My brother Jeff recently sent along a YouTube clip that I thoroughly enjoyed, a travel advertisement sponsored by Chevrolet ("Let our behemoth mobiles be your magic carpets!")with some great footage of Coral Gables and Key Biscayne as the area looked in the 1950's.
Enjoy!: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyb3h0Vqlzo]
Denise Gibel Molini is, to me, first and foremost a huge blessing. She is a true original and one-of-a-kind, in the best kind of way. Our life paths first crossed twelve years ago, and she has enriched my life ever since.
Here's Denise:
The smile you see here is real, but well-earned. Denise has many gifts, but seems to have paid a price for them, as those that really feel always do. She understands and approaches life as a journey of the Spirit, but that is no kind of cop-out. Like me, she wages a wearying battle against depression. Her life is not always easy. But (sometimes without words) we remind one another of what we know in our hearts: that nothing in our experience of life is without a reason. That knowledge, carried still and small within, can make the unendurable bearable.
Because yes, there is always tomorrow. And may it be a new day!
She is an author, artist, teacher, lecturer, healer, astrologer. And oh yes, a mother. Here she is with Richard and Evelyn:
Sometimes we head out on adventures together: to wade in the shallows at Bear Cut out on Key Biscayne, or to paint by the Bay in the dark of night. One night we took out our easels and a couple of canvases and painted like mad people, by the light of kerosene lantern, and forgot about life for a while.
Part of the reason I felt to bring Denise and her spirit into my web log is to express gratitude. I've grown to realize that gratitude is more than a feeling. It is on some deeper level a spiritual practice, packed with its own power and charged with a mysterious capacity to help us shift things into a perspective that always opens rather than closes. It is impossible to feel true gratitude, I believe, and to be genuinely unhappy in the same moment.
And so nothing would make me happier than for you to take a moment to think about the people in your life, and to consciously bring to mind the gratitude that may be lying dormant within you, and see what happens. The press and crush of life, and its constancy, have a way of making us forget.
And there may be nothing better that you have to do right now, at least for a few moments, than to consciously focus on the gifts in your life. Especially the people. Most especially, the ones that you carry in your heart, and that carry you.
Good Endures 2001 Denise Gibel MoliniPlease take a moment to visit the latest posting on Denise's web log, The Growing Field,
A couple of years back, I started the practice of taking digital pics of my paintings at the end of each sitting, and emailing them out to a few friends. Sometimes I included a little story about one thing or the other that had transpired while I was out with my paints. I almost always paint "en plein air," outside in beautiful places, and there's something about that scene that seems to really speak to people, that tends to delight, surprise, or inspire them. So they stick around and watch, or they visit for a while. All kinds of people of every age, from every walk of life and many different countries, from gang members to retirees to mystics to tourists, or all of the above, you name it. Those that do engage in conversation tend to speak so intimately it's as if we've known each other always. They sometimes voice to me of their private visions, share the dreams closest to their hearts. All of which then most definitely becomes part of the art, somehow energetically "woven in" to the process.
I had one such great encounter while working on a painting out on Key Biscayne a couple of years ago. The place could not mean more to me, I have a definite love "thang" with Biscayne Bay. It is just so big, so blue, so beautiful. Plus, we go way back; my brothers and I spent large chunks of our youth, and some of our happiest times, exploring and generally carrying on in its waters. We used to call her "Mother Bay." So I was sitting alongside the bike path, out by Hobie Beach. The place looks like this:
This painting would eventually be called "Biscayne Day!" Which is interesting, considering that I started out with the canvas as a night painting:
So one beautiful winter day I was sitting there painting, and I could feel that someone had stopped a little ways away, and was watching me work. After a while I turned around, and saw a young blond guy astride and leaning forward on his bicycle, just sort of grinning. His eyes kind of twinkled. I said "Hi" and turned back to paint.
"Looks like you're having quite an experience there," he said. "Yeah," I paused, a wet paintbrush in my hand. "Tell you the truth," I said "I never really have any idea what's gonna come out when I start on a painting." I've always loved Picasso's quote to the effect that "An artist should have some idea of what he wants to do when he sits down to paint, but only some idea." That has always rung true. The realm of true power, real and abundant possibilities, always exists just a little beyond our reach. Or (and here's the key): at least our known reach.
So the guy says "Well when you think about it, it's not really you that's doing the painting." I was stunned. I stopped in my tracks, turned back around. He just sat there, smiling like the love child of Mona Lisa and the Buddha. I stood up and walked over to him, stood right in front of him, and put my hand on his arm, and said "You know what? I love you for saying that. That is just so true." And no one had ever said anything like that to me, before.
That's all, for now.
