Sri Ganesha

Obstacles, placed in

 the path or moved aside, are

analogous gifts.

Ga-nesh-a (also Gan-esh) - Hindu - the God of Wisdom; placer or remover of obstacles, especially at the beginning of a journey or new endeavor; son of Parvati and Shiva; human body with elephant head.

Ganesha has been journeying with me in three different vehicles for nine years . . . . as an air freshener.  He was a gift from a friend who knew I had obstacles in my life that needed moving.  My friend had a confidence in the scented square that I did not.  "Trust me," she said.  "He's never let me down."

That neon yellow elephant was seen as silly by some, irreverent by others.  I told people that he had to be working because I'd never hit an obstacle in any of the vehicles he was in.  I told them that until August 2010 when my Outback hit a branch that was hidden under the rushing water of a late summer flash flood.  Since then, no more obstacles.  One obstacle in nine years seems like a good average.

A few months ago I got back to a regular practice of zazen (seated meditation).  During a recent meditation I thought of my faded Ganesha still hanging from my rear view mirror.  While I try to not have any thoughts while meditating, I decided this random thought was inviting me to send out some gratitude to Ganesha for his continued obstacle removal.  "Thank you," I said to the faded square in my mind's eye.  "I am so thankful that you have kept me and my car safe during our journeys with you."

I was expecting the image in my mind to float out, to be left again in thoughtless meditation.  Instead, the Ganeha in my mind stared more intensely at me.  The square he sits in seemed to get closer to me, Ganesha's peaceful expression  had changed to repugnance.  "That's it?" he scoffed.  It took all my effort to stay with the image, to not abandon my meditation right then and there.  It was too weird.

"Really?" he continued.  "You have a life filled with uncertainty, illnesses, crumbling relationships, overdue bills, and who knows what else - and I just get to remove the obstacles from in front of your car when you drive to HyVee?"  I felt like I was no longer alone in my physical space, no longer deep in meditation.

"What are you saying?" I asked the faded piece of cardboard, breaking all my meditation rules of silence and letting go.

" You're whole life is a journey, not just your car rides."  

I quickly scanned my brain for information.  "Had I been drinking?  Any new medications?" I allowed myself to ask.  No. No. Nothing to hint at the origins of this surreal experience. 

"I'm here.  Ask me for help with anything.  Ask anyone for help with anything!"  His arms, all four of them, thrust out toward me, as if offering me something I could not see.  I could not look away.  "I mean it," he said in a softer, almost compassionate voice.  "Obstacles can not always be seen, are not always physical," he whispered as he crumbled into a million tiny pieces.

I wish I had some amazing ending to this story, but that is it.  However, I do spend time each day thinking of this mediation encounter.  I guess that is an obstacle placed in my path.  So much so that I painted his portrait as I pondered.  

Removing the Mask

Our inheritance:

a cerebral closet full

of ill-fitting masks.

                                    ~ Lori Allen

I recently painted the Buddhist bodhisattva Avalokitesvara.  (See her photo in my prior blog post, "Bodhisattva Antidepressant")  I have learned to expect that my paintings will never be copies of photos or the actual subjects, but rather my interpretation of the same.  Reminding myself of that expectation, I can relax and not get every single detail right as I paint.  I re-interpret what a photographer, nature, or some other entity has created, what I am inspired by.  It is a lovely way to create.

While I am not expecting my work to be a carbon copy of what I am painting, I have finally identified the one thing that almost always disappoints me as I finish a painting.  That is - taking off the mask.  Or masque.  Or frisket.  These are mediums painted on paper, usually before color is applied, that will dry to resist water and color.  When the painting is finished, the mask is rolled or rubbed off to reveal an unpainted area.  In watercolor, I was taught, they add interest to the painting.

Or not.  Sometimes they add big dead spots that the painter then tries to blend in with the rest of the finished picture, or that she applies another medium to (gallons of gold paint) to try to make it look like an integrated and pre-planned part of the painting.  I have achieved satisfaction in about 10 percent of the painting I apply mask to, but mostly I don't like it.

I don't like if for all the reasons I don't like masks worn by me or other beings.  Well, again, I do like masks in about 10 percent or less of my life situations - Halloween, parties, pretend play - but I am talking about the masks that are worn everyday by all of us.  Our happy masks, or false interest masks, or being who you want me to be masks; our being strong or caring or unhurt masks; our I can't see that, can't hear that mask - all these and any worn to mislead others, inevitably disappoint when taken off.

