I didn't realize it had been quite this long since I posted. In late July, I spent some time with my sister up at Copper Mountain doing some hiking. I got a lot of bug bites one day (we missed a spot on my shoulder when spraying the bug spray), and I had a reaction that caused me to sleep a lot when I got back. I was running regularly (after I rehydrated--that caught me off guard) following the trip, an hour three days a week. Until two weeks ago, that is, when I came up lame. I think I did something during my stretches, but the running on that injury messed up a tendon. I couldn't walk, let alone run; I had to position my leg carefully to even be able to stand on it.

So, I've been on the couch watching videotapes and movies. I am completely caught up on Mad Men, the first season of True Blood, seasons one and two of Dexter and am now watching season three of that. I had borrowed season two of Joan of Arcadia from a friend a long time ago and am on my way through it. With the reading I'm behind on and the bookkeeping work I need to do, laptop on my lap, I've been convalescing pretty well. I've been frustrated but not bored. KuKu the cat likes the heating pad better than the ice pack. Today is the first day my leg hasn't hurt or ached all day.

Of course, the studio was set up to do all the projects I have been working on standing up so I'm way behind where I wanted to be with those. I decided I'd rather be healed and able to do what I want rather than gimping around cursing the pain and, in the process, prolonging it.

I found I didn't want to post while I was sorting out my feelings. I was fearful for a good week or so that I wouldn't be able to run again, ever. It hurt that bad. That put me in touch with how utterly addicted I have become to the running even in such a short time. We all know what those fearful thoughts can do--suddenly nothing is working, the world is a horrible place and we (people) are destroying it anyway, and there's no hope. All from a case of tendonitis. I didn't want to write about all that. Not here anyway. Some things are better saved for the journal.

Hopefully things will be getting back to normal next week. I'm going to postpone any running until I know I can walk without pain or re-injury, maybe another week or two. But I should be able to get back into the studio next week and see what it will take to get back into the flow. I trust I haven't lost all my conditioning for running or painting.

This is my second week of running for an hour three days a week. This sounds like a really long time to run without stopping to me, but it doesn't usually seem that long while I'm doing it. I'm still slow, but I am surprisingly persistent.

That persistence has been useful to draw upon with my painting lately. I'm moving along, slowly, even though the Transcend series looks like a bunch of linoleum tiles right now and my other painting is just big and scary. Sometimes in the past I have kept on with projects, but other times I have just stopped. What seems different now is that I'm not listening to the chatter in my brain quite so much. Or rather, I hear it but I'm not paying much attention to it. Most paintings go through phases when they don't seem quite right; at least, mine do. There are plenty of stages left to adjust and refine and finesse.

One of the things I always want to know in the books I have about painting is what is the artist thinking when she or he chooses elements of the painting? I particularly wonder about this with collages. The technique is usually clear, but I suppose it's my nature to wonder about the psychology and the decision-making process. So I'm going to include why I'm choosing what I do in the Transcend series.



I put a light smattering of white on the clear background to fade the collage a bit. It was too visible compared to the way I envision it for the end result. There isn't any particular reason for this choice other than to lessen the clarity of the original collaged headlines.



Next, I sponged some indigo paint over the surface, more or less randomly. Indigo is a color that has seemingly contradictory meanings to me. It's one of my favorite colors; it's the color of night, my favorite time, and is somehow comforting to me. Which is odd considering that for me it also represents the color of dark nights of the soul, when everything seems meaningless and hopeless. It seemed an appropriate color for this stage of the background-building process. I followed with a smattering of blood red, which represents pain to me.

This all seems rather dark and depressing so far, although I'm not feeling affected by the negative aspects. As the working title indicates, this series is all about overcoming. So it is necessary to identify what must be overcome. A change agent will say that the first step in the change process is to clearly and honestly identify the problem, to tell the truth about what is so. This early part of the paintings corresponds to that part of the process.

I'm planning to carve a stamp for the next stage. I am hopeful the approach I've started to transferring the image is going to work; if it doesn't I'll have to try a different technique.

I have started a new series of paintings. I haven't done a series in quite this way before, and have never documented the process, so it will be interesting to see how this goes. I've been following Robert Elrod's blog and have been inspired by the way he shares his work.


