Make Good Art.

Nature makes good art too...

I laugh at how the perfect words land in my lap seemingly out of nowhere, snuggle their way into my world and nestle themselves inside of my heart, right where I need them most. Today those words were from Neil Gaiman-

"Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do-
Make good art.
I'm serious. Husband runs off with a politician?
Make good art.
Leg crushed and then eaten by a mutated boa constrictor?
Make good art.
IRS on your trail?
Make good art.
Cat exploded?
Make good art.
Somebody on the Internet thinks what you do is stupid or evil or it's all been done before?
Make good art.
Probably things will work out somehow, and eventually time will take the sting away, but that doesn't matter. Do what only you do best.
Make good art.
Make it on the good days, too.

The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right." 

So this has become my manifesto. Whatever comes my way, I'm going to do one thing with it- I'm going to make good art.

Deconstruction.

"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

This concept of things falling apart feels so true in my life, especially recently. It's easy to float along, but when the big waves come crashing down and cause you to flounder and get water up your nose, it's harder to keep your perspective. I get hopeless and scared, too. I get fearful and obsessive and my mind runs off the rails like a runaway trail and I have to rein it in over and over from dwelling on the things that scare me down to my core.

Avocado, cucumber, carrots, kamaboko, shiitake mushrooms and nori over a bed of black rice.

Tonight's dinner was metaphor for myself, really. A deconstructed sushi bowl to tangibly prove how life's discordant events can in fact, be beautiful. After I took this picture, I mixed everything up together. It was messy and delicious and colorful and reminded me of how grief and joy and loneliness and hope are all ingredients in life, and are not separate from each other. Life doesn't always present itself neatly, rolled up and sliced into perfect sushi rolls. Sometimes it falls apart, and you just have to be ok with experiencing it in a different form than what you initially expected.

I scribbled these words in my journal early this morning-

"I'm discovering now that writing is much more than transcribing words into a journal, in black and white, on a page. It's a lifesaving buoy, keeping us afloat, providing us with something tangible to grab onto- to rest our weary arms around as we make sense of our world and re-establish our voice and direction in the vast sea of life."

Even if things seem to be falling apart, I've found that making sense of things on the page can make life's obstacles more palatable, and I dare say, more delicious. Just like a deconstructed sushi bowl.

Time to Blossom.

Saturday's mini blessings...

How

did the rose

ever open its heart

and give to this world all of its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against its being,

otherwise we all remain too

frightened.

-Hafiz

Seeing Beauty.

"I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep."

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

As I closed this book, my heart begged, "Lord, give me the eyes to see."

The War of Art.

"Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do or don't do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

This has been added to my Top 5 books list.

This entire weekend I've been submersed in amazing musical and artistic talent.  After watching the incredible actors performing Fiddler On the Roof on Friday and the mesmerizing performance of Mona Golabek in The Pianist of Willesden Lane, it is clear that the world is more beautifully expressed when everyone follows their own creative call.

Right now I'm loving Pressfield's book…get yourself a copy and armor up.

I can't wait to see what you've got.

Beyond What I Know.

First hike up Castle Rock 

Last night's beautiful sunset at Point Isabel

"I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map…nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail or vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home." 

-Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Decadently Delightful.

As much as I love words, some of the best art contains none of them.

Someone described this as "decadently delightful," and I couldn't agree more.