renewal as returning and remembering

                          mixed media collage 8x8 inches on watercolor paper

   

 It has been two years since I wrote on this blog that is painting inspired. 

What surprised me in a serendipitous way was that the first post I had made in this blog format, (sistermotherbeloved in 2009) was also at a beginning, when I moved to Bavaria. 

This is interesting to reflect on ....how many beginnings we are given throughout our lives. So many experiences to come to know ourselves, to know what really matters.....

Two years ago I had stepped into a process of painting that would lead me deeper in touch with myself than I could have imagined. 

I'm kind of excited to see myself sitting at this desk, with my new computer from last year that I've hardly touched...maybe it was waiting for this moment, to write again.

It feels that way.

So that process did bring me more in touch with myself and now - yeah, it's just me in the house. Just me in the garden. Just me in the studio. Just me in the kitchen, on the porch, mending the fences where the persistent groundhogs still enter the field garden. Just me, landing more gently. I thought I knew what landing was all about.

There is a returning to myself. To realize I am fun to be with. Maybe this is too personal. 

Well, that's where I'll start. I'm tucked away on Blogger while everyone else is on Substack. That's ok.

 I will find an image to share of the renewal, of the remembering, of the returning. 

Abstraction has called my intuition awake to a new way of expressing myself in paint and collage....I follow where it leads. I ride the bumpy parts of the road. 

I enjoy the flow when I notice that, too.

i'm very grateful to be here, that's for sure.

If my words reach anyone who is a reader, even though it might sound like I am talking to myself....may they feel the gentle whisper of remembering that calls us all back to ourselves, back to what we have aways known matters most in life.

That knowing, that remembering matters now more than ever.

keeping the connection when challenged by the new

Sometimes I really don’t know what is happening in a painting. 

And I watch myself. 

I see when I am caught by the characters and the story. I am hesitant to make something happen, so I return to a mark, and just let that carry my engagement. 
Often I notice that the disturbance is due to my feeling not connected. There is the thought, I don’t feel connected, I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know who these characters are. 
And I notice a resistance sometimes to naming the characters and letting them be “Her, the Great Mother” and “me, the hairy wild new creature”. 

A story is as much one thought as a train of thoughts.

 I moved too fast into the two figures in this next painting.

Then like I said, I fell into a story, I didn’t like the wild thing any more, and I made a big figure of blue, out of habit. 
I moved too fast.

At the first sight of the wild thing’s hairy arm, I knew I was on the threshold of something new appearing. 
And I got scared.

The wild thing got larger, they met one another face to face.
but I was stopped by my mind.
so, I turned to the dot and covered the figures in blue dots. I was comforting myself not to know how to ask the right question to open up the way.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who these two figures were?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to know who this one hairy arm was? 

Maybe that’s it, I was afraid just to be alone with this hairy armed creature.

I painted little evergreen trees on a hill behind them.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to like this wild thing?

What would I paint if I didn’t have to fix this predicament I put myself into?

Splashes of blue from the blue figure to the wild thing.

What would I paint if I didn’t have to connect the two figures in any way?

What would I paint if they didn’t have to be connected to one another?

When I was walking yesterday I heard myself say I wanted to kill the wild thing.

How to do that? I didn’t want to go there.

So now it is full of blue and I’m writing this analysis/commentary instead of painting....

Not a process. Yes, a process.
 I am not in control of or know the direction of this process.

 I want my part in the process to be as fully intuitive as possible. 
I am learning through the forms, how to let go.
My mind does want to take the direction, show me where it is going, help me stay comfortable in knowing, because I am meeting something new in myself.

This is not easy, no one said it was.

I want to learn how to ask the question that reaches below my mind.

I want to discover how to keep the connection during these transitions without relying on the safety of thought/planning/action.

The body senses danger in this opening, not knowing what resides in the darkness.
My awareness remains steady, knowing there is a great container for this alchemy.

passing through

the expression continues
comes closer to home

in the world 
my mother's voice is strained
in my inner world my heart is straining 
to express

in relation to her
the care
the helplessness.

words don't quite hold
all the feeling
the open door lets the conditioning pass through.

grateful for paint today.

the upper hand

grateful

for 

mind and heart

in process

heart's longing is getting the upper hand

living in the meaning full and meaning less

how does meaning occur?

what gives meaning to our lives?

what is meaning?

can we live without it?

can we grasp it?

and can we let it go,

giving rise perhaps, 

to a deeper sense of meaning that is not mind made?

Mind/Ego gives meaning to forms and colors as I paint.
Mind/Ego needs meaning to know where it stands.
Without knowing where it stands it is put in great danger. 
The meaning it creates can also create a disturbance in me,
When I believe what I am thinking, when I identify with Mind.
If I like what is painted, I am stressed to lose it, 
If I don't like it, I am stressed to get rid of it.

