Amy and I are preparing to fly north—to “New” Mexico—from our home in “Old” Mexico.
There is unfinished business waiting for us in Santa Fe. Artwork of ours still held there, personal belongings of value, threads not yet fully gathered. These things call us back, but so do the people. My daughter in Albuquerque, dear friends, familiar faces and places that still live somewhere inside us.
And beyond all that, there is the simple happiness of returning to a place we loved for so long.
This visit will be shorter than most—just two weeks—but the days will be full. The lilacs are blooming in Santa Fe now, and the spring air carries that unmistakable sweetness. I look forward to standing again beneath the vast Southwestern sky, breathing in the high desert air, feeling that spaciousness that once shaped so much of my life.
We will be staying in the home I built years ago with my former wife, Jean, who will be away in Europe. Returning there will no doubt stir its own quiet reflections—another layer of time folding back upon itself.
And so, once more, we travel north—carrying the past, meeting the present, and remaining open to whatever waits for us there.
After more than five years living in southern Mexico, in the village of San Pedro Ixtlahuaca near Oaxaca, I have grown accustomed to the rhythm of two seasons: dry and wet. Even so, the dry season still weighs on me, much like the bitter cold once did in the northern places I came from.
This year, some welcome rain has arrived earlier than usual, ahead of its typical entrance in June.
With the rain, the long-suffering plant life begins to stir awake. The ground remains mostly brown for now, but soon it will turn green. And with that, my daily yard work will grow from a modest twenty minutes to nearly an hour.
The images are a few photographs of the colorful flowers blooming around our home just now.
"In the garden of Thine heart, plant naught but the rose of love."
Writing has once again claimed most of my time. I love it, though my other loves—painting and photography—wait somewhat forlornly in the wings. There are only so many waking hours in a day, and domestic tasks quietly insist on their share.
After completing The Weight of Air, my travel memoir, (available by donation) another project has taken hold: an autobiography written in prose-poem form. Epic in length, it has already grown beyond 6,000 words and is not yet halfway finished. Most poems average fewer than 300 words, so this one stretches the form considerably.
The work begins with my father and mother—their early lives and eventual meeting in Chicago. Then come my own beginnings: the arrival of my four siblings, the rhythms of our household, my father’s work in social justice, the moves, the schools, the growing up—alongside my mother’s struggles and her efforts to find balance. Graduation follows, then leaving home, mental struggles, and the uncertain steps into adult life.
The writing has now reached the time when my first daughter, Naomi, was born. Soon afterward her mother and I divorced, and her mother had to be institutionalized. The story carries both tenderness and upheaval.
Here is a small section from that writing.
The Child
Strong vowels formed her name:
Naomi.
For a season
three shared one bed.
Her mother’s breast was never far.
Light gathered in her—
blonde hair,
green eyes.
No sooner had she found her steps
than the hand began to draw.
In her father's studio
page after page
flew from her grasp.
At first
only bright scribbles—
then houses, figures,
the sun and rainbows.
A small school stood nearby.
She entered the circle of others.
A few years passed quietly
before the first fracture.
Something within her mother
turned against itself.
Hunger answered,
then denied.
Food taken in,
then cast away.
Voices rose at night.
Rooms held what could not settle.
Then the word was spoken:
Divorce.
It did not rest easily in him.
Yet it was received
as a narrowing path
that might still lead forward.
Writing these memories means experiencing them again. Yet the distance of time allows new insights to appear—quiet understandings that were invisible in the moment.
While completing a section describing Naomi’s early life, I came across a drawing she made when she was about six years old. It is so luminous it might have been made by an angel.
Through a trellised gate covered in flowers we see a young horse resting on a grassy knoll in the near distance. Around the horse’s neck is a red ribbon, the same red ribbon that winds through the flowers climbing the trellis. Behind the animal shines a bright sun, its red rays spreading outward, while a few soft white clouds drift across the sky.
