Migrations, Dreams & Habits

new work 16"x20"

I am part of a migration, not one guided by the moon or involving birds or butterflies. No one has fixed a metal band round my leg or tagged my ear as part of a study, but still it's happening out there. I suspect you are aware of it too.  It's a technological migration of sorts, one where I sense small currents quietly causing people to drift from the blog world over to facebook or follow the shifting breezes to instagram. Robyn Gordon's lovely curated collections have migrated from her Art Propelled blog to facebook. Jeane Myer's moved house from her blog, Art It to Instagram and I have joined her there for no other reason than to see her amazing work as she creates and shares it.

There are many other bloggers, that were part of community when I ventured here with my first post in December 2008, that like me, simply post less often. I am not leaving quite yet, but it's more of a second home than a primary residence these days. I sense this is true for blogger friends like Lynette Monteiro of 108Zenbooks and Lynne Hoppe (who is also sharing her work on instagram).  Do I have less to say? Do I think about painting and practice less? Not really. It's just that those thoughts don't make it to these pages so often anymore. The excitement of sharing on a blog has met time and they have wandered off together. The Buddha talked about this (not blogs, facebook and instagram) but change. It's the one thing we can always count on. Change is a constant.

Noticing the virtual migratory patterns did give me cause to think about why and what I post. There are artists that share what materials they're using or simply post the work they've been doing. There are those that write about where their practice is at the moment. It's about connecting, sharing what they know in the spirit of offering help and inspiration to others. When I thought about what I want to share these days, it's the things that excite me most, things that I think others might be interested in discovering too.

Trails 12"x12"

So here's a little goody bag of what I've been exploring lately. There's lucid dreaming with Charlie Morley. Lucid dreaming just seems like such a good thing to me and Morley talks about it with passion and clarity. We sleep 1/3 of our lives so being lucid in our dreams expands the time available to us and offers a connection to our inner life that the conscious mind doesn't. Probably most importantly, if you believe in any intermediate state between this life and the next, it prepares you to navigate that.

We listened to this great series of talks , called Awake in our Bones by Martin Aylward on a short home retreat. They were inspiring and expanding, a great companion to a few days of sitting. He has a fresh and clear way of speaking about life and the dharma.

I am curious about all the new brainwave technology and ended up on a site called iAwake that has lots of little samples to listen to and a freebie if you care to share your email address.

Canyon Rain 6"x6"

I've also been re-reading "Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself" by Joe Dispenza and doing some of his meditations. His work is part of the quantum consciousness movement that focuses on how our thoughts create our world. That belief is part of basic Buddhist thought but Dispenza and others focus on using this to create conditions we might want to find in our lives. I'm not talking about "let's get a new car" but working with more stubborn mind states that might affect our health, how we use our time, our worldview and our happiness. I am finding it particularly helpful in my attitude to my painting. In Buddhist thought we might call it trust or faith. For athletes an aspect of performance is wrapped up in mental attitude. Is it any different for artists?

On January 1st I kidnapped a vintage mason jar from the cupboard and made it in to my gratitude jar. I cut up cute little pieces of paper and find things to be grateful for each evening and pop them in the jar. I find the physical act of having a jar a much more powerful reminder than a journal for recording these tidbits. I am finding that simply turning the mind from grumbling over little things to appreciation is a powerful reorientation for a somewhat aversive mind. Here's a lovely little website on gratitude.

And back in the world of things the wood stove in my studio finally got hooked up so other than some storage and a comfy chair my studio can take a bow and pronounce itself finished. It is amazing to have this space to work in. I can while away the hours, listening to the rain on the metal roof or keep company with the big trees out my windows and the ducks on the pond. I look forward to warmer days when I can throw open the door and windows.

And you, what have you been up to that fills your days with joy and passion?

Wandering Down Memory Lane (My 7 Links)

Winter In The Pacific Northwest

I was invited by the lovely Donna Iona Drozda of Following The Moon to be part of ‘My 7 Links’ project. Of course I felt pleased to have been chosen, but once pride left the building, sloth and torpor moved in while I considered the work involved. But then I thought it might be fun to look back over my blog posts, so off I trundled into the deep woods of blog posts past.
The idea is to go back to your own posts and find one to fit each of the 7 categories, then ‘choose’ 5 more bloggers to do the same, and so on, and so on.
The project is described as a way of “uniting bloggers (from all sectors) in a joint venture.

