The Sweet Heart of Winter

Winter Monks 20"x24" acrylic and collage

It could be the winter of our discontent -- or not.  Brutal temperatures and storms are blasting their way across the landscape. The weather has gone mad in many places. Here on the west coast of Canada, I am really ineligible to comment on the weather lest you bombard me with snow balls and sharp icicles.

But winter still exists here in lotus land, with it's grey, foggy days, shortened by how the sun brushes by our tilted, blue sphere. Winter has its effect on sentient beings, whether we care to admit it or not, whether we choose to live in a big city and carry on a pace that hardly nods in the direction of the short, cold days or whether we batten down the hatches for winter. And for some reason unknown to me, this year I am embracing the full heart of winter as it exists here. Sharon Zappha Barfoot wrote about her experience of winter in a much snowier place here.  And wherever you live the question seems to me, do we resist what is or do we somehow enter into it? Do we acknowledge our place in the natural world or do we live in separation from it? Do we try to make light out of dark, in either our inner or outer worlds? These are the bigger questions for me?  To what lengths will we go to sustain our delusion? Where do we shine the flashlight of our awareness?

Before winter's weathery course was set, something in me knew I was going to savour hibernation this year. Other years I have tried, but ended up doing a lot of grumbling about the darkness and feeling lonely and hurumphing that this year I might go away for a bit. But as I watched others plan their holidays and listened to stories of winter getaways to come nothing was tempted in me.  No beaches called to me, no warm breezes beckoned, no spots on the map flashed hotly, come here. Instead like a dozy black bear I slowed my pace and prepared for the delicious decent into hibernation. My cave is warmed by a fire, the lair offers all manner of comforts. And the internal world has many hillsides, rock walls to scale and tumultuous oceans to explore. I am never bored.

16"x20" Oil & Cold Wax  "Tracking"

It is interesting to watch the slowed call to activity.  I have become some lumbering creature of the earth. The slowness of the day sometimes feels shocking to me. How could I get so little done? And yet I seem powerless against this feet in molasses feeling, like I am some small creature ruled by a masterful force. There is a gentle joy to it. I am simply surprised how appropriate it feels, how it seems to be calling me to some deeper state.  There is a feeling that there is purpose and a reason for this, that there is some strange call to a landscape deep within.

There is lots of time for meditation and here's one of my favourite guided meditations. It's called Nourishing Your Inner Being and that feels like that's what this winter is about, offering internal nourishment that will support more active times.  This is my winter project if I need to give it a name.  And in nourishing this inner being there is a feeling that I am nourishing all parts of my life: the inner life, the spirit, my art and writing life, and my physical body; that when the winter earth thaws and the days lengthen there will be a natural movement into the next season.

I realize I am fortunate to have the time to live in harmony with this season, to sleep late, to be still, to do less. Even here where the animals of the woods don't hibernate, they slow. We see the deer and the squirrels less often, the birds are less busy. Only the tiny hummingbird keeps up its frantic pace. Living close to the natural world reminds me on a daily basis of how the planet sustains itself, cycling back and forth to create balance.

And so that is where you'll find me these days, meditating by the fire, contemplating and reading, sipping tea, painting a little and residing in the deep heart of winter.  No matter what your circumstances I invite you in ways large or small to join me in tasting the sweetness of winter. It's about creating a different story around the real or imagined winter life, or perhaps creating no story at all?

Tip Toe Through The Demons

Cold Wax, Oil, Pan pastel 10"x10"

Yesterday I went to a day long teaching on "Chod" practice.  What, you say, does this involve chocolate or shoes?  No, not for the moment anyhow. It's a practice from the Bon tradition, a lovely Shamanic, Buddhist tradition from Tibet that predates Buddhism. I love that the originator of the practice was a woman, a rather old woman,Machig Labdron,1054-1155.

The one day teaching on chod was a bit like an amuse bouche, a little something tiny and delicious to make you feel happy inside. It's an ancient practice laced with a large helping of fierceness and depth. The shamans who practiced chod used to travel around to fearful places known to have bad energy (are you thinking Walmart? I thought so.) They hung out in charnal grounds (places of sky burials) and generally worked to tame and release dark energies. They cured illnesses, turned around epidemics and delved deeply into their fears. Quite the calling card.

