Fallen Leaf

For those of us of a certain age, today marks a dividing line. On one side was innocence ... a belief in the perfectibility of the world ... and a youthful hubris toward mortality. On the other side was loss of all of the above and a gnawing ache where carefree optimism once resided. November 22 was our generation's first wake-up call that the world was not an entirely safe and rational place. It was the death of a dream. We will never know if JFK would have been a great president; we can only grieve for what might have been.

Today's youth have already been marked by a similar blow to innocence that rocked their, and all of our, confidence in the safety and security of our world. May this day mark a new beginning.

Hard Words

"My most creative work seems to be on projects where I'm inexper- ienced and uniquely unqualified for the job." -- Paula Sher

If someone asked me to define "artist," I would reply that it is someone who makes art. I would not include in the definition that it is someone with an MFA from a recognized art school or that it was someone whose work is shown by major galleries across the globe or someone who came out of the womb paintbrush clinched tightly in tiny fist.

Wikipedia gives us three definitions:

1. A person who creates art.
2. A person who creates art as an occupation.
3. A person who is skilled at some activity.

And, the Oxford English Dictionary states that the dominant usage is

* One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses (Calliope - epic poetry, Clio - history, Erato - lyric poetry, Euterpe - music, Melpomene - tragedy, Polyhymnia - sacred poetry, Terpsichore - dance, Thalia - comedy and Urania - astronomy). Notice that none of the muses reigns over painting or the visual arts.

So, if experts old and new, agree in concept with my own definition, why is it that I have such a hard time saying the words, "I am an artist"? The Wikipedia definitions carry a hint when they mention the words "occupation" and "skill." I do not make money with my art so it is not an occupation and, while I am becoming more skilled, I can't yet claim that I am skilled. And OED uses the word "cultivates" as though it's an ongoing process. That works, I am cultivating my art.

This difficulty with self-identification as an artist is not new. I remember being in a workshop years ago and, as part of an exercise, having the workshop leader encourage me (almost forcibly) to say the words. My throat slammed shut; my heart pounded and tears flowed. The words were almost impossible then and they are still hard now. It was almost the same situation twenty years ago when I was trying to become a "writer." It wasn't until I had a contract for my first book that I felt entitled to call myself a writer.

But if I, or anyone else, makes art but never sells it, shouldn't we still be allowed to call ourselves artists? Or is that term reserved only for "professionals?" A friend suggested that I create and use some artist affirmations to strengthen my self-identification as an artist. It sounded like a good idea so I asked several of my artist friends for affirmations that they use and started prowling around the internet to see what other ones I could find. And, I found many keepers:

I am an artist.
My creativity is a divine gift.
I have time to make art.
My art heals wounds, mine and others'.
My art is my gift to myself and the world.
My art is an expression of my gratitude.
My creative work is an expression of truth, love and peace.
My art creates new and joyful connections.
My art expands the world.

The problem that launched this stream of thought came when some of the affirmations claimed "quality" ... such as:

I am a brilliant and creative artist.
I am a truly gifted artist.

I would have no trouble telling you how bad an artist I am but telling myself that I am brilliant, creative or gifted is rather mind boggling. As my blogger friend Louise might say ... it creates a kerfuffle in my mind. I am going to create affirmation cards out of all of the above ... even the truly hard ones ... and we'll see what happens. In the meantime, I'm going to take one small step ...

You may have noticed that I have moved the About Me from the bottom of the blog page to the top and included an Artist Statement ... not quite saying "I am an artist" but almost. And, I will keep in mind Georgia O'Keefe's amazing admission:

"I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I have never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."

I want to do art ... I want to be an artist ... so I am not going to let the fear of saying the words stop me. I am an artist. (emphasis intended)

Letting Go

This summer as I was beginning to pack my stuff for the transition from one life to another, I picked up a book titled Shed Your Stuff; Change Your Life by Julie Morgenstern. I never buy books like that but I was walking through the airport and it almost jumped into my hands, so I read it and began to follow its advice. I got rid of tons of stuff ... literally tons ... stuff that I had been carrying around for years ... stuff that was no longer serving me. In the introduction, the author states:

The theory behind SHED (the process you will learn about in this book) is that by releasing your attachment to obsolete, tangible items in your space and schedule, you will gain the energy, insight and clarity to make decisions about the big stuff. SHEDing creates the space to think; it fortifies your identity and eliminates old, unhealthy belief systems.

