The Landscape Has a Beating Heart

It has been a few weeks since I have written here. Life took me elsewhere for a while—not far away exactly, but into that strange territory where the body demands attention and the ordinary rhythms of life rearrange themselves around it.

Amy and I arrived from Oaxaca on September 2, returning once again to our beloved New Mexico. Very dear friends had offered us the use of a wonderful guest house on their beautiful property, along with a car. Such generosity is humbling. We flew into Albuquerque, took the Rail Runner train north through the familiar and wonderful landscape, and were met at the station in Santa Fe.

Almost immediately, the medical journey began.

My first appointment was September 4. I had come north primarily because of a lingering complication from the prostate and bladder-stone surgery I underwent in Oaxaca in June. Although the surgery itself brought significant improvement, the abdominal incision stubbornly continued to drain. Tests in Oaxaca had revealed a small tract extending inward from the wound—though without demonstrating a direct connection to the bladder. Here in Santa Fe, more tests, consultations, urine studies and discussions followed.

There have been suspicions and possibilities, but not yet a final answer.

That uncertainty has probably been one of the most difficult parts. The mind wants a name for things. It wants a diagnosis, a map, a destination and preferably a road sign telling us how many miles remain. The body, meanwhile, follows another calendar.

I have thought often of Maya, that ancient idea of the veil of appearances—the world as we perceive and construct it, rather than necessarily as it is. During these weeks I have had to learn how easily fear can become its own reality. A sensation appears, the mind seizes upon it, and before long an entire story has been written about what it might mean. I have had to practice stepping back from that story: observing what is actually happening, attending to what needs attention, and allowing the rest to remain unknown.

Perhaps this too is part of healing—not only the closing of a wound, but learning to see through the veil a little more clearly. To live with uncertainty and trust the body to do some of its ancient work without the mind continually standing over it demanding an explanation. Yet the wound continuing its weeping for almost three months and not a single definitive answer . . . well I have had to wonder, “What is my body is up to?”

Fortunately, something encouraging has been happening while all this investigation continues: I seem to be getting better.

The wound has been contracting. The drainage has diminished. Pain is negligible. I have had no fever or redness, my energy is good, and I am urinating well. Amy, who has watched all of this closely and perhaps sometimes sees more clearly than I do, keeps telling me, “You are healing. It just needs more time.”

Perhaps she is right.

My preoccupation with the physical problem also led me to visit my psychologist while here. Months of surgery, recovery, uncertainty and watching the body closely can tilt the inner scales. I wanted help restoring some balance—not by pretending that nothing was wrong, but by learning not to give the problem dominion over every hour of the day.

There is the body, and there is the mind watching the body. And then, somewhere deeper still, there is the soul watching them both.

I have been spending each day taking time for prayer. In particular, I have been saying the Bahá’í Long Healing Prayer every day. Its words move through the different chambers of illness and healing until healing itself seems larger than simply repairing flesh. I do not know what form the answer to a prayer will take. I only know that saying it changes the atmosphere within me.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe has been Santa Fe.

We love this place. So many years of our lives are woven into northern New Mexico that returning does not quite feel like visiting. Dear friends are here, and we have been fortunate to spend time with some of them. Old conversations resume. Familiar roads bend around familiar hills. The sky performs its immense daily theater above us.

We drove north to Taos, where something wonderful is unfolding for Amy. The Millicent Rogers Museum has expressed interest in adding some of her artwork to its permanent collection. For an artist whose work rises so deeply from the indigenous traditions, stories and spirit of this region, the possibility feels especially meaningful.

While there, we also visited a dear friend who is homebound and fighting cancer. There are moments when all our smaller concerns become quiet in the presence of another person's struggle. Friendship then requires very little ceremony. One simply arrives. We sit together. We share whatever light the day has given.

And outside the window is New Mexico.

The landscape has a beating heart, and somehow its rhythm is synchronized with our own. The mountains, piñon and juniper, the enormous blue sky, the adobe colors of the earth, the scents—all of it still speaks to something deep within us. Oaxaca is our home now, but New Mexico remains in our blood.

Of course, there is also our storage unit.

