More than Can Be Read In Books

 

I more clearly see an ending to this journey, with each day bringing me closer to a final scene. I want whatever time is left to be meaningful for myself and others. After seven decades on earth with myriad experiences, all inscribed in God´s cosmic records and my memory, I yearn for more wisdom, understanding and insight into life.

At times in the last few months I have had the feeling, What am I doing with my life? What am I to do with my time?  I have been an artist, writer, photographer, traveler, husband, father and friend. All has helped define me. Now, what more? Of course moving with Amy to a little village in Mexico flipped our lives. My art changed and I ask , Where am I? Who am I?

An excerpt from the writings of Bahaú´llah has been as a lantern in the darkness for me for many years: “O My friend, listen with heart and soul to the songs of the spirit, and treasure them as thine own eyes.” – Baha’u’llah, The Seven Valleys.

An urge recently  took hold to go alone on a vision quest, forsaking food and routine in order to get spiritual clarity. There is a a nature reserve called Cuatro Venados, or Four Deer, about 45 minutes from our house and the road there is paved, with little traffic.

We drove and Amy left me alone, agreeing to return on the third day. An old man took my 500 pesos ( about 25.00 USD) for two nights, then showed me uphill to a cabin made of adobe mud bricks and timber. It could sleep 6 people and had a fireplace. Basically a big room with bathroom attached. Windows with curtains on three sides. Other cabins were nearby on the hillside but I was the only one staying there. Very quiet and I soon felt alone. 

Nearby, a short walk down a dusty road and into the woods is a waterfall that is fabulous. It is part of the attraction of the eco-resort. Also on the property are little trails I explored. A creek runs through on its way to the waterfall. Especially I thrilled at the pine trees and greenery all around. At home, everything is dusty and brown from four months of dry season and no rain. 

Curiously, I had no hunger, and if a small craving came I enjoyed quashing it. My energy stayed good, but eventually I tired more easily during walks. The last night I woke and felt very strange including my heart. If I spiraled into something dangerous I was stuck without help. So I ate a bowl of granola and coconut water.

Everything around was speaking to me: the pine trees, birds, temperatures that went from hot to cold, stars in the night sky, silence and nature. I wrote in my journal: Just being, no agenda—The sound of a gurgling brook. Inhaling pine sap that has been warmed by sunlight. Water flowing over land and through the woods, meandering serpentine until a cliff interrupts its course, causing it to cascade through air, splashing on rock, falling more in spray and thunder until collecting in pools⏤only to resume an inexorable journey. I sit on a hillside that is covered deep in pine needles, under pine trees, while listening to the waterfall. The forest is dappled in light. Air is cool and balmy with gentle breezes wafting all around.  

“Nothing do I perceive, but I perceive God within it, God before it and God after it.” – Baha’u’llah

“Sometimes a tree can tell you more than can be read in books.”  ⏤C G Jung

A Shooting Star

 

The mid wife looked up at me from where my newborn child lay and asked, “Do you want to cut the cord?” It was a special moment in the living room of our little house. The doctor stood nearby and my tired but happy wife lay on her back with the baby on her stomach.

Doctor, at birth of Naomi

Morning light streamed in the bank of windows nearby. I took the scissors offered me and cut the cord—separating mother and child. About a foot of cord stayed attached to my daughter’s navel. I hardly could take my eyes off her, marveling at her perfection. The day: January 11, 1980. 

Newborn

Tomorrow would be her 41st birthday. Naomi died when she was but nineteen.

There are countless mysteries in life, and most of them will not be unravelled. I will have many questions when I cross over to the other side to reunite with Naomi and my ancestors. Then, as I stand in the light of truth and divine love, understanding will be given.

Colored pencil drawing Naomi made hours after learning of her cancer

One mystery that haunts me is the dream I had when Naomi was 12. I woke up with a feeling of extreme sadness and dread and then wrote the details down. It was a marvelous dream in all respect—full of awesome symbols of power and beauty—yet in the end the death of a child occurred. I could not understand its importance and even went to a psychologist to unravel the meaning. I made a painting using its images. Then, when Naomi was diagnosed with terminal cancer at age 17, I thought about the dream again. 

I will carry this mystery with me until the end of my days.

In the dream, which occurs at dusk, after witnessing an amazing flock of birds fly by, I ask for a sign and it is given immediately—a shooting star racing through the evening atmosphere, fiery, fast and bright—just above barren winter tree tops. More events unfold, before the sudden surprise ending that left me gasping when I awoke.

