Forest of Healing

"Forest of Healing" 2011
Oil on Canvas 18x24"

Disease and ailments of the heart are ever upon us, striving to take the vitality that gives us life.  When all has been taken, and we are weak with nothing left, it is the passions of the heart that keeps us going.

There is a little girl with a chronic health condition who often frequents Primary Children's and art is the passion that keeps her going during her long visits to the hospital.  Recently I offered to give her oil painting lessons, and the above composition was painted with her.  For these reason I titled the pieces "Forest of Healing".  The piece will be given to my sister as a thank you for her contribution to Primary Children's play therapy programs.

Addendum:
The little girl that I referred to in the above passage passed away this Memorial Day due to complications of cystic fibrosis.  She passed at 12 years of age, the past 7 of which I have been privileged to share with her.  

Spring

Every culture has a different definition of when the beginning and end of the season is.  Our current system is based off of the solar calendar, namely that each equinox or solicit is the first day of their respective season.  I do not believe that this is the best definition for the seasons.  Why should the longest day of the year be the first day of summer, when every day after that approaches fall and winter, and every day before it approaches summer.  According to my logic, each equinox and solicit should be the midpoint of that season, rather than the beginning.  Thus the summer solicit, the longest day of the year, would be the midpoint of summer, rather than the first day of summer.  The first day of a season would be the date exactly between each equinox and solicit.  These dates tend to be more inline with what we would call a season by the nature of the weather and world around us.

Other cultures define the season with less precision, and in many ways, their lesser degree of precision yields to them greater degree of accuracy.  For many, the first day of fall begins with the last harvest of the season, the first day of winter with the first snowfall.  By this, Mother Earth determines her seasons, rather than by the calenders and calculations of man.  There is a certain comfort in allowing nature to define herself and speak to us.  

For many weeks now I have noted that buds have been forming on the trees and that spring flowers have been breaking soil.  With today's warm sunny morning came the blooming of the first crocus, and with it the beginning of spring.  

Broken

Coming to terms with the fact that you are, in a way, 'broken' is an interesting developmental process.  People do not refer to transient conditions in a personal way.  They say, "I have the Flu" or "a cold".  But conditions of life that impart some kind of permanence to the body or soul must be internalized.  We do not say "the asthma is killing me", rather we say "my asthma is killing me", "my diabetes", "my scared heart".  They become part of who we are, but it is not an instantaneous process, rather it is a process that slowly proceeds from initial shock and denial, to self internalization and acceptance.  It becomes part of who we are, part of how we identify ourselves.

Being a deep thinker, I find myself watching this process take place inside myself, almost as if I were watching from the third person as I observe how it plays out in 'my' newly diagnosed ulcerative colitis.

I have a dream...

I have a dream that one day a woman may share equal rights and wage with her male counter part.

I have a dream that one day a man may marry who he will, irrespective of gender.

I have a dream that one day a Hispanic child may receive an equal chance to raise out of poverty, to equal education and health.

I have a dream that one day a young white male will have an equal chance to education, that he will not be discriminated against because he is not the minority, that merit will determine his fate rather than his colour or gender.

I have a dream that one day a mosque, church, synagogue, and temple may one day line the same street, and that all may worship freely without discrimination.

I have a dream that one day political affiliation will not determine the choice you must make, but that a man can decide for himself what is right and wrong.

I have a dream that the rights of freedom, health, and the pursuit of happiness will lay equally before all the children of Eden.

Christmas 2010

Christmas was quite... spent with my own thoughts as company.

Dreamer

Recently I was called a visionary by a supervisor of mine.  This was by no means was a derogatory comment, rather just a statement of the truth.  I wonder, have I always been a dreamer:  Was I such when I was a child on the playground?  Did I daydream my way through class as a senior in high school?  I don't know the answers to these questions, my teachers never made comments on the subject, but that does not mean that it was not so.  But for today I can speak, and today I know myself to be a weary dreamer.  I say weary because I tire of always living in a dream world that never becomes reality.  What I would give that my dreams and reality could be one...  Yet I will continue to dream, I don't think I could stop if I tried.  I will always be creating something out of nothing, a visionary dreaming a dream, after all, sometimes dreams are all we have...

Unstop

"If only there could be an invention, that bottled up a memory, like scent.  And it never faded, and it never got stale.  And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again." Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca