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ome poems are as perfect and unique as snowflakes, leaving us with lines that echo down through the years. My favorite Robert Frost poem offers us perfect rhyme and several haunting lines: ... the darkest evening of the year ... the woods are lovely, dark and deep … but I have promises to keep …. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. President Kennedy invited Robert Frost, winner of four Pulitzer Prizes for his poetry, to read a poem at the 1961 presidential inauguration, starting a beloved tradition recently continued by Amanda Gorman. Frost died on January 29, 1963, just days after the dark night of the new moon, and left the last line of one of his poems as his epitaph: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” What a gift that quarrel was.
Wonders along the path
Strong Women
Desert Monsters
Dedicated to the Kumeyaay peoples: San Diego County has more Indian reservations than any other county in the United States. Some of the reservations near Julian include: La Jolla Band of Indians Mesa Grande Reservation Inaja - Cosmit Band of Indians Pala Band of Mission Indians Pauma and Yuima Reservation Santa Ysabel Reservation
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6-7
8-9 What makes night?
Rejections 10-11
What Matters?
Puddles & Windows
12-13 Tree Lessons
WonderSmitten 14-15 Sunrise Highway
Art Process
It is a blessing to live on this beautiful, ancestral land. 18-19
16-17 Dancing with CeeZee 22-23
Copyright: Joyce Wycoff, 2021 created, written, photographed by Joyce Wycoff unless otherwise noted. contact: jwycoff@me.com
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Photosynthesis
CA: 1000 pieces 26-27
24-25 Diane Walker
“Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth...tame the dragon and the gift is yours. -- Noela Evans
20-21
Favorites
30-31 “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” -- Neale Donald Walsch
Curly Manzanita 32
Puddles & Windows ...
I
have long been a lover of reflections in windows and puddles, and laughed when Bill Watterson said,
“Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you’re just a reflection of him?”
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Puddles of Pinezanita Maybe it’s the delight of finding the unexpected in something as fleeting as a light painting on a puddle or window that keeps me attempting to capture the illusive beauty.
Reflection is a mirror dance of light, object, and observer.
Mesilla, New Mexico
“This outward Spring and garden are a reflection of the inward garden.” -- Rumi
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Desert Monsters ...
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Great Anza-Borrego Sea Serpent (photo by David King)
n a Tuesday, 47.2 million years ago, a mama Hesperaltes gathered her babies close as she smelled a deadly sabertoothed tiger approaching. Well, it might have happened that way. This area was full of incredible megafauna eons ago. Just outside Borrego Springs, hundreds of full-sized sculptures populate three square miles of open desert. Wandering back through time in this diorama of prehistory, you can almost imagine life before humans. Galleta Meadows, where mammoths and dinosaurs still roam, blends place, art, and history into a growing international wonder and photographer’s delight. And, how did this desert mirage of enormous, weathered, rusted relics of an earlier eon become a reality? An accidental artist bumped into an eccentric land owner and magic began. Dennis Avery, the land owner, dreamed of turning his Galleta Meadows Estates into a giant free-standing art gallery. He commissioned over 130 pieces of Ricardo Breceda’s sculptures to dot the landscape … including a fanciful 350-foot sea serpent swimming in the sand.
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Another Time
Borrego Springs, CA is a quirky, artsy community surrounded by Anza-Borrego desert.
Ricardo Breceda, the sculptor, was selling exotic boots after a devastating accident ended his construction career. When his then 6-year-old daughter Lianna watched Jurassic Park III, she wanted a dinosaur of her own. Ricardo traded a pair of boots for a welding machine and created a 20 ft tall Tyrannosaurus Rex, using a welding technique learned in his home town of Durango, Mexico.
What Matters? Very little.