I'm using a working title of "Transcend" for this series of twelve small paintings. The painting size itself is 8"x8", to be mounted on 10"x10" mat. The frames, which I'll build, will fill out the visual border to probably 12"x12" or so.


I wanted to start the background with the feeling of the state of current affairs, so I did a collage of newspaper headlines glued on newsprint. Then I made color copies of this collage at the local office-away-from-home store. The ink on the copies needs to be waterproof (not from an inkjet printer/copier) for the next step. I wanted to start all the paintings with the same background. They could all go together as a set, or be separate paintings on their own. Either way, I wanted a common element. There may be more common elements as I go along. I'm only a few steps ahead in my mind as I plan the work.


The next step is to paint the surface of the color copies with a couple of thick layers of acrylic gel medium. I chose high solid gel for this stage because I didn't have any clear tar gel; both dry clear, but clear tar gel would have required only one layer. Since the high solid gel would take two layers, I painted on the first layer with a brush and let it dry for a day; I applied the second layer with a palette knife for texture, and let that dry over the weekend.

I've made a special worktable for my studio for this project so that I can work on the entire series at the same time. This precludes setting up my easel for the moment because I don't have any extra room unless I juggle some other projects around. I have another painting of an entirely different nature to work on right away; if I can get that set up I'll show a stage or two of it as well.

“It is not reality that has a time flow, but our very approximate knowledge of reality. Time is the effect of our ignorance.” —Carlo Rovelli

mys·ti·cism n.
1. a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
3. Vague, groundless speculation.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.)

Two things this week made me think about time. The first was my running. I ran twice as far Monday as I did last Friday. I'm on target for six weeks out, but I definitely didn't expect to be when I finished that Friday run. The second was that I received some completely unexpected help on a project. This help cut two weeks off the time it would have taken me to do the project on my own.

I’m just saying that sometimes things just don’t take as long as I believe they will, and that still always surprises me. Breakthroughs can come unexpectedly and sometimes inexplicably, and sometimes are so subtle I barely notice them. I think noticing them makes life more interesting, so I try to pay attention. Speculating about their advent allows me to believe there is a possibility of mastery, a chance that I can learn to summon little miracles.

If you are familiar with Esther and Jerry Hicks and their work with Abraham, then you will recognize their take on the illusion of space and time in this video:



As I neared the end of my run Wednesday morning, I was passed by another runner. She was older than I am by maybe ten years; since she came from behind (and from nowhere, because I hadn’t seen her in any direction before I turned the corner) I only caught a glimpse of her face as she passed. Questions came to mind that I wanted to ask her, and I thought if she slowed down or stopped near where I would end my run I would talk to her. But she was still running and long gone by the time I reached the pond where I start and end my runs right now. I could see her cerulean blue shirt way off on the street above the pond. I was faintly disturbed by how quickly the gap between us became kind of vast.

Later I thought how strange this encounter was. I’ve been walking or biking or, now, running in this area for years and never have seen her before. (Of course, there are a number of reasons that this could be so.) Plus, she really did seem to come out of nowhere. I decided that I had encountered a future me. She was about my size, only slimmer, with silver hair (mine’s still richly brown with only a few silver threads, thank you, but it will go silver eventually). If I consider this an encounter with a future me, then I have an image to hold on to while I continue my training, an image of me in several years being stronger, faster, more steady (and slimmer). I like that image a lot more than some of the alternative images of the aging process.

Could such an encounter be possible? Years ago I heard or read a statement that time is a human construct, not some force of nature. I know that Einstein addressed this idea. I’ve heard it several times since, and every time I hear it I keep trying to imagine life without time. I can experience the absence of time (when I'm painting, for example), but I can't seem to imagine its absence.

Anyway, I found this interesting article about the illusion of time: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726391.500-is-time-an-illusion.html?page=1. The quote at the beginning of this post came from this article.

Finally, this whole post reminded me of a poem, which I will share in closing.

Love After Love

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.
Feast on your life.
—Derek Walcott

I started running about a month ago, three times a week. I’ve been really surprised at how easy it has been. I am following Stu Mittleman’s technique as described in Slow Burn, combined with a slower build-up described in a magazine I read somewhere and the alternating walk/run plan that I followed a zillion years ago when I used to run before. I dug out my copy of Runner's World Complete Book of Women's Running by Dagny Scott, but haven’t re-read it yet.

