I was asked about my art making this week. Of course, art is healing, learning to empathize and listen well, and a way to build community! But they asked me about my own art, and how I saw it:

I”m a Neo-romantic with a gothic touch. I still have hope but not false optimist or sentimentality.
I like setting up vignettes, where something recently and long ago happened. Usually little windows into time forwards and backwards.
I enjoy making mood or tone, and sharing it with others. Then always have some sort of opening so people can see several other options or dimensions to the story, and theirs.
In that way, my art is hopeful. But hopefully not sentimental, and certainly not propaganda for some idea.
More a kid like exploration of life as I see it—multi-dimensional and many times at once.
So montage and collage are usually where I find myself in my art.
I don’t focus on decay, but I’m aware of it, and try to make others aware that our bodies and the painting is in passing and becoming simultaneously.
We are being reborn and we are dying at once. Most of my art has that awareness.
Train windows and the sky, fish and musical notes are recurring motifs.
Usually set in a dream like place, but that is landing into everyday life.
I see life as having many dimensions interacting and occurring at once!
Angels eat breakfast with us, whether we see them or not!
But also taking out the trash or cleaning the toilet is a prayer! Art just reminds you of that.
Prayer for me is so similar to making art. They coth take you in between worlds to look in both or all directions at once.
When I pray I see images and hear words. It takes me some time to interpret them. But in that type of moment, I’m not concerned with interpretation, only Presence.
And considering this Kindness from which we come being so active in every detail of daily life!
That always inspires wonder in me.
And gratitude.
So I paint and pray to be thankful.
And I share that window into thanks with others through art.
The wonder of just being here and there at once! And dearly loved as we are.
I like Jesus because He is very much with us, and very much in the other dimensions at once!
Art is just practicing being loved in many dimensions at once!

Dreams punctuate my life.
All my major decisions were made
In my dreams. Waking life
Is dictated by them.
So I’m their fan.
I’m no Jungian
And certainly no Freudian
But dreams have given me the maps
I needed through the years.
Dreams and art intersect for me
As well and they echo one another if true.
I see the free cinema nightly
Therefore I know a thing of two
Of what to do, while awake.
The inner cinema is my cartography.
And as I read, God spoke to most folks either through angels or dreams. They
Are about all we can handle.
Good dreaming friends!
May your dreams provide syntax
For your life.

The things which cling….

In nature, things cling to our socks.
Even walking from my house to my art shed, I collect all sorts of things on my socks. Leaves, seeds, debris. My socks receive and interact with their surroundings, as does the rest of me.
In life, things cling to us
Some helpful, others less so.
Noticing what’s clinging to you at the end of the day, is a helpful practice, and tells
The story of where you went
Along your way each day.
Watch what clings!
And what we each cling to!
My socks taught me that today.
//

Almost too tired for a walk today
But these trees outside beckoned me,
And what I see as we pass one another,
Is not through them, but inside
Their inner lives, what we share
While here that goes on.
I’m ok, just to be
With these trees
Through our seasons
Of co-beholding one another
Through, the mysterious lens of Love.
Trees are like a friend’s face
Which we will know forever.
As soon as we really stare
Into their eyes.
And yes,
Trees have eyes
As in the fairy tales. It’s true
That they are
Like that.
We all watch
One another
Through this other Eye.
And my own eyes see only Love
Everywhere I really look.
Love occurs in all languages
Even the language of the silent trees
Which first beckoned me
On today’s walk.

//
I’m stretching out today
As my body actively deteriorates daily
Still, I’ve hope for another day
So I stay on the floor stretching my wearied muscles after so many
Miles on every road.
I’m stretching as a hope prayer
Or just because I’m still here
And want to relieve the pain
For a few hours before I enter
This floor and down through it
Back to earth itself
And this body helps grow
Those flowers I planted
Yesterday. I think
Stretching is saying thanks
And preparing ourselves
To grow taller, later.

//
After years together
We think we know one
Another. But there is always more.
Like planting a tree
And eventually
Sitting under its shade.
So marriage is.

//
Her eyes are dimming in old age
But I can still see the girl through them
The expectancy before her life barely
Began. I can see her in the womb
And now looking at the tomb. It is
The same her, I see.

