awake

I got up early this morning for the light. Usually I am sleeping or baking at dawn, so to just be awake and sit, with the breeze, the piercing soft morning rays, the speech of birds all around, is a tranquil and precious thing. Artemis sits nearby, utterly fixated on a patch of sunlight on the wall, watching for the shadows of birds to flicker across it again.

I am here. This morning it, is not enough to watch the day pass. Strangely, it has been difficult to gather momentum these last few days. The internal pressure of half born ideas and unrealized dreams builds enough to propel me out of the house on a walk, or into the studio to shuffle things around on my desk. But sometimes there is no clear course of action. Sometimes, the best I can do is listen. Not just to my monologue of hopes and fears about the future, the continuous planning and reforming of plans and the measurements of how well I'm leveling up the game of life. It is beneath all of that that the deeper voice is calling, singing a song of who I am and why I am here.

Part of me longs for simpler things. Walking barefoot on cool moss beneath a silent forest canopy. Finding patches of snow on a hike up a mountain. The green tea I tasted at a small Zen monastery in the Northwest. Turning over rock after barnacled rock on an island shore, to glimpse what creatures hid beneath before they slipped out of sight again. The thunderheart pulse of a drum, pounded by a circle of drummers singing fullthroated, soulpiercing melodies strange yet all familiar, sage and sweetgrass and tobacco in the air.

Even as i dream of things which seem out of reach today, I consider myself fortunate to be exactly where I am. Here, I dream and make paintings to remind myself where I've been. Or to wonder aloud through paint and pen to stumble across some new image which inspires me and raises new questions. The play between mystery and revelation never grows old.

Which is also why I've begun writing here. I've kept blogs on and off, sometimes revealing myself in poems and sometimes sticking to cryptic musings. Usually I posted nothing at all. Its a bit strange, like revealing your "best of internal monologues", carefully arranged and edited... but why not? If this can be a way to share what we dream of and share more than passing conversations may allow, so be it!