On being enough.

Lately I've been experimenting with what I think of as everyday mandalas. I created this one, called Heart Mandala, to accompany my guest post at Tracey Clark's I Am Enough blog.

Reverb10: Letting Go

This month I'm participating in Reverb10 with creative responses to daily prompts as a reflection on the year.  I'll be including some of my written and/or art responses here.

Today's prompt: What (or whom) did you let go of this year?

I can't seem to find the answer to this question. Is there one answer? Is there a concrete list of things I've let go of in 2010? I think maybe this is such a difficult question for me because I never feel like I truly, permanently let go of anything. Every person to whom I've ever said goodbye, whether by choice or unexpectedly, has left an imprint on my heart. Every lesson or awareness that comes from growth has altered my relationship with something, yet still I cycle through these lessons again and again, if perhaps with a deeper or wider learning each time.

I could make a list of things that I wish I had truly let go of this year, that I want to be done with abruptly instead of gradually. I could describe in great detail what I've been grasping onto repeatedly. But letting go? That's like breathing out. It's only one part of the dance.

Wanna play? Find out more at the Reverb10 website or follow along on Twitter with the #reverb10 hashtag.

A postcard of the ocean

Photo credit: Stacy Lynn Baum, Creative Commons license www.flickr.com

I was a teenager when I first encountered the statement, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” (It seems to me that dance might actually be a very effective way to evoke architecture... but let's leave that detail aside for now.) This quote comes to mind when I remember that I first learned about mindfulness from books. Reading about mindfulness is a lot like talking about music. You can find plenty of words to describe what music does, or how it makes you feel, but no amount of discussion can convey the true experience of music. It's all secondhand.


My first experience with mindfulness was secondhand. About six years ago, I started reading books by Western Buddhist teachers like Surya Das and Pema Chodron. I loved the words, which felt like spiritual poetry to me. Mindfulness seemed like something to aspire to, something beautiful and pure, beyond my everyday experience.


Two years later, in my first weeks as a graduate student at a Buddhist university, I became a true student of mindfulness. In weekly meditation classes, I learned how to meditate Tibetan-style: shamatha-vipassana (calm abiding / clear seeing), which is an eyes-open awareness practice. When I took a seat on a cushion for my very first meditation session, I fell into the struggle that epitomizes true practice.


And boy, was it a struggle. I had thought that I knew what resistance felt like. But sitting practice showed me the true depth, color, and texture of my resistance, all the layers of experience and fear that had brought it into being. Sitting on the cushion brought me face-to-face with the specificity of my own experience. I began to understand that mindfulness happens in our willingness to be in relationship with the gritty, uncomfortable, awkward details of our inner lives. (I also learned that avoiding the actual act of sitting, out of fear or overwhelm, does not result in one's self-awareness mercifully going away. But that's a story for another day.)


In merely reading about mindfulness, I had been gazing longingly at a postcard of the ocean. But when I became an active student of meditation--on the cushion and fully engaged in relationship with myself--suddenly I was standing barefoot at the edge of the world in the stinging salt wind. When I finally stepped up to meet the ocean, I knew for the first time exactly how small I am, and (yet / also) how vital I am within the complex web of human connection.


But what about those days when we feel too defeated to even try to practice? If you're like me, you get frozen into inaction by a desire to practice perfectly. What helps me is to reframe practice as being less about mastery--what is there to become perfect at, really?--and more about just showing up to maintain a friendly relationship with myself. Know, too, that what you do as a practice is far less important than your intention. Although I do revisit shamatha-vipassana occasionally, these days my mindfulness practice takes many different forms. Instead of sitting, sometimes I do several minutes of savasana (“corpse pose” in yoga). Some days I do a little Shiva Nata.** Some days writing is my practice, and some days it's making art. Some days there is no intentional practice, and I am merely a student of the moment-to-moment: noticing what's happening inside, knowing that I can choose how to react, and just coming back to my breath as needed.


Whatever your practice or not-practice, if you're showing up with love, then you're doing it just right.


