The pilot is still hot From life Memories Scratch him like stars
But the fields grow dark The sun gets caught in a barn The wheat stalks lower Their heads
And as the pilot still flies Through the dust of the world The lakes underneath Go deep to no bottom.
My friend told me he is getting ready to die, and he is not afraid. As long as he lives, he said, he does what he likes to do. I placed it in my mouth, as you do with unknown food, waiting for the taste to show up. I did the painting that you have here, not knowing what I do, as is always the case, except for being loyal to my sense of beauty. Then I wrote the words that came.
The mind creates magnetic fields Within what do they live? They live in the truth The truth is everywhere And it is the only thing That cannot be destructed Therefore It is not a thing
Trees grow from the earth They eat the earth and drink water They soak the sun They breath the air Like us The earth and water are The sun is The air is Products of the ancient mind And are influenced by my own Current mind
My mind Is a traveling choice maker in infinity Using the old truth As clay To be shaped with imagination
Birds can fly They are not afraid of heights A bough Is a home for them Sometimes they would fight for a good one Then they’d sleep Almost standing Birds start to sing Even before the sun arrives Birds are soft And hard
And I What is hard and what is soft In me? What am I afraid of? What will my dreams be like If I have to keep my balance At night? Will I sing In the morning?
When I was very young, there were geckos on the screens of the windows in my room, hunting flies and moths. And beyond the screen birds were standing on the windowsills. Then they would fly to the trees that surrounded the house. In the evenings many birds would fight for the good boughs, making a huge noise. Then they’d settle down and sleep, sitting on their folded legs that held on to the thin branches. They did not have homework to do. I loved their boldness as they peeked into my room, with the excitement of having just flown still alive in them. Today, when I close my eyes and imagine what a good life is for me, I see myself flying above the landscape, almost like the birds, but I flap less with my hands. I just have to think forward and I fly. And when I settle on a bough, at the top of the tallest tree, I do not shout. There is nothing to fight for. The world comes to me.
The mountain range is dreaming It throws little lakes around And casts reflections In ochre and purple
When the sun goes down To meet the mountains The mountains cry To the sky
And the other little mountain Alone at the side Oh, Is in awe
The pain in my feet is hard to take. The body does not like it. The subconscious thinks it is terrible and something must be done immediately. I sit on the bed and place the more hurting foot over the other foot. I put my two palms on two different places between the knee and the pelvis. I want to feel both palms, as they touch the leg, at the same time. Not to move my attention from one to the other. Together. It is impossible to do with effort. I know already. So I relax as much as I can. I tell myself: Go empty. Go empty. Empty. I give away thoughts and worries. I feel calm for a moment. The pain goes crazy but for just a moment There is calm. In that moment the experience of the two palms touching in their different spots comes to me. It is not me chasing after the experience. It comes to me. It does not come to the mind but to the heart.
I stay in the experience. Within the environment of crazy pain, there is an area of peace, in which the experience of two separate hands touching two different places on the leg somehow continues to exist. I leave my attention there. I keep being careful not to make an effort. I just tune into experiencing the two touches. And the calm starts to grow.
Then there is a relaxation of the whole body. After some time the pain fades out from the foot that hurts more. Now it moves to the other foot and I continue. This is a healing state.
Sometimes the peace grows and I feel that I am the peace. Then the event of the pain in the body looks like an interesting event in eternity. And it is as if I am the little mountain at the side.
A rock and a shadow Stand on the flexible green And a cloud comes To cover them
It turns out The shadows have been going on From far in the past And into the future
Unfinished life forms have only to ascend As the blue haze is hinting To come to a place Of peace
The life forms Will decide
Or does it only Seem so?
The rock and the shadow seem to be me and my shadow thoughts. The flexible green is the village where I grew up. Much of the shadows start early in life. The cloud is the way our subconscious thoughts are unknown to us, until we learn how to hear them.
We know this, don’t we? The shadow thoughts are those that prevent the energy of our infinite self from being expressed by us in the life that we live.
