~ starting a garden,/ re. rooting.

On 23 January 2012 03:42, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker> wrote:

fifty-four change of address moves since leaving the parental nest, culminated in the first stable and satisfactory present one on a housing estate.

satisfactory, in that, while not being the first garden I have established from scratch, it does have adequate space to do it again. thirty-seven and a half feet square out the back, with also a sizeable front garden.

an opportunity to put down roots, after a half century lacking such. the previous address having only a comic/tragic claustrophobic three feet of gravel, totally shaded by a fifteen foot high surrounding block wall.

so that, three years ago now, this present address was a welcome opportunity to establish roots and grow food.

the square patch was overgrown, having never been cultivated. the previous two year's harvests from it have carried me through most of the winter. a timely re.rooting synchronized with the impending systems’ crash.

being a painter, I approached the challenge as an artist approaches a canvas. with fertile imagination and a love of the materials. it was mostly long grass at first. I loved the way the wind rippled in waves across it. but of course, the main density of grass is below the surface, that is, roots.

I have never had any inclination to resort to a mechanical cultivator. any more than I would do a painting with an electric toothbrush. so I set to "work", preparing my canvas with spade and fork.

the first thing I did was, clear a space of cut grass in the centre, by hand, with garden shears, old rusty ones I had found. to lie down in the sun and contemplate my next move.

well, a central lawn is nice. especially a twelve foot diameter perfect circle, inscribed with a string and two sharp sticks from the exact centre of the square.

this left adequate space around it for radial arms of enough potential vegetables of sufficient diversity. the only crop-circle for miles around, in an environment of complacent rectangles. I imagined how that must look from up above.

and so, feeling like a cookie cutter I slowly started to separate the green from the brown, enjoying the sharp edge, which would later become a moat. radiating out concentrically as more brown expanded to counterbalance the green. and the brown is thick with roots of grass. the brown is dense and never been dug. there is also plastic, trash, glass, and what became a mound of stones of all sizes.

knowing full well, this will have to be dug and dug again many times to restore it's fertile consistency and texture.

some may disagree, but that's cool. I love the process, and intuitively know the energy and attention won't be wasted. it's my painting, and I'll make it as welcoming as possible for whatever may wish to grow and thrive and throw down it's roots.

and of course, everything did thrive. friends commented that it must be magic, and of course it is. creative energy harmonising with the sacred soil, inseparable from it.

but this intimately relating, with the downtrodden and neglected earth, dreaming of rich loam and fertile abundance, that's a next part of the story for a rainy day.~~~~~

~~~~from martin rainbowmaker.

art by martin law :
- radiant sphere, january 2006   
- window in space, august 2006
- solar quincunx, 2006   

collage by Wfp for moo



Visit Cork Food Web

Echo system signals~~~~~~~

On Sat, Aug 18, 2012 at 4:25 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

~~~~~~~~
Meanwhile and after re-reading through your wondrous playful word weavings and of course staying in synch with whatever inflexions or peripherally nuanced momentary oblique asides and in passing not missing a beat along the path to wherever it may lead swinging around to heed a stray leaf becoming the part of the puzzle that continues the gossamer thread from stem to stem popping it into the basket like little red riding hood and not dropping a stitch on the way by way of demonstration that of course i dig your groove and it all makes perfect  random organic sense red squigleys and all as i naturally scrutinize each footprint.
I earlier along the path, checking the state of the fire in the grate to safely stretch out and fall asleep in the chair to compensate the few missing hours of last night sleep and all that standing around bantering from stall to Bantry market stall a town built on subteranean water  channels literally laterally and down to the lapping sea.  It being a day of grey atlantic looming and impossible torrential canvas flapping monsoons in sudden waves of gutter swelling drain gurgling vertical downpour, hence my hopping from stall to sheltering stall loitering without tent each one an abundance of dripping glistening unpolluted produce.  All hatches hastily and firmly down-battened some stray sails to no avail but all hands rope lashed to the common goal of 'business as usual' and a maritime was had by all.
So saying with intent to elucidate my meaning of the afore and aft mentioned 'house situation'.  Simply said that my many moons of experimental affirmation whether drafted in duplicate, recited in repeated incantation, intoned internally in exponential replications of thirteen times thirteen hourly for three full moons aiming for thirteen counted on handlebar fingers by bicycle and while shopping and suchlike, on the occasion of manifesting a satisfactory place to live, quite self evidently bore fruit.  The 'mis-shots referred to being previously stuck in a substandard daylightless dark and claustrophobic dungeon tomb of rooms, stuck being a modest metaphor paralysis of verve and will to move lasting a staggering nine years and the labyrinths of cobwebs customarily encountered in an underworld journey.  Being an archetype of a test typically self inflicted in order to pass carrying the candle often quaking but ultimately unflinching faithfully following the golden thread of creativity despite surrounding environmental desecration of otherwise sacred space, not to mention the daily onslaught of diggers and dumptrucks and other long term traumas finally finding the exit out into light.  Which is why i say, an affirmation of intent may well incurr a test of worthiness humbling the intender into releasing hold of the arrow of such intent for it to reach it's mark.  And it did!

So this is just an echo of that, in retrospect the tale told incomprehensible to some but not to you who know well that neck of the woods and the listening involved in the passing through.  Bearing a gift safely wrapped in soft hide of delusory demons encountered. A small but sacred bundle self-destined to open like a flower of it's own accord.  As the seed seeks the sun sensing cyclic signals of birdsong.
And so, whatever with the weather, the wild and weary ways of the world.  Trust bears fruit.  Seed to root.  The gift is in the flower.  Endless spirals and cycles of unknown suns. ><><><><><><><><
~~Rainbowmaker.

artwork: Swirled Flower, martin law, October 2005
              Solar Quincunx, martin law

Another one for the blog's pot.

