Spirit Is Manifest

The tree on the right died at the same time as Chamo.

“Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”
Albert Einstein

When I traveled in Asia, I often saw homemade shrines with offerings to Spirit. These shrines held a place of sacred importance and took up but little space in a home or place of business. Often they sat in a corner somewhere. A figurine representing Buddha or Krishna, or another saint sat on a pedestal, and all around were placed offerings . . . candles, incense, food, money—even cigarettes. These offerings were given to please Spirit, and in so doing, the giver hoped to get a blessing in return. This might be health or healing, or prosperity, or any of many other forms of blessing.

I am aware that the spiritual world is powerful and invisible, and that it affects every element of our physical existence. Spiritual signs can be read from physical phenomenon.

Chamo, at about three months.

Recently, this was made apparent to me again when we lost our puppy, Chamo, to an illness. He had come to us with a hidden birth defect that caused him to become ill. He was operated on and recovered, but then became ill again, and we had to put him to rest. Two weeks before, I noticed one of the trees outside my art gallery was dying. It had stood in a vase outside the entrance—opposite another tree on the other side. When Chamo died, the tree died also.

I had seen this sign from Spirit, heralding death, on another occasion. When my daughter Naomi was eighteen, she was fighting cancer. As a child, she had brought home two pine tree sprigs, and planted them on our property. They sprang up and grew until I decided that they would be better at the top of our driveway, framing the entrance, so I moved them. They continued growing, and I often thought that they symbolized Naomi and I. At one point, midway through Naomi’s struggle, during a drought, one of the trees began withering, despite my watering it. At one point, Naomi arrived home from California where she was living and being treated, and the tree had died. She was upset and scolded me for moving it from its original spot. Naomi died soon afterward. I planted a new tree, which has flourished . . . as I am convinced that she is flourishing in the spirit world.
See my previous post: Endlessly Changing

Endlessly Changing

“Physical bodies are transferred past one barrier after another, from one life to another, and all things are subject to transformation and change, save only the essence of existence itself -- since it is constant and immutable, and upon it is founded the life of every species and kind, of every contingent reality throughout the whole of creation.” - Abdu'l-Baha

This quote is so beautiful and profound. I found it because a few days ago my dog had to be euthanized in front of my wife Lori and I. He was not even one year old, but had come to us with weaknesses that led to his demise. In the brief time he was with us, he had made our hearts more open and full. Now, we were faced with ordering his death—and in that we were also dying a little.

During this sadness, I felt again the feelings I experienced losing my beloved daughter, Naomi, who died from cancer at the tender age of nineteen. I have always known Naomi went from one life into the next, and she is in an exalted realm now. But what about our dog, Chamo?

The way I have been living is so simple, that I do not even own a shovel, or piece of earth. Lori has a house 45 minutes from Santa Fe, but when we put down Chamo at 6 AM, August 16, I could not go back there immediately, so we had him cremated. And that is all that is left. Our memories of him fill us with emotion . . . but nothing else remains. In this world, only humans have rational souls that can communicate through all eternity, from every dimension.

As for the physical elements that were held together by divine love and made the creature that we called Chamo—they have returned to dust, to be scattered and rise again in many forms, endlessly changing in the play of cosmic unfolding.

Turning Point

"Claustrophobia and Insanity"

When I was in my late teens I was surprised to find violent darkness within myself. I will always remember that the surprise came when I suddenly had a violent thought, and the thought was directed at someone I was intimately close with. This experience came at me like a thunderbolt from the underworld and it shook me to the core. Life was not the safe place I relied on, especially now that my peaceful inner world had been violated. 

From that time on, I became guarded about the world, and worst, guarded against the vast mysterious places that existed inside myself and were the “invisible” realm of the universe. When I had unsettling thoughts typical for teenagers, I was shaken, and the divide against myself widened. Essentially, I could not accept psychological violence anywhere in the world or universe, and loathed it.

As I was so embroiled, I continued to be an avid reader, and read heavyweight books, especially classics like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Crime and Punishment, and various books on psychology. I began reading a book in my mother’s vast arsenal of literature, called Our Inner Conflicts, by the esteemed German psychoanalyst, Karen Horney. This book had a profound impact on my thinking, and I realized that I must not set up ideal pictures of life to enforce, but rather accept all of it, including the darker, less ideal parts. I must discover myself, rather than idealize. To do otherwise would only lead to neuroticism. 

I began practicing allowing all my thoughts and feelings to flow uninhibited through my being. Immediately, I sensed freedom and even joy, but also great fright because of the power of the demons that lurked within. 

