Dreams, Letting Go, Mindfulness, Writing

Art of attraction

Art begets art, don’t you think?

Of course, we may disagree on the definition of art. But I find the more I notice, the more I notice.

The more I write, the more I photograph, the more I dream.

The more I read, the more I feel, the more I write.

When you open up — even just a little — to noticing and noting, you are actually working your art muscle.

What I say is not new. It’s not an original thought. Many more experienced at attracting art have said it before I just did.

But I notice it happening to me.

I see poetry in my photographs, and color in my poems. The art of one lends itself to the other, and suddenly I feel as if I am getting somewhere.

swoosh

It’s not that I am a constant rushing stream of good art. Some of it is just purge.

Pages filled with strike outs.

I look like this sometimes.

selfie beat poet

But then I laugh at myself. At my #selfie.

And I share it with you.

And my nervous heart strengthens a bit when you laugh along with me… in the knowing fully that you understand I’m half joking.

* * *

There’s something that gets in my way, though.

Thinking. Too much thinking. About getting somewhere with my art.

This, too, I notice.

It’s like that moment when I realize I am lucid dreaming and I know if I think too hard about it, I will wake up. So I try not to think — just breathe, I say — but this in itself is thinking.

POP!

Out of the dream.

Or, more simply, it’s like losing your cross-eyed stare once you finally become aware of the 3D image in a Magic Eye design. I see it! You cry. Then,

POP!

Back to staring at blurry peacock feathers.

What’s the real magic trick?

Minding your thinking, I suppose.

Noticing it, yes, but allowing thoughts to float away as easily as the 3D Magic Eye design.

Blur it away on purpose.

Master this, and become a Master.

Climate Changes, Community, Culture, Environment, Family, Living in Community

This is best use of social media for social good I’ve seen in a long time

#Litterati

 

Family, Love, Mindfulness, Parenting

My life in pictures

When I was a girl, I imagined my life a movie.

In fact, I have a few distinct memories of moments in which I felt very present to the experience of being watched.

This makes me sound crazy. Paranoid. Egotistical.

I know.

But, nonetheless, every once in a while I’d be walking down the street with a friend or engaged in a song and dance with my brother, and suddenly sense an observer.

I’d look around. Nobody was there.

Over time, I resolved this to be an inexplicable sensation I labeled, “My life in pictures.”

Now, as an observant adult, as a mindful lifer, as a humbled human being awed by her children, terrified by her own mortality…I find I am a member of the audience, instead; with one greasy hand inside the popcorn box and the other gripping the side of the aisle seat wondering…

How will it all end?

Meanwhile, I’m also the excited, but cautious cinematographer.

Struck breathless by extraordinarily poignant scenes

moti penina piano

Obsessed with capturing light

lights tangled

and angles

boys in the grass

Wondering all the time if other people can see what I see…

If other people feel the love and the loss inside a half-eaten cupcake

cupcake

Or the extraordinary sadness of a broken plate

plate

I sometimes watch my husband chase the children and know that once there was someone who watched me.

Someone is still watching.

A critic, a fan, or just a curious spectator of my life in pictures.

Letting Go, Living in Community, Love, Making Friends, Mindfulness, Relationships, Spirituality

Life is hard work and other things that make me feel tired, but alive

I am struck by the pictures my friend Holly is sending back to us from Hong Kong and Vietnam.

See more http://instagram.com/theculturemom
See more http://instagram.com/theculturemom

She’s feeding her wanderlust with banana pancakes, dim sum, and gorgeous panoramas, while feeding our desire for travel photography “porn.”

I love instagram.

Almost in the same moment that the drool drips down my chin,  while mesmerized by the lush green mountain ranges and Buddha statues, I long for the eyes through which I saw Israel in the first months I lived here.

The virgin immigrant eyes.

The virgin immigrant heart that burst with joy each and every day…at the beauty of this land; in curious awe of her people.

Cochav Hayarden, March 2012
Cochav Hayarden, March 2012

When we first made Aliyah,  every drive was emotionally equivalent to a stroll through an art museum; every hike through a national park was a new adventure in a foreign land.

Every day I would find myself saying out loud: “Do I really live here?”

And I meant it in the same way a mother whispers over her newborn baby, “Are you really mine?”

Two years after making Aliyah, I find that my eyes and my heart are still capable of wonder.

But  it’s an experience that does not come as naturally and as automatic as before.

I need, instead, to make those moments happen.

And that takes a lot of work on my part.

I need to see the trash fire in Kfar Manda

smoke in kfar manda

— and turn my anger into compassion, and then activism.

And that’s really hard.

It’s much easier to be angry.  To rant. To shake my head.

I need to remember, in a moment I feel frustrated by my community, when I am outraged by their seeming indifference to the trash that peppers our fields

how grateful I am for my community.

How my community supports me.

How my community allows me the freedom to be a Jew in Progress. To be curious. To be a novice at living in this country.

Acknowledging my community as a gift, however, is really hard work when I am stuck in a moment of discontent.

It’s much easier for me to assume. To judge. To wish myself away from here.

It’s really hard work — and a huge emotional commitment — to be present in your life all the time.

To notice. To stop. To redirect. To be who you want to be, not your raw-emotion-of-the-moment.

It’s exhausting — living your best life.

It’s much easier to feel alive when you are on vacation — separate from the drudgery that often clouds your intentions.

It’s much easier to feel alive when you are first in love; experiencing a newness; your senses overwhelmed by glorious colors and smells.

I recognize this.

And I acknowledge that some days I am too tired to live my best life.

But on the alternate days — the ones in which I work hard for happiness, the ones in which I allow my heart to be open and my mind to be free — I find beauty that surpasses any landscape, any painting, any colorful market scene.

A vacation awaits me.

In my regular boring life.

And yours.

Family, Kibbutz

Barefoot kibbutz children make for good photo ops

My barefoot daughter walking along the sidewalk of our kibbutz

Ode to Found Love on Kibbutz

Flowers, dirt, and stray cats
Dogs that bark at midnight
The cow-infused downwind from the refet at 4:30 pm…
My children at 4:30 pm…
My husband at 4:30 pm…

Taking the trash out in my pajamas
Dressing up in grownup clothes for Shabbat
Singing Shiru L’adonai

Picking up snails, picking up trash
Picking up friends at the park
Showing up.
Speaking up… when I’m afraid to speak at all.

Finding out someone else is pregnant
Thanking God it’s not me.

Breathing in shnitzel,  shwarma, and secondhand smoke

The beach and the sunset and the Jerusalem stone
And the kibbutz children, my children
Who pepper my pictures with delight.