Depend On Love

What a blessing; to be connected with other souls and feel love that goes between us. As I prepare to go into the unknown, I will depend on love. It may seem foolish, but I like the challenge. Anyway, I will remember the Arabic saying, "Trust your neighbor, but tie your camel." The world has many pleasures and cruelties that await those who leave the safety of home, but I like to think that I can go forth as a strong emissary of love. Certainly, along with truth and beauty, there will be encounters with the “dark side.“ But this danger is smaller than my inner forces, and can even be a test to become stronger. Selling or giving away my comforts, as I have begun to do, is another way of testing. This is what I am called to now. I feel strong and want to step forth and meet the whole world on its terms.
I am also drawn to going to places where life is hard for people. Many millions of people live in poverty and hardship every day. Can I make a difference and reach out to them? I am happy to volunteer where I might be welcomed to lend a hand. I do not want to always live in luxury, separate from souls that struggle and know suffering. More and more, I do not discriminate between “other” and myself. “Other “ is me too.

Traveling Around The Sun

Human thoughts are experienced as imagination: portals into experience. The physical world is where we come to know the true value of our thinking. I have been having an imagination reoccur: I want to disappear into the matrix of the earth. Along with this inclination is to not carry anything with me, but be fluid and free. So what does this mean? To disappear means to vanish from being seen. Everyone has attributes that define the way they are perceived. Yet, definitions trouble me because I want to live in mystery. Mystery is where definition is uncertain, which intrigues me.
I imagine the matrix of the earth to be the womb of the world, where creation springs forth. Children are close to it, since they continue forming in it’s embrace. At this time in life, I am about to explore what it is to live without artificial boundaries. Some people, when they hear that in February I will be selling my possessions and wandering homeless over the globe, have come forth with concerns. But all is well, for I will be returning to my true mother, who will take me with her traveling around the sun.
Check out my new website for artistic photography by Steven Boone

Grand Confusion

For the first time in 22 years I am single again. I pinch myself and realize that basically, I am the same. My values have not changed, I look the same, my voice is recognizable, and my studio phone rings as always. What are different are my obligations. I am not obliged by marriage. I feel freedom by being released, and also, my aloneness. Thinking about it, I realize for many in marriage, the obligation is a sweet imprisonment.
Jean came to my studio and got the divorce papers. We talked and as she was about to go, she looked at me and said “We are now officially ex’s.” We hugged, and as she turned to go, she cried a little. At least we are still deep friends. Certainly, there are many days ahead to celebrate together the good between us, and share it with the world.
I have been mentioning to friends that soon I will be selling my possessions and leaving to travel. Many fine discussions have ensued. The other day, voices from the spirit world added their note. When I awoke, I recalled a sentence I had just heard: “The vessel he entered was a grand confusion between his world, and the world outside him.” As it is with messages from the other world, these words, strewn together seemingly randomly, are powerful, mysterious, poetic, and also a puzzle. A vessel can be different things, like a blood vessel, but I take it to mean a ship, or large boat. Anyway it is a container for transport; something that allows for traveling. So, the transport is a grand confusion between inner and outer world. Thankfully, the word “grand” describes confusion. Grand can mean many things, but is quite positive in every respect. Synonyms are: impressive, fantastic, wonderful, enjoyable and memorable. Confusion has other connotations that are mildly negative. Like the state of being confused or perplexed. A chaotic or disordered state. Not thinking clearly or else unable to distinguish between people or things. The fact that the word “grand” comes before “confusion,” shifts the confusion positively. Also the vessel the person is entering is a grand confusion between the inner world and the outer. I like that, because it means the boundaries are falling into nothingness. What a crazy boat to embark in!
Readers, if you have any other thoughts on this dream sentence, please comment.

Leaving What Is Familiar

I am on a path of leaving what is familiar. In February the open road will stretch out before me, beckoning to places beyond the horizon. I don’t know where I will begin, but trust the way will be shown. My possessions will be a thing of the past and hopefully, I will only be carrying essentials.
Occasionally now, common places can remind me of goodness that will be left behind. On Thanksgiving day, I joined Sarah and Jean at our house for a relaxed afternoon, then dinner. The winter is coming, and as it became dark outside, while Jean was in the kitchen, she asked me to build a fire in the fireplace. After a little blaze was begun, I made several trips outdoors, gathering more wood. Coming into the warm indoors, seeing dancing flames in the hearth, and recognizing my lovely household of so many years, it suddenly struck me how good a home can be and why people are attached to their dwelling place. Then I thought with a hint of sad nostalgia of my coming homelessness and transition. Then again, it is okay; I am choosing it.
For years I have had a feeling that this world is only a place along the way—somewhere I am passing through. My spirit will always be restless here because as beautiful as it is, it also is the place of death. Beyond this material place, in the spiritual realm clear of space and time, where day never becomes night, deathless, sublime, and indescribable, awaits the true home I am destined for.

Tuned Into Mystery

Recently, when I have mentioned to friends my intention to sell my possessions and become a homeless planetary wanderer, several have suggested that I am having a midlife crisis. Their idea is new to me, but sometimes others see us more objectively than we see ourselves, so I have thought about it. It is true that I will be divorced in a week or two, and I have felt unsettled for a couple years. My teenage daughter, Naomi, died in 1999 and there is no getting over it. What I have asked is, am I having some kind of existential crisis that is triggering tumultuous events around me?
The thing is, I feel I am in a broad spiritual current that is flowing into a fathomless sea. Of course I am going to feel somewhat lost because I realize how little control I have. I am not feeling grounded in answers, but this is okay. As I become more tuned into mystery, I don’t even want to presume to have answers—all I want is discoveries. As an artist, I thrive on surprise and revelation. For someone in need of security, I might not be the best partner. Anyway, I look forward to diving into the deep end. After diving into shallow waters and hurting my neck, I know I must go a different way. At this time, I am letting go of physical attachments. In ways, I am following in Naomi’s footsteps.

