from the exhibition catalogue

Being alive is pretty weird. Like a swirl-up of sad and happy and lonely and ecstasy and looking and questions. Sometimes you brush up against something, and it feels tingly and so you say “Oh, that’s Truth!” but then you turn to see what it is and it ain’t there and you can’t hold it in your hand because it’s slipped away or turned into something else. So you hold onto that feeling and try to piece together that feeling with that feeling again, hoping that the two together will amount to something you can hold onto. But away it goes. And you keep walking. Trying to remember to keep your eyes up and out instead of down and in.

Because the world is there. It surely is. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to keep waking up inside it. So what to do?

 Deep Time. Science and spirit. Deep Time is a geological concept first given voice by the Scottish geologist James Hutton while studying rock formations at Siccar Point in 1785. Through observations of the layers of rock he came to a conclusion that was revolutionary for the time: That the Earth was vastly older than previously imagined, and that the history of the human species was but a blip in comparison. And when compared to our modern understanding of the scale of the universe we are even smaller yet. This thing that is my life is so small. So fleeting. It seems so vast and all-important to me, yet placed up against the fabric of the cosmos… It just feels like there is some construct in my brain breaking off and falling away when I engage this. Surrender is necessary.

 Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr takes the idea of Deep Time into another realm. In the Bible, the Greeks used two words for time, chronos and kairos.  Chronos is used to describe chronological time, or duration. The regular old everyday idea of time. Kairos is used to describe Deep Time, which is “the eternal now” or “when time comes to it’s fullness”. Rohr equates this to moments of peace and clarity, where things come together, line up, and everything makes sense. He goes on to further posit that contemplation, meditation, and prayer are ways to access this Deep Time. Ways to learn to trust it and not be battered about by chronological time.

I feel torn. Like I am being ripped apart between being infinitely small, and infinitely vast. Between animal and divine. I think this work expresses that struggle. Or that pondering. I think this work reflects that. There’s this schism when the seed of infinity enters your brain, and for me the medicine is meditation and contemplation. I try to get past my mind and into a place of stillness. Like for me Deep Time is both the beginning and the end.

 I remember when I was in middle school, I was looking in a science textbook. The lesson was about the visible spectrum, different wavelengths of light. Infrared and ultraviolet, light which is just beyond the limit of what is visible to humans. It had two different photographs of the same flower. One showed how the flower looked to humans, just a regular pretty flower. The second photo showed how the flower looked to bees, which have a broader visual spectrum than humans. There was a visible landing strip on each of the petals, guiding the bee into the center of the flower to eat and pollinate. These strips were not visible to the human eye, as far as we could tell they were not there. This blew my middle school mind, in two ways. 1) Nature is AWESOME. And 2) My world is made up of my perceptions. Things that come in through my senses. If my visual sense is so limited that I can’t even see this flower fully, what does this say for the rest of my senses and thoughts and ideas? How little do I really know, and how can I possibly grasp what is going on? It tears everything down. The realization of the limitations of the self. Is this liberating? Or is this devastating? It sure makes saying “I’m right” or “I know” awfully difficult.

 So I’m trying to reconcile all this. What am I? What is all this? What matters? What is real? So I look and look and look, and make and make and make. These photos are the sawdust and the crumbs and the footprints left behind. Relics.

 That moment of no gravity, the eternal frozen instant where you are neither rising nor falling, suspended between two worlds. Not on the ground, not in the sky. Not there. Only here. Exhilarating. Terrifying.

 Chasing monks and nuns and shamans from the caves of Myanmar to the plains of Siberia. Where is the peace? How is it done? Impermanence. Faith. Ancestors. Nature. Silence. Stillness. Peel the fruit for me, show me the way.

 Service. I am you. Let go of me and dive into we. Share the stories of those that are passed by. Listen. Celebrate the beauty and the sadness. Give myself. The answer lies in the space between us!

 Inward wandering, wrapping myself in mantras and prayers, laying down the need and the want and the now now now. Bathing in the balm of silence.

 And the sky.

 The sky.

 The sky.

 It’s always there when I remember to look up.