The image suggests a threshold—a passage between the ordinary world and somewhere more protected, more essential. Yet the gate is not forbidding. It is a trellis covered in flowers, an invitation rather than a barrier.
Beyond it rests a young horse entirely at peace in its meadow. The red ribbon circles its neck and winds through the flowers, as if beauty itself has reached outward and gently claimed the creature.
Behind it all shines a bright sun, spreading warmth across the scene. Even the clouds drift without menace.
The drawing suggests that the child understood something wordlessly: that somewhere within her there existed a place no upheaval could reach—tended, flowering, quietly illuminated from within.
Perhaps children know this instinctively—that somewhere within them there is a meadow no storm can reach.
Amy and I are the same age for two months each year. She turned seventy-three on March 4th, which means we share that number until May 13th, when I step ahead and become seventy-four.
This year, for her birthday, I made arrangements for us to escape to the Pacific coast, to one of our favorite places a short drive away: Mazunte.
From our home outside Oaxaca City it is about three and a half hours by car along the new highway that crosses the Sierra Madre mountains. It took years to build, carving its way through difficult terrain, and when it finally opened about several years ago it almost immediately began experiencing problems—landslides, boulders tumbling down from above. Even now parts of it feel precarious, and Amy becomes nervous when we pass through the steepest sections.
Still, the alternative is a much longer journey on the old two-lane road, just as dramatic with its endless hairpin turns. So we set off early, trusting the mountain gods to let us pass.
Our destination was a small hotel we have grown to love, Casa Ofelia, sitting quietly on the beach. It is cozy and intimate, with a small swimming pool and broad verandas that look directly out to the sea. Not luxurious in a grand sense, but perfect for us—and surprisingly affordable. Over time it has become our go-to refuge on the coast.
The drive went smoothly and before long we were settled in, breathing the salt air.
Whenever we arrive, the meeting of sea and land begins working on us almost immediately. Something in the body relaxes. The rhythm of the waves begins to wash through the mind.
The beach in front of the hotel is usually empty. Only at sunset do small groups wander down to watch the sun slip into the Pacific. It is always a quiet ceremony. The colors shift dramatically, the sea turning shades of aqua beneath the descending orb as it changes from gold to deep red before disappearing. For a few minutes everyone grows still. Happiness fills the air. It feels almost sacred.
The days hovered in the mid-eighties, the nights in the seventies, with a steady breeze moving through everything.
Mazunte itself remains a delight. The town is relaxed, easygoing, and perfect for people-watching. Many of the visitors are young travelers from around the world, drifting through with a distinctly counter-cultural spirit. Amy remarked more than once about how much skin some of the women were willing to display—so scantily dressed they seemed almost part of the beach itself. Outside our hotel at a nearby trail that ends at the beach, a sign reads, No Nudism."
We also discovered a few restaurants we had somehow overlooked on previous visits—simple places along the shore serving fresh fish and shrimp dinners that tasted even better with sand still on our feet.
Swimming in the ocean directly in front of the hotel isn’t possible. The currents there are simply too strong. But just a few minutes away by car there are calmer stretches where I can plunge into the surf, which gives me enormous pleasure. Amy prefers to watch from under a rented umbrella, content and amused.
4 minute video
The three days and nights passed in a seamless, tranquil way. By the end we both felt renewed. More than once we looked at each other and said how grateful we were to have made the journey.
The drive home was uneventful—no landslides, no falling rocks.
When we arrived back at the house our two dogs greeted us with great enthusiasm, along with Jo, our trusted house-sitter who had kept everything running smoothly in our absence.
And just like that, another small chapter of life had unfolded—sea air, sunsets, and the quiet joy of celebrating Amy.
Mexico has been at the center of major international headlines recently after the government carried out an operation that resulted in the death of Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, known as “El Mencho,” leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the country. Assisted by the CIA in the United States, an ambush was accomplished and El Mencho was killed, along with others on both sides. The immediate result was celebration but also a wave of violence that swept across Mexico. The images of burning vehicles were rather gruesome.
