"GIRL" , ceramic, steel, 24" x 5

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I have a friend who is in the hospital having surgery today.

I am praying for him, his physicians and his family.

When I chose this photograph to complement my writing today, I did it because of the sense of REACH in the sculpture.

Her neck is yearning toward distant pastures..

But is that really prayer?

Is it the action of going outside ourselves for something?

I’m just asking, here, because it’s interesting territory and I watch myself continually going elsewhere for the blessings of GRACE.

I do know from my own experience, that we, humans, are not the be-all-end-all.

We think we are and that is dangerous at best.

For my friend, I want legions of angels and archangels whispering in the ears of his weary doctors and all the detritus of the mundane world OUT of that room as he rests in a state of uncomplicated willingness to allow the invasion happening to him.

I pray for his ease of recovery and for the results he desires to be forthcoming.

Is this life-experience all our own illusion?

I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I need help along this path.

And when I am pure of heart (meaning asking from a non-ego position), assistance is there for me.

It often comes in a decidedly different costume than I had imagined.

But with time on it, I see that my own intelligence could carry me only so far and the gift of it was a few steps further.

Like the health challenges I swim in these days..

Who would’ve thought up this screwy plan to make me stop and undertake this graduate course in refining my life into a package authentically reflective of me?

And yet.. my prayers have always centered around the desire to BECOME REAL.

So, who’s to know?

Today, I pray for peace and healing for my friend.

Whatever that looks like.

"TRIBE", 2003, 24" x 5" x 7", ceramic,steel,wood

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My friends are my gold.

The fact that these particular humans are in my sphere is my greatest achievement.

I invite people into my life for a variety of reasons but the foundation is respect.

Oh yeah.. and the fact I don’t have to (or want to) edit myself with them.

Over this past week as I moved, they have shown up for me in ways that have opened my heart multi-fold.

Cleaning, restaurant-going, listening, driving, dog walking, cleaning some more, packing, laughing, crying..the whole shebang.

I ask myself: “What did I do to deserve this wealth?”

The answer seems to be that I BECAME REAL.

Only then could they find me.

Only then could I recognize them.

When you choose change or it just happens willy-nilly without invitation, make darn sure you don’t do it alone.

My tribe is patient with me.

They know that asking for help is tough for me.

But they keep telling me that f I don’t get the hang of it soon, we ALL lose.

Funny, the adage that it is really the GIVER of service who receives the most in return seems to be spot on..

I don’t know.. the coffers of my heart are darn nigh spilling over..

Within the intensity of this schoolroom of moving to a new home, I am tested and thrown to my knees (literally).

Last night, as I got up to let my dog out, I fell.

Nothing damaged and I am fine but I speak with more authority this morning as I talk about what needs to happen in my life to keep living, essentially.

Not just that, but to thrive while doing so.

Today, we’ll visit THE VACUUM.

Here’s a story:

A good friend is smack in the middle of a divorce following years of what seemed a solid and vital partnership.

She has good taste and found herself test driving a yellow mercedes convertible.

Every cell in her body was thanking her for the wind in her hair and the identity-enhancement of the whole thing..

It was blessed peace to be transported to something ELSE..

The point here, is that the filling up and shifting into anything OTHER THAN the subject at hand will turn around and bite you.

If my wise friend had allowed herself to write a check for that yellow panacea, she’d be LESS THAN, not MORE.

She would have filled her very emptiness with an attention-grabbing experience that would have left her soul dry and hungry at some point.

Closer to home, in my own personal experience, my nervous system is overloaded with the worry and concern regarding the progression of the weakness in my body.

An antidote to the overload is an emptying out of EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT SERVING ME IN SOME WAY.

Creating a vacuum where there once was STUFF and TIRED OUT PRACTICES and ANNOYING PILES OF UNDONE TASKS and MEDICATIONS TAKEN OUT OF FEAR AND NOT PROOF OF EFFICACY and CLOTHES WITH BUTTONS I CAN NO LONGER FASTEN and TOLERATIONS OF ALL COLORS AND SHAPES which I am no longer willing or able to address.

I MUST HAVE ROOM!

Funny, how downsizing allows a manageable peek into what is stealing energy.

You take what works and leave the rest.

Turns out, I actually need very little.

PEACE OF MIND is my goal as the efforts toward healing cannot happen in any other garden, no matter how sexy or fast or yellow.

How much can you take away before you lose the essence of a thing?

The power is in the laying down of what used to be called ‘The American Dream’ and the active waiting for what wants to be taken up.

