OGT DAILY - Day Seventy Six CHANGE OF HEART

Day seventy six - all I can think of is "Seventy six trombones led the big parade, with a hundred and ten cornets right behind."    We saw The Music Man several years back on Broadway with seventy six actual trombones.  What an amazing sound.  Then up in Skowhegan, Maine we went to a community theater version with maybe one or two trombones backed up by a ringer in the orchestra pit, which was just charming by comparison.

Well, ya got trouble, my friend, right here,

I say, trouble right here in River City.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a con man come to town and just wanted to sell us musical instruments before skipping out of River City?   Instead we're getting sold a bill of goods about coal industry and manufacturing jobs and bids to build the great wall of Mexico.  

Is it possible that DJ Trump has an ounce of humanity and could have some change of heart that involves the American people the way Harold Hill had about the people of River City?

NY Times says he's softening on NAFTA because he probably has to, but Congress just passed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood and he'll sign it.   

When can we see Trump the Musical on Broadway - starring Alec Baldwin, Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy and Boris and Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

OGT DAILY - Day Seventy Five SCALES

Today was one of those biting March days where you maybe aren't wearing quite enough because the sky is bright and there are signs of warm weather everywhere like pansies in the pots along Manhattan streets.  But the pansies are shivering and so are you because even though you can smell the warms days of April ahead the snap of winter still blasts through your coat.

Maybe more like "in like a lamb, out like a lion."  


As I headed to a meeting at Washington Square this morning I passed a man on the shuttle platform playing Bach cello suites in a tuxedo.   I think it was one of the later suites maybe 5 in c minor, which has a mournful quality - even the usually joyful prelude.   I smiled at him for his gracious formality presented to a mostly uninterested crowd of commuters and gave him some money.  He played beautifully and reminded me of the luxury of having my own son play the cello suites for years in our home so I could listen and be calmed by their classic and predictable rhythms.  

Everyone loves Bach and these suites because they provide a music that mimics the rhythm of our own biology.  All weekend we talked about the pendulation between alertness and relaxation which makes for a healthy biorhythm.   We also talked about what disturbs that rhythm - trauma, stress, neglect, confusion, abandonment - causing humans beings to be over vigilant or aggressive to save themselves or to become hidden, scared or silent out of fear.   Such is the legacy of man's inhumanity to man.   But Bach was a natural healer.  It makes sense since he was writing church music which would be inherently spiritual.  Beyond that is a reassuring mathematical, geometry to his music which follows patterns of upward and downward (pendulating) scales and arpeggios, with many interesting "accidentals" thrown in to create texture.   I love playing my scales.  My violin teacher plays them daily for hours and calls it - "keeping us honest."   There is nothing more reassuring to me than the predictable up and down of a scale and its arpeggios.   A great thing to do before going to sleep.   Much better than listening to the news!

OGT DAILY - Day Seventy Four SPRING FLOWERS

Okay so even with this unseasonably early spring and warm winter some things have remained predictable.   While the tulips came up too early along with the daffodils and got nipped by the March blizzard, the hellabour plants on the hill behind my house have waited until Easter to make their full appearance.  These are winter blooming plants.  Some bloom at Christmas, but my plants have maintained their schedule despite any fluctuations in temperature, rain or humidity.   While winter seems to be arriving later and lasting perhaps a month and a half now; while the Trump administration lives in another fairytale land where CO2 and man are not a source of changing climate conditions, my hellabour plants appear to have their own internal clock.   This is mildly reassuring as I watch the garden waking up from its brief winter sleep.

In addition my neighbor's lawn is now spread with scylla and snowdrops.  These are exactly on time as well.

OCT DAILY - Day Seventy Three FORGETTING

Aaahh what a luxury to forget and not care.   Much as I love this daily practice of writing about "one good thing"  I watched my soap opera last night (Big Little Lies on HBO) and blissfully fell into a delicious sleep.   It was morning before I realized I had reneged on my contract again.  But you know what?   I did not care.   I had created a self-imposed stress inducing deadline for myself of editing several stories and submitting them for a 3/31 deadline to various journals.    Crazy, since I haven't touched those stories since August - and totally unrealistic.  So where was all that pressure coming from?   Internal combustion? Anxiety? A senseless striving for what?   This is what I have taken away from my weekend in Connecticut: A little less intensity goes a long way.  Not having to get so wound up and letting go of some of the self imposed agenda makes for a happier me.  

I've certainly gotten to this point in other ways.   Via meditation and walking etc... but I am always genuinely grateful for this realization, especially since it comes from the body and allows for more ease, clarity and contentment.  

So that is the good thing - being able to forget and relax.   Not even Paul Ryan, Devin Nunes, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and the rest of the evil clown show trying to pull a quick rabbit out of the hat on us could unsettle my calm.  Although I will admit to some nasty thoughts cast in their general direction.   Tomorrow I'll call the M of C about the need for a special investigator and Senators to block Gorsuch.   Always something to be done, but maybe with less frantic urgency.

OGT DAILY - Seventy Two MIDDLE GROUND

I think the most important thing I have taken away from my intensive weekend training - and there were many important things including connections with an amazing collection of fellow professionals from psychologists to yoga instructors - was reassurance of a "middle path."  

