Day 44 of Year 2
The Jar with The Dry Rim
By Rumi
The mind is an ocean … and so many worlds
are rolling there, mysterious, dimly seen!
And our bodies? Our body is a cup, floating
on the ocean; soon it will fill, and sink …
Not even one bubble will show where it went down.
The spirit is so near that you can’t see it!
But reach for it … don’t be a jar
full of water, whose rim is always dry.
Don’t be the rider who gallops all night
and never sees the horse that is beneath him.
Day 6 of Year 2
Again I am reminded that it's not for me to judge my work, judgement only gets in the way. When I put up yesterday's print I felt it was a failure. But more people than usual commented on it and I am happy for the reminder that worrying about product over process is a rabbit hole. It's easy to disappear down that hole and be distracted from the real work at hand. It is impossible that every piece an artist makes resonates with them. Some pieces come though for other people, some pieces are energetic messages almost like a pill meant shift or wake something, some are just clearing out old to make room for new. In a way, it's hubris to demand each work be masterful or even complete to an artist's satisfaction. It's trying to control a process so deep we can't know it's true purpose. Knowing this is freedom. An artist only has to listen to the inner Voice to know when to stop. All pressure to create perfect works of art is gone. Trust the process and what is meant to come will come and some will be perfect. With tonight's piece, my inner voice is telling me there is something else that wants to be said that hasn't come though. Thankfully tomorrow is another day!
I've posted this poem before, but it is too perfect for this piece. (It was also the inspiration for my earthen vessel sculpture series many years back. You can see it on my website : www.sybilarchibald.com)
Within this earthen vessel
by Kabir, Trans. Rabindranath Tagore
Within this earthen vessel are bowers and groves, and within it is the Creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel-appraiser are within;
And within this vessel the Eternal soundeth, and the spring wells up.
Kabir says: “Listen to me, my Friend! My beloved Lord is within.”
Day 6 of Year 2
This week has been incredibly busy, very little empty time. It's so hard to work without that silence in my life. Next week I am going to slow things down, without that space its really hard for the creative flow to get in. I have the feeling that I haven't fully honored my sacred contract to work this week. It's not just about being in the studio, it's also about caring for yourself so when you work you are present and ready. I know it's not my job to judge my own work, but I feel this week's prints reflect the lack of space.
I didn't start this monotype until about midnight so there's no time to rework it. I really love the concept, but I haven't hit it yet. There's a feeling I get when an image a right that I don't have. I'm not a huge fan of this flesh tone either. I almost never use it. I think I will try a different approach tomorrow. This print is much bigger than most of my others. I included a pencil for scale.
Praise Them
by Li-Young Lee
The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We’re the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn’t hear
what singing completes us?
xoxo
It's very late. I've fallen off the sleep wagon, but only temporarily for a beautiful holiday night of family bonding. I won't say much more because sleep is calling except I love tonight's poem. This daily print making process has revealed so much to me that is really hard to put into words. I hope some of what I feel and experience in this intimate conversation between artist (me) and the Universal Artist, source of all creativity, spills over to you. xo
This work is paired with by "[Of all that God has shown me]" by Mechtild of Magdeburg, trans. Jane Hirshfield
Feeling more relaxed than last night! Something interesting came up while working. I had the urge to put the large circle on my image again. Immediate resistance came up, "people will think I'm repeating myself". I almost didn't notice it at first. Luckily, I have a practice of sitting quietly before my empty plate and opening to the inner messages of where to go. The circle kept coming up. It is so important for me to listen deeply and act upon the direction received. If I had let my ego rule and worried about the perception of others, this image and it's message would have been lost. It was important for me to experience this message, something shifted inside. I felt healed. Maybe, hopefully, it's meaningful to someone else too, but that is out of my hands. I wish my work to be like a jar overflowing into the world with the energy of healing and transformation I feel while working, just and the Universal creative energy overflows into me. But I can't know the result of my work, only the process. So, back to the studio ... 😊
From moon wreathed
by Matsuo Basho, Trans. Stryck
From moon wreathed
bamboo grove,
cuckoo song. -
Interesting evening. I was so determined to go to sleep early and stop working after midnight, but as you can see this did not happen. I have many, many excuses, but I won't bore you with my "stories". Instead I am thinking deeply about the cost to the creative process. Busyness is poison to art. Emptiness, moments of spaciousness and boredom are essential. Although we flatter ourselves that we have such great ideas, truly all that comes is a gift that we filter through our beautifully imperfect forms. Tonight's poem is one that has always brought me solace when I was held back from working, but now I find it is also a message about the importance of down time and in my case sleep. Just a note on tonight's print before the poem. I am so much more comfortable with bright colors. It's really interesting how easily we stick to something that was successful in the past. Comfort is another enemy of art so I am pushing myself to try and make friends with grey 🙂
Gitanjali #81
by Rabindranath Tagore
On many an idle day have I grieved over lost time. But it is never lost, my lord. Thou hast taken every moment of my life in thine own hands. Hidden in the heart of things thou art nourishing seeds into sprouts, buds into blossoms, and ripening flowers into fruitfulness. I was tired and sleeping on my idle bed and imagined all work had ceased. In the morning I woke up and found my garden full with wonders of flowers.
xo
I love this poem, it gives strength.