I have spent much of my adult life trying to walk the streets of life mask-free, defending my natural features as acceptable ways of being in the world.  Recently, I had some minor surgery on my eye.  A good friend took me to the clinic and stayed with me during the procedure.  As the nurse prepped the eye area with a multitude of antiseptic squares, she said, "thank you so much for not wearing your eye make-up today."  My non-swabbed eye met the gaze of my friend.  We both burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" asked the nurse.

"Do you even own  eye make-up?" my friend asked through her laughter?

"Not since the 80s," I crowed.  I felt like an addict announcing thirty years of sobriety.  "Not anymore." I don't begrudge anyone a bit of eye or any other make-up, I do wear colored lip gloss from time to time.  What giving up make-up, my mask, did for me was remind me that not only are my natural physical features okay unaltered, but also are my natural emotional, feeling, knowing, and being-in-the-world features.

My art, like my life, from this time forward, will use masks only for special effects, fancy parties, and intentional distortions.  For all other times, people will be able to see my paintings with all the colors, swirls, unintended splatters, and blemishes combined to make something that they may recognize as my honest interpretation of the subject, as my authentic statement on that moment.  Now . .  where did I put that gold paint?

                                     

Bodhisattva Antidepressant

On days like these, my

mind easily feigns that Your 

Breath is just the wind.

Image by Donald Macauley

Today's windy weather reminds me of the Buddhist bodhisattva Avalokitesvara.  This bodhisattva embraces the compassion of all buddhas.  Dependant on the culture and tradition, Avalokitesvara is depicted as a male or female and may have a slightly different spelling of the name. When we break her name down we find these Sanskrit words and their meanings:

• AVA - a prefix, this means down
• LOKITE or LOKITA - to notice, look, or observe
• SVARA or ISARVA - authority, leader, powerful

What I love about Avalokitesvara is that she embraces the compassion of all buddhas.  As a bodhisattva she is enlightened and entitled to Nirvana, but instead she has chosen to stay "of the earth" to offer her compassion to all sentient beings on their worldly journey to enlightenment.

Avalokitesvaara especially understands that we are in need of compassion when we are hurt and suffering, regardless if the pain and suffering is caused by external or internal assaults to our bodies, minds and spirits.  I once heard a master say that the Earth's winds are really Avalokitesvara breath.  When we feel air moving around us - drying our tears or teasing our hair - we are gently kissed by her presence.

I feel that today she has grown weary of using gentle whispers to encourage us.  There is nothing soothing or gentle about today's winds - even the trees quake and bow as she comes by. All day long her annoying presence keeps my attention. "Perhaps," I imagine her thinking, "if I am stronger and pushier they will not fall asleep, but will instead move more quickly toward their full awakening,"      

"Don't count on it, Avalokitesvara," I mummer as I pull the blanket close around my neck and turn from the window she begs to come through.  "Don't count on it," I repeat in mantra as I fall back to sleep.  I dream the master who taught me was wrong - Avalokitesvara is not the wind.  Avalokitesvara is the compassionate room where I spend so many nights, and increasingly, more days.  Her belly is my soft, yielding bed, her hair my twisted blankets that hold me.  

The wind is just wind.

No metaphor for gentle

kisses.  Just the wind.

Family Therapy

        

There are many reasons for the adoption of passivity as a defense; in our experiences one common one is that it serves the purpose of warding off murderous feelings.                                                                                                                                                              ~ Boszormenya-Nagy & Framo

Several months ago I rescued some old tin type photos from a family cedar chest.  There were men, children, couples, families, and these two women in the lot.  None of the pictures are labeled with dates or names of subjects, but I imagine that if they are not my relatives, they are at least beloved friends of ancestors. In sharing the picture of the woman on the right, I had some laughs with family and friends - along with speculation as to the cause of the disheveled look. Secretly, I love the woman on the right most.  I imagine that her DNA is what fuels my own genetics.   I was always the daughter, sister, cousin, friend, mother, wife, neighbor - who had wild hair, the look of a person who just rushed in, the untidy and untidying. 