About this time, I had also become religious, having joined the Baha’i Faith. I reached a crucial turning point of continuing on a path of freedom, joy, and suffering, or turning to embrace only the light and reject the dark. I succumbed to my fear and went on a path of war—the war of light against dark. Essentially, I fell back into the war of opposites. This led to even deeper suffering.

Over the course of many years, my perceptions have shifted countless times. I perceive this physical existence as illusion and I am unafraid of death or the darkness it represents. Life is THE DREAM, and I am actively watching and participating, but know that I cannot be harmed by experience.

All Things Pass

Today, instead of writing much, I am sharing a picture. I took the photo at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, in Berlin, Germany. I was there this time of year, four years ago. During those days, I wandered across the city, camera in hand, prepared to meet the unexpected, and thriving on chance and surprise to fill me with awe.

The photo is mysterious, in that the angles are sharp and clear, but a blurred figure is running among the rows of concrete slabs. You the viewer do not know it, but he is pushing a baby carriage with a little child. It is strange to be at this memorial, and find people playing games there. Little children dart in and out of the rows, playing tag, and hide and seek. You can hear their laughter. They seem unaware that during the holocaust, over 11 million innocents were killed, including 1.1 million children murdered.

Underneath the stone slabs are exhibit halls that detail the slaughter of Jewish people during the reign of the Nazi’s—1933-1945.

“All things pass...Perhaps the passage of time is a kind of healing, or a kind of salvation granted equally to all people.”
― Mizuki Nomura, Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

To see more artistic photography by Steven Boone, go to Graphixshoot

Thank God For Beauty

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun
And find your shoulder to light on,
To bring you luck, happiness and riches
Today, tomorrow and beyond.

~Irish Blessing

Lately, I have been waking up from sleep with some anxiety, since my gallery is floundering under the poor economy. Especially difficult is that during the last four months, a large investment was made preparing for and installing a critically popular and well attended show of portraits by twenty-five artists, called HEADS UP—but the sales have been negligent. So I am scrambling to survive.

This morning, I arrived at my gallery to open, and noticed across the street that a garden is in bloom. I took my camera and walked over to take pictures. Right on cue, a beautiful butterfly landed on a flower and opened it’s wings to share with me it’s beauty before it fluttered off, not a care in the world. 

Thank God for beauty.

Faces of Innocent People

At the Jewish Museum, in Berlin, Germany

Janice and Delphine walked together across the campus of their University in the fall of their freshman year. They were assigned the same dormitory room and decided to go for a walk and get acquainted. Janice came from a working class Jewish family in the boroughs of New York City, while Delphine, a Christian, came from an upper class family from Tulsa, Oklahoma. As they walked, they looked around at their new surroundings and talked of their interests as well as the lives they were leaving behind. 

While Janice’s father had been bringing suitcases and boxes into the dormitory, Delphine had noticed a peculiar tattoo on his left forearm. It was simply a string of numbers, rather crudely etched. The vision had stayed in Delphine’s mind and haunted her, since she had a vague notion that it might be from a dark past. As they walked across a grassy lawn, strewn with fallen oak leaves that rustled underfoot, she got up the nerve to ask her friend what the numbers meant. Janice was slightly taken aback, but spoke solemnly, saying, “My father was a teenager when Germans took over his little village in Poland. They summoned all the Jews to the central square and made them begin walking out of town. The people that resisted or tried to hide were all shot to death."

The two continued strolling, but Janice slowed, and kept her eyes down. "A long line of people—whole families, including the elderly and mothers with babies were marched to a nearby village, and the German’s shot anyone who could not keep up. Eventually, the survivors were herded into freight train cars and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp. My father, when he arrived was in good condition, and received his tattoo. Many unfortunate souls never received a tattoo—they were intended to be killed in the gas chambers."

As Delphine listened to Janice speaking in a sorrowful tone amid the gayety of their first days at University, her heart sank and she struggled to comprehend the incomprehensible. Her footsteps, that had been light earlier, became heavy, and the leaves that crinkled underfoot seemed too brittle and she felt embarrassed by their sound, as if they were clinking iron, and the faces of innocent people were staring up from the earth that had become their grave.



This is a story I wrote to go with my photograph, seen above. To see more of my artistic photography, go to Graphixshoot

Ambience, Intrigue and Warm Hospitality

The crowd filled all the rooms

People poured onto the street. Here, some artists are chatting.

As art openings go, our show of portraits, called Heads Up, set records for attendance, generating great excitement and praise. The Steven Boone Gallery began planning four months in advance and worked every day to reach a high level of professionalism.

