One of My Favorite Things

When assessing the past year of my life, I like to itemize the good, bad, painful, insignificant, difficult, etc. Those are crass classifications, and over simplified categories, but they make it easy when trying to write about the past.

Today, I'd like to focus on my favorite things. In no particular order, they are: food, especially when shared with friends; music, especially popular music, female vocalists, jazz from the 30's, 40's, ad 50's, blues, blue grass, 60's and 70's rock'n'roll, and the classical music of Phillip Glass; Frankye, with whom I share my life and home; singing; my home and art studio; my dogs; the close network of friends I have developed; my sister, always a favorite; and then there's ART.

I have to capitalize ART because for the past 30+ years art has played a large role in my life. When I first got sober I didn't know what to do with myself. A big chunk of my life had been taken up with partying, going to clubs (7 nights a week), and socializing around booze with other boozers. Sobriety is about changing people, places and things that you did while you were drinking.

I spoke up at an AA meeting about not knowing what to do with myself anymore and being afraid I would relapse out of sheer boredom. I needed something in my life. A friend approached me after the meeting and invited me to attend an art class she was taking at a local art studio. The teacher was artist John Oliver Brown. I knew when she said it that it was what I was looking for. I had always made pictures. When I was a child anything to do with art facinated me and held my attention. I attended the class, met John, liked him, and studied with him for two years. Making and looking at art has been a cornerstone of my life since then.

There are artists that inspire me and have for decades now. Many artists have caught my attention, some for long periods of time, some for moments. The masters of modern art: Picasso, van Gogh, Cezanne, Klee, Gaughin, O'Keeffe have all amazed and inspired me. Then there are the artists who I consider my favorites. These artists continue to be an important influence and inpiration on me: Robert Motherwell, Susan Rothenberg, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Elizabeth Murray, Arthur Dove, Richard Diebenkorn, and (in my opinion) America's greatest living artist, Brice Marden. Newly discovered artist, Nathan Oliveira's work resonates within me as well.

How have these artists been able to captivate me for so long? That's a hard question to answer. All I know is that when I stand before a work of one of these artists I have a physical, emotional and intellectual reaction.

Two times in my life I have wept when viewing a painting. The first time was when I saw van Gogh's "Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The painting is not large. It's framed behind glass, something that surprised me. Looking at each brushstroke sent shivers down my spine and I found myself weeping quietly. The other time I wept was at an exhibit of Elizabeth Murray's work. There is something about her shapes and paintings that just move me.

My reaction to Schnabel's work is different. I am amazed by his energy, his chutzpah, and the vast expanse of his work. My reaction is as wide as his range. He's not an artist you can pigeonhole. He doesn't recycle one idea over and over. He can also piss me off more than any other artist I've seen. I always have a strong reaction to his work, excitement, anger, revulsion, awe.

Two artists, in particular, stir me deep, deep inside. They are Robert Motherwell and Brice Marden. Both of these artists have an intellectual as well as spiritual foundation to their work. They have honed self-expression to it's barest and most poignant point. It is not the substancelessness of minimalism (except Marden's early work), but it is expressive and deep, in the way a pebble dropped in a pond lives in the ripples it creates. Their paintings are like that for me. I keep going back to them, standing before them, watching the ripples; they never fail to resonate.

I could write something of each of the artists I've mentioned but then this blog would be too long. Dove, Rothenberg, Diebenkorn, Clemente and Oliveira are wonderful painters. I enjoy their paintings, am impressed by their painterliness and stirred by their work as well.

I've linked a website to each of their names. If you google their names and then click on images a horde of pictures from each artist will come up. Check out some of the pictures. I think you, too, will be impressed.