(**That's not an affiliate link, y'all. I just like Havi Brooks an awful lot, and I want more people to know about the amazing work she does.)

Retrospective: A Crack in Everything, Part Two

Hatching Out (in process), 2005. Mud/clay, plaster, and chicken wire on wood.

I tell you this

to break your heart—

by which I mean only

that it break open, and never close again,

to the rest of the world.

—Mary Oliver, “Lead”


The following is an excerpt from my undergraduate thesis, a year-long spiritual exploration through artmaking.

I am not a sculptor. I have no training in three-dimensional art. I remind myself of this fact when I get the first glimmers of an idea for a piece about cracking open. The surface will be red Carolina clay, which cracks organically as its moisture evaporates over a period of days. And the armature, or supporting underlayer, will be in the shape of an egg half-protruding from a flat wooden support. …This piece will test my trust in the process. The materials themselves will do most of the work, which means that I will begin the piece but not directly finish it. Once the final mud layer is applied, I will have to relinquish control and accept whatever happens. …

This visual image of an egg with a cracking-open shell springs from a recent visit by my friend Melanie Weidner, a Quaker artist. I have invited Melanie to see my studio space and my work so far on this spiritual and artistic journey. We are struck by the overlapping themes of our current work, including the use of poetic texts. Melanie tells me about a particular Rumi poem that makes reference to hatching open through prayer.

In the following days I am haunted by the image of mud cracking as it dries, and I wonder how I can use mud as a primary media in a new piece. …When I open Risking Everything to the Rumi poem, I am stunned to see the words “I am stuck in the mud of my life.” I cannot ignore such a blatant indicator of the direction I should follow…

So, non-sculptor that I am, I enlist the aid of a fellow artist to mold a half-egg armature on wood using chicken wire. I plan to cover the armature with two or three layers of papier-maché, followed by a layer of gesso, and finally a layer of red-orange mud. The piece will be called Hatching Out.

…At first I’m convinced that the physical process of this piece will be fairly uncomplicated; I just need to complete each step carefully, and the only surprise will be the manner in which the mud will crack. Alas, it is not for me to dictate the arrival of surprises… I’m nowhere near the point where I can apply mud, but cracks are happening elsewhere.

First, because I get impatient with the first papier-maché mixture and add some gesso to it in a devil-may-care moment, that lumpy layer cracks as it dries. But since it’s solidly adhering to the egg shape, I don’t try to remove it. Instead, I decide to add a layer of plaster to smooth out the lumpiness of the egg. Applying the wet plaster with a plastic palette knife is startlingly like icing a cake. My plan is to return the next day and sand down the plastered egg to a uniform smoothness.

Instead, I get sick. I spend the weekend in bed instead of in the studio. When I return, ready to sand down my egg, I find the surface cracked yet again—the semi-smooth plaster surface shows several fractures, and the plaster has entirely cracked off in two areas. Not only that, but the combined weight and moisture of the plaster and papier-maché layers have begun to warp the wood support, to the point of causing a two-inch crack in the support itself.

At this point, I know what I’ve done wrong in barging ahead with unfamiliar materials. … I have to decide whether to forge ahead with this imperfect and unstable piece as it is, or start over with new and better materials. I’m torn. I’m fond of my egg, flawed though it is. But it seems ridiculous to cling unnecessarily to something that isn’t working.

…It dawns on me that this idea of “letting the process lead” requires a more-than-intellectual willingness to embrace whatever happens. It’s not about certainty, a guarantee that the piece will work out. It’s difficult, this business of trust. Sitting down with my journal to ponder my next move, I come across a quote from Surya Das about “work that genuinely develops us as we develop it.” It’s really about the Buddhist concept of right livelihood, but at this moment it feels like an offering, a reassurance that this difficult work of making art is well worth doing. It’s a blessing to be in development. I’m not perfect, and my egg isn’t going to be perfect, either.

