Unification Theory

I miss my early am walks by the lake with my Dad. I miss being able to run out the door, hop in the car, and get to work without thinking about how long it will take to dig my car out. I miss my second bathroom that is disabled until the pipes thaw out.

However, I'm really enjoying the "we're-all-in-this-together" attitude at home, work, and the neighborhood. Once we were into the third, fourth, fifth, and snowmageddon storms this winter, my husband and son just got up and handled the digging-the-car-out thing before I asked. Last time, my son came in and told me that our neighbors were all out and told him to wait until the plow came through again to dig out the end of the driveway. At work, we all celebrated because our colleague from Germany managed to fly home to Frankfurt on THURSDAY during the storm, in time to take his wife to a concert in Stuttgart that they had been anticipating since Christmas.

Every once in awhile Nature hits us upside the head with the oneness of existence on this planet. Thanks.

Cultivation

I've been thinking about the concept of cultivation. I started thinking about this after a conversation about whether it's better to "bloom where you're planted" or "plant yourself where you want to bloom". The more I thought about it, I realized both concepts put a lot of power in the soil. Really, those sayings assume the blooming is affected by where it's done. And that's true. The nutrients, the water, the air, every bit of the environment that surrounds any living things affects its growth.

Often in life, you can't affect the bloom. If you're an iris bulb, you will produce an iris bloom. If you're a swan, you'll be a swan, if you're a dog you're a dog, and so on. It's just going to happen, and that's a miracle in itself. But how do you help those swans and dogs you love to be the highest form of swans and dogs they were meant to be? You cultivate the surroundings you share. It's the best you can do. 

To cultivate is to promote or improve growth through labor and attention. Standing at the edge of the lake and yelling at a swan to go make a nest and quit pooping in the lake and spread those wings and fly is not going to have an affect on the swan or the lake. It's really just going to make you crazy. To have an affect on how things you love bloom, you're much better off paying attention, adding appropriate labor, and cultivating the environment you share. It's the best we can do. 

Gestation

I haven't posted anything here since February. I was however, still visiting the lake, and taking photos and thinking about why some things attract my attention more than others. I'm posting my spring swan-nest photos from the woods by the lake even though the photos are from May and June. I'm going to go back there later today to see what the end of July has brought to that nest, but that will be another entry.

This nest intrigued me and I realized it was because there's so much going on, even though there's no movement. Spring is pretty naturally an inspiration for gestation. Literally, these swans are sitting on their eggs, but I related it to the creative process in my life and the world in general. I was also trying to work the concept of gestation or incubation into one of my recurring themes -- duality. I kept wondering over these months what the opposite of gestation was, what was its polar opposite? Was it birth? Hatching? And really it came to me that there isn't any. Some things aren't dualities, they don't have a polar opposite. Birth isn't really the opposite of gestation. Hatching isn't the opposite. Birth and hatching are the polar opposite of inception. Gestation comes in between.

And so while I was not posting for these months, I was just regrouping after a very busy winter. You can't really worry about whether you look still and unproductive to the world, that's what I took away from this. Sometimes you really just have to let yourself breathe and that's all.

My cousin recently had bypass surgery. Thankfully, he's doing very well. But right after the surgery, they let him sleep as long as he had to to recover. The doctors trusted him to wake himself when he was ready and he did. Gestation.

My lesson is that even under pressure to perform, keep your own pace. Stillness has its place in life.

Still Snow

I have been away from my blog for awhile. Busy, busy, busy. My daughter to school, my son on with life, work around the clock, holiday entertaining, business travel...all the stuff of life. However, taking the day off for our wedding anniversary (26 years) and reflecting on what life is really made of, I realized the universe has been gently but steadily slapping me with the message that this busy-ness is not all that life has to offer. A few hours of stillness reminded me that taking time to be still, planning to be present to the people you love, and making the space to be open to life as it flows and not as you wish to control it is the path to your best self.