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Brice Marden, Attendant 5, 1996-99, oil on linen, 82"x57"

Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic 34, 1953-54, oil on canvas, 6'8"x8'4"

Monasticism

I received my quarterly copy of "Contemplation and Action," published by the Merton Foundation. In it was a fund-raising letter by Abbot, Fr. Damien Thompson. In the letter Fr. Damien explains that the Thomas Merton Foundation has..."a grand vision that is rooted in a monastic tradition that helped transform a troubled and failing European civilization 1500 years ago and that has the power to do the same in our time."

This is an interesting assertion and one that rings true to me. In the past thirty to forty years there has been an increase of interest in religions with a monastic tradition. Eastern religions, Hinduism and Buddhism in particular, have seen increases in the number of temples and churches in America and many different eastern faith denominations have established monasteries for training and housing monks and nuns. Roman Catholic monasteries are still scattered throughout the United States, though their resident numbers have dwindled.

The tradition of monasticism is ancient, having begun in Hinduism thousands of years ago (Hinduism is said to be at least 5000 years old), in Buddhism at least 2500 years ago (Gautama Buddha established a monastic order), and in Christianity at least 1700 years ago (Pachomius established a Christian monastic community ca. 270 A.D). Silent retreats, week-end long, week-long, month-long, and longer, are fairly popular today and are offered in both Christian, Hindu and Buddhist traditions.

Fr. Damien's letter explains that Merton understood the deep and sometimes prophetic understanding of life was a gift of his contemplative life. In Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer, Merton writes:

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you, tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God. For now I know that the creation, which first seems to reveal Him in concepts, then seems to hide Him by the same concepts, finally is realed in Him, in the Holy Spirit. And we who are in God find ourselves united in Him with all that springs from Him. This is prayer and this is glory!

There is a part of me that yearns for a quiet, alone, comtemplative life. I know I romaticize it and my fantasy of what it's like is probably unreal. But still, the desire is there, even if it is just a fantasy. Could I walk away from the world? Yes, I think I can at this point in my life. Could I do a three year Tibetan Buddhist retreat? NO WAY! I have no desire to actually be a religious monk. I only want to live quietly and peacefully in a world that doesn't demand so much of me.

Some Merton websites:
Thomas Merton Center of Pittsburg
The Abbey of Gethsemani
Thomas Merton Books
The Thomas Merton Center
Thomas Merton, Monk and Poet

The President's Address

Last night our President went on television from the oval office and gave an address that was less than informative and even less inspiring. He is a man with a firm grasp of the obvious as he finally verbalizes what most Americans have been thinking and televised pundits have been extolling for months. Some quotes from President Bush's speech (in red) and my comments (in black):

September the 11th, 2001 required us to take every emerging threat to our country seriously, and it shattered the illusion that terrorists attack us only after we provoke them. On that day, we were not in Iraq, we were not in Afghanistan but the terrorists attacked us anyway - and killed nearly 3,000 men, women and children in our own country.

He is correct when he says we were not in Iraq or Afghanistan on 9/11/01, but we were in Islam's holiest country, Saudi Arabia. It is no mistake that 17 of the 19 terrorists were Saudis. Osama Bin Laden repeatedly said that his war against America would cease when American bases in Saudi Arabia were closed and all U.S. military left.

Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day. I don't believe that.

The thing that strikes me about this comment is that he does not say that the war in Iraq is worth another American, Allied, or Iraqi life. That is the true cost of this war, and his omission of acknowledging that is evidence that his speech is a political maneouver to regain his poll numbers, and not a sincere desire to be honest and open with the American people.

We are approaching a New Year, and there are certain things all Americans can expect to see. We will see more sacrifice - from our military, their families and the Iraqi people.

Again, it is what he didn't say that speaks the loudest. Where is the sacrifice the government will make? Where is the sacrifice the politicians will make? They do not give over their sons to this endeavor. They are rich men getting richer, so they give up none of their fortunes. Where is their sacrifice?

I don't expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair and do not give up on this fight for freedom.

