I knew nothing of Alice Neel or her artwork until I came across a retrospective of her at the MET in my newsfeed. It’s not the kind of art I’m usually drawn to and yet it struck me full in the face. I could not look away. It was those faces looking back at me, steely-eyed, or curious, defiant, indifferent—each face imposing in its own way. Each strong and vulnerable at the same time. All their frailties exposed as well as the undeniable beauty of their imperfections. And even more so, what impresses is the precise and utter uniqueness of their individual humanity.
“For me, people come first. I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.’’
So writes Alice Neel of her artwork, and that’s what I saw there—the dignity and the eternal importance–of each person in those portraits. That’s what she revealed.
Raw, caustic, gritty. All the nicety, sentimentality, and usual clichés stripped away. Leaving the viewer, this one at least, feeling raw, exposed, vulnerable herself. Stripped down to that one commonality that unites us—-our fatal flaws and the dignity by which we bear them. We see this in all her paintings.
We see it in the careless and somber curiosity of the two restless girls gazing at the artist intent upon capturing their likeness. How can you look away from those eyes? Or the ones in the next portrait.
This distended body of the pregnant woman whose “deer-in-the-headlights” face reveals all the expectant wonder and uncertainty of what lies before her.
The close-eyed submission on the face of the proud artist Andy Warhol as he allows the indignities of an abused body to be revealed.
The dark brevity of a young Vietnam draftee who expresses the resignation and uncertainty of a future that is left sketched so lightly before him.
The weary warmth and love of the breast-feeding mother, and the helplessness and hunger of the child who so desperately depends upon her.
The somber “back at ya” gaze of the nude man in all his hairy splendor, completely vulnerable to the female gaze in a role reversal.
Then there’s the last self-portrait of Neel herself toward the end of her long career, gazing away into the distance with a kind of calm resignation or disregard, while the bulk of the portrait is filled with the lines and planes of a full, well-used, aging body. What we leave behind. What was dear to us and others. What will be no more.
But for now here she is, her body open and on display in all its imperfect glory. She dares us to look away from our own mortality. But also invites us to see the “dignity and eternal importance” of each and every one of us.
With Sloping Mast and Sinking Prow, by Albert Pinkham Ryder
He’s considered by many the father of American modern art, and yet I’d never heard of him until visiting the New Bedford Whaling Museum this October. I was stunned and mesmerized by what I saw, and astonished I’d never seen his work before. The exhibit “A Wild Note of Longing” was aptly named. The wildness of his images, the sense of mystery and romance, evokes a kind of longing of the spirit, of the heart, for something that lies just beyond our reach.
”Have you ever seen an inch worm crawl up a leaf or twig,” Ryder once wrote, ”and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach something? That’s like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.”
The Flying Dutchman, by Albert Pinkham Ryder
Apparently I’m not alone in that feeling of being struck by lightning when I first discovered Ryder’s paintings so unexpectedly (in a whaling museum!). The Flying Dutchman was the first painting I saw walking into the gallery. Since coming home I’ve being doing research and came across a lecture given by artist Bill Jensen on his first encounter with Ryder’s work: “[I] rounded a corner and discovered five small Ryder paintings salon hung. I felt as if I had been hit by lightning. I had never seen paintings that had such PRESENCE.”
‘I was struck by a LIGHT that seemed to burn from deep within them. I was struck by the painting’s intense DRAMA: their EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL GESTURING of every shape, every mark, every color to every shape, mark, and color; their weight of immense DENSITY and in the next instant their WEIGHTLESSNESS. They had a feeling that time had been COMPRESSED. They had that “SLAP IN THE FACE REALITY” that reveals powerful INVISIBLE FORCES in and around us. These paintings seem to be constructed of LIVING TISSUE.’ [Emphasis his. You can read the rest of his lecture notes here.]
Sea Tragedy, by Albert Pinkham Ryder
Of course I’ve always been drawn to images of ships at sea, and that’s part of the appeal. There’s so much drama here, so much movement, you can almost hear the waves beating against the hull, the shrieking of the wind in the sails, feel your body hefted by the waves as you grasp at the rails, mesmerized by the beauty and the wildness of it all.
