Category Archives: blog

Three Horses Grazing

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This painting spans my life. Starting when I was seven or eight I would read to horses under the big oak tree in the pasture with the pond my father made. At the bottom my cousin and I set up a jump with tree limbs and I don’t remember what. He taught me to jump by cupping his hand for my foot as I mounted and whacking the horse’s butt in front of the jump. It was the first time I remember blacking out.

In my childhood there were always horses. Gift horses, bought horses, small or large in various assortments of accomplishments or attributes. Most were without known talent in the horse resume world but they all had what I wanted: a different viewpoint and no where much to go.

I rode them bareback, with saddles and bridles or halters. They were out all the time, I don’t remember cleaning their hooves or putting saddle pads on. Henry Havilick the farrier came twice a year. He introduced me to Mounds bars and recited “Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree The Village Smithy Stands.” We had a big tree – there were many above two and three hundred years old – under which he would stand.

And now, what about now?

When Paula saw it in my studio as I was finishing it she said, “oh that looks like us – you and Bimala and Chandrika with your heads down and me giving directions to you!” I hadn’t seen exactly that but I am always pleased when a painting sparks a story. I love to feel my hands making the shapes, choosing the colors, in this case I used mostly sponges to paint. I have a love/hate thing with brushes. They often leave me feeling removed from the work of painting. I like the feel in my hands of both the creative idea and the laying of the paint.

This painting is on canvas mounted and framed, it is about 45″ x 38″ it looks lovely on the wall. Might it look good on yours?

 

How Can I Help?

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Often I run around trying to think of what to do, who to help, where to go and I forget to take a breath, look around and see what’s there.

What is here is often what I need to do. Learning from Niki here in the photo, I could, for instance, take a walk, hop, run around. Good ideas. Yesterday and today my energy hasn’t been what I’m used to and I found myself doing jumping jacks in the bathroom before I was really awake. Don’t know about that for advice and definitely not great for me in front of a mirror – but it got me a little farther along than I might have been.

Back to Niki. I have yet to see him do jacks or see a horse in a pasture doing calisthenics – not that some couldn’t benefit – but the point is closer to home. Can I help you if I’m not being helped? Right – we all know that, particularly when someone reminds us.

I spend a lot of time looking for connection. Looking for spirit, to be happy and useful and all those things endlessly written about  – nothing wrong with that. But the Deal is that Niki is already tuned in. He’s just Here. Now. He’s in the big Present.

Present is what I can give you. How can I help you?

PLAY

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Compassion plays around the edges of a smile. I can’t smile without my heart opening. And the reverse is true.

I’m playing games online, this morning the box I was playing in got tilted upside down. It was really hard to get my mind to push the “up” arrow when I wanted to go down – and, of course the reverse. Life gives me more play like that than I know but I often act as if I’m still upright. This game didn’t accommodate denial. Didn’t allow for my reality. It demanded it’s own reality. And I did better when I complied.

Life’s like that sometimes.

Fences Make Good Neighbors

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Notice the fence. Do you know where they would go if it wasn’t there? I don’t either.

it’s funny thinking about THAT fence. When we put it up – as soon as we moved in – the town got all twisted about it. Made us move it. Newspaper articles were written about it. Invariably about the wrong section of the fence, not the one the town wanted moved. That was because,looking at the fence, it wasn’t really obvious why it should be moved.We received letters telling us of other fences in town that were closer to the road than ours. A friend asked his friend who was the town’s road foreman at the time, had it been his (our friend’s) house, would he have made him move it? No.

So boundaries can be contentious and ambiguous. But the quote of the title usually means that if you know who you are, tell people it isn’t a good good time to call or whatever your boundary situation is then you become reliable and trustworthy.

When my sister – who can talk a lot – used to call my mother, my mother would complain afterward that she had missed an appointment or something and blamed my sister for talking. That’s nuts, right?

I love my fence, all of it, and if you call I’ll tell you if it’s a good time and if you ask that’s great. Then we’ll be easy and not trying to get tangled in what we don’t know.

And let there be room to run free!

Take A Breath!

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This morning when I woke up I was already breathing. I didn’t have to try, I didn’t do anything about the sun coming up, it was taking care of that. The moon was new Saturday and I felt renewed – none of it under my control and all of it for my appreciation. I have lists and lists of appreciation. Filled with things like the moon setting or rising, ditto the sun. Flowers, grass, dandelions, rain all duly noted, all filed under Appreciation. I have learned to do this more and more. I started with my own personal coach and now that I coach and am coached I get some of the smartest and most wonderful (my clients) people on this earth to follow along with me and then I do it better and better.

You know what they say – if you want to learn something, teach it. That’s what I say anyway. I love what I do. I love the paint on my hands and the voices in my ear, the dogs, cats and horses all around reminding me that the most wondrous moments are the ones I pay attention to – and they would add, with them, and I would concur.

