The Path to Creativity IV: Learning by Heart

Great secrets still lie hidden, much I know and of much I have an intimation.-Goethe

At a neighbors yard sale I purchased a pair of binoculars for four dollars. The next morning I brought them to one of my favorite places along the Rio Grande River-bird watching!  On the way I stopped to use my new seeing device to spy on a tiny bird high up in the branches of a leaf-barren tree.  At first I thought this small silhouette might be a hummingbird, but once my vision was enlarged, I could discern it was a rounder bird with what looked to be a long narrow beak and a yellowish-green spot on its back.  A little marvel, I recorded this feathered form as best I could in my visual memory-bank and continued on the bike path to the rivers edge.  Once inside the canopy of a thinly wooded area I came to a second stop and looked up just in time to see a large raptor, maybe a hawk or an owl, too quick a glimpse to be sure. But as my magnifying lenses came into focus, I was startled as my eyes met with the bird's wide set eyes and the space between us condensed.   Some kind of ancient wisdom there, no way to comprehend or describe that moment of contact with divinity; a lesson on wings.

As this bird of prey took off from its perch, to my delight, a vivid scarlet-red bird took its place on a nearby branch. I did not know its name either, it's color said everything radiant, every name resplendent. It took my heart like a poem by Mary Oliver or the Sufi Master, Hafiz:

"What excitement will renew your body

When we all begin to see that

His heart resides in Everything?"

Take time to entrain your heart to the pace of nature is the tender advice of author Stephen Harrod Buhner. "When you go into Nature, you let the field of your heart lead, moving to those things that for some reason attract you.  You may feel one day the need to walk in mountains, or when walking in a forest be drawn to a particular stand of trees.  To notice these things you must, as Thoreau commented, let yourself ' see with the unworn sides of your eye.'  It is in peripheral vision that these things are seen, in peripheral thoughts that their signals come.  Pointed vision is the domain of the linear mind."

Did these birds show themselves to me because they caught my peripheral thoughts in the breeze that day?  What do we mean when we say, "to learn by heart"? That is different than to commit something to memory in our minds, isn't it? Can we be brought to our knees in a fleeting moment? Can I hold this, learn this, entrain this heart to a scarlet- feathered friend? What wonders of the natural world we miss when we sit in cars on freeways?

A few days later on another trip into binocular vision, I was drawn to a bleached-bone colored shape on the other side of the river.  Again, I was startled to meet with the eyes of a being as this light figure shape-shifted into a coyote. Sitting with complete composure, at one with Nature, he/she gazed back at me, as I peered at it through the thickness of the glasses.  My mind recollected my dear departed dog, the one who looked a little like a coyote. Just then, out of the thicket of trees and dark brush behind the coyote moved into view, a small pup, all soft fur and ivory-white. This dear young one came up  to its mother or father, checking in, circling around as I watched transfixed. Then, all too briefly, though what a gift, they disappeared into the woods.

My friend Karen told me the bird I saw with the long narrow beak might be a yellow-rumped warbler, and the red one, a summer tanager. I do love their names, though I love the experiences themselves more.  The binoculars have brought me closer to Nature, oh yes, entraining my eyes to learn by way of the heart to be in that place of unlanguaged wonder.

The Beehive in a Tree

Last night, as I was sleeping,

I dreamt-marvelous error!-

that I had a beehive

here inside my heart.

And the golden bees

were making white combs

and sweet honey

from my old failures.

-Antonio Machado

About a year ago my friend Si took me on a walk in my neighborhood to see a beehive in a tree.  He led us to a spot under the tree and then told me to look up. It was one of those jaw dropping moments; like a bee sting. It was a stunning thing to witness this magnificent organic sculpture hanging way up high in an old blackened craggy elm. Strange and mysterious.

He told me that on rare occasions a honeybee colony will build comb in the open air if they do not find a more suitable place-like the hollow of a tree- quick enough after they swarm.  When that happens they will not last the winter, (that was a hard thing to hear) this temporary home would not sustain the hive and they would die.  All through the summer and into the fall I would make frequent visits and look up from my place on the ground to this curious form above.  Once it got really cold, I could no longer discern any bee-bodies moving in and out of the hive. In the spring I visited it again and again but there was not any evidence of life moving around the honeycomb. I  became intent on getting it down.  But the question was: how?

