The Priceless Necklace

THURSDAY, MARCH 8
It would seem that one week would be ample time for preparing to leave on a trip. It is not if the trip is for three months. I have two days before leaving, and still feel pressed despite devoting almost all hours to being cleared for take off. I need to deal with mail collection, and arrangements for bank deposits and bill paying. I acquired euro’s and an international drivers license and put software on my laptop so that I can keep my website up to date. Magazine subscriptions had to be suspended and my art supplies gathered together. The cost of shipping my supplies turned out to be way too expensive, so I am taking them along in an extra suitcase, (ughh!) I have had to take care of tasks at Jean’s house, and then at my house, get personal items out of the way and make sure everything is spotless for the person coming to rent when I leave. I ordered and received an international cell phone, and lost my glasses but don’t have time to get them replaced, (will get a prescription filled in Italy.) The tasks keep coming non-stop. Saturday at 6 PM I will get on the airport shuttle, and surely there will be things left undone. But once I am in Italy, I won’t look back.
This evening I went to an auction benefiting sick children and their families. I am on the board of Friends Forever, an organization that affords help to seriously ill children, especially by offering them, their parents and siblings, all expense paid vacations. One of the auction items was an exquisite silver, gold and diamond necklace. It came to the table where I sat, and as I held it in my hand and gazed, the light from it’s finely crafted, faceted surfaces danced and gleamed in a glittering display of dazzling beauty. As it left the table, I kept thinking of it, and then I thought of the children it was to benefit. These kids are pure and innocent, yet the dazzling light of their gem-like lives are clouded with pain and uncertainty—it is not known if their talents and gifts will unfold. They have to be warriors when those around them take pleasures for granted. For their efforts, they each deserve to wear necklaces of exquisite beauty. The children's preciousness cannot be matched by all the world's wealth.
My next blog will be from Italy, but the date of the posting is uncertain.

Living in Spirit

FRIDAY, MARCH 2
Growing up in Washington DC, my best friend Lonnie and I spent endless hours of adventure with each other. In 1968 we worked during the summer on the Navajo reservation in Arizona as volunteers, then hitchhiked to Los Angeles and up the coast to San Francisco—following the hippie trail. When I went away to college in 1970, and returned changed because I had adopted a religion, the Baha’i Faith, my friend was perplexed. As we walked together in our neighborhood he confided his concern, and I have remembered this exchange through the years; “Steve, you tell me you don’t drink (booze), smoke (dope) or have sex anymore. What do you do?” At the time, his question left me momentarily speechless, and I could see that he thought I was living on air.
Today is the beginning of the annual period of fasting that Baha’i’s observe for nineteen days. No food or water from sunrise to sunset. This year, I am living alone, practicing chastity, and perhaps to some it might seem that I am living on air. It is 35 years since Lonnie’s comment, and now, I could more easily answer his incredulous inquiry.
It is fun stripping away desires of the flesh, because living in Spirit is to invite a state of blessing. As to the question of what do I do for enjoyment: being in grace, and feeling every moment is perfect, complete and wonderful, well, that is mostly enough.

The Process Of Happiness

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22
For years at different intervals, on a regular basis I have met with an eminent psychologist. Today, it was as if I could not find a problem to discuss. For what seemed a long time, we sat smiling at each other. I admitted to feeling my life has become the process of happiness. The future, past, and present, are melded together—like a big dream that is TIME, and behind this dream is reality: GOD. As long as my journey is returning to GOD, then each moment, I am happy.
As precious Naomi said, “Everything is important, and nothing is important. Everything is illusion, back to GOD.” (See my book, A Heart Traced in Sand.) So it does not really matter where I am in space . . . palace, paradise, or hell, because my journey is always back to God, the source of my being and highest good. The path seems more mystical with every step.

The Incredible Terrain

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14
Drawing a nude model is such pleasure. The first few moments are the most fearsome because there is only a blank page and the pencil in my hand. The task seems intimidating, almost impossible, given the complexity and awesome grandeur of the subject. Once some marks have been made, then there are reference points upon which to build perspective and proportion. The human anatomy is like a marvelous and complicated landscape of rolling hills, fissures, caves, peaks, valleys and forests. To draw is to take a journey, looking intently while trying to map this incredible terrain. It is exhilarating to experience the process unfold. Then to see some measure of success in the outcome is quite satisfying. 
The Sicilian part of my sojourn is now fully arranged. I have plane tickets, 2 houses reserved and a car. After sending some supplies ahead, the only task then is simply arrive March 12.

Experiences are Equal

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10
On weekends, after I awake and dress, I have been walking to a coffeeshop in the art district, about a half-mile away. Some winter mornings are freezing, and the walk seems quite longer going than returning. This morning has been warmer and immediately, every step along the way seemed enjoyable. The old, uneven sidewalk through the neighborhood seemed to be telling me its history. Birds in the tree branches overhead sang out their morning salute to the new day as I noted the soft sound of my footsteps.
On the way, my shadow was behind me, while returning, it stayed in front.
As usual, the return seemed shorter, and I wondered again: why? It is entirely perception. On the way, I am going to a place where I expect a pleasurable experience, and that expectation of better moments, makes me hurry to arrive. Impatience actually heightens my awareness of time so that it stretches out. Afterwards, my goal has been accomplished and the moments are unhurried, languid, and seamless—they seem compressed into one, and before I know it, I am home again. So the trick is to always be in a frame of mind that all experiences are equal, and that nothing is worth having more than the present moment, which is the goal. There is nothing to hurry to.

