Facebook Responses and Email Replies to A Pause for Beauty.
Canyon Crow - A Pause for Beauty 306
Hello Rod
Two years ago or so a friend sent me a link to your site and I've enjoyed and looked forward to Heron Dance postings ever since, regularly passing along ones I liked best to friends. You catalogue your struggles and quests on the open page and we benefit from that introspection. The notion of hesitation, self questioning, even doubt, however, seems healthy to me. It's good, I'll admit, to imagine yourself into a better world, to visualize something you wish for and attain it. Comparing that to a decisive general, leaves a little something to be desired in my estimation. Sure, in sports, all the great players have that resolve to find a way to win, never to concede, to press on when things aren't exactly going your way. Great strengths, yes, but the complexity of human choice and behavior is a lot more subtle and ephemeral than being an in charge alpha male. If that's the only image one has of success or attaining ones goals, it leaves most people out of the equation.
As a Vietnam veteran I saw a lot of high bravado recruits come to the field ready for action, wanting to kill the imagined enemy. It didn't take long for them to realize it wasn't quite a John Wayne movie when their half track hit a mine, or their buddy got killed by a grenade that a Viet Cong threw back out of the tunnel. Watching Colonel Patton in the middle of the jungle boast about Charlie waving white flags all over after we were done with him, didn't quite match reality, either.
There are many sides to any action one takes, and willing oneself to be a better person or more successful artist, while a noble pursuit, does not necessarily justify the kinds of pain one causes other people along the way. We can forgive Picasso and Woody Allen because they are great artists, somehow trying to reconcile the greatness of the work with the human failing of the person. I think it's dangerous to presume that our imagination will lead us only to great things without a lot of havoc along the way. If being a great artist means you don't have a certain amount of self doubt and self questioning, then I think being a lesser artist might not be so bad.
Yes, press for greatness, push oneself beyond boundaries, but what about the flow of the river, attunement with nature, quietude leading to an appreciation of beauty, in each exquisite moment?
William Renfrow
Hi Rod,
I have never responded to any of your writing (or any writing ever),
but I feel compelled this morning to respond for two reasons. One, I
have a feeling that you took a risk, put yourself out there and know
you are going to receive negative feedback from your latest writing.
Therefore, I hope to balance that out for you. And the second reason
I am writing is because I can completely empathize with what you said.
I love Thoreau, and have read his writing a dozen times, but I always
felt that he was missing the sensual. He could write about living
simply or feeling the wild energy to kill an animal, but he was always
missing that wild energy of sexuality. And sex is one of the most
natural and incredible parts of being an animal! Like you, I am also
someone who tries to live a balanced life and nature is definitely my
temple, but I am also a sexual being and have also struggled with my
desires like you wrote about. It was truly refreshing to read what
you wrote and it has helped begin a dialogue in my head about living a
balanced sexual life.
Sometimes reflective nature writers can be so Puritan and I think they
are missing out on one our biggest connections to nature.
So, thanks for the risk you took with your writing. It was a pleasure
to read.
-Katie
Dear Rod,
You mistake your public and you mistake your model. Change
models dear. You are mourning your "lost youth". Get on track. Paint "ugly
wimmin." You know, us typical ladies who have lumps and bumps and scars and
silver hairs among the gold. We have experience, and we have earned our
beauty, our scars, our lumps. We are your fresh young model's future. and
in spite of our society's addiction to perfection and youth, we are proiud
of what we have earned, what experience our bodies show.
Do you target the young critters in the wild only? why paint only the young
and exploring human? Find human models whose bodies express ongoing life,
experience, survival.. your passion will go from the distraction of lost
youth and wishful lust to something that is mature, interesting, meaningful.
Not that you couldn't find all this passion and distraction in one of US...
I guess this is a "guy thing" HMMM. Find your balance, Rod. Let the young
beauty go, go forward with a new mindset, more interesting models.
Painting young beauties is OLD, STALE and not up to your standards.
Appreciate your own experience. Love your aging body. Respect your hard
earned insight.
In Love and admiration for your talent and motivations.
Deb Greer
Dear Rod,
Thank you so much for the exquisite beauty that graces my mailbox
every so
often. Your images. Your words. Your beautiful soulful descriptions of
nature. I love nature so deeply, and your Pause for Beauty is a
wonderful
reflection of that love. Gratitude also for the candid accounts of
your
life's foibles of late. Sometimes I struggle and stumble through life,
sometimes I soar. But its the struggling and stumbling that seem to
take the
lion's share. Your willingness to share your struggles openly
somehow makes
me feel less lonely. Thanks for your honesty and openness and
willingness to
reveal yourself -- your real self.
wishing you many moments when the soothing spirit of nature seeps
into your soul,
Cathy
Hello,
I was first introduced to your publication at 33 yrs old, when i was told i had eight months to two years to live. I made a cancer journal out of the watercolors that used to arrive in my mail. I longed for the reality completely absent of cynicism that I felt in the publication. I thought as much as I love the butterfly petals floating , and the moon pearl veiling and unveiling herself with the clouds, and the river that will never hold a bias, I also love whiskey, and midnight, and lovers and dirt.
