An extra hour...
An old pencil drawing from the dark ages… on BFK in a triangle sketchbook I made.
Palmer, Alaska has a current population around 7,000 ish so imagine how modest the population was in the dark ages when I was young. The Dark Ages used to be the ten centuries prior to the Renaissance. Now the Dark Ages is reclassified as anything before Apple. Palmer is located in the Matanuska-Susitna valley, the Tigris and Euphrates of The Last Frontier. The 43 mile drive from Palmer to Anchorage on Highway 1 is about 45 minutes on a good day. Before Sam Hill’s revolutionary vision of paved roads made it to the Far North, the trek between Palmer and Anchorage seemed interminable. Of course, it was Much Longer the reverse direction.
Now, Highway 1 runs north and south while the moose still run east and west. The ineffective merger creates confusion for moose and drivers alike. Add snow and it’s a 3-D, real time Dodgem. On any given day, part of the scenery is at least one car whose driver lost. Even in good weather, Alces Americanus may unexpectedly become a new hood ornament.
Ted Pyrah commuted almost three decades from Palmer to teach in the Culinary Department at University of Alaska at Anchorage - in addition to running a farm, now the largest U-Pick in the Mat-Su valley. In a passing comment about his morning, Ted shared one idea that’s stuck with me and changed how I view personal time and contribution. Thank you, Ted.
He told me he built in an hour every day specifically to be available to help people in trouble along the road during his drive to or from work. He said if he didn’t need the time he had a whole unplanned hour available every day.
People need help at the most inconvenient times. If we’ve allotted time to help into our schedule, we have the time available. Yes, sometimes the incident doesn’t fit the agenda, however, it all works out. We really do have all the time we need.
Footnote: On a serious note, Moose are one of the most dangerous animals on the planet and may cause serious injury or death in altercations or collisions. Moose kills are given to the first-up organization or individual on a roster to harvest the meat. Alaska is not keeping up with the rest of the world by installing animal overpasses. Overpasses attempt to alleviate human and animal suffering, however, it hasn’t yet been determined who will teach moose to use them. The animals were here first.
The best laid plans...
Collagraph approximately 22x15” Cracks me up. Tend to forget the image will be in reverse when I plan a print. A definite signal to practice right-side-really-on-the-left by making more collagraphs..
Why do our resolutions tank so soon? Actually, mine haven’t since I stopped making them - a guaranteed win to start any given year. TaDa!
Resolutions are 4000 years plus of embedded genetic coding driving us to promise the gods we’ll be good if they don’t rain destruction on us. A few centuries ago, resolutions became a part of western religious observances as a way to determine once a year if our moral compass still functions. The irony is not lost. No wonder our intent backfires when we have an ancient ritual driving us while society has moved on. Our “resolutions” are on a slippery slope to start with. When we understand and separate how much of our decisions, responses and feelings genuinely belong to us from what is ancestral, cultural, historical knee-jerk genetic programming, we stand a pretty good chance of handling our life as it comes.
The current iteration of manifesting leads to the same end if we treat the Universe as our personal concierge, especially when other people are involved in our preferred outcome. Herding humans who have no clue what they’re supposed to do for and with us is like minding mice at a crossroads. My rule of thumb? What is my business, another’s business and the gods’ business. Thank you, Susan Grace Beekman. I’m over my boundaries if I’m involved in any business but mine. Although, I have plenty of opinions when asked.
Limiting the Universe to the parameters of our knowledge base and imagination also becomes problematic in manifestation. Most Alaskan’s don’t know how to swim. The 9 months of ice and below freezing water during the few weeks of summer may have something to do with this. When I went “Outside” to university, the apartment had a pool and I decided to learn. Every morning and night I faithfully repeated the intention while I imagined with every fibre of my being backstroking across the pool - primarily because I couldn’t figure out how to put my face into the water and breathe at the same time. I can still do a terrific backstroke, although I need a life vest to snorkel in water deeper than my knees. Now, I petition the Universe for the right next step and move forward on my desires one right next step at a time leaving the path and future open to coincidences or shifts along the way. We all know Yoda stated empirically, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
So, we’re circling back to the last post. When we consider our goals and make resolutions have we taken into account our personal rhythms and consulted our heart for preferences? What has real meaning for us? How are we attempting to propitiate the gods by offering sacrifice? How many of our goals initiate from guilt? Are our goals really Great Aunt Harriet’s desire for us? What would we rather do to meet our need to improve while being soul happy? Speaking of happiness, when was the last time we were happy and what were we doing we’ve forgotten to do?
Goals rarely work as well as they could when we don’t account for our feelings. How many times have we attained an objective only to realize the outcome didn’t make us feel well? Or, how is the intent helping us avoid issues central to our life mission? How many aspirations begin in guilt because society dictates a mainstream norm and our path may be in the margins?
Our life breathes a huge sigh of relief when our personal integrity is supported by our direction.
If you want to join the conversation or have questions, please leave them below. I'd like to hear from you.
A time for everything...
Tree and Sun. Acrylic on paper. Approx 10x10”
Time doesn’t exist and yet is the most valuable commodity for many of us, so we latch onto anything that promises to effectively manage our time and productivity. What if we stopped with the time obsession and began to notice and live by our rhythms? What if we lived for our purpose? What if we gauge our path by how we feel while we’re on course compared to suffering the side effects of sidetracked?
