The Great Scheme Of Things

Some people believe in God and others do not, and those in between are called agnostics. It is understandable that there is great difficulty attaining 100% consensus of belief in God, for the finite mind cannot grasp the infinite nor can a cup contain an ocean; and many of us have to grasp something in order to believe in it. Furthermore, this world is beautiful but also violent, with merciless atrocities that occur naturally and by the hand of man. This further confuses people who cannot stomach the thought of a beneficent Creator making such a mess and watching his creatures struggle in it for the sake of progress to a better life later.

When I was growing up, our household was without religion. My parents never spoke of God, and religion was something my friends knew about but not me. In some cases they endured the religion that was foisted upon them. Our household was liberal and a place for free thought. As the years went by, many of my friends came to enjoy our house as a haven of sociability. As I entered my teen years and my mind expanded, I asked my parents about their belief in God. My father said he did not believe, and since he was a passionate social activist, went so far as to quote Karl Marx, who said, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” My mother said, “I am an agnostic.” Since I did not know what that meant, she went on to inform me that God may exist, but we cannot know for sure, so we allow that He might be present.

My youthful spirit searched for the truth independently during the beginning of my college years. Of course, I wondered more deeply what life was about and how I came to exist, and what my purpose might be. The first holy book I read, the Bhagavad-Gita, I found by chance while browsing in the university library. Glancing through the pages, something drew me, and I read it in entirety. Soon thereafter, I began a three-day fast, and pondered deeply whether God existed. The main question that excited my imagination and soul: “How did intelligent life and ordered existence throughout the universe come to be?” I could only conclude that a higher intelligence, God, made creation, of which I am part. Funny, but the next question that plagued my youthful mind for the next couple days was, “Can there be more than one God?” Perhaps I wrestled with the thought of one Being, dominant over all. But finally, I arrived at closure when I realized that God must be All-Powerful, and if there were two Gods then neither would be All-Powerful. There can only be one God. Shortly thereafter, I found the Baha’i Faith, and joined.

Over the years, my parents have changed. My father does not mention God or religion, but I suspect he has gone from being atheist to agnostic. My mother has developed a deeply personal relationship with God. She does not belong to a church, but in almost all her conversations she praises God, the Creator. Every day she speaks of “the wonderful world we live in.” I went to live with them in the spring, to help them with aging issues, and slept in a small anteroom near their own bedrooms. They would retire about the same time each night, my father closing his bedroom door and turning on his white-noise sound machine, and my mother would arrive in her bed, then promptly begin speaking out loud, (I could hear her), having a personal conversation with God. Typically, she praises His creation: the beautiful green grass, flowers, magnificent trees, the order in nature, sunlight, air and temperature, earth, soil, micro-organisms . . . and she thanks Him for her body and holding her place in the great scheme of things.

Live Life Fully

For a lover, the greatest torment is separation from his love. It can be an agonizing pain if the goal of one’s longing is removed and becomes inaccessible. Perhaps this is why religions preach detachment as a means to happiness. If we cease to want, then neither do we lack. If we are near God, the All-Knowing, the Protecting, All-Bountiful, then we should be happy all the time, regardless of our outer circumstances. The difficulty is that we are part of the wondrous and terrible wheel of life and death, the Matrix of being. In Hindu scripture it is named the cause of suffering. We are told everything physical is fleeting and must end in death—leading to transformation and rebirth. Only the spiritual is changeless and imperishable. Yet, in this world, the physical is the vehicle for all our learning, our joy, satisfaction, jubilation, achievement and growth.

I learned how crushing this lesson could be when my beloved daughter Naomi became ill with cancer and two years later died. The anniversary of her death is tomorrow, July 5. She died in 1999 at the age of nineteen. How could I be detached from her? If I were a saint maybe I could stand back and say calmly, the Hand of God is at work and she is being transformed and taken by Him to a better place. The fact is, my heart was broken a thousand times by the demolition of her body which she loved so much and tried desperately to save, and after we buried her I cried every day for six years. Granted, I know she became a radiant light during her calamity and is now among the chosen in paradise, yet I will never “get over” the loss of her here, in this physical world. Is it because I am not detached?

In the Baha’i historical record is a transcendent figure named Nabil. He was the close, devoted follower of the prophet Baha’u’llah and wrote the definitive history of the Baha’i revelation, called The Dawn-Breakers. At the time of Baha’u’llah’s death, Nabil became so distraught that he walked into the ocean and drowned himself. He could not be detached from his beloved or live in this world without Him. The pain was unbearable. I understand, although I also know this life is but the time of a blink of an eye in eternity and soon enough this dream will vanish and everlasting union will prevail.