The following are the 7 categories:

Most beautiful post

Most popular post

Most controversial post

Most helpful post

Most “surprisingly successful” post

Most neglected post

and finally….the post that makes them most proud  


So here goes:

1. 
   
   Most Beautiful:  Blush.  Here's the deal.  In western culture we suffer from the cult of "not good enough" and so it feels odd to call something we have created "beautiful".  But here's to changing habits and creating new neural pathways.  I like this post because it felt lyrical.
    It's about a magical retreat I went to here on Salt Spring where someone kissed a cow and French man read Pablo Neruda poetry to me.http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2010/05/re-treating-scooping-away-at-infinity.html
   
   Most Popular: goes to the post with the most comments.  That's scientific right?  The numbers never lie?  It's a post called "A Malpractice Suit" from Aug 5th of this year about the realization that sometimes I use the Dharma to beat myself up with!  Apparently my twisted-ness attracted some attention. http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2011/08/malpractice-suit.html
   
   Most Controversial:  My blog is not exactly a snake pit of controversy but maybe someone out there might be offended by Brad Warner singing "Buddha Was A Good Ol' Boy"  It's a little post I wrote about seeing Warner speak in Victoria and finding he is a lot less controversial in person than he is in his books and blog posts.  Anyway enjoy his little ditty here.  He may get you humming. http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post.html
   
   Most Helpful Post:  I picked a post called "Enjoy Your Difficulties" because, well, it's not that easy to do, so I figured we could all use a little help in this department.  It's from March of 2009 so a lot of current readers of this blog probably wouldn't have read it and they might get a kick out of seeing me as a blog toddler. http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2009/03/enjoy-your-difficulties.html
   
   Most Surprisingly Successful Post:  Well I'm always surprised when they're successful and how do you judge that anyway?  Again I picked a post with a larger number of comments than usual.  You vote with your comments, right?  It's called "Hearing The Still Small Voice"  from Jan 2011 http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2011/01/hearing-still-small-voice.html
   
   Most neglected post: Well when I first started blogging, that could cover quite a few posts! but I chose "What Do You Expect?" from Jan 12, 2009, not to long after I started posting.  It's about our many expectations, subtle and not so subtle. http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-do-you-expect.html
   
   Post the made me most proud:  Well I'd have to say it's the one I wrote about being with my mother when she died.  I posted it the day after she died.  It's called "Quickly The Body Passes Away" from Aug 30, 2009 http://zendotstudio.blogspot.com/2009/08/quickly-body-passes-away.html
   
   And the blogs I love and visit regularly that I invite to join me in this little project are as follows & with a little post script saying if this seems like it's not your cuppa or you're up to your eyeballs in other projects, not to worry:
   
   Mystic Meandering
   
   Lynne Hoppe
   
   Art It
   
   108 Zen Books
   
   Michelle Meister

Zendot Turns Two, No Tantrums, Please, We're Buddhist

Two years ago today, I wrote my first post on blogger. I was dipping my toe into the cyber ink pot (now that's better than ambidextrous, don't you think?). I had posted some art on etsy and the etsy tips suggested a blog was a good thing. Sure why not. I didn't have a clear idea of where I was going but I pulled on my blogger boots and headed off down the trail, posting my first piece of art called "Post Apocalyptic Buddhist Graffiti" Three passions bumped into each other on the trail, my love of writing, exploring the Dharma and art. Here was a place they could hang out together, meet, shake hands, have a coffee, do the hokey pokey, anything within the boundaries of reasonably good taste. It didn't really matter if anyone read what fell in the blogger forest, I was balancing precariously on a little cyber soap box. It felt like a strange mix of offering and opportunity.

It has been an interesting journey, sometimes with many consecutive days of disciplined writing (100 days of Dharma) and as a personal challenge, 30 days of art. At some point I decided I didn't want to post everyday just for the sake of posting. I wanted to write when something in my life or on my mind beckoned me to the page.

I found Dharma friends along the way and blogs that resonated with me, bloggers filled with wisdom and passion who offered sips and deep drinks from their wells. My Dharma has always been about the koan of everyday life, not so much what I find in books or scriptures. It has been my aim to share my life with some transparency without being too much of a Zen Soap Opera. I try to balance the suffering with some joy and find the Charlie Chaplin in the suffering. Irreverence and foolishness are important qualities to me and I try to bake a little into each batch of Dharma biscuits.

The little paper doll Buddhas in the picture above are sharing the coffee table with a book called "Pain Free" (it's written by a physiotherapist, no Dharma intended) but it struck me that often that's what we're up to, trying to escape from our pain, whatever it might be. I have been learning that pain is a little like the monsters in nightmares, you've just got to turn around and look them in the eye. I have been learning that there is so much sweetness and wisdom in the darkness, in the pain. It is full and ripe and just what you need. You just have to learn how to shine the little bike light from your Christmas stocking on it and find the hidden treasures.



That first Dec 30th, 2008 blog post contained these words from the Dalai Lama:

"Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to have woken up. I am alive. I have a precious human life. I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others, to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thougths towards others. I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can."

What more can we ask for really to wake up each day with the aim to "wake up"?

In the Circus of Fear, What Colour Are Your Tights?

There is so much happening in the small space between my ears right now. I'm trying to coax it out onto the page in some recognizable, sensible form, but I think it's more likely to spill out in a tangled ball, like something the cat dragged out of the knitting bag. I'd prefer it to be eloquent and wise but as the Rolling Stones once pointed out "you don't always get what you want."

I have had the great pleasure over the holidays of visiting and spending time on a lot of new blogs; art blogs and Buddhist blogs. I have found lots of sharing of wonderful new inspiring art book and some looking forward and setting of intentions for the year to come. Lots to savour and digest.

Even though the calendar has flipped over to the new year and the party ice has melted in the sink I am spending a few more days in holiday mode. Our daughter is here from out of town until Wednesday so regular programming has not yet returned to this channel. It's an interesting time of year, watching the pre-holiday energy build, reach it's peak and then end. A little year end symphony. The consensus on a lot of blogs is that it's nice to be back to our inspiring work of making art and looking forward.

Today I am aware of a slightly melancholy sense of it all. I always feel a little sad when the Christmas tree leaves the building which happened here on Saturday. In the past I would push those feelings away because sad was an uncomfortable feeling, but now I am okay with that slightly bittersweet sense of it. I usually like the sense of returning to the serene post tree-in-the-house-look but this year there is a slightly edgy feeling as I take inventory of all the things that have to be packed up for moving. I will not be making the house beautiful and returning to my work. I will be going through things and deciding what to keep and what to give away. I am feeling the uncomfortable pulsing of impermanence. Adventure I remind myself, think adventure, not trepidation. Or perhaps don't think at all!

And today we got up in the dark and rain and made the ferry trip over to Salt Spring Island to look for a new place to live. We returned in the dark and rain, at the other end of the day, no house in our eco-friendly shopping bag. I could feel a little mist of worry and fear settle on me as we pulled into the driveway. I got to see the inclination to want to have things solved and settled. The human inclination, I think. I sat with that nubbly, wavy, uncomfortable sense for a bit. I did my stint on the tight rope of fear where the trick is to stay with it, but not indulge it, to let it pass without falling off (no net in this circus). The clown on the edge of the stage kept shouting at me to keep my eye on the ball and have faith. I looked at him a bit crossly and told him he had the wrong act.

So I feel that edgy sense of danger and opportunity in the new year more poignantly this year than others. I will need to sit a lot and pack a lot and keep my rope walking tights nearby. And in deference to right speech I promise not to shout at the clown next time.

Blue Cake With Sprinkles At Zendotstudio

I felt I couldn't pass up posting today. How self absorbed is this? I just realized it's my blog's birthday! I posted for the first time last year on December 3oth. So here it is this toddler blog with a mouth full of pablum, smooshing pureed peas into its metaphorical little scalp and shrieking with delight.