And so too, Naomi’s life was short and bright, for especially in the two years of her struggle at the end, she incandescently shed light as her life burned up. 

I am filled with a wonderful sense of happiness. It is an indescribable sense of utmost freedom and joy. When I am in touch with it I just think, Oh, God, thank you for this beautiful body and life. I have learned how to use THANK YOU throughout everything.
  —Naomi, age 18

The book I wrote about Naomi is available in print and digital edition: A Heart Traced In Sand

What Stays, What Goes

Purge. This is what comes to mind frequently these days as Amy and I go through possessions, deciding what stays with us and what goes. Fortunately, we both are veterans of purges from before our marriage a couple years ago. Between the two of us, we have more than we want to take to live in Mexico. So we pack only the most meaningful books, and give away or sell those we may have attachment to but don’t quite reach the highest level of “essential”. This is the same with everything . . . there is some emotional wrenching—like when I just gave away a 40 year old jade plant. It had been with me since before I had children. In fact, it felt like I was giving my child away.

At one point, I gave up expecting certainty about the timeframe for moving. We haven’t bought the home yet, and I expected to have done so by now. But it looks as though this week it will happen. It is not like we are buying a house in our neighborhood. It is in another country. Many things could go wrong. So we have been working carefully with our American realtor who is also a Mexican citizen. His partner is a Mexican lawyer. The owner is a German senior citizen, living in Germany.

We must obtain a permanent residence visa from the Mexican consulate. A lot of paperwork there. Complicating matters is that Amy’s passport has her maiden name, but she changed it after our marriage. So she decided to apply for another passport with her new name.  

Then there is issue of moving our possessions. The border is closed.

I give it all to God. 

Spirit comes to me and gives encouragement. That is enough.

Chain of Life

When I go to my fitness club to swim I often meet friends who arrive around the same time. Furthermore, by the time I get to the hot tub, usually a person I know is there.

The other day during my routine of using the steam room, showering, using the tub and then swimming laps, I met Carlos and Daniel in the hot tub. We talk and relax. Carlos is an atheist of sorts. I used the word “God” and he objected that "God" is nonsense. Like many other non-believers, he insists God is an invention of man’s mind.

Carlos and I went back and forth about it for a few minutes before I went to the pool to swim, and he went back to the lockers, calling to me, “Steve! You are God!”. I grinned back at him, “And so are you!”

For a few moments as I swam laps, I thought of Carlos and I as God. It felt good to be so powerful. 

I am not under any delusion that I am God. 

When I was a young adult, I was a non-believer without religion. Then in my freshman year at college, my soul talked to my mind and asked, “Do you believe in God?” For days, as I walked the university campus and attended classes, I grappled with the question. Looking around at creation, including my own life, I thought, “Something Greater must have made this world and it’s beings.” Scientists cannot create even one blade of grass. I struggled thinking that many gods might exist throughout the limitless universes. Why not? 

At last, I concluded that if God exists, then His attribute of being All-Powerful would preclude any opposition—since if there were a power outside of Himself that existed it would mean He was limited. I knew from the philosophy class I was taking at the time that this would be an a-priori contradiction in terms.

As Carlos and I spoke in the hot tub, I asked, “Where do you think humans come from?” He answered from “nature” through “natural selection.”

A couple days later, while thinking back to Carlos and his view of evolution, an image came to my mind of humans evolving from worms. Simple forms had to evolve to more complex. Worms came into existence 518 million years ago. Man is only about 200,000 years old. 

So where did man come from? He descended from simpler life forms such as worms.

My view is God made humans and gave us powers not unlike His own. Our evolution is such that at one time we may have looked like a worm, or a reptile, or other mammal. Just like in the womb, at one time we looked like a tadpole, or something with a tail, not resembling human. But in time, a beautiful human being is born. 

This is the chain of life; by divine plan and the Hand of God.

Fists Against The Wall

Last weekend was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious German concentration camp in Poland where in just two years over 1 million innocent people were put to death: men, women and children. The anniversary comes and goes each year and there are memorial events at the former killing grounds that attract fewer and fewer survivors and many visitors. For some reason, this year I began reviewing more about what happened. In high school, during a period when I read dense and important world literature, I also read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, (1245 pages). It is mostly forgotten in my mind after 50 years. 

