Mystery

I have before me an original 6″x 6″ abstract painting by Carole Leslie, sent from Victoria, BC, Canada

What a treasure! Her website and blogs are too. We met on Facebook. She calls herself “introvert.”

I can’t call myself introvert or extravert or anything in between, because I’m all over the place!

I am a lover of mystery though and arriving at conclusions without needing questions to be asked.

Seeing Carole’s original layered, textured, spontaneous work as a miniature of what I imagined…

…a large oil painting, no less than 3’x3′ high and wide, on an immaculate, white wall, in a room overlooking a land or seascape…

…that is what I imagined would give the painting the dignity it deserved – like one of Toshiko Takaezu’s closed forms

commanding the only attention in an otherwise empty room – requiring one to imagine the mystery within…

just absorbing it like the air we breathe and walk and swim in that we can’t live without.

What is before me is the original art work that I first observed in a tiny Facebook post – it’s like the word becoming flesh, except it’s more than flesh.

It’s an abstraction more than just a word. It’s an expression of an inexplicable wave transmitting light, across the miles, in innumerable ways.

Thank you.

Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland

March 5th, 2019 – three days before my eightyth birthday,

my friend’s husband, Dan, has an accident.

In just one minute, he goes from active, beloved, high school teacher to inactive, beloved, handicapped quadriplegic.

LIFE SHATTERING!

On April 22nd, 2019, I “throw my back out” lifting a box the wrong way….  It sounds temporary….but

I thought I’d never walk again.

June 8, 2019 – fourteen weeks and 2 days after Dan’s injury and ten weeks and four days after my own injury, I feel connected to real life again – to life like before my own injury.

I begin to see the people of all ages walking down 15th Street in Center City Philadelphia from Magee Rehabilitation Center, where Dan is healing,  – to the Patco Speedline to my Camden home.

And I begin not to feel sorry for myself…

And I begin to see more compassion for others.

That is what  it  takes:  Putting oneself in the shoes of others incapacitated with pain…

And I begin to clearly see “the caregivers” – to Dan and to myself –

There for us in a time of need…

Dan with the magic of his wife and family’s constant touch…

And me with my circle of acquaintances who care –

We are starting to live again – getting used to new restrictions.

Life happens…life resurrects…

And life begins –

Again and again.

Hallelujah!

 

 

Camden in Winter

Camden in winter – a beautiful city for those with eyes to see!

Always the loving faces of children peeking from bundled scarfs going to school, book bags on wheels in tow

Bare tree branches reaching to the sky – magnificent barren design

Fallen leaves eddying, leaping through the streets, blessing what they touch

Windows of rowhouses – like television sets tuned to life’s channels

The clock tower of City Hall a beacon – not symbolizing anything but the passage of time

The peace of the Delaware – with Philadelphia beyond – a testament of forefathers and mothers, beckoning

Strong visage of Camden people peering out the bus panels, every color, age, disposition

The churches on Sundays drawing from the suburbs, catering to the locals

The downtown bustle of business on weekdays – street vendors humanizing industry

The students’ artwork, large and bold, displayed in Pathmark supermarket at the checkout, reminding us of why we live!

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February 20, 2019 – It’s a snowy day and I sorted some old boxes of school folders and found this – that  I wrote in Winter, 2005. I still feel the same way about Camden fourteen years later!

Anthropomorphyzing Dogs

I feel close to my friend Evi Schumacher because we’re kindred souls in anthropomorphyzing (is that a word?) life – especially our dogs.

Evi wonders if her dog remembers losing his first home and coming to  hers when he saw her using a walker (hopefully temporarily). He had a worried look on his face. Did his first owner give him up due to health and lack of mobility?

That made me wonder if my 75 pound Great Dane mix has a memory of his beginnings in Southern USA on Christmas Day, 2015.

Thanks to Evi’s sensitivity, I try to attribute memory to my dog because of his behavior – his response – to the word “crate” as in “Get into your crate.” He does it so joyfully. He loves his crate. Did his first foster person instill that joy?

I find my boy completely ignores me if there is any annoyance in my tone of voice asking him to “Come to me.” If my voice drips with “Oh what a good boy…” – he responds immediately. Tone of voice is important to him. Early on, he may have learned that. And, he teaches me to emphasize it – even to the extent of tricking him to come with a nice voice even when I’m displeased with him.  I have to figure out a different way to change bad behavior than with tone of voice…

Thanks Evi, for pushing me to give intelligence to the canine species here-to-fore not considered much.