I've heard that this is the function of mind - to name, to grasp...
Identified with mind, I have a preference for every experience that arises.

a stroke of the brush is made 
and mind will name it
this or that
it loves to do this
.and that.

Meaning created by mind has a quality of holding tight, 
keeping something intact. 
It has the quality of resistance, 
not yielding to something greater than it can know.
Being able to step back and let the painting be painted,
I allow the process to do its work through me. 
I let go and am returned to a wholeness that is easy and good.
Laughter is a by-product of letting go.

in life,
in process,
with awareness, 
the effort to hold meaning intact is dislodged, 
gently.


When I am aware of the feeling of touch 
of colored brush to paper,
without knowing what anything is
I feel 
the quality
the contact
the sense of connection
of felt meaning, 
of being, 
in the heart.

This brings rest to what is seeking meaning.
This brings to rest what is seeking to be seen.
This brings the awareness of a deep and abiding joy into my life.


the meaningful encounter
breathing
living 
issuing out of the silence we share
we become more sensitive to one another
and we find meaning, 
after all, 
without looking for it.

the gift of process

We are in process. Sometimes we may forget that we are in process because we are thinking thinking thinking about where we are heading. 

By letting thinking have us, we miss the moment 

                                                     - b e i n g  h e r e  n o w- 

the fullness that is beyond our thinking of being fulfilled when we reach our goal is subtle and always present, waiting for our heart's attention.

The Life Death Life process painting continued and reconnected me to my living and breathing process. 

It spilled over into my oil paintings and I feel as if the thread has been returned to my hand.

It has brought me closer to the silent place where thinking does not have a chance. 

It takes trusting in the not knowing to open the space for the flowering.

a poem came out of the experience - "the fire within has a language of its own" - and can be read at womanhappytobepaintingandmusing.wordpress.com

process reveals what is true, beyond the idea of connection

I could have titled this post penis process, but alas I am stepping into this doorway with care, not daring.
What I am discovering lies beyond the form of the penis. But it was the form of a penis that released me from a mind in turmoil, a mind afraid of my own experience of desire.

I had been painting, continually finding more and more layers of connection.
They appeared naturally in the process and I wasn't trying to make them happen.
It felt like an expansion of unending connective possibility.
Then the black lines came in, - opening, opening - and then the white teeth like shapes came along the smaller black lines.
I began to feel really distraught, the feeling of completion was not arising despite all the connections, a sure sign that there is something more to discover, yes?
I was stopped, blocked, looking for the next passageway.

 I went to Michelle's book of questions and practiced to bring my own question into form.

I wrote to myself:
I don't know what the painting (my life) is about, I feel turmoil.
Then I wrote the question out of the experience I was having:
What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
I would paint great desire -
In the turmoil was this resistance NOT to be feeling the way I was feeling.
I named it turmoil.
It was desire.

And it took on the form of a penis.
Glad that I was alone, I was free to paint a penis.
Not forced, but inviting.

The first one emerged out of a black hole that had appeared as a kind of lock shape, in my center.
And then one after the other, more pink desire emerged from the other black holes which had appeared earlier in the painting.

The penis was not threatening, and that was good for me to notice.
I enjoyed painting it and remembering all its qualities.
I haven't seen one in so many years, I had to really call in my memory!
The mental drama around a penis is lessening.

Is the penis the great connector in my belief system?
I hope not.
I mean, because without one, I would experience disconnection.
And I am not disconnected, far from it.

Belief number 3456 has burned up as I write this.

It felt like the only form I knew - in that moment - to express desire.
I am worried a bit about myself (I am conditioned to worry)
that that would be my way, as a woman, to express desire....

I can see that it is one way to express desire.
There are beliefs in me about desire.
This completion gave way to ease.

The next painting I began right away, letting the energy lead me on.
I thought I knew where it would lead but a child's head began to appear.
I painted the beginning very, very, very openly, not knowing at all what was arriving out of the brush.
I let myself slow down to let the lines relate to one another on their own, not from my ideas.
 I'm learning.
My dreaming that night was magical and friendly.

That's what this is.
I am learning
all the time
that the next moment and the next, I cannot know.
It brings with it awareness of living on the edge.

To feel connected to life is what I desire.


More concern at times, and at other times the furthest thing on my mind :
that I either don't want to do anything or I want to keep painting!
Desire takes many forms and I am releasing myself from the judgements I place on my experience, painting myself free from judgements that live through learned conditioning.

Clearly, I'm still on the mind see saw.
And insecurity,
though troubling to a mind that wants to know,
is also becoming more of a truth I am learning to live with.
In every moment I can pause and make a new choice.



I hope you have a wonderful day as your own truth is revealed,

BH