Another brilliant and timely piece! - In my middle 70's now - caring for my elderly life partner through Cancer and dementia these past three years - seemingly a sufficient catastrophe to snuff-out any and all creativity. My studio has become a storage space for the building mess and chaos of home life - trying to keep it all together when I'm only able to grab a few hours of sleep between the endless rounds of care-giving
This Christmas brought magic unexpectedly, in the recognition that my "art" my vocation has become all acts of caring and love - to providing myself as medium to my partner no longer able to navigate the world which has become frightening to him. This awakening delivered me from the exhaustion and feelings of helplessness - that somehow fate was cruel and unfair.
I look upon the body of my paintings....particularly the ones which confirmed my life at a deeper strata, as a legacy of the life I lived previously. Now I step fully into this late phase, not lamenting what is lost, but accepting that another purpose is brought forward for me to fulfill.
Thank you Matt, for your work which serves to reflect the deep reality of Magic immanent throughout the spectrum of life.
Yes, both love and suffering can subdue the ego and serve as a path to the portal. The light and the dark both get us close. I’ve been feeling this too lately.
Yes, but I have tended to focus on the light path and have tried to avoid the dark one (I think you have been fascinated with the dark one for a long time). I'm learning that neither can be truly avoided forever and it's a real trick to transmute suffering, pain into a portal. Integrating the shadow, and all that jazz. This topic has been on my mind a lot lately.
Yes. My attraction to the darkness and its path has mutated and moderated over the past decade. It's both a present reality and, in a real sense, a vestigial artifact. Or maybe more accurate, it has become recontextualized in a broader picture. The feeling is that this was all organic and inevitable.
Wow, thanks, Matt! I'm really enjoying your "thoughts, quotations, and fragments". I already own and have read Lachman's biography of Colin Wilson, which I also really loved. I find Wilson to be one of the more interesting authors, as is Gary Lachman.
Agreed on both counts! Gary seems the perfect biographer for Wilson, what with his symapthetic sensibility, expansive interests (much like Wilson himself), and critical sensibility.
thanks for the shout out. I have been thinking about the cosmic horror as spirituality recently bc it's still missing in psychological treatments of nightmares, to this day, as well as missing in contemporary liberal religious circles that I sit in too. so as usual both science and religion turning away from this vital way of knowing. Awe can be scary. We learn about the cosmos through the tremendum. that's important.
Another brilliant and timely piece! - In my middle 70's now - caring for my elderly life partner through Cancer and dementia these past three years - seemingly a sufficient catastrophe to snuff-out any and all creativity. My studio has become a storage space for the building mess and chaos of home life - trying to keep it all together when I'm only able to grab a few hours of sleep between the endless rounds of care-giving
This Christmas brought magic unexpectedly, in the recognition that my "art" my vocation has become all acts of caring and love - to providing myself as medium to my partner no longer able to navigate the world which has become frightening to him. This awakening delivered me from the exhaustion and feelings of helplessness - that somehow fate was cruel and unfair.
I look upon the body of my paintings....particularly the ones which confirmed my life at a deeper strata, as a legacy of the life I lived previously. Now I step fully into this late phase, not lamenting what is lost, but accepting that another purpose is brought forward for me to fulfill.
Thank you Matt, for your work which serves to reflect the deep reality of Magic immanent throughout the spectrum of life.
That's beautiful, Richard. Thank you for sharing this insight from your current place and experience. Al positive energy to both you and your partner.
Yes, both love and suffering can subdue the ego and serve as a path to the portal. The light and the dark both get us close. I’ve been feeling this too lately.
I know it's a place, a truth, that both you and I are intimately familiar with, Clint.
Yes, but I have tended to focus on the light path and have tried to avoid the dark one (I think you have been fascinated with the dark one for a long time). I'm learning that neither can be truly avoided forever and it's a real trick to transmute suffering, pain into a portal. Integrating the shadow, and all that jazz. This topic has been on my mind a lot lately.
Yes. My attraction to the darkness and its path has mutated and moderated over the past decade. It's both a present reality and, in a real sense, a vestigial artifact. Or maybe more accurate, it has become recontextualized in a broader picture. The feeling is that this was all organic and inevitable.
Wow, thanks, Matt! I'm really enjoying your "thoughts, quotations, and fragments". I already own and have read Lachman's biography of Colin Wilson, which I also really loved. I find Wilson to be one of the more interesting authors, as is Gary Lachman.
Agreed on both counts! Gary seems the perfect biographer for Wilson, what with his symapthetic sensibility, expansive interests (much like Wilson himself), and critical sensibility.
I'm glad you're enjoying these posts.
thanks for the shout out. I have been thinking about the cosmic horror as spirituality recently bc it's still missing in psychological treatments of nightmares, to this day, as well as missing in contemporary liberal religious circles that I sit in too. so as usual both science and religion turning away from this vital way of knowing. Awe can be scary. We learn about the cosmos through the tremendum. that's important.
Thank you, Ryan. Including for all the interesting thoughts and explorations.
i like how you are drawing out into the open, the tension between inner calling and measurable success.