Tumbling Down

"Tumbling Down" - acrylic and watercolor on paper, 22" x 22".  Ready to frame.  Available here and at Artfinder.

This week in the studio, a return to abstracted landscapes and a large version of a prior watercolor study.  I think there will be one more iteration of this piece, but even more abstracted. As wildfire season ramps up here in the PNW, I am feeling the heat of these reds, oranges and magentas.  A little iced tea, anyone?

When you take a drive through the Columbia Valley River Gorge just outside of Portland, there are waterfalls of all different sizes trickling (or bustling or crashing) down cliff walls - tiny avalanches of water which seem to emerge from cracks in the earth.

Tumbling Down

Cracks seem to attract every little thing.  Water, for sure, but weeds, tree roots, litter, rubble.  A stroll through our urban neighborhood, steeped with deeply fissured sidewalks and rumbled asphalt, reveals little microcosms of vegetation and whatnots building tiny towns within every nook.

Mark Nepo has an entire chapter, called "Reading the Cracks", nestled in The One Life We're Given.  Instead of reading tea leaves or fractured sidewalks, he writes about reading the cracks that life opens.  I'm guessing you have a few cracks opened in your life, being human and all.  Whether it's a tiny fracture or an earthquake, you might have noticed how those cracks (which we might, at times, call a cruel avalanche of unfairness  - Nepo)  are the very place where the light gets in.    And being curious creatures, we try to read the cracks and make sense of what comes through.

If you're like me, you might have been working hard all of your life to mortar those cracks, harden your shell and keep things out.  But humans aren't sidewalks or roads.  It's hard to see truth or beauty without letting the light in.  Nepo challenges us with this:   As you walk down [the] street, look for the cracks in your walls that will let your Spirit out.  This may appear as a moment when your guard is down and you feel vulnerable.  Or when a moment of nature slips through a crack in your worry.  Notice how you feel in the moment of being cracked open. 

Now this is not the same as being cracked up, a crack-pot, or full of craic (you Irish readers).  And most definitely not the same as being a crack-head!  Perhaps it is ok, and maybe even good, to be cracked open.  I will ponder this with a bowl of pistachios, and call it "cracking meditation."  :)