Everybody will help you. Some people are very kind.

Alive in the mystery of kindness

We're not there anymore.  That was 40 years ago.



We're not there anymore either. That was 12 years ago.



We're not there anymore. That was 6 years ago.



We're not there anymore. That was this last Tuesday evening.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed. The insight into the mystery of life, coupled though it be with fear, has also given rise to religion. To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms—this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.” (Albert Einstein, Living Philosophies)

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness." (The Dalai Lama)

"... You a praying man, huh? What do you pray for? You pray for the world?" I never thought about praying for the world. I said, “I pray that I can be a kinder person.” (Bob Dylan, Chronices: Volume One -- from a conversation with "Sun Pie" near Raceland, west of New Orleans)

Antidote / "Kindness at the Crossroads"

It took me years to realize that waiting for someone else to change is not fruitful and, besides, it's unkind to all involved.

Here's one wildly creative antidote to that, with lyrics here.



Thanks to Doonesbury's Featured Video.

And to Sabine for this:

Don't go into the tangled jungle
looking for the great elephant
who is already quietly at home.
Nothing to do,
Nothing to force,
nothing to want -
and everything happens by itself.

("Kindness at the Crossroads," a computer trackpad drawing by am from 2005)

GRATITUDE AT 6:18 A.M.

Some more things I found while sorting through my storage unit:

Two photographs of the view from my parents' living room during their retirement years when they lived in Gualala, California. My middle sister gave these framed photos to me many years ago. After my parents had both died, I put the photos in my storage unit. Now I'm ready to look at these morning and evening views again.

and this from a magazine clipping:

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions and kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread

only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

Naomi Shihab Nye
(page 35, Ions Noetic Sciences Review, April-July 1999)

and this, marked by my mother in a book (MIND IN THE WATERS) she sent to me for Christmas in 1975:

"So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don’t find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time."

José Ortega y Gasset

Black and White Series: Kindness at the Crossroads (2005)

Last night I wasn't able to sleep so I read for awhile. When I still wasn't able to sleep, I listened to the end of the unabridged audio version of the book, ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, by Robert Pirsig, which I have been listening to as I weave and paint during the last several days. The book is deeply moving for me, especially the section at the end that was added in 1984. The end of the book brought me to tears, after which I was able to sleep well.

It was when I was 26 years old that I first read ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE, around ten years into my life as an artist. As was the case the first time I read the book, there was much that went way over my head. Still, what I felt I did understand gave me hope.

Listening to Pirsig's description of areas of Oregon and Northern California, where I have taken multiple solo road trips, brought back my own memories.

Also see ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE route and landscape between Minnesota and San Francisco.