…I do a little first aid with wet plaster strips to make the egg’s cracked surface solid and unbroken. …Three days later I come into the studio with a bucket of red Carolina clay and a small bag of dark earth. … I had forgotten how much I like working with clay and mud. Being on my knees in the studio layering mud onto this egg structure feels primal somehow, as if I am building a world. My plan is to cover only the egg and later paint the wood background with black acrylic, but I find myself spontaneously covering the entire background with a thin layer of clay as well, and the visual effect is striking. I don’t know how the background layer will react when it dries, but I’m eager to see what will happen.

…I check on the egg every day to mark its progress. Each time I leave the studio, I know that the egg will be different when I return. It dries unevenly, the moisture slowly withdrawing from one side to the other. In this partially dried state, the egg seems like a living creature, an object imbued with transformative powers. It takes more than three days to fully dry and crack. Finally, all of the moisture is gone. Deep cracks run throughout the clay surface as well as in the dark circle. Despite the cracks, the dried mud is firmly adhered to the egg armature, but I will add a finishing layer of spray-on fixative to ensure that it remains intact.

…The piece becomes irreparably damaged in an accident soon after its completion. One in-process image is the only evidence of its existence. The forced letting-go of this piece, a struggle at every step, feels like a lesson in my ultimate lack of control over the process. Even the final product of the art process is not really final. Some of my artwork may outlast me, some of it will not, but the fact is that whatever mark I make on the world is impermanent. And yet the knowledge of that impermanence fails to persuade me to give up this business of making art. In fact, it leads me to want this divine connection not less, but more. 

Retrospective: Be Very Afraid. And Then Draw It Anyway.

This is a drawing I made in 2003. It is untitled. I made it with a green gel pen on 60-pound sketchbook paper.

Please take a moment to notice whatever thoughts or feelings arose in you when you first glanced at this drawing.

If your response was That's not a very good drawing. The perspective is all messed up, and it's not very realistic, and there's hardly any detail... you're absolutely right. If we approach this drawing from a sheer technical viewpoint, it gets a failing grade.

On the other hand, if your first thought was That's such a good drawing! Whoever made it was really paying attention to their environment... you, also, are absolutely correct. If we see this sketch as an attempt to interact with and remember a specific moment in time, a way to record an impression, then it succeeds.

And if your reaction sidestepped the question of quality, if you saw this drawing and wondered how and why and by whom it was drawn, if you intuitively identified with the underlying desire to somehow name and contain one little piece of an overwhelming experience... then you are the most absolutely correct of all.

I've never been very interested in debates about how to define Art, or whether a piece of artwork is Good or Not Good based on any specific parameters. What interests me is what type and degree of relationship a created object compels from me. Sometimes I can't seem to stop looking at it—I fall instantly in love. Sometimes I find a piece aesthetically displeasing but, because it elicits a strong response from me, it has succeeded in its job of creating relationship.

This is why I love seeing pages from other people's sketchbooks. In our sketchbooks, we are vulnerable. Sketchbooks are tender places where our drawings sometimes tremble or smear or are left unfinished. I began recording my world in notebooks at age 9. They were purely written journals for the first 17 years, no visual elements until about 2001. Even now my journals and notebooks and sketchbooks are a messy and cryptic mix of handwritten entries, sketches and collages, lists, color-coded schedules, and notes from a smorgasbord of whatever I'm studying lately... but always they are vulnerable and doubtful, with bravery leaking out around the edges.

So here's what I see when I look at this drawing now. I see a young woman holding a green gel pen and a cheap sketchbook, sitting on the back of a couch in an empty common room at twilight, struggling to breathe in and center herself, despite bone-deep anxiety and self-doubt. She is afraid of being caught in the act of being an artist—afraid of being told that she is not an artist and never could be—and she hurries through the drawing so as to escape unnoticed. But she so badly wants to capture the beauty of the mugs drying on a table at twilight. She draws because she can't help seeing and loving the world.

What matters here isn't the drawing itself, or the hurried and anxious way in which it was produced. What this drawing records is a moment in time that mattered, and a desire to document seeing the moment that was stronger than the artist's fear of doing it wrong.

So it is that the drawings I am least proud of are sometimes also the ones that make me feel the most proud.