Freedom meditation

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.”

- Ursula K. Le Guin

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Thank to Beth for the inspiration

Old Lovers / Painting Dream / Drawing Dream

In 2000, I wrote this poem:

PAINTING DREAM

No one can paint this desire.

No one can paint this forgiveness.

Her hand drawing his.

His hand drawing hers.

They carry silence between them

as if it were a newborn child.

In my dream we were an old man and an old woman

walking by the ocean.

Who painted this desire?

Who painted this forgiveness?

"Painting from Memory of the Future / Evolution of Forgiveness" (painted in gouache and watercolor by am sometime in 2006):

Last night I dreamed that a young woman, using a 6B pencil, had done a series of beautiful drawings of people on 18 x 24 inch drawing paper and had carried them into a cafe and set them down in a pile on a table so that they could be seen. They looked like drawings I did in the early 1980s.  I asked her if I could photograph them.  She consented.  I took her drawings outside where there was more light.  I placed the first drawing on the sidewalk, being careful not to damage the drawing in any way.  

When I tried to photograph the drawing, there were problems.  The first obstacle was my shadow blocking the light on the drawing, but I changed positions and resolved that issue.  Then I couldn't seem to get the whole drawing into the camera's viewer.  While I was trying to address that difficulty, I noticed that there were bystanders' reflections mysteriously superimposed over the people in the drawing, creating a pleasing meaningful effect on the image of a large family or of a group of friends.  Passersby were gathering around me to see what I was doing.  As I looked at my camera's viewer, the drawing became more and more detailed, almost photographic.  I continued to try to photograph it but found that to be impossible.  Somehow, this failure turned out to be a positive experience.  

When I woke up, I was grateful to have seen the drawings.

Something is shifting in my psyche, healing lifelong grief and giving me choices I didn't know I had.  This is no easy process, but I welcome it.

"... How many deaths will it take 'til he knows that too many people have died? ..." / Summer Solstice 2020 / The Parable of the Sower

Although the early morning sun is still visible from my porch, it won't be long before it will be hidden behind the dense grove of cottonwood trees to the northeast.  Summer solstice is not that far away.  On that day, the official sunrise will be at 5:07 a.m. and sunset at 9:19 p.m., but the first light and the last light are much earlier and much later than that.  When I get up at 4 a.m. on the morning of the Summer Solstice there will be light in the sky.  The birds will be awake.  Summer Solstice in the time of COVID-19.

My 18th birthday happened during the first few days of my freshman year, 1967, at University of California, Irvine, but I didn't tell anyone.  Someone found out, and an informal un-birthday party was arranged for me a week or so later.  All anyone knew about me was that I was an art major.  Someone went to the University Bookstore and bought a print of Vincent van Gogh's "The Sower" and wrapped it up as a birthday gift.  For the past 53 years, it's been on one wall or another wherever I have lived.  Recently I moved it to a place where it can be seen when I walk through my front doorway.  This morning when I looked at the print, the idea suddenly came to me to put one of my older mandalas where the sun is, in the spirit of collage.

Sometime in the 1980s, I made a collage along the same lines, combining another painting from Van Gogh's Sower series with a self-portrait by Rembrandt and "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," by Renoir.

When I Googled "the sower," I discovered this:

"... But the road to freedom is long, arduous and dangerous. "They run into this fire that they know they can't control and then an earthquake happens. Lauren makes a choice. She cannot control the earthquake or the fire. But she can control the path she and her people take."

Many thanks to 37paddington for introducing me to the writing of Octavia E. Butler.

For some time now, I've been saving a quote which just happens to affirm everything I hoped to say in this post.

"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears."
(Nelson Mandela)

"Long Night's Journey Into Day"

"Long Night's Journey Into Day," by Megan Rye, 2008

For quite some time I've saved this image, meaning to post it with a link to information on the artist, Megan Rye.  See the link to her webpage at the bottom of the link. I'm in the midst of my own journey, experiencing the return of a recurring anxious dream that it is getting dark, that I am alone without material resources and that I am trying to find my way home.  Home is nearly always thousands of miles away in these dreams.  This dream has recurred a substantial number of times recently, including last night.

As disturbing as these dreams are and as far away as home seems while I am dreaming, I am noticing that inside the current series of dreams I have choices and inner resources.  That was not an element of the earlier versions of the dream.

I've come a long way since last September when I suddenly began reliving the months before and after my Richard returned from Vietnam in December of 1970.  It's been a journey of healing.

A morning meditation in my porch garden with birds singing: