Philosophy of Sleep

from Caretakers of Wonder, by Cooper Edens
via phantasmaphile

Falling asleep at night can mean approaching the strangeness of pensée de la nuit, so says Hélène De Leersnyder. What a great opportunity each night to practice serenity, and accept our solitude with creativity and gentleness.

"If tomorrow morning the sky falls... have clouds for breakfast.
If night falls... use stars for streetlights.
If the moon gets stuck in a tree... cover the hole in the sky with a strawberry.
If you have butterflies in your stomach... ask them into your heart.
If your heart catches in your throat... ask a bird how she sings.
If the birds forget their songs... listen to a pebble instead.
If you lose a memory... embroider a new one to take its place.
If you lose the key... throw away the house.
If the clock stops... use your own hands to tell time.
If the light goes out... wear it around your neck and go dancing.
If the bus doesn't come... catch a fast cloud.
If it's the last dance... dance backwards.
If you find your socks don't match.... stand in a flowerbed.
If your shoes don't fit... give them to the fish in the pond.
If your horse needs shoes... let him use his wings.
If the sun never shines again... hold fireflies in your hands to keep warm.
If you're afraid of the dark... remember the night rainbow.
If there is no happy ending... make one out of cookie dough."
    —From If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow, by Cooper Edens

Windwalker: Hero's Journey

Windwalker is a classic tale of a hero: the title character dies and is given a funeral, only to be reawakened by the Great Spirit for a final heroic task. Along the way, he overcomes a bear after falling into its den, teaches the meek to be brave, and recovers what was lost. In the end, he is rewarded for his deed by walking on the wind and being reunited with his true love.

In one of the more beautiful parts of the film, Windwalker teaches:
"Do not fear death . . .
As spring begins with winter
So death begins with birth.
It is only a step
In the great circle of life."

Diamond in the Mind

First Butterfly, by Sulamith Wolfing

What better amulet can you carry than one that is always present in your mind?

Here is the "amulet" I was recently taught:

"All conditioned dharmas
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows;
Like drops of dew, or flashes of lightning;
Thusly should they be contemplated."
    —excerpt from Diamond Sutra

Yoga Practice: Migration

Bird migration at Eddystone Lighthouse, by Charles Samuel Keene

Watching birds fly south as the seasons change, I've been noticing my own movements as life around me changes and unfolds. I'm not sure where I'm headed, but like the birds, I seem to have some internal homing sense that leads me and pulls me along to the next destination.

Here are some things that have been meaningful to my yoga practice of late:

• Sun salutations with a pause to move back and forth between extended side-angle pose and reverse warrior pose. It feels a little bit like I'm stretching my wings and getting ready to fly.
• Finding eagle pose, then shifting my non-standing leg forward and then back to warrior three feels a little bit like I'm taking account of my situation and then letting go to soar.
• Taking time to do some some scissor jumping jacks with arms outstretched makes me feel little like I'm getting somewhere fast.
• Stretching out with heron and pigeon. These poses remind me that even birds need to take a rest from traveling now and then. 

Zen: The Life of Dogen

from Zen
via Rusty Ring

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to watch a wonderful movie, Zen, a Japanese movie about the great teacher Dogen. I can't recommend this movie highly enough. It's absolutely beautiful, visually and philosophically. It includes many famous sayings from Dogen's life, including this lovely conversation he has with a head cook:

I asked, "What are words?" The tenzo said, "One, two, three, four, five." I asked again, "What is practice?" "Nothing in the entire universe is hidden."

Trust me, this movie will make you see your own life differently. Maybe, like Dogen, you will find yourself on the shore, with the full moon above you.

Personal Myth 4: The Return

The Return, by me

I think it's time to conclude this series. My four-part creation myth ends with the mystery of what death might mean. I don't pretend to have any answers about life after death, but I feel that it works best in my life as an alchemical step within a greater process. As a necessary part of life on earth, death allows for the recycling of materials, and this can happen on a variety of levels, not just the biological level. The place that is most rotten within us is the very place that can lead to new growth and new life!

What happens to us personally after we die? I leave that for others to say. I once had a dream, though, in which a girl cast a spell on a two lovers: their hearts crystallized into the stars, and their bodies dissolved into the night sky.

