in the dream said, very kindly, "This is what we see when you move away from the people you love."

In the years since that dream I have developed a picture in my mind in which each earthbound soul holds the light of his or her life as a candle, that tiny flame flickering and braving the weather of our years. We'll wear whatever masks and costumes of our choice as we hold our lives, our souls, and explore the heart-mysteries of who we are here - perhaps we will even manage to carve out a little lantern for ourselves to pierce the darkness.

When we leave this earth, when we walk on into the light, perhaps we set those lanterns on Heaven's floor and the light we have always been pierces that floor, carving out the stars for those still finding their way to the light.

So, on this Dia de Los Muertes (Day of the Dead) let all honor be to those whose lives light ours with Love, who in their mercy pierce the darkness and assault us with Love - most gently and beyond the limits of reason.

MCMLIX

So. Today I, a storyteller, celebrate my 50th birthday. I am actually very happy about this and it seems like a good day to share some of the stories, the dialogue, that I have relied upon over this half-century to answer what makes me, me.

The primary story is one I know only because my parents shared it with me, as it happened when I was only two weeks old - two weeks old and still weighing in at less than six pounds!

I made my entrance into the world three weeks early at only five pounds, nine ounces and measuring eighteen inches in length. Not much had changed by my second week, but the doctor dismissed quite confidently any worries during my check-up, as he watched me kick and hit back at him reflexively: "She may be tiny, but she's a dandy. She has a mind of her own and she's not afraid to use it."

I took that story to heart more and more through the years. Even now I do not understand how the doctor saw

so much in me at just two weeks, nor do I understand why those remarks resonated with me from a very young age. Maybe I recognized that such a remark from a respected person was a remark worth keeping, worth treasuring?

As I write this I consider another remark I heard too many times to count over the course of my life, and I realize that it offers an interesting counterpoint to that basic theme of an independent mind. The remark has usually been, "You wear your heart on your sleeve." For a period of time, I confess, I caught undertones in those voices that made me think I might be a fool to wear my heart thus.

Not anymore. Not for a long, long time. Somehow, somewhere along the line I decided I was not doing myself or anyone else any favors by keeping my heart out of sight.

Somehow I heard my independent mind decrying the demotion of my heart and I stitched it back onto my sleeve. Maybe it was after a fresh reading of St. Exupery's "The Little Prince," the part that tells us, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I guess you could say that

I decided to give my mind its eyes.

So. Here I

am celebrating - yes,

celebrating, a milestone birthday, but celebrating especially the gifts of ageless heart

and mind - gifts I would give to everyone if I could.

Photos: Me, at 2; Me, at 3; Me, at 6 in my new school uniform; Me, at 21, with my best friend, Renee; Me, at 30-something goofing around at a museum in Richmond, VA.

'Foul Rag and Bone Shop'

For the last week I have been contemplating the startling fact that I had found an actual place - a place I had never seen nor known existed - which I had 'made up' and written down in my notes and in the blog. I cannot say it enough: I just made up a place and gave it a name. I never suspected that a place loosely fitting that description existed.

The more I considered this the more I understood that I had experienced 'creative visualization' at its fullest. My introduction to the concept came in the form of a book I read decades ago. The exact title escapes me but it was roughly "The House that Gilda Drew" and was a title I acquired through the Scholastic Books program. (Oh, how I looked forward to those flyers and the chance to buy books!)

These days I would recognize Gilda and her family as likely being homeless as they constantly moved as her father searched for employment. Through all the travels, all the schools, Gilda dreamed of a certain house she wanted to live in one day. She drew it time and time again. Then, one day she saw the house itself. Sadly, I do not remember how it came to happen, but in the end Gilda and her family did indeed move into the house of Gilda's dream. That story has always remained in my mind.

I wonder now if that story was in the back of my mind when my fourth grade teacher, Sr. Mary Henry, a Dominican, took one look at the tree I had drawn in crayon on art paper and informed me that it was not a tree, that 'There are no trees like that.' I said nothing, but in my mind I retorted, "Just because you haven't seen a tree like that doesn't mean there isn't one.' Years later, to satisfy myself, I looked through a book and saw that my tree could have been a very mature weeping cherry!

The discouragement was replaced by my resolve to be a writer as under that same nun's tutelage I quite happily discovered that those sentences and paragraphs and all that other grammar stuff were the nuts and bolts of the stories I devoured.

Not long ago I discovered some quotes attributed to Ms. Georgia O'Keeffe in my notes. They had been posted on one or another of those websites offering fine art posters for sale. This quote leapt out at me: 'It belongs to me. God told me if I painted it enough I could have it.' I read between the lines of that quote and came to understand that Ms. O'Keeffe very likely believed in the principle that life would imitate art provided she practiced her art, lived her art.

I pulled Hunter Drohojowska-Philp's biography of Ms. O'Keeffe ("Full Bloom," W. W. Norton & Co., 2004) from my shelf and paged through it for one of the stories I remembered from Ms. O'Keeffe's school days which, ironically, involved a Dominican nun passing judgment on one of her drawings (p. 27) Ms. O'Keeffe chose to respond differently to the nun's stinging judgment of her drawing efforts than I did to Sr. Mary Henry's. In fact, at some point she 'decided that the only thing I could do that was nobody else's business was to paint.'