I wrote a poem once called Night Howl about being on a hurricane watch aboard La Gitana one night in Pago Pago, Samoa. These images remind me of that poem and that night, and so many other moonlit nights at sea.
I wrote in that blog post: “Human consciousness is the mirror through which the universe sees and knows itself, and through which we see and know ourselves—the fullness of being, our primal past and present standing face to face.” That’s what I see in Ryder’s paintings, but it’s not just the sea images that move me. It’s also his use of color and composition, the elemental shapes and striking contrasts, the way light seems to emerge out of the paintings, and the themes he choses, so many drawn from myth and legends.
Below are a few more favorites, including what is considered his masterpiece–Jonah.
The Tempest, by Albert Pinkham RyderBegger Maid and the King, by Albert Pinkham RyderSiegfried and the Rhine Maidens, by Albert Pinkham RyderJonah, by Albert Pinkham Ryder
Some say Ryder is a painter of dreams. But as Jensen says in his notes on Ryder: “This can be misleading unless one understands that dreams are reality condensed.” This is true of the myths and legends and Biblical stories that he uses as points of departure to reveal what lies below the surface of our common day experience—that “something more” we yearn for that lies so tantalizingly just beyond the reach of our fingertips.
Time-travelling—that’s what it feels like when listening to Erik Satie’s Gnossienne. When I close my eyes and let the music move me, I’m transported to faraway places and distant times. I can see the mist rising from the river, the arched bridges, the damp gray stones of gothic towers tilting toward sullen skies. I can feel the cool breath of the river, smell the sweet-dank dampness of rain-drenched streets, hear the clatter of distant hoofs on cobblestones. It’s almost as if I’ve entered some strangely familiar dreamscape, or the distant landscape of an idealized past.
These dark, insistent, melancholy notes play us and ply us across space and time in rapturous eloquence. It reminds us that we share so much of our common past, our common humanity, to the art and music and literature that inspires us.
I’m reminded of the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges, and this particular quote:
“This web of time – the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries –embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this one, in which chance has favored me, you have come to my gate. In another, you, crossing the garden, have found me dead. In yet another, I say these very same words but am in error, a phantom Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures. — Jorge Luis Borges, from “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Collected Fictions. (Penguin Books September 1, 1999) Originally published 1941.
And also, this from Rilke:
Even the past is still a being in the fullness of its occurrence, if only it is understood not according to its content but by means of its intensity, and we–members of a world that generates movement upon movement, force upon force, and seems to cascade inexorably into less and less visible things–we are forced to rely upon the past’s superior visibility if we want to gain an image of the now muted magnificence that still surrounds us today. — Rainer Maria Rilke, from “On Life and Living,” The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke, ed. and trans. Ulrich Baer (Modern Library, 2005)
And finally, from a Nobel Prize winning physicist, this:
“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear: Tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as ‘I am in the east and in the west, I am below and above, I am this whole world’.
Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely ‘some day’: now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end.” ― Erwin Schrödinger,
I went to see a rare collection of eight Titian paintings gathered from around the world. But the Venetian palace that Ms. Gardner built to display her artwork was as fascinating to explore as the Titian masterpieces. It was opened to the public in 1903, a labyrinth of magnificently appointed rooms rising four stories tall and built around a lush, enclosed, garden courtyard.
I was a little piqued at first because none of the painting on display included the names of the artists or paintings, or any information about them, as you usually find in museums. So you were flying blind, guessing whose painting is this, and where did that one come from. Is that amazing Spanish dancer a John Singer Sergeant? It is. And that lovely terrace by Matisse? Right again. But I missed the Rembrandt self-portrait and the Botticelli I got wrong. Some of my favorites turned out to be from artists I was unfamiliar with. Fortunately you can explore her art collection and her rooms on the website.
Still, it was a feast for the eye, not only the paintings but the elaborate furnishings and wall tapestries and carpets. Even murals on ceilings.
It created aa lush and exotic atmosphere in which to experience the artwork. And the way one room wound around another and led to little alcoves and long hallways, pretty soon you felt as disoriented in space as you were in time, and everywhere your gaze fell was some extraordinary painting or sculpture to arrest your attention.
