Zen

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.

On Being Precious or Being Precise

The Renwick Gallery has an amazing new exhibition of 40 artists under 40 years old who are changing the face of art and craft.  The work exhibited there is transformative for anyone who is interested in creativity, inspiration and the artistic process.  I marvelled at the concepts they played with in their work and level of precision and craft that each artist has achieved in his or her own piece.  See a slide show of their work here.

One of the most important lessons for me to learn and relearn as a recovering creative has been to be honest about being precious and being precise about my work.  I had a wonderful painting teacher at the Corcoran named Tom Xenakis who would stand behind me in a painting class and say (in a very unjudgemental way):  “You are being precious.” He didn’t mean cute or funny.  He meant that I was being fastidious and affected in my work.  It is a challenge about the practice of art.  Tom’s lesson has stayed with me, although it usually doesn’t come to me the moment I need it, before I have painted a canvas into a muddy mess.  Or when I look at something I’ve worked very hard on but it won’t sing.  There’s just paint, no heart.

Like all good art teachers, Tom taught working the entire canvas, leaving something and returning to it, trusting the process of making art.  In other words — get the hell out of your own way.  Let it flow.  Stop thinking so much.   Look, focus, see and paint.

The practice of mindfulness — of being in the moment and getting yourself out of the way — is important to painting, to yoga practice, to life.  Precision happens in mindful moments.  It is when we really see the shape of an eye — it isn’t shaped like an almond, the pupil isn’t really round, the iris catches the light here and darkens there.  In asana practice, precision happens when we can turn off the noise in our minds to tune into the sensations of our bodies, allowing us to take flight into bakasana or come up into our first headstand.  Indeed, mindfulness allows us to be precise with the people we love.  It allows us  look into their eyes and be present, to empathize, to listen and to love.

In Re-Entry I posted the painting of my husband’s hand.  I’ve added to the canvas a portrait of my daughter and the crook of his elbow, where she used to swing from as a toddler.  It is still unfinished, but I’m happy with it because I enjoyed every moment of the painting process.  I stopped being precious and just let the emotions carry me through.

Again I’ve learned the truth to the  Zen paradigm:  Stop thinking and talking about it and there is nothing that you will not be able to know.

Yes, Cricket, you can be lost AND found

The Garden Gate

I painted these two pictures — the one on the banner and the one in this post — during a time in my life when I was terribly lost.  So I found myself in front of a canvas.  Then I found myself on the yoga mat.  Eventually, I found myself engaging in life in a whole new and joyful way, despite the fact that I was hopelessly lost then and that there will be other lost times ahead of me.

There should be a map for these times in life that says “I don’t know.  Try a left?  Then perhaps a U-turn?”  That’s what I hope my site is for you:

A map with no discernible direction.

I’m tired of strategic plans and goal setting.  I just want to be.  To let things happen.  To do some yoga and create some art. To go for a journey.  So join me.

This is a good reading to start with, from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki (Tuttle Publishing, 1985).  (Shout out to Rebecca Bell Curlin for the great grad gift!)

Zen Dialogue

Zen teachers train their young pupils to express themselves.  Two Zen temples each had a child protegé.  One child, going to obtain vegetables each morning, would meet the other on the way.  

Where are you going?” asked the one.

“I am going wherever my feet go,” the other responded.

This reply puzzled the first child who went to his teacher for help. “Tomorrow morning,” the teacher told him, “when you meet that little fellow, ask him the same question.  He will give you the same answer, and then you ask him: ‘Suppose you have no feet, then where are you going?’ That will fix him.”

The children met again the following morning.

“Where are you going?” asked the first child.

“I am going wherever the wind blows,” answered the other.

This again nonplussed the youngster, who took his defeat to his teacher.

“Ask him where he is going if there is no wind,” suggested the teacher.

The next day, the children met for a third time.

“Where are you going?” asked the first child.

“I am going to the market to buy vegetables,” the other replied.