So the days are an hour longer, yet we ‘lost’ an hour Sunday. I’ll take the extra hour of daylight. Time is a funny thing–all hours are not equal. We’re always rushing around, saying we don’t have enough time, wasting a lot of time. For me it’s not about having more time, it’s about the quality of my time. Time can be full or empty.  I just read somewhere that we spend 95% of our time thinking and 5% of our time being aware and fully present. Scary! All that thinking time is generally frustrating, having the human brains that we do which tend to ‘loop’ to the negative, fearful, habitual. This does not make us happy. Since learning about the concept of ‘flow’ as described by Mihalyi Csiksentmihalyi, who has written extensively on the subject since he first defined the term in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience—that feeling of being in the ‘zone’—totally immersed in an activity where time disappears, I continually try to adjust that percentage.

I can get there with some effort through yoga and meditation. I’m there when I’m photographing, always. I’m often there when I’m cooking, gardening, writing—creating something. I’m also there when swimming or hiking, and of course being with friends and loved ones. It’s about a balance between challenge and ease. The more hours we spend in ‘flow’ , the happier we will be. Time spent pursuing all forms of ‘pleasure’ does not necessarily make us happy. Time spent thinking about how to be happier does not make us happy. Time spent engaged, in flow, in love, in bliss, in the moment feels full, and enough.

So I’m sitting here in my morning room—the room I have my coffee, read, write, ponder as the sun rises before me each day. The view is filled with the foreground silhouette of a beautiful oak tree; always in silhouette until the sun is well above the horizon—sometimes  bluey-pinky-orange, sometimes  chalky-white, depending on the weather. I am thinking I am so sick of winter. I need it to be over. It’s raining–I find myself continually looking to see if the snow is melting, and it strikes me, how ridiculous this is. There may be another month of this! It’s like watching paint dry, or watching a pot boil, or obsessively checking my blackberry—same thing. It’s all a form of resistance to what is—wanting things to be other than what they are, which in my experience is the root of all suffering.

This is what I love about being in nature—it forces us to allow for what is, accept the cyclical nature of things, and find beauty in all of it.

Undoubtedly it’s getting tough to find much beauty in winter any longer. The ‘bloom is off the rose’ as it were. We just want it to be over. Chances are, had I come across this little scene on my front porch today as opposed to a month ago I would have kicked the rock rather than seen the beauty in it. Winter does however offer a certain  stillness and quietude, unlike any other season. The Japanese term Wabi-Sabi came to mind when I happened upon this little scene. Wabi refers to a quality of austere and serene beauty expressing a mood of spiritual solitude. Sabi refers to a thing which may be withered, aged, patinated. The term is often used in the design world to connote things beautiful in their simplicity and somewhat imperfect. Seems like something we all should aspire to—inside and out.

It has been a while since my last post. I apologize! Life shifting—bit of creative chaos—has upset my blogging routine. It’s all good…and this post I had started months ago now seems particularly apt, as I have begun the process of writing a book tentatively titled  Fresh: The Art and Craft of Food Photography due out in October 2011. Suddenly I find my delving in to the psychology of creativity and creative process particularly resonant as I’m experiencing all sorts of fear, anxiety, procrastination, mental blocks, frequent trips to the refrigerator, compulsive checking my email, mind pops interrupting my sleep, words pouring out of nowhere onto the page one minute, blocked the next, and a general sense of ‘what have I gotten myself into?’ paralysis.

I have found that understanding the nature of RESISTANCE helps somewhat in pushing past it. As I head into this venture I’m very happy to have read Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art that speaks to all forms of self-sabotage when we are creating. He names all the ways resistance shows up (see above) and shares his process which involves 3 parts discipline and 1 part magic…summoning the muse, allowing for grace: setting the scene for the interplay between left and right brain interplay. He also talks about the evolution of self and how the ego is constantly trying to undermine our personal journeys of evolution….be it a new fitness regime, a new diet or a new business venture.   And by the way, Pressfield’s experience in the Marine Corps in the 60′s and as a best selling author makes you want to follow his authoritative, good humored admonishments. Good handbook for the art of living.

Snowmaggedon, Snowicane, Snowpocalypse. The thing about being surrounded by nature is that no matter what the weather is doing, it’s all visually inspirational. My first winter here, so happy was I to be in the woods after years of being an urban-dweller, I would take long walks and marvel at the unexpected beauty of winter—the twist, the tangle, the sculptural aspect. I find winter more interesting, visually, than the other seasons—more mysteriously beautiful. There is more decay and entropy, all imperfection and abstraction. William Blake said “He who does not prefer form to color is a coward.” Although a bold statement, I tend to agree.

I’ve found it much easier to stay connected to my intuition while in such close proximity to the natural world, and the shifting seasons encourage and support the creative process, allowing for a balance between stillness and activity—incubation and productivity. “In nature, the emphasis is on what is, rather than what ought to be”—Huston Smith

A Very Happy New Year to all!