This is actually a DBT concept - Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a modality where one is encouraged to hold two concepts to be true at the same time.   Thus the dialectic.   For example with a teenager it can be: "My parents are really mean and don't allow me to do the things I want, but they also love me."     So it's a middle road that is not one extreme or the other (eg "I hate my parents" or "I love my parents.")

With Somatic Experiencing this is more related to body experience and my big discovery was that I "check out" a lot at certain times during the day.  This was especially true during long lectures and intense, emotional demonstrations.   The clinical word is dissociate - or not being present in your body, checking out, spacing out.  Those who experience extreme trauma such as a abuse or war or accidents have good reason to dissociate.   But we all do this everyday for less urgent reasons and simply because there is so much information coming at us all the time that we cannot always take it in.  At first I felt a sense of guilt and shame that I was doing this so much.  With the help of many teachers at this workshop, I was able to accept that this happens and just begin to notice it.  Then it became less of a big deal and I began to relax ( less anxiety) and voila - less dissociation and more ability to focus and notice things.

This also lines up with Joseph Goldstein's Insight Meditation technique of noticing and naming emotion, thoughts and sensations that enter the mind/body during meditation.  By naming and noticing them they become a bit more distant and allow you to maintain control and be present.  

It was really quite a gift.   Going to try and hold onto this.

OGT DAILY - Day Seventy One LETTING GO

Okay so this is a day late, but what a long weekend it has been!   I feel like I've compressed three life times into the last four days and in a sense maybe I have.  

Last night was my daughter's 27th birthday party so I had a good excuse, but in addition I had been doing experiential learning all day before that, and for two whole days before that.  This learning involved exploring all the body sensations stored up from whatever life traumas I've experienced.
I mean headaches, stomach aches, throat and chest restriction, panic attacks, agitation, anxiety.   Believe me it was quite a party.   How do you learn to manage this stuff?   Well there was only one way:

Letting Go!

It's a little bit like skiing. If you fight the hill you'll land on your ass, stiff, bruised and angry, but if you allow yourself to fall into the hill, your skis will turn for you and you'll follow a rhythm down to the bottom.

This training - Somatic Experiencing - is about helping the body regain a natural rhythm and this may involve uncovering some unpleasant stuff.    But also the pleasant sensation and relief of letting it go.

OGT DAILY - Day Seventy DISCOVERY

Seventy whole days!   Can you believe it?   I've stuck it out and so have you dear audience.  There will be no great revelations or photo essays tonight as this cowgirl is just exhausted.

And the good thing, of many, to be grateful for today was a discovery about myself and the way I practice as a therapist that was both painful and extremely useful.  No growth without some discomfort!  This is the result of having spent the last two full days immersed in a beginner's training in Somatic Experiencing deep in the hinterlands of Connecticut at a corporate hotel spa.   Whole mornings watching lectures in cold meeting rooms and then working through emotionally exhausting training exercises.  Somatic Experiencing is a body based therapeutic treatment which addresses the way we as humans regulate distressing feelings in the body and how we become dysregulated and then can learn to regulate again.  It is a way for working with trauma, which effects both mind and body, but often results in body based issues.

So we were asked to work in pairs and to image, but not say while looking at our partner, "I need to fix you."   Then we had to switch and think, "I trust that you have the capacity to heal yourself."
The first was very hard for me and I had to say in my head very loudly, "I NEED TO FIX YOU.  I NEED TO FIX YOU.  I NEED TO FIX.  YOU ARE SICK. I NEED TO FIX YOU."  And the while while I was girding myself and squashing the urge to send out the thought, " You are whole, you can heal yourself."  I also held in my own energy as that is the resource I send to people.  So it was a relief to switch and feel, "You can heal and I'm sending healing energy to you."  With reiki when you send healing energy you generally receive it as well and this was my experience.

However that was not the experience of my partner who said, "The first time round I felt completely free (when I was holding myself back), but the second time I felt completely drained and restricted by you."   Wow - it was a wake up call.  With Reiki you really need to ask permission to give energy to another or it could be an invasion upon them.  This was a reminder.  In giving energy that way I had turned on the "I can fix you" wavelength, where as when I was consciously trying to hold that back I was not inflicting my need to help.   It was painful reminder of my own need to impose an agenda.  She did not want or need to be "fixed" by being sent reiki energy.

But it was hopeful for me in terms of the use of body energy to help people with this method which is based on intuitive sensing (like Reiki) but also really grounded in observation of body states and the neural science behind traumatic response.

I also met so many new and interesting people from physical therapists to dancers to musicians and other energy workers well as psychologists and other psychotherapists.  This training will continue over three years during which I imagine we will be well bonded and make many new discoveries about ourselves, each other and our craft as healers.

Round three tomorrow - Good night

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Nine - WHITE LIES

Today I spent the entire day in a training in central Connecticut in a corporate convention room of a hotel.   It was an experiential trauma training and therefore somewhat draining emotionally.

