Internal Improvements ~ me

One of the ways (of a great many) I'm trying to improve myself is to be more in the moment and unattached to things, zen style. Helping me in this process is this amazing book:

"Coming To Our Senses; Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness" by Jon Kabat-Zinn

I keep hearing a voice in my head as I'm reading it, "This is your bible," and it very well could be.

Well, tonight, I am holding on dearly to the idea of not being too attached to 'things'.  My computer spontaneously shut down tonight, sending the image I was working on into Photoshop oblivion. It was an important image for me, an experimental, maybe even pivotal image. And, it's just gone. I've spent nearly two hours trying to recreate it and I simply can't. There were too many layers, too many slight alterations here and there. Sigh.

Breathe.

It's a good lesson. It's a lesson in realizing that in art, as in life, it's not about the product at all. The product is only the way in which we share our experience of making art with other people. (I learned this from Andy Goldsworthy who creates sculpture amongst nature, photographs it, and walks away leaving it to be reclaimed.)

It's the making,

the moments while making,

the awareness that making brings to us of the moment,

of the materials in the moment,

of our bodies in the making in the moment..

it's all of this that is the point, because nothing is for certain other than this moment.

And when I see that this is true, there is no loss.

And then, another moment comes, and I find myself wondering what that image might have been. Push and pull. Back and forth. Rivers and tides.