December 2009

Let go, Gouache on paper, 2005

Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is to say ‘I don’t want to.’ –Lao Tzu

What do you usually say you’re too busy for?

Let’s not be too busy to pray. To cook. To read! To exercise! To meet up and have face-to-face qt (quality time ) with friends and family.  Let’s make time.  Especially this season of LOVE. 🙂

Merry Christmas, friends!

Soulmates, Gouache on paper, 2002

Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. –Elie Wiesel

First time I read this, I agreed to it in my gut. Why? Friendship has no expectations. Really.

It’s not fleeting; there’s no celebrated effort to make it work once the “honeymoon phase” is over, because there is no honeymoon phase. There’s no expectation of progress, of a journey, because although there is a journey, and it’s one that is shared between those in the friendship, this journey doesn’t exist outside– there’s no space or separation to point it out from a distance. The whole relationship of friendship is just there–not static, but not rushed to the “next stage” either. There is movement, to nowhere specific really, and so the main concern is not to achieve goals together, but just to be there, together.

A friend accepts and stays. Such a simple agreement, giving it so much room to move in, potential, potency.

Friends are the most simple relations we can have, and yet they offer the greatest pleasure possible.

Best part is that friendship is not exclusive–we’re not meant to have just one!

* * *
Emailed to friends on August 1, 2006.

Gouache on paper, unfinished

The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time. — Jack Gilbert

My friend Jason shared this powerful chant with me–it’s something that his spiritual community in Iloilo uses when praying over each other.

Two concepts you wouldn’t normally clump together: violent fire and purity. A great upsurge of energy, a disturbance, a violence that is heated, burning, passionate, but also pure, sincere, precise, like a laserbeam. This violent fire is dedicated, committed, and will not falter. And it comes from a tough, loving place–a place of truth.

What a great source of strength, to be able to tap into Truth. Fierce and potent. Unforgiving truth, that makes brave men and women out of all of us. You know you’re dealing with Truth when you’re disturbed, rocked out of your boat. It’s that surgical incision that hurts, but brings healing and resolve (and often, duty) all at once.

Try saying it out loud: “I am a violent fire. I am the purity that God desires.”

What happens?

In a dryspell moment last July, I came up with my 30 before 30 list (encouraged by my friend, Tina).  She said it will help me say yes to things that matter, and no to those that matter less.

Starting today, I have exactly one year to check off items on this list.

Oh the great adventures begin!

Oil on canvas, February 2009.

This theme’s been surrounding me lately, that life is about flow.  Best to be like water, or the river that runs with and through everything.

Four days til 29.

Deep breaths.

Pastel on paper, 2002

Reading this piece on creativity in relation to age made me understand something critical and validating about my own creative process..

I always thought I was brash and rash, that I painted/created spontaneously, intuitively, based on instinct…so I thought I’d fall under the first set–the conceptualists. But reading more, I realized I’m actually more of an experimentalist, like Cezanne, who was a “late-bloomer”: …

creativity in slow dosesRead More »

Gouache on paper, 2002

There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. — Cynthia Heimel