the here of this earth... the now of this sky

i like the way that these particular words by ee cummings express a zen-like awareness and appreciation of nature... an invitation to pay attention.
i came upon these words by ee cummings in a song by the composer john cage.

i remember the day that my grade four teacher showed us some poetry by ee cummings. for some reason, i was really affected (and liberated) by seeing the ways that cummings played with language and broke the "sacred" rules of grammer. i liked the way his words flowed all over the pages. i liked the fact that he always wrote with un-capitalized letters.
this was the first time that i remember anyone saying the equivalent of, "it is okay to colour outside the lines".
i liked a lot of what cummings wrote, even though it didn't make literal sense. this was the first time that poetry actually spoke to me and resonated with something deep inside me. these words made me aware of something bigger.

this was also a time in my life when i really began exploring nature on my own. all of my friends had moved away that year, so I was left with a big hole in my life. i believe that my time alone exploring nature informed me about "awareness" and about nature - in ways that were later echoed in my studies of zen and taoism.

coincidentally, it was john cage's book "silence" that led me to discover zen and taoism, when i was twenty.

park theatre gig

photo by e. comack

Here I am onstage playing my djembe. I love this drum and I play it a lot.
In order to play an authentic West African djembe, one needs to develop a relationship with it. It needs constant tuning and care. Over time, one becomes sensitive to how it behaves in certain types of weather and humidity.
My djembe came from Guinea. The shell is made from a hollowed-out tree trunk from a cashew tree. Someone in Guinea hollowed it out by hand. The wood is a beautiful deep reddish colour, and is very dense and resonant.

I became interested in African music in 1981 when I heard three albums... Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians", Talking Heads' "Remain in Light" and David Byrne and Brian Eno's "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". I was instantly hooked. I began scouring libraries and ordering African records by mail from New York and California. (It was very hard to find back then.)
In 2002 I started studying West African Malinke drumming. And I haven't turned back since then. This music literally changed the direction of my life, and continues to bring me riches - beyond measure.

double vajra

The double vajrayana, ("thunderbolt of awareness") shown above is a symbol often used in tibetan buddhism. tibetan buddhism is partly buddhism and partly the (animist) bon religion that existed in tibet before buddhism arrived.
buddhism has been molded and twisted into many different things wherever it has spread in the world. in some cultures, buddhism is a full-blown "religion", complete with gods and scriptures. in other cultures buddhism is just a way of approaching life.
when buddhism traveled from india, through china, to japan, it was influenced by chinese taoist thought, and became what we know as zen buddhism.
my favourite version of buddhism is the soto zen buddhist lineage, which traces back to a 13th-century japanese monk named dogen. dogen wanted to strip away everything but the very essence of buddhism... which is "zazen" (just sitting). zen is awareness gained through direct experience, rather than theoretical ideas (thinking), beliefs (mysticism), or a dependence on religious texts. (thinking is a tool, and is something we need to do, but it can lead to self-delusion and mental grasping. texts are used, but only with the knowledge that words can never express reality.)

having said that, i admire what i know about the tibetan culture. it is a culture that includes long-term thinking in its plans. we can learn a lot by studying the tibetan culture.
i think the world could use more buddhist-style thought and awareness. awareness needs to be cultivated... especially in a world where intolerance, hatred, vengence, greed and profit-seeking seem to rule the land.
when people are more aware of their true realities, then they see clearly that altruism, peace and harmony are actually the most selfish things we can do.
that's how i see it, anyway.

regarding the image... i scanned a black and white drawing and played with it in photoshop.

heidi

this is my favourite image that i have created so far.
i found a black and white photo of heidi and manipulated it in several ways, using a primitive photo editor.
then i took the same original photo, reversed it, and manipulated it in other ways.
then i overlaid the two images, in photoshop.
i am happy with the results... with the textures, the angles and the contrasting colours.

when hurt leads to anger

some people feel completely justified to seek revenge when they have been hurt.

some people wage wars on this premise.

in the long run, i think this is an unwise and uncivilized way to live. the way i see it, if we live our lives by acting on whims (according to our immediate emotional responses), then we end up in trouble.

as they say, an eye for an eye eventually makes everybody blind.

at some point, somebody just has to step back and walk away.

simple as that.

barrier

This image represents the state of our world right now, from my rather limited perspective.
I created this image by overlaying a Persian design on a blurred image of a woman's face. I used the blurring effect to represent the current lack of focus on the feminine side of humanity. For me, women represent "beauty" and "civilized" life... mothering children... creating homes... creating a sense of "community" and civility. Females are the "yin" compliment to male "yang" forces. And a good society is a balanced one... not a fearful one. Fear is a state of weakness. And the solution to fear is love, not violence. Violence is an act of desperation and sign of a lack of mental resourcefulness. In other words, it is an act of the unintelligent.
I made the Persian design look like a wire fence. I like the strange juxtaposition of using an ancient beautiful design for such an ugly idea... a barrier to keep people out... or to keep people in. But I take some solace in the fact that my "wire fence" is an impossible one. It cannot support itself. And neither can a society that is unbalanced.

I originally created the Persian design as an AutoCAD hatch pattern, many years ago (certainly many years before the current invasion of Iraq). It took some challenging mathematical/programming work, but I only made it as a challenge to myself. So I was glad to be able to use it for something.