They ended the training by showing an inspirational Vimeo called "Wolves Can Change Rivers" which was a sort of Hallmark Card of a mini documentary about Yellowstone Park and the re-introduction of wolves to the ecosystem in 1995.  The movie's claim, which they demonstrate through lots of dynamic National Geo-like photos, is that wolves caused a "trophic cascade" ending in the change in the course of the actual river.   What does that mean?  Good question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q

Wolves killed off deer and elk who were over grazing meadowlands.  With the wolves there deer avoided the open meadows, which soon grew back more forest.  More trees brought more birds and then beavers to the area.   These brought more wildlife who liked the pools created by the dams and the whole ecosystem became more lively.  The trees also stabilized the land around the rivers so that they would not meander as much and stay within their river bed.    Sounds beautiful right?  Sounds too simple and easy right?

Right.  It's since been debunked.   Wolves returning to the wild do have an impact on Yellowstone, but man has probably a greater impact.  The claim that they can change the course of rivers is a fairytale made for a TED talk, but...

If that is a fairytale or  a white lie I'll take it anyway.   I like the idea of wolves back in Yellowstone and I wish the woods around us were still wild enough for these creatures.  Maybe we would have less deer then and I could keep my tulips in the Spring.

I'll take the Hallmark Card lie about Yellowstone over Donald Trump/Breitbart/Spicer/Conway Alternative Facts any day - even if in some ways its just as bad.  At least its easier on the eyes and inspires people to cheer for the environment.

Today was a good day for anyone who cares about health care.   A large victory for the resistance. The result of many small contributions.   Hooray.

OGT DAILY -Day Sixty Eight INSPIRATION

Okay so sometimes I am less than inspired. Today I could not get myself out of bed, but had to because of the dog who barks because she's thirsty.  Or she has to pee and she's blind so she needs help and I have to get up.   But even walking down the stairs, I'm still asleep and then standing at the door I can't keep my eyes open and it's sooo cold.   23 F this morning.  It is too late to go back to bed so I do stretches hoping to wake up slowly, but I cannot seem to activate my body and my mind is both busy ruminating and cloudy - Intelligence Committee, Manaforte, Nunes, Ivanka in the White House.   Meditation is just as bad.  It's brief.  My hands are cold.  I can't seem to wake up or get warm and energy is not there.  I do a little Qi Gong exercise to get the energy level going and that helps, but as I have learned, "This is how it is right now."

I chose words for myself randomly from cards I have and they were: Oneness, Patience and Inspiration.    Seems I'll need patience to find any kind of oneness or inspiration today.  Joan Boryshenko's Pocketfull of Miracles suggests thinking about the shadow, a Jungian concept about the dark unseen parts of self.   The previous day was a meditation on The Thunder, Perfect Mind - a poem found in the Nag Hammadi - Gnostic Gospels - a poem from an unknown prophet in a distinctly feminine voice - or is it?:

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

For I am the first and the last.

I am the honored one and the scorned one.

I am the whore and the holy one.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and I am peace.

A mysterious set of contradictions similar to words spoken by Jesus; speaking in the voice of an all encompassing divinity.  Scholar Nanna Liv Elkjoer Olsen (1) describes this scriptural text which is a full seven pages of prayer like riddle as both utter nonsense and deeply profound; that is presents a voice of God which is hard to pin down and characterize because it is constantly contradicting itself:

I am the bride and the bride groom,

and it is my husband who gave birth to me

I am mother of my father, and the sister of my husband, 

and he is my offspring.

Olsen goes on to say that the constant affirming of opposite makes for a God who is beyond any category.   The poem takes the form of riddle which invites the reader to search for the identity of its author, only to end up deluded that they could know anything about this identity.  Though the text makes no literal sense, Olsen suggests that taken as whole the poem has meaning as performance, as a prayer that tells us something of the unknowable and all encompassing quality of God and existence.  There is the "oneness."  The notion that we are all part of the same consciousness and that consciousness is essentially unknowable so just give up and give into it.  All very cosmic.   There is such subversive meaning in this text found in the second century when Aristotelian logic was at the fore.   The non-linear emotive power speaks to the right brain, the mythos female aspect as opposed to the male logos or logic   Finding it today reminds me of my mother who was always reading books like "When God Was a Woman," by Merlin Stone.    Speaking of women and divinity: Dorothy Day's grand daughter Kate Hennessy just published a new biography of her life, "The World Will Be Saved By Beauty."   Dorothy founded the Catholic Worker Movement, which believed in living out the liturgy of the bible by acting on good works on feeding and clothing the poor and homeless.  Before becoming a Catholic, she was a journalist, a communist, and a suffragist arrested for protesting a woman's right to vote in the 1920's.  She was a social activist all of her life, an inspiration to my parents, who were part of the movement, and a good friend of my aunt Ade Bethune.   The Catholic church wants to canonize her as a saint, a distinction she apparently eschewed as nonsense.   My grandmother used to knit her sweaters and present them to her. Then she would promptly give them away down at the original CW House shelter on the Bowery where my aunt described her as, "Sleeping on the floor on newspapers." Now she was an inspiration.

Dorothy Day 

My aunt Ade Bethune on left and Dorothy next to her at the Catholic Worker House 1934

Thunder Perfect Mind – or How Nonsense Makes Sense
Nanna Liv Elkjær Olsen (1)

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Seven WIND

Turner "Wind in Clouds

Today began with a brisk walk in the cold with the wind whipping the trees and clouds above the Palisades.  

