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It's always exciting when you get a tip about a great place to visit, but even more so when you stumble on it unexpectedly. And even more exciting when it involves an unexpected cupcake. Butter Lane had a small cart on the High Line, and I couldn't resist trying "The Elvis," made of banana cake, peanut butter frosting, and a sprinkle of marshmallows. A perfect way to celebrate the end of a fabulous trip.
Last photos from New York join one last piece of wisdom from David Leffel's painting demo, "Highlights are always on corners, where planes change direction. Highlights give you corners, corners give you dimension." I like the idea of corners giving dimension, and the idea of light before the turn. It's scary to surrender to a journey that you did not expect, when corners come and planes change direction in places and ways you didn't plan. It helps to notice how your own highlights appear, whether as bodhisattvas or shells or blue glass. And how seemingly unconnected things connect.
Goodbye New York, and thank you. Happy Holidays to all, and see you on the shore!
After turning the corner, I noticed above me what looked like a platform covered in tall grass and wildflowers. It seemed like it might be someone's private garden, but I saw people going up and down the stairs, so I followed. That's how I discovered The High Line. The High Line is a fabulous park, built on an old elevated freight rail line. It goes on for twenty-two city blocks.
Peace and quiet, a sense of time and wildflowers in one of the noisiest and fast-paced cities in the world. I loved how this trip to New York was a combination of old favorites and places I had never been. Old memories danced with new discoveries, and gave rise to things I hadn't thought to think of.
Tomorrow's post will be the last for a little while. A great wave of Not Enough Time has overtaken my ability to paddle my blog fast enough. Holidays and other commitments, I wish there were an in between month, a month to get things done. We will wash back up on shore, though, my blog and I. I don't know when, but we will.
One of my favorite things about East Coast cities is window boxes. As I walked past them and on toward the bus stop, to catch the next M-5, I wondered about emotions, and memory, and the feeling of feeling like you feel too much.
Cyndi Dale, in her book, "The Subtle Body," writes that, on one level, emotions are not feelings; they are streams of biochemical properties that interact with the brain, producing feelings. She explains more here, through the work of Candace Pert, PhD, who did research on receptor cells.Receptors are molecules made up of proteins that function as sensing molecules or scanners that hover in the membranes of cells. To operate, receptors need ligands, substances that bind to specific receptors on the surface of a cell. Dr. Pert uses the analogy of cells as the engine and receptors as the buttons on the control panel. Ligands act as fingers that push the button to start the engine.Dr. Pert found that our emotions are carried around the body by peptide ligands that change cells' chemical properties by binding to the receptor sites located on the cells. Because they also carry an electrical charge, they change the cells' electrical frequency. According to Pert, we constantly transmit and receive electrical signals in the form of vibrations. Our experience of feelings is the "vibrational dance" that occurs as peptides bind to their receptors; the brain interprets different vibrations as different feelings.
That brought to mind this post. Interesting how seemingly unconnected things connect.
I got a strong feeling to get off the bus somewhere on Riverside Drive. I wanted to walk for awhile, take my time and look at the architecture, I could always catch the next M-5. I'd walked only a block or two in the heavy heat when I felt a wave of familiarity. It got stronger until, somewhere near this window box, I realized I was standing in front of the building where my boyfriend had lived, twenty years ago.The facade of the building had been updated, but its core was the same. I stood there frozen, looking up at the window I used to sit in front of, looking down. When the doorman came out, I moved on. I passed the corner where we always turned left, I passed our bus stop, and the grocery store where we bought an Enteman's chocolate cake almost every Saturday night.Walking slowly down those blocks, I remembered those days and their feeling of being young and having forever, combined with feeling overwhelmed and lost. I remembered feeling "Is this who I'm going to marry?" simply because I thought that was a feeling you were supposed to feel, even though I didn't really feel it. I remembered feeling like a country bumpkin in the big city, and the feeling of feeling like I felt too much.Then, unexpectedly, I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned around, and walked back to that building. I planted myself in front and consciously gathered back any energy I had lost to that time. I breathed back in any of the longing that may still have been hovering around that window for twenty years, unsure of where it was safe to land.Sometimes you're sent on a journey that you did not plan. One that doesn't make sense to yourself or anyone else. Then, somewhere in its unfolding, it starts to make sense, even though you can't explain it.