The origins of our national despair is the realization that our country is led by a fool, a very dangerous fool. Our despair is rooted in the awareness that the fool and his "advisors" will continue on their course no matter what reality, world leaders, or American citizens tell them.

My most solemn responsibility is to protect our nation, and that requires me to make some tough decisions. I see the consequences of those decisions when I meet wounded servicemen and women who cannot leave their hospital beds, but summon the strength to look me in the eye and say they would do it all over again. I see the consequences when I talk to parents who miss a child so much but tell me he loved being a soldier, he believed in his mission and, Mr. President, finish the job.

It has been reported over and over again that this President is never allowed to randomly meet and talk to people. Only people who are carefully screened on their pro-Bush, pro-adminstration positions are allowed to talk to him or attend his rallies and speeches. A case in point: his refusal to meet with Cindy Sheehan, anti-war activist and mother of killed soldier.

If those who are like wanton children
Are by nature prone to injure others,
What point is there in being angry--
Like resenting fire for its heat? -Bodhicaryavatara

It is helpful, at times like these, to know that the President's voice is not the only voice out there. Here are some helpful websites that express another view:

United For Peace
Peaceful Tomorrow - Families of 9/11 Victims
Not In Our Name Project
Veteran's Aginst the Iraq War

There are many, many more groups. Just GOOGLE anti-war groups, and pages upon pages of American and International groups will appear.

A Christmas Message

Hostilities aren't stilled
through hostility,
regardless.
Hostilities are stilled
through non-hostility:
this, an unending truth.

-Dhammapada, 1,
translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.

Sometimes Crashing, Sometimes Floating

Sometimes people crash into each other. The movie "CRASH" was about exactly that. But it happens in everyday life to everyday people, everyday.

We humans are imperfect, defective, our full potentials unrealized. We're all in the water, swept along by the movement of the river. Because of our very human malady we sometimes crash into other people who happen to cross our path and who's vulnerability is momentarily compatible with our agression or ignorance. It's cruel and harsh and painful to watch, even when unknowingly commiting the act simultaneously. So easy to look outside me to others. So easy to scream, "hey you, what are you doing? Stop it! Stop it!" as I trample others in my righteous indignation. So easy to anger than feel compassion or ask why the perpetrator is himself in so much pain.

Then we have moments when we are floating along, all in the same water, floating along on the river of life. Not aggressive, not trying to get ahead, not trying to destroy others to save ourselves. Just staying afloat together, all understanding we are as vulnerable as one another. Sometimes it takes a glimpse of someone else's pain, or a word whispered from a friend, or a mirror image of ourself seen crashing, to relax and just float, float along with all the othes.

low

The American Heritage Dictionary’s 5th definition of low is: "Emotionally or mentally depressed; sad."

That about describes it. That’s me right now. It doesn’t help that I don’t feel well. Hard to know which came first. But I do know that I am low today. Way down there. Again from the dictionary: "Having little height;" "Below average or standard in degree, intensity or amount;" "A low level position or degree;" and the one that is the truest description of my mood: "The gear configuration that produces the lowest range of output speeds, as in an automotive transmission."

What I really feel like doing is going home, having a nap, and then going into my studio and painting for a bit. I’d listen to music. Music that I love and can sing to. I’d let the music lift my spirit and the creative process would energize my mind and body. The smell of the oil paint and turpentine would tickle the follicles in my nose and reinforce the well-being creativity nurtures in me. The brush in my hand, my preferred tool of meditation, would rest my mind and spirit in a way no other thing can. At the end of it I’d have a picture, good or bad, it doesn’t matter. It would be a document of the experience I had one afternoon when I was feeling low and spent some time alone with my soul.