Today’s Notes:

The sounds of this room

Listening to birds through the roof
Imagining through the ceiling to those birds
On the roof; hearing their pacing
Their little leaps, their take offs
As if blind, just imagining their movements. My roof is tin
So their presences and little hops
Are amplified. The sound of this room
Includes them each day. As well as as planes overhead
And dump trucks
People’s passing conversations
The AC and electrical
This room is uninsallated from life.
Some rooms are meant just for listening
To what’s around them. The surroundings
Become the life of those rooms.
Like us, we both emit and receive sounds.
We are and express
But also we are impressed
By all that is around us.
We make sounds, and receive them
All the time. What we receive or open
Ourselves to hear or listen to-matters.
Now, the birds have left the room
But I can still hear them from high above on a wire which runs from here across the street. I know they are there, because I recall how that wire runs, and the distance of their chirping.

When in my art studio, I often close my eyes to try to hear my paintings without vision. They emit a type of energy that is audible if you really listen. But then when
I open my eyes, I hear their music loudly.

In nature, things cling to our socks.
Even walking from my house to my art shed, I collect all sorts of things on my socks. Leaves, seeds, debris. My socks receive and interact with their surroundings, as does the rest of me.
In life, things cling to us
Some helpful, others less so.
Noticing what’s clinging to you at the end of the day, is a helpful practice, and tells
The story of where you went
Along your way each day.

Daily hourly I stop and just listen to the
Layers of sound around me, and try to hear
Their narratives, and then the story
They are all in through
My listening to them.
For what it’s worth can hear
I am loving by listening.

To listen well to a person
Is to love them. It is the same with
All that surround us.
To listen in thanks for all you hear
Is part of healing them.
We help make things whole
By listening to them lovingly.

To My Friends, I am because you Are

My friends are my home.
They are where God meets me
People are my bible, I read daily
And in between their lines
Is The Love I’ve found.

People are sacred scripture to me
And each line a forever poem
I read over and over daily.

I live in several dimensions, but people
Are where I dwell. I meet Love there
In each of you, I now know by name.
You are the refrain that bookend my life.
And for that, I’m most thankful

You have become my holy mountain
My well of waters of life. You are how
God opened my eyes
And quenched my thirsty throat.

You are the names I sleep with nightly
And the characters in my dreams.
You are the everything
For me, friends. You are
The breath I breathe.
My aspiration is
To love you
As you have loved me.
You are my poems
And I am yours.
We have given ourselves
To one another
As lovers of life do.

Each of us is how kingdom comes
To one another. So all your names
Matter most to me.

I toast you to be
Toasted. I recognize
Your name, to be seen.
I see you friends
So I am seen—face to face us
As naked as we are
And all shining stars!

/

The poppies are towers of hope that don’t fall, because they were symbols after those wars.
The Towers fell, but they weren’t as strong a symbol as the poppies.
They just started war. The poppies were what came afterwards.

The ghost of a friend who visited me after she died:

This ghost with a sort of physicality
Came to me, the night you died twice
You showed me your kids and smiled
You seemed to say take good care of them. I wasn’t sure, but I have, in this time. But not well I’m sure. But why did
You come? To show me how dear they each are; I already knew that. Or was it for you, fair ghost mother, that you return
For one last scent of this form of life.
Or for my comfort, so I know your wisdom
Is still here with me, with us, and that smile
Hides above us all the while
While here below.
Maybe you came as a kiss of God
Which lingers a lifetime.

Two ways of riding BI-cycles or reasons and ways for doing so….an argument for holding hands ((Bien tomados de la mano!): Se donner la main!

In Antwerp, Belgium
While riding bikes next to one another
We hold hands
To steady us
Through today’s
Rain. And
Not just lovers
Do so. But old and young
Friends, and even strangers
Hold hands while riding their bikes
Two by two
Into and through
We lose ourselves in
Today’s rains.

One would never see this
In America, where we ride alone
And pick the toughest terrain
To climb. We wind our way up-name
By name,
Getting there first, before the others-Per aspera ad astra
Up the sheer misted twisted silent Rocky Mountain.
And when we get to the top
It is raining, and we
Are all alone
Having won
Today.

Adam must’ve had a hard time
Naming Zebras on that day.
What a black and white task he was given, and yet zebras confounded him.
Giraffes, ok he got it—the tall neck of the sound Gu, the funny legs of the letter f
When coupled with itself;
Elephants also were easy for him—wise and mighty like El, but odd and funny like plants; but then
The monochrome striped horse walked in-
Like a circus act-
And he was silent for a second or two.
“Can I get back to You, God”
(Asking the most ancient of questions)
In fact, he thought all night about it
Til just at dawn it came to him
The zed ,the beit-the z the b-
then the open a of awe!
Zebra, he said to God, finally.
And God laughed
And said, ok man.
We’ll go with that.