Embracing Life

I am in Chicago, the place Carl Sandburg called “Stormy, husky, brawling . . . city of the big shoulders.” November 11 marked my daughter Sarah’s 21st birthday. She is a student of dance at Columbia College here. It is a pleasure to see Sarah so eagerly embracing life, confident and happy in her surroundings. Now that she celebrates another birthday, she admits to being especially happy because she can go to any nightclub she wants. Indeed, she and two friends marked the occasion by making merry until 4 AM, dancing in a downtown club formerly off-limits.
Chicago is the place of my birth, and whenever I arrive, it is as if I hear a familiar echo of a long forgotten song. As I walk the streets, something comes up through the earth, and reminds me of the matrix from where I came into the world. I like the strength of this city. The skyscrapers are enormous; world renowned feats of architecture.
By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul. Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys. It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories. From Skyscraper, by Carl Sandburg

Sunday Times and Dry Leaves

The morning light pushed through the window blinds next to my bed, gently prodding me to arise. But it was not as if I heard bugles blaring, since the sun was still low on the horizon. I lingered and dozed a few more minutes. The autumn air felt nippy, and my covers warm. These days, my first waking sensation upon leaving the carefree realm of dreams, is feeling slightly oppressed by the burden of waking life. Saying a little prayer for assistance, within four minutes I had jumped up, dressed, combed my hair and shot out the front door. This is the first morning of putting on gloves and a coat. Unlocking my bike from the trashcan on the front porch, I pedaled to a popular local coffee shop, and sat down for my Sunday morning ritual of coffee and reading the New York Times. The Sunday Times is so beefed up, I bring a backpack with me to carry it home. It provides a week of reading.
I must say, the air is wonderful . . . I like the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot.

Molting

A feeling is growing inside of me to shed what is familiar, and make a major leap into the unknown. It is an anticipation of growth that I liken to the process of molting, which is part of the life cycle of certain species, like snakes. They are amazingly agile creatures that can bend themselves into concentric circles. Their skin is extremely elastic, although covered with protecting scales. As snakes grow, the tough scales become constricting and must be shed to allow supple movement. A new skin grows under the old, and when it is time, the snake scrapes the edges of its mouth against a hard surface, such as a rock, until the outer layer begins to fold back around its head. It continues scraping and crawling until it is completely free of the dead skin. Amazingly, even a snake’s eyes have scales that come off during molting! Did you know that snakes never stop growing until death?
Imagine lifting scales from eyes and seeing afresh.
I can feel my own molting process beginning. An unstoppable yearning is growing within, to move into a free form. I am ready to shake away my past, and begin anew.

Give And Take Of Play

I am in Cincinnati for a funeral. Charles Tobias, my father-in-law for 22 years, died on Thursday. In various ways, he filled voids in my life that I felt from my own father’s immersion in his social work. Charles liked the give and take of play. We went to football and baseball games together in Cincinnati, took family vacations away from the mainland, played golf, enjoyed many fine restaurants and once when he came to Santa Fe, although he was seventy years old we went river rafting down rapids on the Rio Grande river—all fun activities I never shared with my father. A Harvard law school graduate, he enjoyed intellectual discussions that we pursued in politics, philosophy and life in general.
Charles did not talk much about the after life, and Jean said he did not believe in it. So I imagine his joy after he died to discover that he had only been dreaming, and his real life has just begun! Now he is reunited with his wife and ancestors in the eternal.

And now concerning thy question regarding the soul of man and its survival after death. Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving kindness and bounty. The movement of My Pen is stilled when it attempteth to befittingly describe the loftiness and glory of so exalted a station. The honor with which the Hand of Mercy will invest the soul is such as no tongue can adequately reveal, nor any other earthly agency describe. Bahá’u’lláh

Love

As I pulled into my driveway today, a short segment on the radio about after-life experiences caught my attention so that I sat listening. Many people who have died and then been brought back to life have recounted similar experiences of the next world. When they get to the next side, they do not miss their bodies at all, and feel great joy, peace and love. While basking in the presence of God, sometime soon after arriving, the individual is visited by a holy being, and together they witness the person's entire life on earth. What matters most is how much a person has loved. Even small moments of charitable love can mean more than years of work.
I went to see the movie Across The Universe, by Julie Taymor. As one who had his coming of age in the sixties, I found this movie, laced with Beatles songs and following a twisting romantic plot rooted in the period of hippies, free-love and youthful anti-war uprising, quite fun. As an artist I am visually oriented, and this movie had lots of visual passages; even some psychedelic. Mixed with great music, it made me consider going again, this time with another former flower child to sit next to me.

Honey To The Bees

October always is a major month for the sale of artwork in Santa Fe. My opening at Adieb Khadoure Gallery last Friday attracted scads of people. It was a feel-good affair, with plenty of food, flowers, casual conversation, and of course, my paintings covering the walls of two rooms. That night in Santa Fe, there were at least thirty gallery openings. The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is presently in progress. Each year it attracts enthusiasts from across the globe, and 800,000 visitors attend. Many of them take time to come up to Santa Fe; and they buy art.
The colors are reaching a climax about now. Golden aspen trees, purple asters, ubiquitous chamisa shrubs with their masses of dainty yellow flowers, Mexican sunflowers, and of course all the colorful fruit showing up at the farmers market. Tomorrow I am going up in the mountains to paint the quaking aspen trees with an artist friend. I am sure we will both have to catch our breath at the beauty. For an artist, these sights are like honey to the bees.