I was thinking today about how I was following a more rigorous regime and particularly about how I was eating only before 12pm. I decided today that I should eat later on as well (I am currently munching on various assorted health-foods) and so I did. And I noticed that it was becoming harder to control my eating habit unless I kept to a strict diet. I think that I need to eat less in each meal, but have these little breaks and eat all meals. For only then can I become unattached, when I no longer am habituated to this style of eating, I can leave this cycle.
Habit is a tough thing. I feel the only thing that can break a reason why. Have you noticed when you have a habit, and you want to break it but you find no reason to motivate you to do so, you generally don't break it. But when you have a motivation, it becomes very easy? For example I used to bite my nails, but I decided I wanted to shape them, and i havent bitten them since. Not even once. It was incredibly easy just because I take pride in my nails now.
Habit is an uneasy thing,
Monday, February 23, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Pollock Discussion
When I was watching a movie today about Jackson Pollock, I noticed he painted when he was very angry. And I also noticed that made me feel uncomfortable, and I went into drawing when I felt uncomfortable. They say that painting and drawing are ways of expressing ones own emotions, but could it not be that they are more the escape as opposed to the answer.
Jackson Pollock was a wonderful artist, and painted very abstract expressionist work. He played with cubism, and surreal abstract work, but in the end came to a very automatist style of painting. He focused inwards with his work. Someone noticed one could not but paint from nature, and yet here he was painting from within, Pollock stated quite simply "I am nature". One is nature. Yet, your view of nature comes only from within. So in the end, the painter only ever paints them self.
Pollock was a severely depressed man, and an alcoholic. He painted from within, and painted all this out. When he was frustrated, depressed, drunk or angry he would paint this into his work. But he seemed to not focus what was going on within, but projecting it into his painting. Putting the pain outside of himself. When he was drunk, he would get angry and push the anger outside of himself, either at his lover, his family, things in his immediate environment, he would project.
People see art as a way of dealing with problems. And I believe it can help, but if you put everything into your art, you are only projecting. Putting your feelings into something outside of yourself, and to put it into an extreme like Pollock is something unhealthy. There should be no mistake that art is a way to solve your problems within. It can help to understand, to look at, and to analyze them, but in the end it does not help them, it does not fix them and it does not heal them. Art is something you look at. All it can do is let you look at what it is you feel.
When I feel uncomfortable, I will sketch, I will draw, and I will distract myself from this feeling. But to use art as habitual distraction is not constructive. I feel that art should be seen as not a form of healing, but expression alone. For an artist can do no more than a self-portrait.
Jackson Pollock was a wonderful artist, and painted very abstract expressionist work. He played with cubism, and surreal abstract work, but in the end came to a very automatist style of painting. He focused inwards with his work. Someone noticed one could not but paint from nature, and yet here he was painting from within, Pollock stated quite simply "I am nature". One is nature. Yet, your view of nature comes only from within. So in the end, the painter only ever paints them self.
Pollock was a severely depressed man, and an alcoholic. He painted from within, and painted all this out. When he was frustrated, depressed, drunk or angry he would paint this into his work. But he seemed to not focus what was going on within, but projecting it into his painting. Putting the pain outside of himself. When he was drunk, he would get angry and push the anger outside of himself, either at his lover, his family, things in his immediate environment, he would project.
People see art as a way of dealing with problems. And I believe it can help, but if you put everything into your art, you are only projecting. Putting your feelings into something outside of yourself, and to put it into an extreme like Pollock is something unhealthy. There should be no mistake that art is a way to solve your problems within. It can help to understand, to look at, and to analyze them, but in the end it does not help them, it does not fix them and it does not heal them. Art is something you look at. All it can do is let you look at what it is you feel.
When I feel uncomfortable, I will sketch, I will draw, and I will distract myself from this feeling. But to use art as habitual distraction is not constructive. I feel that art should be seen as not a form of healing, but expression alone. For an artist can do no more than a self-portrait.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Circle
Walking home, just yesterday, I was taking photos and I saw it; a beautiful Cicada, sitting on the grass nearby. I decided it was near the foot path, and may be steppy apon, so I picked it up. It had no problem with this, and sat on my hand for a long while. I took some photos, and then walked along with it, in hopes of finding a new, safer, place for it. Accepting that I will never see it again, I placed it in the shade just underneath a tree elevated from foot steps. I thought about how I have saved it from the feet of the unnoticing passerby. I felt gratified that I could leave it be in a safer, shadier place.
A day later, I am walking the same route again, pondering on the Cicada, did I do the right thing, or should I have left it, and not interferred with its life, but I know I have saved it from death at human hands. And then I saw it. The very same Cicada, on the road. Noiseless and void of movement. I approached it , and saw that it had been killed by a car. The side of its shell cracked open like that of a egg, contents splayed onto the hot black road.
From this, I understood. We are all at the door of death. We live our lives like this. We continue on, and live and grow like anything else, but in the end, death is our reward.
So I took рдеे Cicada. If it was on the road, ants may stream onto the road, and be killed again by human feet or wheels. I put it at the roots of a bush, hoping that the plant and insects could benefit from the body of the Cicada. The Cicada is not dead. It now lives on in the world.
Even if I can still hope to end the intervention of human hands, and act as if humans are seperate from the circle of life. We are not. The Cicada may be washed from the roots of the bush in rain which threatens even now, and the ants may find it there and again travel into the human realm at a risk of their life. But there is no individual life. Death is as much a part of life as birth is. In fact, they are one in the same. This is the circle.
The two forces in the universe, I shall call them yin and yang, are the same. But there is a third force, a non-force. It encompasses neither and both equally. This is life. It is the yin in yang, and the yang in yin. We live our lives in duality, but our lives are made up of this non-duality. This being, this beauty is life.
So with the truth of this in mind, I ask you this: What are you saving the Cicada from?
This is the circle.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
A blank spot
O.K. To my readers, I apologise for not having posted in a fair while if you were looking for a new one, because you see, life has been busy.
I started school, have been looking for jobs, and have been very lazy lately.
I was thinking about posting on this site. And I thought I would try my hand at the philosophical poems... Koans, I think they are called. I don't know how they are produced, but I thought that this my help show my view on where I am now.
The Flower,
Without eyes sees the sun.
As do Buddha,
Without mirrors see themselves.
I started school, have been looking for jobs, and have been very lazy lately.
I was thinking about posting on this site. And I thought I would try my hand at the philosophical poems... Koans, I think they are called. I don't know how they are produced, but I thought that this my help show my view on where I am now.
The Flower,
Without eyes sees the sun.
As do Buddha,
Without mirrors see themselves.
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