The final room I viewed was where the Titians were collected and I spent quite a bit of time just allowing myself to absorb them. The title of the Collection is: Women, Myth, and Power. I may have more to say about these works later, but for now, here is what the Museum has to say:
“Between 1551 and 1562, Titian created a series of monumental paintings for King Philip II of Spain. Celebrated as landmarks of western painting, the six poesie — or painted poetries — envision epic stories from classical Antiquity. Titian reimagined these familiar tales and used his modern style of painting to shape the future of western art. For the first time in over four centuries, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s fully restored Rape of Europa is reunited with its five illustrious companions in the exhibition’s finale and its only American venue on an international tour including to the National Gallery, London and the Museo del Prado, Madrid. This exhibition explores each painting’s story, its drama, raw emotion, and complex consequences illustrated in each painting, reconsidering what the poesie meant in their own time and how they resonate now. Newly commissioned responses by contemporary artists and scholars engage with questions of gender, power, and sexual violence as relevant today as they were in the Renaissance.”
Adding to the mystery and allure of Ms. Gardner’s museum is the famous art heist that took place in 1990. Thirteen pieces worth $500 million were cut out of their frames by two men posing as police officers. None of the work has been recovered, including Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), his only only known seascape. The empty frames are still on display.
If you love art and are in Boston, don’t miss this treasure. It’s a feast for the senses.
In several of his films, Ingmar Bergman plays with the notion of multiple layers of reality. This can be seen as early as The Seventh Seal, and continues with Autumn Sonata, and Wild Strawberries, culminating in what was intended to be his final film, Franny and Alexander.
In some ways, Franny and Alexander is a tour de force. It speaks to us on so many levels. It can be seen, in part, as a family saga, a farce, a fairy tale, a theatrical play, a Gothic Romance, and a supernatural horror story. It is, in fact, all these things at once.
Yet each differing perspective can be seen as a different layer of reality, a different way of looking at the same material. Each appears as a separate backdrop against which the film can be seen, which, when lifted, offers a new view, a new level of perception, a new “reality.”
We can see this in the opening sequence. The first shot reveals a close-up of what appears to be an ornate building. As the camera moves down the building, we see a row of footlights and what now appears to be a stage. A series of painted backdrops are lifted to reveal new scenes. But it is only when the last backdrop is raised that we see a child’s face, huge, behind the scenes. This is when we realize that the stage is but a child’s theater and the row of footlights are candles. The camera seems to be inviting the viewer to see through these multiple layers of “reality,” perceptions of the real, to the final revelation, the child, or rather, the child’s imagination, as revealed through his dreamy gaze.
The film continues to pull back layer after layer of curtains to reveal the tenuous and shifting nature of reality.
In the final scene, the grandmother is reading from Strindburg’s “A Dream Play.” She reads: “Anything will occur. Anything is possible and likely. Time and space do not exist. On the tenuous ground of reality, imagination reaches out and weaves a new pattern.”
Reality is seen to be not singular, but as consisting of ever-deepening layers of reality, one on top of the other, in a richly dense and complex multiplicity.
I was reminded of this film when listening to one of Alan Watt’s talks that I wrote about in another post. And I wonder if the reason Bergman’s films resonate with so many people is that we sense a truth here. We see this perspective not only in film and art, about the mystery of things, these shifting perspectives and “layers of reality,” but we see it in science, how beneath these seemingly solid bodies lies unseen, shifting worlds that swirl and collide and contradict each other.
I question often what is real and not-real, and wonder if it’s more complex than that. Perhaps it’s not a case of what’s real or not, of one or the other, but shifting perceptions of what’s real, some dark, some light, that weave together a reality that is deeper and more complex than our superficial lives allow us to see.
POSTSCRIPT: In searching for photos for this post, I happened upon Roger Ebert’s review of the film, which also, surprisingly (or maybe not so), refers to the film as having “shifted into a different kind of reality.” I’ve added an excerpt of his review here:
“There are fairy-tale elements here, but “Fanny and Alexander” is above all the story of what Alexander understands is really happening. If magic is real, if ghosts can walk, so be it. Bergman has often allowed the supernatural into his films. In another sense, the events in “Fanny and Alexander” may be seen through the prism of the children’s memories, so that half-understood and half-forgotten events have been reconstructed into a new fable that explains their lives.