 

Careful of the How

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How do we engage ourselves, know who we are, what we want to do, be, when we grow up or any other time? When I was young I thought of my life as an out-of-body experience. In the world of Meyers-Briggs (did you know they’re WOMEN? – I didn’t until recently – I assumed that only men could make those formulas) I am an INFP and very into the “F.” So all that hiding in plain sight I did in my birth family was mirrored – think Narcissus – by my roots of shame. I may have looked like a tree – or a stump according to my parents – but all I see now is how powerful the law of attraction is. If gravity holds us in our seats, the law of attraction gets us what we ask for. I was the kid my parents asked for, maybe you were too.
It takes years of courage to know who we are and what to do about it. Often others know who we are way before we do but are at a loss for what to do about it. In 1990 I was deep into photographic processes. Hours in the darkroom mixing paper, chemicals and film finally produced what I found to be an excitingly deep and surprising outcome.

I became enamored of the process, got some proficiency and got a body of work together which I took around to photography galleries. One said,”It’s too beautiful, I’ll never sell it.” Another, “It’s too processed.” Women loved it. Men didn’t.

So it’s like a Buddhist story I tell about a farmer whose son is everything to him. The son goes to war, the son dies, the farmer is nothing. The son comes back, the farmer has everything. Ilusions. The farmer has an illusion. When I discovered the process I thought I was so cool, I thought, “this is who I am.” No one was doing anything like it. Great. Then when it didn’t shake the world, I felt like a fool, a shit, not an artist, not worthy.
It’s taken years just to love it again. Without the need for it to go anywhere. – Oh, I should say that it did win a spot at the Corcoran Gallery in the Smithsonian. And I thought that was so cool. I thought it would go on from there. I thought, I thought. But it didn’t and I still love the work and I still love the process and I think I’m cool.

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I used to write poems a lot when I was young and then older and then older, in fact I’m still writing them. I put up this photo of our dog Cho because he’s really stepping out. Look at his reach and his legs crossing getting ready for his next reach. You’d never know he’s sixteen – a lot of dog years in that forty-five pound body.
I want my writing to be like his hunting. The quality of his reach is impressive, he is steadfast in his focus and nothing ever stops him – from barking or jumping the fence – he is all about showing. I never don’t know what he means.
My hand went numb the first time I formally sat down to write a poem. Not only did I not know what to write, I couldn’t. I got over it and I wrote for many years, gave readings, became a poet around town. I stopped writing for the longest time because I was telling not showing. I wasn’t paying enough attention to dogs – or any animal-being. My first new poem that I could really relate to was about the death of my dog Esme. Her death stunned me – it was sudden, heart attack – but I had leaned on her in a way I don’t think I’ve ever let myself. The quality of her presence drifted into my soul like air I was breathing without thinking about breath.
Here’s a photo of her

and here’s the poem, and yes, it is the anniversary of her death two years ago.

Esme – Greyhound Friend
She rescued me when I rescued her

Today, Monday, is the last time – at 4:30 pm – that I’ll
Be able to say, “last week Esme was…”
My heart is a landslide of rubble, scary places, bad footing.
Now, this day, this minute a week ago I was lying next to her
I was taking her head in my hand, I was feeling her pulse
Her breath, her eyes on me. I felt her limbs be cold in an odd way.
I won’t forget that. I felt her warm belly. I felt her warm ears
And her cold nose and I thought and thought breathing with her
As I was, breathing without thinking of breath, or that thing that rhymes with it.
That point on the trajectory of each life that seeks level, that is level.
Everything else is up and down, hot and cold, short and long.
But death is a flat line. Death is a long time. Death is No More.

Today, Monday, it is 1:45pm. I didn’t know. I had no clue.
When I put her in my car she was breathing. It never occurred to me
She would stop. Or anything. Nothing much was occurring – and everything.
Halfway there I knew. I kept driving. But I knew.
And didn’t wouldn’t couldn’t know – no.
A week ago right now I had no clue. What a blessing.
Her life was a blessing. She blessed me. Her every move
Her looks – they were “come hither” and I did
I can’t bear to put a period with these sentences
Time will tell
Time is telling me
This is Monday, it is almost 2
I still have 2 ½ hours left
And I don’t even know it

Body Art

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I remember in third grade being the only one who didn’t know a certain song – that Everyone knew. And it was that same year that Linda Varney asked me to touch her tongue with mine at the drinking fountain. I did. She said I was the only one who would do it. She’d asked around. And then some years later someone said they’d give me some money if I asked the bio teacher what was missing in the crotch of the mannikin on her desk. I got the money.
I cannot tell you how many such incidents filled my school years but, yes, I was ready to try stuff.
And when I got my 4 x 5 camera and wanted to try it out, well there I was, wasn’t I? So I held it out as far a my arms would go – they aren’t all that long – and click. Too shy to ask someone to model, I guess. Remember I was on the doing side, not the asking. Asking is a life-long task – a thing confounded. The wallflower in me craves the wall.

Start with a shot, then go for it.