"Occupied by living"

A woman occupied by living.

A Birthday in June

The "Where Will Your Spirit Walk?" Koan

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering -- Jane Austen, novelist (1775-1817) 

Some of the most painful days of my life were spent at the ocean or in my own home, including my childhood home as well as the place Richard and I lived for about five months after his return from Vietnam, and other places that I called home, the last of which is this place I have called home since October of 1984.  

Jane Austen's quote opened up something in me -- the realization that even when my perception was that I was experiencing nothing but suffering, it was in contrast to having previously experienced transcendent joy. 

Richard has never been far from my thoughts since we met as 17 year olds.  If we had had a traditional marriage and a long life together, today would have been our 44th anniversary.  

In this moment, though, I can feel something shifting in connection with the suffering I experienced in relationship to him.  The suffering is in the past. There is an unexpected opening for joy in its place in the present, born of that timeless transcendent joy I experienced so long ago when I first met Richard.    

My experience is that one does not love a person the less for having suffered in connection with that person's alcoholism, drug addiction, or mental illness. 

All suffering, nothing but suffering.  All joy, nothing but joy.  I can remember experiencing moments of both with Richard.  Without our joy, our suffering would have had no context. Without our suffering, our joy would have had no context.

In recent years, I have met others who have suffered in ways I can't even imagine, and yet they speak of the joy in their lives as well as the suffering.

The film clip ends in the place in my living room where I practice the asanas.  For me, yoga is where joy and suffering meet in a place of love. 

Did you hear birds outside, Oboe's voice, the sound of the electric fan in the kitchen, and the sound of the clock ticking?  It wasn't until the third time I watched the clip, that saw I Oboe!

Now I am reminded of an old post of mine, "Like a rolling koan," and William Blake came to mind:

"Man was made for joy and woe

Then when this we rightly know

Through the world we safely go.

Joy and woe are woven fine

A clothing for the soul to bind."

(William Blake)

and this, which was playing on the radio in my VW in July of 1968:

We were married on a Tuesday afternoon, a few minutes walk from this section of Miramar Beach, California.  Half of Richard's ashes were scattered by his brother not far from this place where we met as 17 year olds:

Photo credit:  Ana Preza

As Leonard Cohen observed, many loved before us.  Many will love after us.  Love is a story that keeps unfolding through the generations.

For my 63rd birthday in October, I'm looking into a visit at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, the place where Georgia O'Keeffe first stayed for a month in 1934 when she was 47 years old.  She moved to New Mexico when she was 62 years old.  That was in 1949, the year I was born.  She lived in New Mexico for 37 years until her death at 98 years old.

Georgia O'Keeffe said, "When I think of death, I only regret that I will not be able to see this beautiful country anymore ... unless the Indians are right and my spirit will walk here after I'm gone."

Where will your spirit walk?

"... what is your Original Face?" (Eno, Sixth Patriarch of Zen)

(Today I can't seem to figure out how to get the fonts and font sizes to match.  Perseverance furthers.)

STILL LIVING WITH THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE

This morning I was listening to a talk about grief when I heard these words of Stephen Levine and thought of this painting I did in the mid-1980s:

We are learning to live with the consequences of love. So we must bear loss as deeply as we cared. Throughout spiritual literature we are told that attachment creates pain, and here we are, trying to learn how to love more fully in the shadow of that very painful truth! But the irony is that without some level of attachment, there could be no love. As the Dalai Lama has said, 'No attachment, no compassion."

It is the balancing act of a lifetime.

Beloved Person in Bird Costume Painted from Memory / Be Loved (1993)

On December 8, 1979, nine years to the morning that my boyfriend had returned from Vietnam, I began to record in my written journal some fleeting images (several of which were of sculptures) from a series of dreams that became increasingly complex and mysterious. Of course, it is very difficult to translate dream images onto paper because dream images are elusive. The recording of the dream images led to my decision to return to college to finish my degree in English Literature with a minor in Studio Art and preceded ten years of intense creativity and growth.

In October of 1990, feeling my inspiration slipping away, I went through my written journals and copied those dream images onto four pieces of 13" x 17" watercolor paper. Many of those images appear in my paintings in the 1990s, including the "beloved person in bird costume."

































































It was on December 8, 2006, thirty-six years to the day that my boyfriend had returned from Vietnam, that I decided to create this blog, which has led to a renewed commitment to myself as an artist and writer.

Calendar Series: 19th Month / EADGBE (1987)

The 18th Month was not photographed. Its title was "PQRST." Where could it be?

Woman Trying to Remember What She is Trying to Forget (1986)

This morning I have been struggling to write about this painting which came from a personal experience of domestic violence in May of 1971 when I was 21 years old. The lingering effects of the recent upper respiratory illness are still with me. Although I got up at 6 a.m., I found myself so drowsy and headachy at around 8 a.m. that I let myself fall back to sleep. The sun is beginning to show through the morning fog, which was an ice fog before the sun came up. It was the sun coming through the fog that woke me up again. In this painting I was trying to talk about how it feels to live with the memory of having deeply loved someone who tried to destroy your love and who failed to destroy your love but left you with the knowledge that as much as you had loved that person, you would have to live without them. The terrifying memories don't go away. Neither do the memories of what I thought was loving and being loved. One set of memories keeps me vigilant. The other set of memories, of loving and being loved, is crucial to my physical, emotional and spiritual survival. The woman walking alone by the sea was beginning to remember the feeling of loving and being loved, but then she would find her herself wanting to return to the one who had hurt her. When this painting came to me, fifteen years had passed since that spring of 1971. During those years, I had married, tried to put the past behind me, struggled with depression, gone deeper into the eating disorder which had first manifested when I was 10 years old, begun to express myself more and more as an artist and writer, graduated from college and begun making a good living as a medical transcriptionist, which led to a decision to leave an increasingly troubled marriage and to live alone for the first time in my life at age 35. Thirty-six years will have passed this coming May. For the entire year of 2004, I attended a facilitated domestic violence support group which met weekly and which slowly brought the healing that had so long escaped me. The other women's stories helped me see how far I had come since 1971 and that I still had a journey of healing ahead of me. Currently, I am continuing the process of healing with the help of Jungian therapy on a monthly basis. Writing this blog and reading other blogs that give me reason to celebrate life in all its complexity have become part of daily healing.