Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Motivation, Incubation, and Expression


I have always been interested in collages – visual images spun, placed together in ways that may be surprising.  I had not thought much about it, except peripherally - as something would remind me, until a few months ago, when my friend’s granddaughter sent her a beautiful birthday card with the right amount of whimsy and charm and insight to motivate me back into the playful joy of childhood scissoring of all manner of papers and pasting.  Since then I pasted a picture together which reminded me both of the card, of my sister and me squatting on the living room floor surrounded by paper dolls and more, and of the absolute joy of creating and remembering.  That led me to making a “collage-book,” which I’ll display soon.

In the last few weeks I have been seeing all kinds of articles about collage, and the way certain artists integrate materials. One is BrainPickings, the fascinating brain-child of Maria Popovva, curator-at-large and troll of all manner of connections of potential human inspiration and interest. Another is the facsimile (and more!) of Joseph Cornell’s Manual of Marvels, noted in a book catalog I received in the mail (holiday time and all). In yesterday’s New York Times, I read “Recycled Newsprint,” by Carlo Rotella, which describes an exhibit running at Washington’s National Gallery until January 27. The curator and her collaborators call the exhibit Shock of the News, the catalog of which “offer(s) a cogent, evocative account of artists’ use and abuse of the newspaper from 1909 to 2009.” I find this fascinating – both the making of images from other images, and the collective consciousness summary of the findings/creations by others who “discover” them in a new context, as more of a whole over time. What more do they say, in context over time?

Again, bodies of work reveal themselves “naked” in the world in which they are incubated and expressed. The bodies change and show other interaction as context is expanded.  Keep looking.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Mother & Child, Cycles of Creation


A body of work – addition. I just finished reading Carole Maso’s novel, Mother & Child. I have read all nine of her other books, so can truthfully say that I have read her body of work, in book form. Mother & Child took me a while to read, though as always with her writing, I found that finding the moments to sink into the lilting rhythms was the most satisfying way to appreciate the images, the “singing narrative.” The reading itself becomes almost a cradling, a sense of lullaby, both muted and softly incoherent at times, lucid as starlight on a cold night in other moments. I was carried along with the rhythm and pace of the Spiegelpalais, and the dreaming and waking images Maso created of the mother and child’s interaction, their growth cycles and changes, how experience and knowledge become a way of life as love shown, lived.

I now have one more image of how we create our reality, each of us, individual and collective, how we mold our world into reflections of how we know ourselves to be, each blinking moment in Time.

“Pupa is from the Latin for puppet, and from puppet, or young girl, comes an animated doll-like puppet creature. Pupa is the life stage of some insects undergoing transformation. The Romans also noted that when you looked into the center of the eye, you saw a small doll-like image of yourself reflected, and this was called the pupil. Look, the child said, shining a light into the Grandmother’s eyes.”  (287)

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

An Opposite Force can and will work for you and with you


The ego can’t understand that the spirit and soul are there to help. The ego of man will simply not understand what to do first to gain access to this world of the inner self. Indeed, the fear of this ‘other world’ will be so great that the ego will feel much ‘safer’ when it denies that another world could possibly exist. This is not right or wrong, but it is a lack of understanding that an opposite force can and will work for you and with you.”  (Bridges of Consciousness, 210)

            I read a few sentences the other day that have stayed with me – maybe like a piece of sand or grit that burrows to much later become a pearl. The sentences were about how we don’t usually understand that opposing forces can work together to help us. This pearl of thought is relevant to me as I watch the news, and as I review the “endless electoral cycle” that has become an embedded part of our American life in particular. As I watch the news stories every day, and read Spiritual Philosophy with an ever-growing appreciation and intention, I understand better how necessary it is that we understand our mission in life, AS life, and that life is meant to be understood to be truly enjoyed and celebrated (shared). We cannot truly do this (live) as our “best angels” until we know our best self, which is designed to live love, truth, and equality and all that unfolds from the Ethical Values.  Knowing our best self requires a motivation to know and developing a love for life and learning.

            Every day now I listen to stories of how we, as a culture and world, are struggling to understand truth and lying. From the most respected and accomplished personalities to the most singular and “invisible” personality, we are showing ourselves the challenge we have to know the love, truth, and equality of our internal self as we are designed to be and to live as a whole energy being.

            A body of work is a body of knowledge that sustains itself as a whole throughout its eternal life, in whatever form (as energy). I am a body of knowledge as physical matter, as I have been created from the passions of my parents, and as I have continued to support (or abuse) myself as a physical human being growing, day by day, year by year – cellular matter adding density and mass, into the time and space of Time and experience. What do I know of the body of knowledge that I am? How do I use or apply the knowledge that I am? Knowledge is only a possession when it is used only by the intellect. This can be very useful in many ways, as I’ve enjoyed and acknowledge throughout our human history, yet this is not the true gift of knowledge as a body of work, a whole (a gift that keeps on giving).

            This is what is coming to me as I listen to our collective challenges and struggles to understand truth and lying, and therefore love and equality – the basis of the Golden Rule, love your neighbor as yourself.  We have lots of words for how we think and live this struggle to be who we want to be – “cover up,” denial, secret, secretive, private, privacy, hidden, revealed, levels, shades, sharing – the list goes on and on. Just as the elements of wind, water, sun, and sand (Earth) shift and change throughout time, and together, we uncover within ourselves the levels of consciousness that we have lived as we have created our evolutionary cycles of life.  We cling to beliefs that we have made “sacred,” or “set in stone.” We become possessive of who is entrusted with “right” and/or “wrong.” A deepening exploration and exposure to the study of myself as energy is teaching me to understand what Mandelbrot exposed in his own ways about fractal geometry; what Jackson Pollock expressed in his own ways about the cohesiveness in the distinctive patterns of nature; what Pythagoras heard and defined as the music of the spheres.

            I am coming to appreciate what “a body of work” means.  What does it mean to “age gracefully”? How do we know and define objects or practices or thoughts and emotions as “timeless”? What do they tell us, show us; how do they enlighten us? Fragments are essentially part of a whole, and can be in themselves beautiful, of course. A perfectly curved lip (Think Elvis!); a perfectly delicate flower petal just beginning to burst into full bloom; the head of a dandelion; a single pearl. Yet without the identification or association of their being, they mean much less. The parts add up to the sum – yet the sum is not simply a sum of parts. We are energy beings – organic in our consciousness journey as we create our lives, inviting ourselves to wake up and smell the coffee (and the natural perfumes of all of life, the joys that transport and set us down, gently, etc.). To begin a journey of reading a writer’s body of work is to acknowledge the design and pattern of life, and to begin to incorporate, to absorb, to integrate knowledge that cannot simply be taken in by the intellect. The same is true of any art form, and life is designed as the art of change and growth. Evolution. To begin to learn is to begin to apply the knowledge that “I am that I am.” Thought form expressing itself as love.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Teach a Man to Fish

I've been fishing only a few times in my life, but I have a few vivid and fond memories of being present while others fished. For instance, my Dad - standing on a pier while on family vacation, simple fishing pole in hand, looking over the lake in full contentment, it seemed; swimming below a long thin waterfall in Nigeria while on school vacation (junior high or high school), splashing in our big bright inner tube as a tall man approached the watering hole carrying a large carved gourd under his arm. Without changing expression, he walked to the edge of the water and kept going. He held onto the gourd and speared fish, which he placed inside the hollowed gourd until it was full. Then he made his way back to the water's edge and walked out and away. It was a fascinating sight, and I often wondered how the dinner tasted.

Memories are knowledge gained. What do we do with them?