I have just woken from an afternoon nap; the disquiet of work is not yet deafening; the wispy tendrils of undiscovered-love are quiet and pain is not shouting; is this peace? The creative tension between whether to draw or write pushed me to the keyboard with it’s illusion of understanding, yet the fallow gurgle of color bubbling on the surface of the drawing-in-work is almost creating itself in front of my eyes. Is there a magic for compounds that were once together to again coalesce into some image of pertinence and meaning? Is the act of dialectic questioning a tonic to the terror of not knowing? Or can it be as simple as remembering how to breathe? The sun is dampened by the high clouds of the Himalayas; my lungs have cleared somewhat from decades of abuse; and I have come to accept the quizzical looks on people’s faces as they laugh at me, “ki bhan ca!” The drawing continues to clamor for creative attention. Creative work is not so much different from the poor schmuck Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the Hades hill; only to get inches from the top so it can roll back down - over and over again. Constant creative tension disperses ego into mystery. Is that the nature of peace - the oblivion which creation has the capacity, but not always the kindness to provide? It is clear when there is no self between color, tone or shifting mass from Plato's 3 dimensional ideal, just consecutive decisions - an ever evolving where and how to smear, shear or grind closer to that moving target - beauty; it is as close to bliss as I have been - is that peace?
Why then does it at times feel like such a battle? How can so many extraneous unrelated discursive ideas intrude? How much difference is there between meditation and creation? Each requires an absence of will; the a subordination of distraction; a heart full of love, or whatever guise the loving heart cloaks itself in at the time - suffering, pride, lust - all those passing squalls of dissonance the chattering monkeys of the mind seem so adept at conjuring. Still none of these props comes close to nourishing the hunger that comes from searching for that precise application which Paul Cezanne described as not “clashing with nature (g_d)” - writing is no different. When conjuring a portrait, each soul tries to reveal itself; I try to discern that feeling or experience that is not easily shared but cannot be disguised or forgotten. It is for this reason self is an unwelcome companion in the creative journey - to remove all possibility of projection. It is the same trying explain an idea in such a way that someone may find their own experience in the concept and permit a kinship - then words are friends. My good fortune was to have parents with two distinct passions - literature and plastic arts. They applied themselves honorably, and in so set an example for what is possible through consistent effort - music unfortunately skipped a generation and I’m left to the eternal damnation of a tin ear. As with all tragedies the silver lining is my love and appreciation for beautiful music is reciprocal to my lack of capacity. Is that some sort of law of nature - what gets taken away is returned in some balanced aspect, true for love, kindness, and honor? If so we just need the patience and pluck to perceive each transformation.
I recently watched a clip of George Harrison - his last interview. He struck me as completely at peace, if anything somewhat anxious to be on with it. What was most vivid in his discussion was a determination to contribute something of value - not of value in the sense of what he George Harrison had discovered, but an exhortation to those of us left to seek higher ground. It was almost as though there was no George, rather someone who cared about people he didn’t know, nor ever would know; I like that. However, it still confuses me when compassion runs full square up against stupidity and bullshit. I am more comfortable with someone attempting a strong-arm robbery on me than being played. When an institution such as facebook sends me Halloween greetings after sifting my content for what can be monetized or traded with whichever corporatized government apparatus believes my irreverent contempt for trust-fund-babies-cum-nouveaux-riche-lords-and-ladies is analyzable, I chortle to myself. Where with interpersonal dealings, when someone presumes to take, I chortle in their face just for the pleasure I get from “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” - Oscar Wilde. It only gets dicey when, as just now, I read myself taking pleasure in someone’s discomfort, because that is real; it is a defect which is mine - a smug satisfaction at the expense of another which at another time in my life would be a torment, an imperfection subject to the shrill denunciation of self loathing but which today is no more than grist for the mill. I am determined to take no real pleasure other than striving toward better understanding through whatever existential lens I have at my disposal at that moment.
Lao Tzu said “if you are anxious you are living in the future; if you are depressed you are living in the past; if you are at peace, you are living in the present,” which again leaves more questions than answers. For example, writing that sentence takes me back to 1973-something and the emerging orthodoxy of Baba Ram Dass and his “Be Here Now" acolytes. I had come by an Irish Setter who was abandoned to her own devices in a barnyard because the Ram Dass ashram wouldn’t allow animals. In my 60's-flavored self-righteousness and solidarity with my new best friend, I agonized for her having suffered an externally imposed arbitrary spiritual regulation completely at odds with my no-holds-barred concept of freedom. I share this for the simple awareness of how little I have changed. I still chafe at oppression under the guise of orthodoxy - be here now - is still a fungible concept however correct Eckhart Tolle, Lao Tzu or Baba Ram Dass may be. Peace, however, is not subject to any criteria other than what can be found within the struggle of each human heart, creature, system or dynamic. I use a variety of realities to describe peace, for quiescence is not unique to the human condition. Take for instance the critical mass of a thermonuclear device - it is the peaceful resolution of contrary physics allowed to expand to their potential - just as the exhaustion of rage is subject to the limits of its fury. Peace is not the idyl defined by Jesus, Muhammad or Buddha, but rather a shifting condition somewhat akin to a wave one needs to paddle for to ride that much sought state of peace. Does that make any sense?
The art of calm has been and will continue to be developed by advocates from “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” by Dale Carnegie; to “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius; to this humble 5 paragraph essay by nobody you know - yet we burn with passion, seethe with jealousy, weep in misery and laugh hysterically - why? Why must we struggle to either maintain, evolve or discover peace? How is it that our natural condition is so antagonistic to the state which so many strive to achieve through drugs, meditation, passion or force of intellect? Is it possible to be hostilely peaceful like the cartoon of the hippy and his peace sign T-Shirt shouting “you want a peace of me” or the way Richard Nixon’s peace with honor cashed in on the backs of 58,220 dead Americans - how about the American Indian holocaust with estimates of 95 to 114 million human beings murdered by disease, starvation and superior technology while my nation barely takes a backward glance in its headlong leap into further death and destruction - all the while screaming manifest destiny, exceptionalism or 9/11! Clearly my sense of peace does not come from a blind eye to pustulating injustice and ignorance; though the sadness I feel from plumbing these examples of hypocrisy is more of a tonic to me than that existential tic which pulls more alcohol from a bottle than wise; caves-in to stress riding in the gut and gorges on GMO contaminated comfort food; or wallows in some delusional state cowering from some command of an exalted promise of bliss by ___fill-in the blank___ etc . . . world peace will never arrive until personal peace is nurtured, shared, and/or taken. So by my lights you may find me in a backwater somewhere peacefully struggling to depict the majesty of a naked woman or typing ideas on how to survive the havoc of a handful of haters who will never know peace; may you not be one of them.
post script: this morning Paris was savagely attacked in an effort to be heard by a body of people whose families have likely been attacked in kind by imperial forces raining anonymous destruction from the skies above - war is over - we are our own enemy.
post script: this morning Paris was savagely attacked in an effort to be heard by a body of people whose families have likely been attacked in kind by imperial forces raining anonymous destruction from the skies above - war is over - we are our own enemy.
