Groundlessness

On February 28, 2014 By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Experimenctes, Reflections4 Comments

I seem to be unable to stop digging in and reflecting on When Things Fall Apart. My memories range over its engagements with this book, most of the circumstances blurred and dissipate, but not the wisdom of the text. I was trying to explain to my teens the odd euphoria that follows suicidal determination – what neuroscience knows as “shut-down.” As the body begins to burn, or be ripped apart by fangs, riddled with bullets or smashed into bits…pain ceases to be useful to the organism and it is flooded with endorphins…a kind of blissed-out euphoria like a systemic morphine drip. “There is definitely something tender and throbbing about groundlessness,” Pema says.

But the idea isn’t shut-down. The idea is more like a drowning compression without a bottom…a fall…a float…if fear – flight; if anxiety – distract; if anguish – addictive comfort; all these options for moving away, slipping out, attempt at relief, escape, a concretization of experience, rather than its flow. It’s now-ness. This drowning compression without bottom – what if we BE THERE? What if we sit in it, and breathe. The groundlessness, bottomlessness, suddenly becomes some space. A little room…there’s opening. We don’t know what to do, don’t know where to go, don’t know how this happened, don’t know why we did. “Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all...Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know.”

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us.”

– all quotations Pema Chodron

“Leaning into the sharp points”

On February 26, 2014 By NW FilbertIn Art, Journallings, Reflections4 Comments

painting by Holly Suzanne

“Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth” – Pema Chodron

I modeled for the painting above. It is propped beside the bed as I write. A large painting, and heavy, maybe 4.5 feet long and 3.5 feet tall, loaded with layers of paint. She called it “Praying Man,” but I wasn’t praying – the way it turned out I felt like a longshoreman, a hauler, tensed with the energy of pulling things out from the deeps. I see why she called it that.

We’re reorganizing the house, and in that process I notice what’s gone, and discover things forgotten. Today it was When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, “heart advice for difficult times.” I’ve depended on this one before. It’s written with the situation in mind in which a human feels there is nowhere to escape. Suffering floods in weights that compress one toward no option. Chodron says that “No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear…the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves…but by all means make it go away.” “We don’t need that kind of encouragement, because dissociating from fear is what we do naturally.” “Cheating ourselves of the present moment” according to Chodron.

Instead, she suggests, “we could step into uncharted territory and relax with the groundlessness of our situation…by inviting in what we usually avoid…adopting a fearlessly compassionate attitude toward our own pain and that of others.” I am taking this on as the work of the “praying man.” The longshoreman and hauler, reeling hand over hand over heart over hurt into the tumult of the pain of being. “…getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye – not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and thinking…having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.” The traditions align. “He who saves his life will lose it.” The terror that drives the boundaries, isolates the organism. Protectiveness cuts the supply chain. Security stanches generative flow.

What happens when we stay? Nailed to the present misery. Chodron suggests that when we move into rather than away from our life-threatening pain a kind of catharsis can occur – an acceptance that we are “precious beyond measure – wise AND foolish, rich AND poor, good AND bad…and totally unfathomable.”

another painting by Holly Suzanne, emptied of me

“The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought. That’s what we’re going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought. I can say that with great confidence. Emptiness is not what we thought. Neither is mindfulness or fear. Compassion – not what we thought. Love. Buddha nature. Courage. These are code words for things we don’t know in our minds, but any of us could experience them. These are words that point to what life really is when we let things fall apart and let ourselves be nailed to the present moment.”

Preying Man then, hunched over and hauling it out, rhythmically breathing into the present, a turbulent pain fueled by fear…searching into what I usually avoid. Hopefully not so much as a way to solve problems, but an undoing of native ways of seeing and hearing, smelling and tasting and thinking…along with the courage to die.