Since then, numerous of our friends and loved ones have been calling us, asking, Are you safe? Are you okay?
We are. Thank God we are well — safe and living our ordinary, creative life in our home outside Oaxaca City, in a region still regarded as calm and secure. Life here remains grounded in daily rhythms, the friendliness of neighbors, and the simple joy of sunrise light on the mountains.
We are even planning a short trip to the coast for a special celebration. Before making any definite plans, we asked a neighbor who runs a coffee cooperative near the Pacific and travels often along the new highway whether it feels peaceful. He checked with his daughter, who lives close to our favorite beach town — and the word was reassuring: the road is calm, the coast is peaceful.
In other news, this past week my neighbor Mayolo came over for a painting session with me. We set up a still life of sunflowers in a vase, with an alebrije set next to it. Over the course of two session we painted side by side. Very enjoyable and Mayolo, a creative person who makes the frames for many of our paintings, was very appreciative of the opportunity to paint together.
And yes, my creative currents continue to pull me in new directions. I completed a short video titled Muro Vivo, or “Living Wall.” For years, I’ve photographed street art all over Oaxaca. In this new piece, an AI animation platform was used to bring those images to subtle movement, like walls awakening with breath — a little magic and a little experiment.
Meanwhile, Amy paints steadily, losing and finding herself in color and shape every day.
So — despite unsettling news and distant violence, life goes on here. We are safe. We are creative. We are grateful for friends near and far who care. And through it all, the sunflowers still turn toward the light.
For more than forty years, painting has defined my existence. It has been my daily discipline, my way of understanding the world, my place of inquiry and refuge. There have been brief interruptions—periods of extended travel when photography took precedence, or moments when life delivered a blow so heavy it was impossible to lift a brush to canvas. When my oldest daughter died, painting simply fell away. There was no decision involved. It was just gone.
Recently, the pause has come for different reasons.
Many hours have been spent writing—especially completing my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. (Available now by donation—here) The memoir is largely taken from posts found here, in My Fairy-Tale Life. In 2008 I went around the world for one year and lived in 25 countries. Along with me came my paints and camera.
The writing demanded a different kind of attention, one that left little room for paint. At the same time, I found myself uncertain about what to paint. Not how, but what. The familiar urgency wasn’t there, and forcing it felt dishonest.
In the meantime, ideas did not disappear. They simply shifted direction.
There has been photography—new work, still unfolding. There have been final revisions to the memoir, shaping it into an e-book, letting it take its own form. Poetry has crept in quietly. And lately, something unexpected has emerged: a new series built from old ground.
Over decades, I accumulated hundreds of figure drawings. They were never meant as finished works—mostly studies, explorations, moments of attention. Mostly female forms, some male. They lived in drawers, folders, and eventually in digital archives. I rarely looked back at them.
Now I have.
Using these drawings as a foundation, I’ve begun combining them digitally with photographs of graffiti, walls, weathered surfaces, and street textures gathered from years of wandering across cities and countries. The figures—intimate, vulnerable, inward—meet the marks of public space: abrasion, repetition, accident, history. The collision has produced something neither source could accomplish alone.
The results have surprised me.
They feel less like paintings and more like conversations—between past and present, private and public, line and scar. Some figures sit, wait, turn inward. Others lean, stretch, confront. They are not heroic. They are human. They exist within surfaces that have already lived a life.
This way of working suits where I am right now. My temperament has always been to follow an idea when it arrives, even if it runs counter to previous directions. Perhaps it’s the adventurer’s impulse—one I’ve written about before. I’ve learned to trust it.
I don’t know when paint and canvas will call again. For now, attention has simply moved elsewhere, and that feels honest. This pause isn’t absence or loss; it’s another way of listening. The work continues, just not in the way it once did. And for the moment, that feels right.
Brisa, breeze in Spanish, has swept into our lives with charm, and grace—as if she always belonged.
