Nourishment in Hard Times
by: Dave Belden on March 4th, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Where we get our fuel from for being our truest selves and for remaking the world — which are two sides of one coin in my worldview — is always a question for me. I meet someone who is creative, or who struggles on over decades to care for some part of the world, and I want to know: what has kept you going, what feeds your spirit? They may be successful at their struggle and they may be well loved, or they may be a burr in others’ flesh and feel that their success is way too little and unappreciated: or both of these! But how have they not burned out? How do they keep giving?
We profiled Barbara Bash on this blog and on our art gallery a while back. Here’s a different side to her, from her “visual blog” True Nature. I recognize this experience of hers so well: one day’s answer to the questions above. I find a good deal to think about in how her day developed, and in the fact that she kept at her work in the absence of inspiration. I have not been having an easy week or two myself, and thank her for lightening my morning with this.
A Day at the Museum
By Barbara Bash
After a week of snowstorms
I head into New York City and the Metropolitan Museum
to see what draws me in and out . . .I expect to feel my delight and curiosity.
Instead I stagger through the halls, overwhelmed and discouraged.
The buddhas and bodhisattvas do not comfort me.
The Egyptians seem preoccupied with death.
All the people wandering around appear to have attention deficit disorder -
but it’s really me that has it !Finally I get to the “primitives” – Oceania, Africa, Pre-Colombian -
and I painfully coax my pencil to the page . . .
What strikes me at first sight of all the paintings above is the second one:a helmet mask .
Well, it is simply not a helmet mask as the Mali has made, nor a boat heading into the wind, eager being abroad as Barbara Bash has imagined,it is a vast crocodile ,such as George Soros ,heading for its preys :Thailand, Eastasia, and EU…
Dave, thanks for this. I loved taking in Barbara’s sketches and I could really feel how she was taking in the source material and what it moved inside her. Very very cool.
What feeds my spirit is connecting with earth.
Surfing or even just sitting at the ocean–the Pacific in particular. I’ve lived on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts and I have to say there is something very different about the Pacific. The energy in the water is different, the feel is different, the sense of global awareness is bigger… which is ironic becuase I’ve been to Europe, Africa’s west coast and South America’s east coast and yet sitting on the Atlantic in NE north America I never had that sense of being on an oceanic “rim.” I dunno, there’s just something about the Pacific that recharges me. I feel alive again when I head inland over the mountains to my little coastal valley.
Being in the hills, either mountain biking, trail running or hiking, sitting out there off trail. I like to especially go in winter when rains are coming in off the Pacific and I can see fingers dragging down from the low-hung pregnant clouds, trailing across the manzanita and sage and the mounted up rocks and dirt like we trail our fingers through the sand on the beach, tracing patterns. You can hear the vegetaion around you crackle and pop like rice-krispies in milk. I feel everything fall away from me, and my body my mind my heart and my essence feels whole again.
Daily training outside. I make half of my income officiating soccer games. This requires daily training and because I can’t afford a gym membership–recently discovered that even if I could, I’m not a “gymn person” (too crowded, too much other people’s energy banging around inside four walls)–so I train outside rain or shine. Being out in the air, feeling my muscles burning in the sunlight, my feet on the grass, rejeuvenates more than just my body. My soul feels alive again. In a match, it’s more intense but afterward I feel a paradoxical mix of being enervated and energized, no matter how stressful or difficult a match it was.
Drumming or playing music, drawing for no commercial purpose. I get fuel when I work (my other income source is fiction writing) but I’m thinking Dave’s talking fuel intake sources and working in my creative occupation does require some base fuel intake that isn’t that same as that which builds off of my occupational creativity. Hanging with a drum circle, playing bass or guitar at home (I used to be in a band and I miss that), drawing–just expressing with my hand what I’ve seen or been impressed by within my own mind. All these tap and connect internal and external in a way that recharges my spirit.
To read your comment, Just, is another enjoyment .You recharge yourself and recharge your readers by sharing your personal “paradoxical mix of being enervated and energized”,your connection with the earth and the universe.
Thanks, Jack, I enjoyed reading this as much as jiuquan han did. “Being out in the air, feeling my muscles burning in the sunlight, my feet on the grass, rejuvenates more than just my body.” It’s so true. I first learned this to my great surprise when I was in my twenties and was learning basic carpentry and building skills on a job in Yorkshire. After many years as a student I was totally bushed at the end of each day and the 45 minute ride home on two stuffy buses left me even more flattened. But when I biked those nine miles home over the hills I was refreshed for the evening. It was so counter-intuitive for me at the time, but I ended up biking in all weathers and hiking the moors in rain and fog: it’s not just the sun that rejuvenates. These days I’m just delighted to have a bike commute again and as long as I’m wearing good rain gear the feeling of rain lashing my face is a thrill, and the fact that most people seem surprised I like it just tells me they are missing out!
I love that my sketches – of objects sitting in glass cases in airless museum halls – led to a wide ranging discussion of the deep refreshment of the natural world ! It brings forth in me a deep trust and appreciation of aliveness always available and waiting . . .