But today is Wednesday and my time and energy is accounted for. I’m at work, where I should be. With my headache. I will do chores at lunchtime and then return to work until my day there is over, my energy with it. I will return home and do a few more chores. I will listen to people talking. I will hear what they say as if I were in a well and they were speaking to me from above ground. A friend will come over. She will bring dinner. It will be delicious and comforting, as well as a relief not to have to cook. I will think about the day I had today and review the things on the agenda for tomorrow. I will understand that tomorrow will be a longer day and I will need to sleep longer and better tonight. I will wonder when I will have time for me to take care of recharging this low battery I am living on. I will realize it may be quite a while before that can happen. It will make me want to sleep deeper. I will hope that happens.

Questions Without Answers

I often, and have since I can remember, question what life is all about. Why am I here? Where is here? Who are you? Why everything? What are thoughts? Where do they live? Why doesn’t my mind get old like my body gets old? Or does it?

What is natural and what is fake? If everything on earth was created from something on earth then why isn’t everything natural? Everything that is made can be made. Everything that is learned can be learned. Human beings have not yet created something from nothing. Everything, including plastics, chemicals, splitting atoms, gene splicing, was here all along. It’s just a question of putting the right elements together, elements that already exist. No one has created a damn thing.

I didn’t invent metaphysical thinking and I started thinking these thoughts long before I had ever heard the words philosophy or metaphysics or heard anyone else verbalize these questions. So where does it come from?

I remember when I was about five years old I was playing alone on a tire swing. Just swinging softly back and forth lost in my own thoughts. I started to sing a song to God. It started out as a little song but I kept thinking of things I wanted to add to the song, so with each thought I had to start the song over to include my new concern. The song went on forever as every question and thought I had was added to this litany to God. Finally, my mother saved me from my first recollected existential dilemma and called me in for dinner. My litany hasn’t gotten any shorter and I fear it hasn’t gotten anymore sophisticated than it was forty-nine years ago.

Through the years, I’ve sought answers to my questions in philosophy and religion. No group has any answers. Each time I explored a new path I found the same questions answered with that leap-of-faith response, "it’s a mystery!" It’s either God’s mystery, or Jesus’ mystery, or the mysterious ways of the creator, or Krsna knows and if we achieve Krsna Consciousness the blinders on our eyes will be lifted and we, too, will know. If, when, then. No one knows the answer no matter how hard they try to believe they do. Jane Wagner said it best when she said that "reality is a collective hunch." That I can agree with.

Why is any of this relevant? I mean, what’s wrong with just not knowing? Nothing is wrong with not knowing. But how do you measure the success or failure of your life if you have no vision of what the purpose of it is? Is getting up every day and going to work of any consequence to anyone but my own comfort? Does it need to be?

Questions, questions, questions without answers, and yet, everyday I get up and go to work. Everyday I do what I believe is right regardless of the scores of thoughts to do the contrary pass through my mind. Everyday I do what I know how to do and try to be satisfied with it. Everyday I wake up not knowing why I’m doing it but do it anyway. Everyday I ask the same questions and know I don’t have the answers and never will. But I'll get up again tomorrow and ask them again anyway.

December 8th - A John Lennon Remembrance

Here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

Sounds like nonsense. Many of his lyrics sounded like nonsense.

Semolina pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower
Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna
Man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Alan Poe
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen
I am the walrus, goo goo goo joob goo goo goo joob

What does it mean? It means nothing. It's poetry combined with music and sound to create a vibration that resonates within. What's wrong with that?

When these songs came out the world was a different place than it is today. America was less capitalist and less commercial. It was much more idealistic and yet heartbreaking. Assassination of heroes was the terrorism of the day. In a five year period from Novemeber 1963 to June 1968, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were all murdered. The Viet Nam war was in full bloom with no end in sight. Nonsense songs were a reflection of not being able to make sense of a senseless world.