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” 
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“For example, the wind has its reasons. We just don't notice as we go about our lives. But then, at some point, we are made to notice. The wind envelops you with a certain purpose in mind, and it rocks you. The wind knows everything that's inside you. And not just the wind. Everything, including a stone. They all know us very well. From top to bottom. It only occurs to us at certain times. And all we can do is go with those things. As we take them in, we survive, and deepen.” 
― Haruki Murakami, Hear the Wind Sing

Winds in March bring change of weather, of light, of optimism as the days grow longer and the possibilities of spring and summer lie ahead.    I've always enjoyed the energy of brisk breeze at my back even if it was one of those mornings when a tree might crash on your head or the 200 foot crane down the street might blow over.

Wind is a harbinger of change; an alchemical element like fire, water and earth; a catalyst for transformation.   In Hindu and Chinese tradition it in Prana or Chi - the life force.   Though we cannot see the wind, its invisible forces recall our essence, our spirit snd the soul of those who've passed on.
The changes that come are not always easy, but we can't stop the wind.

Turner watercolor 

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Six CHOICES

So today was the Vernal Equinox; that day when the light is balanced between day and night.

I woke up this morning way too late for all that needed to be done and just lay there in bed listening to the radio... on and on about Gorsuch and Comey and who wiretapped who or what and why 45 is such a liar.  Anyway no incentive to get up right?   Still I did and lo and behold I could hold that tree pose, both sides, without a wobble and it was like a straight shot to heaven - just floating.   A good meditation and I was balanced all day.  Who says our environment doesn't influence us?   The Vernal Equinox.

This has me thinking about choices; whether we choose to see the glass half full or half empty.   Do we choose to be more balanced or not?   I think we are influenced by the eternal elements of the seasons, the moon, sun, stars, but ultimately we make the choices even if those choices are affected by the atmosphere.   The choice to set my balance with the tree pose leads to greater ease, leads to a better day, leads to new encounters and an openness to the world.

Today I went and photographed the new show I hung yesterday and put up the labels with my new friend Nancy, a fellow collagist, with whom I am showing along with another collage artist.   The three of us were so well paired in terms of image, color and geometric form.  It was fun to curate together and see the dialogue which occurred between my woven collages, Nancy's color grids and Phyllis' ephemeral polaroid collages.   If I hadn't made the impulsive choice to join this gallery last fall I would not have been in three shows this year already and made a new art friend today.

Nancy and I have a certain obsessive artistic point of view in common.  We are both fussy about detail and have our hands is a million different projects that pull us in so many directions that the OCD must be a practical response to maintain focus. When I asked her about this tendency,  she said, "Well the world is just too interesting."  And this made me feel better about my choices to paint and write and make music and engage myself in many layers of creation.

As if reading my thoughts, Nancy said, "I'm a layerist as well."   At first I wasn't sure what she was talking about, but she added, "As a collagist I layer a lot, but I'm a layerist and believe in layers in life." This sounded to me like an obscure or occult club or like the Odd Fellows or something.  Sure enough, layerists see the world as multi-layered and have their own society composed of artists, weavers, doctors, scientists, etc...   This sounded consonant with my interest in weaving and its metaphor for life.   So it's nice to make choices that open your eyes to new dimensions of life - new friends and ideas.  As much as I love my old friends, I so appreciate the new energy and excitement of new friends.   By the way the Odd Fellows is a society that believes in a philosophy of service to others and friendship.

"A Layerist is a person who knows that the Universe is an endless interdependent web of dynamic and dimensional diversities each with a life long desire for passionate interaction that will work for ALL"

Taken from:
http://layerist.com/docs/Layers_layerist/Layers_layerist.html

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Five FRIENDS

So this is one of those days where I literally do not have time to breath.  Always a bad idea, but seriously I have spent the entire evening checking things off the "famous" list after spending the entire day at the gallery hanging a collage show.  Which looks great by the way!   Opening is Sunday 3/27 from 2-5 pm.  Upstream Gallery, 8 Main Street, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.   I and the two other new members of this cooperative gallery were given a last minute show due to a cancellation.   And we all do collage mixed media.  So a very cohesive group, but I had to drag out old work because everything new is still in progress.   Yet these old work are like old friends.  Oldies but goodies; paper weavings and large geometric pastels.   Sometimes things can sit on the shelf and age a bit and still get better.  The same can be said for friends.   It is challenging now with Twitter and Facebook because it seems everyone is your friend, but nothing can replace sitting around and having actual dinner with friends you have known for twenty years of more.  We share so many memories and life experiences that rehashing over wine and a pot of stewed chicken becomes one of the true pleasures of life.  I say this especially because we have lost so many good friends and family this past couple of years.

So hears to my friends!  Thanks for all the meals and memories.

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Four PERSPECTIVE

"The winds of God's grace are always blowing, it is for us to raise our sail."  Krishnarama

I went to bed feeling restless; needing a change: new job, new house, new political climate, new perspective.