Chod translates as "cutting through".  And in the modern world, as urban, householder shamans, what we're cutting through is attachments, those things we think we must have to make us happy.  Those things we absolutely need. Fill in the blanks.  What is that for you?  In the 42" screen view of your life, what must happen for it to be okay?  In the minutiae of daily life, how are things supposed to shake down? What attachments are so subtle that they breath you without you even noticing? Do you think things should be fair? People respectful of you?

 In my world I like things being reasonably easy, not too much trouble. I like it that way, and start to grumble when things don't comply with this world view.  I have opinions and beliefs that I consider right. Many of the things we want and like are fine in themselves, it's the "needing", the insistence that tips us over into attachment and trouble.  Geshe YongDong who led the Chod teaching said, "we have 84,000 thoughts a day. Sixty percent of those thoughts are about our attachments.  Any time you find yourself in a struggle, you've got attachment."  That's a sobering thought that I'm probably not attached to.

Ego clinging and fear is where the chod knife aims to cut, aiming to sever the attachment we have to ourselves, because ultimately one day we will have to give up our bodies, our loved ones and all the accessories we have accumulated.  Our practice is to learn to give up "stuff", views,  expectations as we travel around with our trusty chod knife.  When we get to the ultimate giving up, it will be less difficult, since we have been practicing internal and external closet cleaning in the days of our life. That's the plan and chod is the road map. Geshe YongDong pointed out that we are just renting this skin covered real estate. We don't get to keep it in any lasting way.

It's a shamanic practice so of course there are songs and a lovely little Damaru drum and some bells that get played to work on the unseen energies that bind us to our attachments, to give us the unseen help that we need to navigate the path toward living in harmony with what is.  We make our plans, we buy our stuff, we go about our daily lives.  But we spend our energies on learning to be more content and peaceful and generous. If we are successful it becomes less about us and the demons tiptoe off into the night.

Where Are All the Imps & Mischievous Ones?

Being The Pink Dog of Happiness

I have something serious to talk to you about. It's been up on my radar for a bit.  Yesterday I began a conversation with myself about it and then I continued the conversation today with my daughter.  I realized it's a seldom discussed subject and perhaps we are all really starved for it. Before you peek at the next sentence, can you guess what it is?  If this were a card I'd have a little bit of paper covering the word but I can't do that here. Hopefully your crafty eyes have not darted ahead and you have filled in your own special word about what you think we all need more of in our lives and are not really getting.

I've been thinking about fun. Fun and lightness, lightheartedness, and my personal favourites foolishness, perhaps even impishness.  Where are the imps and mischievous ones these days?  It seems to me what our culture often sells us as fun is merely escapism and indulgence. Not to say that a movie or a novel, a dish of ice cream or a new toy can't be fun.  But at the end of the day how does it make you feel, that's the question I've been asking myself.  Do I feel nourished and restored or do I just need more? Do I feel joyful and revived or a little dirty?  Am I  on the prowl for something else? Or do I feel a little used and empty after that last new sweater or the eggnog latte?  Those are the the little elf questions that have been popping up and asking me to look at the details that make up my life.

An ocean of fun at Tofino, BC

Our culture is so busy convincing us of all the things we need to have and do to have fun, messing with our heads and hearts in sly marketing kinds of ways.  Just today as I waited to watch a Ustream teaching, a kindle advert told me that if I liked to read, I'd want the new kindle. It showed me happy pictures of young women with cats on their laps, cozy sleeping partners nestled beside them.  Surely my life would be more fun with a kindle?  And if I didn't buy a new kindle was the implication, I didn't like to read? Fun it seems has been hijacked, kidnapped, gagged and tied by the advertising industry, made into a thing, a lifestyle.  They have sucked all the life out of fun and put a price tag on it (whoops, that little rant was no fun was it?) Note to self, the truth is not always fun. Back to fun.  Are we having any yet?

When I took the awakening joy course, James Baraz asked people to do things that were fun for them.  Hmmm, a lot of us had to stop and think about that.  How do I have fun?  What do I regard as fun? Do you have some fun everyday?  I think often I am so busy getting done what needs to be taken care of, that I forget about fun.  I often choose work.  I like to cross those things off my to do list and fun isn't on it.  I have even watched myself doing things that I think should be fun and realized for whatever reason, that I'm not really having fun, I'm not fully engaged.  I'm half there, watching myself, watching others.  I might be noticing petty annoyances (it's cold out) or thinking about the next thing I have to do.

Fun Spots Tofino BC

I once heard a yoga teacher make an interesting comment.  She said something like, "I pretty much resist everything, except lying on the couch drinking a latte."  And I could identify with that!  I could see how I look forward to things until it's time to do them and then by some strange twist of mind, I'd rather stay home or do something else.  I read some research a while ago that made me realize I'm not alone.  People expressed the most happiness when "planning a vacation".  Not actually taking the vacation, but planning it was the fun part.  Hmmm.


So I realized a couple of things.  Culturally fun isn't valued for adults.  And many of us don't really know what is truly fun for us, what feeds us and nourishes us.  I'm not talking about fun substitutes, you know the tofurkey of fun, nope I'm talking about the meaty, luscious, drippy stuff that makes us smile from the inside out, leaves us feeling full and satisfied, corners of the mouth turned upwards.  And to find that thing we have to be like the Sherlock Holmes of fun, snooping around for signs, just the smallest ones, for those mid afternoon shafts of sunlight across the floor, the handful of paint chips we surreptitiously collected at the hardware store for no reason at all other that we like those colours.

A little Buddha 6"x6"

The more I explored the idea of fun, the more I realized that like so many things, it was an attitude of mind, something that comes from the inside and radiates out, not the other way around.  If you spend time with children, you probably know about fun.  They don't need much, a couple of fingers to turn into a spider, a cardboard box that becomes a house.  Fun is everywhere if you know "how" to find it.

You know how people pick words that they want to focus on for the next year, important words, weighty, thoughtful words like silence and love.  I've never been very successful with that. My words usually crinkle up and dry out by the first week of January.  Some years I find them all mouldy and sour under the couch.  But maybe FUN could be my word for 2014.  Maybe at the end of 2014 if I explored fun with enough gusto I'll have a great big freeway of neural pathways with on and off ramps that flash the word "fun" in big neon letters.  Who knows, but it could be fun.  I'll keep you posted.  And if you really want to have a little fun, watch this bonus video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCyw3prIWhc

Geography of the Art and our Internal Compass

"Geography of the Heart" New Work at Cafe Talia 

It's been a weird couple of weeks in my world: time consuming email crash, got the flu, vacuum stopped working, then pretty much right after I stopped whining a largish painting sold and I got a small art show hung.  As I watched it all unfold and unravel, it was interesting to observe.  Again I was reminded of my preference for things to unfold as "I like". You've heard me talk about this before. Of course you say, who wishes for the flu, who hopes to spend 2 days mopping up after an explosion in  their inbox?  Excellent point. But the subtle thing is the mind's arguing with what is, evidenced by impatience, grumbling, imagining that things should be otherwise.  When the desirable things arrived I could even see the slightly edgy excitement of them, which felt uncomfortable in the body.  There was a subtle background note of the nose sniffing around for more "good stuff" as the "desirable" unfolded.  I could see the imbalance at both ends of the spectrum.

At one point a line from a Zen poem popped into my mind: "the way is not difficult for those who do not pick and choose" . Here's the whole poem if you're interested: "Affirming Faith In Mind".  As my mind staggered back to centre I realized I wasn't chicken little and the sky wasn't falling.  This was simply life unfolding as it does and I could do what needed to be done and not terrorize myself with whining, clutching and looking like an embodiment of Edvard Munsch's "The Scream"(perhaps that's a little too dramatic?).  I sometimes forget that it is my railing against what is, rather than the circumstances, that really makes life suck.

Cafe Talia with painting "Continents of the Heart"

It reminds me of a teaching story about a farmer who lets his old horse loose and it runs away. The villagers say, "that's too bad."  The farmer says, "who knows?"  The next day the old horse returns followed by a beautiful wild stallion.  The villagers say, "that's wonderful, now you have 2 horses."  The farmer says, "who knows?" The story continues.  Here's the link to the full story but I know you're getting the gist of the story: "how do we know what's good or bad, really?"  And for me this is such a good reminder of how small our focus is.  How do we really know?  The most helpful position is to simply be with what is and take the next step that needs to be taken.

The Density of Air 12"x24"

 I have been reading some interesting stuff by a German doctor named Rudiger Dahlke who talks about the fact that the human mind is so drawn to divide things up into light an dark and wanted and unwanted.  Even our word de-cision means to cut in two.  He warns about chasing "the light" and how one side of a pair is likely to draw in it's opposite, in it's attempt to seek balance.  Harmony and balance are what create health.