Lori and I

Twenty-five artists shared their work—all the pieces selected by a skilled curator, Geoffrey Laurence. The gallery offered food service and the combination of fine art, ambience, intrigue and warm hospitality assured success.

Sculptor Ted Fleming in front of my self-portrait

HEADS UP, The Art Of The Portrait, runs from July 6 – August 5.

Inhabited By Ghosts

A dark story to go with the picture I made, above, which is a composite of photographs:

As a child, a young woman, who we shall call Jill, lived in a chaotic household with her younger brother and parents. The father had a violent temper and drank heavily, especially while home from his job as a mailman. Jill’s mother was prone to depression, and numbness of feeling, so barely kept the household in order. In earlier days for the family, some happiness existed, but the home went into a downward spiral with the father’s anger and drinking. He could become abusive when he was drunk, hitting the other family members and cursing. The mother once found John, Jill’s brother, had taken old photographs and a recording of his father, speaking affectionately to his wife during happier days, out of a drawer. She walked in to a room where the boy, entranced, was playing the recording to a friend, and became hysterical, crying and furiously scolding at once. John, even at an early age, dreamed often of leaving home.

Jill too, especially as she reached her teen years, thought of escape. But when she dreamed, terrible fear eroded her heart. She felt responsible for her mother, and wondered, “Who will protect her and be her aide?”  Yet she hated the house and its dark energy. It felt inhabited by ghosts.

Jill felt unworthy of finding someone to take her away. Although a teen, growing into a woman, she still played with dolls, alone in her room. She sat them up beside her and talked to them. And she dressed them in pretty outfits . . . better than anything she wore herself. 

After high school graduation Jill stayed at home and made small efforts to find work. She did not have a sense of style, so could not know how hopeless she looked. More and more, she stayed in her room and fantasized, so to escape the anxiety that gripped her chest and the dark thoughts that invaded her mind—thoughts that would suddenly come upon her out of nowhere, like a flock of dark birds, circling her very soul.

The Surgeon General's report estimated that 20% of the United States population was affected by mental disorders and that 15% use some type of mental health service every year. Community surveys estimate that as many as 30% of the adult population in the United States suffer from mental disorders.

Read more: Mental Health and Illness - How Many People Are Mentally Ill?

The Art Of Portraits

When I had the idea to use The Steven Boone Gallery for a portrait exhibit, I almost simultaneously thought of Geoffrey Laurence as a possible curator. Geoff is the quintessential realist painter.and he has been around the block many times. He is talented, and so knowledgeable about art and painting techniques, that he is sought after as a highly respected instructor.

When I asked Geoffrey to consider curating a show of portraits, he was honored and thrilled. That was over four months ago, and now, in barely two weeks, our show, called HEADS UP, The Art Of Portraits, is about to commence. Geoff has gathered twenty-five highly respected artists and over sixty works of art.

I have been amazed at how much work our gallery has put forth, and also astonished how much effort Geoffrey has dedicated. As I write this article, Geoff is busy with a scale model he built of the gallery, and is placing small-scale prints of all the artwork in the model, to visualize the best presentation for exhibition.

From the start, we have planned, selected artists, communicated with them, selected art, made graphic art for advertising, written promotions, made contracts . . . the list goes on, and continues, probably until the hour of the show opening.

In the end, this will be a fantastic show, and leave its mark on the consciousness of Santa Fe.



To see all the artwork, click here: HEADS UP

Mosaic of a Life

 

Today I am lazy, and since I have blogged for six years without fail, I am not writing, but rather, giving this link to visual entertainment:

http://www.my-fairytale-life.com/view/mosaic

It is a fun excursion though pictures I have used in my blogs. Enjoy.

The Zone

In "the zone" on a street in Madrid, Spain

In 2008, while I was traveling solo around the world for one year, about three months into the journey, I shifted away from painting as my main focus of art, and became a photographer of the street life that surrounded me everywhere. I developed a pattern of walking through the cities, keenly aware of my surroundings, and as I looked, I would go into what I called “the zone.” Thus, I became one with my surroundings. An ephemeral vapor with eyes. I sought to capture with my camera the unusual and unexpected confluences of life.

Fashion meets the street.

For example, in the picture above, I found a large panel of reflective red glass bordering a narrow walkway near my apartment in the downtown area of Madrid. I stationed myself there and simply snapped pictures of people passing by, framed by the red expanse, and also, sometimes my reflection was in the picture too.

I am sharing some pictures I took in Madrid, Spain, since it was exactly this time in June I was there.

For more artistic photographs, see my photo website: Graphixshoot

She is always standing outside of the bar, holding a gun in  her hand.