flowers

To Do, Be OR The Challenge of the Empty Laundry Basket
A way to say goodbye

A way to say goodbye

At my goodbye party at Iona, I explained through a very ugly cry, that I was leaving because of my yoga practice. This life on the mat has helped me understand that challenges are at the very root of growth and development. Challenge helps us question, discover strengths and quiet the internal dialogue that binds us. I had grown comfortable at Iona and had lost my beginner’s eyes. While I could have stayed for many more years because I loved the work and the people, I knew comfort wasn’t good for me or the organization. I took a position at First Book on July 22 and I have beginner’s eyes, hands, mouth and feet. I remind myself every evening that just like headstand, this is the challenge I need and I will learn.

As I was leaving Iona, I decided to do a project for the teams I worked with. As a conceptual artist with a laundry basket full of 3.5 ” cubes of wood, I decided to do a block for each of the 12 individuals that would form a whole.

Block Puzzle

Block Puzzle

I started with the facade of the bouquet — since I thought of each person bringing a unique beauty to the whole — the sum being more beautiful than the parts. This facade took a long time, and to tell the truth, I was disappointed that it looks like a mundane painting on a china vase.

And, the process would be too long to produce the project by the time I left. On the other facades, I painted the Lao Tzu quote that was going through my mind about Iona’s strategic planning process and my own thinking about my own future journey.

The other is a white foreground with black lettering:

Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu

The last facade was more opportunistic. Ben sent me an incredible picture of his time at Ocean City. I loved the shimmer and the mystery of this new place. Fourth facade done.

Oppportunistic inspiration

Opportunistic inspiration

By this time, it was my last week. I had to step up the pace to complete the process. Interestingly, these are the images I’m the most happy with. I had to move fast, and to riff on the outer facades. So the words “bloom” or “flower,” the images of a shell, a bird in flight, then a feather flowed onto the wood. I began to use the wood as part of the design rather than to cover it up. I had to stop capturing reality and move to flowing creatively. I love that these are the images that are the “inside” the reality. Fitting for a team or an individual thinking about the future. According to Keith Sawyer in his new book on creativity, Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, a good way to bubble up ideas around a problem or question is to give yourself a deadline or a boundary so that you can’t get stuck with one idea. Another way to bubble up ideas is to “topple,” to help your mind create ideas by association. For example: I didn’t like the picture I painted of the bouquet, but I really liked the idea of “blooming,” so I concentrated on a quick painting of the opening of a day lily. Then thinking of yoga, I used the stylized lotus to imagine the same bloom. Then I got realistic about what it was I wanted to say and I “said” it with image and word. Three blocks down in an evening, instead of in a week.

Toppled ideas

Toppled ideas

The last creative idea was to think about the how the individuals I know and love would make their own mark at Iona. I created a space for them to do this, using chalkboard paint.

It’s three weeks later than the day I left Iona. I spent yesterday tying a bow on the project, literally and figuratively.

I spent time thinking of the gifts I had received from these people in the six years I had worked at Iona and thanking them in writing, choosing the very right piece of the puzzle for them and wrapping it up. I wonder if they’ll have time to put the puzzle together?

Everybody gets chalk to make their mark

Everybody gets chalk to make their mark

Woo. Way too much doing.
More blocks

More blocks

Mother’s day flew past in a whirlwind of doing. Our major fundraiser at work on May 3 was the most successful yet. It required considering the “what ifs” and “what happens when,” reams of paper with seat assignments, thinking through processes of pledges received and acknowledged, of financial reports to file and contracts to sign. I was drained by the time Tom and I got away to celebrate a strange new mother’s day without our mothers or anyone around to mother. But the doing kept us moving forward — there was packing, driving, friends to see, the beach, the great new restaurant in town…then, back at work to refocus on website redesign which has been left too long, teaching more classes than normal, Emma’s homecoming, a weekend workshop with Tias Little at Sun and Moon Yoga Studio…and today, the inevitable wall. Thud.

My body has told me that I must undo the effects of charging my adrenal gland up to the max. I must un-do and non-do.

So how ironic is it that on my day of non-doing, I am pulled to the studio to the 29 blocks in our laundry basket, awaiting transformation? I painted this facade today, inspired by the poem by Wendy Videlock, written for her mother:

Flowers

They are fleeting.

They are fragile.

They require

little water.

They’ll surprise you.

They’ll remind you

that they aren’t

and they are you.

I’d found the poem about a month ago when the flowers for Dorothy’s funeral were fading and I took pictures to remember them. Today, as I painted this facade, I lost myself in the process of painting — in the color and the line. Even though I was doing, I was undoing — undoing some of the sadness of my mother’s and Dorothy’s passing, of the exhaustion I feel today and other negative emotions that have been stuffed and packed in nooks and crannies of my body, mind and spirit. There is no tomorrow and no yesterday. Just this moment, this brush stroke.

As Tias explains in an article he wrote for the Sun and Moon newsletter, in the Taoist tradition, non-doing is “wu-wei,” a highly esteemed way of living life. His workshop helped us instinctually understand that we are “doer devotees” and that this approach is antithetical to yoga. The first session of his workshop started with sitting in meditation, listening for the deep thunderous silence rumbling. Today, I heard a moment of this silence as I became a flower.

Spring Should Be Here Already
There are 29 of these blocks left in my studio...

There are 29 of these blocks left in my studio…

There are some things in the studio that are a beautiful metaphor for how our lives are really going.  My newest project sums up everything about my life as a yogi, a development professional, a wife, a mother, a person of faith.

Years ago, I painted a puzzle — it was eight smaller cubes that fit together to form a much bigger cube.  On the outside facades, I painted apples.  On the other facades of the individual cubes, there were aspects of a human face.  It sold in a show in Tennessee, and I was shocked.  I still miss it, like you miss an old friend.  I thought I would paint another one, but you start to understand the futility of this enterprise.  It is like saying, “I’ll have another child just like the one I just had.” It doesn’t happen.

So, when I started treating myself to a weekly bouquet of flowers, I thought — great idea for the facade of another puzzle piece!  My sweet hubby helped me pick out a beautiful piece of pine at Home Depot and waited as a patient wood-cutter split the beam into 33 pieces of 3.5 x 3.5 inch cubes.  They occupy a laundry basket in my studio.

The pics of these blossoms inspired me and the first painting of my first little cube came out pretty effortlessly in an afternoon.

Then life got in the way.  I subbed a lot of classes at the studio and I learned a lot, but didn’t paint at all. Then I  had a big event for work and didn’t spend any time painting. I wanted to make sure to spend time with the wonderful and giving hubby that would spend time with me in the Home Depot and is a wonderful friend and companion.  No painting — but lots of time with him. The second and the third facades were not as effortless.  The details of the flowers were not fun, they were painful — how many little lines are in those strange little green flowers?  How do you paint a flower that has petals like a cabbage, for God sakes? My back ached in the seat, I kept finding new distractions in the room…

The unpainted cubes mock me from the laundry basket. What was I thinking? Why is this project even remotely important?

Now, still 29 blocks...

Now, still 29 blocks…

Even though I’ve lost my sense of purpose or process with this project, I  must get through these blocks.  I can’t have twenty-nine 3.5 inch cubes in our laundry basket any longer.

Spring needs to come soon, literally and figuratively.  As a meditative prayer, I’ll be painting lots and lots of very complicated flowers. And that’s the yogic/parenting/friendship/spiritual lesson.  Get on with it because we really, really need the laundry basket.  And spring.