Each step is an arrival. Forget about past walking,
don't think about future walking. One step, another step.
No long ago, no now, no east or west. One step equals totality.
Fayan Wenyi
from Water Shining Beyond the Fields by John Brandi
"It isn't what I think, it's what I see," Mr. Cunningham says. "I let the street speak to me. You've got to stay on the street and let the street tell you what it is."
"After a while you learn...
"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We
grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We
grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm,
childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull
us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of
layers, cells, constellations."
"I don't teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail."From an interview with Richard Bausch
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!" "Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
When we first moved to our property it was the rolling land of old pasture. Feeling very exposed we planted lots of trees. Now that they have grown up I have been on a mission to clear views and allow more light. When the leaves first come out in full my studio now feels too dark. And then when we have really hot days I love retreating to the cool of the shade. Now on a day like today when the the humidity blew off overnight, the light feels incredibly clear, the landscape seems a liquid green and the sky impossibly blue.
"The thing about green-- and maybe this is why
it is
notoriously difficult to use a lot of it in painting-- is that
its a
temporary color. Not in the technical sense that it is fugitive,
but on the metaphysical
sense that it is a visitor. Its liquid, undulating, mobile pushy." From I send you this cadmium red by John Berger and John Christie
The Swimming Song by Kate and Anna McGarrigle has been stuck in my head all day:
I posted a few of my sketches of cups on Italian tables here
"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life,
"Actually though, compression is the opposite of what I do: what
interests me is so remote and fine that I have to blow it way up
cartoonishly just to get it up to visible range. My technique is
something like using a hammer to drive a needle through silk" Poet, Kay Ryan 
If we live truly, we shall see truly. - Ralph Waldo Emerson 