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ecently, one of my memory-keeper friends … you know, the ones you’ve known so long they know your stories and can fill in the blanks when you’ve forgotten … gave me a book she found at a used book store. She planned to dismember it in service of her art journals. However, it was too beautiful to destroy and she thought I might like it. I do ... a lot! The book is a facsimile reproduction of a naturalist’s diary for the year 1906. Edith Holden, a British artist and art teacher, recorded in words and paintings the flora and fauna of the British countryside through the changing seasons of the year. I feel a bond across the years as if she might be a soul-ancestor who lived a life I still yearn for … peaceful, observing deeply the nature around her, and capable of capturing its beauty with simple elegant watercolor illustrations. Her journal is organized by month with dates and her observations. Included in February is an illustration of a Shrew Mouse and a note about her observation of this “pretty and harmless little animal.”
“Walking home from Solihull this afternoon I noticed a number of gnats dancing in the bright sunshine, and I saw two little Shrew Mice in different places on the bank, who darted quickly into their holes directly they saw me.”
Apparently this copy of the book was given as a gift by a poet who inscribed the book with a poem that prompted my thinking as well as the title for this page.
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What matters? very little … Only … the flicker of the light within the darkness the feeling of warmth within the cold the knowledge of love within the void
For: Roger Meyerstein and his wife From: Marianne Van Sante Netherlands, 14-11-1979
So, what is my “very little?” Marianne’s inscription startled me, called me to ponder this question. I have been challenged by trying to stay warm in an RV, however when given a chance for a more normal living environment, I declined. Walking through this peaceful oak woodland, listening to the wind wafting through the trees, trying to find words to capture the beauty of white cottonwoods against blue skies ... these are among the “onlies” that matter.
Collecting Rejections ...
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n the fourth grade, four of us girls (there were only four of us in the fourth grade in the fly-spect town of Dearing, Kansas,) acted out little dramas at recess, plays written by Charlene Storm, who was our leader in all things. I probably wanted to be Charlene; I definitely longed to write one of those plays. So, I did. Charlene was kind when she told me she couldn’t read my handwriting so they wouldn’t be able to use my play. She was right, of course. At that point, my writing was a tiny, scribbled scrawl. Rather than rewriting the play more legibly, however, I accepted the rejection as failure: the first but far from last. Later, when I got the only C of my grade school career in “Writing,” it confirmed my destiny: I would never be a writer. While 10 books were my escape from the lonely life of an only child, I would never be one of those magical people who created the stories that introduced me to the world. An image changed everything. A bleak black-and-white picture of a house and windmill by a lake captured me and set my imagination in motion, spinning a story of a young couple grown old. The experience shocked me and I began to think of writing once more, although when I had a chance to read the story in an English class, fear stepped in again. But the dream was reborn and gradually took hold with creative writing classes in college and an unexpected flow of poetry in the oddest places. Writing was a thrill but I never thought about actually being a writer. I needed to make money; I needed a job. Over the next twenty years, I found many jobs; made money, and periodically,
submitted manuscripts and article queries to various publications. The rejections piled up, but I kept writing, or at least thinking about writing when I wasn’t focusing on the latest rejection. Finally, technology stepped in with desktop publishing. I convinced my employer at the time that we needed to do a marketing newsletter so they bought a system and I learned how to do layout. The company was experiencing some challenges so I never did a newsletter for them, but I started doing one for myself. I discovered the freedom of being able to publish whatever I wanted to write about and created a monthly newsletter, MindPlay, that went on for eight years. It was definitely a limited-edition newsletter (years before email and social media offered a long reach) but it was enough to attract a publisher who offered me a book contract for Mindmapping: Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem-Solving. Suddenly, after 30-some odd years of dreaming about being a writer, I was one. Four books, a blog and a multitude of articles focused on creativity and innovation in business followed. And, then came the disruption: in rapid succession my husband died and 2008 shut down my business and the demand for my writing. I had fallen in love with digital art and that distracted me for awhile until more death and losses drove me back to writing. I needed to write and a new friend, met at photography workshop, suggested that I start a blog. What did I have to blog about? I asked. Anything you want, came the answer. So, I began. Over the past eleven years, I’ve posted an average of 100 blog posts per year. All of that bloggery introspection led
to a memoir: Joy After the Fire, When Grief, Despair and Loss Become the Seeds of New Joy and Growth, which I selfpublished. One morning I was sitting in my comfy chair when words appeared, something about a young girl riding through the forest on a silver-white horse. That sat for a long time in the back of my mind before it became Sarana’s Gift, It Changes Everything! That was so much fun, I wound up writing two unpublished novels. The publishing industry being what it is and with my definite lack of a platform, I didn’t even try to find an agent or a publisher. Then came small books: the first for my granddaughter’s 13th birthday, then after a gap of several years, illustrated books of poems, events, and the first months of COVID. I fell in love with making books and then began this magazine series. Financially, none of these efforts have made sense. However, each has been a joy and each has made me who I am. So, still, I write.
