What Layers!

What Layers Beneath : mixed media on canvas board
Sept. 2011 - For Sammy

I had a very interesting dinner with my friend Burette this evening.  Haven't seen him in a while...  a long while...   not that I have ever really seen much of him to begin with.  Ours is a very unique amoeba of a relationship.  And seeing him, and having the conversation that we did, was stunningly synchronistic.


I'm learning that the key for a happy life (for me at least) is being unapologetic.  That might sound a little strange...  perhaps even a little discompassionate, at least if you're in a similar mindset to mine before beginning to see this differently.  Unapologetic, living an unapologetic life, means never having to say I'm sorry for being authentically me...   never second guessing the decisions I make, the life I lead, the dreams I have, or the art I create...  It means never having to justify...  not even feeling the need to defend...   the bliss that is my existence!  


Take the painting I finished for my brother Sam yesterday.  Yes, I got the inspiration from someone else's artwork.  That's often the case.  I see something I love and I decide to make it my own.  In the past, I would do one of two things:  I would pretend/deny ever having seen anything like it before...  OR I would over-defend my decision to  "study" some other piece of art and plan never to sell my own "study" of it, blah blah blah.  Hey, I'm not ripping anyone off here!  I know what I like and what I don't...  and if I see something I think I could make MORE pleasing to myself, why the hell shouldn't I go ahead and do it...  and do it without apology or defense!


I don't care if you think I've ripped off someone's intellectual property.  What IS property?  No one owns anything, when we get right down to it.  No one owns me.  Not even myself.  But I digress.


Being unapologetic means I can be free to live in each moment, with as much bliss as possible and without a single grain of guilt.  Is that not the point of life anyway?  Maybe?  Being unapologetic also means that I don' t ever have to know a single thing about a single thing.  (That just made me laugh.  My BFF always says, "...and I know and thing or two about a thing or two," which cracks me up every time!)  I no nothing about anything...  and, guess what?  How awesome is that?!  


Burette reminded of a saying (neither of us could complete it or remember who said it) that basically said...   it is when we begin to believe we know... that we die.  It's just as Rumi said, "Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself."  Labels, thinking we know something (anything, in fact) kill us...  kill the infinite potential in every single moment, every single experience.


You see where my head is right now (besides all over the place and nowhere at once)?!  


I took a painting that I saw sometime back...   made it mine...   yes, and made it Sam's too, since he asked for it...    and now...  let's be honest, it isn't anyone's at all!  It's just dust...  particles...   nothingness and everythingness.  All of it.  None of it.  Whatever.  No one can claim it, not even me...  and I painted the damned thing!  Isn't it freaking gorgeous!?!


Yes, it really it!  I love it!  And don't care a bit about it other than the experience I loved while painting it!


I stopped blogging, I realize, because I was so concerned about whether or not anyone read it, whether or not any of it mattered or made sense...   and I lost the point entirely!  I love to blog because it frees my mind from the words and thoughts I put here!


So I'm back!  And I hope I live in this kind of moment far more often...