This is hard-going, this segueing into the truth of authentic need and desire.

It looks funny and awkward to others and may be unpopular at best.

But people will watch you out of the corner of their eye and see the shift you are making toward a very palpable peace.

"HORIZON LINE", 1996, 6' x 4', m/m

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Forever enchanted with new horizons, I tend toward what might look like a life steeped in insecurity.

I often hanker after a hundred year-old porch swing on a veranda attached to a family-held estate with kids playing bad clarinet and an old yellow lab keeping my feet warm.

But that’s another life….

Certainly not this one.

Recently, I completed a seminar in public speaking for professionals.

One of my homework assignments included creating a 7 minute talk which would be videotaped.

The topic I chose was CHANGE.

Not just change, but how to thrive (or just be ok) within it.

This past month has brought the sale of my home, two weeks to find a new place to live, packing and the physical and emotional tumult that goes along with all that multiplied by 10 as my nervous system tried to keep it’s fragile boundaries intact.

I was so out of it that I totally forgot my own advice I had presented in the seminar.

For the next few days here, on my blog, I’d like to take some time to remind myself and share with you some of the key points I came up with regarding THRIVING IN THE FACE OF CHANGE.

The first of these I call POINT OF VIEW.

Here’s an example:

Cathy moves into a little doll’s house of an apartment.

She chooses it because it is filled with light and it feels like a safe retreat for her to do some needed healing.

In her health challenge, the value system she holds keeps changing.

Right now, her need for light and security and an energetic sense of support prompt the choice of this postage stamp sized home.

Here, she sits amidst boxes and gritty floors from the movers and no dog door for the chihuahua, Olivia, and passageways only just accommodating her walker.

This is a great place but she is mired in self-doubt in her exhaustion.

Possibility is a far-away country at this point.

She is challenged and starts to spiral down.. and down..

But WAIT!

Hold on a second, here.

Wasn’t there hope and inspiration and clarity and an eagerness to meet the unfamiliarity of the place just a day or two ago?

And isn’t she a resilient and creative human being intent on adventure and opening to new territory?

And isn’t there light pouring through the bay window and a dog curled at her back; peaceful in the midst of all this chaos?

I’m not professing any pithy new age aphorisms that leave one cold and empty of a good reality check.

Shifting ones’ point of view is extremely good medicine if you happen to find living well an attractive concept.

Can’t walk today? Lost your job? Burned the dinner?

Cry a bit if you must then remember all we can count on is change and enjoy the time in
between.

It is at times like these that I hobble to the mirror and put on my favorite pink lipstick, blot my lips and begin again..

Usually works every time.

I’m pretty sure tomorrow is in the not too distant future.

It’s all in your point of view..

"CRITICAL MASS", 22" x 22" x 4", matches, earth

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Since I will be off line a few days, I wanted to leave you with something special.

I have tasted the teachings and miracle-mongering of many revered teachers in my lifetime.

In the end, all the trying we might do hoping for answers to ease our shared suffering and ponder pesky questions like: “What is the purpose of life?” urge us inward, not outward.

Here is an interview with someone I love and greatly admire for his ability to reduce the flotsam into what feels essential and practical.

It is kindof a longish interview but you can take in in in stages like eating a warm and gooey chocolate cake…

The focus in the interview is yoga but you can substitute any old thing: illness or frailty, relationship, politics or choosing an apple from the grocery store..

The point being to access that still place inside us and ask for prompting regarding how to better negotiate this sometimes rugged road we all walk.

Open, listen, receive, trust, move.

Red apple or green one?

See you soon in my new home.

"PORTRAIT OF RICARDO", 22" x 22", 2003, earth,nest,shell,rattlesnake rattle,feather,mica,ceramic,pearls,dice,fish spine

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“To live content with small means when need be; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy not respectable; and wealthy not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; await occasions, hurry never…. this is my symphony.”

-William Henry Channing

untitled, 2003, 4' x 4' x 4", earth, ceramic, mica

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If you came to my door this morning and entered my home for the first time, if you were a truly intelligent sort you’d leave immediately..

CHAOS!!!!!! EVERYWHERE!!!!!

Boxes and stuff and melted snow (storm last night) and a freaked out chihuahua and a limping woman and a half eaten avocado and a broken vase and a list of storage space prices and a huge pile of treasures that will blessedly belong to someone else tomorrow after they get to Goodwill…

MY LIFE!!!

MY PRECIOUS LIFE!

It is oozing into other environs..

I know it knows the way.

But I lost the map somewhere in this catastrophe..