What’s certain is that Bergman somehow glides beyond the mere telling of his story into a kind of hypnotic series of events that have the clarity and fascination of dreams. Rarely have I felt so strongly during a movie that my mind had been shifted into a different kind of reality. The scenes at night in the Jacobi house are as intriguing and mysterious as any I have seen, quiet and dreamy, and then disturbing when the mad Ismael calmly and sweetly shows Alexander how everything will be resolved.”
What do you think? Have you seen any of Bergman’s films? Do you think there’s more to us, or reality, than what we experience in the everyday?
I first posted this, in slightly different form, in 2014.
I’ve always loved the intricacy of highly textured things, in art as well as in the natural world, like tree bark, fungi, and moss. And I’ve always been intrigued by what makes highly textured things so satisfying to the eye, even when we cannot touch them.
My home studio features the highly intricate and textured art from the San Blas islands of Panama, thick layers of colored fabric that’s been cut away to reveal parts of the fabric beneath, and then sewn with such tiny hand-stitches you can barely see them.
Another textile artwork in my studio comes from Sierra, Peru, depicting a village scene with stuffed doll-like stuffed figures. These I can touch, but I don’t need to, to feel them, to appreciate the depth and texture.
So it’s not surprising I was drawn to the work of Julie Bland and other textile artists. Julia’s work is highly abstract and and fuses together several mediums and techniques to create intricate collages: stitching, weaving, braiding, cutting, painting. Some of her artwork is deeply textured, others delicate and almost ethereal.
Art by Julia BlandArt by Julia BlandArt by Julia Bland
Textile is one of the most ancient arts, and most often it’s women who create it. For practical as well as aesthetic reasons. We love to feel what we wear, and we love to feel what we see, and texture is what makes that possible. Touching is so elemental, and so satisfying, even when the eye alone is doing the touching, as we are doing when viewing the artwork on this page.
Abstract photo by James McLarnan – “Really wet window” from ThePhotoArgus.com
Every day I spend listening to music, sometimes stretches as long as five or more hours at a time, while I’m deep into my writing. Often I’m playing a list of my “likes” which includes a lot of music by Pat Metheny, who is considered one of the greatest contemporary jazz composers and innovators of our age.
Recently his “The Truth Will Always Be” came up, will its slow, melancholic build-up to a transcendent and ecstatic crescendo. One of my favorites. Its title speaks volumes and is a comforting reminder in these turbulent times.
No matter how many lies, big and little, are out there circling the globe, stirring up whirlwinds of trouble, trying to distort, obscure and obfuscate, they can do nothing to obliterate the truth, and the reality of all that is good and worthwhile in this world. The truth will always outlast and outshine the lies and campaigns of disinformation, hate, distrust, and fear. They will tarnish in time, grow stale, irrelevant, and crumble away, or wither from within.
But the truth will carry on and carry the day, moment by moment, in the tangible ways it has of expressing its reality to each of us.
Below are the lyrics to Metheny’s song, which expresses this truth. Read it while listening to his music.
And, in the meantime, may the truth be with be with you, my friends, on this lovely Monday morning here on the central coast of California.
And may the “truth that will always be” comfort those in places of the world not so lovely this morning.
The Truth Will Always Be
And every morning before I’m awake I walk around the world to make sure she’s alright And every evening ‘fore I bolt the door I give the stars a stir to make sure they will spin all night For I see people who will scratch And spit and kick and fight And I see nations war about whether Right is left and whether wrong is right And I know storms inside your head Can amplify the plight But no matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful No matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful And every Troy with wooden horse I take to peaceful waters but can’t make him drown And every Bastille that gets storm troopered Hail to the chief comes raining, rainin’, rainin’, rainin’ down And I’ve seen people conduct lightning Down to a summer’s day And I see nations playfully hurl Snowballs packed with stones and clay And I know rain inside your head Can seriously put a stop to play But no matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful No matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful, so let it rain And we see flying saucers, flying cups And flying plates and as we trip down lovers lane We sometimes bump into the gate and I know Thunder in your head can still reverberate But no matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful No matter what the weather You and the clouds will still be beautiful No matter what the weather So let it rain, so let it rain, so let it rain Just let it rain, so let it rain, so let it rain So let it rain, just let it rain, so let it rain, so let it rain
I came across this much beloved sailing poem recently, which captures so beautifully and vividly my own exuberant experiences at sea aboard La Gitana. I’ve paired it with paintings by the “Poet of the Sea” Winslow Homer, along with some classic sailing songs: Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” and Loggins and Messina’s “Vahevala,” which includes some beautiful sailing video as well as some amazing guitar, flute, and violin riffs.
