Ocean

cerulean sea's natural heartbeat
the need to merge into it --

to climb back into
the womb that birthed us.

For Ruth Stone

she stood wide-eyed
on the black earth
and knew the words were near.

familiar muse rattled towards her -
intent on finding voice.

so she ran
and ran
and ran

ran over soil
and grass
and straw
and wood,

into her home,
child's feet on the stairs,
fingers finding pencil
and paper

pulling the words
into her and onto the page -
exposed.

Olfactory Nerve

in the stairwell
she caught a whiff
of oil of olay and
late summer roses --
olfaction
and memories
of her grandmother.

with child's eyes
she noticed the weathered skin
and softness of body and muscle
as she was caressed and hugged -

the purse that was well-stocked
with wrigley's doublemint gum.

and in all this closeness
love still felt very far away.

Joseph Campbell and Jiddu Krishnamurti

My ongoing reading of Joseph Campbell's life has taken me into new directions and into new literary terrain I have not frequented; it's exciting. Joseph Campbell--on a steam boat from Europe to America in 1924--prodigiously encountered Jiddu Krishnamurti, a famous speaker of religious and spiritual material, and later said that the serendipitous meeting changed his life.

Campbell would encounter Krishnamurti several more times during the 1920s but his last visit occurred in 1929 when he went to hear Krishnamurti speak in Eerde, Holland. Krishnamurti was considered by some theosophists to be the "World Teacher," but he later disbanded the group (Order of the Star) in 1929 which had sprung up around him.

Campbell was so inspired by Krishnamurti's words while at Eerde, he offered the following to his journal:

"So here I hang between my past and my future--trying to fan a spark to flame--a spark which came as the final gift from my past. And now I feel that the old shell of the Joe who was searching and never quite finding lies somewhere in the woods which are about Krishna's castle. --But through the shell was a fairly huge thing, the creature which stepped out of it is microscopic in size! Sometimes I lose him amidst all the rubbish of my old feelings--and I never have seen him stand up on his own feet and walk. But this tiny spark of what I hope to be--this glimmer of gold which I've discovered at last in the midst of disillusions--this thing is what I'm going home now to nourish, and to build into something" (An Open Mind, p. 113).

I think this is why I am so drawn to Campbell's words -- they soothe me and validate my own experience of growth and expansion into the world and into myself. I make it a habit to follow synchronicity whenever it shows up in my life, so when Krishnamurti's name began to pop up rather frequently on my radar, I decided to follow in Alice's footsteps and investigate. I'm beginning with Krishnamurti's "Total Freedom," which is a collection of his work and one which seems to echo my quest for greater self-discovery and awareness.

Krishnamurti writes in his essay "What I Want To Do":

"What I want to do is to help you, the individual, to cross the stream of suffering, confusion and conflict, through deep and complete fulfillment. This fulfillment does not come through egotistic self-expression, nor through compulsion and imitation. Not through some fantastic sentiment and conclusions, but through clear thinking, through intelligent action, we shall cross this stream of pain and sorrow. There is a reality which can be understood only through deep and true fulfillment" (Total Freedom, p. 10).

I'm not entirely sure where this new direction is taking me, but I'm game to find out. Besides, I think it's a tad thrilling to read Campbell and Krishnamurti simultaneously given that they were friends in real life. Perhaps they will look kindly upon my search as I plow through their literature and point out what I need to know and tuck away for future exploration.

Callings

"come back,
come back,"
said the Self.

"come back
from your
waywardness.

"come back
and sit
in the place
where there is
wholeness

and you
no longer rise
to meet the wind."

Maya Lin at the Corcoran Gallery

Tonight I went to the Corcoran Gallery of Art to hear Maya Lin speak about her new exhibit "Systematic Landscapes" which will show there until July 12, 2009. If you live in the DC area or are planning a visit here in the next few weeks, I encourage you to go and see it for yourself - it's amazing and encourages you to look anew upon all which surrounds you.

I've been drawn to Lin's work for years -- the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial (since moving to DC), The Women's Table at Yale University in New Haven, CT (during my time as a student at Yale), "Reading a Garden" at Cleveland Public Library's main branch downtown (near where I grew up) and "Storm King Wavefield" at the Storm King Art Center in NY (one of my favorite and most frequented places on the Eastern seaboard) -- so it was quite a treat to engage with her new work in person and to hear her speak about it.

Lin shared with us that she's always been moved by the land and hoped that each of us would begin to look at the world differently and more expansively after viewing her pieces in the galleries above.

I think what pulls me most to Lin's work is the quiet center which sits in stillness within each of her pieces--the pause within each work that acknowledges your connection to it even though you lack intimacy with it.

Again, I find myself hearing the same message but from still a different teacher...this message of "within"...of "go within"...of "go to the center and sit and know stillness." Lawrence Weschler wrote in the foreward to "Systematic Landscape":

"I kept finding myself being put in mind: of this, and then that, and then of course right past all of that to the hushed core, the stilled center, into which one eventually always seems to find oneself arriving with her work...with Maya's pieces, how one is always shifting back and forth like that, between the particulate and the seamless, between material facticity and transcendent form--all of that, all of that, all of that stuff, and then grace quite simply abounding" (p. 11, 13).