From the other side, I often hear Naomi’s voice telling me to live life fully and appreciate its great beauty.  Soon enough it will be over, but now, love life and be glad for it.

To learn more about Naomi Boone and her life go to the website: A Heart Traced In Sand, Reflections On A Daughter's Struggle For Life

Peace And Understanding

During my marriage, we had a wonderful cat named Misha.  At the time Misha arrived at our house, our other pets were two Australian Shepherds, Sophie and Chaco. When the kitten was set on the floor,  immediately the two dogs charged and I feared it would be torn to bits in a flash. But remarkably, Misha did not know it was a cat, assumed it was among family, and did not flinch before the snarling dogs but purred a hello. This flabbergasted the dogs and they pulled up short of chomping down on the little creature. After that, all was well.
Another episode with a dangerous dog occurred when I was teen and delivering newspapers on my paper route. I had stepped in front of a home and thrown the paper when a German Shepherd suddenly attacked me. He charged, teeth bared and growling. For some reason, my reaction was perfect composure, and when the dog clamped it’s teeth over my arm I was calm and did not flinch. This reaction disarmed the beast and we both stood together, the dog with its mouth fastened over my wrist, while I was waiting to see what it would do next. He let go.
Another time, I was a student in College and during the summer had moved from Baltimore to a rural town called Hagerstown, in Maryland. I had gone there to support the tiny Baha'i community. I went to a realtor to find an apartment. This man owned many properties in town and because I was poor, he took me to a ramshackle house in the most impoverished district. In fact, the house was a former slave home in an area of dark people. He was nervous while unlocking the front door, and I could tell he was anxious for my safety, but also greedy to get the rent. The building was extremely run down and missing floorboards in some places. But I enjoyed the light, and had the whole house for only a trifle rent. The home was not on a street, but rather a back alley. One night, I had been walking alone on a street and had just turned to go up the alley when I was accosted by two youth. They stopped me and asked for some change—a quarter to be exact. I had a quarter in my pocket, but knew I was about to be robbed, so I said “no”. The two wedged me between them and while one repeated his demand, the other pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and clicked open the blade—and it flashed under the streetlight. From my head to my feet I felt a perfect tranquility, and then turned and walked away untouched into the dark alley. Something told me they would not kill me for the quarter, so I did not look back, but walked slowly to my house.
In this world, too often we see each other as adversaries. Muslims are adversaries of Christians, Republicans hate Democrats, rich people disdain poor, English soccer fans hate German soccer fans . . . etc. etc. For humans, these barriers are constructs and to release them can lead to peace and understanding.

Cradle Of Civilization

One day, while on African safari in Tanzania, we had been on a grueling, bone-rattling, and dusty journey over the Serengeti Plain, and our excursion vehicle rolled to a stop near the boundary of the wildlife reserve. Everyone poured out to stretch legs and look around the barren landscape. Immediately I spotted a small group of Masai women gathered under the shade of a lone tree nearby. The sight seemed incredible since civilization was nowhere to be found in the area; no roads, homes, village, utilities . . . and I wondered how these females were here, in the middle of nowhere with no men in sight.

Our group had made previous stops where Masai were near, and I had noticed everyone stayed together and would not approach the Africans. It seemed as if an invisible boundary existed that could not be crossed. The tourists were on a mission to see exotic game animals, not people. However, the Masai drew me like a magnet—even more than the lions or elephants, and so I approached them. This day, I walked straight into the group of ladies. They welcomed me with smiles and I smiled back. The women were of different ages, including grandmothers and younger ones with babies in slings around their shoulders. Soon I motioned that I would like to take pictures and they smiled okay, so I snapped some shots. What was remarkable was how everyone maintained an unflappable equanimity and graciousness. I felt welcomed by strangers. Before going back to join the safari group, I spontaneously leaned over and gave a kiss to one of the woman . . . and that brought giggles and laughter from all.

I imagine that the Masai people are older than Christianity or Judaism. Not far from where our truck stopped is Olduvai Gorge, also called the “Cradle of Civilization”, where fossil remains of earliest man were found by anthropologists in 1931. It is believed man emerged 5-7 million years ago.

When I was among the Masai, I always felt a peacefulness that was special, distinct from the frenzy of the world. They seemed calm, fearless, and curious. Sure, they had great adversity living in unforgiving environs, but a nobility inside of them transcended their outer circumstances. I found I could not simply look at them from afar, but always had to step toward them, perhaps shyly, but lovingly and with eagerness to learn.

