When I Learn - Life Drawing

I've started to notice incremental, tiny improvements in the way I think and how I draw. The acronym Jeff Watts often used is SIPDE. Scan, Identify, Predict, Decide, Execute. This way of drawing and thinking when drawing is much more effective than a chaotic, freestyle approach. Of course, there is also some practical use of not being rigid or of letting unplanned changes manifest themselves. It's a catch twenty two, in a sense.

Many people that I encounter draw in a messy style, without much thought about each stroke before, after and during the mark being made. That's not going to make the best drawing. Also, too much thinking will stop any happy accidents of occurring. A happy accident is something that turns out nice even though it wasn't a planned addition to the drawing. It may be a hand movement that wasn't what you were trying to do, but it looks better than what you aimed for. Or, at least, it looks good and you're glad it's done. It may have been less good than what you were aiming for, but perhaps what you visualized is not one hundred percent accurate for what was possible in that single stroke. Meaning, I might visualize something, draw something else that's good, but what I'm visualizing might still be better than what I drew. And in a way, I hope it always is, so I have an idea of how to improve my drawing no matter how good it is.

As I draw, my process of visualizing what I see, what I want to see and what I'm able to draw is all growing, mixing and changing. It's becoming more refined with each drawing session and with all the lessons I'm taking, digesting and applying into my daily practice. I gather a little more sensitivity and intelligence with my practice each day. How am I learning? What am I thinking? What state of mind am I in?

Listening, watching and playing. There's a whole movement to thought. All our changes of mind, constantly streaming through. As I draw, I have to be aware of this movement and see its benefits, but not get lost in it as one of its thoughts. There's a balance to observe and drawing is my tool to see it. My awareness contains these reflections, like a baby in a mother's womb. The mother is not the baby. She nurtures it and is ultimately the one who feeds it. We have to see how we feed our minds and what we feed, and know that our feeding is not the wholeness of what we are. The act that observes this feeding is whole, but the feeding itself, the movements of thought, are bit by bit. We can't think everything at once, just like we can't bring up the whole drawing at once. It is bit by bit, drawing the leg here and the head here.

We are an awareness that sees beyond patterns and recognition. We can see something new when we observe without an idea about the thing. Then we are learning. We are perceiving without the perceiver. When I draw from a live model, I know when I'm observing him without analyzing, or when I'm seeing the knowledge imposed over top. It is in experience. I can be present with the moving, living organism that exists there before me and put a mark down or I can be thinking about it in terms and knowledge. This Reilly abstraction here, this geometric shape there, this mark there... SIPDE. How is this mark? How is this representing what I remember about this anatomical form? Both are necessary to make a good drawing. We need to both see clearly and think clearly. They go together yet are in contradiction when relating this to making a beautiful piece of art, because beauty is not in the art, but in the one who sees.

Beauty, it seems to me, comes from a cultivated sense of awareness, clarity and care for everything. It does not actually have anything to do with a nice drawing. Beauty is inspired care. I'm learning art to have well cultivated aesthetics in how I see and in my execution of it. That's my knowledge and I can use those skills to express beauty as I feel it. However, just attending to nature as it is, including human beings, we are full. There is a completeness in observation that empowers oneself. It is both the mother and the baby nurturing each other. It is not one giving direction over another. It is a freedom in being beyond recognition. It is truly a miracle just to be alive and awareness as that. Freedom emptying into freedom, continuously.

- Anthony

Jim's Andy, Doubt and Direct Experience

I doubt a lot. I doubt myself, my work, my path, my environment, my ideas, my contradictory thoughts, actions and just a whole bunch of stuff. I doubt people. All that I doubt in myself, I project doubt onto them about these things too. I doubt my projections. I doubt life itself, and I had for a moment a thought during meditation that maybe this doubt isn't so bad 'after all.' I doubt this too, a little.

I've found that certain things become more credible for me as tools to navigate life with as I use them and understand what their place is for me within the universal impersonal changes in life. Some of the things for me right now are practices. One is art (drawing and painting), one is dance (Mandala Movement), one is Qi-Gong and one is Vipassana Meditation as taught by S. N. Goenka. Another one is writing this weekly blog post and making a monthly Youtube video. And of course the last one, but not the least, is working on my story, (secret title.)