Every time we return, the steel door is opened with the irrational optimism of a prospector entering a gold mine. Surely this time all those paintings, photographs, furniture and accumulated valuables will miraculously transform themselves into a fortune.

Mostly they stare back at us gently, reminding of other lifetimes lived.

We move a few things around, rediscover something we had forgotten, wonder why on earth we saved something else, close the door again, and leave our treasure patiently waiting for its next opportunity to make us rich.

We also spent time in Albuquerque with my daughter Sarah. Seeing her always seems to reaffirm something that needs no explanation—the abiding love between us, strengthened rather than diminished by the years and the distances that sometimes separate us. While there, I was also able to hand-deliver a print of one of my Vanitas paintings, *Sandia Man*, to a collector: a skeleton in a blue denim shirt and rumpled hat, seated at a table contentedly eating watermelon. It was a pleasure not simply to deliver the work, but to spend time together. I have always loved those moments when a piece of art leaves my hands and enters someone else's life.

And now our time here is almost finished.

In four days Amy and I will begin the journey south again. Oaxaca awaits us. Our house awaits us. Our animals await us. Friends await us. The familiar mountains and villages and brilliant Mexican light await us.

My medical story, however, will travel with me. There are still questions to be answered and another important study ahead. Healing does not observe national borders.

Perhaps that is one of the lessons of these strange months. I have spent much of my life traveling toward something—the next country, the next painting, the next love, the next revelation. Now the journey has become quieter and more intimate.

For the moment, I am being asked to inhabit the mystery of my own body.

To care for it without fearing it.

To seek answers without demanding them.

To remain attentive to the practical things—doctors, tests, medicines, wounds—while remembering that another kind of medicine is always available: friendship, beauty, laughter, love and prayer.

Soon the suitcases will be packed again.

Amy and I will turn south toward our Mexico home.

And the healing saga will continue.

Danger, Beauty, and the Human Form

What art awakens in us, and how it matters

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.

An Early Awakening

When I was but a toddler, my father would carry me in the early morning to the local bakery. We took a route through the back alleys behind our tenement building in Chicago. It was before my brothers and sister were born. He would hoist me atop his shoulders and I would hold on to his head. At the bakery he put me down and when the door opened, the light, warmth and sweet fragrance poured forth. On the way back one morning, a bird flew into the brick walls nearby. It is so far back in my memory . . . but I distinctly remember the fright of the beautiful winged creature. Was it blind? Or trapped? 

Why did this brief experience have such an impression on me as to last all my life? Certainly, to see a bird fly against a wall or glass, as if blind, is a jarring sight.

Now, six decades later, I drive to work and park my van in a city garage, then take my bike out and ride to my gallery. There are four parking levels. Birds come in the garage, and sometimes they fly up the stairwell and think they have reached daylight at the top level, only to smash into a big panel of glass. Often, feathers are strewn about the concrete floor. Once I found a dead bird and took it home for burial.

Birds represent freedom and are like unto spirit. In many ways they are angelic. So to see one fooled by glass and be trapped or hurt flying into a transparent barrier, reinforces the feeling that physical life is not what it seems—it also holds death. For my childhood eyes, the vision startled me, but also was an early awakening.

Conquer Mountains

These days I arise before dawn for breakfast. After the sun touches the horizon, nothing passes my lips until night comes. No food or water. The Baha'i fast occurs from March 2 - 20th annually. This is the 46th year for me of observing it.

I always lose some mental quickness and feel cold more readily. Sensitivity to light, sound, smells etc. increases. I get tired during the day and yet thrive on the changes. My mind might complain but my heart and spirit rejoice. The grace and bounties of God come to refresh and renew my being. I do not need to use my mouth.

Instead of craving food, I crave the experience of sacrifice that brings the reward of Spirit.
In a way, during this period I am entering a prison. I realize I am at a disadvantage physically. But also know what I gain, and that imprisonment is temporary. When the fast ends, I have become so accustomed to renunciation during the day that when I see a water fountain, my first response is abstinence. Then I realize I am free, and the enjoyment is heightened. Same with eating. . . it becomes special again.

Meanwhile, I am stronger internally and feel I can conquer mountains.