we played a game on the roadtrip back from boston and time spent with our beloved boys and family and friends. our on-the-road-many-hours-to-pass game was “if i were first lady/first man, my platform would be….” we spoke about what we would choose as our impassioned work, the reasons we would choose that very important work and how we would try to support it.
coming back – after thanksgiving gratitude and in the beginning of this beautiful holiday season – to this painting morsel of HELPING HANDS and the full image of david’s deeply touching HELPING HANDS painting, i can think of no better platform than that of those two words – helping hands.
when you think about bowling, you can literally smell that distinct bowling alley smell. each time we see the boys, we bowl. it is becoming a tradition. i think it is because we are erratic bowlers and they like to poke fun at our lack of bowling expertise. no, truly, they are pretty kind about it. and it is always a blast. after we bowl together, i always say to d, “we should bowl more often.”
sandy and dan (brother and sister) bowl on thursdays. every thursday. they bowl with a team and i know that they look forward to it. it is a staple of their week and balances out everything else going on in work and life. it would be a unimagined joy in my life if i could bowl on thursdays with my brother.
this morsel is a piece of a much much larger painting, called joy. the painting is gorgeous and colorful and one of my favorites of d’s yoga series. when i sorted to this morsel, i was surprised and amused at the bowling ball and wooden lane that i could clearly see there (at least clear to me.) but how perfect. joy within joy.
more than once i have been in a moment when i thought, “this is a slice of heaven.” everyone has them. like this scene, it may be on the beach. it may be in the woods. it may be in the rocking chair with your tiny baby. it may be on the mountain in fresh powder. it may be listening to music while running (or sitting quietly) or reading poetry in an adirondack chair. it’s different for everyone. regardless of where it is, of when it is, of what it is, everything feels in balance and all feels well with the world, at least in your little piece of the world. we feel grateful and alive. and we wish for more of those moments.
what if we treated every breathing moment like that? like a slice of heaven.
i love design. and i love finding the small morsels of design hidden in each of david’s really exquisite paintings and, with my mind’s-eye-magnifying-glass creating products with them…my favorite new design challenges are – amazingly – leggings! but, regardless of the product i am designing, it makes me crazy how many stunning individual images are within the whole…i’m bowled over with my camera roll after i shoot a painting.
earth interrupted I, mixed media 48″x53″
it occurs to me that this is not far from something i should notice in all of life. quarter earth – a part of earth interrupted I – is no less a beautiful image because it is a smaller piece of a whole painting. ahhh. it’s not a stretch to see – that the individual daisy is no less a beautiful image because it is a small part of a field of daisies…this moment is no less a beautiful image because it is a small part of a life of moments…we are no less a beautiful image because we are are a small part of a whole world of people.
peace. the written word (or the symbol) punctuates the corners of our home. it’s suspended on doorknobs, off of old window frames, made of old copper or tin, in my studio handmade by the boy out of a scrap of wood, a necklace from the girl hanging on a mirror, a chunky silver ring on my right hand from david…
“may you be peace” would be my motto, if we all had mottos. i just feel like i can’t think of better places to lead from than kindness and peace. way back in high school, a long while ago, the-amazing-english-teacher-andrea made an impression on all of us – with her peace signs and her pay-it-forward-thinking; if my obsession with peace signs hadn’t already started by then, this indeed was its jump-start.
david’s painting MAY YOU wraps a buddhist prayer around you and is astoundingly beautiful. as i photographed it for his gallery site, i found myself concentrating also on morsels of the painting, each stunning in their own right. this is one of the morsels. may you be peace is simple and complex, beckoning you to be both of this world and beyond this world. wishing you, today and every single day, this peace.
reverse threading 