I don't know if I can give complete credit to "SHEDing" for the changes that have happened in my life, but I do know that new doors are opening and I feel a deeper sense of peace ... (most of the time ... ;-) ... than I've felt for a long time. But, now as I contemplate how to develop greater "equanimity," I wonder if I also need to shed some of the intangibles I've carried for so long, intangibles that may be weighing me down even more than the 600 tangible pounds of books I let go of this summer.

This morning I let go of the fantasy of resurrecting an old relationship and in dissecting the carcass of that fantasy, I realized that I've been carrying around the belief that I need to live someone else's life ... that somehow I can't or don't deserve to live my own. It's probably the residual from childhood where I was living my parents' life and then from two marriages where I was basically living my husbands' lives. That's a lot of years of fitting my wants, needs and beliefs into a structure mainly created by someone else. For the first time in my life, I'm living in a structure that I created for myself ... a scary, exhilarating, overwhelming at times but ultimately freeing experience. Letting go this morning felt like being a trapeze artist who lets go in mid-air and turns ...

Will I catch the bar coming toward me and swing into new space? Or will I miss and fall into the safety net below? And, is there a safety net below? At this point I don't know but I feel like I've made an important step in shedding this old belief. I will live my own life. I will follow the path that calls to me. I will live MY life to the fullest extent possible.

And it is scary ... I don't know if there is a safety net but I do know that I have dealt with everything that has come my way so far and that I will be able to deal with whatever lays before me. And, just like in the picture above, I don't know where the path leads but I know as soon as I round the corner, I will see a little further and all I have to do is keep moving forward and following the path ... my path. I am on the journey of my life and it might eventually connect to another's path but even if it doesn't, the important thing is that I'm now on my very own path.

When the War Came ...

Today I'm not going to do anything more than quote from Recover Your Joy as it is one of the most powerful messages I've read in a long time. I highly recommend the entire post ... here's an appetizer ... and thank you Louise for this incredible reminder.

From Recover Your Joy:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower [1953]

He was nine when he remembers the war coming for the first time. It was how he said it, "I was nine the first time I remember when the war came."

When the war came.

I had never heard it said that way. I think of men going to war. Of soldiers going off to war, but never of the war coming to me. To my family. My home. My city.

Snow Day

This morning dawned white and cold with even more snow forecast. I tried to back out of the last day of the Miksang workshop but two of my classmates offered me a ride through the snowy morning. And, what a day it turned out to be. A world transformed and a deeper journey into the "fields of perception" ... this time, appropriately enough, snow. As the day warmed, the snow began to melt, creating puddles and another field of perception ... reflections.

It was magical and easy to feel joyous today. The world was clean and bright covered with a soft white blanket and on Pearl Street Mall ordinary objects peeked out of the snow in extraordinary ways. I'm grateful that I let myself be pulled out of the cozy warmth of my house into the shared experience of seeing the world in a fresh way. While the image above would be considered "Miksang" ... based on a "flash of perception" ... the one below would just be considered cute. It wasn't seeing something new, I actually watched him for some time waiting for him to do something interesting.

But how could I not take his picture when he cooperated so well? More results of the day at the Miksang Snow gallery.

Equanimity

On this the second day of the Miksang workshop, we talked about equanimity ... the art of staying steady when the rest of the world is rocking and rolling. Miksang is a way to develop equanimity as we learn to see without judging, without labeling, simply seeing our perceptions and what "stops" us.

So, on this chilly November day, we bundled up and walked to a neighborhood pond surrounded by weeping willows. The pond was glassy and the reflections stunning. It was easy to fall into the peaceful beauty of the place. Every direction you looked, there were a hundred pictures. And there were layer upon layer to see and attempt to capture ... reflections spreading across the water, leaves scattered across the surface gently held by the surface tension, sticks breaking through the surface creating a calligraphy of stick and reflection, yellow willow branches weeping into the water, and leaves and debris creating a colorful, patterned mosaic floor of the pond.