And there's no better visual representation of the depth of stillness than winter snow on a frozen lake. So I took myself and my new camera out to our lake. If you've followed this blog, you know that I spent a year documenting lake-life on a log. That log had been there at least 10 years, but I caught the last year it was in that position, because a flood dislodged it and it's now gone.

Since there was no log, I went to the dog park to capture lake vistas. and the first photo above is from that point of view. Very Currier & Ives, and the sunlight was beautiful, but I found myself still attracted to my old spot, even though it was logless.

Once back in "my" place, the same scene that I've photographed so many times, still had a something new to offer. The familiar can offer intimacy and inspiration if approached with respect, an open frame of mind, and an awareness of attraction. And so taking the time to let thoughts flow on my anniversary brought that thought, which could just as well be describing marriage.

So my takeaway was that it is really a pleasure I've been missing to make time for my husband, my children, my family and my friendships. Not time that just fits between work and other obligations, or time that's multi-tasking with everything we need to accomplish, but committed time without distraction. And to discern what is distraction and what is me, I have to also spend time in stillness.

The third photo above represents the beauty, depth and wonder of leaving a space to be still.

Truth

Here's a quote I came across today that kind of clarifies what resonated with me in the quote in my last post.

"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold."
– Leo Tolstoy

So I thought of the "hiding" as actually a discretionary judgement of not dwelling on details that confuse the fundamental truth. Similarly the silhouette of this landscape against the sunset is really enough information to get the point and understand the "truth" of the moment perhaps better than a picture with distracting detail. Cropping with a discretionary eye washes away all that is not gold.

So hiding wasn't the point. The point is that life, if allowed to take its own course will reveal its beauty naturally the way it is supposed to. You just have to notice it. It's taken me a long time to have the faith that the world just works, even without me forcing it along. I didn't create this sunset, I just noticed it. And so I'm taking this lesson to mean that as my kids go off to college this year, I just have to notice them, not control them. Their spirits will shine the way they're supposed to because their innate talents are made to be seen.

Paradox and Passion

To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don't want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other.

--Roland Barthes

To_hide_a_passion_totally_or_even_to. (n.d.). Columbia World of Quotations. Retrieved August 25, 2010, from Dictionary.com website: http://quotes.dictionary.com/To_hide_a_passion_totally_or_even_to

I'm posting this quote to examine the paradox of living a life without resistance and a life of achievement. Effort, discipline, structure, and responsibilities seem more associated with deadlines and pressure than ease and grace. Can they exist simultaneously?

Passion may connect them. I see passion in nature as the force that manifests itself in infinite forms. That's what I felt in Florida where the photos here were taken.

Structure

The Australian Pines in Florida are an evasive species. Here at Stump Pass the state has killed them so that the native environment won't be choked out. At first we thought there had been a fire. There's something eerily attractive about the shoreline with those black and white trunks. And in the photo above, we once again see a log, for a time, grounded in the water and providing a structure that attracts wildlife and provides a dramatic focal point.

The point is that the life is always there, the structure just supports it for a finite amount of time. Although the structure supports rather than defines, it is what attracts the attention and makes this photograph. That bird could be any Floridian bird, but this one is special because it's framed by the tree. The context, the structure defines this birds presence in one particular moment. The environment is part of it's existence and an even larger part of it's observance by me.

I mention this because I've been thinking about "dependency on form". Existence is not dependent on form, but communication of existence is. You have to be somewhere to be noticed. And the somewhere that you are is the starting place that others have to connect with you. So your environment, context, or form is transient, but not separate.

I think that Tolle's point is best taken then, as instruction to be conscious of the form you take at any given time. Forms that work are structures that support rather than dependencies that limit growth.

Dependencies

I haven't posted anything in a long time. Not just because it was an exceptionally busy summer with graduations, weddings, college preparations, vacations and the usual product launches and job deadlines, and other responsibilities, but partially because my inspirational lake log is really gone. The lake is still alive with all the life it had before, but that focal point was taken away in the excessive rain and flooding that we had. It's such a seemingly insignificant thing, that log, that it's really surprising that it mattered to me at all.