Richard Feymann had commented once that doubt is a key component of his personality and who he is. Science requires doubt, so that we can test our theories, know whether we're right or wrong and then start again. Without doubt, we could stop any scientific exploration and live as we are. That is the feeling I had during meditation, that doubt is the other side of the coin of exploration and creative invention. Doubt is the yin to consistent curiosity and exploration as yang. Of course, I doubt this when I state it as an intellectual point. I don't doubt it in the experience I have of it. The 'intuition' of it, one might say, but I'd actually rather not say anything like that either.

What my practices do for 'me' is bring me into the direct experience of something that has no doubt whatsoever. In hindsight, in my intellectual activity, I may look at it and doubt it. I may not understand it fully in words and theories. These full living experiences are not always result oriented and cannot 'always' have the 1+1=2 literacy. In a day to day existence, I can't say what does what in terms of cause and effect. I can have guesses, but it won't be one hundred percent accurate. When I'm practicing Vipassana meditation, I can experience this shifting take place without a measurement. It is undeniable, direct, choice-less awareness of reality. It's hard to put words here, because I feel when I say 'reality,' someone can say that that is a subjective 'idea.' It is NOT when you are experiencing it directly, which may be a bit paradoxical, or simply unable to be proven right or wrong, true or false.

It is unable to be truly calculated and one might call that insanity, but too much calculation is actual insanity. This analysis mindset breaks spontaneity, poetry, intuition, faith and experience. Attention is caring and the action required to live objectively. It is attention that we can rely on first, because otherwise any new discoveries will be based on old thought. Doubt can be a deep, fulfilling component to realizations and their explanations. Doubt gives us the courage to go into uncharted territory and come back with something to share, when we understand that doubt is our tool for growth. Too much doubt, on one hand, can be just like too much calculation. We think we know and therefore we get the results we've 'set in stone.' For example, my recent arm injury has become very clearly a direct representation of my mindset for approaching my artwork. A mindset that is detrimental and short-sighted. See the picture below. These examples may shine all around us when we know how to see them. We are also free to doubt them, but sometimes they deserve the credit for being so blatantly obvious, in hindsight.

~This says, "I have to get better" (at art - mental) on one side, changing into "I have to get better" (with my arm injury - physical). A direct translation, just a different context showed up because I needed to learn the lesson all the same and change my thoughts about myself. The thing didn't matter, just the application of it and thankfully I had the context change enough to show me what I wasn't noticing. 'Enjoying my pain,' because it helped me see.~

I was thinking about food and how someone might be a good chef. Their food is good, so we want them to cook and we want to eat their food. This is how we think, yet at another level, gratitude can change the quality of the experience of any food so drastically that we don't need to get someone good to cook, in a way. As I write this, I'm bouncing around my memories of Jim and Andy, a movie with Jim Carrey going into how he acted as Andy Kaufman in 'Man on the Moon.' He experienced something surreal with this performance and permeated it into the cast and the process of making the film. He doesn't fully understand it in all its levels, but it came together none the less and the movie was well made within that chaotic, emotional state of transformation and questioning. All context can be tools for this transforming and our transforming can give all context validity. Seeing representations of things can help us to put our observations in perspective, and help us observe more.

Other examples coming to mind are when the first picture of Earth was taken from the space station. The observation of the wholeness of Earth and how that's our home changed the perspectives of many people. The picture represented that and helped us see it. The other day I had not done something that I felt would have been fun. I reacted, thought too much about it and fell into a fearful stasis. Right after, my jacket strings got tangled in a mess and were tangled around my neck and head as I put the jacket on. I was like, "What's going on?!" The strings were choking me, as I had choked. I had to take my jacket off and work to untie the knot. Being a bit frustrated as I untied it, I stopped. I took a breath and thought, "this is a representation of the fear I just experienced. When I untie this knot, I'm untying that fearful patterning I just experienced." After that thought, the untying was easy, as if I was just aligning with what the truth of the situation was. The energy of that activity was no longer about finishing it, but about knowing what it represented. Here's some tangled headphones, which I can untie using that same mentality of processing, contrary to frustration.