I woke this morning at 6:30 having to take the dog out.   Then did my morning stretches and found the change there.   A spaciousness and ease in the body despite the usually cranky aches and pains; the sciatic hip, the slightly shorter left leg and buckling knee.   Aaah such a gift!  The quote I found in Joan Boryshenko's book of daily meditations from Krishnarama seemed apt.

I went for a walk for the first time in several weeks despite the dirty banks of frozen snow and lack of sidewalks; the twenty degree weather and my current sore throat.  I walked for five miles and the first thing that greeted me as I stepped out the door was a Georgia O'Keefe cloud sky.

I've seen this painting or one like it at The Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.   The sky this morning was that exact shade of pale cobalt with a touch of pink and those continuous rows of cotton ball clouds.  How's that for new perspective?   A sky I would hoist my sale into any day and I did. Walking the length of Warburton Avenue into Yonkers toward the Hudson Museum I heard numerous woodpeckers and saw one close up who was calling above me.  An unusual sound I've never heard before.    

From: Georgia O’Keeffe in An American Place Exhibition Brochure, 1944:

“I was the sort of child that ate the raisin on the cookie and ate around the hole in the doughnut saving either the raisin or the hole for the last and best. So, probably – not having changed much – when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones – what I saw through them – particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world . . . They were most wonderful against the Blue – That Blue that will always be there after all man’s destruction is finished.”

(quoted in Drohojowska-Philp 404)

From Liz Brindley, Curatorial Intern at The Georgia O'Keefe Museum:

"O’Keeffe spent much of her time looking up through the lens of these bones, or out toward the distant clouds of the open skies on the horizon. But eventually the artist changed her perspective from below the clouds to up above when she started traveling internationally by plane. She began to paint what she saw from this bird’s-eye perspective:

O'Keefe with Sky Above Clouds IV 

When I re-plant my feet on the ground after O’Keeffe takes me up in the sky, I see more light, space, and realize the unfathomably infinite ways in which we can see this world. Georgia O’Keeffe’s cloud paintings speak to me this summer as the fluffy formations drift in and out over us, sprinkling rain here and there.  Standing beneath these expanses, and above them in O’Keeffe’s paintings, broadens our perspectives, leads our eyes upward in captivated stares where we can float away into daydreams of what Miss O’Keeffe might think of these rainy days."

Taken from Georgia O'Keefe Museum Blog post: https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/2015/07/13/head-in-the-clouds-draft-unfinished/

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Three LISTS

Have I talked about lists yet?   No!  Well by all means I must then

Stop me if I have or I'm boring you, but how would I get through my day without lists?

Actually I have not been getting very successfully thru any day lately mostly because I have not been making lists.   I can stand up go down stairs and then return to my desk completely empty handed having had some water, watered a plant and moved clothing out of the washer into the dryer, but not retrieved whatever obscure item it was that sent me looking in the first place.   Then there is the sitting and becoming bilious with rage at Facebook and the TRUMP Outrage as if there were all the time in the world. Next thing three hours are gone - literally gone from my life!  I do not have that luxury.

So lists are a good thing to remember.  My lists refer to lists as many a list maker likes to say, but they work.  The current one made has 23 items on it and I have been on track.  9 Items got checked off today and that took up most of two days.   I am so inundated with e-mail that if I do not create reminders I will forget which to respond to.  Lists literally save me time and again; acting as an external hard drive for my brain.   I am nor referring to the little note pad on my phone either, which I do use.   I am speaking of an honest to goodness hen scratch on a scrap of paper that gets shoved into my bag, dragged everywhere, and laid out on my desk until all items are checked off.   When that happens it is very satisfying.

Today also a random picture of my daughter holding a birthday cake.  Next week she will be 27!

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty Two - BALANCE

Notes from my meditation practice:   I always try to incorporate the yoga tree pose in my morning rituals.   These rituals consist of trying to get up by 7:30; stretching and yoga to help my lower back; meditation with reiki; and then if I am really good a walk as well.   Life isn't always that seamless as you know.

One way to see how balanced (or unbalanced) I am on any given day is to do that tree pose.
You know the one.  One leg up by the knee while the other one holds you up as your hands are held on prayer and generally are wobbling allover the place like a mast in high wind.

The tendency is to look around at everyone else to see if they are wobbling too which makes you fall and have green monster jealousy of those yogis who look as serene as this woman.   What you really need to do is just focus and it stops the wobbles and this takes practice.  But actually I've gotten pretty good at it.   The right side is stronger than the left, but I can hold both for several minutes and on a good morning it feels easy.     This practice has allowed me a view into balance in the emotional and physical body sense.  Some nights I just don't sleep.  Get up and can't stand in tree long enough to get heel on your thigh. Then I think to myself, "Well you were up till 1:00 watching Steven Colbert or Rachel Maddow worrying about the national tragi-comedy."   Other days the foot goes up and stays without effort.  The body stands lightly with no strain and barely pressure on the pad of the foot below.   This is when an inner force holds the body.   They say focus on the core and its true.  If you pull in the belly and straighten the posture, weight comes off the standing leg.   But I have also found there is a visual core, that I see.  I focus on the beam of wood in the window before me and nothing else.  I imagine the beam within me and then it becomes a light and then I'm not thinking about my standing leg at all.  My focus shifts internally and I have become the beam of light.  The hands go up into prayer and above the head and then out from the body.

