Brandt Lane, June 2016. I finally started painting again yesterday. I did two. The colors I bought are strange to me and it will be good to start blending them I think. I am starting off on a new composition, basically vertical stripes. I like it so far, but I'm kind of attached to what I did before. I'm doing it mostly freehand and I'm quite happy with my ability to kind of get a straight line. I have so lost my feeling for paint because of the meds. It's like having gloves on or something, though I don't. That's why I am painting small and super simple, that and the fact that mentally, I just can't come up with a complicated composition...yet. I'm hoping after some time doing these little paintings that I will feel like trying something bigger and more complex in the future. I don't have to, but it would be fun. This is kind of new, just seeing how my meds unfold. I'm getting ideas more often but I'm just not interested in making a mess. So, more practice. We'll see.
I finished Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. It was hard lol. He is doing something much harder than what I have encountered in Tibetan Buddhism so far - I read books by Pema Chodron and a few by the Dalai Lama. The only thing I have got so far, for Zen physics, from the book is, "...I mean, believing in nothing, believing in something which has no form or color, which is ready to take form or color." I think that is his description of what nothing is. He quotes in the book something to the effect of "teaching which is not forced, is not real teaching". He is forcing it, and it's difficult to get for me. He repeats himself in the book often and it kind of helps things to sink in. He describes a very humble approach to zen, not emphasizing enlightenment or whatever, but stressing a daily sitting practice and a kind of appreciation for every day life as a perfect zen practice. He says that the study of Buddhism is the study of the self, and that everyone is already enlightened, even before they begin to sit. I'm not ready to sit. I tried it in LA many years ago at a zendo and it was so hard for me. I'm going to kind of go against his teaching and just consider the meaning without actually sitting - unless it's to sit and read. In fact, the Dalai Lama has said that it is not advised for the mentally ill to meditate, anyway. I find it hard, but maybe it was because the dharma talk in that session was about demons and so on. It was disturbing to my already bedevilled mind. Anyway, I will leave it a few months and then read this book again. He is heavily contradictory to himself, on purpose of course, and so it's just something I will live with for a while and then go back and see it again. My neighbor came for coffee on Sunday and it was really great. I can't believe it. She gave me a beautiful bag from India with elephants on it. She offered to take me out to dinner sometime. I may actually be getting a social life after millions of years on my own. She was great though, she noticed especially things I had done for the house, having not ever seen it before, ever. My Italian picture frames, my enormous sofa which she loved especially, a bag sewn by a schizophrenic friend in the UK, even the brush strokes on my paintings. She just really noticed everything. On Saturday I am seeing a dear friend from school who lives a couple of hours way. We are meeting in our old university town for lunch. I'm especially glad, as she has been ill this winter - hospitalised twice - and is so far able to still make the day. She's bipolar and is just recently trying Disability, which, like everyone, she avoided for as long as possible. I'm hoping it will be nice for her - she can finish her book she's writing, stuff like that. And I have an invitation to a fireworks party for the Fourth. So I'm really happy with the way life is shaping up. Oh! And my best friend from childhood in Italy is flying in to visit for four days at the end of July. I'm blessed. Can't wait to see her. Ciao!
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