Shoji

My new painting is progressing well. It's a lot of orange to deal with. My eyes get tired quickly from staring at it. The longer wavelengths of light (towards the red end of the spectrum) are easily absorbed by the eye so my eyeballs are greedily soaking up all the color and ending up pretty burnt out after a couple of hours.

I started wearing glasses about 8 months ago for the first time in my life. It seems all of the intense peering at canvases a few inches from my face is making me a little far sighted. My peepers are slowly wearing out.

Don't worry, they have a long way to go :).

Since my larger paintings take so long to do, their subject matter tends to seep into my daily thoughts. It becomes an extended trip, one that can be arduous, joyful and usually surprising. "Shoji" is no different. The surprise is that I'm thinking about Carlos Castaneda a lot.

Don Juan instructed his student to remember that death is his adviser. "Death is our eternal companion . . . It is always to our left, at an arm's length . . . It has always been watching you. It always will until the day it taps you," he told Carlos. He spoke of the power of living life with the awareness of death in terms of how death informs your decisions. How would you choose if it were the last choice you ever made? If you were called by death tomorrow, would you have regrets about your choices? If you were given a second chance, would you do anything differently?

In terms of the meaning of Shoji in Zen Buddhism, there is a slightly more non-dualistic way of looking at it. It's a compound word, like "lifedeath", implying simultaneity, or more of a flowing, wave-like process. There is no "instant" of death, but a transition from one state to another, like the crest of a wave of water. That's Buddhism for you.

There's a subtle anxiety created by all of this that I don't see as a bad thing. Keeps one on one's toes, perhaps. I suppose the sudden realization of Shoji could impel some people towards drastic life changes and frantic personal crisis. For me, it keeps me doing what I'm already doing in spite of a myriad of obstacles.

As for "Shoji", the painting-in-progess, the metaphor is unfolding in interesting ways. This is the first piece I've done in a very long time that has no dark areas - in fact it may be the brightest painting I've ever done. Also, in spite of its ultra-vividness, it's actually quite subtle. Almost gentle.

I'm going to leave this entry for now and let the painting talk to me a bit more.