I wish I could talk with her and hear the story of her life before we met her on the streets near our home in San Pedro Ixtlahuaca, in southern Mexico. Who did she ever belong to, if anyone? Where did she sleep? What paths did she walk before crossing ours? How could she be so good-natured?
When we first noticed her, she bore evidence of a small mishap, favoring her front right paw. Even so, she lifted it to “shake hands” with Amy—a polite gesture that suggested she still believed in people. Aside from that, she seemed healthy—no collar, no signs of a home, no hesitation in her step toward us. From the start she showed nothing but affection and friendliness, without fear. Everyone who has met her thinks she is about three or four years old. Her story is a mystery.
It took a few days—coming so soon after losing our former street adoptee, Avión—but one evening we gathered her up from in front of a gas station and brought her home. It felt less like a decision than a recognition, as though something already understood simply needed to be acted upon.
Now she is home and fully part of our “pack”—Amy, our dog Mali, and me, and now Brisa. She is so well-mannered and loyal that my heart thumps with gladness—like her tail, which begins wagging even when she is resting and knows I am entering the room.
She comes when called, racing back to the house from the yard as if responding to something urgent and joyful. She eats enthusiastically alongside Mali, then checks Mali’s bowl, just in case something important has been left behind. And she gives what can only be described as hugs—sitting up and wrapping her front legs around ours, gazing upward with bright, uncomplicated happiness. It is a gesture that feels both earnest and disarming, and resistance proves futile.
Brisa has already had several veterinary visits. She received injections to ease the pain in her paw, which may have been the result of a severe bruise. We took her to a clinic in town for examinations and to schedule sterilization. During the exam, several clinicians felt along her underside and said she appeared to have a scar, indicating she had likely already been spayed.
When I heard that, my heart sank. A cloud formed over our happiness. My God, I thought, what if she belonged to someone? The possibility had crossed our minds before, but a friend who knew her—and had been feeding her scraps at night—assured us she was a street dog.
The veterinarian explained that it is common here for street animals to be neutered and then returned to their familiar territory. That explanation brought some relief. Brisa received three vaccines, and we decided not to pursue further surgery.
On the drive to the clinic she shook the entire way, her body tight with worry. On the way home she was calm. And when we arrived, she leapt from the car and raced into the house, joy restored and fully operational.
Her past may always remain a mystery. But her present is clear, and her future, at least for now, feels certain. Brisa is here. She belongs. And like a gentle breeze, she has brought something quietly refreshing and life-giving into our days.
After the mysterious disappearance of our beloved Avión, the house felt hollow—as if a light had gone out and left a quiet, aching space behind. We were still adjusting to that absence when, almost as if by divine choreography, another presence stepped softly into our lives. Her name is now Brisa, but at first she was just a gentle shadow wandering the village streets who looked uncannily like Avión—as if she might be his surviving sister.
A few nights after Avión’s death, we went to the small pizzeria down the road, run by a friend in our little village. A handful of neighbors had gathered for a birthday, the usual warm mix of laughter, candles, and night air. As we sat talking, Amy suddenly rose and walked to a nearby empty table. A dog had caught her attention.
The dog came straight to her—unafraid, deliberate—and sat at her feet. She looked deeply into Amy’s eyes and gently lifted her paw, as if greeting her with a shy “hello.” The resemblance to Avión was startling. The pizzeria owner mentioned that he fed her every night and believed she was homeless. Hearing that struck something tender in both of us. Here was a dog who looked like Avión, who lived like Avión once did, wandering the same streets he used to wander.
That night at home, we talked quietly, both knowing the same thought had taken root: If we could find her again, and if the stars aligned, we would bring her home.
Two days later, on our way into town for a dinner engagement, we kept a watchful eye on every dog along the roadside. Once, we even stopped to check on a dog in the shadows—many look similar here—but it wasn’t her. After dinner, we drove home in the dark. Near the pizzeria we searched the corners and doorways, but there was no sign of her.
