It’s been snowing out. Wind and snow. What they call blinding snow. And they call it that because what you are able to see is just what’s in front of you. Not far away. Not beside you. Just you and where you might take those next few steps.
And as you walk, you can see the next short distance. And then the next. It’s like walking past a Chinese scroll. Space unfurls for you.
None of this “perspective”. No near and far. You are in it. In the space.
I was reading Gaylord’s book, Pursuit of Art, on traveling to see art in its location rather than in a photo. He wants to get the sense of the artist from the art.
In going to the scene of the art, he encounters the surroundings and the people along with the art. He goes to China to see several of those beautiful scrolls that portray an alternative sense of space than we encounter in western art. He shares how obvious it is that it comes from their culture. The religious understanding. The Tao. That flow of yin and yang. From dark back to light back to light; one existing with the other, perpetually. Life unfurling. Moving.
I might be obvious to you that this has to be the OPPOSITE of our heaven and hell. One place OR the other, right? That’s it.
And yes – I will take this minute to say – I have definitely been guilty of thinking in this way. In the last year – as I encountered what I termed as Hellish challenges (health wise), I wanted none of it. Give me Heaven immediately. That one thing – that pill. Fix this.
That didn’t happen. The healing has been gradual. The good seeping in, little by little. Was there good already, in the “bad”?
Perhaps one such good is that I now appreciate my art in a way I hadn’t. That it, in itself, helps me feel better.
Art. That slow process of making. And then making it better. It’s never perfect, but you reach again.
Can we get back into the snow storm and lose our perspective again? And keep walking with this one moment’s visibility and then the next… it does allow for the possibility of change. Right?
Maybe I can learn to like that idea of flow.