Sacred Space: Impermanent Gifts

Danmala, by Kathy Klein
via Colossal

What is it about us humans that makes us want to rearrange natural objects into patterns? When I find myself in a beautiful setting, sometimes the most natural thing to do seems to be to make some sort of "offering" to the beauty I find myself surrounded by. An arrangement of shells, in some attempt to align my own perspective with the greater landscape. An arrangement of rocks, as a greeting to others, a sign of recognition that my own perspective can blend with others'. 

Kathy Klein's danmalas are a good example of this kind of art. Visit her gallery to see a quilt of technicolor patterns, all created from flower petals. She describes "centering" herself and creating the art in a state of devotional silence. The designs she creates seem to pulsate from the blending of her state of mind with the natural matter she works with.

Some of my favorite art is the kind that is meant to be impermanent. There's something so poignant about making something, knowing that when you leave it behind, it will eventually be returned to the earth. There's something beautiful, too, in leaving the art to be discovered for others who happen to be passing by. I sometimes want to hoard everything that's beautiful, and making something that can be left behind is a good exercise in sharing and letting go, even if a photograph allows us to hold onto the art in some sense!

Shell Offering by me

Postmodern Hymn: We Will Never Pass This Way Again

Tryptavision 4, a light painting by Joe Mehl of Tryptavision
via Deviant Art

Time has been playing funny tricks on me lately. I used to think of my life as one-directional, but lately I've been noticing loops and spirals in my life's story. Places, interests, and people that I didn't expect to ever reconnect with suddenly reappear.

It feels like I'm already in the eternal return, learning to affirm past choices and reintegrate them into the ever-growing pattern of my life. (I tend to think about my life in terms of quilting, even though I've only ever made one quilt). It's a bit of a relief to have these unexpected continuities, honestly, because I'm so intent on making the most of each scrap of experience. The scraps may be bigger than I had first imagined!

The discovery of spiraling time doesn't make each moment any less special, though. It makes me want to appreciate these pleasures now, so that when I perhaps return to a similar moment somewhere down the line, I will have double the joy in greeting it again. 

Love Will Be Preserved

Emblem 9 (of 12) from the
1752 Hermaphrodite Child of the Sun and Moon
by unknown alchemist L.C.S.,
reproduced by Adam McLean
via Unurthed

"Only what has turned to love in your life will be preserved."
    —Rule for a New Brother

Personal Myth: Humans

Humans, by me

Humans, by me

Here is my next chapter in my personal myth project, which explores what it means to be human in this world. For me, what's interesting about being a humans is how language, laughter, and story can be used to   mediate the natural cycles of life and death. Given that I love learning foreign languages, I really feel that language is an integral part of the human experience. Maybe it's because I feel that words fail me too often, and that stories uplift me, but my own experience of the world is closely related to the human faculty for language and for nonlanguage too.

Postmodern Hymn: Pig

Flowers in Your Hair, by Louise van Terheijden

I woke up with a fragment of a song floating in my head the other morning, and it took me a while to figure out which song I was singing to myself. It turned out to be "Pig," by the Dave Matthews Band.

Wash out this tired notion 

That the best is yet to come 

But while you're dancing on the ground 

Don't think of when you're gone 

Love! love!? what more is there?

Apparently I had the lyrics slightly wrong, because I was singing "wash out this time notion." Oh well, the message is still the same. Enjoy life as it comes, and open up to love.

Sacred Space: Church Ruins and Angel Oaks

by Dustin K. Ryan

Sheldon Church, north of Savannah, Georgia, located in South Carolina, was destroyed twice: once in the Revolutionary War and once during the Civil War. And yet, despite what has been done to it, it's beautiful, don't you think? 

Can you imagine looking out of the arches and back out into the trees? Somehow the landscape would be transformed, and the trees would be part of the church.

Walking back through the arches of the ruins, and into the trees, maybe our relationship to the landscape would be changed, and maybe everything would feel a little more sacred.

Angel Oak

Imitating the Habit of Twilight

Untitled landscape, by Rabindranath Tagore

I've been feeling at odds with time lately. I say 'lately' not because my racing around is an entirely new feeling, but rather the same old feeling has been stronger the past few weeks, despite my best intentions to slow down. I know I'm partially making up for a few weekends of missed productivity, and I know I'm also being too concerned with getting everything done.

