Suspending disbelief...

Oct 2012, graphite drawing

After two days, 860 pages (I’m always polite about reading the acknowledgments) and a struggle to learn the language, customs, geography and history of dwarves, elves, Urgals and dragons, I crashed landed back in reality this morning.

Suspending disbelief for an extended period is like a two week vacation in Neverland.

A bit more death and destruction than I prefer but I guess that’s the way it goes when you’re fighting an evil king-magician-spellcaster person who didn’t know for a couple of centuries what kind of pain he caused. The dragons hook up but sadly for the hero (and us) Eragon floats off into the sunset alone. Although, with a life expectancy of 1k years plus, he still has a chance to get the girl, or elf, or dwarf, or ….  Four books in umpty-dozen languages and a movie under his magic belt at age 27. A great start for Christopher Paolini author of “Inheritance.”

Suspending disbelief is a great tool for creatives.

Remembrance, Peace, Healing and Cannon Fodder

When a human being consciously believes they are offering their life for a cause greater than themselves, they choose the path of hero.

I may not support the cause, however, I honor the individual for the nobility of their act and respect a person’s right to choose how they may possibly die.

With honor to the men and women who serve…

Yesterday, my US Air Force veteran spouse and I visited the Dignity Memorial Wall, a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, now on the final leg of it’s tour before retirement to a museum.

As a Marine Corps wife during the Vietnam war, the wall brought back powerful and painful memories. I’m profoundly grieved by this compelling reminder we humans have been involved in the earth experience for thousands of years and haven’t yet found a peaceful way to resolve international differences. I pray every day we get a lot smarter in a very short time. Since Lysistrata, mass sexual boycott has been a powerful tool for peace consciousness. Hello? An end to combat may really be so simple.

Turning from the memorial to look across the grounds I saw recruitment tents. To make sure I read the situation correctly, I approached a uniformed man behind the table:
Me: “Are you recruiting?”
He: “We’re trying not to.”
Me: “What’s your purpose here then?”
He: (Indicating a precision fan of brochures and pamphlets) “We’re providing information and handing out presents.” (Presents was the term he used for trinkets marching between the pamphlets. Do military marketers really believe we’d raise young people gullible enough to sign their lives away for a few gimcracks?)
Me: “So you’re recruiting?”

He had the grace to look chagrined and didn’t answer. To his credit, he couldn’t lie.

Most folks, whatever their their political or military persuation, would acknowledge using a memorial as a shil for business is ill mannered at the least. The title of the traveling exhibit and the stark reality of a recruiting presense set up an irreconcilable dissonance for me. Exploitation of the intense and vulnerable emotions from those at a vigil for the thousands of men and women who served and died is conscious less.

In the dark...

My spouse was already out cold. I’d almost completed the rituals in preparation for rest and stood at the side of the bed after a very long day. I flicked on the light, set the phone alarm, applied lip balm, fished the sleep mask from the top drawer and skimmed it into position across my eyes effectively blocking all visual information. I kicked off the slippers and slid into bed, pulled up the covers and the universal sigh of “I finally get to lie down” emanated from somewhere deep in my soul. Blissful deprivation with the relative quiet of evening in a suburb of twenty thousand people right over the back fence from 2 plus million. I’d curled into my favorite dream position and was dropping off when the voice came out of the dark, very close to my ear…


“So, Zorro, you gonna sleep with the light on all night long?”


I’ve mentioned before our bodies are the evolutionary product of thousands of millennia and physically our responses are slow to catch up and cope with the myriad of technological stimulations we’re subjected to. Back in the day, we slept in caves and didn’t have to deal with blinking cell phones, glow from alarm clocks, computers downloading at three a.m. and street lights seeping glare through the blinds. I’m told there are even those who sleep with the television on. In the bedroom.

The consequences of these exterior conditions are hard on the health of our still indigenous bodies. Melatonin is a hormone necessary for the regulation of numerous critical physiological functions. Melatonin doesn’t trigger and function properly in the presence of a light source, no matter how small. Recently, studies suggest women who sleep with lights on have a higher incidence of breast cancer. Yep. It’s serious.

One of the solutions, when we don’t have the option to regulate our environment, is a simple sleep mask.

So, turn off the lights and keep the sword handy, just in case.

Kumari Devi

Thought it may be time to post some of the work I’ve been doing in the past months.  A departure from the usual in some cases, all of it fun to do.

2012, gouache on watercolor paper, 9.25 x 9.25, private collection

Kumari Devi means virgin goddess. She certainly was a pleasure to paint and get to know.

 

Hope


 

What if it were this easy?

What if we could look up the hill when we’re slogging through the dark places of our nightmares to see a sign announcing hope only 16 miles away? Not only that, we’re offered rest and time out for a little fishing.

Hope is a commodity so dear to the human condition we’re willing to walk through the fire if we think hope is waiting with a cold drink and cool towels on the other side.  We all seek the relief of hope.  

What happens if we’ve trusted the sign, and we’re halfway down the trail with a burning thirst and blisters and wonder if we really saw a sign?

When the flare isn’t this clearly visible, where do we find hope?

Often, hope ignites when a complete stranger shares a moment of compassion through kindness and our optimism restores or hope may be a spiritual gift from a gracious Universe very personally invested in our aspirations.

Most frequently, hope resides as an eternal spark in our own murky interior. When we can’t find hope in the present we can access our memory of hopeful times and memory will stimulate a regeneration of incentive. Because of the way the mind works with memory, the same chemicals produced at the time of the initial hopeful episode recreate in the present and flood through our systems to bring the uplift we desperately need. This is one of the times there is merit in looking back.

We humans are in all, amazing creatures.