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 10:58 PM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>  People-animals & Animal-people.   <<<
         ( Another one for the blog's pot.)

People are animals.  Animals are people.  'People animals,' (that's us),
don't know how to talk among themselves, so how would they know how to talk to 'Animal people?'
Look at what we do.  We chop everything in half, and call our bit 'good', and the other bit,'bad.'  Because that's how our language defines everything.  And we think our language is good because it's ours.  But who are we to talk?  We are only half-people because we think our animal part is bad.  You know, "worse than an animal."
Too bad by half.  We're 'Halfists'.  That's our belief system.
Is it any wonder we build a 'civilization' made of 'other bits'?  The left-over half we think is 'not us.'  You know, trees, rocks, earth etc.  The 'bad' part we're forever trying to conquer and tame.  Then we wonder why we live in a junk heap!
Halfists.  Half arrogant, half mad.  They're bound to cause trouble.  Being 'side-takers', they think everybody is against them for being against everybody, which they are.  Forever wanting what they think they don't have, and should have because they think they are the better half of themselves. 
Rene Descartes, might just have well have said:  'The better thinking part of me thinks i am better therefore i am."
Well what 'about' the animal part, which is not 'a part' because not apart.  Or it wasn't, before you decided you could chop a whole in half.
 What the animal part is NOT, is 'cruel and savage'.  It's not 'dumb', 'stupid', or 'without feeling'.  Neither is it 'soulless' or 'lacking intelligence and natural wisdom'.
All the things, People animals think Animal people are.
Let's get things the right way round.
People animals,(that's us) are 'the Clown of Creation'.
That would be funny if we weren't so currently ignorant and downright dangerous.  Why, do you think, the Animal people don't seem to laugh?  Give or take a few hyenas who obviously have a highly developed sense of black humour.  After all, it's us who chop them in half and eat them, and we do a pretty ( not pretty at all) savage and brutal job of it too.
Human(e)?  Don't think so.  What's humane about humanity?  Ask your better half.
The 'other half', which we designate to 'dumb animals' has most of the goodies we deny ourselves.  To name a few:~
Grace, Freedom, Dignity, Authenticity, Spontanaeity, Telepathy, Empathy, Acute senses, Precognition, Physical prowess, Social cohesion, Attunement to habitat, Resourcefulness, Caution, Total presence, Soulfulness, Prudence, and lots more we've forgotten to remember.
And reason calls them 'dumb animals'.  How 'reasonable' is that?
It would be reasonable to have a bit of humility, and not be chopping everything in half with our brutally ignorant binary language. 
In our crudest possible terms, we think, 'this is this because it's not that.'  That's the rule of language, not reality.  In reality, everything is this AND that inseparably.  Inter-dependently.
Ignoring this, is what makes us so dangerous.  We're not designed to be this way, we're just , literally, 'spell bound'.
Since we're not naturally this way, we can dispel (de-spell) our spell.
Just stop defining reality through language!
Doesn't mean we can't communicate, or have to stop talking.  Although learning to listen without thinking would be a good start.
Did you ever meet anyone who didn't insist, against all possible refutation, that they are 'me'?  And you thought you were the only one!
 This one feels it's about time the People animals, (that's us ) learned from the Animal people,..... again. 
As it was before we became The Clown of Creation.  I mean, we're not even half what we used to be.  That's 'progress'.  It's pathetic!  Embarrassing.  And the Animal people are not laughing and i don't blame them.
There are those among us who would chop everything in half and patent both bits and charge you for one, or more of them.  And they mean business, and i mean, 'Business'.
Well, stop joining them and join yourself back together instead.
If you had half an animal instinct you'd know, their intentions are sold to sound like what you think you most want.  A unified world.
Bark bark!  Woof woof!  Even the wolves are howling.  Not laughing.
You can only get yourselves back together.  I mean how many have you got?
Get it together.  As Robert Dylan once said:  "It's every man for himself are you a man or a self?"  But no.  Service to others.  Your/our kin.
It's called 're-membering'.  Do you remember, how it was, before we split?  Do you remember?  Mark my words.
Mitakuye oyasin. (All our relations.)
(Part inspired by Tippi (Degre) of Africa/ and all natives.  Google it!)
><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><

 

artwork: Kisses the Wolf, martin law, January 2009

I Think it's Time.

On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote: 
 

Prelude to, 'I Think it's Time.'

Which is written in self explanatory accessible syntax. (so you don't have to ask what was intended.)  Regarding 'understanding':  Discernment produces 'Knowing', which is when there are no more unresolved questions that can relevantly be asked.  Perhaps there always are.
Meta-self- consistency to as fine a degree as possible.  Implicit catalysts.  Most people blur out following the thread.  Which should be like Celtic knot work, an intricate loop, or a Mobius strip.  So you can't pick holes in it.
In making a thesis explicit, when you spell it out 'on the blackboard', people react in denial because blackboards remind them of trauma and coercion. There's a fine line between analogy, and dogmatically stating how something is.  That's where wit and humour can take the sting out of the tail with a twist.  Puns don't need to be apologized for.  So you relax effort to grasp, and just allow the right-brain to re-member.  Not so serious.
 

If it sounds provocative, which it demonstrably can be, that's a catalyst to release stored objections, which it evidently does.
Permutations of the algebra of the alphabet is 'skilful means', or if you like, a magic called 'communication'.  The syntax doesn't have to be 'perfect grammar', but just arranges the emphasis in an order that will best present and hand over the verbal picture.  Such pictures are intended only to be of help, and outrageously sweeping generalization can be funny and a liberating way to make a point.