Crossing The Fields in Winter

Dahlke has an interesting view of illness.  He says our illnesses are in fact messages from our bodies about imbalances or things that are missing in our lives  that we have consciously rejected or ignored.  Our symptoms are telling us we need to deal with these things.  I find this so interesting.  Of course the trick in this is to hear the message accurately.  I think part of why I find this so interesting is that it feeds into this duality of picking and choosing, of liking and not liking what comes up in our lives.

peeking in the door at Cafe Talia

I will end with a quote about "Geography of the Heart" that I used in my artists statement at Cafe Talia:

“... Setting the compass of our heart, no matter how rough the storms, how difficult the terrain, even if we have to back track around obstacles, our direction is clear.”

- Jack Kornfield

Rushing Toward Beauty & Building Resilience

8"x10" Footprints On The Earth Oil & Cold Wax

While I was painting this afternoon I noticed at one point, how much I was in a hurry to get a part of the painting that I didn't like covered up. That little palette knife was just doing 90 in a school zone.  I could feel the rushing, the almost breathless way I went after the offending spot.  And I thought to myself, "isn't this interesting?  What's that all about?"  And it struck me that this is very like me in many parts of my life, this lack of tolerance for the imperfect, for the messy, a reaction that often leads to feelings of frustration.

Feeling sick?  Let's get that out of the way.  Messy kitchen?    Messy life?   Let's get that cleaned up. A Longing for problems to disappear in a poof.  Hmm... in a hurry to make the ugly; beautiful, the imperfect; less flawed.  A magnetic draw towards beauty and perfection.  Definitely encouraged by our culture, I think we all have this in varying degrees.

8"x10" Uncovered Oil and Cold Wax

And aiming oneself in the direction of clean and tidy and beautiful is a fine intention, let's not get weird here. It's perhaps the rush away from mess and chaos, that requires reflection.  And how we handle the movement from what we "find undesirable" to it's counterpart is vital to our well being, I think.

It came to me how much depth and complexity I rob myself of, when I hurry to get things all "nice" without appreciating the nuances of messy.  Perhaps I miss finding the interesting hidden line or shape, or a new direction in a painting I am in a hurry to get resolved.

16"x16" Tethered  Oil & Cold wax

Maybe I am thinking about things in this way because I've been dealing with a dental adventure that found me having a tooth extracted last week.  Around the same time I came across a German doctor who writes about finding meaning in illness. His take is that the healing lives in the more complicated crevices of understanding, buried in the deeper meaning of our symptoms, instead of in the headlong rush to get those symptoms out of the way. In the same breath that it makes sense to me, I also want to get on with what interests me (some habits die a slow painful death)!  I've gathered my arsenal of natural remedies and am marching my little holistic army toward that dental infection.  The inclination to be well is fine, don't get me wrong, it is the energy we bring to it that's important, I think.

I was reminded of the quality of "resilience" in my work, my health and some frustrating encounters with Samsung's customer service this week. I listened to a talk by Joan Borysenko a couple of weeks ago on "stress hardiness" or resilience and it really resonated with me. Unfortunately I can't link you to that talk because it's no longer available but here's a similar one. She talked about the 3 C's of stress hardiness: 1. Commitment- a sense of purpose and engagement with the world.  2. Control- a belief that our actions can make a difference.  3.  Challenge - an understanding that life is constantly changing but viewing that change as exciting rather than scary.  Here's a nice little blogpost someone wrote about it.

I am really working on #3, viewing the less desirable ones as exciting.  How about you? I wish you a stress hardy week.

Brain Surgery Without Scalpels

10"x10" Mixed Media with Cold wax  "Setting The Inner Compass"

Near the end of September I had the pleasure of doing a weekend retreat with Rick Hanson.  I really like how he marries the Dharma to current brain research.  He even gives it a fancy layer cake kinda name: "applied neurodharma".  I'm all about the applied part of the layer cake.  If our spiritual practice doesn't help us lead increasingly saner lives, then what it's all about?  Can we be a little kinder to that neighbour who seems annoying, a little less reactive and self centred when family needs call? Can we just be quiet and listen more sometimes?

One of the major tenets of Buddhist thought is "there is suffering in this world".  I know people that say Buddhism is "negative" because it focuses on suffering but to quote John Cleese, it's really just stating the "bleeding obvious."  It didn't invent suffering, it just stopped long enough to observe this phenomena.  I used to sit with people in my old Sangha who would say they had no suffering in their lives.  This always made me raise my inner eyebrow.