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What makes night?
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here is something mystical about shadows. While they aren’t actually a thing, they tell a story that seems real. Perhaps Ray Bradbury knew the reality of shadows. In Dandelion Wine, he states: “I got a statistic for you right now. Grab your pencil, Doug. There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? ... (cont)
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So, then, what makes night? I’ll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there’d be no night!” -- Ray Bradbury
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“Both light and shadow are the dance of love.” -- Rumi
Words ...
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ords from other lands, other cultures, other sensibilities, often with no direct translation to English, often capturing a feeling, a sensibility, that we’ve never named.
Hiraeth is a Welch word representing a kind of homesickness, like a grief that combines longing, nostalgia, and yearning, sometimes for a home that you cannot return to, which no longer exists, or maybe never was. Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again speaks to that feeling.
 Yūgen is a Japanese word, one describing a set of ancient ideals that include wabi sabi, and yūgen. These ideals, and others, underpin much of Japanese cultural and aesthetic norms on what is considered tasteful or beautiful.
Originally, tohubohu meant something very different. The Hebrew phrase “tōhū waḇōhū” refers to the world just before the creation of light. In this context, it means a lightless, endless void.
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Tree Lessons ... Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. 16
“Learn character from trees, values from roots, and change from leaves.” -- Tasneem Hameed, author and peace activist
Balboa Park, San Diego
— Herman Hesse, German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter
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ince moving to this oak woodland in the mountains east of San Diego, I can almost feel the spirit of Hesse wafting through the acorn laden trees, whispering … Listen to the trees. Be true to yourself. Care not about what came before or what may come after. Bring forth that sacred seed hidden within you. You are a daughter of the ancient law of life.
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Grandmother Cottonwood
Solstice Wizard
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From a photo of a dead tree taken at Lake Cachuma from which an oak bole had been harvested.
Following Color
19 From a photo of a sculpture in a friend’s yard.
Sunrise Highway ...
O
ne afternoon I decided to drive up Sunrise Hwy (San Diego County S1), thinking it might be a pretty drive. What an understatement. This rather gentle, mountain drive changes with every mile, beginning with the pale straw grasslands on Hwy 79 between Lake Cuyamaca and Julian and rising through the chaparral with magical, never-ending views of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and then into the Ponderosa Pines of Cleveland National Forest. My morning exercises were done at Desert View Picnic Site with views that stretched all the way to the Salton Sea, although it couldn’t be seen because of the haze. I resolved to be there at sunrise sometime soon to experience at least a few of the 2,650 miles 20 of the Mexico-to-Canada Pacific Crest Trail, accessible from Desert View.
“Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.” -- Robert Motherwell
Pacific Crest Trail calls Sunrise Highway is a favorite with bikers and there are many memorials to lost riders.
Storm Canyon Overlook
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Dancing with CeeZee ...