So, I sit. I know stillness. I wait. I see the answers coming to me but they're still far away on the horizon, like the coming of a dusk or a brilliant dawn. I watch the movement and the shadows as they lengthen and then shorten and anticipate the light which will brighten my face and my soul. And the answers that will come and sit with me in this still space.

In the meantime, I sit.

I know stillness.

I wait.

Joseph Campbell

I've been on what I would affectionately call a "Joseph Campbell" kick much of the past year, feeling pulled to read and reflect on his writings and on the content of his interviews with others (most famously those with Bill Moyers conducted in 1988.) Currently, I'm reading "A Fire in the Mind: the life of Joseph Campbell" and am learning about his transformative time in Paris during the years 1927-28.

It feels like a hint of synchronicity because I just returned from Paris and felt pulled to many of the same places once frequented by Campbell, like Paris's famous English bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. I first discovered the store in 1996 and now make it a point to revisit it whenever I'm in Paris. In 1927, Campbell had the good fortune to meet its first proprietor, Miss Sylvia Beach, who ran the little store, hosted literary salons there, and even managed to get James Joyce's Ulysses published in Paris -- no small feat given that in 1922 the book was banned and even burned in both America and Great Britain.

Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, June 2009.

Campbell later wrote that reading Joyce helped him "to translate knowledge and information into experience: that seems to me the function of literature and art. And it was with that I made the step not to becoming an artist but to try to find what the experience would be in the material I was dealing with (A Fire in the Mind, p. 84).

Also while in Paris, he encountered Angela Gregory, a young American sculptor who was studying under the master sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, and later introduced him to her teacher. Bourdelle, a former student of Rodin, took a liking to Campbell and invited him into his inner circle, even permitting him to watch him at work.

Bourdelle taught Campbell that one's totality was the fuel on which the spirit fire of the creative process fed (A Fire in the Mind, p. 91). The master sculptor also offered this quote which perfectly articulates all that I feel right now:

"Let us be ashamed of our superficial life, it is full of lies. There are only two possibilities: the one is that we are not able to see truth, the other that, when we have once seen it glimmering before us, the path that is leading to it, we are devoured by the eternal thirst to follow it to the end. He who is filled with this love for truth goes out into life like a hero without weapons, but under the spread-out wings of an archangel."

I find myself dutifully following a type of rabbit hole that first presented itself to me in my dreams last summer. The course has been interesting but there's a theme and it's connected; Campbell is just one guide along the way. What I've also noticed as of late is that my inner voice has much more to say than my outer voice, and I'm craving deep and meaningful conversations with others on matters of spirituality, comparative religion, Jungian psychology, and comparative mythology. This is the type of work with which I want to spend my days and what I hope to transition into sometime soon.

Going Inward

If last summer's theme was to raise my vibrations, this summer's is about going within. It's not a new theme but it's gotten to the point now that it's popping up SO frequently and in so many diverse places that I just have to giggle and tell the universe, "Okay, okay. Message received. I'm on it."

But what does this mean exactly? I take it to mean the following: meditate, pray, reflect habitually enough so that you can eventually come to a place which transcends even silence. There, in that space, the answers will come. Insight will come. Peace will befriend you. Anxiety will melt away and creativity will blossom.

And I know that this works because I've followed this practice before, even religiously so. Humanoid that I am, I have fallen OUT of this practice the past several months and am feeling the effects. My efforts are sporadic now, so I take the universe's message anew and will address it.

Over the weekend, I went on silent retreat at a monastery and relished its natural beauty, rhythm and proffered silence. It was good to be still and silent and to follow my soul around for a few days, reminding me of a curious puppy content to do one thing one moment and then do something else 30 minutes later. During my time there, I felt pulled to walk the monastery's grounds after meals and the habit allowed me to run, hop, and skip through fields and dance with the wildlife there. I saw blue herons greet each other in the morning with loud squawks which I translated as, "Morning, Tom. Morning, Fred." Bluebirds and woodpeckers flitted about, white and yellow butterflies hovered in verdant fields and cows lowed to each other at dusk.

The silence tempered my thoughts and allowed me to go within unhindered and unhurried. Joseph Campbell and the Upanishads were within close reach. Rilke, too. I smiled when Campbell began to discuss the need for inward journeying. "So there are two stages to this: one is going inward, and finding the relationship of your own deeper self to the ground of being so that you become transparent to transcendence; the other is bringing this realization back into operation in the field, which is the work of the artist--to interpret the contemporary world as experienced in terms of relevance to our inner life (An Open Life, p. 22).

Later he says, "And what the Orient brings is a realization of the inward way. When you sit in meditation with your hands on your lap, with your head looking down, that means you've gone in and you're coming not just to a soul that is disengaged from God: you're coming to that divine mystery right there in yourself (p. 89).

