“Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around a lake”
Wallace Stevens, the poet (who had a day job at an insurance company), considered a seventeen-and-a-half-mile walk “a good days jaunt.” He walked in town, in the woods, and along highways. It was the walking that mattered. His poems depended on the enlivening of his senses, and the movement and observations that walking cultivated. It was in the early 1900s, when people walked more. And when they walked they did not have phones or earphones, and so were more attentive to their surroundings, noticing smell and sound and sight, even touch and taste. The mind was open to make space for new arrivals in the form of insight, phrases or words.
“Make Your Own Bible”
Make your own Bible, is followed by this suggestion:
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
This idea, along with Gerard Manley Hopkins’s idea of “inscape,” (which I will address later) is what is fueling the theme for my 2023 classes.
The world is still big.
I was lying on my back in the woods, watching the clouds. After some time the realization, simple as it is, hit me: the world is still big. This moment vanquished my anxiety and returned me to something I know and forget: There is something beneath and above all this noise. The world is not only this cacophony of chaos and disaster and busyness. How many days go by when there is just too much to consider, too much to take care of, too many dishes, too many emails, too much loss? The sky, when pondered long enough, brings back another order of immensity that puts all this too-muchness in perspective. When I stay in stillness, I feel myself a part of something much bigger. This is what can happen when I am working in my sacred space too — the sense of other intelligences, presences; other hands in the work — and the relief, the comfort, that I am not the center of whatever this is.
There is this saying: the path is already laid beneath your feet. I don’t mean pre-determination, or that it doesn’t matter which choices you make, but that the-something-you-came-into-the-world-with is still with you, waiting to open. There is something in you that cannot be taken.
Happy Being Small
This morning I looked out my window at the very small garden, well garden is still an imagined thing — but the new soil has just been added, and the string to determine what is level. I had no idea that this patch of bare dirt and string would be a playground for the baby birds! A fluffy fledgling Carolina wren is turning somersaults in the dust and then hopping up on the string as if it is her very own tightrope. When I sat down I was in a melancholy mood, but after watching this display, it is a very different sort of day.
Later I went to see Frankie York, the owner of New Editions Gallery. I told her stories of talking with other artists about how lucky we are to work with her. The privilege of having someone in charge of our work who cares about both the work and the artist who made it. Someone whose gift is creating the exhibit by transforming the atmosphere in the room until the space itself is also part of the art. Someone who is interested in each person that walks in the door. What Frankie said in response to my admiration was not what I was expecting…. “I think we are all tied together”, she said, “because we are happy being small.” This touched me, that phrase happy being small, and I have been thinking about it ever since.
The Lit Corridor
How do I hear my own voice in the midst of the world’s clatter and disaster? The truth of change and impermanence leads me back to the same question: Where do I find refuge from all the heartbreak of our world? There are so many competing demands that it is a struggle to preserve some sense of order, quality and dignity.
I ask myself these questions heading into my studio to write and paint. For me, the answer is always the same — get still enough to hear the voice inside. In my studio, I get quiet with my hands. I reach for my favorite fountain pen, or that tube of Vermillion. This is the way I can eventually come down from my head-full-of-doubt-and-fear, rest in my body intelligence, and open my imagination.
Consolation and imagination can also be found by paying attention to night and dreams. Even if I don’t remember a dream, staying still when I just begin to wake up, staying in that liminal place, is a lovely way to catch ideas and dream fragments. Solutions come unbidden that don’t occur to me in full daylight. Any thread of thought or dream will do — there is nothing too small, too ugly or too silly — and then I make a note of it. Or sometimes I just notice how my mind has already begun to spin and worry, and stay put,
refusing to get out of bed, until I find one moment of delight.
“I have worked hard to give up a place ordained by others in the world….” — Mark Nepo
“I have worked hard to give up a place ordained by others in the world, for this always leads me into noise, confusion and gruffness.”
— Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
My aim in teaching is the same for my students as it is for myself: to give up the place “ordained by others” and step into my own particular place in the world. The world cannot find me if I don’t find myself. I begin class with more than an idea, more than faith: it is the experience that each student who shows up has a gift — a gift that no one else has. The contemplative atmosphere in the classroom cultivates work that is distinct to each student. In our recent class in Taos, New Mexico, all the students worked with the same structure, tools, book form, and alphabet — and yet delicious creations arose that are unlike anything or anyone else. (Images from students below).
Art as Devotion
I had the doors and windows open so that birdsong could come in. I heard the high trill of a melody that comes only in spring, repeated over and over with the passion of a love song. I went outside with my binoculars to investigate. A bird less than half the size of my hand stood in the branches of the tulip poplar, singing his blue heart out.
Indigo is the wrong name, at least now, in the breeding season. He is an impossibly brilliant mix of turquoise, ultramarine and cobalt that covers his entire body. The only indigo is on his wing tips and around his beak. Regardless of what color he is known by, the indigo bunting is dedicated to singing until someone answers, until someone responds to his call. He waits to be answered, and sings and sings. When he sings, it is with every feather; everything vibrates, down to the tip of his tail. He holds nothing in reserve. This is devotion.
Delight
“The more stuff you love the happier you will be.”― Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
The nature of synchronicity* is surprise and delight. Those moments when the gods seem to collude in unexpected ways to make astonishment manifest. All kinds of things happen without any apparent cause, conspiring to make the impossible possible. It’s the feeling that something outside you has unexpectedly touched and answered an inner yearning.
You have all had moments of synchronicity, moments that confirm the connection between the inner and outer world. Something that has no causal explanation. I find I am often more open to this while traveling, wandering, or being in a strange place. Generally when I am away from my long list of things to do. I am not trying to get from A to Z. It happens when I am no longer expecting to know what I will find, but just noticing things. Transitions are a good time for synchronicity.
"Come, let's stand by the window..." — Danusha Laméris
Each morning after meditation when I head down to my studio, there is a process of re-orientation. I used to think that after I had been painting this long I would walk into my studio and know what to do. This hasn’t happened yet. So I begin with my opening ritual — a way of re-orienting a mind in chaos. I take a glass from the altar and fill it with clear water. I light incense and ring a bell. Above the altar I have pictures of my guides, friends and family. I express my gratitude. An old greeting card is also posted on the wall, with a child’s drawing of a train climbing up a hill with the caption yes you can, yes you can, yes you can.