Notice:

Come to find out, meditation is not necessarily about clearing your mind of all thoughts but rather noticing the thoughts as they come and go. The practice of noticing, checking in, coming back to something like the breath. I'm beginning to see my artistic life in a similar way.

As an artist I am constantly questioning and redefining my identity. Noticing where I am and continuing to deepen and expand whatever work I'm doing whether it be an acting project, a new painting or a piece of writing.

Moving forward, staying awake. Eyes open, ears pricked, mind alert and heart expanding.

The teachers in the school of life are sometimes difficult to identify. They're all around but every once in awhile we dreamers and creators must be our own teachers too. We have to set our own standards and continue to ask what are we doing and why?

Today, this is where I'm at. Add your thoughts to the list and perhaps we can learn something from each other.

My rules as of this moment:

• Have something to say. If the impulse is there but the purpose is unclear work towards specificity.
• Do everything possible to open and expand the mind.
• Read.
• Find role models and note the specific reasons you admire them and the specific reasons you don't.
• Be willing to compromise but only to a point.
• Develop artistic integrity, don't be afraid to say no.
• Keep money separate. Money motivated art is likely to be shit.
• Daily practice. Do/make some art every day.
• Allow yourself to be moved as much as possible and wonder at the beauty of your heart.
• Make room for the simultaneous existence of genius, mistakes, perfection and shit.
• Daydream, nightdream, fantasize and actualize.
• Ask lots of questions.
• Yes, people are judging you. Sit with that.
• Re-write these rules as often as possible.

Contemplating Attachments

Today I will make vegan cupcakes with tofutti "cream cheese" frosting.

The last time I attempted vegan cupcakes I made them chocolate with green mint frosting.
Everyone called them "toothpaste cupcakes".

I'm determined to redeem myself today! However, in the spirit of this post, I will try not to become attached to a particular outcome. These will be my "go-with-the-flow" cupcakes.

Getting my hair chopped was a good reminder of how easy it is to become attached to stuff, (in this case a mess of dead cells). The day before my scheduled cut I stood outside Little Star, waiting for Amanda to get us a table and found myself drifting off into a hair stroking trance. I caught my reflection in the window and took hold of my longer locks. I started running my fingers down from root to tip and repeated this motion unconsciously until,

"SHAKTI! What are you doing? I got us a table!"

"Dude, I'm not psychic, I was waiting for you to tell me! Lemme lock up my bike."

Really I had just zoned out but the point of this stupid story is that I realized I don't want to be tied down by my attachments. I know I'll always have certain attachments. I'm not a saint and don't plan on becoming one but I also don't want to get to a point in my life where my clinging to material things is running the show! The hair thing got me thinking...

The new chop has brought with it a new sense of freedom! I'm re-inspired to continue minimizing my stuff and since I'm going to be moving in August, I have a real excuse for getting rid of things.

Letting go can be really hard but one of the things I keep hearing at these Buddhist meditations is that it's the clinging that causes the suffering. I find this to be true in my own experience so it's interesting to experiment with what happens when you let go of stuff for starters.

I'll clear out some trash and clutter from my room and then move on to bigger things such as the boxes of "mystery junk" under the bed and in the closet. As I go through the bits and pieces I'll try to be mindful of what I'm feeling or experiencing.

Today my practice is a cupcake/cleaning meditation.

Random:
Speaking of attachments, what's with people spending tons of money on engagement rings??? This is kind of like the baby thing from the last post. I just really want to hear your thoughts.

Sometimes I feel like we just continue to accept things because "that's just the way things are".

I hate this.

Oh, and another thing, I might be showing some paintings in the near future.
Weird.
More on that later...

Birds of a Cyber-Feather Flock Together?

A few days ago my roommate and I had a cookie making party at our place. A couple of neighbors and a friend came over to bake and nibble, drink cheap wine and decorate the branch that we nailed to the wall (our poor girls' Christmas tree). We made the plan the day before and coordinated the details via texting and a few Facebook messages but it was a real, live, face-to-face hangout session. That night one of my friends mentioned an interesting article to me during a conversation about society and the impact that technology has on our friendships and relationships. I texted him today to get the title, Googled it and poof!

