Maailman Paras
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With love
You can’t control everything that happens in your life, but you can decide this now. You can decide to accept whatever happens. You can accept your loved ones with their decisions, with their uncertainties. You can accept change. You can accept disappointment. You can accept loss.
Tomorrow will come with new opportunities to learn and grow. There is nothing you need to do right now.
Just relax. Just enjoy this moment of peace. Just be. Right here, right now.
Love without needing to control. Accept without needing to fix. Relax without needing to understand.
There are things you won’t get the answers to. Things you don’t need the answers to.
Just relax in this tangled nest of mystery. Enjoy the gift of wonder and possibility. Not all questions are answerable. Not all answers are permanent.
Truth will come to you in its time. Understanding will dawn on you when you are ready.
And in the meantime, rest in the understanding that you are exactly where you should be. You are exactly who you should be.
The truth is the truth. You don’t need to understand it. You don’t need to control it.
You need to care for yourself. You need this not only for yourself, but so you have something to offer to others. You can’t give from an empty container. So be generous, and fill yourself with strength. With light. With conviction. With love.
Two Island Lake
Grand Marais Harbor
Ovet
Doors. 5″x7″, mixed media on paper. 2021
Served a purpose
Over the past 21 years, Flash Meridian has been described as a hero, a superhero and an action figure. For a long time, I believed it. Those are natural descriptions for a futuristic astronaut, hurtling through uncharted space and encountering alien beings.
That is, until a 14 year old pointed out that Flash Meridian doesn’t DO anything!
He fixes broken equipment, and hikes distant planets at times, but he mostly sits in his spaceship sipping lattes and thinking deep thoughts about his life, the universe, and his place in it. Kind of like me.
He doesn’t really fight villains. He doesn’t possess any unusual strength or have any notable abilities.
I’m in the process of producing the complete audiobook. Friends who have listened to parts of it have not described it as thrilling, but rather darling, and have said that it helped them fall asleep. But in a good way.
I’m not offended.
I’ve described this as introspective.
When I used to do late night radio shows, listeners called in saying that my voice was relaxing. The music I played was melancholy. One listener even said my music was morbid. Ok. I just think it’s beautiful.
I’ve written guided imagery meditations specifically with relaxation and sleep as the goal. I fall asleep to the sound of my own voice every night.
This is what I do. I subvert a genre. It’s similar to the way I present the world in my paintings. You might think you’re looking at majestic old growth pines, only to later notice the fish swimming in the treetops.
I accept that my story is not the action adventure you might expect. It just happens to be set in outer space.
It comes out of me, with the themes and flavor that flow through me. That’s not unexpected. If it helps you fall asleep, it’s served a purpose. If it makes you think differently about life and death, it’s served a purpose. If it entertains you, it’s served a purpose. If it inspires you to express something that you find flowing through you, it’s served a purpose.
Mixed Media
Fish
Subconscious
I used to do this thing where I avoided telling people my story behind my abstract art. I didn’t want to limit their ideas of what to see in the piece, and I didn’t want them to think that there was just one right answer. Then a gallery manager told me that people like to buy a story, so I should tell it. I’m glad she did.
I had a musician friend who didn’t think people should bring their interpretation to a song. He felt that only the songwriter’s original intent was important. Well, of course we are going to bring our experience and interpretation to the piece, be it a painting or a song. That’s what makes it relevant and relatable.
I can’t care about something I can’t relate to.
Then another friend told me that these come from my subconscious. When I paint without attempting to represent something from the physical world, but just lay down the color in a way I feel like arranging it. I don’t always ask a line to look like a branch or a brushstroke to look like a fish. When I’m done with my composition, I stop. My subconscious comes into play again when I’ve put the art supplies away, and the paint is dry. I look at it with purpose. Not with urgency, but with an open mind, and time to spend exploring the marks I’ve made. At first, they may seem random, but like those Magic Eye pictures, something will suddenly appear. Something that flowed from my hand. Something I didn’t know how to draw. Something I didn’t know how not to. I don’t understand how it works. The feeling I get when I look at them is like I am looking at art by someone else. It came from my hand, but it is not contrived.
I wouldn’t have chosen to paint a knight on horseback. The other day, I did a mixed media piece that looks like just that. And I do remember watching a show this past winter about the Knights Templar. At the same time, I was researching my genealogy, and I learned that some of my ancestors were knights. My 17th great grandfather was Thomas Kerr, the first Baron of Ferniehirst. He died in 1484.