When thinking about the value of meditation and the free mind that acts without pretense and with a freshness of creative insight sometimes beyond logical, comprehensive calculation, I found that it is in certain practices that I experience this knowing. With Qi-Gong, Vipassana, Mandala Movement, I am more 'with' the experiencing of it than anything else. "How can I even be anywhere else?" One imagines. It is with thought that I can identify with things that are projections and therefore feel elsewhere. I am not aligned with what I'm doing at the intimate feeling level and the total understanding of it through a direct, objective, universal awareness. I know the difference when I'm with that or living in ideas and projections. When I'm not IN it, or WITH it, then I am in a division between an idea or image of myself, other labelled things, and the perception of what is here and now. Basically, process V.S. result, but being totally with something can still lead to tremendous results, such as in Andy Kaufman's (or Jim Carrey's?) 'Man on the Moon,' and also in life itself. This doesn't just happen in the movies folks.

We come to think that we are finished human beings, that we won't change any more. There's a study that talks about how people think they would still like to see their current favorite band ten years from now, and pay more money to see them.  Yet, most of them wouldn't care to see the band that was their favorite ten years ago, today. This is our choosing to find that perfect chef, because he's what we think we want. When I'm truly present, I don't need anything. It's just like Jim Carrey says at the end of Jim and Andy, "I have no ambition." I am living life, when I'm living it, so what else could I possibly ask for? MORE than everything that my experience is? How can that be reached? This is the kind of 'new' common sense that I integrate into my psyche with every moment that I'm in creative process mode and not in quick, efficient result mode. I am understanding the balance and the connection of these two modes (as I doubt if they are separate) more and more.

What I get from my weekly, daily, monthly practices is a sense that what I'm doing all the time, no matter what the thing is, is more like a practice of moving energy, such as Qi-Gong, or watching my energy move, such as Vipassana. In typing this, I can write it as if I'm doing a Mandala Movement 'dance' and move in a natural, flowing way. I can feel as though there is a lightness in my work because I'm just playing with waves, trees and movements in the body. I can experience an effortless witnessing of these things that require a focus to come into fruition and yet not lose a clarity of boundless attention that it is aware of all passing, changing movements in freedom. Of course, I doubt my clearly stated words when I know in my experience I bounce around in my thoughts like a lunatic sometimes, but so did Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. I may sometimes be doubting or losing the battle against myself, or battling myself (and therefore losing), or just simply not too sure about what it is I should do, until I sit and get so engaged with reality that I don't miss a thing. Therefore, I continue to rest, return and continue, on all levels of my experience with what is.

Thanks for reading,
If you like this, please share and continue coming back every Sunday for a new post.

Fall Term - 1/3 Months - October 2017

It’s late before the due date of a Sunday blog post. I decided I would post every Sunday, to be consistent with that. So here I am, writing about consistency with practice and sticking to something to cultivate learning with the work. My work is to write and draw, mainly. It is also to live and be healthy and wise. As I had to postpone drawing practice due to injury, I realized a spaciousness and a more relaxed frame of mind with it. In this way, the break I had from drawing was for drawing. It’s added to my practice and is not viewed as a lack of practice, in my experience. Though, here I am, writing tomorrow’s post on the evening before it is due, because I want to.

I want to write this because the accountability is my own doing. I want to write this because the doing of it is helping me to write and be accountable. The accomplishment of this simple blog post is a continuing to develop and be consistent. Yet, I have not always done these Sunday posts. It is a relatively new idea that I’ve suggested to myself. Write something every 5 days is what I decided when I published my last Youtube video. Now I’m doing it once a week. Things change due to what feels right and how we can establish a consistency in our practices. I stopped drawing because I had to, but the understanding of the process and the ‘result’ I’m aiming for has deepened and solidified into a clearer, more self affirming source. I see what I could not see as clearly before, likely due to breaking from the practice and now from starting again with fresh eyes and with a different disposition, necessarily so, because the physical instrument is tuned in a way that can only do so much repetitive motion.