Then, just beyond the local gas station, Amy suddenly shouted, “There she is!”
She was lying quietly by the curb, as if waiting for whatever came next.
I pulled over. Amy climbed into the back seat, and I lifted the surprisingly calm, gentle dog and placed her on Amy’s lap. She did not resist. In fact, she seemed relieved.
Getting vaccinated at home
Back at home, Mali—our xolo dog—and Oso, the neighbor dog, rushed to meet her with a burst of excitement. Brisa held her ground with quiet strength. She has street wisdom in her bones, the kind that comes from surviving by instinct and confidence.
Now she has had her vaccinations, is wormed, and will soon be spayed. And she has a name: Brisa, meaning gentle breeze. And that is exactly what she is—a soft, steady, calming presence moving through our lives just when we needed it.
Avión took over a year to be unafraid. Brisa is affectionate and composed from the start. She quickly learned the safety of the indoors, though she also races joyfully around the yard with Mali and Oso. When I enter a room where she is resting, she thumps her tail with a warm, welcoming rhythm. She gives both Amy and me an abundance of love, as if making up for lost time.
She isn’t a replacement for Avión—nothing could be. But life has a mysterious way of balancing its losses.
Sometimes, when one door closes painfully, another opens with gentle paws and an offered hand—reminding us that love, in all its forms, finds its way back to us.
Last Monday, we woke to a shock that still hasn’t settled in our hearts—we found Avión mysteriously dead. This, the morning after joyfully writing about our dogs in last week’s blog.
As always, Amy prepared breakfast for MaliNalli and Avión—they eat when we do. Mali, who sleeps indoors, was already waiting by her bowl. But Avión, our faithful watchdog who slept on the front porch, didn’t appear. He always came running. This time he didn’t come at all.
After a few uneasy minutes, our neighbor’s dog, Oso, showed up for his usual treat… but still no Avión.
Then I heard Amy cry out from the front, “He is dead! Avión is dead!” My heart dropped. She had found him lying just outside our front gate.
Moments later, Oso seemed to reveal what might have happened. He trotted to a small opening in the fence on the steep hill beside our driveway and pushed his head under the chain-link. Avión was a master escape artist—our little Houdini—forever squeezing through tiny gaps to patrol the perimeter. It seems he may have tried slipping through that opening, become caught, and strangled.
I lifted him gently and laid him on our front porch table.
Amy sobbed. We ran our hands over his stiff body—no wounds, no bruises, no sign of violence. His tongue protruded slightly. We kept asking ourselves how this could have happened. Maybe someone found him earlier and moved him. Maybe something else occurred. Life in our village holds both kindness and cruelty; we’ve seen both.
Just the day before, I had taken all three dogs for a walk. Everything had been normal. And the night before, I had written about him and Mali—about Mali’s new portrait and Avión’s shy, soulful presence.
Today our hearts are heavy. We called him Avión—“airplane” in Spanish—because of the two big ears he stretched out like wings. He was our adopted “boy,” full of love, vulnerability, and quiet devotion. We rescued him as a terrified street puppy, and over time he became part of our family.
I posted a short tribute on Facebook yesterday. More than two thousand people responded. Their kindness helps, but the silence he has left behind is immense.
Life here in the village is raw and unpredictable. One moment everything is ordinary—the next, the world tilts. Losing Avión has reminded us, painfully, how fragile the beings we love truly are. But it has also reminded us of something deeper: that love, once given, does not end. It remains, like a quiet flame, illuminating even the darkest corners of our days.
Do animals continue on?
In the hours after burying him, I found myself asking a question I’ve never felt so urgently:Does a creature like Avión continue on in some way, as human souls do? Across spiritual traditions, there are gentle yet meaningful hints that the answer may be yes.
In the Bahá’í writings, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá describes the animal kingdom as a sign of God’s perfection—beings who feel love, joy, loyalty, and sorrow. Creation, He says, does not simply vanish but transforms, and nothing that reflects divine qualities is lost.
