Your Wild & Precious Life

Here's a partial shot of a mixed media piece I posted a while back. I am adding some text to it but it's not finished yet. I thought it was, but then you know how it goes. What at first seems finished sometimes tells a different story on second or third glance. Life is like that, art is like that. It's a process, an ongoing one, always open to fine tuning. I was working on something else. Ideas were flying in every direction. A few of them hit this canvas. I'll post it again when the ideas have dried.

I was working in a looser way today, without the editor-me popping in every few minutes to say how she likes it. She is so annoying. Yet I am used to her bossy little visits (the devil you know) but I must say it was nice that she'd taken today off. Perhaps she will go awol. It was a pleasant morning. I was just doing what I wanted with no thought past that. Time passed, ideas flowed in and out. There was an intuitive sense of playing with stuff to see what worked, but no one suggesting I'd better be careful or I'd ruin the canvas. No soup nazi minding the alphabet paint soup.

There is another piece that's been hiding in the closet that needed something and today it became apparent. Ah for patience and a deep closet. I have succumbed to the idea of text, an idea I love but haven't used that much. It's all over me now like a half read newspaper. But the line I will use is "What will you do with this one wild and precious life?" It's a line from a Mary Oliver poem.

I found it in the strangest place and it burned a place in my brain like some printing plate. We were looking at house and kept bumping into Buddhist paraphernalia, Buddha statues, pictures of Tibetan teachers, a meditation cushion here, some dharma books there. And plunk over an art table was this lovely question: "What will you do with your one wild and precious life?" Sadly the house did not work out but I got to keep this lovely question to ponder, to add to my art and to share with you.

Gradually I am figuring out what to do with my one wild and precious life: live within touching distance of the natural world, make art, make friends, study the Dharma. It's taken a while and a few good swift kicks in the butt by life. But since I still have the boot mark, its never too far from my mind. And how about you, what's up with your one wild and precious life ?