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ith winter fast approaching and my struggles with propane tanks and various RV systems dragging on, my confidence in my ability to live this self-chosen life plummeted. I fled to the desert, found a house that fit, made an offer, and prepared to move … again. A minor issue with the deal gave me a moment to breathe, and walking under “my” trees in the park made my heart ache at the impending loss. I stopped, pondered, and realized I was dancing with CeeZee, the name 22 I use for the fear of exiting my comfort zone. My goal is to create an abundant life of freedom, creativity, and nature, so the question changed to: how could I lead CeeZee in a different dance? Several warm base layers and a new resolve later, I cancelled the offer on the house and decided to stay in this place of woodpeckers, acorns, and an inviting picnic table in every space. It just took some comfort-zone-stretching exercises. “Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.” -- Aberjahani
Perseverance Two hundred years ago today, Nanzan brushed perseverance on a scroll and added his chop. Did he know I would need that message on this very day when my spirit dropped? What was he doing on that day long ago that focused him so on this one word among all others? I see him sitting there, brush in hand, ink pots ready, rice paper stretched flat: His heart dripping rejection onto the paper, His mind retracing the long, circular track. What dream had just died? What long-held belief turned brown on that winter day? Which lover walked away? See him as his chest rises on a deep inhale and releases in a day-long sigh. He looks around, sees what no longer is, picks up his brush and puts away why. What brings him back to this place of paper and ink? What solace is there in this forming of art from pain? We see him bent over the page, characters flowing, his graceful, steady hand sending his only gift down the days and hours straight into the waiting pool of our minds. What bridge carries his touch across two hundred years to give me the strength to pick up my choices once more?
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Banner Mountain, California
California: 1000+ pieces of a compelling puzzle
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“Time Past” is based on a photo taken outside Golden, Oregon, and reminds me of how different the deep, wet forests of Northern California are from the drier oaklands of Southern California. So much diversity bedazzles the mind.
alifornia stretches from the Mexican border to the beginning of Oregon with 840 miles of coastline in between. My new two-RV lifestyle provides a Southern California base camp in the mountains east of San Diego (where I am as I write this) and one on a lake of Northern California, which will be the base for my summer explorations. One reason for setting up this unusual living situation is to expand my understanding of this highly diverse and beautiful state. An art and words project is aborning although it’s still a faint outline just out of reach. It began with wildflowers and has branched off into endless other directions, sometimes leaving me bewildered. Trying to grasp a sense of the diversity and possibilities, I’ve divided the state into twelve regions and positioned all of its 58 counties into those divisions, rearranging them frequently. Into that regional structure, I’m now trying to fit the pieces of national parks, national forests, national monuments, state parks, and a mind-boggling array of preserves, reserves, wilderness areas , indigenous tribal lands, and other designated areas. I’m unsure of where this is going, I just know I want to know more about this land, the holder of my spirit.
Thank you Teddy Roosevelt: Of our 154 national forests, 20 are in California and 13 of those were established between 1904 and 1908, under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901 to 1909). Teddy was 25 in 1883 when he was awe struck by the North Dakota Badlands. A few months later his wife and mother died within hours of each other. He wrote in his journal, “The light has gone out of my life.” Work became his focus and conservation of the land and resources his passion. He later wrote: “We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when National Geographic the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, 25 polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.” During his presidency, he created the United States Forest Service (USFS) and established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves, 5 national parks, and 18 national monuments. Theodore Roosevelt left us a legacy of approximately 230 million acres of public land. He leaves also a challenge: “We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.” -- Theodore Roosevelt
“The Earth is furiously beautiful.” -- Owen Bettis, photographer Bridgeport
Photosynthesis ...
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hile walking through the park watching sunlight play on the craggy bark of the trees, I suddenly wondered just how sunlight creates life. I know the word photosynthesis and that somehow it turns light into sugars; however, it seemed like, after all these years, I’d have a better grasp of the actual process. Maybe trees and plants are like solar power cells, I thought. That wasn’t very helpful since I really don’t understand how they work either. Ignorance is not bliss. So off to Google school. This definition is probably one of the reasons I’m still in the dark: Photosynthesis is a process by which phototrophs convert light energy into chemical energy, which is later used to fuel cellular activities. The chemical energy is stored in the form of sugars, which are created from water and carbon dioxide. Next: Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, some bacteria, and some protistans use the energy from sunlight to produce sugar, which cellular respiration converts into ATP, the “fuel” used by all living things. No light dawned.
