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Art
November 2009 
AwkwardPromisedLand
Doug
A Tuesday night, almost Wednesday and what an awkward day of the week but it fits me right now.
I began the week and a painting with an awkward color, royal purple stuffed into the bottom left side of the painting like a big messy challenge.
How to make the awkward graceful?
And it does happen. After struggling with it for the past few nights it's now what it was meant to be. Just like the man/beast that I am, intrinsically clumsy and ill fitted and yet graceful when I am loved.
And I remember those dreams where I would go to school and had forgotten to get dressed first and everyone would stop dead in their tracks to point and laugh at the naked clown. But god how nice it was when someone would be so thoughtful as to light the candles in their room and take me in to their warmth, to smile and laugh at my lame jokes, to pretend that my fumbling fingers and the dry mouth of someone slightly scared to death gave pleasure. And it's good to be strange when the strangeness is no longer a stranger in someone else's eyes. To be known to fall fast asleep before the candles have burned down and rattle the early morning walls with less then the soft breeze of easy breathing.
And I wondered why I was made so beautifully awkward.
But then if I thought I deserved to be loved, would I have known this gratitude?
Access: Public
I love it….the words, the feelings, the colors… Really like the black/dark areas and especially the white, where I see a lot happening. The figure in the bottom right-hand corner intrigues me…
Perhaps the awkward and the graceful accept each other….
aww see you made me cry again :)
“…….I am intrinsically clumsy and ill fitted and yet graceful when I am loved.”
“And wondered why I was made so beautifully awkward.”
I'm sitting here,in front of this screen,reading these words,yet am at a loss for what to say,other than quoting you,beautiful you.
Your nakedness is breathtaking.
Thank you Lisa! Perhaps there is no graceful without the awkward and we really don't know love until we give it away?
Elisa, let me see if I have a hankie in my shirt pocket, let me see if I have a shirt! Thank you!
Hi Bridget, so nice to see you! Yes, fig leaves are so last year don't you think?
Thank you for being here!
:)))))
….. a perfect reflection of Love…..wonderful You!
Hi Nikki and thank you Love!
I love the title…hmm…awkward is actually graceful here. And the poetic words…they dance smoothly…never stepping on toes…
Lol. Love that comment and I agree…fig leaves are soooo last year…
Amy :-)
omigod! those naked dreams… going to school.. and realising while I was on the pavement walking down the road in the middle of the city… no where to hide!
aah the painting is naked too!
feels as familiar as ancient tales before the 1st man and woman…the land they were on… where fig leaves grew and fell with the seasons…
Ah shucks Amy ( looking down at his Buster Brown shoes only he doesn't have any shoes!) Thank you!
OMG Hummy were you there too!
That outfit actually worked in art school, but high school not a chance. Funny those dreams have to do with shame which was the same thing that got our asses booted from the garden to begin with. But I'm glad to lose the shame and frankly there just is no room for it.
et in arcadia ego… hugs, doug
Just spectacular Doug! I love the colors…so earthy and luscious…kind of has met my dark mood and underpinings as of late…but yes so much flow and promise! From one akward child to another…I think youre perfection!
love you!
You are such a darling Julia! Love you too!
You've got me remembering the tenderness of youth. Tenderness, both sweet and vulnerable. Ah.
If this is awkward then you are absolutely divine :o)
Hi Martha! Funny that I have been remembering that too and it's a great place to be. Thanks for being here!
Thank you Jung Lady! It's doubtful I'll make god but I remember making friends with a girl on a swing when I was 8. Somehow you remind me of her and how I felt like a god that day.
I was just rereading the Tao Te Ching, the bit about how beauty only exists because we've labelled something else ugly, how something is good only because we've labelled something else bad. There is only grace because something else has been labelled awkward and only awkwardness because somesomething else has been labelled graceful. We, as creatures of the Tao, unify these opposites within ourselves and opposition fades and there is only us, whole the way we are. Doug thank you for sharing the journey's we all take through your art and words.