Many more of my world photos are at Graphixshoot

People Of Color

Lately, I have been pondering the nature of prejudice. Here in the USA, we immediately think of racial bias. But prejudice comes in many shades. It can be nationalistic, religious, have to do with class and status, or intellect . . . the list goes on and on. What is sure is that prejudice diminishes life. Why? Because prejudice is a judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known and in most cases, these opinions are founded on suspicion, intolerance, and irrational hatred that resists alteration or enlightenment. Life, to me, is all about change, growth, flux, alteration, mystery, and surprise—in short, it cannot be contained by small minds with petty judgments.

When I set out upon my travels, I begin by looking forward to meeting the world in all of its diversity. I forget the color of my skin, my nationality, my religious affiliation . . . in short I abandon all that sets me apart from the matrix of where I am going, and then my eyes are open like a child's—full of wonder and awe at what is before me. Remarkable things happen this way. Doors open and miracles are plenty. Ecstasy demands abandonment. This is esoteric, but think of the mother’s love for her child. It is ecstatic in the moments of complete abandonment to the relationship.

I find it humorous and pathetic the attempts to define race. We all share the same genetic background and are of the same substance. Terms like “people of color” are particularly stupid. I am an artist and observe that everyone is colored. The term “colored people” is a silly contrivance. Melatonin produces the color we see in each other, and it also controls the amount of ultra-violet rays from the sun that enters our bodies. It is totally neutral and has nothing to do with intelligence or character.

I have painted people of various skin tones and find that I use the same colors, but in different proportions. If you look closely at the two portraits I include here, you will see that the two people share some colors. 

Nobody is black or white and everyone is colored. Many years from now, this need to define race will be gone, and all that will remain is the human family. For now, it is fun seeing the differences. When I first arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, from Rome, Italy, my initial impression was shock at witnessing a drab, dilapidated city, since I had come from one of the most culturally iconic and artistically dazzling places in the world. My eyes hurt, until I became entranced by all the dark skinned people who offered a beauty I had not seen before in such a grand way. From then on, my vision was not so much on the material surroundings as upon the people. Love allowed beautiful experiences to unfold. Prejudice would have killed my time in Africa. I am so glad that it did not—the ecstasy was waiting for me to experience.

Plenty To Write About

 “Have you thought of writing your memoir?” Several people who have watched my life unfold have put this question to me. There is plenty to write about.  I could make a book out of just the year 2008, when I traveled around the world and lived in nineteen countries.
It strikes me that there has been so much contrast in my life. I come from a family of contradictions. My father is the product of an upper-class southern household, and went on to the highest echelons of education and career. My mother’s history involves broken childhood homes, poverty, and little education after high school. The two conceived five children in eight years. I am the first-born.  From this crowded scenario, I have found that in adult life, I prefer solitude, or at least anonymity in crowded places.
My first wife had no material wealth when we met.  Several years into our marriage, after our daughter Naomi was born, she revealed mental instability, divorced me and was institutionalized.
My second wife was born into wealth and it only increased with time. We share a beautiful daughter and our marriage lasted 21 years. After my first daughter died when she was nineteen, our marriage became seriously undone. After divorce, I took my year to travel around the world and live as a homeless vagabond, experiencing the basics of earthly existence and living in what I call THE DREAM, in flux. 
A question I am pondering is how truthful to be in divulging my life story. Do I describe growing up in a household without religion and my teenage years as a hippie? Do I tell of my first sexual experience that happened to be with my girlfriend and her girlfriend both? Do I include my times in jail? Hitchhiking experiences from coast to coast? Religious conversion to the Baha'i Faith is easy to tell, but not so easy is my subsequent mental breakdown and three days in a psycho ward. This was after graduating Art College and driving across the USA in my car with four other Baha’ís, visiting Indian reservations and transfixed by conversations about extra-terrestrials, the Urantia book, and Baha’i writings. Do I tell of visions I have had in prayer—of vibrating light coming through walls and then entering my body and causing me to smell roses?
The common advise in writing a memoir is to follow a time line moving forward. Another encouragement is to “go deep” in the emotional experiences, and to write what is hard to write. It is said that those parts can be what readers remember and value most because they reveal inner struggle. Especially, reveal changes in life . . . and for this I have had plenty to speak of.

Ghosts, Beauty, And Suicide

Yesterday I walked with a friend to a place where many suicides have occurred. It is near the rough and tumble old west town of Taos, at the foot of mountains where Taos Indians have lived in their pueblo village for many centuries, and close to where many people have sworn they have heard a mysterious sound called the Taos Hum, featured on the television program called Unsolved Mysteries.

