Artist's Process Part Seventeen

The more familiar but automated the activity

Walking, working, sitting, involved in roles. The mind is content.

So activity such as painting or whatever we love can be practiced

Finding your knack, instinctual level.

Where the mind cannot do.

The last lesson always being letting go; Givin’er. 

Until then I found I either sub-c created drama,

And somehow trouble found me, seemingly by design,

Or I invented design in it to keep my mind rational.

To provide these gaps, ins and outs of life with a breath.

Tension and release.

If I created this, it must be because

some kind of letting go was still necessary for a human being.

This must be how we find.

And while bottled up, the mind had to possibly own these returns.

Why not use drama, self created missions, discovery, loss,

Heartache, argument, resolve.

That sub-c, and then to sit and lament, enjoying it.

I saw myself enjoying it at some level. I was creating this.

I was complicating things outside of my influence.

Losing adaptability, or having other needs when the situation

Is just a situation, and not about me.

So rather than rely on conflict to provide gaps,

One can peer, it is silent and clear, energetic, alive.

It’s okay to blush, I thought it was being done to me.

Instead I am training to jump a bridge I enjoy.

I intend and move my arm,

it is not anything prior automated by another,

Not from copied gestures, emulations.

My body is intention and willingness.

From my life and movements,

from nature as utterly as unique as yours.

Followed by colour and structure and symbols.

Words have a fucking long way of expressing a knack.

Art for me is seeing. Arriving there is the art of my way.

What I make is a bridge,

Inviting me back to being seeing doing-applying.

Having myself back.

I stopped my flow as a child, my relaxed with-myself.

To focus on other’s perceptions and fulfillment of real needs

Involved in necessary questions and outcomes.

But lacking understanding, without awareness of self.

I took those actions, successes failures,

Unrelated to me events as about me, and created an identity,

Was told what is my identity, although this I fought.

I lost my feeling of being alive.

I felt it when laughing out loud, but was restricted on what I could laugh about,

Was judged and I worked to belong,

And what did not became my secrets, was shame,

When seen could be used to shame me,

I resolved to not show. It is not a wall or anything.

Just an inner attitude that is forgotten it was made,

Further sealing impression of being an identity,

But it sucked living this way.

Oh, and some people climb cliffs, surf big waves and some drink. Why?

How did these activities become saints?

A cigarette? A saint. Relied upon pathway to feeling something,

Without doing anything that would be me; a jolt.

Did I taste these activities and ask, is it just me flung back to me?

Or is this thing infused with magic?

So then there is magic,

What is this magic when acknowledged by an attractive person?

What about when they can’t, or purposely won’t open up,

Too many days working, when is the next climbing siege trip?

Man, this vodka is making me bloated.

If there is any purpose in life, any intelligence out there,

And I am made of it,

My quest matters.

What is the mechanism that attraction, danger and stimulants,

Give me aliveness, me, or chance to be me.

So I used it, felt what it gave. Found it when doing things I enjoy,

Saw how much of it was possessed by the subconscious identity.

I developed a plan.

That plan is my technique,

and it is a place where to command it,

I have to return to being real.

Where I can speak for myself.

Say okay to your glimpse,

Recognize the difference between a glimpse and wanting.

Experience is an expanding cone.

So I don’t wish to rely on being torn apart in drama,

Or pry open doors temporarily with escapist dangerous activity,

And resolve then to push harder and soon fail next time,

I choose to put on my tunes,

I make that time for me happen.

Art is seeing-doing.

A celebration.

Today returning here.

I get there, each of us finding a way,

Each honouring a pieced together way,

If it ‘works’, it is reliable

from that emotional mental state back to

what feels alive and like a calm place inside,

from where we see, just feel good

without a problem being solved,

and proven in opposite circumstances,

it is then my way.

It means I can trust it

To start each day, beginning

from wherever else I end up normally,

back to seeing. Art is seeing, first I must have a window.

I must be me.

So I use this trust to start where..;

I would rather rely on old previously scheduled programming.

It feels distasteful, so I have to rely on my process,

Then what I do from there is decided there,

I have learned to be concerned with

returning to who it is I trust,

Rather than the conditioned identity that lives by

Best values, coping, managing, a tiny candle to feel

To laugh and feel cheerful by.

There is more I have felt, done, been,

Events, moments of synergy, alcohol, ambition pursuits, danger.

Demands, expectations growing, challenges increasing,

I see the point, was the moments of me freefalling,

The body on a parachute, the me alive witnessing my own scene.

pure joy with no reason.

Is there any reason to perusing a passion?

It is the passion, not for its own sake,

But who it uncovers.

One can celebrate victory or mourn loss,

But during was the only prize, what is truly sought again,

When wanting of the next doing.

Where I am fully engaged

Single evolving tasks within a singular intention,

I became aware, that I appeared.

There I am now, minus exhilaration,

just closing my eyes,

that is me intending to raise my arm

when in complete trust, no self consciousness,

I saw this; the arm was willed, me as the body followed,

There were many parts of this living experience,

But I had become identified, that that is me.

What every identification of me needed was

That it was an intention I could move, think, feel toward.

Then realizing, trust was moving from there, I simply trust me.

This is how I learned to trust myself outside of social proofs,

And that the secret of love was first knowing this feeling,

Then without expectation and judgement, there could be contact,

Sincerity, less effortful suspicious tact, more felt tact,

Less effort on my face to smile, a comfortable neutral,

Or an honest admission of insecurity,

Because where I could return had to be done alone, even as I tried

I desperately wanted it to be together.

Together could only receive from each bringing from this space,

Could develop in unimaginably joyful ways.

But not for me right now. This is not where convention has interest,

I have returned, felt, thanked life, expressed, engaged in paint and colour,

Or I have not, and then there is no party waiting.

If I go, everyone will be drunk or high under the impression

That all of this is nonsense and yet drinking to alter their state anyway.

Its simple, it works, there is too much work, too little time,

Don’t mess with convention.

Unless you have the time.

And ready to go alone, possibly reaching out to two

people who may read this, but likely the ‘universe’ as I imagine guiding me,

will make this visible after I pass on.

In the meanwhile and up to including that moment,

I have this to return to,

Some moments of fear and sadness aside,

Okay many moments.

This is why it is a returning. And why it is again. And every time beginning again.

The identity is too complex, it did not develop in some 40 years,

There were facets of a person I did not know in my character

As I reflected as a 6 year old child,

Asking how will it be, how will I feel looking at this spot on the balcony

When I visit many years from now,

I did, I went to that spot, with my reflection in mind. It was me asking,

It is still me. So I cannot fit into some cultural norm,

Some expectation of how to think, and act,

And yet good comes toward others in my day job,

Sincere good will, mixed with exhilaration just being engaged in my task,

Also healthily aware of making money, of human  connection, contact,

All within healthy boundaries, from discernment of what is right

For the other, and within our working relationship.

Not instead so ‘that’ I will feel and have and get and make and build.

It is a catharsis. It has happened with my awareness,

So I can choose to return, remain, build trust to live there 24hours.

So that love, listening, care, giving, having boundaries,

All healthy values arose from sharing

Or any thing to solve first before simply I could relax.

What if this is what meditation is? I asked.

It is. For me. It is my way. This is what I see and paint

As Finn-I-am.