I’ve adopted a very smooth, very slow (probably kind of silly-looking) running style and am now running a whole mile without stopping. That’s pretty exciting to me. I have no pain and I’ve been doing it long enough now that I’m looking forward to my running days. I’m not working on speed yet; I’m first trying to keep that smooth gait (to minimize injury) and to build distance. I’d like to be running three miles after about two more months.

I was given a heart monitor for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve been using that. However, my pedometer crashed about two days after that so I’m not able to increase by distance initially. It’s hard to measure my route by car. Maybe I can tell by time until I can get the foot POD that goes with my monitor.

“If life isn’t about human beings and living in harmony, then I don’t know what it’s about.” Orlando Bloom, actor

I've been thinking about harmony lately. I've been thinking about it when I look around my messy house, wondering where to begin to transform it into what I hope will be serene beauty. I think about it when I contemplate bringing serenity to my generally chaotic life. It’s a little embarrassing to admit harmony doesn’t seem to be very present in my life. People who are doing things “right” are supposed to have “harmony.”

“For all problems of existence are essentially problems of harmony.”
Sri Aurodindo, mystic and philosopher

I can never think about harmony without thinking about this commercial:

I get along with most people, but I don’t feel I’m in harmony with very many people. Sometimes, and in some places, I am in harmony with nature. But when I think about being in harmony with people, I find I look for feelings of comfort, acceptance, absence of anxiety, trust. My mental image is of dancers, between whom there is a seemingly effortless give and take and knowledge of each other that magnifies the gifts of each.


I’m not much of an opera fan in general, but the Lakme Flower Duet is another example of harmony to me.

(Photograph of Fauvism painting ''The Dessert: Harmony In Red'' (1908) by Henri Matisse. Location: The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.)

I like the advice, “For color harmony, look to nature.”

“You don’t get harmony when everybody sings the same note.”
Doug Floyd, author and journalist

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mahatma Gandhi, political and spiritual leader

Gandhi was speaking of authenticity, I think, and therein likely lies the secret. The comfort and acceptance has to come from within, where authenticity originates. This is not a news bulletin to the universe, but it is a little snippet of greater awareness in my tiny corner of the world.

“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.”
Albert Camus, author and philosopher

“The Tao is unpredictable to those that live according to plans. Only those who have no agenda are in harmony with the Tao.”
Unknown; source, The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

I learned the other day that a guy I dated for a pretty long time years ago had done some things recently that were really out of character for how I remembered him. I had not been in touch with him for years, so it wasn’t like I was following his life. But occasionally I would hear something about him, and this last information was just plain surprising.

All these years, I had considered him The One Who Got Away. Let me be clear—I broke up with him, and went on to marry my first husband which enabled me to move away from that town I grew up in, which probably saved my life. Nevertheless, I often thought of his character and his goals in life and thought with a little, but not too much, regret that maybe things could have been different if…

When I learned of this more recent behavior, I was suddenly released from that mild sense of regret that had been there, in the background of my life, for so long. The effect was as if I looked at a timeline of my life, and suddenly a thin thread of regret that had run along most of it was simply snagged away. It felt…strange. I had trouble even remembering what the regret felt like, or why I’d had it in the first place. The feeling was similar to that you might have when you walk through a room and you feel something is missing, but you don’t know what. And if it’s not something you need right away, you forget to care or even think about it again.

The point is the result is the same as if I knew all those years ago that I was making the right choice, instead of worrying that I was making a mistake. If I’d trusted I knew what I was doing, I would never have regretted choosing to move on. So now I’m wondering what it would be like if I broadened the scope of that little epiphany. What if I change a general belief that I’ve made mistakes into a belief that, at some level, I’ve always made the right choices? What if I trust this new belief by believing as well that perhaps the rightness of some of those choices may simply not be evident yet?

Wouldn’t this be like going into the past and doing something that changes the future? What other beliefs could I try this out on?

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time
with." --Jim Rohn

This quote stopped me dead in my tracks, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. Yet. Whatever the reasons, I was moved to finally start writing a blog instead of continuing to think about writing one. I have almost no idea of what I'm getting into, but it sounds like fun!