The Hebrew scriptures remind us that humans and animals “share the same breath,” and humbly admit that no one truly knows the path of an animal’s spirit. Christian mystics wrote that animals return to the embrace of the One who fashioned them, because love is never wasted. Islam teaches that all creatures are “communities like you,” and that all will be gathered to God. Eastern traditions speak openly of the continuity of animal consciousness beyond physical life.
And then there are the countless individuals who, in moments near death or deep vision, have spoken of meeting beloved animals again—whole, luminous, and free of fear.
I do not pretend to know the architecture of the next world. But I know this: Avión lived with love, and love is never extinguished. Whatever spark animated his gentle eyes and anxious heart came from a divine source. And what comes from that source, I believe, returns to it.
If there is a meadow of light in the next world, may he be running there now—ears spread like wings, finally free.
Here is our Xolo dog Mali and Avión (gold color) adopted from the street, during a happy time:
Once again, the work has taken a turn—into a new series of colorful expressionist pieces. Throughout more than forty years of creating, I have rarely stayed in one lane. Galleries often encourage artists to find a niche and repeat what sells. I have never been comfortable with that. Landscape painting brought my greatest commercial success, yet I have continually wandered into new territories: abstraction, mixed-media, and even my HangUps series with faces suspended on clotheslines. With our move in 2019 to Oaxaca, Mexico, a group of paintings emerged from our Dos Venados studio: Memento Mori paintings of symbolic skeletons, honoring the Dia de Muertos motif.
Reinvention keeps the work alive.
This new chapter begins with pure abstraction:
Antes del Nombre, Oil on canvas, 70 x 80 cm
Fauve Mujer,Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm
I lay down color and motion without a plan, letting the paint lead. After that foundation is alive on the canvas, I look for what wants to emerge. In the first two paintings, that became luminous female portraits. I created them first using AI as a reference, then translated and transformed them in paint over the loose, expressive ground. They are larger than life, born from imagination and guided by technology, yet made human by the hand.
Sandia, Oil on canvas, 25 x 25 cm
Today, I shifted scale. Once the abstract background had dried, I set up a simple still life of a slice of watermelon on a plate. Working from a familiar, realistic subject sparked a different energy. A dialogue unfolded between the bold underpainting and the object before me. In the end, both voices found harmony: the grounded and the mysterious, the seen and the unforeseen.
The pleasure lies in not knowing exactly where the next brushstroke will lead. That is the freedom I have always trusted.
Amedeo Modigliani, Nu Couché (Reclining Nude) 1917
When I posted on Facebook an AI-generated image of a young woman, bare to the waist, it was simply a piece of art to me: expressionist in style, mysterious, tender, and beautiful. I hesitated only because the figure was nude. Soon after it appeared online, a dear Bahá’í friend wrote to say she felt uneasy. The figure, she thought, looked too young, and she worried it might play into unhealthy fantasies. She admitted it was first and foremost a visceral reaction — a gut feeling that told her something wasn’t right. Her heart objected.
Part of her unease, I realized later after speaking with my wife, was not only about nudity but about youth. To her eye, the figure suggested someone underaged — and in our world, with its painful revelations of exploitation and abuse, that association carries enormous weight. I did not see the figure that way. To me, she appeared simply as a young woman with a slight, undeveloped frame — diminutive breasts, yes, but nothing childlike. Casual, unposed, and not voyeuristic. Yet my friend felt something different: a suggestion of underage vulnerability, and in our cultural moment that alone can feel troubling. The same image, then, lived in two realities at once — one of quiet beauty, the other of potential harm.
That set me thinking. As an artist, I know the human body has always been at the center of art. Michelangelo’s David towers over Florence in his colossal nakedness, admired for centuries as the pinnacle of beauty and strength. At the Academia Gallery, when people stand before the 17-foot-high, perfectly proportioned figure, genitals at eye level, many gasp, their eyes widen, and I daresay pulses quicken. Each time I’ve stood there, I’ve seen eyes widen, smiles flicker, and even laughter rise — the shared astonishment of being so publicly, so unabashedly face-to-face with the naked male form. It is a delight to witness, and it always makes me smile.