Enter Shelia, tree pruner, bee keeper and flying arborist. Something of a Peterpan with a purpose, she flew up this tree and scaled it with seeming ease.  I’ve never seen anything quite comparable, a performance both high-wire circus act and rock climbing ballet in a tree.  By the time she rose up into the branches, I realized too late, I should have brought a video camera. But sometimes it is better not to try and capture the moment but let our memory serve us and hold the event.  She simply took my breath away.  Once she was close enough to cut through the branch the hive hung from, (oh how great my anticipation) the coveted treasure was at hand.  As it was lowered down into my open arms, I felt a palpable excitement to receive this golden home, great gift from the worker bees.

It is without a doubt, a work of art; a captivating object of utter beauty. Eight combs are attached to the limb, each one carefully constructed of translucent wax. The hive is almost completely cleaned out, except for a very few delicate little bee wings peeking out of cells in the interior, no bees remain. No honey, or capped cells evidenced on any part of the eight hanging combs.  It is immaculate except for a noticeable dark brown dusting across each of these rather tongue-shaped forms, clearly used, a few random leaves stuck in places where the combs fused with the tree.  It is a thing of exquisite perfection.  Each and every hexagon shaped cell boggles the mind, delights the eye and leaves substantial yet incomprehensible proof of the wonder of our animate universe.

Of course we will never know what happened to the colony of bees, whether they endured the winter by abandoning their wax nest to build another home in a more protected location.  But I like to think they did; I like to think they found a more sustainable place nearby and that maybe they are the very bees sucking nectar from the flowers in our garden this spring and making sweet honey to survive another year.

For more Antonio Machado

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship.  But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.  Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves.  No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.  ~John Muir

Growing Your Roots

What Path Shall I Follow in Life? 

This question forms the basis of one of the primary chapters in Caroline Myss’s book, Invisible Acts of Power. 

We shall consider this question in terms of your own creative expression.   Myss says, “...each of us is meant to treat our life as a journey, and at each step on that journey, we are meant to notice what is around us and act on opportunities that present themselves.”  I believe the personal creative process is much the same.  We are meant to form a creative path by following our intuition and letting it guide us as we make artistic decisions in a painting or a poem.  As Myss states, “[i]f we ignore everything around us, if we cover over our senses with a cloud of indifference, we’ll miss the coincidences and synchronicities that signal where we are to go and what we are to do [next].” 

Growing your roots is the first step in the process, Myss connects this act  to our first chakra and we might consider before starting to paint or write, doing just that. Try imagining rooting down in to the earth, sending energetic cords into the terra-firma like the axis mundi. 

As defined in Wikipedia: The axis mundi (also cosmic axis, world axis, world pillar, columna cerului, center of the world), in religion or mythology, is the world center and/ or the connection between Heaven and Earth. It expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all. The image is both feminine (an umbilical providing nourishment) and masculine (a phallus) .

So the first step in developing intuition for your creative process might be making this connection clear in your consciousness. Much like the developing fetus is connected by an umbilical cord to its mother to grow and be nourished during gestation, we as artists need to be continually fed.

The Nature of Insight

It is interesting to note that Isaac Newton made his greatest  breakthrough when he was forced to spend a year in virtual isolation, at his mother’s house.  I wonder if there is a connection to being in his mother’s home, able to be nourished and safe, that led to the right set of circumstances for him to intuit the information that formed the basis of his famous work, Principia- said to be the most important book published in modern European history?  Is it possible that the umbilical cord of Newtons’ connection to his birth mother was such that it continued to nourish him, ground him, and therefore help to bring insight to his work as an adult? The nature of insight may come in various forms, through dreams or through an inner knowing, you may hear the solution to a problem or see something that sparks an idea, you may simply understand a solution to a question through a hunch.  We are continually living in the realm of mystery. To encourage our creative expression requires the belief that the path we are on will lead us to the right insights for completion. Our perfect palette for poetry or painting is always available to be intuited no matter our ability to comprehend all that is.