Independently of one another both Ms. O'Keeffe and I chose art as the means of being our Selves despite the judgment of an early teacher. The most inspiring aspect of Ms. O'Keeffe's life and work was that she practiced her art on her terms, however shaky she may have felt at times.

Ms. Drohojowska-Philp relates one instance of self-consciousness at a time just prior to Alfred Stieglitz's introduction to her work, when few established artists were understanding that work. 'After staying up all night working, she felt the results to be "effeminate" but she was unsure of the implications. "It is essentially a woman's feeling - satisfies me in a way," she admitted. "There are things we want to say - but saying them is pretty nervy." Once again, she was thinking that it was all "a fool's game" when she learned of Stieglitz's approval.' ("Full Bloom," pps 106-7)

Nearly thirty years after Alfred Stieglitz first glimpsed the work of this extraordinary woman she produced another piece I consider to be self-conscious, a pastel on paper entitled "My Heart" (1944). She was then 57 years of age and had bought a home in New Mexico only four years previously, a home with stunning views of her beloved pedernal.

Ms. Drohojowska-Philp wrote, 'The Navajo believe that the Pedernal is the birthplace of their "Changing Woman," who represents earth and time.' (p. 368) In full view of that Pedernal, that mountain, Ms. O'Keeffe imagined and presented to us an image of her heart. 'O'Keeffe named this drawing of two stones after her heart because she thought they "looked hard."' Hard as pieces of the 'Changing Woman,' perhaps?

For myself, when I consider that heart image she offers I am struck by a parallel between her work and that of the poet William Butler Yeats in the closing years of his life, specifically the poem "The Circus Animals' Desertion" (1938-39). I quote here the final stanza of the poem:

Those masterful images because complex

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Many are familiar with the paintings of skulls and pelvises Ms. O'Keeffe executed. (My favorite is "Pelvis with Distance.") There are paintings featuring ladders in Ms. O'Keeffe's oeuvre as well. Her studio must surely have contained stained rags and a collection of skeletons to qualify it as not just any studio but a "foul rag and bone shop of the heart." She painted her heart out, and in the end it was hers, always had been. I suspect she cherished the irony, as I do, that the nun's judgment had been passed in a schoolroom at Sacred Heart Academy.

These remarks from the commentary about the 2008 exhibit "Georgia O'Keeffe and the Women of the Stieglitz Circle," (HIGH Museum, Atlanta, GA), which included work by Pamela Colman Smith, Katherine Nash Rhoades, Georgia Engelhard, Gertrude Kasebier, Anne Brigman and Alfred Stieglitz point to the enduring significance of "charms the brush laid on with tints in sweeps and flourishes" : 'her work and that of the others "laid the groundwork for the idea that women artists possessed a powerful creativity equal to that of men and their stunning images convinced Stieglitz ... that women could reveal a new and uniquely feminine perspective on modern experience."'

For Ms. O'Keeffe the perspective from her foul rag and bone shop of the Pedernal, the Changing Woman, gave her her heart and gave the world a beautiful vision of life lived artfully.

Top Photo: "Crossing to the Everlasting," Barbara Butler McCoy, oil on canvas, 12"x24," 2007, after "Sky Above Clouds," Georgia O'Keeffe and the author's photograph

Bottom Photo: "A Bowl of Cherries," the author, 2009

Jellin'

Just goin' with the flow today, which has meant redoubling my efforts to finish unpacking and organizing my atelier (love that word). Somehow I am never prepared for the memories I encounter buried amid stacks of papers and books. Photos, cards, notes, books - they set memories flooding down my brainstem and through my limbs. Remember the Ringo Starr song, "Every time I see your face I'm reminded of the places we used to go'? Or the Four Tops, 'It's the same old song, but with a different meaning since you've been gone'? My eyes get misty or I shudder to think 'Did I actually write/fall for/ think that?' I find myself thinking these memories can be much like jellyfish - beautiful there in the dark, but requiring careful navigation.

Now, as I navigate among these memories I realize that what makes them so beautiful is the light in the sea of hope, the sea of dreams, where they float. I'll take that.

[Photo: Jellyfish at the Tennessee

Aquarium, Chattanooga, July 2009]

'rooted and reaching'

Woke up this morning fully aware that today is the summer solstice, so 'You Are My Sunshine' popped to mind, as well as, 'Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.' Right now, in this newest home in this hot and sunny southern state, I am inordinately content to be surrounded by trees.

It is something of a heart-mystery for me, my love of trees. It has been with me since childhood when I learned to climb the chestnut tree on my grandfather's farm in Michigan. Is it the viewpoint or the shelter the branches and leaves provide that calls to me? As I find it, the key lies in that 'rooted and reaching' verse I used as the title. Perhaps it reminds me of the ancient and timeless stories of the 'world tree' prevalent in so many cultures. How ironic, then, that we have the legend of a man, bigger than life, who chops down the trees.

Here in this sampling of my photos of trees I hope to present, well, my way of looking at trees.