But, there were also the tennis balls ... dozens of them, maybe even hundreds ... dark, muddy ones, green ones, yellow ones, orange ones ... jarring, incongruous notes in the idyllic setting. But equanimity means seeing things as they are and not judging them, not labeling as beautiful or ugly, so tennis balls belonged just as much as the fallen leaves and wispy reflections. It was so easy to see the beauty and there was so much of it that it was hard to take pictures of the tennis balls. I had to remind myself that the purpose of this exercise was developing equanimity not creating photographs that would be considered beautiful by the world. It wasn't an easy assignment when so much beauty was there just for the snapping. I'm not sure I passed this one either ... it was extremely hard for me to take a picture of the tennis balls.

And, now that I re-read this, there's a LOT of judgment going on in this note ... and actually in the workshop. At our end-of-day slide show where each student shows their images, there is a lot of ooing and ahhing going on by the students and many comments by the instructors as to which images are "miksang," or rich, or lovely, or "ab fab" (absolutely fabulous), or "that should be a print." When you think about it, the very word "miksang" is judgmental since it means "good eye." So, now I'm back to the drawing board ... back to the definition of miksang taken from the website:

‘Good’ here doesn’t mean good as we usually use the word, as in good or bad. Good here means that our mind is uncluttered by preoccupation, relaxed and open. Its innate nature is clear, brilliant, and extremely precise. When steady mind, clear vision and soft heart come together in one single moment, ‘Good Eye’ manifests. It is vision that is inherently pure, unobstructed, unblocked, free of depression, free of aggression, free of interpretation. Free altogether. When we synchronize eye and mind, we abandon all concepts and predispositions and become completely present in the moment. The world becomes a magical display of vivid perception. We can develop the ability to experience and express these experiences precisely through the practice of contemplative photography.

While this definition doesn't mention the word "judgment," in order to "abandon all concepts and predispositions and become completely present in the moment," wouldn't we have to eliminate judgment? More to chew on.

In the meantime, the image at the top was part of the beauty ... the one at the bottom is obviously the ugly duckling tennis balls. More images are at the Miksang Water gallery.

Seeing Sidewalks

Today was the first day of the Miksang Level II workshop (miksang is Tibetan for "good eye"). Miksang is a practice to develop the ability to see things without categorizing and labeling them; to truly see them as they are rather than as the symbolic pictures we have in our mind. If we see a rose, we have a tendency to immediately put it in the category of plant/flower/rose without seeing the individual "roseness" of the specific flower in front of us. It tends to be the same when we are taking pictures ... we take the pictures we've always seen unless something breaks the pattern and helps us see in a new way.

Today we focused on one "field of perception" in order to exhaust our labels and categories and break into new territory. According to our instructor, Michael Wood, by exploring one subject to the point of boredom, if we pushed through that point, we would arrive at a new connection with the subject, a fresh way of seeing it, a place beyond our normal preconceptions and cliched thinking. Our subject for the day: SIDEWALKS.

I was a little apprehensive about spending 2-3 hours shooting sidewalks but headed off through Boulder's Pearl Street Mall on this chilly and dreary November day only to be amazed and delighted at the world I found at my feet. Squatting in an alleyway I found the still life shown here and can only wonder at the story behind it. Every time I bent down I found landscapes in miniature ... canyons, sand stone monuments, beaches, and dry river beds. And what colors ... of course they were sometimes broken bits of glass or discarded chewing gum, but still the colors and lines and shapes were truly amazing. I think I failed the assignment because I never got bored ... but I will also never look at sidewalks in the same way. They may not have the grandeur of the Grand Canyon or the majesty of the Tetons but what an incredible miniature world lies beneath our feet.

It wasn't until I was on my way home that I wondered why we can't look at each other in a miksang way. Why do we see "Muslims" or "Christians" or "Democrats" or "Republicans" or "Lawyers" or "Engineers" when those categories are just abstractions that don't accurately and fully describe any individual. What if we had "miksang people workshops" that would help us break through our preconceived notions and labels about people? Maybe, if we could connect deeply with enough individuals and see them for who they truly are, we could begin to let go of our stereotypes and neatly labeled boxes. Maybe we would begin to accept each other more fully and appreciate our brilliance as well as our imperfections. Maybe we would find ways to be more peaceful with each other.

More Images: If you would like to see more sidewalk images, please go to this gallery.