Other times any distraction, a passing car or neighbor walking their dog draws my eye and down I come.   But the practice of the tree doesn't just inform me of my internal balance, it forms my inner balance.  The practicing of focussed balancing creates balance.  The more I do it the better I get at doing it and that can affect my entire day.

Small shifts in attentional focus - from the beam of wood, to the beam inside me, to the beam being light - transforms the practice so that it becomes transformative.   

This is true with sitting practice also.  Small mind is always poking at me: :"Oh my hip hurts.  Oh that paper cut I got yesterday is throbbing. Oh I have to worry about grading papers.  Have to go to the bank. Pay the bills."   You have your own list I'm sure.

Sometimes all it takes, though, is a small adjustment of posture; settling the shoulders back, lifting the chin and then the breath settles again.  Then I can breath into the achey hip and treat it with kind attention and maybe I visualize a dragon lion instead of pain. Another shift in posture and like the beam of light, and I become the dragon lion and meditation is transformed.   That will follow me all day.   Doesn't happen all the time, but it's worth practicing for.

Many years ago I worked with a young teen who struggled to find balance.  Every time her drug addicted mother came back into her life she was thrown into a tailspin.  She was tall and elegant and dreamed of being a model.  Her signature drawing was a girl standing in mini skirt with one leg tucked up under the skirt like the tree pose.  I real metaphor for the balancing act of what it meant for her to keep her life together.   When I think of her and wonder where she is now, I think of egrets or white cranes; elegant birds who so effortlessly stand in balance despite the prevailing winds.

Balance is one good thing.   A pronouncement of "boringly good health" at my annual physical is another!

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty One COMMON SENSE

So it has been a day, and perhaps week, where some bit of common sense has seeped back into the global consciousness.

Islamaphobe Geert Wilders was defeated in the Netherlands, and the conservative center People's Party for Freedom and Democracy remains in place.   Thank goodness for the sensible Dutch! Germany's Angela Merkel declared it, "a good day for democracy."   Wilder's party came in second and picked up numerous seats in their parliament.  Europe still struggles with its immigrant issues and the next test is France in April.

But thanks to my friend Laurie I have a list of other "good" things to be positive about this week as our politicians seem to be regaining some sense even as conservative Republican's are wilding with our healthcare and the Whitehouse has introduced a draconian budget, which favors weapons and walls over meals for elders and medical research.   Guess we don't need to eat or find a cure for cancer after all because we'll all be so safe here in the homeland.

Things to be grateful for:

1) No to Geert Wilders
2. 12 GOP Senators criticizing the American Health Care Act aka Trumpcare. 
3. Justice Department brings charges against Russian intelligence agents. 
4. Trump's second attempt at Muslim Ban fails in Hawaii and again in Washington State. 
5. Bipartisan criticism: no evidence of wiretapping for Trump's psycho tweet about Obama. 
6. Republican senators holding up nominations until public disclosure into Russian influence.

All in all a good day for democracy indeed.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte of People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD)

OGT DAILY - Day Sixty - GRACE

The act of creating a painting requires the presence of grace even if the product is not so pretty.
The last month has been a striving for this presence with fleeting moments of success.   It is hard to embody grace when in a constant state of stress and watching the news, FB, the paper, radio has been anything but conducive of gracefulness.

However last night I was in bed by eleven and then up today by 6:30 when I did my stretches and a kind of a deep resonant meditation using focussed breathing and acknowledgement of a divine grace which can induce a state of calm, clarity and focus.   Focussed or "coherent" breathing, by the way is a technique I've learned, which comes from Stephen Elliot, a yoga teacher who developed this method of visualizing focal points for the breath as a way to reset the autonomic nervous system as in QiGong breathing exercises.  For more information: www.coherence.com.   I have been reading Peter Levine's book as well,  In An Unspoken Voice - about the work of allowing the body to reset itself naturally after a state of trauma, which involves natural physical movement like shaking or trembling.  It's wonderful really to become familiar with such methods to allow your body to heal from physical or psychic upsets without much fuss and with very simple movements.

At any rate today was a calm day and I would say somewhat grace filled.  Two of the ugliest canvases I have been struggling with gained a measure of wholeness today.  I'm not saying I don't appreciate their ugly states.   I do.  I am going to begin documenting the transformation of one of them.  It's just that there needs to be a state of grace between the mind, the hand and the body in order for an image to emerge.   They are all reflective of my inner life and the ugly gives testament to tremendous struggle with anxiety which is national affliction if not international at this point.   It's just that the ugly image is restless; has not yet found its point of balance; its inner grace.   At least one of the ugly paintings reached a point of balance today even in its ugliness.   That was a small victory.

Here is a favorite painting/painter of mine.  An image filled with grace:

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit by John Singer Sargeant 

Detail

Notice how in the detail the doll she holds is created out of loose brushstrokes.   When you step back from the painting it becomes solid and your eye sees a doll.   This was Sargeant's genius, his ability to make the casual mark appear so unstudied when it so completely conveys an aspect of realism.  I just love the balance between light and dark and the older girls retreating into darkness as adolescents will do.   There is both an ease and a tension in this image which makes it so compelling.  I saw it in person at The Museum of Fine Arts Boston - flanked by the two Chinese blue vessels which are in the painting.

