Saturday, August 11, 2018

Mandala #32: Starry Landscape Drawn From Childhood Memories Of California




















I don't know why this mandala unfolded the way it did, anymore than I know about the previous ones.  This one feels unsettled and unresolved to me.  My decision is to let it be that way.

Bob Dylan has sung various versions of "God Knows"

God (or goodness or heaven) knows
phrase of know
  1. 1. 
    used to emphasize that one does not know something.
    "God knows what else they might find"


    Thanks to Sabine who gave me the link to this lecture listened to while working on parts of this mandala and for giving me so much to think and feel about on her blog and to Elizabeth for her enlightening blog and for her collaborative podcasts which I also listened to while working on this mandala.  Thank you to everyone who continues to visit my blog.  You all contribute to what inspires me to keep making mandalas.  I'm grateful for this community of kindred spirits.

    And eternal thanks to Mavis Staples for:


5 comments:

Sabine said...

There is much to see and discover and I wish you could tell me more about this one.

ellen abbott said...

have a little faith indeed. so I see Orion's Belt and Draco?

am said...

Sabine -- I wish I knew more to tell about this one. It has a life of its own. I am guessing someone else could see something I can't see. What do you see?

ellen abbott -- clockwise from the right are the Pleiades, Scorpio, and Orion's Belt. I'm baffled by the constellation at the top. I copied it roughly from who knows where. The lower part is the Whale. The upper part could be the spout of a Whale, but there is no such thing!

37paddington said...

This is such a evocative mandala, the more I look, the more I see. There are dark clouds for sure, ominous doings, but there is also promise, the new growth plants, the ongoing sea. This bubbled up from your unconscious and is somehow perfect for the times. I love Orion, too.

am said...

37paddington -- Thank you for looking closely at my most recent mandala and seeing the promise in it that came from my unconscious. I will think of you looking at Orion with me when I see Orion from now on. When I was volunteering in the 1980s as a teacher's aide in an ESL class for people who were mostly refugees from Southeast Asia, one of the Vietnamese women told me that, in Vietnam, Orion is seen as a farmer. I had drawn out Orion for her and asked her how to say the name for it in Vietnamese. When asked about The Pleiades, she told me that The Pleiades formed a spoon that pointed in the direction of something good.