Spring

It is going down to freezing tonight. The dogwoods and azaleas will be tested by this cold wind. But it is Spring for me in spirit. I began a new blog about history and art in Charleston, and I think it is time for me to be physically in the Lowcountry. The old midwife said it best, " When the good Lord has something for you to do, you won't have no good luck until you do it." For four years I have been trying to get to the Lowcountry. So many doors have closed in Charlotte.Tested by cold winds here lately. Wisdom is all I ask today. Thank you sweet winds of change.

ozzie harriet and robert

Seeing just boggles me. This is is a painting of mine, from oh, six years ago or so ago. It's large, oil on canvas, and it hangs on my wall because I simply continue to enjoy looking at it everyday. I painted it after a trip to Lo Angeles with my sister, Dianne, to see my namesake niece, Charlotte.

My souvenir from the visit was this postcard of Ozzie & Harriet, a reminder of the idealized 1950's family on TV from my childhood. I brought the postcard home, and projected it onto my canvas late one night. The image of this perfect family humored me, as my own was splintered and not perfect at all. In my pile of old black and white photographs, collected from flea markets and garage sales, was this other charming gentleman, with an elegant smile and a great hat. He looked like Robert Johnson, the bluesman, too, whose music inspires me when I paint. So Robert got projected up there, in the dark, all life size, and became a member of the family. I mark the outlines of the figures in cobalt blue paint on the white canvas, the way Alice Neel used to do. Later I choose all the colors and draw from the handheld picture. Color is how I feel about it all, and painting it heals me some way - the bright colors in this painting feel triumphant I think. It made me smile to think of the mysterious black brother in the Ozzie and Harriet scenario.

Sort of like how it feels now, to have Obama as President of the United States, in fact. I look at this painting and still smile at the trickster imposing as child. Now this is what is so cool about being an artist. Yesterday, I am reading my old journals, which I never do, and I stumbled upon an entry from 2004. Oh, I really would like to paint myself as a black member of the family, but how in the world could I do that? I do not understand even a shadow of the how it feels to have black skin in the South, to be suspected of shoplifting or speeding or to be turned down for a job because of the color of my skin. I decided not to paint that idea. But then, yesterday, I saw. This is that painting! I had painted it already. I am the Robert, this is yet another self portrait, and yes, it reveals to me how I FELT in my own family. Odd as he looks here, there is a happiness, a charm, a knowing, though, isn't there? Another glimpse into the light of things. Amazing.

Little Boat Without An Oar

What I'm trying to do is say lighten up and let life flow through you, and be on the waves as they go up and down. For me, a great image in mythology is Tristan of Tristan and Isolde. He's out there on a little boat without an oar, without a rudder, on the Irish sea . . . You float your way. You drift. The essence of my approach is to be extravagantly accepting and forgiving of yourself and others. Ride the waves and let life take you where it has good things for you." - Thomas Moore

Lately I am watching several close family members, the generation below me, struggling with how to do the real thing in their marriages: how to juggle those elusive components that create genuine intimacy. I am blessed now, in my fifties, to have a good and soulful relationship, but this arrived only after I found that floating, trusting place in myself. It is not that I did not enjoy the ride and the practice; I served as muse and inspired poetry and song, because I was good at the lush part of love and skilled at seduction. But I wanted the real thing. I wanted to find home with my mate and my children, to have the family that reflected deep trust and respect, faithfulness...lightness of being. When I was young I thought if I worked hard enough anything was possible. If I worked hard enough... if I kept a perfectly clean house... if I cooked dinner every night, was a goddess in bed, if I was perfect at every task I took on. But I had no instinctive roadmap for success; my parents divorced when I was little and carried great animosity toward one another. I simply had no earthly idea how to get what I wanted. I had desire, my faith and my determination and I expected that to work. It didn't. It wasn't what I expected. Which is exactly the point. And what a life of faith really is. Faith to leap into new places of trust. No, the answer, too long coming, and one completely beyond logic, was to let go. It was to float around in that little boat without an oar.

a bright new world

It is January and seeing is believing. Even though it is frigid and wintry out, the country has elected a smart, kind, moral man, who seems to be awake. All things feel better, even in the midst of an economic meltdown of historic proportions. President Roosevelt cautioned us in 1932 that fear was the only thing to fear. Having this new President feels like we did a wise thing. Today there is hope even in the insecurity. For that I am bursting with gratitude, simply in being able to see a bright new day through this cold and wintry one.

Snaking Sea

"In sacred space everything is done so that the enviroment creates a metaphor." - Joseph Campbell

Edisto Island lies among winding rivers and curving ribbons of sea. Snakes of water. The twenty-four mile road that leaves Highway 17 and heads out into the sea, twists and turns and carries me like a song, like a psalm, in its healing beauty and rhythm. The island is called Paradise, and is chock full of snakes, real, living snakes. Who doesn't long for Paradise?

startled at the grace

When the student is ready the teacher appears. How many times have I repeated this wise phrase? But to see it anew is another. To be teachable and open to seeing the teacher arrive is the great gift. Robert Henri, the legendary art lecturer, taught, in his wonder of a book, The Art Spirit, that there are two kinds of people in the world: students and non-students. True. It has always been so easy for me to tag others when I meet them as open or not. This week I am startled at the grace that has chosen me and enabled me to see my own smug self, the resistant self, the know-it-all one. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." How simply brilliant!

I have a dream

This morning from my luscious bed office I pulled out an idea journal I keep in this messy pile of bedside books. Surprising me was this quote by Walt Whitman, one I wrote down after reading Lois Palken Rudnick's book, Utopian Vistas : The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture.

"We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed, and in widely different sources. Thus far, impress'd by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States has been fashion'd from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only — which is a very great mistake."

In light of our electing the first African American President of the United States, do you think that we are, as Americans, more than 100 years after he wrote this, finally seeing? How hopeful this feels.