John O'Donohue has gave a fantastic interview with Krista Tippet of On Being, where he described stress as "a perverted relationship with time." A harmonious relationship with time, in his view, is being a subject within time and seeing the "deep heart" of time, which is possibility and transfiguration. It's such a beautiful thought, to see time as our invisible friend instead of our cruel tormentor. 

John O'Donohue also has a beautiful blessing for "one who is exhausted." Here is the end of it:

"Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time."

Doing Nothing

The Night before Footrace, by Toshio Ebine

"The Tao does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone."
    —Tao Te Ching, verse 37, Lao Tzu

Lately I've been doing everything, and leaving everything undone, so this little reminder of wu-wei is beyond helpful for me.  

For me this piece of wisdom specifically applies to my inner world, where I feel so tempted to fix everything and work to achieve a blissful, peaceful state of mind. But maybe I could let go of trying to work out every little problem. Maybe I could just go on with my life and live it well, and then maybe things would naturally come into alignment. 

Personal Myth: The World

Here are is the second part to my series on my personal myth. You can see the first here.

I've been hesitating to continue posting my personal myth series, first of all because it is personal, and second of all because my art is going through some transformation and it feels strange to post something that would look completely different if I were to make it today. But, regardless, I want to share.

In "The World," I'm trying to think about what it means that the world is the way it is—that there are sentient beings, that there is life and death—and how humans fit into that narrative.

The World, by me

The World, by me

At Home, At Sea

At Home at Sea, by Timothy Karpinski

I'm still thinking about the sea these days. Timothy Karpinski's art captures the question I think I've been asking, which is, Can I make a home and a place of steadiness in a constantly changing life? Can I be comfortable in not knowing much at all?


"On the Sea-Shore. I would not build myself a house (it is an element of my happiness not to be a house-owner!). If I had to do so, however, I should build it, like many of the Romans, right into the sea, - I should like to have some secrets in common with that beautiful monster."

    —The Gay Science, #240, Frederich Nietzsche

Sacred Space: Anshe Kenesseth Israel

via Really Borning

Some places of worship find themselves in disrepair, in neighborhoods without the funds to renovate them to their former glory. Some churches get transformed into apartment buildings or offices, but others are simply demolished. This seems to be the future for Anshe Kenesseth Israel in Chicago.

I find myself circling around the idea of reusing spiritual ideas for this particular time and place, and I find myself wishing that buildings like this could also find a new life. 

King of Hearts

Scene from The King of Hearts
via Bitchin' Flicks

The King of Hearts, the cult-classic anti-war film, offers an excellent commentary of the insanity of violence and modern society. In case you haven't seen it, it is about an ornithologist (Alan Bates) who is sent to save a French town from being destroyed by a bomb. The setting is World War II, but it has a classic late 60s feel.

Besides making an anti-war statement, it also offers a beautiful parable about the struggle that each of us faces with death and love. 

via Nader Library

The King of Hearts manages to dismantle the bomb, which is hidden in the great clock tower of the church, and thus acknowledges the suffering that can be caused by time. Shortly after comes his great scene of enlightenment: he takes of his clothes and stands at the gate of the insane asylum. 

Postmodern Hymn: Bottom of a River

Adam Arcuragi would like to share the gospel of death with us. Shall we listen?

I heard about Adam Arcuragi through a fantastic article on Sightings, where M. Cooper Harris describes the genre of Death Gospel and discusses the various artists who could be included in such a label:

"Death Gospel offers an interesting rejoinder to a culture that denies death and decay, insisting instead that particular individualities require a universal point of convergence; it addresses a generation of young adults (and their elders) who, despite their spirituality and electronic connections, feel alienated from their traditions (religious or otherwise), from their humanity, and from one another."

"Death Gospel offers no assurances. What it holds out for is the possibility that people may, together, be transformed in their attitudes toward living, may love and be loved, and thereby recognize in these fleeting moments of community a measure of authentic existence regardless of what lies beyond knowing."

Yes. Amen. I think I'll be learning the whole Death Gospel hymnal.

Destino

A collaboration between Dali and Disney, which I find incredibly beautiful.

The original collaboration was completed in 2003, after Disney's nephew found the storyboards and 17-second clip and saw the project through to completion. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.