movement, Monotype of the Day #556

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Day 186 of Year 2 (Actually Day 191)

I've gone back to my roots tonight, birds have been with me from the start. A self portrait with a bird on my shoulder was my very first painting. They represent creativity coming into the world and I am refilling my creative tank right now. Tomorrow I'm off to the art supply store to refill my physical supplies too. Then I will be all set to dive back in. I'm including a Kabir poem translated by Robert Bly as a reminder to myself. The poem is about seizing your life, living now. My show is up but my work continues. xoxo

Poem by Kabir, trans. Robert Bly

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.
What you call ‘salvation’ belongs to the time
before death.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment
in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest
that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.

From Kabir https://amzn.to/36flzmx