We had to park our car and walk before setting foot on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, a fantastic metal span, 650 feet above the river below. Narrow walkways allow pedestrians access on either side of the two lane highway that crosses over the gorge. The day was bright and balmy, but steady strong gusts of wind buffeted us, and almost immediately my friend complained she was dizzy. In fact, it is easy to get vertigo so high in the air above ground, but the view is breathtaking and so spectacular that the draw is almost irresistible. Standing in the middle of the span, visitors can lean against a railing that is chest high, then gaze out and down to the wild, relentless river far below. To stand there in the proud and primitive setting is to be inches away from certain death. I felt something primeval and compelling about looking closely into such a grand abyss—as if in one second I could disappear forever by crossing the thinnest of lines.

It is said that a ghost inhabits the bridge and has caused people to jump. She appears as a young Hispanic woman wearing jeans and a white T-shirt who is visible one moment, then suddenly disappears. I cannot say that I believe in ghosts like that, but I do say that people carry ghosts inside themselves and that these “demons” can do harm and even drive a person to suicide.

What is true is that invisible vestiges of doubt or fear can be lodged in a human psyche, and whatever a person does to root out this “ghost” can fail, so it lingers as if in a haunted house.

I knew the last person to be confirmed as having committed suicide off the bridge. The last time I saw her was when she modeled for a drawing group on a summer evening, and afterward we talked outside under the moonlight. She seemed very animated and also to be slipping into darkness and then scrambling out again. Her boyfriend had left her; she was plagued with self-doubt and had money problems. Her intelligence was astute enough that she had written, produced, and then performed in many one-woman theatrical productions that had been favorably received, and gained reviews in the local newspaper. In her productions, she tried exorcising her ghosts by making light of her personal problems and how she felt that she did not fit in the world. Shortly after our meeting, I learned that her car had been found by the bridge, and she was missing. About a week later, her body was found, miles down stream, caught in brush and partly submerged in the river. Had the ghost spoken a spell in her ears? For some, the peace of death, and the urge to control the pain of life by a "final solution" ultimately gets the better hand.

After my friend and I peered off the side of the bridge, we walked along the West Rim Trail amidst rugged, wide-open mesas and chiseled steep canyons.  The elevation along the river is 6,100 feet and rises 800 feet at the gorge rim. Along the way we often stopped to gaze from the mesa top above the river at stunning and breathtaking views of the Rio Grande Gorge and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Not once did I see a ghost.

Wild Beasts

A problem with new ideas is that they may be rejected by society. There are many examples of this in the arts when an artist is inspired to create something different, but the public is not ready to receive this unique gift. This is probably where the term “starving artist” gets its meaning.

There will always be critics, some who are professional and paid, who are the self-proclaimed arbiters of public taste. They insist that they know everything that constitutes good art and are quick to judge anything that an artist produces that enters the public domain. There are endless examples of artists being publicly derided by ardent critics. But artists listen to their inner muse, not public taste. Often artists are ahead of their time. Van Gogh met with scorn his whole life until he committed suicide. Now his art is universally valued and sets records at auction. The impressionists met with rejection in the beginning because their paintings were not deemed academic, realistic or historical and met with disapproval from the "establishment”. These artists were excited by a new way of seeing things, but the public was not. Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, their families and other impressionists suffered miserable poverty for years. Eventually, a few artists including Pierre Matisse, Andre Derain, and Maurice Vlaminck began further liberating painting from representational, literal values by using color whimsically, such as in a famous painting by Matisse of his wife where he colors the middle of her face with green. These artists shared their first exhibition at the 1905 Salon d'Automne, and the group gained their name, fauves, after a critic named Louis Vauxcelles described their work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" ("Donatello among the wild beasts"), contrasting the paintings with a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared a room with them.

Later, a man named Jackson Pollack responded to his muse by flinging paint on canvas in what he termed “ all over” paintings. They did not have a gravitational reference, but could be viewed from any direction. In fact, he placed the canvases on his studio floor and walked around them as he applied his drips of paint. This was the beginning of abstract expressionism.  Painters such as Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Pollack initially met with skepticism and were so poor that they sometimes could only share a can of spaghetti and meatballs for a meal, and fought over who claimed the extra meatball. Interestingly, an insightful and compassionate dentist agreed to trade his dental work for the early art of some of the expressionists . . . and later claimed a fortune when the public eventually proclaimed the artists as geniuses.

