Lily and I combined a Sufi Chant with an Arapahoe Ghost Dance song as musical score for a video of Old Hand sailing Port Madison.
Tag: spirituality
Chop wood,carry on
Its been very lovely in Port Madison this Spring. I’ve been regrouping after putting up the art show, taking stock and redirecting energy toward simpler things like chopping wood. We are talking serious wood chopping.
The building is a workshop built by Ed Monk. I’ve been privileged to Moor Old Hand at this historic site, built by one of the Northwest’s finest boat designers. I feel his presence in the stoutly built out- buildings and docks, and gladdened by the thought that, he too, hauled gear and materials up and down the steep path to the water. His can-do spirit inspires my humble efforts, and I take extra care in the stacking of split maple and cedar. This stacking is itself, an art.
At first, I was unimpressed by Monk’s designs. But as I worked on his boat-houses I came to see his ubiquitous, wooden power cruisers in a new light.
I find rusty, bent shipwright tools near Monk’s shop, and use an old, weathered workbench he made. After the long preparation for the exhibit, this physical connection with common objects that surrounded his life has inspired in me an appreciation for the simple aesthetic of usefulness.
My boat, Old Hand is not a Monk, but was built of such stuff. Her portly hull design is a scaled-down version of the hefty Norwegian lifeboats designed by Colin Archer. After 10 years of owning her I’ve greater appreciation for her ponderous lines and stout workmanship
. So I am readying for another season of sailing. I look at tide tables and plot course South toward Old Hand’s first port of call: Gig Harbor.
So stay tuned for posts chronicling these adventures on the Salish Sea told in art, music and videos.
Artwork in progress-a look back
Here’s an installation photo from my show. It’s good to get it done. Now I can move on to other things. Like gardening, chopping wood, and writing blog posts again.
Putting up a show is always a double-edged thing. There’s the excitement and sense of accomplishment, but it’s also something of a let down in the end. It’s a summation, of sorts, a statement of where I’ve arrived at this point in time, life and career. It’s strange to think I did my first oil painting 50 years ago. I thought of showing this painting too, but couldn’t hang it without a little more work on it. Would this be cheating?
Last touch up for April art exhibit
Here are some paintings I’ve been finishing for my art exhibit this month. I’ve been too busy getting them ready to find time for a blog post.
The Sufi Shrine has been a real challange, but I believe I pulled it out at the last minute.
The Sleeping Poet (not sure of title) has a long history as well. It was inspired by a medieval poem called the Pearl-a pious allegory where the poet falls into a dream by a beautiful river bank. I’m not usually into allegory-especially pious ones-but something about this story has grabbed me ever since reading it (and memorizing some) 20 years ago.
The Square Rigger is my latest, unfinished painting. It evokes an earlier time of Port Madison history. She emerges from the sunset mists like a ghostly presence.
Here is my version of Dante’s Inferno. I’ve been listening to a recording of the Divine Comedy while getting ready for this show.
Putting it all together
I’ve been cloistered in the studio, getting ready for my April art exhibit. Its been a challenge to bring all these images and colors into some coherent form. Having an art show forces you to bring work to, as Marcel Duchamp called it, “a state of definite incompletion.”
A way to get them up on the wall is necessary. I’m attaching hooks and wires, trying think of titles, and bringing some paintings back from the edge of oblivion . To do this you sometimes you have to be radical. Painting is a complicated business, and to narrow the focus can be, paradoxically, liberating. After putting this painting aside for a time, I covered the whole thing with a coat of indian red. It was the ground color I began with and I return to it in order to unify the disparate elements again. I then used my favorite tool, the paint rag, to reveal the under lying color. This gave everything a reddish tinge and shadows turned from cool blues and violets to warm red.
For a long time I’ve been interested in the Temenos, the enclosed, sacred space set off from worldly concerns.
The figures in this picture suggest gnomon. This is a greek word meaning both a column on a sundial indicating time of day, as well as one who knows. The gnomen are guardians of the spellbinding circle where we safely confront the unconscious and undertake the magic of creative work.
Soul Hydrography- The Elwha Dam and Seattle Seawall
Soul Hydrography is the study of how waterways, rivers and currents reflect the spiritual state of humanity. Our psychic energy flows with the drainage’s along which we establish our precarious settlements, into mythologies of the parched landlubber, and hies with the stream of time back to the infinite. I have no actual experience in this field, unless an adolescent kookdom in Surf City counts for training.
We are pulled into the undertow of mythic floods or swept into a sea of trouble . The primal chaos that threatens to engulf us is the same prima materia from which our civilization arose.
The removal of the Elwha River Dam and the rebuilding of the Seattle Seawall are two projects that reveal something of the secret history of the Northwest and the contradictory impulses we share-namely, the primal drive to hold or release, to build and destroy, or open and close. Like the breath, these complementary movements alternate through cycles of history. 
The Elwha dam nearly decimated one of the world’s largest salmon runs, destroying the livelihood of the Clallum tribe as well as the settlers who lived along the river. While it generated electric power for Port Angeles, it deprived the area of another form of energy not measured by kilowatt-hours. It created a major blockage of the communities’ vital force-its chi. 
The deteriorating Seattle seawall is symptomatic not only of infrastructure divestment, but is also an example of soul hydrography. In a heartbeat, the waters can engulf the high temples of power so serenely reflected on the surface of Elliot Bay.