Awe, Courage, Love Affair with Unknown

Be it from a ledge on a rocky mountain top (open link below) or from a 25th floor window of a high rise, the awe, courage and love affair with the unknown is there.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2248938401994293&id=100006344655968

Me and Johnny Depp

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=354740654873581&id=180202438994071

FB posts tell me about what’s going on in the world. My other sources of news are NPR and the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper on Sundays.

When I post on the Internet, I don’t usually write my opinion, so I’m not chased down the beach like Johnny Depp in the above clip.

I post a lot of FB because I want to share a glimpse at this world we live in and can with a slight touch of my finger on the Android. That alone is a miracle happening, yes!?!

My life’s passion is art awareness – and FB is a vehicle to share with like-minded friends who can “like or not-like” or not respond at all – and just scroll on by.

Just don’t chase me down the beach if you disagree with something.  :-))))

Art Will Save Us – 32 years in Camden

  I moved to Camden, N.J. 32 years ago after my father died, to get away from Cherry Hill taxes and to become part of the Sacred Heart Church community.

Yesterday there was a birthday celebration in the rectory chapel – such a familiar place and so many familiar faces – for the person who influenced my journey to Camden: Father Michael Doyle.

I’m grateful to Michael for maintaining an intercultural, spiritual community where art and individuality matter and I have been able to do my own thing: teaching and doing art with all ages from pre-school to old age, where I’m now at!

I recounted to him a short trajectory of my move:  1) Japanese Buddhist monks passing through Camden (at his request) at the end of their peace march from California in the early 1980s. 2) Michael’s writings in the ’80s about Bobby Sands in an Irish prison. 3) Michael’s primary teaching that “Art Will Save Us.”

1)  I lived in Tokyo in the ’60s when Catholics were taught that even visiting a non-Catholic (no less non-Christian) Church would mean not going to heaven. I was going to Buddhist Temples – which did not bode well for my future… until those monks, in the 80s, were invited to unfurl their banners at Sacred Heart Church and chant their sutras. All was not lost for me – and the beauty of Buddhism and Catholicism (post Vatican II) was also unfurled…

2) The compassion Michael showed for those in Irish prisons as well as for the poor in Camden was somewhere I needed to live and to learn.

3) My connections to the places I had lived – Manhattan, Tokyo, Honolulu, Cherry Hill, were Art-centered:  music, painting, pottery, literature, individual inspiration and creativity…

Thanks for the gift of YOU, Monseigneur Doyle, for many years of joy and learning in Camden, my home.

And many more Happy Birthdays to come!

Executive Origami Toy – For All Ages

It ain’t easy to put together 6 units into an origami whole! Check it out on You Tube.

It’s called an “Executive Toy,” I suppose because if you hold it gently between your palms and blow, it skillfully spins. And any organization that “spins well” is run by a skillful executive? Or, maybe CEOs have nothing better to do than to twirl it?

I work part-time at a State-of-the-Art play care center (at Camden Kroc Center) with kids – ages 6 months to 6 years old. It is well equipped with train sets, action figures, small construction trucks, sports cars, potato heads – you name it. Most of the toys are made of plastic and metal.

But, in addition to the high-tech stuff,  the children use plain old Crayola jumbo crayons to draw pictures and to color 3-D origami figures of birds, boxes, flowers, etc.

They also play with the assembled “Executive Toy” between their palms and love the way it spins so skillfully – even faster than their manufactured, miniature, battery-operated Maseratis!

 

 

 

Meditation in Cinema

I’m taking a a Rutgers-Camden film history class with first generation Iranian-American professor, Emud Mohkberi.

The paradox he articulates in class, that Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, in his films, can focus on the discomfort of family situations while NOT allowing his characters to wallow in it and at the same time he affords the viewers the luxury of seeing the truthfulness of such cinematic intimacy as if it were their own.

I’m enamored of  Japanese films and literature and feel fortunate to better understand my decades-long fascination, hearing the way Mohkberi describes it.

• The above image is of a doll I received in 1966, made by the grandmother of one of my Japanese students who studied English with me at Sophia University in Tokyo.