OGT DAILY - Day Fifty Nine HIBERNATION

What an utter luxury.   The return of winter affirms my belief in seasons, which smacks of my nostalgia for "the way it used to be."   There is no need to hurry when you know you can't go anywhere and there were seriously no cars on the road today for hours.  Not even snow plows.   It must have been three o'clock before they emerged in force and the snow had finally dwindled to a fine mist.   Isn't that the purpose of snow to force a bit of hibernation?   Internal reflection? Making of fires and hot pots of tea?   Then I have only experienced Xmas in California once and have never lived in Florida.

Perhaps this is just part of my east coast bubble or is it nostalgia for when America was still great?But it sure seems we were all ready for a little break.

Much as I love snow in February for my birthday though, I think I'm going to have to learn how to adjust to our a climate even if it means blizzards in April and Indian summer in February.   That's our new reality.

Today we shoveled a foot and a half of heavy granular snow off the walks and drive, but I also called Elliot Engel and told him to vote against the healthcare bill.   Both are a drop in the bucket, but we have to hope all those drops add up.

OGT DAILY- Day Fifty Eight ANTICIPATION

All day we prepared; checking for flashlights and batteries; clogging the aisles of the Foodtown; cancelling all appointments for the morning; laying out shovels and salt and praying the winds do not take out the power.  My neighbor has an elaborate ritual of laying down tarps and crates all over her front walk and driveway.  The theory is she can then just dump the snow out and not have to shovel. She is a stubborn 80 year old who does not like any help or dependence on neighbors.   My husband bought a small generator in the event the power goes so he can keep his salt water fish tank heated! He just bought a new fish.  You see where his priorities lie.

It is being billed the storm of the year and we are hunkering down and anticipating a day of snow, snow, and shoveling.   No meetings, no mail, no newspapers and perhaps no TV.   I do hope everyone is safe and warm and has shelter, but I look forward to forgetting the crisis of our government for one day and focussing on the snow.   Such anticipation gives us permission to stay home, read a book, drink tea and let it all go.   Enjoy your snow day!

OGT DAILY - Day Fifty Seven - SPIRITS

The wind was up and the temperature was down.   Spirits were in the air and I tried to lasso them into my work in the studio with some minor success.   Venturing into the realm of the abstract is always a bit dicey.  The truth about art comes out.  It's not all pretty.  Some of it's boring and some of it's spectacular with a thing going on that's hard to define other than the presence of spirit.

So the movie yesterday, Personal Shopper, was about spirits both benevolent and malicious.  It was a bit of a horror film, but more psychological than anything else.   Kristen Stewart stars in this French made genre piece set in Paris.   She is a psychic or at least trying to be as she tries to contact her deceased twin brother who was a spiritual medium and agreed to give her a sign from the "other side" once he passed away.

She keeps telling people "I'm waiting," referring to this sign when they asked what she does in Paris. In the mean time she supports herself by working as a personal shopper (hence the name of the film) for an impossibly rich celebrity who is never home but communicates through notes and text messages sending Kristen Stewarts character to Cartier for jewelry and exclusive designers for one of the kind clothes.   She drops $4500 in one store for a belt and two handbags.

But the sign never seems to come and Stewart (who looks beautiful, wan and malnourished in a reprise of her earlier role in "The Clouds of Sils Maria" by the same director Olivier Assayas, where she played the under appreciated personal assistant to Juliette Binoche's fading movie star) - begins to doubt her ability to read psychic phenomenon.   In her search for ways to make contact she comes across artists who dabbled in psychic encounters.  She watches a film of Victor Hugo holding seances and talking to historical figures.  She learns about Hilma af Klint a Swedish artist from the 1890's who was creating abstract paintings before Kandinsky, Miro, Klee and any of the early abstract painters.

Eventually Stewart makes contact with a spirit and there are tortured scenes of her riding a train and being texted by this presence which we can't tell is her brother or even if it is a friendly spirit.  It's very suspenseful, plays with notions of grief and loss and disconnection of technology which are bypassed by spirit and emotion. Assayas won best director at Cannes for this and Stewart plays a nervous, introspective yet complicated role.  Worth seeing.

Hilma alf Klint was a follower of Rudolf Steiner who was founder of the field of Theosophy, which combines science and spiritualism. Steiner was interested in the spiritual aspect of the arts and later went on to found the famous Waldorf Steiner schools, which work on a theory of philosophical freedom.   She created huge colorful, geometric and symbolic painting which were in part derived from contact with spirits through seances and spiritual visions and the occult.  Jung had a similar experience in his own self analysis using the creation of mandalas which he documented in the Red Book.  Klint forbid her paintings to be shown during her lifetime, stipulating that they could not be shown until 20 years after her death (in 1944).   She believed her paintings, which like automatic writing, were dictated by higher powers and represented a visual language that would not be understood during her life time. She is now credited with influencing the abstract movement that was to follow in the 20th century.