Staying Grounded

To go into the ”wilderness of your intuition” as Alan Alda says, requires stepping out of the known into the unknown place. How to stay grounded when we are in the unfamiliar may seem like a puzzle.  In fact it may seem like the opposite of all that is required to be open to our intuition. Myss makes clear, that developing our self-esteem is the primary way that one’s intuitive instincts thrive. Because following ones intuition requires that a choice is made and a fork in the road is taken.

The moment that you choose for consciousness, the closer you are to the path of your own satiated creative expression. Think about all your favorite artists and note how their confidence as an image maker shines through their work. As much as we know about Van Gogh’s suffering in the world, we can see in his oeuvre an absolute groundedness, a surety in every brushstroke of his magnificent paintings.

a video we love: www. johnframesculpture.com/the-tale

an interview with John Frame: www.vimeo.com/24706483

 www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/living-bridges-in-india-have-grown-for-500-years-pics.html

A Prayer for Jaurez and West Mesa: An Offering Mandala

Sunday, March 11, 2012

12 p.m. (don't forget to set your clock forward the night before)

Plaza of the National Hispanic Cultural Center

Avenida Cesar Chavez and 4th Street

Albuquerque, NM 

Free and Open to the Public

Please join us to create a prayerful community offering in memory of the young women of Cuidad Juárez and West Mesa, Albuquerque.  Wear black and bring a large bowl to pour water, one to another, as we create a mandala—a portal between the dark and the light. Please invite your friends—men, women and children.

Contact:  Deborah Gavel, djgavel@gmail.com 

This special event is part of Women & Creativity Month and is sponsored by Littleglobe.

About Deborah Gavel: Deborah is an artist, educator and art activist in Albuquerque.  She is interested in the intersection of healing and creativity. www.deborahgavel.com

Women and Creativity Month is an annual, month-long series of events that celebrates women’s creativity across the disciplines.  Coordinated by the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC) and Creative Albuquerque, with state, regional and national promotion by the Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau(ACVB), Women & Creativity is a collaboration between over thirty partners and organizations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  Visit our website at www.womenandcreativity.org 

Littleglobe is a New Mexico based 501(c)3 organization of creative professionals dedicated to artistic innovation in the service of social change.  Littleglobe exists to create collaborative art, nurture community capacity, and foster life-affirming connections across the boundaries that divide us.   Learn more at www.littleglobe.org. Littleglobe has been a Women & Creativity partner for the last four years.

A Menu for Creativity

 He to whom nature
begins to reveal
her open secret
will feel an irresistible 
yearning 
for her most worthy interpreter,
Art.   

-Goethe

After a ten day stretch in Boston and on Cape Cod, I am feeling like moving to be near the ocean's healing breezes all the time.  I know that desire won't last for long because I am such a desert rat, but walks on the shore picking up sea shells and a unique sighting of a sea lion catching fish renewed my dry New Mexico body and soul. The trip ended on a three day high.

 

Day one: A weekend watercolor workshop, In the Painting Spirit, was the catalyst to get me on the Atlantic beaches, inspired by the art of Morris Graves. (He is one of my favorite painters and a superhero of mine in terms of the aesthetic life he led).  Our weekend started with my friend Sandy, "hostess with the mostess" and a walk on Long Nook beach in Truro, then time in her kitchen preparing butternut squash soup.  

   

Later that afternoon, once everyone gathered, we talked about art-making as a sacred conversation with nature and read a bit of Annie Dillard's book, Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek: 
 

 "Something broke and something opened. I filled up like a new wineskin, I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water, I was the lip of a fountain the creek filled forever; I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was flesh-flake, feather, bone."

Filled up on her words and after a delicious dinner, (thanks to everyones helping hands), we started to paint. 

Day two: We began some under-paintings using sponges as a tool, in a similar way to the grounds of Graves' paintings. Then another walk along la mer, this time-bayside;  shells and seaweed gave us ideas for muted color-palettes and sandy textures.

 

 The day ended with a meal of mussels in curried coconut broth and linguine with good vibes.
www.simplyrecipes.com

Day three: 
Watching sea lions in the waves, I was sorry this immersion in watery concerns had to end. But everyone said, let's do it again, same time next year.

Thank you Kate, Barbe, Rochelle and Sandy for a dream weekend.
For more about the art and life of Morris Graves:

www.historylink.org 
www.en.wikipedia.org