"Every journey has secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware." — Martin Buber
In preparation for a series of 14-hour drives through farmland to my father’s, from Kentucky to Minnesota, I revisited the story of Odysseus. Most of you will remember his 20-year voyage, and the monsters, goddesses, Sirens and storms he met along the way. I felt the mythical impact of being called to attend to my 96-year-old father and his dying wife, but also the “something else” — the invisible difficult web present in the family legacy. I felt trapped in that story, which creates a fixed frame of reference. A fixed frame of reference impedes the celestial help that is always here. I needed to have a deeper story inside me. Not the monkey-mind stories, but one from the universal myths that carry a timeless wisdom and a primordial knowing that has nothing to do with culture, race, gender, economics or time.
How can I begin to tell the transforming effect of having a story, which becomes a sacred map inside you? The map shows the next step, and the road is a pathway to traverse the human dilemma— the impossible circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in….
Are You Guided by Aim or Fate?
I love returning to a book or a poem that is well written, as there is always something new that emerges, or something I have read before, but now I understand more deeply. There is a scene from Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings, when an arrow, against all odds, hits its mark. Tolkien says: It was guided by aim or fate. What an image! We have all had the experience of something coming to pass where there seemed to be a force outside the realm of cause and effect at work. How much of our work results from our aim, our will– and how much from something that we cannot quite pin down?
How to Inspire Your Art When You Are Not Making It
We have all had the experience of needing to step back from our work– to get a fresh perspective, and I am thinking again how valuable it is to be around art and artists– and discovering new artists. I have been on a retreat at St Meinrad Archabbey. When I first arrived I felt I was in the story "Beauty and the Beast", when she wakes to find herself alone in a castle, and the table is adorned with fresh flowers, a large bowl of fruit and a fine bottle of pinot noir. The "guest house" has porches all around, looking out to the woods. The reason I am here is by invitation of Brother Martin, the artist in residence– and my need for some solitude.
Wandering
As many of you know, Steven and I have designated "Sabbatical Sundays" as the day we turn off our cell phones and computers, and find another way to enter the day. As much as I love solitude, it is curious to see the extent to which my mind is captured by the impulse to check this or that on my gadgets– fingers and a mind that resist being still. You could say that these Sundays are a kind of mind experiment. One Sunday Steven woke up and said "Let's go east!" This is the day of the week we often get in the car and head out on adventures without the advantage of GPS– and both of us having a tendency to get lost. So without any plan, we left before breakfast and drove through the rolling hills of central Kentucky. I was captured by all the old tobacco barns with the "hex" signs.
New Year's Eve Tidings
This morning before first light, I was greeted by the hoo-hooing of a pair of owls outside our window. I had gone to sleep reading Jung's "Memories, Dreams & Reflections", and his thoughts on death, alchemy and eternity. Perhaps these ideas are more prevalent with the ending of another year, and the mystery of what is beginning. This poem from Rumi came to mind:
Making Order Out of Chaos
Everyone has his or her own way of working. For me there are times when I need to step back from the creative chaos that has taken over my studio, let the paintings germinate, and re-create order. This is the phase I am in now. I began this week by cleaning, organizing, sorting– letting go of things I no longer need. This is a somewhat difficult task to stay focused on, as all along the way I come across scraps of papers with phrases like: “old and broken boat” and “the festal intention of these flowers was revealed” * – with no note about where these words came from. Without knowing what it means, something happens when I ponder the festal intention of the flowers. I feel lighter.But it’s almost Thanksgiving, and I must get back to creating order, making room for something to happen.
Why Make Art?
Why make art? This is the question that was posed for a group of us who met for lunch this week:
Two poets, a composer, a psychotherapist, a sculptor, a graphic designer, a drawing professor, a painter and a calligrapher. It was such a lively conversation! There were many different strands to our talk, so I will take just one today.
One of the people in our group had decided to quit making, and caused me to ask myself again: Why am I a maker?
Wandering in Umbria: A workshop at La Romita School of Art
The sense of local, of what is particular to a place, along with the absence of chains, of Starbucks, in itself is a delight In these small Umbrian towns. Back home, I am longing for my coffee to taste like it does in Italy- and to have the sense of history, art and time that is embedded in stone here.
King Minos and the Minotaur
When I was nineteen I had the opportunity to take a break from my studies and travel to the Greek Islands. I arrived by boat on a misty full moon night in March. Off the coast of Santorini they were digging for the “Lost Atlantis”. My studies of mythology, and how it is mixed with history, came alive– and I felt myself to be in a story (that was then and the feeling hasn’t left).