"Ah c'mon you must be joking!"  Yes.
So it's actually very respectful of receptivity.  ( I bet you've forgotten what is.)     ~Thus spake RBM~
                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On 3 August 2012 02:01, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

              I think it's time.

Do you realize that everything you see and hear is not what you think it is?  So where do you think you are?  Obviously, what you think, is of another order than whatever anything, as we say, 'is'.

And what do we mean when we ' know what something is?'  It could be anything.  If you make a list of everything you think you know about what you're looking at, you've just covered it with labels, and every one the title of a story.  A story about what you think you're looking at.

And since you assume the stories are all true, you've imprisoned the thing in a cage and thrown away the key.  So how can you call it an object when everything you think you know about it is totally subjective?

We do the same to each other.  You think you know who someone IS, because you think that what you think, is who they are.  They could be anybody.

IS, is a funny word.  Different in every language.  It's a bit final.  It IS what it IS.  Whatever it IS.

What is time?  "Pardon, oh, er,... deux heures moins cinq."

Oh! Merci. I'll ask somebody else.

Ah! Time is the conjunction of memory and anticipation.

A concept overlaid on what just is.

Then that means that what just is, is what's here now, so how could it be going anywhere else?  

It's pathetically apathetic how we take time for granted, and don't take time to question it's existence.

All the philosophers down through time tell you it's a mystery.  What!?

All that time and you don't know what it is?  How much time do you need?

Some people say time is the fourth dimension.  How would you know what that was if you didn't have the assumption of time to pin it on?

Well, it's not something measured by clocks.  Clocks measure space.  Circular rulers.  Haven't we had enough rulers?  Hands off!

Well then it's got something to do with movement and how much, er, long or short it takes.  ...?

Objects.  Look, if there was only one object in only one infinite space, say, like a ball.  How would you know how long it took to move?

Take time to picture that.

You wouldn't know unless perhaps there was another ball as a reference point.  But then you wouldn't know which one was moving or if they both were, so you'd need another one.  That's three.

Ah, so it's about measuring change in relation to memory of what (as we say), 'was.'  Was, is an is that isn't any more.  Unbelievable.  I mean, un-believe-able.

But all these fecking balls are all existing NOW.  Whether we have memory traces of them existing not now, or not.

So then we go and imagine a NOT NOW that we don't remember yet, cos it never was.  Call it er, future.  Sounds cool.  There's hope.  (Hopefully.)

So what have we got?

Something that's always and only, NOW and HERE.  'NOWHERE'?

Spatially changing.  But the now and here, is always now and here, so  nothing is 'going anywhere'.

Except, when compared with memory, and projected as imagined possibility.  Which is always and only now and here too.

The past is not in the past and the future is not in the future.  Because anything that really is, is here now.

That may sound complicated to grasp.  Always a good idea to read slow and feel each word.  Time well spent, as the cliche goes.  

Slowly.  Like this:   'Time  is  the  conjunction  of  memory  and  anticipation.'  TIME IS THE CONJUNCTION OF MEMORY AND ANTICIPATION.   NOW!  It's happening NOW.  It just IS.

So if it's all now, which it just is, you're just 'imagining' time.  Take a break.

If any part of this flow lapses into a blur, read it again slower.  Or you're wasting your time.

I've been meaning for some time to bring this to your attention, or vise-versa.  Four years actually.  Pity to have to say what's obvious.  What's true is what's self-evident.  People don't even have time to share it.  It's not philosophy.  It's THIS.  

"Sorry i don't have time."  Well, congratulations!  Neither do i.

Why waste time trying to prove something that doesn't exist?

I suggest you pin it on your wall and study it properly some other time, as is the tendency.  When you've got more time.  There is no 'other' time.

Just say, 'i'm here now, with memory, and expectation.'  Thirteen times.  Consider thirteen lucky.  There are reasons for that which you can look up.

You might not have been here, but that's neither here nor there.  You expect to not be here but that's not here either.  But you are and it is.  The past isn't a place or a time, it's memory traces, echoes.

The future isn't a time or a place, it's expectations, imaginations.

Why live like a trapped piece of meat in a timeburger?  Why regret memory and fear expectation?  Spoils the flavour of the meat.

As for the present.  I hope it's what you wanted.  

Even though it's self-evidently not a moment in time.

I did try to give you what you wanted.  If not a diamond, at least the 'forever' part.  Welcome to the fourth dimension.  The end of the mind construct of time.  I hope you have a nice time.

As always,  Janee Denimore. RBM.   (rainbow maker)

PS.  What 'they' do to keep you as meat, is, they do the unthinkable, which is shocking.  so it will stick in your memory as indigestible.  And you will call it 'the past'.  Emotional indigestion.  

Knowing that you think in linear time, you are likely to fear it happening again.  And will call it 'possible future'.  And the present won't be quite what you wanted.

Don't worry.  There is no present.  Only you can be present.  There's nothing else you can be.  Just don't get hung up trying to work it out in thought.  Thought is time and the illusion of a you that isn't what is timelessly reading this word.

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Artwork: Window in Space, martin law, 2006

             Infinity's Rose, martin law, 2005

What to express?

On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 5:15 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

>What to express?
That's a 13 letter title.  It's also something i'm always asking.
'Always', also means, for at least 66 years.  I might, just might, (i never know), write whatever comes up from that. I'm just going to go and sleep on it.
'Synthesis': a word meaning, to include diverse elements blended into a unique wholeness.  Literally, 'syn-thesis', to initiate a process of making diversity the same, synonymous. Being of the essence of creativity, it seems, the question,'what to write', is synonymous with 'what to paint'. So why not write about that?

