I’m exploring Sacred Geometry…finally! (I’ve been hearing the call to delve into this arena for years.) Last night, like a lightning bolt, the opportunity to work with the Shiva triangle smashed into my awareness. I’ve been playing today, and — hoo-hoo! — am I excited.
Shiva Play Mandala
All images and text copyright (c) Anne Sailer, 2010.
Last weekend, I put my soil garden to bed for the winter — something I technically should have done weeks ago. Yet, I learned something profound from arriving late to the bed-putting party.
As one might expect, most of the plants had completely wilted and died back after the last few weeks of sub-freezing temperatures, so it was clear that nature was “taking its course” and had moved the garden into a period of wintertime rest. However, I still sensed a kind of incompletion, similar to the feeling I get when I hear a piece of music stop right before the final, resting chord. The garden’s energy felt like it was “left hanging.” I turned to Machaelle Small Wright’s Perelandra Garden Workbook* for some insight into what I was experiencing:
…since the [co-creative] garden is by definition a creation between humans and nature, it is quite reasonable to assume that all aspects of the blueprint have built in the dynamic of teamwork between the two. This includes the closing-down portion as well. (p. 232)
OK, this makes sense. I planned and planted the garden in concert with nature intelligences, so it’s just not logical (and not fair!) to leave all of the final work to nature. And then I read a bit farther:
The closing down of the garden is primarily an exercise in energy, in that what is being done establishes an overall dynamic of attitude and intent for the benefit of the garden environment as a whole…this important attitudinal energy is infused into the environment. It is an energy infusion through the vehicle of purposeful action. (p.233)
Oh, goodness; that’s it. Not only is my physical action required to effectively put the garden to bed, but the energy of my intention is also an indispensable necessity. This absolutely explains my experience of the garden waiting for that final chord to sound. When we’re waiting for those last notes, it’s an energetic imbalance, or insufficiency, that we feel — and then we pitch forward in our seats, as if our bodies are begging for the tonic resolution. Until I did my part to put the garden to bed — until I engaged in that purposeful action that the co-creative garden (and gardener) truly needs — I could feel the garden’s own off-kilter pitch in response to the energetic insufficiency. I am grateful to have sensed that imbalance, and I am thrilled to have finally, blissfully sounded the final notes in our co-created garden-symphony.
With this post, I am starting a new “Inspired By…” series. From time to time, I will post a snippet of something I’m working on and label what has inspired my creative work. Today, I’m kicking off this intermittent series with my old friend, Pokeweed.
I have a dried Pokeweed berry cluster hanging on the wall of my studio, and I recently took it down and spent some time studying it and sketching the graceful line of the center stalk and the highly-textured shapes of the puckered berries. I selected a portion of the sketch that had graphic excitement (the design kind, not the bedroom kind ;-) and began playing with that segment, digitally. The result is my most recent nature-inspired mandala.
Pokeweed Berries Mandala 1: See What I Can Do?
All images and text copyright Anne Sailer, 2010.
My children brought home Paperwhite (Narcissus) bulbs just before school let out for the winter break. I’ve been dutifully taking care of them ever since, keeping them watered and reporting daily on their kitchen-window-sill-progress. The bulb rooted in pebbles and water, nestled in a plastic cup decorated with foam shapes and permanent marker, bloomed first. The other one, covered in soil inside a terra cotta pot, followed about five days later. Wow, does my kitchen stink! Strike that. Wow, does my house stink!
One morning this week, after sending the children off the school, I walked in the front door thought, “Oh no, there’s rotting food somewhere in the house.” I spent the next 15 minutes searching for the piece of meat, cabbage leaf or open can of black beans that could cause such a stench. And then it hit me: It’s the paperwhites. I actually banned them from the house last year, knowing how adversely I react to their scent. This year, though, I forgot…until now.
Yet, my heart is softer this year, and I won’t banish them from my home. The blossoms are sweet and lovely, straining to reach for the bit of sun that makes it to my kitchen’s north-facing window. I have conversations with them as I wash dishes; I play a guessing game as to which flowers in the clusters will fully open first; I share the thrill of growth and emergence with my children (and those thrills are few and far between in the chill of winter). Sometimes the garbage can smells, but I still keep one in my kitchen. Sometimes the dog smells, but she remains an integral part of our family. And sometimes the plants smell, but I focus my attention on the beauty and growth opportunities they bring into our home. That said, once their bloom season is complete, my nose will be quite happy to see them go.
“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” ~ Georgia O’Keefe
This week, I (and my date for the day: my mom) had the glorious opportunity to see the exhibit, “Georgia O’Keefe: Abstraction,” at the Whitney Museum in NYC. Of course, I knew of her work and in fact had seen her work exhibited a few times before, but I now feel like I know her work on another level — on a co-creative level. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to jot down the O’Keefe quotes written on the museum walls; a couple were jaw-dropping, from a co-creative perspective. Since I didn’t, the above quote (found somewhere on the great, vast internet) will do. “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.” My gosh…I’m reminded of my bird’s-eye jasper post earlier this week — how something so magical is waiting for us on the surface of a rock, but we miss it if we’re too far away to really see.