“Every so often a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it and then Picasso did it again with cubism. Then Pollack did it—he busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new pictures again.” Willem de Kooning

“The artist must prophesy not in the sense that he foretells things 
to come, but in the sense that he tells his audience, at risk of their 
displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts. His business as an artist 
is to speak out, to make a clean breast. But what he has to utter is 
not, as the individualistic theory of art would have us think, his own 
secrets. As spokesman of his community, the secrets he must utter are 
theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether 
knows its own heart; and by failing in this knowledge a community 
deceives itself on the one subject concerning which ignorance means 
death. For the evils which come from that ignorance the poet as prophet 
suggests no remedy, because he has already given one. The remedy is 
the poem itself. Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease 
of the mind, the corruption of consciousness.”
Quote from R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art.

See the new art of Steven Boone

Chicago

The place of your birth will always have special meaning as your entrance spot into this world. Furthermore, the elements that formed your body in that place, infused their memories in your bones. The life of your mother, and her perceptions and experiences during pregnancy arrived with you in gestation—what she ate, drank, perceived, and thought.
I was born in Chicago, Illinois. My family moved when I was nine and I grew up in Washington, DC before finally settling as an adult in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Sarah, my youngest daughter, was born in Santa Fe and after high school chose Columbia College in Chicago to pursue her study of dance. Interestingly, she returned to my birthplace. Sarah has lived in the “windy city” for almost five years and this past weekend, graduated with a Bachelor of Art degree.

Whenever I return to Chicago, I am aware of a distinct sensation. It is as if a familiar vibration comes from the earth, entering my feet and quickly awakening all my senses with an echo of personal closeness. It is as if this intimacy sounds through the pavement and brick, sounds through steel, and ripples in the wind. I feel it in the air pressure, and smell it. All the sensations speak to my core and tell me I have arrived home again.

View my artistic photography of Chicago 

Woven Of Many Threads

 A human being is woven of many threads. Each thread is given at birth and has come from afar, through generations, to arrive in the special place of a unique person. Some people are woven of strong threads throughout, and others include threads that will break. Our environment and personality are responsible for weaving the strands together into the design that becomes the semblance of our life. It is dazzling to behold all the patterns and complexity of the human race.

We must always know that diversity is good and not to judge too harshly if one weaving is of gold and silver threads, and another is of plain cotton. Rather, it is good to celebrate the splendor of the world and that it is varied. Never complain that we have been given a bad deal and our threads are not good enough. It is best to use what we have been given and then be imaginative. If we weave love, justice, charity, kindness and wisdom into our design, a marvelous outcome is assured, even if the threads are not all of the highest quality; they can be made into something pleasing and fine. Likewise, even though the threads be of excellent quality, yet if hatred, greed, or falsehood be woven into an otherwise beautiful design, the result will be worthless.

Lately, I have continued with my new direction in art. It is as if I am sailing my boat in uncharted waters and do not know where the journey will take me. But I am simply sailing and learning the waters. The voyage is wonderful enough. I am the captain, so I can go in any direction. I just need the wind of inspiration to fill my sails.

See some new work at http://stevenboone.com

Imagination

Does the moon follow you when you walk outside at night? It depends on what you believe. If you imagine so, and push that imagination into the forefront of your mind and then invest the thought with a determination that it is true not based on logic but simple belief based on feeling, then this fantasy can be hard to shake.

Religious attitudes can be especially strong, particularly if individuals base their salvation upon belief and have been trained to trust in the “higher minds” found in their religious order. For instance, this may lead to a conviction that God came to earth in the form of a man. Or that to kill unbelievers will gain you favor with Allah and a seat in heaven.

In the first example, if we apply logic and understand that God is illimitable, then He does not go up or down, but extends through all space and time, so it is quite impossible that He would fit Himself neatly into a tiny cavity of flesh to work miracles from this place. What would happen throughout infinite space if He were to only be in this tiny cell? The universe would collapse.

In the second example, why would anyone think that they have to kill in order to gain favor with God? God could easily do this Himself if He wanted everyone to be the same and only believe. No, He enjoys diversity and wants people to come to Him of free will, and that is why He is patient and merciful, and all manner of people exist on earth.

I have been exercising my imagination in doing new artwork. Using photographs from my world travels and also studio shots, I then print them onto canvas, mount them on board, and then paint over and apply encaustic (hot wax and resin mixture) to give added dimension and nuance.
For years, I have gained my livelihood for the most part through my landscape paintings, and some artists are content to continue in the comfort zone of success achieved by the formula that is feeding them. But imagination is an artist’s foremost calling, and for me, this must be my path, although it might be fraught with peril . . . I would call it sublime fear.

Does the moon follow me at night? I can imagine so, but not necessarily believe it.