A drum for dreaming

This new drum from the Journey Oracle is called “dreampipe” and how it got its name is a good story.

A friend called to tell me that a beautiful sailboat was in her bay that looked like our Bristol 29.9.  She thought the make was a dream pipe. While I was talking to her, I was also putting the final leather thongs on the reverse of this drum.

I turned it over and was surprised to see a pipe in the patterning of the blacktail deer skin.

I went on line and discovered the sailboat is a Pipe Dream 36’ which does indeed look like a bigger version of our Pearl.  But by now the drum was showing me images in the white streaks of smoke rising from the bowl of dreams.

This 14” frame of British Columbia Spruce wood also has a special task: stabilizing the drum skin around the bullet hole that is positioned on the rim.   When a thin, clear skin has the bullet hole as part of the drum, I consider this a doorway.  For this drum a path to the dreamtime.

This drum for dreaming also has a beautiful teaching in the Octagram tied into the cedar withy ring for the hand-hold of the drum.  This is the sign of regeneration.  The two squares that make the central motif can be seen as a square and a diamond.  That which is hard and clear from the past combined with that which is solid and grounded in the present.  

I will paint this drum, but first I like to offer a drum with its own face, just in case you want to see your own dreams in the patterns of light and shadow.

Best source of names for paintings

The unexpected comment is one of my best sources of names for paintings.  Just like a Journey Oracle card reading singles out images, aspects of nature and dream-like pronouncements that empower forces to speak that are beyond one's conscious control--chance is my favorite origin of painting titles. A name that both conveys a sense of my intended meaning and also provides insight into the mystery behind all art.

usual magic

This large acrylic painting completed during my tenure at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design had one of my favorites sources for painting names: the television.  While watching TV one evening I was suddenly brought to attention by an After Eight chocolate advertisement.  The announcer's voice said, "Catherine worked her usual magic at the dinner party...."  That's it!  A title that both captures my sense of nature, and also opens to the sensation that just beyond reach there is something more.  

What time is this?

What story is this?

These two drawings in colored pencil were completed as nature lessons for a young art student.  The titles are literally two assignments.  Can you look out at nature and say what time of year this is just by identifying the presence and condition of the plants you see?  Can you tell the story of the plants you see: their First Nations lore, medicinal uses and local mythology?

not an exit

While attending Martin Prechtel's school of spiritual ecology in New Mexico, I would go for walks to sketch the area cemetery. When standing next to the fence gazing at possibilities for a composition, a local man mistook my interest for trying to find a way through to the road beyond and said," There's not an exit from here, you know."  

no more waiting

Later I was telling a friend about my work with Martin and how the study was changing my sense of purpose, especially with my work on the Journey Oracle divination deck, and she said, "There is no more waiting for the time to be soon, or better, or whatever.  Just do it now!" 

nothing is coming

My favorite name for a painting in this cemetery series is the one that I completed after I returned back to Cortes Island.  I asked my partner John what he thought would be a good name, and he said, "nothing is coming."  

The true magic of these three sketches is that no one title carries the full impact of the three pieces together.  When taken as one statement these three names certainly open to the sensation that something deeper and more thought-provoking is afoot.  

What is an Oracle?

An oracle sits in the space of veils and mist, of glimpses that disorient as much as reveal. An oracle does not tell us our fortune or our future so much as it speaks from our hidden present—revealing unconscious hopes and fears, unseen views within our present perspective, traces of choices and motives that cross and parallel the ones we are presently following.

            An oracle leaves the responsibility for our choices and actions with us.  An oracle does this by unveiling mystery more than by offering advice, by prompting revelation more than by providing answers.  We must still choose and act within this expanded knowing, this expanded truth.  We must make our own connections between the oracle and daily life.

WHAT MAKES A JOURNEY?

A journey moves us through the space between what we already know and what we have not yet experienced. Loss of comfort, heightened awareness and unexpected discoveries characterize a journey. 

We may begin with an intention to change a view, a routine, a situation—and find a journey’s end that it is ourselves who have changed.

WHAT IS THE JOURNEY ORACLE?

The Journey Oracle guides us by showing images of a situation for which we want advice, and then by showing images of our relationship to this situation.

Like the I Ching, the Oracle makes pronouncements about the origins and prevailing energy of the situation and about the impact of our perceptions, and how the momentum of the situation is being fed by our actions.

