SURRENDERING TO THE UNKNOWN
Lately lots of older memories have been arriving as things shapeshift and change and call me forward in a different kind of way. I have been hitting into deep pockets of reflection about my past and how things have brought me to this point, the good, the bad, the beautiful, all here and all I can do is Surrender To The Unknown.
Yesterday I went to a special place that I remember through my beingness.
It's a place that always holds me.
I have been going to the banks of the River all my life, unbeknownst to me, it was a natural pull and draw and I didn't always understand WHY I always gravitated towards that particular place as a child.
As a child my deep sadness and melancholia brought me there so many times...
and at the time I didn't understand the healing power of the elements.
Looking back I can clearly see now that sometimes, things just enter at the right time, and we don't always receive an answer, until years later.
They also come at the wrong time, too.
(a true story and tale of a lives foreshadowing)
And of course with every answer, a new question arouse.
Through all the turmoil. And upheaval.
The WATER came rushing...
Our Tears washed away, all that has been hidden.
Very much like the sacred waters of life.
A cleansing. A remembering, Happens in the process of shedding skins.
One time I met a woman who told me she couldn't Cry. I thought that was the strangest thing, for I have been Crying all my life.
At that particular healing retreat, I was crying everyday - something was opening deeper inside of me.
It definitely did NOT go as PLANNED.
But ODDLY enough that is how my ARTIST RETURNED.
Although you could say, it was always trying to return, but there is something about the intensity of the times in the fertile darkness, and the ruptures that took over me, that led me more deeply back to myself.
The complete loss of identity and metaphorical nakedness took over, and it would take years to reassemble the pieces, you could say, I am reaching the point of my own critical mass as I type these words here.
It's time -
But at that particular place and time, it created more doubt and even more questions. A deep schism. An internal conflict.
Awakening Points is what I call them. Something that is hard to give words to, or explain and maybe its not supposed to have them. But forever the rebel and ready to expel the stories.
Well I will always try -- to find the words...
As everything is rising again in a different way in this moment and place and point of time, the memories and the dreams, and the years flying and spinning and weaving there way into a new tapestry of something yet unknown,
they are creating these reflections and new compulsions for myself - to say what it is - and has been, for me - to use my voice, in my own sacred way, to tend to the garden of my heart through the way of ART and Creation, herself.
And lots of thoughts have been swirling about the heart of the Artist, or what it even means to be one...
What does it mean to say I AM AN ARTIST? to be an ARTIST?
Who decides? Who defines it?
I am not to sure anyone can define it except the Artist, which is strange because well, there are so many definitions, whether put upon us, dictated by history, or opinions, and judgements even.
It's a Strange JOB.
In some sense ART arrives and is derived from the ephemeral, there is a compulsion where the individual can not look away, and the muse enters at all hours of the night.
It's in constant motion and flow.
Like BREATHING.
Messages arrive.
So lately I thought to myself also, perhaps the Artists job is to simply deliver the messages, and then let go of everything they thought they knew about them.
RECEIVING is such a GIFT. But not everyone SEEs it.
The ARTIST is in a way a receiver of something more than, yes, even at times words, but words can also become part of the Art.
Always a conundrum for me.
Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night with words filling my brain and I run, rushing to to write them down -- and sometimes the colors form before the image --
Sometimes I can see the image so clearly in a simple unpredictable moment, the way someone laughs, or the way someone says something, the happenstance of the way things fly together.
its the ARTISTS job to catch the LITTLE MOMENTS -- and RETURN them, but they can't control if anyone else SEES -- it, too.
The PARADOX.
So I suppose....
The ARTIST brings things into clearer view.
The ARTIST is in constant relationship with the impermanence and expressive nature of being.
The ARTIST can't look away, even when it hurts, they will enter the darkness and bring back the treasure.
The ARTIST can't RUN AWAY.
The ARTIST follows the impulse all the way through to the heart of creation
And seeks to RETURN the BEAUTY even through the brokenness.
And I was also thinking the other day, well, maybe the ARTISTS job is to release all the CRIES back to the world, to give them voice, to create the energy and emotionality.
And offer an opening, a doorway to something beyond even at times, that the ARTIST understands, fully...
And it can happen in a tiny moment. In something still.
It can happen in a wild moment. In something to fantastical.
It can happen in our tears and through facing our fears.
It can happen in the spaces between the dreamer and the dream.
It can happen in all kinds of ways.
Much like life, the call of the Artist is
Unpredictable.
Unbound.
Unshakeable.
Undeterred.
Limitless.
Infinite.
And you can't take the ART out of the ARTIST
But so many things will try to TAKE it AWAY.
So the ARTIST
Dares to enter, the cave, again and again.
To bring back the metaphysical and metaphorical.
To conjure magic and mystery.
To return color to the world.
Of course, that's just how I SEE it.
And that is the BEAUTY of
Being an ARTIST.
For the ARTIST in the end
Does INDEED
DECIDE.
