Darci Kistler, on Balanchine and giving:

"He loved it when you could go beyond yourself and work to the point of losing yourself... I think he realized that real giving has nothing to do with yourself. So you were useful to him if you could lose yourself, also.

You would give more, and you do more, when you're not thinking of yourself. You're not inhibited, you're not protecting anything. You're not really asking for anything either."

Buying art is a frivolous thing to do, only for the rich, something we can't afford. This mindset has been a total "given" that I'm realizing is really a "taken", sadly devoid of pleasure, especially when contrasted to the happy walls and homes of some not rich folks I've been fortunate to visit.

The truth is clear if I compare the pleasure I would get from looking at this painting versus just about anything money could buy. I was thinking about Vermont and my wanting to plant a garden (farm, really) there. My wish to invite folks over and be something like a retreat hostess. About "clarity of heart, like an objet d'art", and this phrase came to me:

Invest in your happy place.
{reminiscent of "where your money is, there your heart will be also" (Luke 12:34)}

It sounds a little trite until I "pair" it like a fine wine with my new favorite artist, Rory Jackson, the glorious product of an artist family. I almost can't stand to look at his work I love it so much. His painting "Walking in Clarity" totally mesmerized me this summer (and still does). I was lucky enough to see it in person just before it sold, leaving me an admiring voyeur trying to give credit where credit is due:

Rory Jackson, Walking in Clarity, 2014

Edgewater Gallery

This weekend, I was imagining what clearing all this external stuff would look like internally. I searched the internet for what I see in my mind's eye but apparently it's just not out there yet (note to self: learn glassblowing). So I can only describe in words the beautiful, quality, non-cheesy glass heart that should be made in by Simon Pearce in Vermont but might just have to be made by me.

It's spaciously, curvaceously, purely clear and smooth. Solid, transparent, colorless, slightly irregular. Full and empty, a crystalline sanctuary, calmly holding nothing and everything. Suspended in air, full of light, made of earth and fire and human breath. These words came to me about the benefits of clearing:

Clarity of heart
Like an objet d'art

Then I discovered this synchronistic message, the word of the day:

Beloved

In your prayers, ask God to grant you a precious glimpse of how he sees you – of the wonderful picture that he sees when he looks at you. Give thanks that you are indeed God’s work of art. -Br. Geoffrey Tristram

The sweater man, to me, is one of J's most memorable people. This man ladens himself with sweaters, the heavy wool kind, wearing upwards of 30 at a time. He spends his life regulating his temperature which is in odd fluctuation due to his sweater habit. Wearing all those extra layers makes him sweat, so he'll take some sweaters off, then the sweats cools and he feels cold again so he puts more on. The effort of putting on so many sweaters makes him hot again, thus the cycle continues. Further complicating matters is that under all these sweaters is the inner most layer, the one that needs to be washed. So every day he goes through a production of removing all the layers in order to wash the inner layer, repeatedly reordering the sweaters to rotate the clean garments, while trying to keep up with his tiresome temperature management.

I used to wonder about the internal drive to behave this way but today I'm struck by the layers themselves. We all have them, but I'll speak for myself, since I know that I've got many layers of additional weight that I've been somewhat arbitrarily wearing. And it's wearing me out.

Sometimes people ask me what I'm doing with my summer, an innocent enough question that shoots straight to my workaholic guilt like an accusation that I'm not doing enough. I think: you're right, I should have published a book or solved world peace or secured a new job or at least gone on a date by now. But the truth of what I'm doing is that...I'm  un-doing. I've spent so many years accumulating all these heavy and exhausting layers that I am now working on taking them off. And the guy is right. It's a lot of work.

There are the perceptions and the misperceptions. The disappointment, the guilt, the regret. The fear - sometime mine and often others' - and its power to dismantle my dreams. The craving for approval, the need to please, the expectations. The career choice, the graduate school(s), the bad decision(s), the exhaustion. The real stuff (like student loan debt), the imaginary (like needing to stay in this job-apartment-life I've made). All cycling through this dirty wash but never coming clean.

What strikes me is how the original issue gets buried under so many layers that the layers themselves become a problem. Never mind what started it, now there's a whole new world of regulating the layers and their conflicts with each other. They take on a life of their own - relating, reproducing - until suddenly sweater management becomes a full-time occupation like a stay at home mom. Lost under cover, masquerading about like the Michelin man, dying for the mummy to be unwrapped, meanwhile...

Buried somewhere under this fabricated mess is the original skin.

"They were both naked...and were not ashamed" (Genesis 2:25)

Ask me again. I dare you. What have I been doing this summer?