Wonder

October 29, 2017

This morning’s cup of coffee offered a pause long enough for some wondering about the heart and the head. I’ve long been aware of ways I self-sabotage by a tendency toward over analysis; this passage seems to offer a little philosophical generosity toward better understanding.

“We deceive ourselves about love — about who; and how; and when; and whether. We also discover and correct our self-deceptions. The forces making for both deception and unmasking here are various and powerful: the unsurpassed danger, the urgent need for protection and self-sufficiency, the opposite and equal need for joy and communication and connection. Any of these can serve either truth or falsity, as the occasion demands. The difficulty then becomes: how in the midst of this confusion (and delight and pain) do we know what view of ourselves, what parts of ourselves, to trust? Which stories about the condition of the heart are the reliable ones and which the self-deceiving fictions? “

Martha Nussbaum, from Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature

Cycle

October 28, 2017

“In Japanese Zen, the term shojitranslates as “birth-death.” There is no separation between life and death other than a small hyphen, a thin line that connects the two.

We cannot be truly alive without maintaining an awareness of death.

Death is not waiting for us at the end of a long road. Death is always with us, in the marrow of every passing moment. She is the secret teacher hiding in plain sight. She helps us to discover what matters most.”

Frank Ostaseski, The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully”

Flower path to guide spirits, Dia de los Muertos celebration, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, 2017

Outside

October 27, 2017

“Your whole piece is the truth, not just one shining epigrammatic moment in it. There will need to be some kind of unfolding in order to contain it, and there will need to be layers. We are dealing with the ineffable here — we’re out there somewhere between the known and the unknown, trying to reel in both for a closer look. This is why it may take a whole book.”

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Outside the studio, 2017

Care

October 26, 2017

I come from serious people.

And yet this piece below, I adore. There’s such a poignant rub between its exuberant labor and ultimate dark humor, and it succeeds so resolutely on both of these levels because it is joyousness set up for failure.

Kate Jackson’s embroidered paper towels

Home

October 25, 2017

“I think that home shouldn’t be a place you need to leave if you want to experience something in consonance with your innermost being. Home should be a place of experimentation and discovery, a place of peace and quiet where the most natural in each individual can be developed in fine-tuning to the desires and searches of others. A place of rest, as well.”

Oddný Eir, Land of Love and Ruins

Home, 2017

Perspective

October 24, 2017

“Our country is large in extent, small in population, which accounts for our fear of empty spaces, and also our need for them. Much of it is covered in water, which accounts for our interest in reflections, sudden vanishings, the dissolution of one thing into another. Much of it however is rock, which accounts for our belief in Fate.”

Margaret Atwood, Good Bones

looking eastward, Pacific Coast, 2017

Signs

October 23, 2017

We'll just play this one out until it explodes
into a thousand tiny pieces
What's your story universe
You are melody and numbers
You are shapes, and you are rhythms
They are signs that we can learn
to place over the heavens
to predict how long they'll burn

from A Thousand Tiny Pieces by Sean Hayes