William Blake called the 5 senses “the chief inlets of the soul in this age” (A happy turn of phrase for our theme.) Today, few consider that there might be other inlets, and forget lessons from former ages. Though decay of the materialist bulwark against the soul’s depths causes unease, we seem ever more walled off from the possibility of accord with unconscious dictates. These energies lie a thousand fathoms deep right off Seattle’s doorstep.
Emanuel Swedenborg’s reading of Genesis accounts the Ark as a vessel bearing remnants of the Ancient church. The waters Noah navigated drowned the remaining populace-the Nephilim- in materialism and greed. In Swedenborg’s esoteric reading of scripture, Nephilim denotes those whose inherent goodness and charity became immersed in selfish desires. Noah safeguarded secrets that held the key to gnosis, a mode of perception that maintained the spiritual life of man and, therefore, humanity itself. Though Swedenborg’s biblical interpretation addressed an inner history, involving preservation of an Arcana entirely different from chronological narrative, there are correspondences with the ecological disaster we face today. See Henry Corbin’s fascinating book, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam.
Happily, the Elwha dam is gone and the construction of a new seawall is in the works.
Hypergraphia-updated
Writer’s cramp is neither a basic muscle problem, nor the high level disorder of the composition process seen in writer’s block, but somewhere in between.
Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease
1. I’m on my own for a week. Lily has left for Hawaii, leaving me to do something meaningful with my 7 days as a bachelor. Its time to start a post. Have I lost my ability to write since the last? Did I ever have it? 
2. I’ve been reading my morning pages from 2010-2011. Those who follow of Julie Cameron’s Artist Way books know what I mean. Basically, you write 3 pages every morning whether you feel like it or not . Though I never progressed beyond this to her subsequent exercises, I’ve been doing them now for some 20 years (can it be true?)
After perusal of the pages and notating with the recommended red and green colored pencils, I see certain themes recur in dreams. Usually, I’m lost in some city looking for food and burdened with too much gear. The blockages I face in writing, art and life seem reflected in these endlessly recurring images of abandonment and loss in crowded cities somewhere to the south.
3. I listen to Hawaiian, slack key guitar and imagine what Lily is doing. A cascade of clear, lazy notes falls like rain on banana leaves while puffy clouds are blown across a vivid, blue sky with the tradewinds. Festoons of bright jewels play over the dancing palms Jewels of radiant light festoon the swaying palm trees while Lily does the hula.
4. I read more pages from 2010-11. There are exhortations to myself to get moving-to overcome stasis. to get moving. I throw pages out and keep only the dreams. These are the only things of interest-like the one of the earth gyres that inspired this painting. Only later did I realize it was a tribute to my ex-boss and dear friend Doug, who passed away from cancer 40 years after exposure to Agent Orange during the Viet Nam war.
The image of the twin gyres spiraling like whirlpools on the earth somehow seems related to this dilemma of intention versus receptivity. Or maybe Doug is simply telling me to get off my ass and get to work.
5. I told Lily before she left for Hawaii that its best not to stick to a set itinerary. Better to go with the flow, and adjust to circumstances over which you have no control (like volcanoes.) I might well have been speaking to myself as regards writing. After faced with a week of my own dark thoughts, negativity and acedia (sloth), I’ve decided to surrender to he natural ebb and flow of ideas and, like the ancient poets, call upon the muses for their aid in meeting the self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog post.
6. Today is overcast. The wind blows dark masses of cloud northward past the cell phone tower that looms overhead like an Archon whose only duty is to arrest my flights of prose. Dark clouds fly past the cell tower looming overhead like an Archon whose sole duty is to arrest my flights of prose.
Maybe I’ll go clean the galley on my boat, Old Hand, or lay some dark hue on a fresh canvas and invite the muse into my fortress of solitude on the farm.
7. Why not write something? I resolve to have courage in the face of the blank page. I shall summon fortitude, and let not my hand be stayed by the inarticulate. O Muses, grant me a loftier theme! Inspire my oft-times loopy pen to transcribe thy song. Or at least not let my computer crash.
Window on the Pureland
A few years ago I was engaged in the Buddhist practice of Amitabha visualization. Amitabha is the western Buddha of infinite light. It is taught that if we practice his mantra and visualize Amitabha’s Pureland as made up of insubstantial, jewels of luminous light, we can visit his peaceful Pureland in our dreams. This is of immense benefit for readying us for a peaceful death and helps us navigate the dangerous pathways of the bardo.
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It is also said that, ultimately, this very samsaric realm we inhabit is no different from the blessed Pureland.
Once, as I slept in my studio on a Spring night, I dreamed I flew over a desert landscape chanting the Tibetan version of Amitabha’s mantra: Om ami dewa hri. I flew over a bombed out village and saw scenes of bloody violence and suffering. I thought: Strange, the mantra doesn’t seem to be working. This is no blessed pure land but a vision of pure hell. I chanted the mantra with more intensity: Om ami dewa hri, om ami dewa hri. But all I saw was hellish torment and fighting. All I heard was the sound of screams, gunfire and explosions. Finally, the dream faded and I woke in my studio where all was peaceful and quiet. The only sound was the singing of birds. I lifted myself to see, outside the window, the cherry tree sending forth radiant blossoms in a lovely vision of luminous, rainbow colored jewels of light.
A View from the Wheelhouse 