"I'm So Totally, Digitally Close To You", by Clive Thompson for The New York Times

I loved this article because I spend a lot of time thinking about the impact that technology has on my relationships. I think it's fascinating and also important to analyze ourselves as we change our interactive behaviors because then we can make better decisions about how we choose to participate in something like Facebook, for example. The rate at which these "awareness tools" develop is extremely fast and it's easy to get swept away...

In the article, Thompson begins by focusing on a "revolt" that happened when Facebook users took issue with the addition of the News Feed; "users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive." As Facebook has changed so have the people who use it. Some of us get used to the way things were and resist the changes at first but usually, we all come around. I've had my account since college and I've watched it morph and grow so fast that I sometimes find myself starting to predict what will be next, like some weird, giant chess game, only I have no idea who's winning!

Thompson goes on to describe what social scientists call "ambient awareness", something that's "very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye". The thing is, the "ambient awareness" we experience online comes from picking up the mood of our friends based on the tidbits shared through "'microblogging': posting frequent tiny updates on what you’re doing".

Most people I know "microblog" by changing the status on their Facebook or Gmail accounts throughout the day. Another popular way is through Twitter. In fact, I believe that's all it's for. Twitter is something I've just recently heard of and have never used but I think I'll probably keep it that way. You're reading this blog right now, so there's a good chance you clicked on the link that I posted as my Facebook Status or the one I have in Google mail. I think that means I'm microblogging my blog... weird.

When I think about my online world I often tend to focus on what strikes me as negative or potentially harmful. Maybe that's just because new can be scary; however, I'm starting to observe it in a more neutral way. Towards the end of the article a few interesting ideas came up about "awareness tools" and mindfulness. As someone who practices meditation I still don't think I'd have made this connection but it kind of makes sense in a strange way:

"It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves [...] The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form."

Status updates as a literary form? Woah. I could discuss this for, well, a long time but I'll save my ramblings for the lucky few who do me the courtesy of tolerating my wine-induced monologuing. Little Twitter updates are apparently called "Tweets" which makes us the chatty birds. When I think of "ambient awareness" and the strange, almost telepathic connection we seem to be developing by staying constantly plugged in, it makes me think of a flock of birds. They move together with a secret connection that has nothing to do with talking or even body language, they can sense each other, can we?

*Randomly Related?
Yesterday I woke up missing a certain (sort of) ex. It was one of those moments where you kind of wish you hadn't said "stop texting" or start thinking to yourself, "I wonder what he's up to today?" This guy is not a Facebook friend and I would fall over laughing if I found out he had a "Twitter" account. There is no profile for me to visit, no digital image of him for me to pine over and I think I like it that way. Right now a memory feels better, fleeting though it may be, than a cold computer screen.

Oh, Art!

After a delicious bite at Mission Pie yesterday, Land Dog and I got into this discussion about our art! We're both involved in theatre, writing, visual art as well as some musical endeavors...
And this is the case with many of my friends (which makes for some really good times!) but there is this feeling of insecurity that seems to come with being an artist. There are all kinds of ego-trips to worry about, there's money (or rather the lack thereof) and there's the motivation. Why do we do it?

This morning, at our weekly breakfast, I sat and guzzled coffee with a few friends. After our orders had been placed Char set down his cup and said, "so guys, how's everyone doing with their quarter life crises?" Ha! I laughed to myself, (it's something I reference often), Land Dog said she's not in it yet and has a few years to go and Alex just changed the subject. Well, Land Dog, it seems to me this questioning of art and what one is doing with one's future might just fall under that quarter-life dilemma...

