Day 95
shifting
I love stories and language, because within the words there is an attempt to still the universe so that we might see, for just a quick moment, the nature of things. At the same time, our words betray the shifting nature of things, the constant evolution.
I have learned over the last ninety-five days of writing that there is no true stillness in language. I can nail down one insight today, only to watch it wriggle away the next.
Looking back over all these essays and poems, I see the shifting light and shadow-play. One thing comes into focus, then another, then another, and at the same time other ideas and wonders become lost in the shadows. My thoughts, ideas and words dance in all directions to a melody and a rhythm I can only hear when I stop trying to name it.
There is no way to create without acknowledging that you are created, in every moment, by the incessant transformations taking place within and around you. The evolving beauty, the reasoning mind, the aging body…these are just some of the elements and forces that create the artist and that the artist uses to create.
Kari, who once told me that figure drawing is not her thing, has drawn so many bodies, especially hands and feet, that I can not help but feel that she is confirming this intuition as well. We are embodying the shifting world, the flickering light, the evasive wisdom that we are attempting to manifest with our art. And what is most amazing is that it feels so ordinary. The creating and the being created, it is just the regular, everyday movement of life; all we are doing is making room for it.
The less attached I am to the product, the reaction from the “public,” the hope that I might say something amazing or the fear that I might fail to say something remotely relevant, the more I creating I do and the more created I feel.
If I can name one thing I have learned with certainty during this project, it is this: We are dancing. We are spinning and leaping and falling. The artist simply draws attention to this fact, and ironically does a better job when she does her best to sit still and observe. But even sitting still, she falls in.