“The scientific term ‘chaos’ refers to an underlying interconnectedness that exists in apparently random events.  Chaos science focuses on hidden patterns, nuance, the ‘sensitivity’ of things, and the ‘rules’ for how the unpredictable leads to the new.  It is an attempt to understand the movements that create thunderstorms, raging rivers, hurricanes, jagged peaks, gnarled coastlines, and complex patterns of all sorts, from river deltas to nerves and blood vessels in our bodies.”  This, and the following, is from The Seven Life Lessons of Chaos by John Briggs and David Peat, one of the most illuminating books I’ve ever read in relation to creativity. Using nature as a metaphor for ourselves, it speaks to the need to embrace life’s constant state of flux. It’s about letting go, accepting limits, and celebrating the magic and the mystery. Chaos theory suggests that instead of resisting life’s uncertainties we should embrace them; this is where creativity enters.

“Krishnamurti argued that a deep creative appreciation of life comes only when there is enormous uncertainty…In each moment we have the opportunity to die psychologically by letting go of prejudices, mechanical habits, isolation, precious ego, images of self and world, and conceptions of past and future.  In this way we set in motion the possibility of a self-organizing perception that puts us in touch with the magic that gave us birth.”

Most of us cling so desperately to the need for certainty; lately this feels like a bit of a slippery slope. It takes a bit of mental effort to shift and be open to change, but there are real creative opportunities in doing so.

…for, among other things, my many years doing what I love, shooting food. This of course translates to many years of shooting Thanksgiving meals…so many turkeys, so much flow! That’s just a start of the many things I’m grateful for, and by no means at the top of the list. Gratitude. Grace. If loving is the heart of creativity, then these things seem like a good way to get there. Creating anything requires a generosity of spirit. It’s pretty tough to create from a cup half full. Since we know our thoughts create our reality, and the practice of gratitude generates positive feelings, focus today on how gratitude can open a window to your creative Self. Happy Thanksgiving!

I’ve often struggled with the definition of myself as an artist, despite the fact I’ve had a long career as a photographer (more on the ‘art vs. commerce’ subject to follow). Eric Maisel, a brilliant therapist and creativity coach helps establish ways in which we are all artists in one form or another. He delineates three ways creativity can permeate our lives in his book Creativity for Life. People who manifest the qualities of imagination, resourcefulness and self-direction are considered “everyday creatives” or engaged in what he terms ‘ARTFUL living’.  Then there are people who fill their lives with “gorgeous, thought-provoking, evocative things” like art, music, literature, and natural beauty. They fill their living spaces and spare time with art. They go to museums, concerts, films, dance performances etc. He calls this ‘ART-FILLED’ living. And thirdly there are the ‘ART-COMMITTED’–those who identify as artists and spend a lifetime creating in a particular domain, who are perhaps better at manifesting their creative potential and overcoming the barriers to creative expression, not just because they have talent but because they work very hard at the business of creating and make it a priority in their life. I would also add that ‘committed artists’ create initially for themselves, in order to express something, and feel as if they have no choice; it is their dharma or purpose in life. This is a profoundly challenging, yet very enlivening way of life.

At the end of the day I’ve decided the label ‘artist’ can apply more broadly than I used to think, one needn’t sacrifice their life in the service of art making…..we are all artists in one form or another. What if everyone saw themselves more in this light? Wouldn’t that be an empowering shift in attitude?

“The contemplative instant at which (an artwork) is appreciated by the mind, which has been arrested by its wholeness, and fascinated by its harmony, is the luminous, silent stasis of aesthetic pleasure.”  –Robert Rye  1967

This description comes to mind any time I look at a work of art and it has that ‘wow’ quality; where I feel somehow altered by the encounter. I’ve always pondered what the mysterious ‘recipe’ is for creating work that resonates in this way. This is the closest I’ve ever come to understanding the components, with the help of Thomas Aquinas’s suggested attributes for beauty: WHOLENESS (integitas)—the unity of the whole, HARMONY (consonantia)—balance, fitness, symmetry, rhythm of structure, and RADIANCE (quidditas)—’thingness’ a unique product of your thinking.

I think this is a useful standard to apply to any creative output, whether it be a photograph, a painting, a poem, a meal, a birthday party, a story, a garden—anything new we bring into existence. Have you ever been arrested?

“When someone seeks, it can easily happen that his eyes only see the thing he is seeking and that he is incapable of finding anything, incapable of taking anything in.” I recently came across this upon a re-reading of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It occurred to me that most of us are so busy looking ahead, looking for more of something or for things to be different in our lives that we are closed off to so much beauty and richness in our day to day lives. Our mental gaze is often elsewhere, and we are disconnected. The challenge seems to be striking a better balance between gazing outward, fulfilling our intentions, and seeing what is right in front of us, everyday. It’s a concentrated mind shift, a fresh pair of eyes, a conscious effort to be present, to take it all in, to really appreciate the ‘fullness’ of time and be open to opportunity, luck, grace, joy, wonder—all the magic. What would it feel like to move through just one day like this? What tickles you?