In the same way, the repetitive action of writing a blog post could be detrimental if done too much. That word seems strong for ‘writing a blog post,’ but the truth is that anything without balance inspires a surge of imbalance within a duration of time. How long? That’s on us. It depends on how we are in tune with ourselves, to notice whether or not we are tuning effectively or ineffectively to the circumstances and the processes of life. Our bodies and minds are functioning in processes. How much do we notice these and have the awareness and clarity to align with them instead of acting with an ignorance or disharmony to ourselves? When I intentionally repeat myself, it is something to see. When I write this post to have it done on a Sunday, I am doing something to cultivate a solidified contextual tool of some kind to develop with. As I have started to draw again, I have returned to what current context I would like to clarify in regards to practicing representational art. I have looked at what things I could continue regularly to establish a better understanding of this craft.

As I was doing before, I have divided the year into 3 month terms. The term I’m on is the Fall Term and it will end at the end of December. Conveniently, I am signed up for the Watts Live Stream Critiquing course (Figure Lay-ins with Jeff Watts) that ends on December 30th. The other course I will be doing soon (Jonathan Hardesty’s Essentials of Realism critiquing - Schoolism) will end around the same time. As I had done before, I have chosen ‘classes’ that I will do until January. Two of them are actual courses, as just mentioned. The others are things I will continue to work on along side these courses. This may change as things are always changing, but for now the framework seems like something I would like to stay within in a consistent way. I realized that my previous terms had been a bit ‘full.’ It is hard to select a few courses out of the many different concepts and curriculum I will need to learn over a life time of studying how to draw and paint.

I had 9-11 courses on average in these terms. I am simplifying my Fall Term to much less. This term is as follows. The main things I am studying will stay in these ‘classes.’ I would like to digest the information in these few classes as much as I can before the next term. It was useful in my previous terms to have studied with so much diversity. However, I feel that since I've tasted many angles of learning to draw and paint, it is time to give more attention to a given few 'techniques' and fully internalize them instead of 'biting off more than I can chew.' A good analogy may be that I would rather enjoy a smaller selection of foods and digest them fully than to have a small amount of many foods that would still leave me hungry, or something.

Schoolism: Essentials of Realism. (*Critiques starting mid November til end of term) Watts Atelier: Figure Lay-ins (*Critiques weekly with Jeff Watts til end of term)

(*Above are my weekly necessities) - like a Sunday blog post.

Then I have decided to put Feature Studies - mostly related to Watts Atelier or Realistic Portraits (Schoolism) content - as a daily necessity. Every day I must spend at least 20 minutes doing a study
of a facial feature from photos, life or other art reference.

(A digital study of Johnny Depp's eye.)

Along with that is to do one sketch of something weird, wacky and wonderful from my imagination on a daily basis. The other ideas I have that I am not 100% locked into yet, because it may be too much for me right now, are to include a weekly class of Portrait Lay-ins, as well as doing master studies and then improving on sketches for our illustrated story. As well, doing a weekly or monthly fun image that contains all of the characters from my story. It could be their heads, figures, or just some kind of montage that I can create over a time to have hung up on my wall. Some image I can do again and again and learn to draw the characters in my story, concept design, decorate my studio and see my improvement as I get better and better at creating vignettes and good design for these ‘posters.’

As always, there are some uncertainties with my planning. Things will work out as they should. Included in all this is a monthly Youtube video, which continues to evolve and move into different kinds of videos. We don’t know where all this is taking us and that’s why it’s fun. We just have to enjoy the process and do the work in whatever ‘consistent’ way.

Thanks for stopping by. Joy to you all.

- Anthony

Living Every Moment

Every moment is an opportunity for enlightenment. We graze the grass, hug the trees and see that in every single beat of the heart, inhale or exhale of the breath and sensory exchange, we are able to see a little clearer, with a little more joy.