Since it's something i know a lot about, intimately from long experience. Also since it's something that anyone not having that experience finds a mystery, quite naturally, and it might be helpful to demystify it. It might be mutually therapeutic.
Also, contrary to what people who don't consciously claim to be creative might assume, the process is all-inclusive. That is, not an isolated separative pursuit, but one that includes, and is included in, all that goes on everywhere, and all that is thought and felt about it with regard to the wholeness of experience.

Everything is so interdependent with 'everything else' that everything IS everything else.  That is, 'else' is a word that indicates separation, and there isn't such a thing. Only 'appears' to be. In that sense, 'wisdom' and 'creative art' are not two separate things.  Wisdom principles are inherent in the nature of the art process. And this can be described and demonstrated.
Much of this understanding is currently obscured by commercialization and the notion of separate individuality. To regard wisdom and beauty as a commodity is simply delusion. A tendency to trivialize what is most inherently essential (of the essence) and profound in the nature of human consciousness and experience.  The essence of life as we experience it to be.
We lose the essence by putting quantitative value on qualitative experience. Like trying to patent the sky. Or to define infinity.
When was 'the sky' ever a limit? We are already in the realm of spatial relationship.
Yet, with at least one foot firmly in the timeless continuum, and right on cue, once again, an intended simple email message turns out to be a 'by itself written' prologue or preface for whatever it is i was saying i intended to write. Which i have equally and similarly no idea of what that might be.
'Always keep a don't-know mind.  There are infinite possibilities in that.  In contrast to a mind that has come to a 'conclusion', which is an end.'
So, this can be the first thing to be posted on the next blog, just as it stands.*  I will keep my fingers crossed for whatever comes forth next, (except when typing, as i only use two fingers) and , not that there ever is ,was, or will be, such a thing as 'next'. So this will do for now.
Rainbowmaker.

Vision Quests, martin law, 2005

On Vision Paths.

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 12:39 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

On Vision Paths.
'When you see a new trail
or a footprint you do not know,
follow it to the point of knowing.'
(Uncheedah.  Grandmother of Ohiyesa.)

'The Tao that can be talked about
is not the true Tao.'
(Lao-Tzu.)