I have been in a marriage for nine years. For the last five, my husband has chosen separate bedrooms, with no option of me in his or vica versa. He told me to seek what I needed. I found a best friend/lover/dreamseeker, pisces. He never wants marriage. He says, after two years, that I'm growing on him. One companion at home that calls me wife but will not acknowledge that I’m a woman, and one man who keeps me fully aware of my feminine wiles, but who lives so in the moment that tomorrow is never assumed. I tell him that finding a best friend, one who has a still point that resonates with his own peace, where passion is not so sophomoric, schoolgirlish or bumpy ride, yet is still palpable,...isn’t that the verb of love? The alive is in the sharing.
His words resonate with your last email, his thoughts of wanting the feeling of wanting....his thoughts of being a man of solitude, yet repeating this to me, not himself, nightly. Peace and passion...how do they co-mingle? My parents are about to have their fiftieth wedding anniversary tomorrow. There is peace in their eyes because they have practiced it in their hearts for years. not because of the nape of moms neck either :) But as a woman, i can tell you, we all want to feel like the one whose neck you must taste, whose eyes you must remember, whose heart you cannot feel yours as strongly without. Unfortunately, this kind of chemical feeling doesn't take long to create, build, nourish, or love,...it exists with or without your best intentions.
I know I am not the one who makes my lover swoon, and I know for now he wants to do the "right" thing and try because he asked for love and was presented with an open heart. But he too wants passion. and he will tell me this as I listen and melt at his voice. He says he hears his answers best in solitude, and yet still confides this to me nightly. I listen, with my heart, and try to remain compassionate, and not the bias of ownership. I cannot wait to see if there is a bridge here, but I do know that compassion is healthier than passion, peace dwells in an open, truthful heart, and love comes in many colors (which my son said to me when he was five).
So i leave you with two quotes, both from Zorba the Greek/Niko Kazantzakis...."how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched litter brazier, the sound of the sea...all that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart."
And..."the highest point a man can attain [note that it is not obtain] is not knowledge, or virtue, or goodness, or victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: SACRED AWE! "
I am guessing that the trick is not having the answers, but in asking the right questions,...and peace,...and passion,... what lives within that bridge?
Thanks for touching a cord
A subscriber
Hi Rod,
I've been one of your silent but admiring supporters for a while now. I've
been inspired to write by your recent inquiry into this different level of
truth-telling which at once makes me wince and cower while simultaneously
cheering loudly at the courage to be more transparent and the gift of
freedom it might confer. I have for whatever reason, in the past, sought to
avoid confrontation or anything that resembles it and watched my life
suffer, sometimes crumbling under the searing pressure of the volume of
unspoken words. Of late there has been an interior rebellion brewing in
which I am now never quite sure what is going to be issuing from my vocal
chords. Most recently I nearly came to blows with my mother's husband (not
my father). I am not prone to outbursts of physical or verbal violence. It
seems the filter that prevented me from what appeared to be certain
annihilation has been shredded to pieces by unknown but powerful forces; and
my voice will not be held back.
It is quite clear that the pendulum that was once held in check by my
silence is taking a ravaging swing in the opposite direction. There may be
some carnage as a result as I find my way with it. I'm not sure what to do
with that accept support myself as best I can and make reparations if
needed. I think that relationships can better endure intense levels of
expression as opposed to the void of silence. I'm sure many of my
frustrated ex girlfriends would agree.
Anyway, I look more forward to receiving Heron Dance than in times past.
The writing was starting to lose me because the life energy in it was
flagging. While I'm not an artist, I feel more creative and alive as I read
your recent work (even as I sometimes look for a place to hide as I read it
:).
Thanks for waking me up to the powerful forces of vulnerability revealed.
Best Wishes,
Roger Cook
Rod,
I have been reading and loving your emails and artwork for a very long time now. I have never felt compelled to write to you before reading your latest Heron Dance entry. Hear this~ Whatever people's negative responses have been ...ignore them!
I, too am an artist and i know it's very hard to ignore the bad stuff but stay authentic and put it out there anyway! The reason i keep opening these Heron Dance emails and buying your books and artwork is because you seem to lack pretension entirely, your style is SO loose and flowing, it truly inspires my to do more watercolor... no bullshit, it does.
Recently, I have begun the process of giving my first home back to the bank (deed in lieu of foreclosure), my hubby lost his 3rd job within a year, and we got in a car crash on my birthday...blah blah the economy yadda yadda, sounds sucky I know. I have been challenged to the very edge of my optimism lately and still, I feel real, held in the embrace of my Higher Power....like Spirit has me safe and sound... sometimes when I feel completely overwhelmed, I (like you) need to retreat to NATURE AND LET HER NURTURE.