I don’t know the truth for myself, let alone anyone else. I do have moments where it seems clear as to what is helpful to abide to the universal laws of nature and to deepen my connectivity with life, in contrary to increasing my disconnect or divisiveness with it. It happens through the breath, it happens through the body, it happens through perception. My scars are silhouetted into elements of a harmonious whole and what is realized is unity. Things that are causes of my misery vanquish when I’m in tune with what is wholesome. Then, I feel better than I did. I feel whole and unique in this wholeness, like a child playing in a bathtub in a world huddled to itself, free of the chaos and confusion on the other side of the curtain. We’ve unraveled the veil here, just a little bit, to see that it is really all “rainbows, smashed to smithereens,” and we are happy.

To express this authentic joy is to be it, to feel it and to live it. We don’t need someone else outside of us to attain it, but inspiration comes from those who are examples in their own action and perception on how they have peaked through their own ignorance. I am grateful for these people, and many are my friends, each having his or her own unique moments of unveiling day by day. I’ll admit that I’m a learning, wandering, lost-at-times being sharing the same questions we all have. Yet we all have the moments of clarity where we see beyond the veil into our selves of purity. It’s wonderful to witness the changes. Life is constantly changing, so to be alive, so are we. It’s a process. Observation is taking place. The moment ceases to have meaning when we contain it rigidly. Selectivity in one manner can help us define the things we carry with us on our path. However, too much and we are like a comic strip, trapped to the panels on one page, when it is every page that accounts for the context that gives us meaning and the framework from which to begin our discovering. One page is enough, when we know how to read it - how to see beyond the expression into the expressing and into the source of joy that inspires true freedom and authenticity.

Let us not be caught up in the mundane, trimming branches, when the root remains rotten. For anyone seeking freedom, dive into the way you see the world and yourself. Dive into the things you take for granted, positive or negative, these are the things you don’t usually notice. Each thing unnoticed is one passing piece of life that may offer some tools, context and enhancement of what can be reflected on. This is also not something to search for, because your attention is full already. What is it full of? We can offer our energy to fruitful, wholesome qualities, or demonic, destructive, unwholesome qualities. We are all containment of both. Human beings are examples of both and what we create and live in either state is our example to ourselves and the world. It is our framework to see whether it’s benefiting us or others. So each moment stands at the precipice of seeing or ignorance, reverence or concealment, light or darkness. As map, compass or flashlight, the tools are ours right now.

Here is something I wrote on a typewriter recently:

You are a master of limitation.
To think that you of knowledge and of time are bound to this creed.
Where bountiful freedom abides, there rests all unlimited being.
Bewitch the be-witcher, a guise of misery and complexity.
Stand where freshness begins and all form is in communion with this direct observation.
This seeing is truth without reaction. It is life unencumbered.
"It sees the false in the false and sees the truth in the truth."

“Even now, the world is bleeding. But feeling just fine, all numb in our castle, where we’re
always free to choose, never free enough to find, I wish something would break, cause we’re
running out of time.” - Overcome by Live

Find your freedom. Don’t choose it.

Joy to you all,
- Anthony

My current process to create an illustrated novel

In this post I'm going to share the steps that my brother and I are taking in a streamlined, non-messy fashion. Of course the actual process has many steps and other aspects that are integrated or left out of these several clear steps, but these are the necessary components of how we're getting our ideas onto and into a finished copy to publish, after much exploration and more to come.

Step 1) Writing

Most of the writing is done on paper by hand or on the computer in Libre Office or X Mind. The scratch notes and ideas are then compiled and interlaced into an actual scene that contains characters and flow of conversation, rather than journal notes, incomplete phrases and monologue inquiries. It's passed back and forth through programs, but X Mind has a nice way to organize the actions of the characters or scene on the left, and the colour coded dialogue of the different characters in lines on the right. Then it may be taken from this format and re-placed into Libre Office to print and work on the scene on paper again as needed.

Step 2) Layout

Once the writing is done, the Layout is a simple process of getting a basic, rough idea of where text and images go together on a single page. The layout of this book is likened to something like Dinotopia or a children's book, but with words more spread out than single large paragraphs on each page. Each page has sketches like stick men or worse at this point, and scratchy coloured pencil to mark where the words of the characters will be placed along with the illustrations. We as authors can barely even understand what we're looking at here, but it's a necessary step in the process. When we can draw really good, really fast, this step will be more integrated with the next.