Amy saw that I was studying and getting emotional about what had happened. She pulled a book off of her bookshelf, a small hardback. Saying nothing, she put it on my dresser. Within a day I had begun reading Night, by Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016). "In Night," Wiesel said, "I wanted to show the end, the finality of the event. Everything came to an end—man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night.” ( In the above picture, he is in the second row, seventh from left.)

Simultaneously I looked online at pictures of the holocaust and the Nazi perpetrators. Photos of mothers and children being herded off boxcars to take them to the gas chambers, of skeletal forced laborers in horrid conditions, of despicable ghettos imprisoning isolated Jewish populations before being wiped out. I found myself getting angry and researching what became of the Nazi commanders, then seeing them hanged and thinking, “It serves you right.”

A page from Naomi's journal

“Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.” 

― Primo Levi, (Italian, 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987)  Auschwitz survivor

I grew up in a non-religious household. No mention was made of God or religion. My father worked hard as a social engineer, alongside Robert Kennedy and Sergeant Shriver. HIs time was spent constructing solutions to injustice and implementing them. Once when a teen-ager and I had recently found God, he quoted Karl Marx to me: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” I took exception, noting all the good that has come from Christian charity and the spread of principles of equality and love.

At nineteen I became a Baha’i, a religion teaching the essential worth of all religions, and the unity and equality of all people. Established by Baháʼu'lláh , (Persian, November 12, 1817 – May 29, 1892) in 1863, it initially grew in Persia and parts of the Middle East, where it has faced ongoing persecution since its inception. 

A beloved Baha’i prayer by Abdul-Baha, the son of Baha’u’llah includes the exhortation, “I will not dwell on the unpleasant things of life, nor will I let trouble harass me .” But what if life itself is cataclysmic without hope? What if there is no pleasantness to enjoy? 

Certainly there were those in the concentration camps who had seen their loved ones marched to the gas chambers, had felt the sting of smoke in their eyes from the furnaces incinerating bodies, and lived without hope in wretched unthinkable existence. Some, like Job’s wife might have thought “Curse God and die!” They are forgiven. Wiesel himself, after surviving the death camp spoke in an interview: “Some people who read my first book, Night, they were convinced that I broke with the faith and broke with God. Not at all. I never divorced God. It is because I believed in God that I was angry at God, and still am. The tragedy of the believer, it is deeper than the tragedy of the non-believer.” (See https://onbeing.org/programs/elie-wiesel-the-tragedy-of-the-believer/ )

When my beloved daughter Naomi fell victim to cancer at seventeen, I had to watch her endure her own holocaust. Dreadful pain spread itself in her body. Doctors said she had little chance to live and she began torturous chemotherapy treatments, locked away from the world at large. Many times, during my own “dark night of the soul,” I found myself thinking, beseeching, how could a loving God allow this? Alone, I beat my fists against the wall and wailed. 

Naomi had to meet her own point of no return. Many times in fact. Did she not wonder perhaps if God had forgotten her? She once said, “I hope not to die a slow, painful death.” But that is exactly what God had in store for her. That was her fate. She fought hard for life, weeding out any semblance of negative thinking that might interfere with her healing. Yet the slow, inexorable death march toward the gas chamber continued. At one point, exhausted, she sought to take her life and be done with it. Like in the Jimi Hendrix song, Castles Made of Sand, where he sings: 

There was a young girl, whose heart was a frown,

'Cause she was crippled for life, and she couldn't speak a sound

And she wished and prayed she could stop living,

So she decided to die

She drew her wheel chair to the edge of the shore, and to her legs she smiled

"You won't hurt me no more"

But then a sight she'd never seen made her jump and say

"Look, a golden winged ship is passing my way"

And it really didn't have to stop, it just kept on going.

And so castles made of sand

Slips into the sea, eventually . . .

One fateful evening in Santa Barbara, California, Naomi swallowed pills, arrived to a lonely beach and walked into the Pacific Ocean to drown. She was saved when she saw a stranger walking and her conscience would not allow her to take her life in front of an innocent person.

She went on to live another seven months before dying at home with peace in her heart. Just before, she had a dream of being on a blissful cruise. In feeble handwriting she managed to write it down on a scrap of paper.

A number of times during the ordeal I found myself down on knees praying fervently for help. I could see the innocents being herded toward the ovens, clutching their little ones and asked, “Please help.” Several times the veils parted and to my surprise I saw angels, in complete tranquility, smiling. Over in a flash, I thought, “but how could you be smiling?” 