Sometimes, (not that there are any other times) i find myself immersed in paint.  Not literally but contemplatively.  And the living room is very quiet, but for a bright fluttering fire in the grate, and it could be three in the morning.  I might have been at it for nine hours,
(not that there are any other hours).  I'm at a solid round oak table populated by nothing that's not either directly useful or aesthetically fascinating.  Sipping tea, with an anglepoise lamp strategically aimed over a small canvas in a halo of peaceful light.
Meditatively rolling a bit of tobacco in a whisper of thin paper. "Huh!"
I hear you say.  Compare that with the carbon monoxide car you drive.  Addicted to petrochemical oil wars desecrating indigenous native families.  We're all in the same boat.
Sometimes, it's always now, and simply this.  Pausing with not a hint of haste.  Pondering the next part of the process.  (Not that there is anywhere in the now for 'next'.)  I'm very methodical, in an intuitive way.  Very long sighted too.
Yet here i am, poring over microscopic features and nuances of a small area of paint like a satellite Earth probe.
All the same thing. No matter what your zoom, from sub-micro to cosmo-macro, talking of dimensions.  I'm focussed in the south quadrant of the medicine wheel, the 'close-to' place of the mouse nibbling the ear of wild grass and the big wide world is a peripheral concept.
What i make, needs to be scrutinized up close, because that's where it is created.  Not, stand back as if to evaluate and miss all the minute subtleties of a poetically rich terrain.  Since, immersed in the process i might have overseen the terrain forming out of nothing for fifty or a hundred hours, till it's as fine tuned and integrated as it can get.
And you say,"hold it up over there", and miss the whole bloody thing.
How can i ever explain?  Seeing in depth with feeling is something quite other than just pretending to look, in order to form an opinion.   Hard look to you i say.
Often, and it's always now, i'm thinking, but not thinking at all, just fully attentive in the timeless continuum.  Scanning the whole, surveying brushwork like looking for the needle in the haystack.  Monet didn't bother about any needle, just did a brilliant job of scanning truth to perception of the haystack registered in the finer frequencies of his retina.  Rods and cones and exquisitely pitched complementaries.  The truth that dark shadow is seen as red when the sun is directly on the retina.  So paint it the exact tone of red.  (You can check this.)  Really seeing the process of seeing, and not faking it.  The term,'impressionism' was originally coined and delivered as an insult, ('mere impressions'.)  But impressions impressively true to perception nonetheless.
But, brushwork!  What a profound subject.
How do i talk about something i'm so familiar with, that's first, not second nature?  Any more than most people couldn't even draw their own face accurately from memory let alone their best friend, without resorting to vague caricature.  Seeing... is not just looking.  When 'you' are looking, the 'you' consciousness is blocking seeing.
It was in art college that i first heard anybody refer to 'paint quality'.  Even if a bit pompously pedantic, it didn't go amiss.  There is such a thing.  Ask Rembrandt.  I carried on from there.  Already sensitively aware that there is a poetic language of substance and how it's applied.  It was a phase of earthy revelations arising from the deep, during hours spent in the library seeing every kind of painting for the first time.  Awe inspiring seismic activity in consciousness instantly recognized and assimilated as my own resonance.
And through that lens i continued to discern on a sensory feeling level how substance resonates with the inner being, so to speak.  Ancient universal symbols and evocative earthy textures emerged through my doodles. Many of which i now recognize in genuine crop circles and paleolithic stone carving.  It's in the genes.
I knew that's the substratum for what goes on,on the surface.
That's where the creative impulse is.  In the depth.  It's another world.    Or more accurately, a finer focus on 'the world' that's already apparent.
A drab grey wall can be loaded with meaning, that doesn't 'mean' something other than the perception of what it is.  Significantly evocative might be better.  People rarely talk about such things.  It's just a boring wall on their way to a stoned movie.
If you're at all curious, (an indispensable trait) about what is meant by 'brushwork', there's a lifetime of discovery in store.  One thing it is not, is, just an effect, or an affectation, or even a knack.  That may be clever but not profound.
China, for instance, has the most refined and evolved tradition of 'the way of the brush'.  I discovered that via the library in my teens.  It is such that an aware practitioner can discern your character from a single stroke or mark you make with a brush.  That's the nature of their ideographic language.  How much more so when sustained through a flawless seasonal depiction of wild misty mountain landscape scroll with zero alteration (which is not possible with sumi ink on silk, or rice paper).  That is, no mistakes or hesitation, and all
as fluid and flawless as a flowing stream, and every single brush mark both spontaneous and right on target.  That's not clever.  That's being so at one with discipline that you can abandon thought of discipline and play, and still not lose uncontrived naturalness of perfection.  It's not contrived, it's beautiful naturally.
Flawless essence.  That's not just knowing the Tao, that's being it.
Just as everything 'else' already is.  The way of the sword, the way of the brush, the way of the world of nature, from which it is impossible to deviate.  Deadly serious.  Yet playful.
And there are many related variations in diverse cultures.  Similar discipline and discernment applies in 'western' art.  In whatever medium, oil, acrylic, clay, wood.  Whether 'abstract expressionist', an
american explosion in the medium of paint in the 1950's, the landscapes of John Constable, the applied substance as much as the  memorable imagery, the dance of light and shade, Blake's visions, ("where the light and dark is put is as important as the colour"), Monet's truth to perception,( If the distant house you see is actually a specific kind of blob then paint that, never mind 'house', paint what you see.)  And Van Gogh's charged and rippling streams of strokes, wild energy contained, barely.  It's the feeling in how it's applied that you feel.  The feeling has to be there as a primal dynamic, you can't fake feeling.  Even if actors seem to, they have to invoke existing feeling.
Subtle variations of everything are limitless, you couldn't put them in a box, no box is bigger than everything.
Oh but i almost forgot. The main point. How would you know an authentic Tao-flow-patterning from a total chaotic mess?  There is no dividing line between one and the other.  Only gradation and it's subjective not objective.
Familiarity for one thing.  Fine-tuned discernment is another.  Organically natural freeform integration looks like a mess to someone who's eye, heart, hand, and intellect are not integrated.  What you see is what you are.  Integrated or not.  You can't change the beholder.  But you can give clues, demonstrations, comparisons. That's what i'm doing.  And obviously vibrational frequencies are contagious. Like resonates with like.
One seeing is worth a thousand pointings.  Study nature.  See interrelationships.  Join up dots where there are no dots.  And know when it's arbitrary and when it's not.
Words can only point, or evoke.  That's why there's poetry.  Words evoking more than themselves, echoes of something elusive, deeper.    But firmly, finely held in the word structures sounding as themselves.
If you're doing it for some ulterior reason you're not doing it at all.  Singing is for the singing, sound is for the sounding.  Playing with the substance for what it invokes as itself, is magic.  Art is the exploration of the magic of life which is inexhaustible.
Often i am quietly amazed by what i witness happening through a small fine brush.  Because i am fully focussed to the degree that i know when it's not it, yet have access to a discipline to magically rectify that.
Evocation and wonder.  The magic of innocence.  The wisdom of not knowing.  The flavour of feeling.  The slightest inflexion has significance.  You notice it in someone's eyes or voice.  Isn't that true?  It's the same wherever you  allow full attention.  When the 'right now' is that important for you to experience.  Whether an emergency or creative expression.  It's a questing.  Following a chosen path to see where it leads.  Here's a song i wrote....
'On Vision Paths'.
><><><><><><><
I am walking in a sacred way
following vision paths
leaf smoke in autumn dusk
feathers woven with amber
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
Walking lightly without tracks
hidden path to a timeless place
where firelight and candles flame
wild eyes smiling in silence
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
The foxy wood is alive with paths
fur and feather magical signs
spirit voices running water
wild geese flying in dreamtime
><><><><><><><><><><><><><
rainbowmaker.

artwork : Silent Circles, martin law, July 2008

A Path of Beauty.

 

 

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 12:37 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