There’s noting that captures the joy of summer more than sailing.
Sea Fever
I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, And the wheel’s kick and wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, A gray mist on the sea’s face and gray dawn breaking. I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying. I must down to the seas to the vagrant gypsy life. To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, And quiet sleep and sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
by John Edward Masefield (English poet, writer 1878-1967)
Georgia O’Keeffe, 1953. Photo by Laura Gilpin (1891-1979).
Aside from her paint brushes, we don’t see much of Georgia O’Keefe’s studio here, but I couldn’t resist including her as the lead photo in this post based purely on the strength of her face and that hypnotic gaze: as if she can see right through you. There’s no doubt she’s an artist that commands attention.
By contrast below, Miro seems quite content to lean back in his rocking chair gazing serenely at the lifetime of artwork surrounding him. These two photos and the ones that follow say so much about what it means to be an artist.
I found them in a wonderful spread produced by Artists Network: 125 Artists and Their Historic Studios. I’ve gathered a few of my favorites here. But if you like this sort of thing, there’s a treasure trove more to explore at the link above, which also includes a bit about each artist’s life and work.
The photo above is my favorite in the collection. A woman in command of her world, poised gracefully on a barbed wire fence post to capture her vision! How does she ever stay balanced long enough to do so?
Looking at her poised on that fence, it’s not surprising to learn that “she challenged oppressive Victorian conventions by embracing individuality and independence” as noted in the article Over 100 Years Later, Photographer Alice Austen Is Finally Being Recognized as an LGBTQ Icon. The photo below that she created of herself and a friend “wearing masks, corsets, and calf-length skirts, their arms intertwined” and smoking, “an act women could be arrested for,” perhaps says it all about this amazing, talented artist.
Portrait of Beatrice Wood in her Ojai studio, 1983. Collection Jim McHugh Artist Archives.
I love seeing these incredible artists, Wood and Sorolla, surrounded by their art. Each so different, and each so prolifically talented.
Wood, I learned, had inspired the character of Rose in the film Titanic after Cameron read her autobiography I ShockMyself. She famously shared in a love triangle with Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roché, two famous men in that time, an artist and author. She lived to be 108. So did Rose, in the film, I believe.
Sorolla has been one of my favorite artists for a long time now. Quite the opposite of Wood, he was a staid, devoted family man. This black and white photo does not do justice to his work. For a better look at the way he infuses his paintings with light you might want to take a look at another one of my posts: The Luscious Light of Sorolla’s Paintings.
Joaquín Sorolla painting in his studio, 1911. Photograph by Ricardo Del Rivero. Courtesy of Museo Sorolla.Emile-Antoine Bourdelle in his studio with Héraklès. Courtesy of Musee Bourdelle.
I found the strength of Bourdelle’s Hercules and the fierceness in the artist’s eyes mesmerizing. Both seem to challenge the viewer with their ferocity. He was a protege of Rodin and a teacher of Matisse, a “fiercely independent'” artist who resisted formal training and eventually started his own free-school of sculpture.
Bourgeois below, in contrast, has the calm, studious appearance of the serious craftsman at work, all her tools in perfect order. You wouldn’t guess that her most famous sculptures are gigantic spiders, who she sees as both predator and protector, symbolizing the mother figure.
I love Dali’s face above and Gorey’s cat below. They make me laugh.
I fell in love with Dali’s work when I visited his museum in Bruges, Belgium. I was especially captivated by his illustrations of Alice in Wonderland. He himself seems something of a Cheshire Cat figure. You can see more of his work at my post Down the Rabbit Hole with Dali.