Self Pity
by D. H. Lawrence
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
Hospital print day 3
Today I’m thinking about how we choose to spend the in between times in life. So much time is spent waitiing, it would be tragic to waste it all. By thinking of something as a waiting period, an artificial boundary is formed that stops energy from flowing. A lot can happen while waiting if we are open, connections can form, ideas can be received, we can feel love. Often I use waiting times to meditate. I especially love to meditate at the doctor’s. Here in the hospital, however, where it is almost entirely waiting time, and when I’m not 100%, it’s difficult to do. Instead, I’m trying to stay open to whatever happens and receive all the love that has been flowing my way, and there has been so much. I am truly grateful.
The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window
Suggestions for a title? My brain is on strike...
Poem by Rumi, translations Barks and Moyne.
From Unseen Rain
This piece of food can not be eaten,
nor this bit of wisdom found by looking.
There is a secret core in everyone
not even Gabriel can know by trying to know.
I can't stop reading Theodore Roethke today. His poem, Forcing House, resonates so much. A forcing house a place in which the growth of plants is artificially hastened. My life has definitely felt like a spiritual forcing house lately. With each physical setback, there has been a corresponding flowering of internal growth. Illness lays waste to the ego, softens the heart, and teaches a deep level of compassion if you are open to grow.
I am so grateful to be here and to be feeling so strong and so alive, more than I felt in a very long time. If it were not for the kindness of my family, the care of my doctor team, and the blessings of good fortune, I would not be here. It is the confluence of these things and the deep pulse of life, the greening within me that allows me to embrace my forcing house.
Forcing House
by Theodore Roethke
Vines tougher than wrists
And rubbery shoots,
Scums, mildews, smuts along stems,
Great cannas or delicate cyclamen tips,
All pulse with the knocking pipes
That drip with sweat,
Sweat and drip,
Swelling the roots with steam and stench,
Shooting up lime and dung and ground bones,-
Fifty summers in motion at once,
As the live heat bellows from pipes and pots.
Every so often I start to get too careful so I move back to my smaller 8" x 10" plate and work quick. Working quickly takes me out of my head and into the present moment. I liked this print best, it feels filled with possibility. Lack of definition can be a good thing
I'm really beginning to feel better and it puts me in mind of Hildegard of Bingen's story which always inspired me even before I fell ill so many years ago. She had visions that she was to leave her nunnery and go start her own convent, but she kept silent. Her silence caused her to become sicker and sicker until so was so ill she could not even be lifted from her bed. But as soon as she shared her visions, she was healed. This story reminds me how important it is to share what we have been given in this world and for me in particular, to keep working. It has been a bear of a year. For a full year I was on a liquid diet and truly did not know if I would ever eat solid food again. I fought, and I am eating again. I battled all year long and through much of it, I had my daily prints. These prints have sustained me, healed me, and given me vision and hope to carry on. They have layers, one is for the world and another is a very personal message of love and compassion for me as an artist from The Artist. I am grateful for this year because I have learned and softened so much. I am also so grateful for finally turning the corner. Hildegard uses the word "veriditas". It can be translated in many ways, but it is fecund, pulse of life and change the surges through creation causing everything to grow. I has seen it translated as "greening" which I love. I had the impulse to bring green in today and I believe it is the beginning of my reconnection to veriditas. xoxo
Unpacking yesterday's image a bit more. Thanks to @stephenellcock who shared a great synchronous image earlier today of the ascension of Christ from the Middle Ages. The Christ figure is being raised into the air. The figure in today's print and my print from yesterday is descending but they share the dangling feet in common. My energy is moving to Earth. Something is being born.
I'm really interested in the feet coming out of the chest window. Some change is in process. Where will it go? That's the adventure of making art. It is possible to travel without ever leaving your home. Did I post this poem recently? I think I might have. But, if I did, it bears repeating...
A Spiritual Journey
by Wendell Berry
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
When Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th century abbess and mystic, first had visions that she should leave her nunnery to start her own abbey, she refused to share them. The earliest account of her life tells that this made her so sick she could not even be lifted from her bed. The moment she started to share what she saw, she was healed. She left to start her own abbey and went on to become one of the most influential women of her time, writing letters to the pope, authoring the first book of medicine by a woman, composing sublime music, and more. When the creative force comes through to transform your life, it’s often uncomfortable but stoppering its flow causes unwanted problems. An artist must learn to embrace uncertainty and discomfort to receive and communicate at high levels.