But the whole thing mattered, I spent almost exactly a year observing, photographing, writing and just plain enjoying the variety of life that log attracted. And this blog was inspired by and dependent on the specific condition of a log anchored in a lake.

Eckhart Tolle is a popular modern philosopher, and here's a quote that my friend John just sent me today about dependencies:

To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease.

--Eckhart Tolle

It really is amazing how messages converge on you from a variety of sources. My mother and I always discuss how the universe literally smacks you in the head with something until you get it. So, in addition to John sending me the Tolle quote that life can be better when you free yourself of dependencies, my friend Clare put the same challenge to me. Different words, same idea, but with a homework assignment (she's a gifted teacher)--walk away from some things and note what happens by writing every day.

That's the background to my next few posts.

It's peaceful to just stay open to moments as they occur. It's not something I practice though. (My family will attest to that should anyone care to ask.) However, I believe I can give it a shot, and I will consciously do so for this next week. The photo I'm posting here is from our family vacation in Florida last week. My parents have a house we all use and this is the backyard at sunset on our last day. All four of us were so much more able to enjoy this after a week of vacation 'freedom'. To me it represents what Tolle said about things you think you need coming "to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last."

Textures in Time

I like the textures in this photo of the trees in the distance, the ice, the water and the reeds at the edge. It's a photo that you cannot go back and experience again. You may find something similar, you may take the essence of what you saw and felt and find it in other places, but the ice is now melted, that swan has swum on, and the reeds are starting to bloom. So here's my last post of the winter, presented as an homage to the textural opportunities of our physical world.

Time 03.07.10

An earlier blog--Time 12.06.09--is the last dated photo I have of the log that I've been blogging about for a year. The lake is very high due to extraordinary rain, and so there's a slight chance that it's still there and covered by water, but I think that it's most likely gone. I believe it dislodged and broke in to pieces that I've seen at the water's edge. (One is shown above.)

This was a busy winter in many, many ways, and so I did not photograph the cold and heavy snows at the lake. I'm sorry that I did not stick to my practice because I can't do it next winter, time has moved on, and it's not the same. I don't have photos of the lake completely frozen, but trust me it was for a much longer time than usual. However, here's a photo of the ice as the edges melted. Note a piece of log in the foreground, and the way the gulls use the ice as a float to gather on.

Snow Dunes 02.16.10

There's something about snow at the edge of the water and on the dunes that feels intimate and intriguing. My husband and I went to Atlantic City in February to celebrate our 25th Anniversary. Tom and I grew up vacationing at the Jersey shore and we've taken our family there for all these years. But in the winter, the comfortable familiarity of a place you know is changed up by the elements.

That's where some of the intimacy comes from--the juxtaposition of the familiar and the new. There's a 'getting to know you' aspect of an off-season visit that reveals some of the challenges and vulnerabilities that are masked by the high vitality and drama of the regular season show.

The snow is a reminder that Atlantic City is after all a seaside resort that must weather the storms.

Between Rain and Ice 01.24.10

Rain and snow made the lake a mystical moist home for the swans and the flora and fauna of the lake. I kept wondering where the turtles go at these times. They don't migrate. They hibernate in their shells I suppose.

The gray mist has a delicate loveliness. I wonder if the swans miss the sun and warmth, or if they are equally at home between the rain and the ice.

Time 12.06.09

I've had this photo on my computer desktop and large monitor at work all winter. I love the colors the blue and the brown. It's a fashionable, sophisticated color combination at this time for clothing and interiors, and I hadn't really thought about that until now. I just like it. The colors are peaceful and the scene is quiet. There's nothing apparently extraordinary about this photo, yet the snow and contrasting shadows and the way there is still grass and some green poking through the icy white embed this scene firmly in one moment in time.