 The Oracle reveals how to recognize the moment of change, and what to avoid while within the change. 

The Oracle tells us a story within which is hidden the resolution we want for our situation.

Inspirations for making art

I enjoy combining art and meditation at Birken Forest Monastery where I am soon to go for a 10 day retreat.  In my experience these two forces come from the same part of the mind that enables me to understand the nuance and metaphor in the Journey Oracle.  The quiet, non-thinking part.  So here are phrases of inspiration that I plan to explore with my meditation into art.

The body's path

Blind contour drawing creates a slowing down.  The hand must follow the eye moving over the form--not ever looking down at the paper.  No racing ahead to see what's next, no opportunity for judgments.  Just like meditation slows the mind down so it can ultimately see itself.

Trust

When I let the form that is mostly empty emerge from the ground that is mostly full, I trust that the material which is paper, and the idea which is bone, have a goodness of fit.   Just like trusting when meditating that what I am striving to become is already present within me. 

Silence

In drawing sometimes the effort isn't in adding marks but in lifting these away.  Just like the true quiet of the mind is always present, and over time words gradually lift away to reveal the form of it's silence. 

The Pattern

My life is filled with choices that direct my conscious actions from an unconscious well of patterns.   How strong to make the mark, how much pressure to apply, how much space to involve.   Patterns only partially intuited, just like the versions of aggression,  ignorance and desire that shape the patterns of my resistance to inner peace.

The Story

Sometimes art is in the way a moment comes together--the materials, the idea, the drawing, the feelings--to make the narrative of a bigger lesson,  

After I drew this apple during my last meditation retreat, I wrote this in my journal,

I kept wanting a finer more majestic paper to draw on but these humble sheets just kept smiling and tuning their bright white faces up to receive the ink.  In the light of such willingness how could I judge them as unworthy.

Of all the art I did during that visit--this drawing and my thoughts about the paper told the best story of our impermanent, insubstantial world, and of how nothing matters and yet everything is important.  

I hit a young deer

I hit a young deer two days ago.  Because I have no photographs of this story, I am adding three images of making a gift of tobacco and breath to a tree. The lesson from the young deer feels as big as this tree.

I am driving home from a wedding--telling myself stories about how profound and beautiful it all was--and not paying attention.  A young deer jumps from the roadside ditch and there I am--not paying attention.  A solid thud and the deer is lying on the wet pavement in spasms of jerking movement.  Surely it is dying.

Because this is Cortes Island and traffic is rare after the last ferry in the early still-bright evening, I stop my car in the middle of the road and move its young body into my lane away from anyone else coming.  I sit on the pavement with him, holding his head in my palms so he will not die with his face against the asphalt, but he does not die.

We just sit there, this small animal with little swelling bumps where horns would have some day grown--and an old lady sad but not crying, not trying to do anything but be there.  Several people drive by, each one asking what happened, what needs helping.  I say we are fine.  We don't need anything.  By this time the young deer is watching me.  I am thinking death is coming soon, and because I make drums I am wondering if I will be able to get the deer's body into the trunk of my car so at least my skill can serve his spirit with another form.

A young man passes by on a bike, gets off and joins us.  He manages to carry the deer to the long wet grass by the side of the road so I can move my car in the darkening gloom.  The young man, the deer and I stay together beside the road for what seems like quite a while--the humans crouched in the wet, the deer lying with legs outstretched and spasms of shivers running along its muscles. There is nothing obviously broken, certainly some scrapes and cuts but no blood and no bones showing. But I think the shock has been too much and now the deer's life is surely passing away in the subsiding tremors.

Someone stops and asks if we want a knife.  I say to the young man,"Which would you rather choose? To die here in the cool wet grass in the fading light, or have your throat cut?"  We decide none of us wants a knife.  We become aware our petting the deer like a pet cat or dog is probably not being understood in the same way by this wild creature.  First assaulted by an unimaginable thing, then moved twice and now held in place with alien smells and sounds and touch.  The young man makes a hollow beside a hydro pole on the other side of the ditch and carries the now actively struggling young deer to it.  The deer is lying in the bed with legs tucked under its belly and holding its head up.

Later at home I read about what I possibly should have done when I hit a deer.  Yet in this one small instance I think what we all did was correct. The humans did not panic or try to fix anything so the deer could receive death, or life, in its own way.  The next morning while driving slowly by I could not resist looking into the hollow place by the pole.  I saw that it was empty.