Painting by Hilma alf Klint 

I saw a collection of her paintings at the New Museum in the fall as part of the Collections exhibit. Many of them bore symbolism and colors which remind me of the chakra system, which is vibrational has a color scheme relation to rainbow spectrum, which is also vibrational.  Much os this relates to Reiki work which uses the natural vibration/ energy of the body for  healing.  So her paintings have a familiar resonance for me.   Painting is for me a spiritual process involving shape and color.  Maybe some of those shapes and colors are the passing of spirits of those I have known and lost; who are now memories that leave glancing impressions on the page.

Painting by Hilma alf Klint

Speaking of spirits and movies, Spirited Away by Miyazaki is one of my all time favorites.  If you haven't seen it you should.

OGT DAILY -Day Fifty Six - HOUSE KEEPING

There is something so meditative and organizing about wiping up muck and throwing out leftovers.   My appetite just flies out the window when I open the refrigerator door and the eight pack of romaine lettuce slides to the floor followed by several snap top Tupperware which skitter across the floor and slam into the dishwasher.

Once I have removed the legion of hot sauces and siracha and wiped everything down and replaced the food, generally an ersatz meal made of celery stalks, mushroom and and last weeks chicken stock begins to formulate.

There is nothing like taking control over your own little patch of nurturance and sanity.   If only I could get that compost thing working and buy more locally sourced and organic.  But seriously my mood spikes every time I open the refrigerator door and see those gleaming shelves.

An update on yesterdays post about Good Journalism:

Today on my way home in the car to clean my refrigerator I listened to the New Yorker radio hour in what was a multi-media supplement to my reading of the actual journal this week.   Much as I like my outraged liberal bubble, the radio hour schooled me on "good journalism."   David Remnick started the hour off by interviewing a conservative Washington insider:  Steven Hayes editor of the Weekly Standard who very much hopes Donald Trump succeeds despite unethical behavior.  Ariel Levy then did an interview of photographer Catherine Opie which gave another view of attitudes about photographing different segments of society: lesbian households, football teams, anti war marches and tea party rallies.   Opie doesn't believe she can represent a balanced portrait of American life by excluding whole segments on the other side of the political spectrum like tea partiers and now perhaps the Trump voter.   She said, "I might have the most interesting conversation with someone at one of those rallies."   It is this kind of attitude, which will bring our country together despite a government that would like to see us divided.  Thanks New Yorker for good journalism.

 Saw a great movie tonight called Personal Shopper  - more on that tomorrow.

OGT DAILY - Day Fifty Five - GOOD JOURNALISM

Call me a bubblelista - but I am so enjoying the latest issue of the New Yorker.   I know I am supposed to be extending myself to think beyond my East Coast big city bubble and imagine and empathize with the middle of the country which voted Republican.   Call me crazy, but I just want to curl up with New Yorker and relish reporting on Jane Austen's unpublished last novel; Catherine Opie's story of becoming a photographer and musings on lesbian domesticity; a description of a safe house in upstate New York, which revives the traditional underground railway routes for the current wave of immigrants seeking asylum in Canada; AND a story about Trump's hideous failed tower in Azerbaijan built in consort with corrupt oligarchs (surprise, surprise.)  And cartoons!!

"So, as you can see, health care is so complicated you may never get well." 

The news is ever present - TV, theTimes, radio, Facebook, endless articles and e-mails about the ACA, the EPA, the CBO, and on an on and it's all so depressing and unbelievable.  

I want to live in a world where people love Jane Austen, lesbians can lead their married lives and our congress actually listens to what people want if even for a little while.   Thank you David Remnick and the staff of the New Yorker.   I give thanks for the free press and honest reporting when those at the top like to tell us "alternative facts" and to laugh about it.   They laugh and phoniness has become normal.  

OGT DAILY - Day Fifty Four STRETCHING

There is nothing like stretching to get you back in touch with your body.

I have a chronic lower back issue, which comes and goes like a little barometer of temperature, humidity, and what every my mood happens to be and needs as much fussy tending as my husband's salt water aquarium.   Needless to say constant vigilant and focussed attention.  What a pain in the butt literally!

I try to get up early when I am still half asleep so I just go through the motions and it doesn't seem like work.   This usually has the effect of waking me up in a gradual way and, when successful, also allows me to greet my body and become reacquainted.   It's amazing how often we step out of ourselves and loose touch with physical feeling.   Dissociation is one way to deal with the constant flood of trauma these days from Washington, but it has real consequences.

I find the stretching and then some energizing exercises, I learned in a Qi Gong workshop, help me to settle back into myself and feel more alive and happy!   This is no small feat when the prospect of not having health care any more makes me unable to pull myself and my aching back out of bed.

      
      Allowing your movement and breath to have a circular rhythmic motion can reset and calm the parasympathetic nervous system bringing your body into a restful non-stressed state.

      This can involve gentle bouncing and them a rhythmic exercise called waterfall breathing where you imagine beautiful sheets of water falling from your hands.  This will remove your head rather quickly from any ugliness.

      With the coming era of luxury health insurance it may be helpful to have a way to just take care of myself!

     Stretching to me is like unfurling and allowing the body to become flexible and yielding, like the tulips which are coming up now in the front garden.