(Words in red coloured pencil. Super rough sketches in pencil.)

Step 3) Better Sketches

The next step is to draw out some images that would be understood if someone were to look at the page. We are taking standard office paper and sketching out each page in a rough, but much clearer form so that we can see where the final piece might end up. This is a big jump from the stick men, pillow head drawings from the Layout phase. This is done without adding any words to the page.

(Just one sketch example - different from the whole page as it's described)

Step 4) Photoshop text

I then scan these preliminary drawings into P.S. and throw them on a fixed template page that will eventually be the final format and file to print and publish. After doing this, I copy and paste the text from our Writing files and place them accordingly within the scanned sketch pages we have pasted and arranged in the document. This may require some adjusting and resizing of the images and words to make them fit together and not overlap. It is still in a rough format, but it is readable with the words and pictures together for the first time.

(Not an official sketch page. More images and words would be there.)

Step 5) Style Guide

The context of our story inspires many types of art. As a way to continue studying artwork in an academic sense, but directing this studying into a streamlined focus on moving the finished pages of the story along, I've started to create Style Guides for each page. In a sense, it's like doing colour thumbnails for a complete book, such as James Gurney did for Dinotopia, or others would do for movies and so on. In my approach, I'm using other people's artwork that I like and would like to emulate as an overlapping template to guide the visualizing of the finished page. The images carry a certain tone or style that symbolizes and emphasizes what I'm feeling from our story in this page, these words and image. After adding the text into Photoshop, I create a folder with many layers of other artwork I've dragged in over top of the sketches. The art is placed over top of the sketches as a guide to see the whole page with a representation of where the art could be in the end.

(The content of the artwork reference pictures won't necessarily match the content of the illustrations needed for the story, but the style and visual reference will influence the final versions.)

Step 6) Studies and Final Page Creation

With the Style Guide in place, I will first do master studies of the artwork I've selected for each page. Then I will draw the images on the page as they need to be in the story. I will carry some essence of my studies into my own artwork by aiming for the greatness that I see in the referenced art and at the same time creating a new piece that is directly framed into the story and the final pages of it. It will be as good as I'm able to do it at this time, and then I will move on to the next page. I may also have to do additional studying before drawing the final image. Say for example I have pasted a certain style over top of an area where I'm going to draw a character's head, but I don't know how to draw the character yet. I will have to draw the character, based off whatever photo reference or ideas I have for them, as well as the style inspiration, then combine the two together. I have to learn to study while I create this story, rather than learning to eventually create it one day far in the future when I'm 'better.' This is the surest way I've come up with to apply my education in art to the actual goal right now, which is the process of bringing this to a complete stage of readability. Thus, after this step, the images are all compiled into the printable Photoshop document to be read and enjoyed with flow and harmony. Then, we are ready to show it to everyone.

(Example: You'll see when it's done.)

What do you think? Share in the comments or on Social Media.

- When Anthony Was

#context #adventure
Questions That Answer

"My questions lead me to all kinds of discoveries about my own pursuits in art."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

This morning I went on James Gurney's blog, 'Gurney Journey.' I watched a video of him painting a tire store in the super moon.  It was inspiring in many ways.  His playful energy and dedication to his craft of painting on such a consistent basis are awesome.  It's nice to have people who exemplify certain qualities through whatever it is they do.  The art, and the blog he posts on on a daily basis is the version of his life that we get to see.  It's a pleasure to have these bits of expression in all kinds of ways through out the internet.  They allow us as curators of content to jump back from the computer into other realms of play and then return to it and share it.  Obviously there's stuff to create on the computer itself, but you get the point.

I thought about what questions I might ask James, since I have the ability to do so.  He answers questions on his blog, and so with the amazing technology, I can connect with James Gurney through virtual space.  I'm able to ask this fantastic artist anything I want and he will likely respond with some kind of answer.  It's tough, when the options are open.  My questions lead me to all kinds of discoveries about my own pursuits in art.  The questions gave me answers before asking, and more questions to answer in the contemplation of them.  I got a lot out of thinking about what I would ask this inspiring artist.