So, keep on keeping it real okay?
PS. though I can't condone biting that models' neck, I do understand the lust of the moment and the delight imagining the unknown body, that tension and vibration is like nothing else on Earth, (thank God for the bodily sensations aye?)!
Know that you are inspiring this frustrated, artistic, tree-huggin’ mother of two in California so don't stop creating and sharing your journey…
Peace,
Krista, red-headed tree hugger from California
Dear Rod,
After so much time, I feel I must share something with you. I am a retired psychotherapist and a lead a poetry group at a V.A. Hospital in the women's psych department. Sometimes I get an idea from your letters and then I suggest that the group write on the subject.
Tomorrow I will suggest that we write from a line you wrote, "There are times of flow and harmony and times of disharmony, distraction and setback."
Hope you get pleasure from the help you provide.
Lynne
Ah yes, Rod,
I can thoroughly relate to your protagonists adventures with the model. I, however, am a eighty year old female....in an asexual relationship.....hmmmm let me just call this my protagonist...too personal to tell you it’s me.
She was divorced after a twenty year marriage when she was about forty. Did it all. Over the next twenty years. There were married men, there were monogamous several year relationships, there were one night stands, and there have been three live-in relationships.
There were road trips across the country, and a spirit-led three year trip to a majestic tropical setting, far away from her usual life. Life was so simple that she owned no keys . Her body and the wild beaches and ocean were joined, and her bed was in a retreat center just off the beach.
And always the theme of liking to live life on her terms, liking solitude, and wanting to be lovers with nature at its wildest. Dancing naked in thunderstorms, swimming naked in the salty waves, camping peacefully beside a waterfall, walking the beaches, and crying at the majesty of sunsets. Alone thank you, unless in the throes of infatuation with another man.
She now lives with a man that she has lived with for over ten years. She has seen him through having his prostate removed, only to find that the cancer was not gone. And he has seen her through some mysterious process which allows her only to walk in a crippled way. NO more running through the forest, or on the beaches. All that is left is the freedom of being in water, or on a bicycle, and even then, not too far into wilderness. They always carry a cell phone now in case....bones are frailer at these ages. This life, even though only fifteen years ago , she was up on the roof of the house, nailing back shingles that had come off in a windstorm, and watching a controlled burn of the prairie, with the wind from the flames whipping past her face, And she thought nothing of being 65 and being on that roof. Now, she could maybe not even get up there.
As I said, her relationship is asexual. She is not. It is a terrible quandary at times, when she sees the young boys on the beach with the silhouettes of their front side beckoning her both forward , and back in time. Or when she meets an occasional vital older man, who recognizes her inner self.
When she was younger, the dilemma was her sexuality versus commitment to a relationship. Now it is the same, but the relationship has become more important than the sexuality.
That does not mean it does not still hurt. Or tug at the fibers of her heart and her well used and well loved other body parts. She wishes she could have it all....wild natural interaction, wild personal interaction, and a peaceful and loving commitment.
She remembers well that unbalanced feeling of an unfulfilled sexual attraction. That which would not leave her alone, until she was driven to another man, another sexual adventure, another crashing onto the beach of the wave of eroticism that had come over her. There was no fantasy, dream, or writing that would take the place of the "action". She often wondered how the nuns lived, and concluded that they were better at suppression than she, or more committed to their marriage with Jesus, than their marriage to their body. She was not. Her body, her sexual nature was so very important and so very strong, that it nearly ruled her entire life at times. It would not let her feel balanced until fulfilled.
Age has dulled the lack of balance, and though she often walks in peace, she feels the loss of not having it all. Of giving up that which has been so vital and important. Her ability to walk for miles down the deserted beach, her chances to tangle her body with another, in the highest forms of ecstasy that she ever experienced, AND a committed partner beside her.
She supposes she should thank aging and circumstances for making the choices she could not have made for herself. She is very, very grateful for all that life has brought her.
And she is even grateful for today's life....as out of balance as it may sound....it has its own sense of balance.
A subscriber
You are a wise and courageous man, Rod, to speak so candidly of your sensual nature and sexual desire. One who lives the deep and vital life in the great ebb and flow of truth, spirit and the deeper meaning of all that is cannot help but know the intensity of passion; of love in all it's forms including intimacy with ones self and with an other. Tantra is not just a lofty ideal; it has the capacity to be the highest and most challenging form of meditation. Practice and be joyful. Hold no guilt or regret to yourself or any other. Be gentle and compassionate in your observations of your thoughts and your choices. It takes great courage to love fully, even for a brief moment in time. I cannot imagine living this human journey without sexual passion and an appreciation of the pleasures of our senses. Perhaps some of us were born that way to ensure that we would, indeed, plumb the depths of every essence of our being.
