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!
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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”: …
The need not to look foolish is one of youth’s many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more, and float upward in our heedlessness…. — John Updike
Exemption as the luxury of age.. another resonance of the glass that is half full.
When we were young and reckless, we used our youth as an excuse to do stupid things. Now our license (still to do stupid things) comes from the smugness of old age–it’s actually “mature” not to be bothered by propriety.
A friend recently wrote about the regrets of his youth: that of not sounding the school fire alarm for fun, of not going to prom night with the girl he liked, of not saying proper goodbyes.
Got me thinking that you can only regret something that you purposefully walk away from. Regret comes from knowing that you didn’t go for something, you backed down.
I once mouthed that my epitaph will read “She was brave.” Maybe that statement came out of realizing I didn’t want to live in regret.
Reminds me of that Calvin and Hobbes quote:
In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the very long term, I know which will make better memories.
SUGOD!
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Wrote this on October 9, 2006–three years ago!–and yet my wish is the same: I want to be brave. 🙂
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
Unfinished oil on canvas, 2002
When you die God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself. — Anonymous
Just yesterday my brother called me the “I want” girl. Seems I’ve been mouthing that line repeatedly over the past few days…
Thanks to the book “The Secret”, I’ve gained a whole new perspective to asking — the secret is to enjoy it, to come from a place of joy, with a necessary sense of entitlement. That yes, I deserve to be happy, to have what I want.
Blasphemous maybe, especially with the Pinoy tendency to play “Juan Tamad”, but oh I’m loving all the indulgence and liberating peace that comes with running after little pleasures… chocolate… deep sleep on a cushy bed with soft feather pillows… ogling boys… smelling rain… walking barefoot on boracay sand…. ayayay, possibilities are endless! so exciting, so delicious! 🙂
Cheers to everyday joys, and to upping the ante and claiming bigtime pleasures!! Time to run with the bigboys, friends! ;P
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Emailed to friends on August 16, 2007.
Gouache on handmade paper, unfinished
Prince Lir: A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.
Molly Grue: But what if there isn’t a happy ending?
Schmendrick: There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.
– The Last Unicorn.
