Ancestors

I have had some people border on teasing me about my love of ancestors. This hint of disdain (that I am so reflective on those who are my collective genetic and familial past) ringing in their voices, dismissing me as almost backward.

I have always taken this very hard. These hurtful and dismissive turns of phrase often came from people that I held in some esteem, people that I valued not only for their intellect but, by default, their opinions.

And then the people who seemed to understand this deep set notion of heritage and inheritance were usually Mormon or generational Catholics. And for some reason, I did not feel any pleasure at having that part of my psyche recognized and accepted by them. It was as if the progressive influences held more sway in how I felt about my ancestors than did these communities that deeply value theirs... when I considered the caveats of my having to be a specific religion to be saved, it makes sense that they were easier for me to dismiss... though sad that I had to abandon my interaction with any culture that loves ancestors as much as I do... because we did not fit a mold we had for each other. I wonder if my theological roots are in this place... standing between these two worlds... one who has the God ancestor and ancestral line versus the one who has the future oriented line? Curious.

But I am struck, today, by my failure to dismiss the ones who dismissed me.

Does it speak to how I valued intellect, even in the failure to fully and completely, understand that being in the present moment is a cumulative moment that includes all that went on before and all this will come in the future...

Yes, being present... something of a mantra of mine. I see it as a recognition of our own time and place but in the holistic context that includes that we are the product of what came before and are the seed to that which will be in the future...

Goodness me, that is a pretty intense thought. It is absent yet so completely full of everything.

I am so very lucky that I have my ancestral stories, embellished or redacted as they may be. I have my place though them, I have my code of honor through them, I have the gift of time, endless multi directional time, through them.

My mother and her rule of 10,000 years... it is so completely circular... I am the result of provident choices and I am tasked to continue with them. To have my eyes forward and my glance behind.

So, I wonder if I should pity those who fail to have ancestors and understand their place as a progenitor?

Probably not... unless of course they are in my own line.

I would imagine them to be bitter and angry people... to have such a wonky sense of place in our world that they want to hurt and damage those around them and especially those who have a sense of place... who become the false prophets of their own existence. Yes, I can see that this may be the case...

and so, I return to this line I heard ( so profound that I've written 5 pages worth of rambling about lent and rituals) but that is really about those who disdain the role of place through ancestry...

Send love and move on... it is, after all, what I imagine what my ancestors would have done.

Momma

I got to visit with my mother. She was in town to give a presentation at a conference.

She sat in the chair and ran through her lecture in front of me. It's so very humbling to have such a wise and intelligent mother. She debated using a certain, possibly controversial, turn of phrase, I told her to do it if she felt saying would honor her grandsons. It did.

After she finished she paused, deep in thought... The light shone on her and I thought it looked like she was being kissed by God.

She is my hero. I'm glad I got to tell her that (and why) today.

Random musings about an ancient esotric mathematician

"For as long as men massacre animals they will kill each other."
~ Pythagoras

I wonder why there is a cultural implication that this quote of his is absolutely a bad thing... I base this supposition on the means in which I came upon this quote today... as it it were a call to action for mankind to stop hurting itself and other carbon based life forms. I would link to that place that I saw the quote, but it just does not feel appropriate to do so as they really were not trying to engage in a conversation about this matter I am putting forth.

As I understand it, Pythagoras belonged (heck, he started it) to what we would now probably call a cult... mainly because there were lots of secret stuff, giving money and goods away to a "collective pot" and a hierarchy of participation.

Some think that the group, who are referred to as the Pythagoreans, advocated vegetarianism while others think it was limited animal products... I don't know that it makes a difference.

Nature is inherently cruel. From the mean girls in high school, college, and beyond to the complete concept of the food chain. I wish I could read this quote in its original language, pay attention to the subtle nuances of the translation... "massacre" is an ugly word and I am curios if that was Pythagoeas' intent. Perhaps, it was more of an observation than that of a judgmental call to quit killing other animals. Based on the extremely little amount of experience I have with ancient Greek and more upon the lifetime of translating that I have lived... I am skeptical.

The rational scientist part of me really thinks that as an observation it is rather keen, there is a simple statement that looks at this idea that as long as men kill animals they (and who is the they in this concept) will keep at it... that there is a continuity of death and destruction in our world. Things die so that they can become part of the process... I think that there might be something to this as it is believed in the transmigration of the soul (aka reincarnation)... so it follows, in a logical sense, that destruction breeds destruction as there is a process that has to happen. I am not aware if Pythagoras believed in a concept like karma which might temper this acknowledgement that death happens (both violently and not), I don't get a sense of that part of our current cultural concepts of reincarnation and karma... so, I remain skeptical.

Now, keep in mind that I am referring to the meaning that Pythagoras had in mind in the quote above. I am too much of a simpleton to make any harsh overarching pronouncements on the way that anyone should feel. I do think that animal abuse it horrid and do so with my own reality. I am sure that the discussion would lie in what constitutes abuse. However, that is not something I want to discuss at this time.

Again, these are my own personal musings and as such I extend an invitation to enter into dialog about what the intent of that quote was. Do you live and breathe Pythagoras, do you deeply understand his philosophies, do you understand ancient Greek and are familiar with this quote and its context... please, enlighten me... because I don't...

Painting part 2, a study in Scarlett and a few cowgirl metaphors...

Scarlett is the name we have given the bellows camera my husband uses...

I spent a few hours working on Arizona Gothic last weekend.

It, the process, has gotten painful. I'm not happy with how it looks. To make it worse, I know that it is all my fault.

My aunt kept talking about building values while I worked on it and boom, the next morning I woke up and realized that I don't think I had a clue about what she meant.

I thought I did, but it's pretty clear to me that I was making assumptions and was full of some unknown and completely ridiculous hubris.

