Week 11 - Meditation On A Fantasy

Week 11 - Meditation On A Fantasy
Over my life I have constantly been a day dreamer. As people have said I have always had my head in the clouds.  With the recent burst of spring that we have been having, how could I not.  With the sun shine spreading its light onto the earth around me, I have been finding myself more and more in a state of imaginary bliss. 


Society, the "they" of the world, say that someone that day dreams is not dealing with reality. If their heads are always in the clouds they are not serious, or that they are missing out on life.  So while in one of my day dreams I pondered this thought.  Is day dreaming, or as I feel getting out of ones self, such a bad thing?  At times we have so much mental garbage being pushed around inside our heads that it becomes oppressive.  We have insecurities about ourselves and our lives that it strangles our thoughts, our creativity, and suffocates our soul.  I find that day dreaming for those brief moments a complete freedom of one's self.  Getting lost in those "out of worldly" seconds cleanses my mind of that self-oppression. 


Around the world different religions and cultures use similar methods of mental cleansing, prayer, astral projection, chanting, and meditation. Yet these are acceptable because they are done in specific places and times, why not day dreaming.  Its human nature to drift from thought to thought, why stop that process.  So I say to everyone take some time and sit in meditation on a fantasy.  Happy day dreaming.    

Week 10: "Like a Child, I Like To Spin"

Week 10: "Like a Child,
I Like To Spin"

Two weeks ago, someone commented on my blog, wanting to see something that I love. Most of the time with my paintings I use as a type of therapy. A way of digging deeply into the inner emotions of my day to day life. So for me to sit and grasp one specific thing that makes me happy was difficult. Yet there was one thing that kept popping into my mind.

When I was a child I used to spin around and around, and around. While I did, I watched the world blur, blend together, become indescribable.  For those first few moments I let go of my childhood insecurities.  I released the hold on myself and on the reality of the world around me. For those brief seconds I felt free. I felt one with the wind that I could not see, but could feel. I felt one with something greater than myself.

Now as an adult, secretly, I still try to recreate that feeling, when no one is looking of course. In my life I have trouble letting go, and just being loosing that vise like grip on reality.  As I grew up the amount of time I am able to allow myself to spin is smaller and smaller. I believe that its because I have a fear of I letting myself spin, and spin, and spin until I loose focus of 

something grounded, and not realize that I'm falling. 

But the answer to the question of what is something that I love comes down to one simple answer. Like a Child, I Love to Spin and spin and spin and spin...

Week 9 - "Soul Freeing"

Week 9 - "Soul Freeing"
 

Recently someone that I just met asked me a question. What makes me feel free? That question hit a chord with me. What  makes me feel uninhibited, unbound, or unguarded?  

My first thought was to give a normal stock answer, "Going hiking and looking out from the top at the world below."  Even though I find that physically freeing, it does nothing for feeling emotionally free.  

It is said that when we hold secrets, it weighs heavy on our heart and our soul.  I feel that sometimes in our modern society we expect each other to keep ourselves guarded and not, as the world says, "show weakness".  How can showing your emotions to someone, letting go of secrets that anchor us down, be a sign of weakness?  Over the last few years, I have learned that releasing those thoughts, talking about them, or shining a light on that darkness helps to free myself of those shackles that put my soul on lock down.  The funny thing is, I never feel weak after that.

 I feel strong.  I find it amazingly uplifting, almost weightless.  

Through my art, and with the added help of this blog, I expose those feelings as they come.  Basically, putting my burdens on a extremely strict emotional diet.  With each secret I shed, I don't find myself becoming weaker, but my soul becoming free.

Week 8: "The Edge of Nothing and Everything..."

Week 8: 

"The Edge of Nothing and Everything..."

So month two comes to an end. Two months I have been on this journey. Two months that I have been bleeding my feelings and struggles onto canvas, and I'm left with more questions than answers.  

For those who know me personally know that I have hit major bottoms in my life. I have found  when I get to that point it feels like emotional inhalation.  I feel like I'm on a cliff and about to fall into the deep vacuum of emptiness.  Yet at that moment of internal destruction, something pulls me back around to the world of rocky roads and uphill paths. Some people call it faith, some call it karma, or fate. For me, I cannot name it.  I do not understand it. How can I name something I don't understand?  Why, in a world of so many choices and we find ourselves on the precipice, are there only two options; be engulfed by blackness or embrace the light?  I guess that is the question that is asked by all man-kind, from the Scholar to the homeless man on the street.  