A Path of Beauty.
Purposely chose a title that's not rational left brain, but intuitional right brain.  Also because it has thirteen letters.  Intuition says it's lucky.  The untrusting literal left brain  has fearfully omitted the number from streets and high rise floors.
"When precious gems hang from the plough,
to peaceful arts shall envy bow."  William Blake said that. And i just heard it inwardly.  Wisdom and beauty walk hand in hand.  Nothing to do with gender.  It's about modes of awareness.  Imagination is not 'just your imagination.'
The planet spawns us and all we do.  So who's imagination is being expressed here?  Ours or hers?  Like there's an invisible world war.  Invisible only if you're coming from a brain and not a heart.  And the brain people propagate a mode of being that dominates, to the degree that we don't operate with the light of our intuitive right switched on.
Artistic language.  Express delivery.  My arrows are antidote tipped.  An 'antidote' is not an animal, as much as it may sound like one.  And 'art' is the largest part of 'heart'.  Both Blake and Hendrix sang of 'arrows of desire' and they were both Sagittarians.  Wild stamina and questing far horizons.
What to express (?) is not 'nothing to express.'  It's the deep reservoir of fertile potential and how we tune the kaleidoscope to the muse of the mode of the moment.
Art is not 'artifice', or 'artificial', or 'arty-farty', or 'artful'.  That's just 'clever', 'contrived', 'conceited', and 'calculated'.  Art is not priceless objects or private ego decoration gone public at a price.
Art is playful discipline of a mode of perception that's so in the flow that the discipline seems to dissolve in artless magical manifestation.
Like, you don't jump start a running stream, you just need a good channel.  It's a receptive process.
It's like waiting in the long grass with your inner ears open.  More fox savvy  than just being out standing in your field.  (Pun lethally intended.)  Not that i'd harm a fox.
'What to express', means, out of a multitude of modes depending on where you point your lighthouse.  Revolution of your lamp illuminates and enlightens how much of your heart is in your perception.  Visioning, seeing with your heart, reveals more of the world that's already present as your perception, because you feel through the so called senses.
Imagination is in how much more vividly you dare imagine it's possible to see.  What your beam projects, heart wise, is what you get.    Beauty is in the heart vision of the beholder.  It's an uncynical  open curiosity that fine tunes the Earth emanation in it's mystical mode no matter what changing mood of weather.
Eyes of love are finer frequencies in action.  But it's subtle.  It's not Hollywood.  It's feel with wild animal senses more of what's present.  Without the static of internal chatter.
It's not like a big blast of projected sentiment.  It's more like not missing the slightest whisper of leaves on a sudden soft breeze and what that seems to say.  With such constant first and second attention the undulating impulse to expression follows as naturally as the breathing breeze.  It's a very quiet thing.
That's where the discipline is.  Very quiet attention.  Inner tension is inattention.  Worth repeating.  Inner tension is inattention.  Hush....!
If you want to see a peaceful world, be quiet.  Shut up!  Shut up but remain open.  Open heart, silent mind.  Attention remains.  A clear medium for the spontaneous darting shoals of mind-movement-waves of subtle inspiration.  Contemplating the random intelligent dance of butterfly and bee.  Starlings startled lift aloft as one and ,gone.  It's all in the fine tuning, augment me that.
What to express is what is uppermost in the moment.  Which means living in the mode of listening.  To yourself.  There's no method. You make one.
"See a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower.  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour."That's Blake again. He won't shut up.
"Who to himself would bind a joy, does the wing-ed life destroy.  Who kisses the joy as it flies, dwells in eternity's sunrise."  Thanks Bill.
But you see what he's singing about.  Total TAO and nothing else.
Impossible to scratch the surface of this topic.  Which is not a topic unless i make it one which i do.  And anyway it doesn't have a surface but for that which emerges and falls back into itself.  So how would you ever bring that up to scratch?
This is still an article about art, that's why it's called an article.  An artistic canticle if you're that way inclined.  Makes more sense than a cantistic article.  Whether you happen to be Prothelic or Catestant or an Apiarist or an Artist.  There's nutrition enough for anybody.  Just have to read between the lines, carefree as they seem.  It's a seem-free universe.
Without a living imagination you're a robot.  Robots can't imagine doing anything different from what they're told.  So before you put your ipad on an altar, know you're not a robot.  The flittering fish have got more cop-on.  Put a goldfish bowl on your altar instead.  It's considered lucky and you learn a lot from a goldfish.  The TAO again.  Can't fake naturalness.  Not trying to be natural is an art.
A path of beauty is a valid path to walk.  Has literally nothing to do with cosmetics, fashion, stereotypes, pretentious ego, or conventional thinking.  Beauty is the way things are.  Seen in their just-so-ness.
This is just one turn of an infinite kaleidoscope.  !woW
I'll give it another turn in a while.  And the path continues who knows where.  It's a long path, but you're always just where you are, so what's length got to do with it?  Just continue in the timeless continuum. ~~  ><><><><><><><><><><><><  rainbowmaker/

artwork : Cosmic Daisies, martin law, September 2003

A wisp of smoke in the summer air

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 12:22 AM, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