Life forms are me and you and others. We constantly change, so we can be seen as unfinished, until we discover one day that we are like dreams. We always represent our state of mind of the moment.
I would like to add something to the previous entry.
In the composition there are two spots that have some uniqueness, some characteristics that are different from everything else in the picture. These are: the area that looks somewhat like a head with dots inside and the area that represents the pain. Here they are:
These two spots relate to each other in their colors, textures and the feeling of having interruptions in them. I could call it spottiness. Please look at them in the big picture, in the previous entry. In the head, the spots look like a decoration. In the pain area the feeling is of a bleeding in a weak system.
Because these two spots are the only different places in the painting, they become important, and the relationship between them becomes important too. They become the subject of the art. Usually the subject of a picture is the strongest and biggest element. and here the subject is almost negligible. The two big movements in this painting, this of the lines and that of the color shapes appear to be the strongest and biggest elements. Maybe it will be more correct to say now that the subject of the art is the contradiction between the strong and big elements and the smaller but disturbing elements.
This correctly represents the situation I am in. There is the big movement of opening and connecting more and more to the infinite part of us, and there is the disturbance of the pain.
The pain is related to thoughts that are at the same time beautiful and separated. Thoughts, beliefs and expectations bring about the experiences that we end up having. Some of the thoughts, the red ones, are connected to the pain by color. If I could let go of these thoughts, maybe this will stop the creation of the pain? And what stands in the way of letting them go? It is the fact that they are considered by me to be beautiful.
Usually we would think that thoughts that create pain must be ugly, shameful, and having other such characteristics. But many of the thoughts that bring us agony are actually being loved by us. This is why we do not want to let them go. Is this true? These thoughts are usually chosen in a very young age, in traumatic circumstances. The child, let’s say the really lovely three years old child, encounters danger. Out of love, and out of wanting to make the situation better, he courageously decides on the spot to act in a way that for him will be the best solution. He feels that it will be a sacrifice. He will have to let go of something that is enthusiastically loved by him. But he is determined to do good, and save the moment. It is beautiful. He is a hero. But this choice of his leads to blocking his connection to his flowing happiness and this creates all kinds of suffering, including, in time, physical suffering.
Thoughts go right Feelings aim left White is all around Red is where it hurts
And if this makes you want to ask Let the questions go Sink instead To where the questions come from.
I’ll go line by line in the end. But first I’ll say this: The poem is how I read the art. At first it is just finding content, quite intuitively. As this inner seeing goes on, a deepening of the awareness happens on its own. A deeper view becomes available and it expresses itself in the end of the poem.
This is a general characteristic of art making. When making art, any form of art, we tune in to deeper layers of who we are. You can call it a meditative effect. The noise of the outer layer of our life calms down. More subtle energies start to be noticed.
This happens too in the drawing and in the addition of background colors. The drawing already is a process of increasing awareness. So when the background colors’ time comes, I am already in a deeper state than the way I started, and the background colors are added with greater understanding and compassion. (Note: I do the background after I do the line-work.)
The whole event, the drawing, painting, reading and interpreting, is about introducing awareness to what is going on in the mind at the time of making the art and reading it.
Now line by line (almost): I took the drawing to be the thoughts. They created in the picture a bridge like shape that feels as if it goes to the right. The background color shapes seem to be aiming at the left and I took them as feelings or the energetic movements under the thoughts. There seems to be a contradiction here. Why would the thoughts and feelings go in opposing directions? This question is not being answered. But note that the color shapes were added when already in a deeper state than in the beginning. White all around is the feeling of the infinite awareness that is everywhere. The pain is in my feet. In almost all of my artworks there is some expression of the pain. And here, in the end of the poem, comes the advise from the deeper and wiser state. Go to an even deeper awareness. Answers that come from shallow layers of us will not encompass the whole picture. They will be partial, and more questions will have to be asked and answered. Better to sink deeper into the infinity that is us, and allow something more fundamental to emerge. And better yet: No matter how deep the answers come from, It is awareness that notices them.