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Finally: YouTube’s photosynthesis for kids. Here’s my translation: Plants don’t have cars to go to grocery stores so they have to make their own food from whatever is around them: air, water, and dirt. They must be smarter than I am; I’d starve to death if that’s all I had. But plants have had 700 million years to learn how to make their own food. We humans have only been here 100,000 years so we’ve had to learn from our elders. We have learned that air contains oxygen and carbon dioxide and that plants breathe in what we breathe out. Convenient arrangement. We also know that plants have taught their roots to absorb water. Try doing that with your toes! Anyway, we’re smart enough to know that water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen … we even know the recipe: H2O … two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. So far so good. Plants are breathing in carbon dioxide from the air and water from their roots. However, the idea of plants breathing is still a little befuddling. But, onward. We already know that plants have some mechanism for carrying that water and carbon dioxide the equivalent of hundreds of miles throughout the tree (how they do that is still a question).
No days off for these trees.
Not Hyperion
Think about old growth trees. Some have been pumping water hundreds of feet up to branches and millions of leaves for sometimes thousands of years. For instance a tree known as Hyperion is a redwood in Northern California, twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty and 7-800 years old. * Imagine what it would be like to carry water up almost 400 feet every minute, every day for 800 years! *Location is secret.
Apparently, in each leaf there are tiny pores called stomata … sorry about the technical term but they are a main character in this play. Stomata are somewhat like our noses except they are on the undersides of leaves. They are how a plant breathes in carbon dioxide although we still haven’t gotten to how stomata know carbon dioxide from oxygen and how to only take what they want and release the rest. Makes me wonder how our lungs know what to breathe in and what to breathe out. Here comes another technical term: chloroplasts. We all know that all living things are made up of cells and that we’re all descended somehow from a single cell who got friendly with another cell. Anyway, chloroplasts. They are tiny structures in cells. Don’t even ask. I don’t know how they came about or how they got inside chloroplasts. Remember, plants have had 700 million years to figure this stuff out. So we’re now at chloroplasts in cells in leaves. Stomata are busy sucking in carbon dioxide and water, while chloroplasts are doing their thing with sunlight. Turns out that chloroplasts also contain that green stuff we call chlorophyll and when it combines with the carbon dioxide and water, it creates glucose (sugar). Plants like sugar; don’t we all? 27 During this process, those efficient little stomata spit out all the oxygen so we should say thanks to plants every time we take a breath. But, wait! What does the sunlight have to do with it? Turns out the sun isn’t just to light our way so we can see to walk around, It’s energy … duh … solar energy. That energy is stored in a special membrane in the chloroplast and is used to start the photosynthesis process of creating chemical energy which allows the plant to create sugar and release oxygen. Simple, huh? Except we still don’t quite understand how all that water gets pumped up to all those leaves. Plants don’t go to the local hardware store to buy water pumps, so how do trees lift that water? There are two forces that do the work of delivering water throughout the tree: osmosis which is the way roots draw water out of the surrounding soil. That inflow of water builds a pressure that forces the water upward. Then it’s back to our friends the leaf stomata and a process called transpiration, which is somewhat like sweating. The loss of water pulls more water through the xylem, technical teerm for the water pipes of the tree, and into the leaves. Not a bad learning journey for that original little cell, even if it did take 700 million years.
Diane Walker: Transitions of an Artist
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n one of my darkest times, I ventured out to a Miksang Contemplative Photography workshop taught by Michael Wood and Julie DuBose. (Miksang is a Tibetan word meaning “good eye.”) It was a transformative workshop that changed the way I saw the world and took photographs. Most importantly, I met Diane Walker and we became friends. Diane already had a blog titled “Contemplative Photography” which featured her photos and poetry, and she was the first other person I met who was doing digital art. Diane encouraged me to return to blogging and informed me after I poured 28 out my story over lunch at Pearl Street Mall in Boulder that my “cup was empty.” 26 She was right and I took her advice to do what I needed to fill it again. We have remained friends over the years and I’ve been delighted to watch Diane move from digital art to painting the most amazing abstracts. I’m honored that she has agreed to share some of her story and art “Grace” in this by Diane Walker volume.
