August 23, 2016 – Offering the driver refreshments

The front cover of next year’s calendar – this time it’s all fruits!

isten to this post:

The Sausalito Art Festival is the weekend after next.  It’s a big deal in my art life.  Yes, it’s just an art festival, but it’s a big festival, it costs quite a bit of money to do and a whole lot of people will see me and this artwork there.  Many of you have found me there.  I’m fortunate enough to have been invited back for my ninth year and – as I always do – I want to put up a nice display.  This means there’s plenty to do:  I feel best when I have a brand new painting to hang; there are postcards and emails to send; my print inventory needs filling in.  And this year I got the wild idea to get the 2017 calendar done so I can show it off there.  This meant that I had to get the graphic design done – which I do all myself – and get it off to the printer early enough for delivery next week.

I led a Special Saturday class this past weekend after which I was charged up with so much to do with my Sunday.  My friend Vicki and I had talked late in the week and she too felt like she wanted to get a bunch done.  We agreed to check in with each other throughout the day to help each other stay on track.  It so worked!  We talked at 9:00 in the morning, at noon and then traded messages before the evening, sharing what we got done.  I ended up spending the day weaving between working on my painting, working in Photoshop on the calendar and doing laundry.  By working in shorter bursts doing something with my spatial brain, my logic brain and something physical, I was able to stay on track and not get distracted.

You who have been reading these journal entries a while might already get that I have a fairly entrenched internal whip-cracker.  I call it my “driver.”  I had the sweet idea years ago to give it a new job – instead of Charlton Heston hurling about in a chariot in Ben Hur,  I wanted to ask my driver to morph into  Morgan Freeman asking Jessica Tandy from Driving Miss Daisy “where to, Ma-am?”.   But the transformation is spotty at best.  I seem pretty hardwired to fill myself with all these ideas of things to do and then the driver kicks in to get to as many of them as I can.  The most painful way this shows up is when I’m trying to finish a painting for a deadline.  I have the inspiration, the skills and the privilege of the time in my life to make these paintings, and I can turn the actual painting of them into complete drudgery!

Given all this, Sunday was such a great success.  I painted first – it’s the most challenging and demanding of me – so I did it while I was freshest.  Then I popped over to Photoshop on my computer where I placed images, moved moons and holidays, chose colors and quotes for each month.  When that became tedious, I rotated the laundry and folded a load of clean clothes.   Each activity I switched to gave me a bit of refreshment to keep my energy up and the capacity to re-focus when I returned.  The best part was that I really didn’t feel like I was making myself do any of it.  I don’t mind laundry, but I generally don’t say,” oh, boy! I get to wash the clothes!”  But it was nice to notice the feel of the soft warm cloth on my hands as I folded.  And since I can only paint so long before what I’m doing starts to really suffer, it helped to also stay engaged with other things that needed my attention.  It was close to 4:00 in the afternoon when the pull of my Joseph and our Bo-doggy cozied up on the bed in the pink room overtook me. My eyes and brain were tired and I went to join them. It was Sunday, after all.

There’s big dissatisfaction with the flower in the center left, so much, I’ m seriously considering cropping the painting along the left and the top. We’ll see…

Thinking about all of this this morning I started realizing how easy it is to wish away our lives. When I’m doing something I don’t want to in that moment, my inner voices, unchecked, can be all complaints, all the time.  Like little kids on a car ride they ask, “are we there yet?”  Sylvia Boorstein, the Buddhist meditation teacher, says the nature of mind is to be dissatisfied.  I so get this. And yet I’d rather not give too much attention to that dissatisfied part of me.  I want to cultivate the habit of satisfaction. I want to try to remember that there is always something to appreciate:  the clouds or stars up in the sky, or the way the light lands on a tree, a favorite song that comes on the radio –  or in this very moment the feeling of the plush blanket on the backs of my legs as I sit here on the couch and type.

There is so much suffering in the world. We are fortunate beyond measure to be living the lives we are in relative safety and with more than we’d ever need to survive available to us ( this is our current reality, at least).  I feel helpless knowing that there’s little I can do from so far away to relieve their misery.  It seems the least I can do is to realize that any complaint I have is miniscule in comparison and appreciate the life I am living in as many moments I can.  That my husband doesn’t clean out the sink like I do after he does the dishes, or that the check-engine light has come on in my car for the third time in a month are barely blips on the radar of human suffering. After all, I have a car and a wonderful man in my life – who provides for me, who adores me and who helps out with the dishes!

It’s tricky because it’s not a good thing to shun any part of ourselves. I think it’s more about allowing this part to be while being aware of a larger, broader reality. This relates perfectly to the process of painting.  This dissatisfied mind is exactly why painting is so hard for the vast majority of us.  I say often that we have the unenviable job of painting our paintings. While our attention is right down where the brush meets the paper, the part of us whose nature is dissatisfaction is right there, on deck, chiming in.  I’ve been painting in earnest for a dozen or more years and I’ve yet to paint for more than a few minutes before I hear that voice.  I’ve got to believe that I’m never going to be free of it.  So I’m going to play with when I hear it.  I’ll notice how beautiful the golden yellow color I’m painting is, or marvel at how interesting the shapes of these petals are, or be curious about how I’m going to sort out painting the fuzzy stems to these buds.  There’s always something to satisfy us if we open to it.

And I’m going to plan for other activities to do when I need a break.  Being better with my time has been a puzzle and I’m wondering if this isn’t a piece of it. I’m wondering if this resistance to structure that has arisen in midlife isn’t some wise part of me that is refusing to drag myself through this one precious life.  I suspect it would rather I keep myself fresh and inspired and appreciating each thing I do as much as I can.  Maybe it is the nature of mind to be dissatisfied, but it’s the nature of heart to love – to appreciate.  Everyone alive has both a mind and a heart – what I see today is that life goes much better when we heed them both.

With my love,

Cara