RAMBLE WITH OAK

I was what’s called, ‘waiting’. That is, just being, passionately but patiently impatient for inspiration and how to tie certain things together.

When the non-verbal insight arose by itself: ‘A rope is a flexible continuity which can be used for forward progress (leading, lifting, pulling, climbing,) or, contrarily, to bind something in place preventing progress.’

Not only that. When a rope turns on itself (enough to throw anything for a loop) yet insists on going through with it with forward intent, it meets a snag called appropriately ‘a knot’, which already sounds like a negation of progress.

If it does it again it’s in a double bind, which is fine if the intention is to bind. We’ve all tied our shoelaces enough times to not even have to think about it. But with inspiration, having been there enough times to train myself to be passionately dispassionate about seeming to be at the end of my rope, yet not making it a tug of war.

Better to pause, and neither push nor pull on the delusory conflict between complimentary poles, and not settle for another double bind. The battle of black and white and other silly loop-tapes.

To not turn on yourself as if you were a worm, sending you for a loop, yet still persisting no matter how patiently impatient, such being the nature of waiting. Whatever about religion, from the Latin ‘religare’ meaning, ‘to bind back’, which doesn’t sound very liberating and which may or may not have been its original intention.

Better still the unravelling, a mini- revelation. Trace back, revealing what you did, but without turning on yourself a second time, and with no loss of passion to heal the ‘not-happening’, simply un-do, comprehending the process inwardly.

Conscientious compulsion to self-forgive, may also still mask a ‘turning on yourself’, until it doesn’t. A snag is only a not-happening till it’s unravelled. We grow by correcting mis-takes, which otherwise plummet to the pole we call evil when we refuse to see and instead, justify and persist. We’ve all untied our shoelaces enough times.

Persisting without deviation is what may be called a straight line, and we are culturally coerced to deify straight lines. Which, as we were told, are the shortest distance between two points. Which may be so as the crow flies or on paper, or driving across flat terrain. But in a wiggly world such conclusions are questionable. You could fall asleep from monotony, run out of fuel, or die of thirst.

Besides, all answers are questionable. Being conclusions (endings) they put an end to further enquiry free of already biased assumption. In looking for answers and building a life on them, we might well have continued to evolve further by forming and refining more intelligent questions.

Why settle for answers when you can ask questions? Belief is ‘choosing to assume’, it’s not-knowing. Another knot. Only when you know you don’t know will you attempt to learn and grow.

Not to mention corners, which are the inevitable result of straight lines. Most of the self-evidently alien intrusion in the natural world is the insistence on straight lines, roads, buildings, weapons, the ‘cornerstone’ of which, being ‘economics’: All ‘nomics’ with no regard for ‘eco-systems’.

Corners are a binary system, alien to our essence as one-with wiggly nature, and nature abhors a ninety degree angle. Corners conveniently replicate as grids, a superimposition of cages within cages of blocked negative energy. Grids are graphs to control and inhibit free flow of natural energy. Alien to nature and taken for granted. Imagine straight intestines, you’d really be in the... system where you’re blocked at every turn.

To return to wiggly lines in lieu of inspiration, and my previous painting PRESENCE OF OAK. A friend suggested that a version with black lines instead of brown would work well, as with recent works, and i noted that could well be so.

Curiosity and desire to paint prompted me to transform the existing painting rather than repeat the process. Possibly enhance, evolve, and enrich it in doing so. Sometimes you can take things further when you have something already formed to work with.

So i decided to see if it felt right. A relatively minor challenge for sure but one that suits my style, and after it ‘not working’ for quite a while, i was ultimately far from being disappointed.

Having for a lifetime explored many inner avenues away from early revelations related to a certain subtle integration of form-enhancing black incisive line. With intent not to emphasize boundaries knowing none exist.

Yet, paradoxically, in delicately daring to define form, it is demonstrated that ‘difference is what everything has in common’, hence the richness revealed. The original revelations of which as i well recall prompted me to sing in appreciation.

After all, who owns your garden fence, you or your neighbour? Or if you take sides, is the bulk of it then shared? Or, if you must have definitive answers to such knotty questions as, “how is everything one while apparently separate?” Which qualifies as “a good question.” Then frame it like this: “Distinctness is the surest sign of underlying unity.” Relationally speaking. Everything is a network of distinct interrelationships.

As in art, so with everything, and that’s saying a lot. The part is not apart from the whole. Wholes don’t have separate parts that’s why they’re whole. They only seem to when we distinguish distinctions, needing to draw a line somewhere between the loved and the not loved.

The oaks return, along with vision, and every-thing is recreated new as it ever was, one-with a wild and wiggly world, and today is Winter Solstice. Silently celebrating the cyclic return of solar self-same celestial light. *

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Martin Rainbowmaker.

A SHAFT OF LIGHT

Recalling a quiet walk in the woods. Returning to revise and totally rewrite, after wandering way off topic and into subsequent unfoldings. In a complex world simplicity is a rare gem. So to resume the thread of inspiration for this painting, already titled ‘A Shaft of Light.’

Autumn sunlight streaming through, down a steep incline, moving among prickly underbrush, layers of illuminated leaves below silent sleeping trees. To pause on a single weighted footfall- crunch of brittle dry detritus. An unseen creature one with the woods. ~

Breaking the surface of sleep, escaping with a sudden gut-deep abandoned and inconsolable whimper, from some tragic sad and soulful dream. What a way to wake to wonder why and what in the world it may mean.

So arise and sit awhile in quiet, with warm cupped comfort of tea before more rest. After a whole night’s study and three hours sleep. Pale peach tints of blue-grey damp dawn before bird chirp, mountains still veiled in grey across the bay. The inner child awaits the returning wise warrior within.

Still unaware the dream had coincided with widespread floods throughout the land, leaving many abandoned without home, echoes of the waking whimper from the dream and images related.

Waiting watchful, listening inwardly for the sign, to resume the task in hand. The painting, the first stage completed to satisfaction almost a month ago. Still on pause, having subtle qualities easily spoiled by haste. With art, it serves no purpose to push the river, but go with nature’s flow.

So when the natural light is right, to illuminate, and not obliterate these intricate textures that arrived, since they’re uncontrived. A specific and precise process currently evolving, involving tactile textures.

Which, when you really focus, with soft sustained attention, deep magnification, you find there’s worlds in there, and diversified dimensions. In visionary relief as glimpsed archaic hieroglyphics revealed in the light of day, which never went away.

To see, you must sustain and not just glance off. It’s no mere insincere effect. Feel lovingly through the eyes and join the dots. Undistracted by all passing thoughts. Inner tension is inattention, beauty, the present absence of beholder.

I will have to take a gentle tentative approach. The black can blur and smudge when touched by water, that’s because it’s crayon and not paint, as when you take a rubbing from a coin.

But i took a very subtle chance, sealed it first all over with matt varnish. First attempt showed even that would smudge. So retouched with white and chose the softest brush, a Chinese bamboo one with hair that caused no friction, and softly sealed with no smudge anywhere. Even so must still proceed with care.

For now, i’ll sleep on it. Then create a sacred space, with reverence for refinement of ancient Chinese art, where minimal soft colour is subordinate to form and line, and disregarding time, find quiet joy in the process.

Since we’ve lost the plot,

then why not stop the fight?

So many see neither wood nor trees.

Oh look, a shaft of light!

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Martin Rainbow-maker.

A Shaft of Light - Nov 15 
           Martin Law