Taken on December 6, 2010 it may be one of the last times we'll see that familiar log in the lake. We've had a harsh winter, lots of snow, then lots of rain, and then lots of flooding. This was one of the early snowfalls (maybe the first, I can't remember.) We did not know what was coming. Time is like that. Infinity and expansiveness created from finite moments and specific details.

Easter Sunrise at the Lake

I was away from my blog for the entire winter. I was not however, away from the lake, or away from taking photographs. So on this gorgeous Easter morning, I'm going to sit here and catch up on the winter and post some photos.

However--blogs are about the present and so first, I'd like to note that we went to Easter Sunday Mass at the edge of the lake at sunrise this morning and it was engaging. My daughter, my husband and I and many of our close friends and about 500 other people were there. Though that sounds like a crowd, it was very intimate, and we didn't have to get to church 45 min early to get a seat and the whole mass was about 30 min, and we walked there watching the moon in the morning and walked home watching the sunrise over the lake.

Happy Easter!

Priorities

I have been on vacation this past week. We went to Boston, I went to a Cezanne exhibit with my mother, and we chose new carpet for our second floor. I really should be upstairs getting rid of all our junk so that the carpet can be installed cleanly and easily. The woodwork has to be scraped and painted, the closets emptied, excess furniture removed...and yet, I've been sitting here refining the photos I took this morning at the lake. My husband and our dog joined me and we took a different path with different views. It's a gorgeous day. I just had to work with those photos to catch the colors accurately and post them before cleaning, and before the other posts of Boston and Cezanne. The questions for the day are how do you make the distinction between procrastinations and priorities? And then, the follow up question, does that distinction matter? I'm going to go with a 'no' on that, but I'm open to alternative views, and I do believe that as this is my vacation, I don't have to make those decisions today.

Unconditional

Unconditional love, unconditional acceptance, unconditional friendship....these all sound so appealing. And yet, I've been trying to get some inspiration around those concepts from my lake-photo excursions and I cannot. The weather has not been ideal; the lake has been lowered three feet for dredging and maintenance; the fall season got off to a freezing start...I didn't find what I was looking for, conditions were everywhere.

I was thinking about what unconditional means because my painting friends and I are going to do a group show and I was trying to think of a unifying theme and 'unconditional' kept popping into my head. This is because when we paint together, it's so freeing. We're supportive and loving, and we eat and chat and work and there's a sense of belonging and acceptance that is fuel for getting through other pieces of our life where this free condition does not seem to exist. And yet, we do offer advice and support to each other on our drawings and our lives. It's just that it's non-judgmental.

But it's non-judgmental because it doesn't have to be. We've been together so long, over 30 years, that we have worked into this relationship. We've created our own safety zone. We have created our own ideal conditions.

The major forces in our lives -- love, honor, respect, attraction -- all manifest themselves in some conditional way. Initial attractions -- with your friends, your job, your spouse, your town, your house, your kids, whatever -- usually seem ideal and they are spontaneous, so they have no time, no conditions. Over time however, conditions arise. That initial attraction is a powerful force that keeps you interested, but then the real relationship begins. There are points that seem perfect, points that make you question your initial attraction, and points that just exist because they are part of the trajectory path. However, the immense power of those major life forces -- love, honor, respect, attraction -- will build up over time and bring us to a higher level that has the depth of time, knowledge and experience. And at that point, you transcend conditions.

Conditions are of course transitory. They don't last forever. So I believe I have actually been inspired by my lake visits. I've been learning to appreciate the condition whatever it is, as a manifestation of underlying forces.

I have been reading Emerson this year, and I found a passage (from an essay on The Method of Nature) where I believe he's commenting on this same phenomenon.

"But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times."

What I'm calling "life forces" are Emerson's "the precious herein." The only dispute I'd have with Emerson on this subject is that the rest is not "mere repetition". We need the conditions, the repetitions, to be able to perceive the spiritual. And when we do we transcend them to exist in the pleasurable state of the unconditional.