I always say I'm a person that sees life in the gray area, but truthfully I have been coming to terms with my own duality.  I question where in my decisions, relationships, and inner growth, that I turn from being the optimist to being the pessimist.  Where in that gray area does it snap from one side to the other?  At what moment do I stand up from sitting on the edge of nothing, and turn to the everything?

 

Week 7: "I've Seen Both Sides"

 Week 7:

"I've Seen Both Sides"

This week's piece was inspired by thoughts that were brought up after hearing "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell. It stirred up the thought of how I have been on both sides of love and goodbye.  

I have been on both the sides of leaving. The side being told goodbye and the side that says goodbye. Both sides hurt, but which is worse? Is it worse to be the one saying goodbye or the one  being told goodbye?  Is it worse to be the one walking away or the one watching someone walk away? One thing I do know is that it hurts either way.  

After looking back I realize that I have always loved until it hurt; or loved until I got hurt. I grew up believing in the fairy tale that someday I would meet "the one" and it would be perfect. As I grow older though, I realize that these stories are just illusions of what love really is.  Love fogs our judgment and blinds us to the edge of pain.  

I ask myself if it is wrong to love someone to much? Is it wrong to love someone so much that it hurts? I guess the answer depends on the other side. What I mean is that I don't think it is wrong to love someone until it hurts, as long as the other person feels the same way.  In these moments I see the fairy tales are true, but just as quickly as they appear, they disappear.  When I realize the love has changed, I lose something, I lose myself.  I lose myself in the illusion of love.  Yet, when I have been the one being loved in  that way I find the fog clears and turns from the edge of pain to safety, and I shut down.  

So I ask again, is it worse to walk away or be the one watching someone walk away? I don't know the answer, but I've seen both sides.

Week 6: "I Don't Believe You (The Crashing)"

 

Week 6: 

"I Don't Believe You (The Crashing)"  

This week's work is something new for those who have been following "52 in 52". This new piece is in a new medium that I have been trying, fountain pen ink on un-primed canvas, painted with 3 different bamboo brushes.

 

"I Don't Believe You (The Crashing)" is an expression of trying to let go. Recent years have brought me waves of love and relationships, some good and bad.  The one thing that I was always left with at the end was my of the denial of the person leaving.  For those few moments I believed it to be a bad dream that I could not shake.  As the denial left and I came to reality, I had a vision of a beach where the waves crashed, and all I could see in the distance is the shadow of the relationship walking away.

This may sound cliche, but like the waves of an ocean crashing on the shore, "Love" can crash on you. Then as soon as it hits, it pulls away as quickly as it came in, each piece of sand a memory, being slowly washed away in the crashing current. The realization that a journey between two souls changes and disappears into the night at that moment is hard to grasp, especially when you're the one being left behind.  When the reality sets in and the waves back away, all I am left with is those scattered memories left on the shore of my mind.  All I can hear is "I Don't Believe You", and feel the crashing of the wave of reality begin to roll over me.

Week 5: "It Leaves You Twisted"

Week 5: "It Leaves You Twisted"

The question I have been recently asking myself is if I  was ever truly in love or was I in love with the act of being in love.  No matter what the answer is, with each relationship the one thing that I know is true love in any form can effect your mind, body, and soul.

Love can make you do crazy things.  I have changed my actions, my style, and even my friends, all in the name of love.  I have thrown out all rhyme and reason, and at times even turned a blind eye to things I shouldn't have.  Yet no  matter how I change, when the relationship ends I am left broken, empty, and wondering.  They say love is blind, but I say the feeling of love can be debilitating.

Deep down I believe that love in any form is the only emotion  in the human existence  that has no release on a person. Anger, sadness, frustration, etc., has some end or release to it.  Love is there from beginning, middle, yet has no end.  Love can be as big as the universe, but yet can be held in the smallest space of your heart and mind. Yet it can also do the most damage.  No matter whether its falling in love, experiencing the feeling of love, of falling in love with love, from beginning to end it leaves you twisted.