After Naomi died, we bathed and dressed her in her bed and put a ring on her finger. It is part of the Baha’i ceremony for the deceased. The ring says: “I came forth from God, and return unto Him, detached from all save Him, holding fast to His Name, the Merciful, the Compassionate”. 

And this is my belief, that this life is a sort of veil and it is lifted when we die.

For those millions who died during the holocaust, the experience was inscrutable. 

Death reaches us all. Some are born and live but a few moments, others longer, but in eternity, this life is but a blink of the eye for everyone.

On that glad night,

in secret, for no one saw me,


nor did I look at anything,


with no other light or guide


than the one that burned in my heart.

This guided me


more surely than the light of noon


to where he was awaiting me


— him I knew so well —


there in a place where no one appeared. 

Excerpt:

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, 16th Century

The Dark Night of the Soul

Gentlemen

At the corner of a public parking lot on Water Street, adjacent to an expensive downtown hotel is a small stone fountain with patio and stone benches. It is where vagabonds hang out. The parking lot offers public toilets. I have passed by the motley congregation many times because my little gallery is in a building nearby. They don’t harm anyone, but sometimes show signs of mental instability—talking to themselves or shouting. They are disheveled, unkempt—mostly men, but sometimes females are in the midst. 

It would be easy to write this band off as vagrants and ne’er-do-wells. But something remarkable happened not long ago that confirmed the fact that we cannot judge people.

The circumstances involved my wife Amy. She said, “I work downtown, but park at the free Capitol lot and walk the blocks to the Plaza. I was schlepping several items and as I approached Water St. Parking lot, I set my bags down to rearrange them for easier carrying. I was running late . About an hour later, I wanted to make a phone call , but discovered my purse was NOT anywhere in my possession. I had gone to the bank prior to coming downtown and had taken out 600.00 to purchase tires for my car. My wallet contained all my credit cards and I.D. ...I was horrified. I ran outside to Water St. near the lot—the last place I recalled seeing my purse. I realized the odds of it lying there were 0 to none. Three homeless men were sitting near the area. At first glance, my heart sank. I asked them if they had seen a blue purse, which I may have left near the place where they were seated? "Why yes, we took it to the shop across the street for safe-keeping." I ran into the shop, and after a brief Q and A from the clerk, I had my purse back! Not one cent was touched. All cards and ID were there. The phone, too. I crossed the street and gave them each some cash in thanks. One replied, " People don't acknowledge us as human, when actually...We are gentlemen.”

I spoke with two of the fellows, Leaton, in the picture above, and Robert who said he found the purse. "I was startled seeing all the 100 dollar bills! I am not interested in a reward or recognition." 

There is love abiding in these beings, though it may not be apparent at first glance.

"…consideration shown to the poor is one of the greatest teachings of God."

"Join yourselves to those who work for the poor, the weak and the unfortunate; this is greatly to be commended." – Abdu’l-Baha

The Gift

For years I have been dazzled by skies at sunset. I study the time in the evening when the sun is disappearing and daylight fades.

Afterward, stars begin lighting up the heavens. On a clear night far from city lights the vault of the celestial sphere can take ones breath away. Have you seen the milky away in all its splendor? And then witness shooting stars?

But sunsets are the phenomenon I get the most pleasure from above the horizon. Here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA the elevation is 7200 feet (2200 meters) above sea level. The conditions are such that many evenings provide dazzling sunset spectacles. And each one is different than those before or after.

Recently I went to a friend's home and after dinner we walked. As the afternoon reached toward evening, we climbed a hill and sat waiting for the sunset show to begin. There were sufficient clouds to dazzle the western sky with colorful refractions and shifting forms. We could not take our eyes from the unfolding drama. I snapped some pictures as I often do during these events.

A few days later I made a painting to celebrate and commemorate the gift that The Creator gave that evening.

Amalia Sunset, oil on board, 10 x 10 inches

Click for more Steven Boone art.

Long Love Letter

Steven's writing

After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
—Jean Cocteau (French: 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963)

My oldest daughter Naomi began a diary when she was only nine years old—and kept writing until she died at the age of nineteen. As her father, I did not know she was being so attentive about the intimate details of her life until she was seventeen. She kept her journals private.

After she passed away, her personal writings were indeed like receiving a long letter from her.