Crisp

Crisp light, crisp weather, crisp photos. The definition of crisp is brisk; sharp; clear; decided; lively; pithy; sparkling. That was the weather today, and I'm choosing that for the tone of the week. I'm not going to examine it too closely, just live it and enjoy it.

September Table

Last Sunday was rainy, but actually really nice. Clare, Rene, and Sara came over and we painted out on the patio and my daughter joined us to draw too. The fine mist of the rain was pretty, and we were actually happy to be confined to close to the house where we could eat and talk. We grabbed flowers I had around the house, Clare's hat and champagne bottle, and we were set. It was a great day.

The Space in Between

The pictures I took last night were about literally, seeing things in a different light. The moon was out, and standing at certain points on the bank you could see the reflection of the moon. Chasing the reflection to find the best one was an encompassing game for awhile. The one I posted here is my favorite because the moon and it's reflection are symmetrically positioned in the photo. That reveals the theme for this September evening's excursion and illustrates what I've been contemplating for the past couple of weeks. In the moon photo, the scene is in between the subject matter that caught my attention. The moon and the reflection are the highlights, but the lake makes the reflection possible. The highlights of life happen in context.

The next scene, the swans through the trees, really struck me as I was walking around. It might not come through perfectly here, but the swans framed by the trees at twilight were very different than the same scene during the day. I've noticed that view quite a few times and even taken some photos, but none ever quite worked well. This photo is all about context, the relationship between the colors, shapes and textures are what works for me. It's every thing together, there's not a clear focal point, but I think it's intriguing anyway. My takeaway inspiration is that in addition to sticking with practices that serve you (I was not going to stop last night, but I was following my own advice from my last post) make sure you note the possibilities that a different light brings to the same perspective. A different light doesn't change the context as much as a different perspective does, but sometimes, the ease of a more nuanced shift makes a more graceful transition to deeper understanding.

When you study communication, you learn that there are high-context and low-context cultures. High-context cultures are about the group. The group has a high level of common experience and so less words are necessary, because much of the meaning is implied. Low-context cultures require more explicit communication. Our northeastern American metropolitan culture is generally low context, and you can say generally that you'd find more high-context communication in eastern cultures. However, that's way too simplistic, because if you look at sub-groups as cultures (and you can) you find that they are everywhere. Your workplace likely has a high-context element that values in-group knowledge. Your family can be high-context, the more shared experience you have, the less you may have to express verbally to communicate. High- or low- contexts are neutral. One is not better than the other. It is helpful to communication though, to be aware of which style you use routinely, and assess if it's working for all involved. Switching styles, is like seeing things in a different light. Not too different, but maybe enough to gracefully move to more effective understanding.

My mother and I talk about this all the time. We are definitely low-context people. We'll say everything that we think about. We also have felt for some time that we need to watch it and just stop talking once in awhile. I've found that really useful. And so my high-context partner -- nature -- the peaceful lake that wouldn't hear me if I was talking anyway, has taught me the value of listening over time, and being aware of what's communicated between the lines.

Practice

Our everyday routines are the practice of life. And everywhere I've turned over the past week, I've received the message loud and clear that the small moments and day to day routines of life layer on top of each other like different pieces of artisan glass and when you look back through those layers they have a depth and beauty that is as important as any momentous occasion or achievement, and you see the shape and form of your life.

The practice of going to the lake for inspiration is one that I realize I have to stick with, even when I don't think I have the time, even when I think there's nothing notable there to see, I should go. At this time, in this season, as I've mentioned for the last few posts, there is not striking beauty at the lake. I still love it though. And I am still always fascinated by something I find or see every time I go. The initial attraction to inspect the log and it's happenings was fun, but making a practice of visiting there over time I've learned things I would not have known just by driving by and stopping only when I felt like it.

There was road work being done on my usual route to work, and the lake was not on the detour route and so I fell out of the habit of stopping for inspiration for the day. The photo above was the first after all those weeks and it represents the contentment that the regular practice of observing nature can bring. Or maybe it's a reminder of the joy to be found in everyday activities.