DiamondLil - that's the effect of dualism
- one creating the other…
“How to make the awkward graceful?” So true, so true … How does one see the beauty in a “sow's ear,” and not need to make it into a “silk purse.” Or, how does one overcome seeing oneself as that “sow's ear,” when the Beloved sees her as silken and simmering? Our perceptions are so strong. That royal purple looks perfect, and in its proper place, anchoring the rest of the painting. Like a serene lady seated in the corner watching the dancers swirl and whirl - recalling days gone by with bittersweet fondness. I love the title of this piece, “AwkwardPromisedLand.” I think of my body when I see that title. I see it as the “consolation prize,” when, in fact, it is a prized treasure. Oh, to move, or to paint, or to make love without the gremlins of self-criticism dancing around and around. Shhh! Quiet … gremlins … let my colors dance. (this brought out the free-associating part in me Doug, which is a very, very good thing). Beautiful.
Hi DiamondLi!
Hi Hummy!
I think I am finding that how I see has a lot to do with my distance. So I see the awkward because it is out there, not me, no sir! I'm for the beautiful. But there it is looking at me and I could reject it, wipe out the painting to try to arrive at the beautiful. But I've done that before and where you actually end up is disconnected from your experience. This time at least I accepted what was emerging and I embraced it and in the end there was no edge between beauty and the awkward. There was neither, all that remained was the gratitude that I am here.
Thank you for being here!
As Always, Doug, As Always.. I need poetry as i need fresh water and in the midst of a busy day i need to stop and READ. Reading you makes me take a deeper breath… Hugs
Doug… looking with eyes which have no aniticipation or expectation…
this way of seeing
discovers
and creates…
creates that which has never been created before
yet which has always been…
Thank You Catherine! I love your free association. Yesterday I met a new friend and she had this quote on her home page.
“Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.” ~ Marianne Williamson, “A Woman's Worth””
OK it's a pretty provocative statement when taken at face value and while I think she means it that way there is much more than that as well. It speaks to me as being in a state of being beyond mere anatomy, of the dropping of all masks including the mask of gender, perhaps even of species. To be truly in listening mode hearing the silent voice of feeling which is not bound to flesh. To be in a state where we take ownership of all that we perceive and knowing that feeling is really a loop and what we feel is what we ourselves have created. It's so easy when the needs are mutual but when there are conflicting needs it's much harder to hear. I'm usually too busy talking, even if I don't utter a sound, to really listen. And damn! do we really have to kiss the frog to know the prince?
Thank you Joanna! Those hugs feel really nice, squeezing you a little to let you know that.
Hummy, thank you for your words. They are just perfect!
“But then if I thought I deserved to be loved, would I have known this gratitude? ”
Interesting question.
Hi Ruth, Thank you for stopping by!
I'm thinking of the cyclical process that I have experienced of thinking I can do it myself (pride) and with that feeling I can not receive love. I'm cut off. The universe loves me so much that she makes sure that I fall flat on my face so that I come back to love again. Gratitude is the feeling of love filling us again after we have opened through humility or been opened through humiliation.
Think of a single breath; humility is opening to the inhalation, the air is love and gratitude is the exhalation.
Hmmm, maybe I should just breath rather then be either blue or red in the face?
Lol!
TY Doug
You are always poetic and enlightening :)
Why do you refer to the universe as 'she'?
My sister (age 52) says there is proof that any creative force/energy/eternal-interconnectedness/god is male: no woman would have designed menstruation, labour or hot flashes.
I am 50 and have been through all of those things and am now happily on the other side of menopause.
And I agree with my sister. The unverse is not 'she'.
:)
It was jealousy, she saw that human women had better bodies, actually they have bodies and men bestowed their love on human women rather then her so she has you pay for your beauty.
Hold your tongue though she really doesn’t like the B word!
Actually I think you and your sister are right.
;-)