>Thanks Dan, i'll write this to all of you(s), in a sunshine colour.
Bit wispy from sitting in the sun, or to be more precise, the garden, intentionally doing nothing 'cept maybe breathing and looking and listening, metabolizing on a cellular level, after a long session clipping, weeding and sculpting the front lawn.
Predictable electric music drifting over the hill from a stage in Bantry square where there's something on for a few days, something to do with boats and pirates and fluttering flags and the town's probably full of drunken sailors running off with all our women.  Good. Make room for some better ones. While i sit drinking coffee minus Tshirt squinting into the glare feeling like a male version of Cinderella on a pumpkin.
Was in town yesterday, first person i saw was a friend who slapped a bold lettered poster on to a telegraph pole, which read:WARNING. TAP WATER IN BANTRY CONTAINS TOXIC CHEMICAL FLUORIDE. This is in breach of European Directives and is a serious potential health hazard.  Please do not drink it.More information available from:   'thenationalfluoridecouncilof ireland.com.'
He also gave me a copy of a poster, the gist of which may be of interest and local grapevine to you all and can be seen at:
'soundsamazing.org'   Somebody i've known a long time doing this.  Fair play to you, and admirable, i said to him later, and he appreciated my response and almost patted me on the part of my back that's healing nicely.
Talking of blogs, with a nice fire, a milky coffee and a roll up.
Not exactly ready to go. Haven't really written anything yet, but for the dream thing which needs typing up and improving and i wish i could come up with something better. My dreams leave a lot to be desired, i'm sure yours are more interesting. Rarely even any women in them, never mind angels or ET's or cellestial otherdimensional vistas. This one's typically sordid and predictably traumatic. What kind of a lightworker am i?
Had almost no emails since to reply to, which, given a receptive perceptive ear on the other end tend to turn into usable articles.
So just at the moment i'm not sure what to say to the people of Earth without being provoked into inspiration except maybe "quit threatening to get your shit together endlessly when the right date arrives, and for once in a million years start inhabiting the planet and give up making endless videos about brutal cops beating up old ladies and waffling about collapsing economy when there isn't any, (economizing, that is), and investing in another take of the gold rush instead of planting anything half edible that will grow, like, beansprouts not greenbacks, worst thing about money is it's tough on the digestion. Not to mention drone strikes and legislation confiscating guns, clubs, gun clubs, spears and rolling pins. There 'are' ways to decalcify the pineal gland but you've only got less than a week to get a tribe together where there wasn't one before they come crashing through the front door without asking for an appointment.
But there are hopeful signs.  Despite total crop failure and toxic pollution of all water.  People everywhere are waking up to the obvious fact that governments are there just to govern and that turns out to mean not helping you water the tomatoes after all and they're disillusioned.  And what will happen when the food additives wear off and how will you explain in a wholesome and joyful way to your children about the birds and the bees when there aren't any?
I mean, what in carnation...? I was (so to speak) born in 'the second world war', (who's idea was it to start counting suddenly?), and three score and ten years round the sun later they're wondering how to arrange a third one and who to invite.
But i'm not too worried, i hear that China just bought america so that, presumably, under new management it won't be business as usual.  'Business', with a capitalistic 'B' is just a camouflaged way of saying 'being busy', busy getting more and more for less and less.  It's called 'profit'.  Fitting if you're a Pro.
The previous tenants didn't do that.  They were all for 'giving'.  And we never forgave them for that.
Even though it's glaringly obvious, even to a slightly 'civilized' creature, that, if  GIVING, is everybody's main activity, then everybody is continually RECEIVING since they are two words for the same process, and so no need for 'life insurance', or banks, or being 'governed', or even the all familiar community-disintegrating divide and rule legal slavery ethic called 'competing for a job'.  I mean, how can 'competitive co-operation', ever, succeed?  Ask yourself that.
No. We lost the plot from when plot-loss was inserted into the script by those who worshipped the profits of old, or gold, or just getting more for less which is properly called  'just taking'. Or theft if you like.  Basically, unless everything is based around sincere and perpetual GENEROSITY, nothing works (except the slaves of course), and you don't have to be a celebrated sociologist to deduce that.  Theories of 'civilization' indeed!
CIVILIZATION.  I look at the definition in the dictionary.  It says: 'To bring out of barbarism.'  (Oh really?)  'Refinement' (!)
'Refined culture'.

No. Sorry. Won't work. If the civilized basic assumption that our natural state is 'barbaric', (and that IS the assumption. Never mind who 'the Barbarians' were), then it follows that we have no sound basis to base our tampering with the natural, on.
What's more 'barbaric', than 'civilizations'?  Especially this one.Did hunter gatherers practice genocide? Democide?  Why are we trained to think that human creatures in the natural state were primarily competitive, and not CO-OPERATIVE? It's primarily a 'civilized' notion.  You know, 'primitive people'!  And what did we do to them?  What are we still doing to them?

Well, we are bulldozing them out of their harmony with the natural surroundings which they very sensibly revere and respect and care for, and dare not pollute or defile. Then we build greedy chemical factories for profit only that poison their water and air. When they naturally resist, we shoot them.
We have never done anything else because we are 'civilized' you know.  The myth of progress is backwards.
Did you ever notice the beauty in the eyes of an uncivilized infant when he or she smiles?  There are no words that convey such alive and appealing innocence.  Would make you wish you had a friend who smiled naturally with such lack of guile, (a word we forget to use), a word similar in meaning to 'guilt'.
Would make you wish your whole family smiled and laughed so naturally. That you were an extended family or tribe so lacking in guile all the while, especially when they smile. That's the beauty of the human soul for you right there.
So.  I coin a new word you haven't heard before.  EVILIZATION.
Or even, 'Western Evilization.'  Though, tell me, or ask yourself, how on Earth can there be an east and a west on a sphere?  And where precisely does one become the other, and when do you apply the brakes?  North and south, okay there's the poles, though they are shifting rapidly.  But east and west?  Keep going and you're already coming back.  So much for western evilization and it's progress.  Back where you started by going too far.  Which says a lot.
All illusions inherently embody the seeds of their own destruction, thankfully, and become dis-illusioned which is a good thing to be.  For us that is.  At least it's a start.
Yet, i will never forget, the light of mischievous but natural innocence, the absence of the burden of civilized guile.  The light in the smile of indigenous child.  Says more than all these words put together.  That being so, perhaps i will have to paint it.
Maybe call it, 'Bulldozers, back off.'  Or  something similar.
One thing leads to another.  Naturally so.
Martin Rainbowmaker.  ><><><><><><><><

www.SURVIVAL for tribal peoples.

art : Moon River Girl, martin law, 1996     (see updated pic of artwork)
       Many Moons Past, martin law, 1990  (see updated pic of artwork)

Out of the wood.

On 11 July 2012 02:46, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

>>>>Just to announce i'm free,
or seem to be.  Out of the maple wood.  Off duty from the ministry of leaf loving.  MOLL.  Approximately 50 hours (i made a note of it) , staring into this woman's face that shape shifted every time i looked.  Scanning for such fine anomalies that i can hardly tell what i'm seeing.  I notice my left eye is a bit sharper than my right, which is funny cos i always lasered with my right for the optical illusion of 3d.  Maybe from so much right brain focus.