Many times while experiencing this exhibit, I felt a shared language and sensibility with Georgia O’Keefe. The most powerful moment came when I read a quote in which she spoke of going to a place of dark nothingness and bringing something into the world that did not exist here before. “She’s talking about the void,” I leaned over and whispered to my mom. We both breathed, taking it in. One of the deepest pieces of learning I received from Machaelle Small Wright was about the void, about how everything that is created starts there, about how it is necessary to go into the void before we can bring something new into this world. Standing in front of Georgia O’Keefe’s words, in front of a painting with an area of black nothingness filled with absolute potentiality, I realized that I’d forgotten to be conscious of the void. Without that consciousness, creating is (I have found) far more challenging and difficult than it needs to be. I am now ready to re-discover my void-awareness and to release to that place of nothingness where everything-that-can-be is waiting to be brought forth. Thank you, Georgia, for reminding me about the void.
The stone in this photo is actually about two-inches in diameter. Look at what we miss by being so far away from a little rock we hold in our hands.
Of course, we are all being told that we have to see “Avatar:” It’s been over a decade in the making; it’s the next big thing in director James Cameron’s oeuvre; it’s going to fundamentally change how movies are made. None of that really matters to me, though. I went to see “Avatar” because my friend, Balsam, emailed me saying it’s the first movie she’d seen with “actual co-creative ideas and moments in it.” She’s right.
The Na’Vi (the blue people living on the planet Pandora, which the U.S. military industrial complex is raping and destroying in pursuit of money and fuel) communicate consciously (and co-creatively) with the plants and animals that share the planet, and all living things on the planet communicate with each other through a co-creative energetic network. (At times during the film, I longed to hop up from my seat, jump through the screen and join the Na’Vi tribe — oh, to be surrounded by others who see, hear and honor the Nature that runs through all of life!) In addition to the Pandoran people, I was also captivated by the plant, mineral and animal life on the animated planet — the artists clearly studied the natural forms on our planet and used them as creative fuel for inventing new species on Pandora. Again, Balsam summed it up beautifully when she wrote that the artists had “the wits and humility” to be inspired by Nature’s “proportions and organization.” Exactly! While watching the movie, I could imagine myself actually walking through the forest, flying beneath the floating landforms, and catching a luminous seed pod in the palm of my hand — precisely because there was an underlying shared organization with the natural forms with which I am surrounded on Earth. (And, it sure does take humility to realize that we cannot “do it better” than Nature.)
After leaving the movie, I found myself wishing for more. I wish that the more enlightened humans’ understanding of the Pandoran co-creative energetic network had been deeper; I wish that the Na’Vi hadn’t battled in such human ways; I wish that I’d seen more about how the plants grew and the animals feasted and less about how missiles devastate. However, this movie is not just for me — it’s for those who are heading in my direction, co-creatively speaking. My true wish is that moviegoers see (through those goofy black plastic glasses) that we don’t have to go all the way to Pandora to discover a network of life awaiting our connection. We’ve got one right here, right now. Let’s just not blow the darn thing to pieces, please?
It’s been good to rest this winter season, to turn inward and allow my resources to rebuild, and yet my eyes and heart keep finding the bits of magic peeking up through the snow and ice, blowing in the sharp winds. I simply had to take a rest from rest and honor all that magic.
I recently heard someone refer to Young Living’s Lavender Oil as her “first aid kit.” Until then, I hadn’t considered using lavender oil for much of anything other than relaxing. This “first aid kit” woman told me that whenever there’s a cut or bruise in her home, she reaches for the bottle of YL Lavender Oil first. This weekend, I had the opportunity to try this in my own home (read: I sliced open my finger instead of a carrot while doing lunch prep on Saturday…eesh). I washed and dried the cut, applied direct pressure and held my hand above my heart while moving to my kitchen’s essential oil shelf. (See? I did pay attention in the first aid unit of my 10th grade health class.) I placed one drop of Young Living’s Lavender Oil on the pad of a band-aid and wrapped up my cut finger. For the rest of the day, that band-aid smelled divine! (A far better odor than Neosporin, I have to say.) By Sunday night, when the band-aid fell off while I was washing dishes, the skin on my finger had completely knitted together. I stood there stock-still in awe for a couple of minutes, staring at my finger, hardly believing that the cut had already healed — that’s the fastest any of my kitchen injuries has ever healed (and my husband will testify, if necessary, that I have had many, many kitchen injuries…). Plants sure do carry remarkable medicine — and better-smelling medicine, at that.
Note: Please use only therapeutic-grade lavender oil, such as that from Young Living. Most lavender oils are laden with harsh chemicals that can hurt far more than they can heal.
A couple of summers ago, I met a potter who produces amazing pieces — pieces that feel very much created with the earth from which the clay emerges. Every now and then I visit her website, to see what she’s creating and to be inspired by her form of co-creativity. Today, I discovered her Enchanted Forest Bells. The description: “Rough, hand pinched from rich brown Massachusetts clay dug from the earth. A rich, three-layer glaze mimics moss, lichen and regenerating decay of the forest.” What a remarkable act — the making by hand, with deliberate care, a piece of art intended to call to mind the “regenerating decay of the forest.” I simply couldn’t keep this to myself! Enjoy.