The Invisible Thread

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3
I am conscious of an invisible thread that weaves between my life and others. Even when I am alone, I sense the presence of others. We are bound together in profound ways that go beyond our understanding. When I recall someone in thought, in a way, I communicate with him or her telepathically. How many times has it happened that when I think of someone, they happen to call and say, “we must be on the same wavelength.” It is because of the invisible threads that bind us, and also act as lines of communication.
This weaving is sacred. When I think of someone, I am also sending love.

I went to a wonderful movie last night called Pan’s Labyrinth. It is by Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and has English subtitles for American audiences. Check out its fantastic website at http://www.panslabyrinth.com/

Eternity

Each moment contains fullness and emptiness both. In our union with God and creation, we can know complete contentment of oneness. On the other hand, that same union can make us aware that our separateness exists as well, and how utterly dependent we are on the whole. Lately, I have been blessed to experience non-separateness and letting go of preconceptions of mind. In the Baha’i writings, Baha’u’llah has said that the soul is first to recognize its creator. Since soul is eternal and always linked to the Creator, when we live entirely through soul, we are also aware of eternity. I enjoy so much the feeling of eternity, where past, present and future meld seamlessly. Perhaps it is part of aging, but often these days, I look with fondness at my past, enjoy tremendously the present, and trust the future entirely.
I have my tickets for Europe. I depart March 11, and will arrive in Sicily the evening of the 12th. On June 7th I will leave Paris for home. The details are taking shape and the trip is full of promise. I am in no hurry. The days take their own beautiful course and the future is somewhere else.

Painting in the Venetian Style

SUNDAY, JANUARY 21
This past week I participated in an art workshop, called “Painting in the Venetian Style.” The class was taught here in Santa Fe at the Andreeva Portrait Academy by Geoffrey Lawrence. For years, since I graduated college with a degree in painting, I have stubbornly pursued my own vision and resisted instruction from other artists. Furthermore, I developed a successful style of palette knife painting.
I must say the week of intense instruction and work suited me. I liked building the painting up in layers, as the old masters did for centuries.
Below is my painting, seen in the beginning stage with the underpainting apparent, shown beside the completed image.

Our Bodies Store Memories

FRIDAY, JANUARY 12
Our bodies store memories. While swimming on Wednesday afternoon, I had not gone far when I felt as if floundering. Staying in my lane was difficult and I felt lost, in another world, one without boundaries. Feeling something was wrong with my routine, I stopped early. Although I have not been sick in eight years, I wondered if I was falling ill. I fantasized I had a brain tumor. Driving home, any bright light zinged my brain, and I fought off a headache. At home, weakness forced me to rest in bed. After a half hour, my stubbornness got me up to go out for dinner, and then join the figure drawing group I attend weekly.
Thursday, when I woke I felt the same rolling waves of unreality and dreaminess, tinged with remorse and loss. It is my daughter Naomi’s birthday, January 11. If she were alive, she would be 27. Even though I feel I have become more adjusted to her death at nineteen, I realize just how little control I have over the profound influence and effect her dying has had on my life. At the cemetery, while I stood in the snow at her grave, her spirit came, more expansive and loving than ever. She expects me to be happy, and shown brightly in my mind the promise of a joyous future.
Today, normality for the most part returned, and I wonder at my “episode ” which I mistook for illness.
The picture here is of Naomi when she was fifteen, two years before her diagnosis of cancer, and four years before her death.
For more, go to: A Heart Traced in Sand

Beautiful Places to Paint

SUNDAY, JANUARY 7
I could not finish listening to the audio book, "Madame Bovary." Gustave Flaubert's writing is superb, with exquisite descriptions of characters, physical settings, and the minutiae of life. For me, following Emma Bovary’s pent up inner yearnings while she has affairs, dismissing her marriage and fortune as too provincial and not up to snuff . . . well, if it were not one of the great works of literature, my listening would not have continued until almost the end, (which I know ends in suicide.)
Plans for Sicily are becoming solid. I will arrive in the second week of March and rent a house on the Northwest side, near Trapani, on the Mediterranean. I want to paint sunsets over the water. There are great towns everywhere nearby, like Erice, a historical city with ancient Greek ruins that sits on a mountain top overlooking the sea. Two weeks later I will go to the other side of the island, nearer to the active volcano Mt. Etna . Taormina sits on a bluff above the Ionian sea, at the foot of Mount Tauro. For centuries it has been Sicily’s most famous tourist spot, dating from the time of the Greeks. The town has preserved its medieval layout. It will be easy to find beautiful places to paint.
Afterwards Venice beckons . . .
The image above is a new work created from a photo of a Rodin sculpture I saw in Frankfurt, Germany combined and manipulated in Photoshop with an image of painted glass.

Anticipate Happiness

TUESDAY, JANUARY 2
It is the New Year and I anticipate happiness. My heart connection with the world is strong, so that every situation is positive in some way. New forms of creative expression are developing. Photographic and digital modalities are coming to the fore. Now, I am creating large photo based collages and painting on them. In the spring I travel for three months, painting, photographing, and absorbing life in other lands.
Sometimes I feel guilty at my pleasure, especially at this time when I am separated from Jean. But why feel guilty at being happy? My heart is pure as I can make it, although God knows I have more work to do, and I ask for His mercy and guidance. Certainly, I pray that Jean be happy and strong in herself, and likewise look with eager anticipation to the future.
So much of my new art has to do with naked bodies, and I wonder how people perceive this. I am an artist and the world is my canvas. The human form is sublime and I am held enthralled. I work to exalt it.