Screenwriter, author and playwright C.S. Whitcomb turned me on to the concept of a creative cycle. In the west, artistic ideas and the work to bring the ideas to fruition are respected. However, a necessary balance in the cycle is rest, renewal and taking an opportunity to clear away to make room for the new. We generally don’t understand this concept in the west where work ethic is considered a moral good. If the world isn’t beating us up enough for being unproductive then we take over and berate ourselves as lazy procrastinators. What if the rest period is the most critical for us to generate ideas? What if tossing the notes and scraps in the dumpster clears the way for the latest, newest, best ideas? What if we need to wander memory lane to mine our experiences or project to the future and visualize where we’re going? What if we need a rest from the “high” of chemicals flooding our bodies during an expressive period. “Normal” can seem depressed compared to a time of intense output because the physical returns to chemical baselines.
Some of us naturally fall into the rhythms that bring us joy. Others of us need to suss out our individual tempo for life. When are we at our best daily? Perhaps our inspiration has a monthly or yearly rotation. What if summer is our best generative time or what if a limp dishrag has more get-up-and-go than we do in August? Until we understand ourselves and live to take care of our tender patterns, we may experience train wrecks. With people, in business, spiritually or even physically. My most vulnerable time for accidents with power tools is when I’m tired. When we know our patterns and sequence of ideas, work and rest, we’ll be far more effective generating what we love to contribute to the world.
If we are solitary workers, we tend to forget there are other people on the planet. The Dalai Lama said, “If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.” Tension, and consistently compromising our high energy work periods in favor of another’s will kill our spark. If we want to live and work in relationship, we must rely on respectful communication to come to consensus around boundaries for our work sequence and space.
So, the point of examining our cycles and rhythms is to find our best (and worst) times to be original and artistic. Only after we know how we operate and move in the world can we even begin to fully achieve our intentions.
If you want to join the conversation or have questions, please leave them below. I'd like to hear from you.
Next? The difference between resolutions, goals, intentions and manifesting.
Time Benders...
Archetype: Perfect Mother. Metal and petrified wood
I favor the sleep when you’re tired, eat when you’re hungry and draw on the walls of the cave lifestyle. However, some overachiever invented a sundial for their back yard and before the rest of us could blink, we have a Simon Says attached to our wrist, reminding us to stand up and live longer. Some artifacts suggest timekeeping is as old as the 30 thousand years old petrified base of the sculpture above. Humans came out of the primordial soup stuffing their planners with appointments as a way to establish productive superiority over their neighbors.
While we may have a craving for techno candy, our body and brain hasn't evolved much past the raise crops and tend flocks stage. Our soul short circuits when an artificial intelligence badgers us about everything from our bad mood to the room temperature. We struggle for balance while the gadgets run right over us. Until we make the space to be alone with our thoughts and feelings, sans the ever present devices, we won’t figure out where we want to go, let alone set a resolution to get us there. We lose confidence in our ability to determine our individual tempo and rely on external tools to manage our creative lives.
Circadian rhythms, the internal chronometer of our ancient ancestors, timed to the moon tides and sunrise, are functional in our 21st century bodies if we learn to hear them. The myth of the creative hedonist is giving way to healthy lifestyles. Research shows humans function better and are more productive when their activities are based in ritual and routine. Most humans share approximate rhythms, however, we need to pay attention to our discrete body and how we feel, then support our unique artistic tempo through the days, weeks and months of the calendar. We know our schedule works when we feel animated and able to pay attention to what totally rocks our socks.
At this juncture, Einstein would point out linear time is a false construct because everything and every plane exists concurrently. Past and Future is a simultaneous existence where time is no longer the absolute Newton proposed. I love Einstein. Time is flexible. We can bend whatever the Universe uses to pass the time to longer or shorter stretches than we logically think we have. As a result of recent experiments with neural connections and eye movement, scientists are on the way to confirming Einstein’s hypothesis and suggest we will succeed in bending time. In some ways, we already have when the past exists in our memory and the future captures our imagination while we sit here with our feet up in the present.
Next we’ll consider how to make the most of time. We’ll explore the rhythms of creative work, check out why our resolutions might be slipping and consider alternatives.
I did this?
Manzanita Sunset, Pastel, 20x12”
Do you ever look at a painting and say, “I did this?” as if you’re coming around from total amnesia? Manzanita Sunset is one of the pieces that does it for me. Sometimes, my art amazes me and other times I think I should have been a plumber. Good friend and great abstract artist, Marilyn Woods https://woodshillstudio.com gave me a gracious kick in the sitdown place by telling me to get out of my own way. I totally appreciate the honest people who grace my life and her counsel was good for all of us who sometimes trip over our own self absorption. I was making art making too hard. I was making painting ~ Work! Too much pressure is a joy killer and most of our pain is self-inflicted. If art is an avocation or our day job, the minute the process stops taking us to our happy place we need to take a breath and re-evaluate. The number one reason I go off the rails is not honoring what I feel called to make and chasing after what seems to be popular or what will sell or what will get the mosts likes on social media. Here’s to a great 2019, getting out of our own way and making ourselves happy! The side effect of that will be performing amazing art!