I wrote during my youth as well—but not so early in life. My first diary began when I wrote on my seventeenth birthday. I would use the little cloth-bound book as a record; “So that the sentimentalist I think I might be in the future can look back and remember the person he once was and the changes he went through.”

Naomi's writings

Naomi, at age nine was simply taking delight in life and honoring it by writing her observances, dreams, thoughts and feelings. Her first entries are full of incorrectly spelled words—she was terrible at spelling until almost high school. She would try and get her notions down on paper and guess at word spelling. For instance she wrote when 12: “We were playing with the new puppy, (we are thinking of naming her Soffy or Sophia). We were playing tug-of-war and then Sarah put the tug-of-war thing in her mouth and so I grabid it and both of us tuged a wile and Sarah’s tooth ended up gone! I feel really bad about it and stuff!
Just a minute ago I found her tooth!
She lost and I found it!”

After my teen years I stopped keeping a diary. Instead I kept a dream journal. It filled quickly and then tapered off when I did not remember them often. Then, as my life as a visual artist came to the fore, I married, had children and gave up writing.

Naomi fell ill with cancer at age seventeen, and I began keeping a record of her struggle. I wanted to write about her success in beating her disease. I kept writing until her death, determined to tell her story of courage, grace and spirit. It became the story of her soul and how she transitioned into a magnificent spiritual being. The writing took three years and produced, A Heart Traced In Sand, Reflections on a Daughter’s Struggle For Life.

During her last two years Naomi wrote her observances of life and her surroundings, and was gaining wisdom: “Today I saw myself in my English class dancing with joy because I was cured. I saw myself telling people that the most important thing in life is to bask in it with all of its glory. Hardship is something that will make us stronger. I don’t know if I have complete evidence of this  but I think that in every situation there is good  in it. I feel so much wisdom and I know that I will learn more!”

Naomi wrote many affirmations, picturing how she envisioned her life. She also wrote her fears and sometimes anger. Life was becoming painful and short. Close to the end, she wrote of her pain, anxiety, and a nagging doubt that was with her. Once, she thought of somebody reading her diary after her death and was angry, writing she would rather burn her journal.
The last writing Naomi did was on a small piece of paper two nights before her death. “Dream of a blissful cruise. I don’t remember much of it. I just remember glimpses of it. I am happy.” The note was on her bedside table when she died.

Soon afterward I made my first journal entry: “It has been sixteen days since Naomi passed away. I am still sorting out the pieces of my life. At the studio; I was here yesterday and could not manage to begin painting. Here again today . . .  I will try and begin again.”

My stack of writing books

Eventually, I became single and felt Naomi’s spirit encouraging me to live life fully without fear. Since then I have been around the world twice and lived in many lands. My stack of journals is tall. I write this blog every week and have 587 posts. There is one little book that is special. It is only for my notes to God. Here is an entry from September 25, 2009: Dear God. To look in any direction is to see miracles. Above is the endless sky, and below is mother earth. On every side is mystery. Even the senses I use to perceive my world are miraculous gifts I do not fully comprehend.

Someday my end will come and I will go to be with Naomi again. My writings will be left behind. Sarah, my surviving daughter will find them and read them as a long love letter to her and life.

Surrounded By Spirits

I am surrounded by spirits, and that is the feeling of the Lord.  —Naomi Boone

I love this simple sentence written in my daughter's journal when she was seventeen. She had learned she was dying of cancer.

She felt the power of angels—emissaries of God, sent to strengthen and guide her.

I am practicing remembering the feeling of the Lord as I prepare to go on another extended journey across continents, leaving everything behind to go into the "flux" state I so love. I will "let go". I thrive with the feeling of falling like the little bird pushed from the safety and familiarity of it's nest. A miraculous and hidden power informs the moment so what is needed occurs—to fly.

SPIRIT can take a flock of birds and direct them to determine Earth's magnetic field so they navigate using true north. During the day time they are guided by the position of the sun. Are they doing this mentally? Birds sometimes fly while sleeping during non-stop trips that can take weeks. No, they are not thinking; SPIRIT moves them to arrive unerringly to their destination.

And so too, I hope to leave the mental arena and go into what I call the zone. Like the falling bird, I go from the familiar into the unknown and rely on trust. Surrounded by spirits and guided by them, barriers fall away and I am no longer separate from my surroundings. In oneness, I enter THE DREAM, where miracles live and occurrences become fantastic.