Gorey, below is also an illustrator of children’s books, and something of a Cheshire Cat himself. He created books with no words, books the size of match boxes, and surreal books he classified as “literary nonsense,” adding: “If you’re doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there’d be no point. I’m trying to think if there’s sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children—oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that’s true, there really isn’t. And there’s probably no happy nonsense, either.”
Edward Gorey, 1976. Photograph by Jill Krementz. Courtesy of New York Social Diary. Renowned illustrator of children’s books. Love the cat!Henriette Wyeth, daughter of N. C. Wyeth and sister of Andrew Wyeth, in her Chadds Ford studio, ca. 1935. Photographer unknown, N. C. Wyeth Collections, Walter and Leonore Annenberg Research Center, Brandywine River Museum of Art.
Something about the faces of these two women artists next to their paintings of other women speaks to me. They almost seem like self-portraits.
Stern, below, traveled the world and was a major South African artist who achieved national and international recognition in her lifetime. Wyeth stayed close to home, a wife and mother. While a noted artist in her time, her fame was overshadowed by her father’s and brother’s, as happened to so many women artists back then. And too often today too, sadly.
Irma Stern painting Malay Girl. Courtesy of Irma Stern Museum.Clementine Hunter was a self-taught black folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana. Courtesy of Melrose Plantation Historic Home, Natchitoches, LA. Pat
The patience and persistence, the quiet dignity, captured in this photo of Hunter above, complemented with the sheer joy and exuberance of Pollock in his photo says all that needs to be said about the making of art!
You can make art no matter your social class, your gender, your personal challenges, and often these are part of your art and what makes it unique. But what is truly needed is the pure love and joy of art-making, which inspires the patience and the persistence, whether fame and fortune follows or not.
Jackson Pollock at work on Alchemy, 1969. Photograph by Herbert Matter. Courtesy of Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, NY. The joy on his face!
Three summers I spent by the river in the heat of a homeless camp. (Having left my father’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)
Three summers of night terrors howling through my tent as the stars threw down their furious spears. (Having left my mother’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)
Three summers trolling the streets in blistered feet while eyes turned sideways at my glance. (Having lost all I loved, which loved me still, though I knew it not.)
As I walked the flesh melted from my bones, my teeth melted from my mouth. My thoughts dried up and blew away. Past and present dried up and blew away.
Nothing was left behind to claim a name, to know what I was or wasn’t.
Empty, careless and carefree, I danced along the street like a wind-tossed leaf, like a moon-mad fool, marveling at how all I saw danced with me.
Now my tent is my temple and the river flowing past me washes through me—mother and father and all I love and always was and ever will be.
Now as I walk the streets flowers grow at my feet, and every eye turned toward me is mine.
By Deborah J. Brasket
The story of the Prodigal is a favorite found in almost every faith because it tells deep truths we all recognize. We are all prodigals in some ways, whether living homeless on the streets or in the home of our dreams, if we have not, as this Prodigal has, returned home to our true self. If we have not gone through the weaning process that strips us of all we never were and gives back to us all we are, the magnificence of our oneness with the All-in-all.
This poem, too, is influenced by the tales of the old Zen Masters, relating their journey to enlightenment, a process known as “losing and losing.” Often they began their journey in abject poverty. Chuang Tzu describes how he was able to free himself from the limitations of the finite mind and gain an insight into his innermost being: First freeing himself from the concerns of the world, then from all externalities, from gain and loss, right and wrong, past and present. Finally he was freed from his own existence, from birth and death, I and Other. He sees the One and becomes part of the One. At that point, he was able again to enter again into the world of men, but this time with “bliss-bestowing hands.”
The photo above is one I took at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I wrote a blog post about that visit called “Fascinating Faces, Tao and the Arts.” I wrote: “Some works of art speak to you on a level that is hard to define. You gaze and are drawn inward. Something in you identifies with what you see there. It’s not outside, it’s in here. It was there before you saw it, and the seeing is just a reminder of its presence.” I felt an especial affinity with this face.
Deborah J. Brasket 