Saturday South Orange 12/31/2022

The trap that I often fall into is literalness. I have to remember that it is never the tree and the branches but their directionality and their relation that would create the implied movement. By focusing on the thing itself I would lose track of the intention. Somehow it feels very relativistic i.e. the minute you put focus on it, its position would no longer be there. I have failed to capture the atmosphere of the whole because I had focused on its parts. So simple but yet deeply hidden. A mindset that needs to be adopted to reach liberation.

Great to hear Peter's talk about time and timeliness dimensions on New Year's eve and the arrival of 2023, a crucial year. My conversation w him earlier in the summer had inspired me to create the website. How does one articulate the inexpressible? It's interesting that the intensely personal meditation experience can only be done effectively in a communal context. After all once Budha had found his enlightenment, he did come down to town to share what he had discovered. Peter fully articulates the meditational experience by using words that would relate universal concepts, in his case via science ie. astronomy. I do find issue in the trapping of the ceremonies and the forms but that is the context that he had chosen to meditate within. I love the explanation that to speak effectively in a language one would have to abide by its grammatical structure. Otherwise, the communication would be non sensical.

No painting can be created on its own. It starts w a familiar personal feeling that follows w the finding of the universal forms and crafts done by others to articulate the "real" of that personal feeling. Words are used to create a context upon which the "real" is expressed in the time that it lives via plastic means i.e. the plasticity upon which the "real" is then realized. I love reading the journal of Eugène Delacroix. It gives me so much insight into his being and his creation.