-all quotations Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Life in Relation to Art

On October 22, 2013 By NW FilbertIn Art11 Comments

My super-wife (http://lifeinrelationtoart.wordpress.com/) strikes again – a triptych selected for exhibition opening this Friday at City Arts – Wichita, KS. Come participate if you can – a varietous juried show! Congrats love!

mixed media - Holly Suzanne — mixed media – Holly Suzanne

https://www.facebook.com/WichitaCityArts

http://www.downtownwichita.org/have_fun-first_final_friday.php

http://wichitaarts.com/

The Return – the Quest continues

On August 13, 2013 By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Journallings2 Comments

After a glorious week smushed together in an old log cabin without running water and an outhouse on the slopes of Pikes Peak Colorado, we have returned. It was wonderful family time – hiking, kayaking, playing, reading, climbing and performing the necessary tasks of cabin-living. Irreplacable. One of our sons was reading “How to Read Literature like a Professor” for his summer reading assignments in the wee hours and pointed out that this type of vacation shared many qualifications of the Quest in literary themes. That feels so right. Life lived in relation to others always seems a quest – to know one another better, love one another better, hear one another better, express and differentiate and develop as persons-in-relation. I have been immensely blessed with a mixed and quirky collective of children from whom I learn so much, and a spouse who cracks and opens me. It is a particular pleasure when the world around us is also so splendid and obviously large as it is in the Rockies of Colorado, and when so many distractions are replaced with shared attentions – mushrooms, critters, rock formations, streams, decrepit mines, wild donkeys, and so on. Priceless time.

Upon return it is easy to see how the quest goes on…kiddos heading back to school…classes starting again…and these packages opened in the pile of mail:

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the quest always beginning…

New Publication – The Art of Salvage / Mining the Modern

On July 11, 2013 By NW FilbertIn Art, Experimenctes, Traces, Writing9 Comments

An unexpected and happy surprise entered my day yesterday with the announcement of a terrific book highlighting a project I was lucky enough to be involved with – a group of artists utilizing materials being removed from an historical building in Wichita, KS during a renovation – and repurposing (creating them anew) into works of art! I wrote an essay for this and now it is available in a wonderful edition you can peruse here:

The Art of Salvage

PROTEUS MAG

On February 13, 2013 By NW FilbertIn Art1 Comment

PROTEUS MAG.

happy to find (ever-so-tardily) – and kansas-bred-proud

The Unfinished

On January 15, 2013January 15, 2013 By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, PhilosophyLeave a comment

The Unfinished.

(click on title to get to content)

Where we’ll be

On November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Art2 Comments

Fisch Haus 524 South Commerce Street Wichita, KS 67202 | Exhibition Open: November 30, 2012 - January 11, 2013

and don’t forget you can still catch Holly Suzanne’s work at Mead’s (through Saturday)

among the many other things happening this lovely eve in Kansas!

Black Friday, Artist’s Reception for Holly Suzanne

On November 22, 2012November 22, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Art3 Comments

Black Friday, Artist’s Reception for Holly Suzanne.

Holly Suzanne and the Layering of Experience

On October 25, 2012October 25, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Art, Writing3 Comments

It is my great pleasure to be composing something for myself regarding my wife’s art in regards to an upcoming showing of hers in Wichita KS (see below for details). I am accustomed to engaging her work with an ekphrastic/participatory sensibility and interaction rather than an observer’s point of view. The pieces below are mixed media encaustic works by Holly Suzanne on 6×6 or 8×8 wood boards.

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“First my…forever my…grown in a…garden” of hands, words, expressions, visages and image.

The mind in bloom, the mouth as fruit, our world in our hands, are nothing new.

Underlying love vaguely aware of an end from the stars of night to ground of flesh,

in layers.

I was thinking of text-emotion-change-emotion-text-emotion-change. Of over and again. Begin.

With rarely the perspective to see in, or through, as we are forming and tattering layers simultaneously. Always.

There is something viscous about us, like warm wax.

“Turning away…she saw herself…” But not really. Recollection rearranges, perception also blinds. Assemblers and dissemblers we. Our stories. Growing them even as we prune. Story over story, backwards, forwards, like the strokes of a brush, the trembling of hands, motions of a body at rest. What comes out, in, or through depends on the moment. Each story a backstory with a curious future.

“First my…forever my…” ever-altering “garden,” the world in my hands behind my face. I tinker and trouble, collage and create, rationally embodied in emotion. What shields and separates reveals and connects: our skin, our language(s), our sighs.

Even our names are malleable, oily pools.

Look at, look in, look through. And over again.

Begin.