I leave Santa Fe on November 1. First stop is Washington DC, (where I grew up,) to see my brother Wade and his family. I especially relish spending time with my young niece and nephew who barely know me. After four days I fly to Paris, France and book into a hotel on the left-bank for another four days. Time in the streets and museums, being inspired,  shooting photographs and going with the flow . . . day tripping to Versailles. Next I arrive in my favorite place . . . Venice. For a month. It is easy being creative there . . . making paintings, writing and photographing. Next is Egypt. In Luxor I have Egyptian friends that make a place for me in their family. After that it gets fuzzy: but most likely I will go and find the Masai people who had such a big impact on me. They are in Kenya and Tanzania.

I do not have a return ticket. SPIRIT and THE DREAM will direct me and that is how I like it.

Everything will be okay, because God is with me no matter what.  —Naomi Boone

Darkness and Light

The ultimate task for me is not an external goal. Rather it is gaining wisdom and inner peace. Sounds simple enough but if we understand that it may take many years to understand just one dream we have had, then we see some of the difficulty.

I had a startling epiphany during a particularly crucial time in my life. During my late teens my mother had just finished reading books by the esteemed psychologist Karen Horney (German/American, 16 September 1885 – 4 December 1952). She had gained insights and lauded them. Two hardbound volumes by Horney were on our bookshelves: Our Inner Conflicts, and The Neurotic Personality Of Our Time. I was a voracious reader and had read classic literature, so read both books—though the language was dense and sometimes almost indecipherable. 

Through reading, I grasped that neurotic people identify themselves with an idealized image and will go to great lengths to maintain an unreal position. Their pain is unconsciously knowing they are not the idealized vision. The gap is unbearable. 

I realized I had been doing the same by blocking out undesirable aspects of my "hidden" self in favor of a superior.

I entered a trial period of just letting thoughts and emotions float to the surface without judgement. Even nasty stuff appeared but I did not bury it. Rather, I accepted and witnessed without judgement. Although difficult, this process lifted me to greater strength. I breathed deeper. 

At that time, I had also delved into religion and enjoyed the ideals in the Baha'i Faith. Furthermore, great emphasis was on unity, freedom from prejudice, purity—away from materialism and towards spirituality.

As I continued my experiment, I remember coming to a crossroads. The difficult emotions and feelings continued arising and I wondered if I could go forward in life feeling such dark forces yet being a person of light. I wondered if I could live with the dichotomy. Should I block the gate and keep the devils locked away, concentrating on adhering to a religious and pure way of being? Or continue withholding nothing and feeling like I was in a Hieronymous Bosch painting of The Last Judgement with depictions of rebellious devils led by Lucifer, or Garden of Earthly Delights.
At this particularly sensitive time in my development, I chose to block the uncomfortable dark feelings and urges. Instead, I would concentrate on immersing myself in religion as a way of evolution and salvation.
I would adopt thinking similar to what Emanuel Swedenborg, (Swedish, 29 January 1688; died 29 March 1772) wrote: The amount of goodness we receive from God can only equal the amount of evil we remove from ourselves as if by our own power, which is done by both working on ourselves and putting faith in the Lord. 

This fateful decision led me into a colossal war of light and dark forces. The more I sought to dispel the anger, frustration, pain and malevolence within me, the more it insisted on knocking at the door of my consciousness. No amount of praying, being with religious people or studying holy texts could slay the monstrous beast terrorizing the kingdom of my being. My light side hated my dark side. I was divided and suffering. 

My family history is an interesting study in light and dark. My mother came from a disturbed upbringing. She lived in foster homes at times. Her mother went from husband to husband; eventually going through ten of them. Mom was beautiful and hardscrabble when she met my father in Chicago. My father grew up the son of doctor and a sensitive Jewish mother, was brilliant and entered the University of Chicago at the age of fifteen. He finished graduate school with a degree in criminology. Human darkness fascinated him and he was a problem solver. He went on to an illustrious career in social engineering, implementing great changes in American society.

Perhaps it was fate that I would be a problem to myself and have to unify my original archetypes.

These days I find myself embracing non-conflict. I have come again to allowing all feelings, memories, thoughts and perceptions. They come and go without a fight. I am a changed person. I continue in my religion and gain great inspiration from it, as well as from other sources of the same Divine light.