“Empty” by Diane Walker Here’s Diane telling her story: When my mom died, in 1997, I was living on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, and had just purchased a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. In response to her suggestion of Art Dates, I purchased a small point and shoot camera and began photographing driftwood and rock formations. In order to develop my photos (this was pre-digital) I had to take an hour-long ferry to Anacortes. On my way back home with several packets of photos, I ran into a fellow islander who suggested my work belonged in a gallery in Friday Harbor, so I took my prints there and they agreed -- which began my 15 year career as a photographer. Fast forward to 2007, when a friend’s 11-year-old daughter died of cancer, and my friend decided to blog about her grief. I’d always been a writer, and I liked the idea of pairing my words with photos, so I asked her to teach me how to blog and began posting daily photos and meditations in addition to selling my photos in galleries. By that time photography had become a way to interact with and learn from my natural surroundings, a contemplative process, and I was delighted to have found a way to articulate what I was learning. But by 2012 everyone and his brother had digital cameras and cellphones, and photos became a hard sell. The cost of matting
and framing inevitably ate up any profits I made, so when I saw Christopher Mathie do a demonstration of his abstract process in January of that year, I decided it was time for a change. I took a couple of classes (and failed miserably, I should add, ending up in tears both times), then went out on my own, and by the end of the year, had sold two pieces. I wanted to, and could, do this! Since then I’ve been constantly pushing myself to become a better artist – not to become famous or rich, but seeking new and better ways to express my soul, my spirit – whatever it is that pours through me and onto the canvas; learning to trust the process, encourage the flow, and not allow my thinking brain to get in the way of the work. I still post daily photos and meditations, and have self-published several books of photographic meditations, but I stopped putting my photos in galleries and focused on my painting.
“Welcoming the Light” by Diane Walker
“Eagle Harbor Reflects” by Diane Walker Today my work is shown year-round in a gallery in Port Townsend, Washington, and I’ve just been accepted as a member of Women Painters of Washington. I continue learning and growing as a painter, and the isolation during the pandemic really allowed me to explore possiblities. With my gallery closed, there’s been no drive to “paint to sell,” so I’ve felt free to push myself in directions that don’t necessarily come naturally to me – with mixed results, of course! But I’m very pleased with where I am now as an artist, and though we moved a year ago and I no longer have a whole studio to myself – just the corner of a small bedroom – I feel I’m really finally coming into my own. It’s all good! For more of Diane’s work ... contemplativephotography.com or dwalkerarts.com.
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Favorite Books, Podcasts ...
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ichael Pollan, one of my favorite authors, offers us one of his deep, experiential dives, this time into the world of psychedelics. While carefully reminding readers that psychedelics are not for everyone, he proceeds to explain why so many people are having life-changing experiences, sometimes mystical, with them. Pollan missed the LSD age of the sixties and thus embarked on his journey into the new world of science and psychedelics as a 60-year-old with a lot of trepidation and myths about “bad trips.” What he found were current scientific studies with astounding results for addiction of all forms, including opioids, depression relief, and PTSD “cures,” many from a single “trip.” Unlike “rave” experiences or the stereotypical sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll parties, therapeutic experiences with LSD, ayahuasca, 30 psilocybin, and other plant-based “medicines,” require a careful use of guided set and setting to achieve beneficial results. Reading Pollan’s book is an eye-opening experience. Informative Review: The Guardian, Oliver Berkman, 22 May, 2018. Having read tons of books on creativity in the past, it takes a lot to entice me into a new one, especially when the new one is an old one (2012) and uses the word war in the title. However, Steven Pressfield, who calls himself a 30-year overnight success, is the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and his name kept coming up, so I relented. This book has one theme and it’s not new, but by the end of the book, I felt lifted up, ready to take on a bigger challenge. Here’s
the opening: “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unloved life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.” I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in doing creative work.