The thing is, for me, it's becoming more and more clear that I'm doing exactly what I need to be doing! I've spent so many years driven by specific goals and these self-imposed goals have kept me moving forward. At a certain point I started to realize that I might be becoming overly ambitious, that these goals were starting to cause me a lot of suffering and that I was too one-pointed! This became especially painful to me when I failed to achieve one of my biggest goals and had to re-evaluate everything. So reaching that point and having nowhere else to go, I decided to let the pendulum swing in the opposite direction for a bit.

I stopped thinking so much about the future and totally indulged in the present. I stopped pushing myself forward with goals and instead started looking deep within myself. This was really beneficial to me in a lot of ways but now, all of a sudden, I feel like it's time for another change. It's time to mobilize again. And maybe it's time to set a few goals...just a few!

I have some auditions lined up and a couple of my friends and I are going to start setting up figure drawing sessions that suit our schedules. I've been working on some music and of course, writing. But where will all of this get me? I don't know. And sometimes, I start to question the importance of my art. This is where my personal dilemma lies: When I attend my weekly meditation and listen to the Dharma talks that follow I start to crave a completely different lifestyle. I imagine myself devoting my life to service and renouncing materialistic things, I hear stories of people working in prisons, in hospitals, with children and in other countries with people who are far less fortunate and I forget all about art.

I grew up on a Yoga Ashram and when I took a semester off from school after my first year in college I went back for a retreat. When I was on this retreat I basically got to live like a hermit; meditating and doing Hatha Yoga three times a day, practicing Karma Yoga, working in a kitchen or garden and analyzing ancient scriptures. I never thought about doing my hair and makeup a certain way, never watched TV or went on the Internet and I didn't even really make any art. I was totally blissful and relaxed. But like all things, this experience came to an end. When I came back to "reality" I was a little shell-shocked for a minute but quickly got back to my old world. And this time I came with a renewed dedication to my art! I found that my break from painting had actually allowed for a new wave of art to come to life. When I returned to acting I found myself a completely different presence onstage and I felt, in some ways, unblocked. Basically, I found new meaning in everything.

There are moments when I question what I'm doing as an artist but what I try to remember in these moments is how art has inspired and affected me. How it can open the mind, show us the world in different ways, inspire all kinds of feelings and spark discussions, how it can provide relief from pain and suffering and how it can teach us about ourselves. I hope that I can continue to challenge myself and my peers and I hope we can all work together as a community. If we don't know what we're doing or why, let's figure it out together! There is potential to make meaningful change in this world and we are the ones who have the means and good fortune to do just that!

now.this.is.happening

I woke up feeling foggy. The week has overwhelmed me. I wonder how restful my sleep can be when I sleep with my eyes open? Last night I had dreams of my family, of Olympic swimmers, of a favorite teddy bear getting stolen, of a lake... and I talked in my sleep. Over the past few days I convinced myself I was getting happy, came crashing down, fell into old habits, didn't sleep enough, didn't eat enough, felt OK again, did some performances, went through the motions, talked with friends and tried to come back into myself. Yesterday I meditated and this was satisfying. Later, I contemplated the word should with a friend. We decided not to use it anymore. Today, I spent an hour reading the New York Times in the park and started to feel depressed again. When I got to the Arts section I started to feel inspired. I saw a woman breastfeeding her baby, I bought some sheep's cheese at the market, I tried to go to the library but it was "closed for renovations". I saw people line up for an AA meeting. Last night the teacher at the meditation talked about indecision. He said that when you feel indecisive you can't force a decision, but you can sit with what you're feeling. They talk a lot about being present in Buddhism and it's something that interests me. I spend a lot of time and energy trying to avoid the truth of the moment. I like being present with physical pain and pleasure but I usually do anything I can to avoid emotional pain. This seems to create more. My mind is constantly jumping around all over the place and since I can't seem to get a hold of it I have a hard time feeling present. But today I have decided to ride the choppy waves that are my thoughts. I will spend this day being in the moment and observing all of the chaos that usually overwhelms me. I am surrounded by strangers in the "Women's Building", a man works on a desk with drill, a little kid screams, I can smell my bread and cheese in my bag and I want to eat it. Tomorrow I'll go back to work.