Zentangle

Zentangle developed from conversation between Rick Robert, a monk in India for 17 years, and the famous calligrapher Maria Thomas.

It can be a soothing, meditative process since it is a free-form art. Zentangle reminds me of machine quilting.

Here is a great YouTube video that covers the basics. I’m fairly certain even I can meditate with this process. I hope you’ll give it a try and share your creations with others.

This post concludes the April A to Z Challenge for 2014. You might give A to Z a try for 2015 or as a general writing prompt any time.

©2014 Sandra R. Davidson

Nautilus

Living fossils.

I love to view these in bisect. I have never considered their appearance when live. A bit like shrimp in a shell. Extinct varieties; evolving varieties.

The image here represents to me a steady progression, an intricate infinity. It is the power of life created then discarded to become part of another sort of creation, whatever that may be.

What are your images of infinity?
©2014 Sandra R. Davidson

Confused Selves

Confusion and division will slay the finest and fiercest of troops.

I haven’t said much recently; nothing’s really been worth saying. I agree with:
We Need To Be Ashamed Of Our Confused Selves. | DEPRESSION: my muse.

I love my sisters and my nieces and nephews. They each struggle to their own degree to know who they are without the interference of all the voices around them saying who they should and shouldn’t be, what it means if they choose A and that they can’t have it both ways.

My sister, V, she’s got it now. You don’t choose: You have it all. Her babies, she holds them by the hands, barely keeping up with their tugging in each direction, but she does.

Those two boys have the world in the palms of their mother’s hands as she brings them up with her gentle laughter and I-ain’t-gonna-brook-no-**** seriousness. They’re beautiful, bold, polite, inquisitive. They stand together, they two, because she stands with them—not between them or beside them or behind them.

When you become confused, divided, told to choose—raise your beautiful eyes to the clear vision of a child. It doesn’t matter which child, whose child. Watch them for guidance as much as they watch you for the same.

©2013 Sandra Davidson

Kinetic Arts

I have been absent, I know; I will not speak to that.

Last night and this morning I began exploring artists from other countries and time periods, methods and media. Several of the sites were not in English and did not need to be for, as you know, art and music transcend barriers.

What we have is a privilege of connecting around the world to  intuition, to inspiration.

Milan Dobeš Museum in Bratislava Slovakia has a video on its homepage, the music of which is transcendent and the images captivating. I suppose that makes museum curators not just students of art but artists as well.

May this find you well and deep in revelation.

©2013 Sandra Davidson

Waiting for Life to Begin

I sliced open an avocado. When I pried the pit from the flesh, the pit split to reveal the life that had begun to form, begun to surface, from inside the dark, dense seed. It appeared in form as an angel of sorts in the white richness that was to nourish growth.

Photo by Sandra R. Davidson©2012

No Art Critic Here

On FaceBook, this image was posted by a friend. I am no art critic. In the first few seconds I realized, as I’m sure I’m not the first, that the painting isn’t about the garden; it is about the path. Well-worn, well-used, it tells of tending and traveling, of enjoyment on a daily basis. It is a means of access to the unruly nature that can be a garden.

I Am Wind

I remember now why I loved bubble baths as a child. Bubbles are clouds on water and I am wind.

This morning’s bath brought a conglomeration of fine bubbles resembling a dog. Unlike cloud formations, when the dog’s head began to morph into something more amoeba-like, I restored it with an artist’s finger and began to refine its shape into Cinnamon (my deceased dog), dropping the ear and shortening the neck.

I have so few memories of childhood. This one is more a collective impression than a specific instance. Still, I pull it to me, part of the fractured child. Perhaps memory, too, can reach a critical mass and pieces gathered will attract other pieces.

©2010 Sandra Davidson

Keep Digging

Another wasted day, another wasted night. No one to hear this and attempt to appease.

I’m critical right now, and not just of myself. I closed myself off from the animals. I rang the brass bowl three times and carried the note each time, the last holding it close until I could no longer hear it, just feel the reverberations through the hollow place where other sensation is absent. I lit a smudge, breathed and blew, breathed and blew.

Some of the bite of my mood drifted out with each breath, across the bits of cedar, sweet grass and sage, their glow rising to claim all the current of my breath offered.

Diffuse, not concentrating. I was more relaxed, feeling the negativity permeated by the life my breath gave to the smoke.

I’m clawing at something. It is close; I am close and closing. It seems so simple and logical to keep turning the rocks aside, scraping the soil layer by layer. At age 40, I know what this niggling is. Stop only to listen, to retune direction. Keep digging.

©Sandra Davidson—2012