Altars

Altars

We humans make everywhere --near our desks, in our cars, in our living rooms.  Theese are just a form of an outdoor altar, where we make a statement and invitation to powers unseen.  I was in an exhibit on this a couple of years ago and wrote more about altars:

Altars have a extra meaning for me. My workbench is an altar; my desk is an altar. The shelf above my desk is an altar.There are many more. And yes, they are about the Dead, but they are mostly about weaving Memory and Longing into the present. Much of my artworks are altars. Oh, they just look like chairs, tables, shelves and carvings, but really they function as doorways to and from Elsewhere, to the thin places of imagination and memory. And like all doorways, things can pass both ways.
I put them out there a fragile hopeful declarations of a brief existence and then I wait and learn from my objects and the people who use them. At a funeral, as we grieve the dead, aren’t the tears also for our own mortality, so bluntly confronting us?
Budda is quoted as saying:  Things are not as they seem, nor are they otherwise.
Altars are the places where this exquisite ambiguity takes place:  Things are dead, and alive

Old Patterns

I'm re-reading Sylvia Perera's Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction: an archetypal perspective. Such a wealth of insight, information, history! I told her a few years ago how much I really liked it and she said: "Oh, are you addicted? Addicts really seem to like that book." Well, that's not my point--right now.

On p. 241, she's talking about the celtic triple spiral as a reflection of lingering patterns in our lives:

We may find that our own rhythms manifest a triple pattern that repeats at each new stage oe venture through our lives. Sometimes we can see that the pattern initially tends to repeat the very processes of our birth... The way we were born often remains as the underlying mode of coalescing and pushing forth towards resolution through all of life's later discomforts and fears."

So, how were you born?

I was breech, rear end first with the umbilical cord around my neck.
My 24-year old father was told, "Mr Mack, sorry to say you'll probably either lose your wife or your baby."

We all survived. Though I do still seem to make things a bit harder than they might have to be.

Arts and Institutions

I was at a meeting yesterday discussing that the best way to get Arts Grants is to have very measurable results from ongoing arts acrivities: how many people came? how many MORE people came the next time. "Pilot projects are OK... but a measurable record of arts projects is really much better."
Oh my! ... and arts organizations wonder why it's so hard to get and keep members!

“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenalin but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”
Glenn Gould

"Art’s essence is its ability to engage us fully in body, emotions, mind and spirit,
to create beauty and meaning, to cultivate imaginative empathy, to disturb the peace,
to enable grief in the face of loss and hope in the face of grief.
Arts advocates have been trying to pour the vast personal and social importance of this
essential human experience into containers—into language, slogans, arguments, strategies
—far too small to hold it. Trying to explain or demonstrate this with numbers is like trying to describe a rainbow without mentioning color. It is ineffective, discouraging, and unworthy of who we really are to keep trying the same failed approach. And now it is plainer than ever that the failure is total and abject."
Arlene Goldbard

more on arts

Arts advocates have been trying to pour the vast personal and social importance of this essential human experience into containers—into language, slogans, arguments, strategies—far too small to hold it. Art’s essence is its ability to engage us fully in body, emotions, mind and spirit, to create beauty and meaning, to cultivate imaginative empathy, to disturb the peace, to enable grief in the face of loss and hope in the face of grief. Trying to explain or demonstrate this with numbers is like trying to describe a rainbow without mentioning color. It is ineffective, discouraging, and unworthy of who we really are to keep trying the same failed approach. And now it is plainer than ever that the failure is total and abject.arlenegoldbard.com.

Seen and heard #133

Overheard -- from a slightly allergic woman to a beloved cat:

"Go away. Just looking at you makes my eyes itch!"

Oh, those generational moments!

I was working in a 5th grade class yesterday with a small group of students. The opening comment to me was this:
"You look like the old man in UP"
It started a buzz with the others, some defending me: "No,he was mean!"
My response was "What's 'UP'"? In my old man mind, I was just a big fifth grader.
I remembered that quote from Gertrude Stein, Inside we are always the same age
Oh, are there more s'elves lurking about the Pixar has yet to discover?:

A Vernal Pool

If we want to realize the truth, the first thing to remember is that we don't have to do anything. No sacred dances. No secret mantras. No religious conversion. We just sit quietly where we find ourselves and simply don't do anything. This is most important. Don't do anything. We look directly and see what is true in that moment without labeling or judging anything. Now we see the truth which is beyond our fantasies. We also see that our mind is a conglomeration of mental events, fleeting and insubstantial. At that moment it's impossible to become attached to any personal story line. This is a perfect moment. It lacks nothing. That recognition brings about a sense of inexhaustible joy. We might feel like we want to get up and dance wildly. If so, do it and call it sacred dance."
Anam Thubten, no self no problem (Snow Lion Publications, 2009), pp. 84-85."