learning to breathe during chaos
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it and move with it and join the dance
Alan Watts
Working on how to breathe and follow the flow, is learning how to breathe during chaos. Practice pausing.
the deeper deep – ancestors
My search of records of my ancestors for my dual-citizenship quest has lead to a much deeper deep than I was expecting. I have expressed it in a variety of paintings. I also found poetry and prose to express the journey that we all carry within us.
Ancestor Blessing by Snowleopard 2005
We are older than old.
This is our place, our time
souls – all souls –
we are sparks of light
dancing and held in the dark light
of the Ancient Ones.
Your souls are held in flesh,
not yet free to dance,
to join the re-creation of the world
atom from atom we would rend you
it is not yet time.
Your dance is the dance of blood,
of moments,
of mud and matter,
of was and will be.
This one night we re-undo
affirm our was-ness,
our part in your will-be-ness,
the rhythm of blood and earth.
Honour us.
We died for you
and because you know, and want to know, your will-be ends here too,
we dance for you
atom by atom
atom by atom,
your body shakes.
This is love.
expanding from the center
The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.
Blue Dream
Her cancer had come back.
She had been cancer free for over five years and now it was everywhere.
I returned home to be with my dying mom.
One day she was turning over in bed and we heard a loud snap – we called the hospice nurse and she suggested taking her into the hospital – we called an ambulance.
She had broken her arm and didn’t even realize it.
I didn’t want to know it at the time, she was very close to death – but I probably did know it
They fixed her arm and sent her home
Then a few days later her breathe was labored
I watched the life drain from her – she became blue.
Her end was my beginning
After she died, I had a series of haunting night dreams, the kind that make you sit up in bed. I was compelled to do something with those images from my dreams.
The series of images I created were blue images and they were one section of a big body of work call Inside the Belly of the Whale
It’s been over 28 years since my mom died, I’ve spent that time thinking, talking, researching, creating, observing and creating artwork. Wondering what is grief, death and life is and how I and we all deal with it all.
Realizing
There is no escaping the harshness of life.
There’s no escaping the timing
And there’s absolutely no way around the tragedy of living
We all walk around with unresolved grief, loss and trauma
What we do with our pain and how do we hold beauty and the pain of life at the same time?
I’ve come to believe that art inspired by and created from hurt and pain can touch us in ways that we never thought it could. At the same time, such art may make it easier to face and learn to be with our own pain.