A few days ago, I wrote in my journal:

Essentially, I will stay in a state of peace. If my pristine and calm being is tested by unruly ego or illusion of duality, I can override the challenge. It is as if I am at last taking the throne of command to my own kingdom. No longer driven by intractable and wayward passions..

Thank you Lord for giving me what I ask for.

So I embrace all and realize that all is necessary. Nothing drives me but the urge to understand the puzzle of life and be near God.

The darkness and light inform each other. Any great work of art must have them both.

Walk A New Path

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -George Bernard Shaw

The best art allows us to see with our own eyes, but brings us into revelation. Our vision and perception gains strength. A chord is touched inside of us so that we say, “Aha.”

When it goes public, a piece of art is owned by all, so to speak, and open to a myriad of interpretations. From that time forward it is objective and subjective both. The risk an artist takes is that he may value his work highly, but the public does not.

When a new movement in art comes along, it often is met with resistance and some ridicule. It asks the viewer to take a different path from the norm, and often, the viewer says, “You foolish artist, I know what good art is. You can't fool me! The tried and true is apparent to all, so why should I go down this suspicious path with you?” In modern times, this is what happened to the first impressionists, and much later, also the abstract expressionists. First ridicule and resistance, and then through persistence, passion and devotion, a warming occurred with people. In these cases, it took years along with the slow gaining of important allies in the art business, and then the public was swayed. Now there is adulation. Just look at Van Gogh's life.

The same happens in social movements such as women's suffrage, native people's rights, race equality etc. Also, the world's great religions were often met with fierce resistance when they first appeared.

I have started creating art that is a departure from my past. It just seems to be the time, and I have the passion and will to walk a new path. I have not lost anything, I can always go back. Recently, I have been constructing my paintings as much as painting them. They begin with an idea that is fed from my unconscious and I go from there. There are two now, with more coming. The finished peieces are in the public realm since people have seen them—mostly online. I am not showing them in a gallery at this time. Being public they are both objective and subjective now.

As an example of how this type of art can evoke a wide range of subjective responses, I will tell of the interpretations from different people as they viewed my last piece. The main parts are: two dolls—one standing and one falling, a niche where one doll stands and one has fallen from, a window, an open book turned to a chapter titled, “On Love”, and a hand seeming to come from thin air and holding the book open.

A close friend of mine was the first to see it complete, and as we discussed it she formulated a story that the two dolls were actually the same person. She is both standing and also toppled over and entering the realm of the book; falling into the story of love while the Hand of God holds the book open.

Another person said that at first glance it made her feel like someone is trying to hold onto LOVE.

Someone else wrote on Facebook: “People told me to be 'perfect'. Perfect like a doll... Then, some people gave me books leading to imperfect worlds... I took your hand so that I could grow into something I would never have imagined...”

Another Facebook friend wrote: “This is a dream world, and perhaps it has a touch of adobe wall of Santa Fe and old walls of places you've traveled. There is hope and life coming through the top window, so close yet set apart from the innocent girl, the fairy tale girl, with the perfect outfit, part of whom has lost control and fallen,(or perhaps some inner part of the dream has fallen) almost, perhaps it will be a surprise to her, into a book, which seems to be orderly - can't see the title. She doesn't know it but part of her falls into some type of order that this hand, old as the wall, ancient like the soul, has touched. The figure at the top might be mourning for loss, while the hand feels the order of that book, not reading it or holding it, but feeling it. It is a left hand of the intuitive, inner self. Some dream perhaps fallen yet into a book. The hatted doll is in a bit of a precarious position but so close to the window of hope. Perhaps she represents external fantasies (letting go. Just a few thoughts. She is hatted like the men you painted, but here is a feminine aspect, perhaps an inner child waiting to be helped down or through that window. the book is quite balanced...I mean the two pages, like yin and yang. Perhaps the hand knows in this book is the balance. If I want to trip on it, it could be a person, with the doll at the head, the doll and the hand the arms and the book the feet. The head then would have part in life and hope and part in image, possibly fantasy or a young female sense, the hands part letting go and part holding on to the feet holding to balance, truth. But I wouldn't want to project onto it...(ha, ha, smile).”

And now, I confess that my original conception was for the two dolls to represent a sort of fate for two different people. One who would stand firm in life, bearing witness to the window of life and the Book of Love held by the hand of destiny (or God), and the other who falls.

I like all the descriptions and they all work! Art is objective and subjective. That is the fun.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. -Pablo Picasso

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. -Albert Einstein