6"x6" mixed media with cold wax "Following The Dots"

I liked the matter of fact way Hanson defined suffering.  He handled it like this: "Craving causes suffering and what causes craving but states of deficiency and deficit." So when we feel liked we're missing something, that we "need" something we are in a state of suffering, be it mild or intense.  If we're sick and we want to be well, that "wanting" can cause us all kinds of agitation and discomfort. If we want a cup of coffee, that can be a pretty mild form of craving (or not), one we might not even identify as suffering.

He went on to round things up with his trade mark clarity.  As humans we have 3 basic needs.
-the need to feel safe
-the need to feel satisfied
-the need to feel connected.

If these needs are not met we wander into states of deficiency which trail off into states of suffering (not one of the 50 states to the south of me, though it could be present in any of them)

Our need to feel safe relates to the oldest part of our brain, the limbic system and is the part of the brain that's hardest to change.  This is the "fight or flight" part or as Hanson referred to it "the avoidance system" of the brain.  So if you ever wondered why it is so hard to step out of the fear response, it's because this is the hardest part of the brain to change.  Hard to teach an old brain new tricks? Apparently.

This ancient part of the brain spends a lot of time scanning the environment for danger.  While this stirs anxiety and reactivity, we can thank this part of our brain for our basic survival as humans.  Hanson suggested that we spend time reminding ourselves that we are safe in the present moment (if of course this is the truth), noticing and taking in our sense of safety in our home, our car, wherever we may be. When we're feeling safe, we are open to experience feelings of peace.

6"x6" mixed media "Highways That Lead Home"

Our second need as humans is to feel satisfied or accomplished, as opposed to frustrated or disappointed.  This relates to what Hanson called our "approach and reward system". The sub cortex or mammalian part of the brain handles our needs for satisfaction.  Here we are concerned with opportunities for food, for career, for the creative aspirations of our lives.  When these needs are met we feel contented and grateful.

Our third need is to feel connected to others.  You may have read  stories of babies failing to thrive in orphanages because they are deprived of the very basic human need for connection.  Our cortex is the source of our primate need for relationship, inclusion and our need for basic human warmth.  Our need to be seen, liked and appreciated are part of our basic human needs.  This is the part of us that feels love, compassion and kindness in relation to others.  The absence of  feelings of connection are sources of hurt, loneliness, and unworthiness.  We have all experienced these whether real or imagined.

6"x8" mixed media "Pilgrimage To The East"

Hanson talked about green zones and red zones as ways of thinking about these systems.  When our needs are met, we are living in the green zone.  If we feel deficient in any one of these areas we tip over into deficiency and find ourselves in the red zone.

One of the things I found  interesting was how we can deal with the "deficient" states when we find ourselves there.  I think finding our way out of the red zone is often a source of confusion.  If you are feeling deficient in the "need for connection" area of life ie, feeling lonely or left out", it's not hugely helpful to notice that you feel safe, or to work more diligently on your career aspirations.  That may improve things slightly or temporarily, but the real need for love and connection is not being addressed.  This clarity is so helpful when we (or others) are experiencing suffering or feelings of things not being right.  And while a bag of popcorn tastes good, it doesn't really address feelings of unworthiness or feeling left out.   Hanson recommends taking in the good in all areas of these systems, reminding ourselves regularly where in our lives we are safe, accomplished and loved.  Over time we can actually change the structure of our brains by taking in the good in our lives.  And who among us doesn't wish for a new brain sometimes??

The Dharma of Art or Two Days In Jeane's Studio

 painting by Jeane Myers

It's amazing how things fit together if you let them. I recently spent a weekend on retreat with Rick Hanson and then slipped below the 49th parallel to spend some time in the studio of Jeane Myers from Art It.  The retreat and the studio time melted deliciously into a unified whole, where painting and dharma practice had the sweet, tantalizing flavour of a favoured treat. The days in Jeane's light filled studio were punctuated with conversations that plunged immediately into the deep end of the pool. "It's not really about the individual piece, it's more about the process and how it connects to the rest of the way we live our life." I'm paraphrasing Jeane here. Yes, yes, I have seen how painting is the condensed milk version of what I spill out in the world.

She asked questions that I stumbled and sputtered over, like "why do you paint?"  This is not casual, filling the space question.  Jeane, a former theatre director is gathering; gathering information so she might help you find that button you dropped on the sidewalk and have been searching for, forever.

