September 11, 2007

How the world has changed since September 11, 2001. I wish the leaders of the world could
apply the wisdom of compassion to their decision making.
Here is one of my favorite poems by Thich Nhat Hanh which addresses the WE / THEM attitude that afflicts so many of us and leads to such suffering.

Please Call Me By My True Names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow----
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the eart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
and legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by the sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart could be left open,
the door of compassion.



Thich Nhat Hanh

Accept Nothing, Question Everything

I came across this graffiti in a back alley in Oberlin, Ohio. Hope it stimulates some thoughts and/or discussion.

Also, I do hope that for those creatives reading this blog, that you are setting up some goals for yourself that you would like to accomplish this fall. The end of the summer is a great time to plan and visualize what it is you want to do with your creative energies.

Have a great labor day weekend....

The Real Treasure....

Here is one of my favorite quotes from Heimrich Zimmer....
"The real treasure, that which can put an end to our poverty and all our trials, is never very far; there is no need to seek it in a distant country. It lies buried in the most intimate parts of our own house; that is, of our own being. It is behind the stove, the centre of the life and warmth that rule our existence, the heart of our heart, if only we knew how to unearth it. And yet - there is this strange and persistent fact, that it is only after a pious journey in a distant region, in a new land, that the meaning of that inner voice guiding us on our search can make itself understood by us. And to this strange and persistent fact is added another: that he who reveals to us the meaning of our mysterious inward pilgrimage must himself be a stranger, of another belief and another race."

SUMMER PUTS BIG QUESTION OUT THERE

by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune

June 15, 2007
The days are long now.
The early birds wake you up at some insane hour, yakking away like drunks staggering home from an all-night party.
You could get up then too, with the morning light just creeping in and the world still in a lull except for the noisy birds and the air conditioners of neighbors who like summer at the temperature of a morgue.
You could get up and put all this extra light to use. Study. Garden. Bike. Bake. Run. All before 8 a.m. Seize the rays!
Or you could just lie there and watch the slow illumination of the room and think about how to spend these few long days that will never come again.


Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?

Those are the final lines of a poem someone gave me one day last winter. It's by Mary Oliver and called "The Summer Day."

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?


There's more to the poem, but it's those final lines that get stuck in your head like chewing gum in your hair, that knock on your mind with the force of a dare.

So, sucker. What exactly are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

Good luck getting that thought out of your head now that it's been planted.

What you're going to do with your one life is a question for all seasons, but it squeezes you in a particular way on these days when there are 15 hours and more from sunup to sundown, with the bonus light of dawn and dusk on either end.

Time and light are related. If you live in a place that's often cold and dark, you don't have to be an Einstein to know that. In places like Chicago , the gift of light feels like the gift of hours.

"Light does not age," I read recently. The line referred to the theory of relativity, and I'm not sure what it means scientifically, but the poetry of it feels true.

The long days this time of year create the illusion that time has slowed down, been stretched, looped back on itself, restored some part of yourself that seemed gone.

The extra light feels like an extended warranty on life.

Every summer I write down -- and occasionally write about -- my summer to-do list. Every summer, the list is a contest between idleness and industry.

To-do:

Walk before breakfast.

Walk after dinner.

Read for pleasure before breakfast.

And after dinner.

Eat outside for breakfast, dinner, lunch.

Find a beach.

Eat blueberries.

Watch the shadows in the trees.

Do more of everything good.

Do less of everything else.

Do more of nothing.

A thing not to do:

Rush.

When the days are long, the nights are different too, and they invite you to act differently.

A few nights ago, a couple of my friends went out. It was late, way too late for people their age to be embarking on the evening, but when the days are long, the night can seem young even when it's not.

They were strolling around their neighborhood when a man rode up on a bicycle. He had a chair on the back and offered them a ride. They rolled through Chicago in the warm night like emperors in a rickshaw, seeing the place they live from a different angle, at a different speed.

That's the kind of thing worth doing with your one wild and precious life.

So consider this your summer challenge. And if you needed more incentive, here's this: Next week, at the official start of summer, the days start getting shorter.

----------

mschmich@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Catherine Edelman Gallery Show

If you are in the Chicago area and have not yet seen the "Mourning Light" series up close, please stop by the Catherine Edelman Gallery at 300 W. Superior Street.
The show will be up until July 7th.

Unbroken circle,
my mind travels...
are we not but stars
suspended in space,
energy soon to be extinguished,
searching for that which is known
and that which is imagined,
visions reflected in light and shadow.

Santa Cruz Arcade

And we wonder why there is so much violence in this country!

Thoughts from Andrey Tarkovsky

Andrey Tarkovsky - Sculpting in Time
The Great Russian Filmmaker discusses his Art

“Art is born and takes hold whenever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal : that longing which draws people to art.…..in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle ….

When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the ‘dirt’ of the world. On the contrary! The artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution….the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite : the image.

Hideousness and beauty are contained within each other. This prodigious paradox, in all its absurdity, leavens life itself, and in art makes that wholeness in which harmony and tension are unified. This image makes palpable a unity in which manifold different elements are contiguous and reach over into each other. One may talk of the idea of the image, describe its essence in words. But such a description will never be adequate. An image can be created and make itself felt. It may be accepted or rejected. But none of this can be understood in any cerebral sense. The idea of infinity cannot be expressed in words or even described, it can be apprehended through art, which makes infinity tangible. The absolute is only attainable through faith and in the creative act.

The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. Artistic creation demands of the artist that he ‘perish utterly’, in the full, tragic sense of those words….

Moreover, the great function of art is communication, since mutual understanding is a force to unite people, and the spirit of communion is one of the most important aspects of artistic creativity. Works of art, unlike those of science, have no practical goals in any material sense. Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has to do not with practical advantage but with realizing the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice; the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of ‘self-expression.’ Self-expression is meaningless unless it meets with a response.

…In Art, as in religion, intuition is tantamount to conviction, to faith. It is a state of mind, not a way of thinking. Science is empirical, whereas the conception of images is governed by the dynamic of revelation. It’s a question of sudden flashes of illumination….to what does not fit in to conscious thought."