Rilke counsels the young poet seeking advice in the following manner: "You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself...ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer...What more shall I say to you? Everything seems to me to have its just emphasis; and after all I do only want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously through your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer (Letters to a Young Poet, Letter One).

I am moving towards stillness. I have been reminded. The stay at the monastery didn't answer my questions (I knew it wouldn't) BUT it has fortified me for the inner journey ahead.

Boundaries

One of my most treasured finds this summer is Maya Lin's book entitled "Boundaries." I checked the hardback version out of the public library and took my time pondering her style and her expressions of self and of art. It will be hard to return it as it is a meditation of page and image.

It is poetically done. Thoughtfully and honestly composed.
Blessed work of hands and spirit.

Architecture has always moved me. Historically, I have captured more pictures of man-made materials and their compositions and interactions with light and shade than of human beings. Buildings and their builders speak to me, and I understand this need of architects to build and compose works to sit within the natural world and blend, mimic, manipulate and, sometimes, even dominate it.

Architecture can also an expression of memorial. Lin is most well known for her design for the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial but her work and mind reaches beyond remembrances for the dead. Like Andy Goldsworthy, she respects and plays with natural elements. She puzzles out clues within the land and grants them voice.

And, as she points out, life and art is asymmetrical. "To combine the rational and the intuitive, the straight line and the curve. The one without the other doesn't balance; it is the juxtaposition of the two that informs the whole" (p. 10:04). Architecture then cannot separate the land from the viewer -- building and site must remain fluid and joined.

I was excited to learn that the Corcoran Gallery has a new exhibition of hers on display, and I am looking forward to conversation with the architect herself as she presents her reflections on earth in a world abuzz with technology and environment.

Condensation

cumulonimbus
builds and spreads upwards
on invisible air drafts
as if generated by the hand
patiently turning the summer fair's cotton candy.

reaching
and
reaching

upwards and outwards

and downwards
towards the earth

rapidly shifting
but still penetrated by swift contrails
which mark their ride on exhalations
from the dirt
and from witnesses who are parched
and await its offerings below.

Paris

Tour Eiffel, Paris, June 2009

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."
~ Ernest Hemingway

I've been lucky enough to have toured Paris several times in my life, and I've enjoyed the city on each occasion; however, I have to confess that it's never formed roots in my bones like Jerusalem or Prague or Rome. So, I was surprised that I came to admire Paris and its citizens during my stay and I departed with a new affinity for France's rich culture.

Bookseller along the Seine River

On the morning of my second day in Paris, I found myself up early and unable to sleep any further. I tossed and turned and debated about trying to fall back asleep. I decided against nursing my jet lag and hopped out of bed, determined to see as much of Paris as I could. Since my hotel was a stone's throw from the Louvre, I began my day with a stroll through the Jardin des Tuileries. The early hour allowed for silent wandering which refreshed my spirit.

Monet's Les Nympheas, Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris

I later sat in the room dedicated to Monet's waterlillies at Musee de l'Orangerie. This is not the first time I have beheld Monet's work--having visited his gardens at Giverny and museum exhibits dedicated to his work around the world--but this was the first time I was moved emotionally. I was struck by the sheer size of the paintings so neatly contrasted by the room's white walls and floor. Monet is my mother's favorite artist and I grew up listening to her short lessons on the artist along with viewing his works at her side. The moment was not lost on me that my adult self sat taking in these considerable works in my mum's absence. No postcard or letter can convey the richness of what I saw...though I tried.

Musee d'Orsay, Paris

labyrinthine twists under paned glass
and steeled architecture providing shelter
as she roamed through
marble
and oil
and light
and air
until she rested in front of nature's reveal
and captured it on celluloid
for public viewing back home.

Le Nature se devoilant devant la Science, Ernest Barrias, 1899
(Nature Unveiling Herself To Science)

The city was fresh and cool and perfectly coiffed and stayed.
Unmoving.
Frozen but fluid.
Merged and married.
Vibrant.
Filled with je ne sais quoi.
And more.

Sacre-Coeur, Paris

and god sat above on a hill
and watched the skirts fly in montmartre
as liquid was exchanged
as easily as money
and souls walked along the shadows of moulin rouge
in search of something --
a need lit in red
and secured by the lust of others.

Travels

Off on some travels but will return with new material and thoughts sometime soon!

Embryo

the ocean is a restless mother
simultaneously birthing and aborting -
excreting scents from her womb which confuse this witness.

foam meets scarred earth which
the mother soothes twice a day.

she wipes clean the striae
of
cycles
and
prints
and
paws

and the living pick over the dead
and its skeletons

and press it all into fine dust.

Photosynthesis

pretty wildflowers
flooding a stretch of earth --
gravid with yellow.

like sweet spring chicks
following the sun,
their heads bobbing and gaping for nourishment

drinking from the mother
and swaying from the swish of a passerby.