And like any good toddler I've fallen down, had a tantrum or two (usually about my mother), gurgled and cooed when things went my way, put a pot on my head and acted the fool more than once. I have gotten into the crayons and paints. And I've messed around with the language spewing out all kinds of babble and unintelligible sounds. What do you expect from a toddler? Gosh, it's freeing to have low expectations. Takes that self imposed, prideful pressure off.

It's interesting to think back. Taking stock is a good Buddhist practice, I think. ...Looking at what we have done, what worked, what we might like to alter. How else can we grow and change and learn? How do we adjust our course? Become wiser? Honest reflection is the answer I think. And while it is human nature to have blind spots, things that we just don't see, if we look at our past actions they can help clarify what is important to us and help us decide how to move forward.

Interestingly, I think I applied much more care when I began blogging, spending more time composing and working on each piece of writing. I had lots of Dharma topics rolling around in my head that I wanted to write about. After a few days I started to write 100 days of Dharma which was a real exercise in discipline. There were many days I wondered "will I have anything to write about?" Surly the well is dry by now. But always something came to mind. It was an exercise in faith as well as discipline.

In the summer I did 30 days of small art projects which was again an exercise in discipline, this time in the visual department, rather than word sculpting. This was much more difficult for me. I found (and not to my surprise) how much time I would spend creating something that pleased me. There was much more critical judgement of the little pieces on my part. No dashing off a little work in 10 minutes (occasionally perhaps). I learned that acts of spontaneous creation were not my forte. But it is interesting to learn how we work, where we cling and get stuck, where our strongest expectations lie.

And in the great tradition of "how do I know what I think, until I see what I say" I learned a lot about my own human experience through blogging. I mined the depths of the every day. I got to be a little less self conscious by spilling the contents of my spleen and other internal organs onto the page.

And I have connected with lots of kindred spirits out here in the blog bog. I am awed by the vastness of the blogosphere and feel like I live in some tiny constellation in the vast dark universe of blogs. I am constantly discovering new blogs and from the very beginning (and much to my surprise) I was blown away by the creativity and imagination I had somehow discovered. I travelled oceans and continents to arrive at amazing and inspiring sites. This has been heartening to me, discovering these unknown treasures, a thriving counter culture of creativity and awareness. It exists slightly apart from the mundane world I live out on the street, that can often seemed filled with consumer consciousness and disregard for the things that seem deeply important.

In some ways I think the focus of my blog has shifted toward my visual art. I blog less than I did when I started. I had to look at the fact that I didn't want to just blog because I wanted to post everyday. I got to examine my motives. I got to look inside and see if I truly had something to share that day. And I found a balance between the real world and that of the deep blue computer screen.

So come and share a slice of cake with me. If I was all grown up I'd choose a cake that was a sumptuous dark chocolate with a middle layer of cheesecake and preserved cherries. But I'm a one year old and I want a blue cake with sprinkles and gummy bears. And I'm going to lean over and take a big bite out of the middle of the cake and then I'll probably try and stuff some ofthat ungodly blue icing up your nose. I will be giggling and sporting a blue icing mustache. What, where are you going?

So long and thanks for the chicken leg

First of all I would like to give a heartfelt thank-you to Beth at Indienorth who featured 3 pieces of my art and gave me the nicest write-up yesterday.  I discovered her site by merrily clicking down the road (like Dorothy I'm not in Kansas anymore), following  a comment left on an article I wrote for CanArtisan by Laura Bucci (who makes awesome linen pouches and things) to discover indienorth.  Now if you know me, you just know I'm going to tie this into the Dharma.  And not because I'm stretching things that don't really fit (oh, oh whose been into the organic dark chocolate?) but because if you look at this, it's the modern day, internet version of  "we are all connected', by a thin, invisible electronic thread,  We are all dependent on each other in some way, which in very simplistic terms describes the rather complex Buddhist topic of "dependent origination."  And as a small digression, a local Rinzai monk just wrote a wonderful blog on dependent origination the other day.

The other aspect of Dharma which Beth at Indienorth illustrates is the spirit of generosity, of thinking of others,  in that she spends some time almost everyday featuring different artists and their work. She is not out there screaming, "look at me, come to my shop, buy something, buy something from me."