Amedeo Modigliani, scandalous in his day, painted nudes with such frankness (including pubic hair) that they shocked Parisian audiences — though today they are celebrated as masterpieces. His 1917 Paris exhibition, which included Nu Couché (Reclining Nude) was even shut down by the police for being too provocative. (Nu Couché sold at auction in 2015 for 170,400,000. dollars.)
And then came Auguste Rodin, pushing the boundaries even further into raw physicality. His Iris, Messagère des Dieux (c. 1895) stunned viewers with its bold fragmentation — a headless, airborne female torso, legs spread in unapologetic display. To some it was obscene, to others a daring hymn to vitality and raw power. I love the piece because it feels like a direct invitation to unite in the matrix, to celebrate the generative force of Mother Earth herself. Today it is recognized as one of Rodin’s most radical and compelling works, proof that provocation and beauty can be inseparable.
It seems every era has its thresholds of comfort, and what unsettles one may inspire awe in another. It is the same old tension: one person sees beauty, another sees danger.
For four decades, my workdays were mostly spent with paint and brush, shaping canvases into worlds of light and form. Lately, that has shifted. My hours are given to words, to chiseling memory into narrative. A little guilt has crept in—I haven’t been producing much artwork. But writing, I’ve discovered, is equally creative. It is painting with sentences instead of brushstrokes, summoning images from the palette of experience.
The project at hand is my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. Its backbone is the year 2008, when for twelve months I circled the globe, living in 25 countries. Every moment seemed to demand documentation. I carried cameras, sketchbooks, and at first, even an easel and art supplies. I painted, photographed, and wrote—laying down a trail of evidence that life had shifted irrevocably. Those blog posts from the road became seeds, waiting until now to be pressed into the soil of a fuller story.
Route across the globe, Jan. 2008 - Jan. 2009
The journey was transformative. Early along the way I stumbled into a mental and spiritual state I came to call The Dream. It was more than just heightened awareness; it was a trust, a surrender, an embrace of mystery. In that current, I felt carried, as though the world itself were the author and I merely a willing participant.
This perception—more than perception really, more like a state of being—opened me to deeper engagement with the world around me. Barriers fell, just as in real life dreaming. It is said that to understand mysterious, indecipherable happenings in dreams, one must become what it is that must be understood. For instance if being trampled by an elephant, to become the elephant as well as the one trampled. So I was unafraid, because I was everything happening all at once.
Section from the current chapter, called Northward to Hanoi. Part 1
"Within a day, a cabin had been booked on a Chinese junk, a flat-bottomed sailing vessel now outfitted as a floating hotel, yet still bearing the elegant lines and fan-shaped sails of another age.
What happens to time and space in dreams? It seems youthfulness exists in dreaming because events occur that are not bound by physical law. All sorts of fantastic actions and experiences occur in dreams, and the occurrences are effortlessly woven together into a symphony of events.
So it was in Hanoi: guided by THE DREAM itself, within two days of arrival I was carried out upon a Chinese junk with eight fellow travelers and five crew, moving almost without sound across the mirrored waters of Halong Bay—a UNESCO World Heritage Site."
Old ladies, near Hoi An, Vietnam
Now, nearing the end of the memoir, I find myself in Vietnam once again—at least in memory, shaping it into words. Soon the path bends toward Malaysia, then Australia and New Zealand. Within three weeks, the odyssey will be complete on the page, though its reverberations still echo daily. At last I will hold the memoir as a complete volume.
I have been an artist all my life, but this work reminds me that creativity wears many guises. Whether on canvas or in prose, it is the same impulse: to bear witness, to shape experience into something that can be shared, something that endures.
.jpg)