I don't know why, but from the moment I saw the photo of disheveled woman, I felt a kinship with her. I imagine that she, like me, felt compelled to claim the seed of consanguinity discontent as her own for her generation. Or was she just bold and beautiful, comfortable with not conforming to expectations held by others?  Either way, I feel there was struggle in her story.

Today when feeling a bit sad, I decided to find my old friend, my possible ancestor, to inspire me to either move on or claim and embrace my disheveled woman self.  When picking up the tin type of the photo on the right, the one on the left was stuck to it. I noted that there seemed to be some similarities between the two woman, so I did some photoshop sleuthing.  Magnified examination reveals that these are the same woman, her Dr. Jeykll and  Sister Hyde shots.   The woman is wearing the same choker - a black ribbon with leaf-shaped pendant - in both pictures.  Her facial features are identical when imposing one face over the other.  

What led to this transition we see in the later, wilder photo?  Is that a scar on her face in the photo on the right?  Or just an artifact of old photography?  Did she find happiness and contentment in life? What could she share with me about life that I have not yet learned?  Will I ever know who she is? Did she ponder her progeny?  Am I even her progeny?  What could I share with her to make life more joyful, more real?  More bearable?  

Most of my questions can only be answered with conjury and magic.  All I can say is - thank you, whoever you are - for making me feel a kindredness to your life; rest in peace knowing that perfect is not the place all your descendants seek.  

Little Lights

Neutrals, taupes, and blacks;
 the middle-age women's cloak
of obscurity.

                                                                  ~ Lori Allen

These beautiful lights

of mine, get close to me and

they will shine – on you.

                                                                  ~ Lori Allen

Tardis Haiku

Dreams and memories

have no need for conjectures

about time travel. 

~ Lori Allen

_______________________________________________________


I have spent an inordinate amount of time in opthamology offices in the past few weeks answering this question, "Is the first one better, or now, the second?"  I pose that same question to you readers.    Is the first painting above the final, finished painting?  Or is the second one, below, the finished painting.  Same questions regarding the Tardis Hai.  

Only the fearful

and angry ignore their own

time travel powers.

                                                    ~ Lori Allen

Teachers

Grief and Sorrow act

like their names are on the lease

with Growth and Learning.  

                                                    ~  Lori Allen

I am fifty-eight, almost fifty-nine, years old.  How much more Growth and Learning can a person abide?  I ask myself this question every time something "happens" to me -  an unexpected tax bill; a surgery that is usually saved for the seventh or eighth decade of life; a loved one's struggles with health/finances/sobriety/emotional stability/whateverelse; the state of inequality in all the world; the planet's living occupants dying because of my desire for cheap and readily available resources - to name a few.

I shoulder a lot of burden when it comes to feeling responsible for the heaviness that is a part of all life.  On days like this one I wonder why these things happen.  No, I wish that things were easier for me.  I wish that I'd made different decisions in my life so I'd have more of what I think I need now.  I wish I could take the Sorrow and Grief from loved ones and make it disappear from their lives.

Fortunately, when my busy and inept worrying has to pause for breath, my centered and contemplative self speaks up, reminding me that Grief and Sorrow share the same familial DNA as Peace, Joy, and, Gratitude.  I am listening.  I am making connections.  I am remembering lessons from the past.  I am closer to becoming a vessel that holds all experiences and all emotions without judgment.

Still, I am not perfect.  As I have grown and learned, I have come to value a three-step process for holding, and eventually letting go of, Grief and Sorrow.

First, I treat myself with Compassion.  I acknowledge that as I encountered choices and decisions, I was not my best self, or it was a hard day, or an unfair situation.  I don't judge.  I allow myself to cry, to mourn, to feel the full emotions of the event that brought my old friends Grief and Sorrow to visit.

Second, I move on.  While I do not deny or reject Grief and Sorrow, I do not let them define me either.  That is where Growth and Learning come in.  With each visit from Grief or Sorrow, I understand a bit better how they got there, and if I can, or care to, block them from arriving in the same way again.

Third, I make no promises I know I can not keep.  To myself or to others. Here is where I allow Grace to remind me that I am perfect as I am.  You, my friends, are too.  

Grace is a whisper

that comes in on the same breath

with "what a fuck up."

                                                        ~  Lori Allen