I'm pretty disappointed in myself. Which now means I have to keep myself talked into keeping on with this... and because I am such a goofball, I also will have to work on sticking with the music project.

I  put the horrid scene up there for any of you to look at.. I am just so saddened by that bulbous object that is supposed to be an old fashioned camera... I look at it and the travesty I see it as and think to myself, if I can't get this down, how in the world will I ever manage the faces... I just don't know...

I do want to quit, put this behind me to the extent that I can pretend it never happened and I never set out to try and paint something that wouldn't look like an 8 year old painted it... I want to invoke a series of expletives that have nothing to do with this piece of canvas and are more about the human body and some of its functions... but, there is something of a cowgirl/explorer in me that really won't give up... If you fall off the horse (or in my case if it runs away with you), you get back on. If it nips at you, you stand there and stare it down.

Maybe, just maybe...

It is a distinct possibility that the music project is managing to keep me in the cycle of sticking with this crazy mixed up scheme I set my self on... maybe it is because the music project is still so intensely private. Only Squink and Schatzy have heard me sing. They are forced to listen during long drives either a cappella (saints help the two of them) or with my music tracks helping me keep what I think is pitch... I am so green.

I suppose this is really, in the end, a project to help me move past crippling self doubt. The process, however, is a painful one, one that gives me little to stare it in the face and tell it that it can't own me.

So, here I go with putting the music project out there to the world (of most my family, who I am pretty sure all get my blog in a newsletter format)...

I am doing two songs the first is this one:  Black Cadillacs

It is a song written and sung by someone I have met and deeply respect... I might also, with great deference, think to call him a friend... and this friend graciously gave me some alternative forms of the song that I could play with. That link plays a different version than the one I am attempting. There is one version I really like and while I was going to do something completely different before he sent it to me, when I heard it I thought I want to make this a duet and OMG it has a BANJO!!!.

Dear me. Holy Guacamole. WTF was I thinking!!!!!

So, the other song is one I grew up listening to, it is one both my parents have sung to me, or maybe it was that they often played the old school pre Frida movie Chavela Vargas version... anyway, it is almost completely my version of this song:  La Llorona

I have loved the song for as long as I can remember and it has so many different lyrics that I actually had to write a version to sing from out of all that was available via the internet (thank you ethers)... I am nearing a completion in putting the various selected lyrics in a coherent order that makes sense to me. I am also tempted to really push myself waaaaaaaaaaaaay out of my comfort zone and record it with a musical back-up and then to follow up by shooting myself in the foot and make a stab at singing it alone.

Hello comfort zone, I need you to step aside and let completely miserable and awkward go first.

I come from a family of creatives, Part 1

Many years ago I painted a painting for my mother that was an adaptation of another painting we have that I love. I switched out the people in that beloved painting to be my family. My aunt, who is an artist with international renown,  picked it up and said it was fabulous and asked how old I was when I painted it, and if I was 8... I had done it when I was 23.

How wonderful to have a mother that has loved all the creative endeavors my brother and I have pursued in a manner that was willing enough to display them proudly among her fabulous collection of art and artifacts from around the world... but, I cannot tell you just how intimidating it is to attempt a field where a family member has some skill. In addition to my aunt, there was my grandmother who was talented at so many things; poetry and music among them. My mother was considered a wonderful painter before she traded those skills for academia, my father is skilled at bead-work. I never took an art (of any form) class, mainly because when you already have super-great at it in your family, why try to copy it. I embraced their abilities, I was proud of their skills, they stunned me to silence with the things they created, and I basked in the glow of my friends who loved their work... but I left the making art to them.

So, we come back to my aunt.

And to my decision this year to do two things that fell way out of my comfort zone. I decided that my New Year Goals for 2013 was to 1) work on a painting with my aunt and to 2) record myself singing.

This past weekend was my first lesson for the painting. Since I mentioned to her this desire of mine I was tasked to come up with my idea for the painting and that once I had that in mind that I could begin.

I chose an idea based on this painting that is housed in the Art Institute of Chicago:

Something I want to call Arizona Gothic.

I arrived with family in tow to begin this process and my aunt and I sketched it out... She left me to my own devices while she turned to work with Squink on his painting... so, I made all sorts of horrendous mistakes... like using black pastels instead of charcoal to sketch my figures in.

This was bad because when my aunt told me to put in color the black mixed in and created these dark muddled colors. Thankfully, I picked up a rag and washed my pastel sketch out... though I lost some things that I had drawn in. I was able to get back most of what I had put in... so after being pushed to put in even more color (a prospect that filled me with dread) we reached this stage:

My aunt, being an ever challenging teacher (in the best of ways) had me start to color in the white space as we talked about perspective and how nice some of the spaces were and what would be the best ways to use them... My aunt kept mentioning how pleased she was with the painting and how fortunate I was to have it be as good as it was at this stage. Then looked me in the face and said to me in a manner that conveyed the seriousness of her words "The important thing now is to not ruin it". We closed up her studio space and here is the last picture I took of it before we left (it looks different because it is in artificial light)

I don't think I can express the horror of the next step... it has to be something I can so easily ruin... but there is such an intense giving up of self and ego in this project that I am trying hard not to let my deep fear of failure over run my approach to the painting. I am trying to take this slowly. I am trying to let the things she is teaching me sink in, I am learning from the mistakes I am making. I am striving to enjoy this process.

I will try hard to let go of my ego enough to share what this process is like... and in hopes of recording this experience for Squink when he is older and may be able to see a lesson in this letting go of self to pursue something that is intimidating

On a last note, one of the things I am enjoying in this process is working on paintings with Squink. Here is his painting so far:... he doesn't like to draw so he may be a bit surprised when I make him come back to it on the next lesson.