Bear with me this next week as I find home..

xxx…

untitled, 1998, 11 x 11 x 4" each, m/m

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I’m reading a book right now in which they talk about the mantra of “FURTHER.”

I like it.

Not in a running- away -from- something kind of way.

But more like moving ever toward the sense of something larger than we know.

“The core of goodness,” a wise man named Erich Schiffmann once said.

What I have learned for myself is that when I move from one point to another; either physically as in the relocation I am in the process of making now, or trying out new behaviors or making new marks in an art piece; if I do that from an inner prompting instead of pure rationality, stuff works.

‘Further’ feels awkward at first.

The familiar is giving way to the ‘call.’

Unknown, untested territory.

But what, I ask you, is better than THAT?

Yes, things don’t always work out the way we have decided they should.

If I always got every thing (read: Tom, Dick and Harry..) that I was so SURE were right for me, well… I’d likely be cavorting around in an apron with my mouth duct taped shut and the tires slashed on my car.. (no bitterness, just noticing..)

Because I now have a solid sense of myself as an authentic being, I can trust the the whispers that urge me further.

This trust is an earned thing.. not a given.

Most of the time it’s fun to watch the unfolding of my life into something tuned beautifully to my nature.

Except when it’s not and then, if I have my wits about me at all, I laugh and decide again.

Or cry..and decide again.

Really, it is all about the stretch.

It excites me even in this bone-weariness of moving.

Further, further..into the wild.

"GEOMETRY", 2007, 30" x 30", earth, ceramic, mica, gold thread, pearls

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I am a very poor dog trainer.

Olivia is confused.

She loves me and wants to protect me from all harm.

Her giant spirit in a little, little package pulls out all the warrior paraphernalia when men approach my door.

If the man wears a cap.. forget it.

Yesterday, David came by.

I met him on my first trip to New Mexico in 1989.

He loves rocks and fossils and is the perfect roadside geology man.

If dinosaur bones get you all atwitter.. he’s your guy.

We began our 20 year friendship watching the world with witness-glasses and enjoying an easy commentary together.

We still do that witnessing thing and still enjoy one another in a ‘chosen family’ sort of way.

He is a painter. Has always gone out into the wilds and moved the pleasure of his intimate connection with nature from his heart to the canvas.

Yesterday he brought me a few paintings to see.

They were spare and and ‘haiku-esque.’

So accomplished in the removal of EVERYTHING non-essential.

The two of us had not seen one another in quite awhile.

So the movement within us both was apparent.

He is far less than I remember.

I am emptying out as well.

What I SAW yesterday, was a man approaching my door.

My friend.

He looked quite the same.

But he was less.

Olivia sensed him and knew he was good.

I had prepared him to be patient as I had my dog at the door, on the lead and ready to make the corrections I am learning to train her away from barking and nipping at strangers.

She wagged and squeaked and wriggled as I opened the door.

No barking…

She had no need or desire to protect me from this person.

I just stood there as he came in and watched the two of them enjoy the recognition of a mutual ’something-or-otherness.’

My sense is that she noticed his pure heart, emptiness and lack of type A ‘I want a particular outcome and I’ll do anything to get it’ kind of human tactic (read: Cathy in the dog training process).

He has POWER in this instance.  A quiet and undefended approach.

I think I see that where she is concerned, I am mistakenly going after FORCE.

Little jerk here, a push-away there..

YUK..

Something about this equation is wrong.

Today, I am going to try to translate what I learned from their interaction into my dealings with my health and well-being.

Instead of attempting to force feed my body with health enhancing activities by rote, I will court spaciousness.

I will let that innate thing come forward without the costuming of effort.

Those clothes are worn and tattered anyway.

Familiar at best, but threadbare and spent.

I am tired and bored today with the ever-so-purposeful-and-incessant-hand-on-the-tiller navigation of life.

The intelligence of emptiness .

This is intriguing territory to me.

detail, "SELF PORTRAIT", 24" x 24" x 4"

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COMING HOME

by Mary Oliver

When we’re driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we’re weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.

*****

I found my new home yesterday..

It is small.

And so bright with SUN!!

And quiet.

My small loveseat covered in white linen will sit in the bay window.

There is a big brick porch.

With chairs and an umbrella.

The walls are smooth plaster.

And the floor is sealed earth.

My dog has grasses and stones and trees to explore.

Without me. On her own.

The kitchen holds only one.

Or two, if you really like each other.

I feel safe there.

It has a presence I recognize and trust.

I can heal there.

I will heal there.