As I began to spend more time in the car, I started listening to podcasts and have worked my way through all of David DuChemin’s “A Beautiful Anarchy.” David is a magnificent teacher and photographer and his 15-minute podcasts are like manna for anyone doing creative work. Highly recommended. The surprise for me was Tim Ferriss’s long-form podcast where his interviews generally run an hour-and-a-half or more.
I started out with reservations about Tim, thinking of him as merely a “hacker” looking for shortcuts and mainly interested in competitive activities. (Think 4-Hour Workweek, 4-Hour Body.) By now, I’ve listened to probably 30 or more of his podcasts and have discovered a depth I didn’t expect. Superficially, he is trying to deconstruct success … the habits, influences, and decisions of remarkably successful people. However, in the process, he elicits amazing stories and insights. One of my favorites to date came from Dr. Martine Rothblatt, the transgendered Chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics, founded to save the life of one of her daughters, and founder of Sirius XM. Obviously a brilliant and successful scientist
and business person, the story that wowed me was her talking about her family practice of “love night.” She and her wife (married for 40 years and before coming out as transgender) for decades have devoted Friday evening dinners to this practice, allowing each person at the table to answer the question of what love meant to them during the previous week. Dr. Rothblatt’s current scientific challenge is finding ways to rehabilitate transplant lungs and deliver them more quickly and efficiently to recipients … a challenge that may require the invention of an electric helicopter. I’ve learned many things from Tim and his guests, probably the main one is that, regardless of who Tim’s guest is, it will be worth the time to listen. Tim does indepth research for each of his episodes and manages to ask the right questions and make his guests comfortable enough to tell great stories and explain their outlooks on life. Tim apparently makes friends wherever he goes, and he is one of the most successful podcasters so his guests always seem to feel honored to be invited onto the show and comfortable sharing. One theme that has emerged from Tim’s podcasts is the use and science of psychedelics. Many of Tim’s guests speak openly about their use and the studies that are now being done about the therapeutic use of psychedelics. Probably at least a third of the guests I’ve listened to have referenced LSD, ayahuasca or psilocybin and Tim has become an open proponent and funder of many scientific studies. Michael Pollan’s interview is a good place to start if this subject is of interest. Another one is the interview with Steven Pressfield. So many others are also favorites ... Jack Kornfield, Elizabeth Gilbert, Seth Godin, and Maria Popova who deserves her own call out for her fascinating, and free, newsletter.
BrainPickings (Maria Popova) started out as an email to a few friends and now seems to be shared with the entire Universe. Its tagline is An inventory of the meaningful life. And, by now, 15 years later, that may not be an exaggeration. Maria seems to have read everything (although she specializes in books not on the NYTimes bestseller list), and, even more impressively, she interlaces them so that it feels like you are having a conversation with half-a-dozen great writers and artists on a single subject. It’s no wonder that this rich, inspiring newsletter is now included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive. While not the most amazing part of her newsletter, it is pretty stunning that it is still completely free and ad-free. She does take donations and it only took me a few issues to realize that I wanted her to be well-paid enough that she would never go off to greener pastures. Subscribe at brainpickings.org.
Birds make us happy
You don’t have to be an avid birder with a life list to find joy in birds. In fact a new study from Germany shows that bird diversity is linked to happiness. This book and video of the same title by Douglas W. Tallamy tells us how to increase bird diversity whether we have a ten-acre estate or an inner city apartment. It’s all about caterpillars, the food that many birds need to reproduce ... and planting the RIGHT native plants. Inspiring!
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NEXT ISSUE: Keystone Mistletoe
Nature In all
things of
nature
there is
something
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marvelous. --
Aristotle
Curly Manzanita
Nature