Finishing touches , so fine they weren't there.  I felt the process accelerating to a fine bottle neck V point>>>>V; (VV), like those buffalo traps indians used to stampede herds off a cliff, a device called a 'piscin' which is funny cos it's irish for kitten.
Anyway, that's how they got their dinner.
Just going to matt varnish it a second time to take the shine off the minute modulations and so there's no surface sheen to distract from the illusion of 3d which is a fascinating phenomenon and varnishing is such a cool homogenising trip.
So i could email it tomorrow when i go to the launderette not that that's where i do it from that would just be a washout.
But it feels good to be free of finishing touches. Wouldn't want to have to do them every day.  I wonder how Rembrandt Van Rijn and Leonindo Da Varci didn't have a nervous breakdown.  No wonder Vincent kept em chunky.
So i planted 12 parsnips and 24 carrots and transplanted the herbs into a neat little spot, earthed up the onions so they don't go brown on top musta been the damp last year, and decided on a sunny place for the butternuts having googled about them, the nutterbuts. The yellow pepper is doing elegantly well but the tomato, that is, the true tomato is not getting the sun it needs to accelerate despite being in the front east to south window. I diluted a drop of 'tomorite' and gave it a homeopathic trickle
but these M class flares seem to be making earth weather moody.  But shucks i'm out of the wood and glad i don't have to channel Rembrandt every day for a living.  Trees are much easier.
I did listen to Drunvalo Melchizedek, wonder what Lashy thinks about his name. Listened to the three latest Lash navigator satnavs. And wonder how you're getting on, living in the living room, sounds like you've got the right room anyway by the sound of it.  Oh!  I never knew before that if i typed all the way down to the bottom, it would move the page up for me thats very kind or clever i've been doing it by hand all this time.
I've had the phone off the hook while i was in the maple wood and haven't seen too many exciting people, nobody visited anyway perhaps since you were last here or at least since the last Deepa and Carmel visit (see archives) and mostly see people when i go into town but they're mostly a bit strange.
Having beans on toast for breakfast in the Bakehouse today around five o'clock i had the notion society is like a zoo. I mean, so many people are an odd shape and size that i wonder how they lie down without rolling out of bed, and so many people seem to be mentally compromised maybe the water doesn't help. And one wonders, is the 'holy water' poisoned too? And does anybody know?  So yes, a zoo will do. Like 'Fota Park', only this is just' Part of Folk', a 'Folk Park' you might say, a nature reserve in reverse.  Not worth worrying about. Not everybody wants to ascend into their truest potential.  If the internet is any indication, there's a bit of a drought (had to look that one up) of imagination on this planet of what a full potential might look like. As they say, "ah sure, we're only human."  Er, excuse me.  What planet is this?  I was supposed to get off at, er....
And thinking out loud, "it must just be 'the Kali Yuga..." and the person sitting opposite you passes you the sugar....!
Anyway. I only meant to say i'm out of the maple wood. But it was nice in there.  And much more real than the internet. Speaking as an 'armchair traveller' mind you. But of course, we're "only human". And sure, "it's just your imagination."
It's like when 'Gandhi' (a common name i believe) was asked, "Mahatma what do you think of western civilization?" The story has it, that he replied, " I think it would be a good idea."
My answer might be, ' I think i'll just go back into the wood in my imagination.  It's nicer there.'  Maybe i'll buy some maple syrup.~~~~    ~~~~ A telepathic echo thru the trees from me.
Trusting you're all resonating well.>>>+<<< Rainbowmaker.

artwork : a love of leaves, martin law, July 2012

Waking Update.

On 9 July 2012 16:32, Martin Law <martin.rainbowmaker@gmail.com> wrote:

>Slowly waking update
after a fifth nocturnal nine hour session concentrating minuscule whispers of energy with a fine brush on a 10" by 14" canvas till the orange street lamps blink out at exactly 5.30. And rising at 2.30 after a good eight hour rest with no dreams remembered.
Thanking for your message from the P.R. muse department, nice to know there's another nocturnal watcher out beyond the streets
where neighbours process their televisual overdoses in prone slumber.
Reporting that the painting process, microscopic laser focus of imaginative light, diminutively inconspicuous as it is in the vast scheme of so called things is well and into the fine retuning phase. Faces must be the hardest thing to paint. They change before your eyes according to the light and angle of vision and the slightest sable eyelash whisper of inconspicuous nuance and modification and all is totally subjective and relative to what you just looked at a moment before. But the aim is to breathe life into substance through such silent invisible whispers. The slim brush, (a new one with a fine point) held lightly and weightless between generous thumb and forefingers like the reed of a wand it truly is and ever was. Love and respect for the timeless rudimentary tool, such that whenever i wander in the wild or wood, inevitable that i pick up a small stick or wand of willow, as if to dowse through finger touch the holographic link with all the mind makes in it's impressionistic meander. The sense of touch, of such refinement of gentle sensitivity the world knows little or nothing of in it's bombast bomb blast blind brute force.
More power to a butterfly's wings and the world we wish into being.
Meanwhile, healing continues with the small crater on my back as extinct as i can get it slowly subsiding into the contours of the terrain with a fresh soft dressing and blessing.  And the next door pup yaps out the back and will hopefully let me plant the carrots and parsnips without piercing my ears. Having turned the earth between showers for air and wind, if not sun to dry.
Another session, or two, with paint should do , to bring the vision glimpse to fruition and completion. I will tie it to an arrow and email send when such is so, soon, i'd say, not long to go.
As the preliminary pencil drawing pales by comparison, and need not be incorporated in the next blog.
But 'A Love of Leaves', a small ritual of remembrance, where we see, momentarily, as if through the eye of the hummingbird, the lone indian woman in the maple wood , a clearing in the cathedral of falling leaves.  Spellbound in a soft sun's golden glance, the palomino companion shuffling, breathing the crisp scented air. She, in the moment , gazing beyond time, with an untroubled bonded sense of 'the people' and to 'all our relations'.
Mitakuyeh  oyasin.  Holding the large red leaf by the stem, between generous thumb and nimble forefingers, a banner for the love of leaves, a bright blaze from the heart.
For 'The People'. May they live and thrive.
>>>>+<<<< >>>>+<<<< >>>>+<<<<.     ~ martin rainbowmaker

artwork : Bright Flowers, martin law, June 1997