Quote of the Day – August 31 2012

“We’re all just walking each other home”
— Ram Dass

I’ve been lost in the woods of my being for so long. I see but do not understand. I have so long ago lost my way that home has become an abstraction. Then I meet someone who describes their home to me and I get it. I now know what home is. I am still lost but now I know that somewhere there is home. I want to go with this person to home but he tells me he cannot. His home is not my home. He leaves and I am devastated. I now know home exists but I cannot go there

She sees me devastated and asks why. I tell her and she ruffles my hair and tells me of her home. Only the home she describes differs greatly from the one the man told me about. Yet they are both home. How can that be? It seems that home can be more than one thing. She tells me that I cannot ago to her home either yet we have walked quite aways. I hug her and thank her. She leaves with a smile

One by one, you all come to me and tell me of your home. Some things sound so nice and I believe that for me they mean home as well. Other parts sound rough and I know that my home can never be like that. I walk with each one and step by step my home creates itself in my being.

Finally someone comes along and says to me “Beautiful home you have there” and I realize with everyone’s help I am home

Blessings, G

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Synoptical Journey Reversed by G A Rosenberg

Forestal by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – July 21 2012

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”
―Hannah Arendt

 

At times I worry that my art becomes too formulaic and then I realize that a lot more goes into even the Mandalas than I let myself believe at times. I was just describing to a friend who’s interested in possibly collaborating on a piece and I found myself surprised at how much I tend to tweak and move things around.

“The way I begin many of my pictures (not all but most of the mandala style ones and energy resonated ones) is to start with a photo or group of photos I like and start treating them to different filters, solarizing, HDR, droste, oil paint, daubs etc until I have hit on something that feels right, i then tend to mirror it horizontally and vertically, usually playing with filters and colours and then concentric-izing it into a mandala form (where i may do more playing around until it feels right)… i may also start or combine with fractal patterns etc… Brush work, erasure and cloning comes in at different points. It basically is finished when it feels finished.”

Just a bit of insight into at least how I approach at least one style of my art.
Blessings, G

 

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Yoga by G A Rosenberg

 

Heart’s Glow by G A Rosenberg

 

Quote of the Day – June 30 2012

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.”
― John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous

Nothing can draw us in like a good story. Also at times nothing can be harder to escape. We tend to get trapped in our own mythologies, the stories we broadcast to ourselves for years on end. Somewhere in there is a cautionary tale not only about the stories we tell ourselves but the stories we expose ourselves to. Not only in books but in movies, plays and tv shows as well. Too often it seems that we fall into stories that we haven’t chosen. There’s way too many cool ones to visit to allow that to happen.


Today I had breakfast with some wonderful friends who among other things are narrative therapists. I told them how much the story prompt “What do you remember?” helped me and asked them for others that might prove equally inspiring. One friend looked at me and said “Canadian Customs”
“…?” I said
“Canadian Customs always gives a really great story prompt “Who are you? Where are you going and what do you have to declare?”
Wow… Just imagining how the answers to that can change from day to day or hour to hour. Just wow.
Blessings, G

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Radient Mandala by G A Rosenberg
Phoenix Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 12 2012

“Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not a sin – just stupid.) ”
~Robert A. Heinlein

He should have known that the gun was loaded. When you ask someone what’s wrong sometimes they tell you. Well the question wasn’t what’s wrong it was far more leading than that. He had asked his friend “What has changed for you in the last month?” Well that and implied that his friend had been less than honest with himself and with his art. Rick acknowledged all of his points and then went on to describe in detail what had changed in the past month. How assumptions that he had carried around his whole life were shown to have no foundation, a literal interpretation of the Tower card tho in this case literally with no Star in sight.