In the end, I did ask a question.  A simple one regarding how long it takes him to do a study.  I had wanted to ask about his beginnings as a painter, but the question isn't formulated yet.  It made me contemplate mine and learn from that, and that was enough for today.  The fact is that there are too many things to say.  This naturally brought me to reflecting on my art training at the Watts Atelier.  A teacher like Jeff Watts or the others there would be able to cover much more of what it is to learn to be a representational artist of a high level, like James Gurney.  Over the internet I can just get a short answer, or even a long short answer.  It's just not the same as a direct connecting and correlating with someone in person.  It's not the same to ask the questions online, so the questions have to be different.  The best part is that it's an option, and that there are amazing people sharing amazing things relating to every topic there is.  It's the wonder of the world that Gurney inspires me to honour in myself.  It's these relationships that you can use to reflect upon for yourself.  It's to ask the question of, "What question would I ask?"  There's your answer.

James Gurney in his studio.

#play#philosophy#writing
The child is free at play

"The other is the child, who plays free and in what seems like utter chaos, but with a closer look is a harmonious rapture of energy."
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

BY ANTHONY ROSS

I think there are many people who end up writing books from what they write on their blogs.  Whether fictional or non-fiction, the blog is a good place to digest ideas for oneself and to express things to a broad audience.  Anyone can have a taste if they care to read.

I've started writing again on a consistent basis.  Partly to digest what it is that I might write and partly to write what I'm digesting.  It is, unlike other social media, a medium where a greater expression can be given.  One that's not broken down into pictures and a few words.  In these last couple days of writing, I've noticed a theme.  The theme is play and the struggle I have with it.  This would be, perhaps, the book I would write.  As someone who struggles with play, I would learn about it and use the context of writing to explain to myself what it is I'm discovering and applying regarding this subject.

Play to me is a struggle.  Why?  I think it has to do with the components of knowledge and ignorance.  When I say ignorance in this context, I mean lack of knowledge.  In starting out life as a child, we know nothing.  We feel our way through life and we do what we must do, without understanding how others may perceive it.  We cry, eat, poop and sleep.  Crying is our language and the others are our necessities.  What happens later in life?  We start to have ideas about things and without connecting with the feeling of necessity or the language that we created without any secondary hand outs, we are forced into a world of symbols.

Terence Mckenna once spoke of how the magical bird that may appear outside a child's window becomes a mere 'bird' when the parent comes in and tells them what it is.  The bird becomes the word, in a non-musical, non-playful way. Though there is a magic to this symbolism, I might argue there is a greater magic to the unknown and to language that comes out of feeling and is not entirely guided by the intellect.  I don't know the way out of this, because we do need to communicate.  The key is to not be over run by verbal communication and to 'think' in different ways, through feeling, intuition and in less linear faculties of intelligence.

Play is not an A to B to C type of moving.  It develops well with a good foundation, but it is as unstable as the ocean.  Unstable to the mind and the intellect, that is.  The play itself builds an order within itself.  Play is a flower.  And the water, sun and nutrients the flower must have to grow are like the parent who feeds the child and is there for safety.  The child itself is unbridled in its movement, like the water that nourishes.  We don't know where the child ends up, we can only watch with a caring appreciation and keep it safe.  So as one who attempts to play, I see myself as two people.  One is an adult, watching with wisdom and nourishment.  The other is the child, who plays free and in what seems like utter chaos, but with a closer look is a harmonious rapture of energy.  It is the responsibility of oneself to be these two people, so that the freedom is there, so play is the flower it is and remains innocent like the sun.

What doesn't work is when the adult says to the child, "You must play."  As Alan Watts puts it, "this is a double bind."  As the adult, we can't force the child.  This is putting the adult's point of view on to the child's order, which is free of 'the old.'  Our knowledge is limited to what the child knows.  And the child doesn't understand the adult, who is usually rather confused with too many thoughts.  The two work separately, yet together.  This is the balance of living as an adult, or one who grows up to learn the symbols placed upon reality.  Keep the little bit of madness alive, however little it may seem.  That is the play.

Ceci n'est pas une oiseaux.