The subway stop near the Hispanic Society museum was too spooky for me to wait in alone (never a good feeling when you get off at a stop and your instinct is to run), so I asked how to find a bus that would take me back downtown. The guy at the museum told me which one was the fastest, "But you should take the M-5, because it's a prettier route," he said.He was right, I loved that long bus ride through Harlem, down Riverside Drive, along Broadway. I loved seeing neighborhoods change, watching people come and go. How often do you get to take a bus and feel happy that it's taking forever to reach its destination? Or not even care what the destination is at all? It was the unfolding feeling I'd longed for, the feeling of having time to explore the city, to live like I lived on the cover of the New Yorker.
When I was on that bus, passing neighborhoods and people, tall buildings and city lights, I remembered the dream I had last spring. Alone on a city bus, in a deep state of bliss...
These are some stills of an art installation shown inside the cathedral, called "In Other People's Skins," by an artist named Terry Flaxton. You can see a video someone made of the piece, here. I loved sitting at the table in the pitch black watching it, and watching other people watch it. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is a very cool cathedral.A few days ago I mentioned how tissue, such as muscle, fascia, or bone, can hold memories, emotions, and trauma. Held in the tissues, not necessarily interpreted or stored by centrally located neurons. I thought the following statement was interesting, from a research physicist at NASA,
If we can store a symphony on a piece of plastic tape, and a video with sound on a little more complicated but still molecularly simple piece of plastic tape, it certainly seems reasonable that something as complex as a piece of muscle or liver could store the memory of an experience and its attendant emotion.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is incredible, a place where you can physically feel the sound of silence and your skin tingles with awe.
Someone asked me once if I thought signs and symbols showed up for me more than they might for others, or if I was just able to recognize them more easily. I absolutely believe that they are available to everyone, right here and now, that it is just a matter of recognition.
I don't care where a truth is revealed, whether from a fundamentalist Christian or in a strip club. It's something I feel, something between a flash and a shiver, and when I feel it, I take notice.
David Leffel mentioned during his painting demo, that "Everything is already there." He explained that as he learned how to paint, it wasn't that he was coming up with something new, but rather, discovering what had been there all along.
This was such a magical and mysterious day. I love when I can take time with things, let them unfold, the day choreographed by symbols and signs. A stroll across Central Park to the Frick in the morning led back across town to the Roerich Museum in the afternoon. As I left the museum in awe, I remembered that the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was in the neighborhood. I hadn't been there in years, and followed my heart Uptown until I found it again.
Across the street from the cathedral I found the Hungarian Pastry Shop. A dimly lit old-world bakery, I sat under a little lamp with a pastry, eavesdropping on accents from all over the world.I once heard Geshe Sherab speak about enlightenment. He said awakening was like clicking on links on the internet. One "aha" moment connects to another, and "link, link, link," he said, until you find yourself in a new place of understanding, not even knowing how you got there.
The other night, in the middle of the night, I said goodbye to an illusion. I hadn't expected it at all, it just fell away at 1:33 am, and when it did, I jolted awake.
I'd been holding onto the idea for a while, that I would work full time for a few years to save enough money to be able to work part time in order to give myself time to make art, and to see if, in that time, I could become good enough at making art to be able to be an artist full time. But could I pull it off in time?
It was as if the idea just couldn't sustain itself anymore, and it wasn't until it dropped away in the night that I realized how hard I'd been grasping onto it. I don't yet know how this shift will change my daily life. In fact, I have less time than ever before. But since that night I've turned my whole apartment around, putting an art studio where my bed used to be.
Above, Roerich's painting "Mother of the World" catches the light.
The Roerich Museum was another magical find on the Peace and Quiet trail. Born in 1874, Nicholas Roerich was a Russian artist, scientist, philosopher, and mystic. The museum is housed in a brownstone on the Upper West Side, and is only open from 2-5 in the afternoon. No one else was there when I went and it felt like an honor to view his paintings enhanced by the fullness of silence.
The painting in the second photo down is titled "The Healer." A shaman once told me that it doesn't matter whether you call such an individual a saint, shaman, or healer, it is simply someone who lives in harmony with, and then can work with, the five elements.
I've heard David Leffel say something similar about painters, that a painter is like a magician in his ability to orchestrate the elements. Through his choices, his arrangement of color, brushstrokes, lights, and darks, he can guide and force your attention.In the bottom photo, a window with a blue glass vase reflects on a painting of the Himalayas.