From there he continued he went on to talk about his inability to show in his writing what was really going on in his head because of family concerns and from there went on to describe other ways he was living a lie in both his personal and expressive life. Well Samuel thought, he did ask…

Drafting story wise…More fragments
Blessings, G

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Coral Musing  by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 4 2012

“The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin,

How much of our story remains unread, unshared and why? This quote brings me a step closer to where I’ve been going in this blog for awhile. Oh I meander aways but my intention is to get their never the less. I wish to share my story. Oh I guess I share it with every thing I write here. After all Doesn’t our philosophical views reflect our stories? I guess if that’s true than the quotes I use and my art also reflect who I am, who I’ve been and possibly clues as to how it all turns out.
Perhaps then we tell our story in everything we do or create. It could be our whole purpose of communication and art–to create, co-create and recreate our story.
Blessings, G

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Electric Web Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Concentric Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – May 28 2011

“This moment. Without any story. The storyless now. What is your direct experience of this moment when you drop ALL stories? Life without the commentator in the head. Pure Being resting in complete (complete meaning whole, lacking nothing) silence.”

                        —-Michael Jeffreys

“Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.”

                               –Neil Gaiman

I find amazing truth in both of these quotes. Despite the fact that they seem to contradict each other..

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Star Abstractions by G A Rosenberg

Several Facts about His Imperial Majesty Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Defender of Mexico

  • The self proclaimed ‘Imperial Majesty’ Emperor Norton I was born Joshua Abraham Norton in London in 1819 and died in San Francisco in January 1880
  • Norton first moved to San Francisco in 1849 seeking to make a fortune in business and real estate.  He was lured to San Francisco as were so many others by the Gold Rush. By 1852, the $40,000 he started with had grown to $250,000 (about 5 Million dollars in today’s terms.
  • Due to a few bad investments, mainly a rice deal gone bad and the ensuing legal fees that a court battle brought, Norton filed for bankruptcy in 1856.
  • September 17, 1859, Editor George Finch of the San Francisco Bulletin was handed an article by a man he described as “neatly dressed and serious looking” This paper read:

    “At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States,
    I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past
    of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States, and in virtue of the
    authority thereby in me vested do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different
    States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall of this city, on the 1st day of February
    next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate
    the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad,
    in our stability and integrity.”
    –Emperor Norton I

    >

  • Norton added “Protector of Mexico” in 1863 when Napoleon III invaded Mexico.
  • Except when it came to talking about himself and his role on the world stage, Norton could and would talk intelligently and sanely on almost any subject
  • Norton was courted by politicians as they realized that disrespecting him would lose them votes.
  • In 1867, a police officer tried to arrest Norton for vagrancy. When his Desk Sergeant pointed out that he actually had over $4.00 and an apartment key on his person, the charge was changed to lunacy. Every single paper slammed the police  officer and a public outcry was stirred up about Norton’s arrest. One paper  The California Daily Alta wrote:

    “The Emperor Norton has never shed any blood. He has robbed no one and despoiled no country. And that gentlemen is a hell of a lot better than could be said for anyone else in the king line”

    The chief of police released Norton with a public apology and from then on police officers would salut Norton when he passed them on the street.

Jellyfish Returning To A New Home -A Fable

After seemingly endless travel, home was now in sight. Not that they had ever been there before. Home had called to them through the vast non-emptiness that lay between it and their planet of birth. The ones who heard the call found themselves leaving one day, sending farewell to their loved ones. They weren’t understood.

“What do you mean you are going home? This is your home. Here you have love and been loved, here you have been cared for and cared for others. In what way is this not home?”
“All that you say is true. I do love you to the depth of my capacity and yet there has always been part of me, as deep as my love for you has been that has stayed untouched, I didn’t even know that it existed until now but suddenly I have received this call and nothing else matters as much. I feel regret that I must now leave wyou  but I can no more deny this than I can deny my very being tho for you I would try.”

So the discussion would go, mirrored in each home, in each area where they had lived. They left neither unscathed nor unscathing but they could not resist that siren call. They rose off as one into the starlit night and began their voyage.
They left as mere shadow reflections of the planet that they had called home. As they travelled towards the beloved that called them, each of them took on distinctive form and colour, becoming more and more themselves.
Now the planet was in sight and the call within them became louder and louder. They started to resonate with the tone and with each other, tho there was no sound produced  in empty space, still there was vibration as each of them became attuned, their beings becoming  one  note in a vast universal chord.

This all along had been their reason for being and this becoming rang true.
Perceiving with senses they never knew they possessed, they knew that there were beings here from all over, all different yet now all one.