I loved the music. It is not an over statement or cliche to say that the Beatles were the sound track of my adolescence. I listened to other music as well, but it was the Beatles that soothed, amused, amazed and opened my mind. Every LP that came out was a leap forward that brought me along with them. There was hardly anything more exciting in my youth than the prospect of a new Beatles LP coming out. They were the only albums I listened to every track on. At that point in the music industry, albums were showcases for one or two single records that sold well, the rest of the album were cover songs and mostly dreck. The Beatles changed that. Every song was a gem. Every song was original. They never put their hit singles on their albums. The albums were all new material that had a feeling and mood that was distinct to that album. Beatles For Sale (known as Beatles ‘65 in the US), Rubber Soul, Revolver, all great LPs that paved the way for Sgt Pepper.

John Lennon was a spiritual, thoughtful, artistic man who could also be cruel, emotionally abusive to women and narcissistic. He was anti-Semitic, insecure, and brilliant. I loved his Beatle music and his solo music too. I'm glad I did not live in his shadow - it is so much more pleasant to have an idealized remembrance of him. But, having said that, it is my own life I remember when I think of Lennon or the Beatles. It is my own idealism and excitement of creativity that brings warmth to my thoughts and memories. And he can still do that with his music.

There are places I remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain

Songs sited are © Lennon/McCartney and published by Northern Songs Ltd.:
Come Together
I am the Walrus
In My Life

The Middle-Way

To balance my annual rant on the world and my place in it, I am trying to seek the wisdom of others so I may assess my life within a middle-way perspective. Here are some quotes from Ani Pema Chodron, western Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition:


"The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new."

"If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher. "

"We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground."

"People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That's not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further. "

"Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us."

Now It Begins

December. It is a time of anniversaries and birthdays. The 5th is my father's birthday. The 6th and 9th are my favorite uncle's and brother-in-law's birthdays. The 8th is the anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. The 10th is the wedding anniversary of my parents. The 24th is my cousin Maryann's birthday and the date of our annual Christmas eve dinner for family. The 25th is a day off work.

In the background of all this is my annual ritual of evaluating the year globally, nationally, locally and personally as well as evaluating my life up to date. I think about it, dream about it, meditate about it, write about it, read about it, make myself sick to death of it, wrap it up well, put it away and then begin the new year with fresh thoughts and enthusiasm.

This is my ritual each and every year. It works for me. I enjoy it in a sort of morose way. I get into the thick of it, roll around in the mud of it, snort, puff, blow, wallow in it. All the failures, the delays, and now that I'm older, the loss of all those missed opportunities are raked over, grieved, and put to bed for another year. I usually conclude that I did the best I could with what I had, that I overcame much, to accomplish what little I have, and that if I've offered only good intentions and a sincere heart to the world, then that is better than to have offered greed and a malicious mind.

The painting I've posted is called "Directions," and that sums up my annual ritual. The end result of the ritual is to put it all in its' place and so I post also "Directions" hanging in its' place in the home of friends Christi and Sue, a/k/a jtl and Q.

Absence

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. But that's not true of writing. When I haven't written in a while it just leaves my life. I don't think of it. I don't remember it. It's kind of like talking about how I feel, or discussing my thoughts. It can easily drift out of my life without a thought, or missing it at all.

Habits. Habits are facinating things. I've had habits that have been agonizing to break. Drugs, drink, cigarettes. Agonizing to give up and long term missing and grieving their absence. But talking about what I think? Writing my thoughts, feelings, musings, making art? They can fly out a crack in the window quicker than I can notice.

Developing a habit is also hard. The bad ones, of course, become habits before I really notice that I'm doing something. But the good stuff, the productive stuff, each step of the way is a chore. When I was trying to incorporate Buddhist practice into my life it was something I had to force myself to remember to do every day and then I missed it a day and the next day it was as if I had never done it at all. One of the hardest habits its taken me to develop is brushing my teeth before I go to bed. Stupid, right?

So, the jist of it is that I got out of the habit of blogging for several weeks. Now I want to incorporate it back into my life and so I have to force myself to write, and write about what is going on right now. Breaking and developing habits. My goal is still the same: to be more open about my life, even when it's trivial.