I am interested in getting to Time in its unstructured existence ... I am interested in how Time exists before we put our paws on it — our minds, our imaginations, into it

Morton Feldman

In Tai Chi we breathe into the belly. This develops the lower dantien and assists my stability and balance. In Heartwork we deepen the breathing so that it extends up into the chest. This helps dislodge the fear that grips the heart and allows the heart to become central to every move I make.

When the heart opens I feel. A feeling is an impulse to action. When I act immediately on my feelings then I am authentic. If I don't act it is because my heart is in the grip of fear.

Delay is an impostume in the soul. He who does not whet his will every hour perishes of velleity.

Edward Dahlberg

Head thinks : heart feels.

strong & steadfast

All things are directed from goodness to goodness.

Marsilio Ficino

True artistic creation is not of the imagination, it comes from the artist tuning into aspects and dimensions of reality usually outside human experience. This is why the creative process surprises even the creator.

It sometimes seems to me as if I did not belong to this world at all.

Franz Schubert

Create rather than survive life. Requires body to be fully inhabited by spirit.

strangely enough somehow

so to the Mystery:

Kenneth Irby

If I give instruction the student is not ready for then I risk plunging both of us into the only place success is possible – the imagination.

There exist two worlds – real and imaginary. The real one is all around me and I am part of it; the imaginary one is in my head and is largely private though its details expose themselves in every choice I make. The real world is infinitely rich and enriching; the imaginary world is extrememly limited and limiting. The struggle for the teacher is to wrench the student out of his imagination and into the real world, and to show him there mysteries he could never have imagined.

transfixed by a slender truth

No, I'm not lost. I'm here!

Thelonious Monk

fragile ego sense : the embryonic denying

A 'connected space' opens up when entities connect or increase the intensity of connexion. A 'disconnected space' appears when entities disconnect or start the protracted process of disconnexion – a rift or comfort zone. Energy naturally fills connected space. Thinking unnaturally fills disconnected space.

All that we are is in our love.

Walter de la Mare

Tai Chi is a way of energizing relationship.

if you move
lightly
events will start
up from your feet

Thomas A Clark

A rounded pebble – that simplest and most beautiful of natural objects – belies a creative process of great complexity and gentle persistence. Whittled down by practice and life to little more than my essential nature.

Loop conceived in a line, the spine with its regions, reasons.

Ron Silliman

Thinking requires disconnexion.

Photo: Rita Harris

The confidence to fail.

Fear – inability to admit feeling – creates discord between perception and reality.

in order to see the world and grasp it as paradoxical we must break with our familiar acceptance of it

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

extending & embracing

Confidence : with trust

releasing & attracting

grounded & real

Generate being

The branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits of a tree are limitless, yet the core point at which they all come together is the root.

Tsong-kha-pa

How beautiful the notion that we create our own personal catastrophes and that it is the creative forces within us that are instrumental in doing this.

Nick Cave

Soften the sacrum

defending only drains

The search for knowledge necessarily trivializes reality. We must find our security in being rather than knowing.

Irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical: the duende is a demonic earth spirit who helps the artist see the limitations of intelligence.

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor E. Frankl

  the trees take
    birds the
        light air

Larry Eigner

God is in the details – the particulars. In other words God doesn't discriminate – loves us all especially and equally. And we should do the same – enter each moment open. Closing is then a natural consuming of the moment – I consume the moment and the moment consumes me – primes me for the next opening. Breathing with my being.

A firm body : affirm body.

Photo: Itzik Patish

Belly and heart are centres of very different character. Belly is a reservoir where energy pools quietly – containment and stability. Heart, on the other hand, floods and spills energy and feeling – not necessarily foolishly – into threads of connexion, and the more effusive and expressive the heart the more I need the belly. Heart always tests my root.

hidden contact
deeper present
heart change

A quotation is not an excerpt. A quotation is a cicada.

Osip Mandelstam

if we learn to relax into the expansiveness that is opening up, then we may begin to feel space as support: the ground of our being actually hold us up.

John Welwood

Bringing it all back home – back into the body. Fully incorporated: united in one body. My dimensions incarnated: embodied, impersonated, enshrined. No ideas but in things.

Photo: Richard Dockray

Life is there for the taking; and only when I take it fully can I start to meaningfully give.

Whatever it be make light of it.

Photo: Rita Harris

Anything that can't find release, for whatever reason, will cause blockage and eventual illness. Sublimation, assuming such a thing is possible, first requires full admission : total honesty.

Relaxation becomes collapse if I disconnect.

Give in to the other

the dirt of basic goodness

In touch

Power is in the connexion not in the action.

Not just ready & willing to embrace the other but yearning for that embrace : big hug.

The only thing to be ashamed of is not being myself.

Exaggerated sensitivity indicates victimhood.

intelligence muddies the water

Being in love is our natural state.

Recognize anything that stifles or drains as the enemy it is.

Delight in (e)motion.

What is to give light must endure burning.

Viktor E. Frankl

the natural world is built on trust

the juice and sluice of energy

Kenneth Irby

Without receiving support and without lending support there can only be collapse. Central Equilibrium is that balance.

Pity is from the head, compassion from the heart : in the heart there is no pity, only an overwhelming desire to connect.