I sometimes hear it said that there is alot of "calling out" on blogs and websites and people saying inappropriately rude, harsh or insulting things to each other.  Over at Dangerous Harvest Blog, Nathan wrote a really good post on this and a great discussion ensued.  But this has not been my experience of the blogging and internet venues I have encountered since my arrival in this strange land in December/08.  My experience of it has been that it's a pretty generous, friendly place.  I visit mostly Buddhist sites, art sites and handmade art/craft venues, so my experience is specific and somewhat limited I admit.  

But I am blown away by the willingness of people to share and help in the both the art world and the Buddha's world, to help promote and link and support each other.  Now as artists we could all be standing in our little corners, eyeing each other suspiciously as competition, but frankly I haven't smelled a whiff of "eau de me cologne" anywhere in my travels.  And as we know when we try hard to have a sincere practice, nothing makes you feel more shrivelled and withered and truly tired than focusing only on what "I" want and need.

As I write this I am sitting in what feels like a heavenly abode, on a spacious deck in a Quadra Island home exchange watching a Toni Onley mountainscape  fade from pink and blue to grey and black.  A few tall pines frame a plexi-glass sheet of ocean, backed by darkening mountains.  We have been wandering the stony beaches in unheard of 28 degree sunshine here and exploring the island.  We have fed raw chicken legs to Eagles (eek! at the request of our hosts) and been awed by the force of that  swoop  as they flash by to grab dinner for their little ones.  But we have also been surprised at the shyness and caution of these giant birds who purportedly can knab a small dog on the beach. We are not the only complex and contradictory species on this planet.  So I shall retire from this glowing screen to watch the final descent of darkness as it comes in for it's evening landing.  May your day be this pleasant and peaceful.

The Zen of Writing Without Words

When I started writing "100 Days of Dharma" at the beginning of January I didn't think about how many words I'd be spilling out on to the page.  It never occurred to me that I'd become conscious of talking too much.  There are many things we can't see when we set out on our travels, namely what lies round the bend.  So here I am thinking about  "right speech", one of the tenets of the eightfold path that leads to the end of suffering.  One of the aspects of right speech is not engaging in idle chatter.  Now I don't think of this as idle chatter, but on many occasions I have thought of it as too many words.  

So then I have my koan, how do I write "100 Days of Dharma" without words?  I could simply say enough words and stop, or write less frequently (which in truth would be much more convenient for me) but I want to complete my 100 Days of Dharma for a variety of reason.  I guess I am curious to see if I can do it.   And it feels like good Dharma practice to go through with it,  good discipline.  When I look inside, the combination of writing and the Dharma have clicked into their little lock position.  And it's a way to build a little writing muscle, weight lifting the alphabet.  

Originally it was my plan to just write in a private journal, you know one with a lovely cover and lined pages.  I think if I'd done that I might not be wondering if it were too many words, but that's speculation at this point.  I ended up in the blogosphere because of an Etsy tip that suggested a blog was a good companion to your shop.  Supposedly I was to write about Etsy related stuff.  Yet the blogging immediately took on a life of it's own that doesn't have a huge amount to do with Etsy other than providing a little welcome mat to the shop.

When I started I thought the blog will make me more committed, less likely to abandon the empty page when the first pang of sloth & torpor hit (sound like a couple of cartoon characters don't they?).   The threat of a little public shaming is apparently effective for me.  But I think the public nature of the writing is also what leads me to ask  " is this too many words?"  Then I have to ask why is this?  Is it my ego, my little self again, primping and straightening in front of the mirror?  Am I simply worried that you will think I'm a blabbermouth, a bag of self inflated hot air, a windbag of tornado proportions, a blathering bombastic Buddha babbler (okay enough already) ?  I think if I am to be truthful there is some of that.

So I am thinking about silence, the fact that we need silence to get to know ourselves, that our true realizations often come when we are sitting silently.  And that in general I know I'd be better off if I listened more and talked less.  And so there is the work for today and always. And so I will end with fewer words than usual perhaps, a fitting ode to silence and right speech and with a quote from Sengstau, the 3rd Zen Patriarch "The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth."  I think I am going to need a very big bag of bread crumbs to get me home, Hansel.