Jeane Myers Studio

If you stop by here once in a while you have heard me whine about frustration with my process, how I feel I don't know what I'm doing and that I am never happy with what I paint. (that's the Coles notes on my whinging as the Brits call it).  And there are great similarities in the way I go about my life, hoping for the quick, tidy fix and on to the next thing.  "Distress tolerance" Hanson calls it and it's a muscle I'm working on.

Another studio view

I have followed Jeane's blog for some time now and I LOVE her work. On many occasions I have been stopped in my gumboots as she obliterates a painting that I would have called a keeper.  This fearlessness and dedication to growth and process hooked me.  I see in her a person that is willing to stand on the edge, who rejects security in favour of growth.  In a way, the how she does it, is almost more important than what she does, for me.  But it's what she does that stops the eye and makes it settle down for a closer look.

We are such interesting creatures, us humans. What I told Jeane I was on the hunt for was "form" in my work.  I felt that abstract composition was a big hairy mystery to me, well actually I left out the hairy part.   By hour 2 of our time together a little light started flashing on the internal dashboard.  I didn't really come to learn about form and composition.  I came to learn how to have a conversation with my painting. And isn't that life?  Often what we think we need is not really it.  We just need a wise guide to push aside the tangled branches and show us where the trail really is.

small work I did in Jeane's studio

I needed to be able to learn from my work.  And doesn't that translate into every place in life? If someone can give us the tools, we can fish forever, instead of constantly coming back like a little bird, hoping someone will feed us.  Jeane displayed a razor sharp knack of cutting through the tangle and getting to  the real issue.  And while I had read about this "conversing with your work" I just never really got it.  I had puzzled over John Daidoo Loori's descriptions of standing in front of his work and waiting for something to shift. For me shift never happened, maybe without the f, but that's another story.

Somehow by the end of the first day, somewhere inside me I understood what "having a conversation" meant. By having me constantly turn my work around, it somehow released my busybody, thinking mind. That simple process freed a deeper, inner eye.  Suddenly I felt more comfortable, more connected to the work.  My goodness that canvas and I were chattering away at each other. I teased that I was channeling Jeane.  But in truth there is something communicated energetically by someone who knows what they are doing and has trust and confidence in the process.

Jeane's work waiting to go to the Simon Mace Gallery

In one of her posts Jeane talked about finding the "arbitrary" parts of a painting, the parts that don't work, the parts that detract and weaken the real meat (tofu for you vegetarians) of the piece.  When she wrote about this in her blog, it seemed like she was speaking in tongues.  What?  Arbitrary?  I couldn't imagine identifying the arbitrary.  And yet as we worked and looked and talked, slowly I could see it.  I am still on training wheels with this one, but I have some sense of "the arbitrary".  Before it truly sounded like a foreign language.

It was 2 days packed with so much learning, more than I could ever imagine.  Sometimes it felt like things were being communicated by osmosis.  As a teacher, Jeane displayed a complete lack of ego and  generosity of spirit.  "Here, what do you think is arbitrary in my painting?  How would you do it if it was in your style?"  She was so interested in figuring out the puzzle of what I needed.  My hunt was her challenge.  You can travel a long way to find a Dharma teacher with that same curiosity and attention to the task.

More of Jeane's painted goodness

One of the things that impressed me the most about Jeane was her understanding of how to learn from her process and the actual piece in front of her.  I loved drinking in her positive attitude (no that would be guzzling). At one point she said something like, "you have your pros and your cons. What is really interesting and where all the excitement is, is in the "cons".  That's where the work and growth is."  As someone who has spent a lot of time feeling frustrated by the challenge this was like being teleported to another planet.  Sometimes we have to look through someone else's eyes to be able to really see.

So we never took out a colour wheel or talked much about paints or galleries.  We jumped right off the deep end, me with my water wings and Jeane swimming out in front, calling out that the water was fine and that you could learn a lot from just putting one arm in front of the other.

And while my retreat with Rick Hanson was great, I can't even begin to communicate what 2 days in Jeane's studio were like.  I wish for you all, whatever your art, a mentor, an art spirit that is just the right fit for you, to encourage you and to fish out of you all that is good and amazing. It's in there.  Some people excel at helping you dip into the pond of what's hiding in your heart. If they're like Jeane they actually thrive on the challenge.