It is the process that is beautiful, not the outcome

The shift in paradigm and the use of color are connected for me in the unconscious.  I remember a color that triggers a feeling or I remember a feeling that triggers a color.  

In this watercolor the structures were added as a reason or a place in which to insert color.  It is an early summer painting of a scene that did not exist until it was constructed on canvas.  There is no town that looks like this and there is no colors that exist in exactly this combination.  The purpose of the painting was not artistic.  The purpose of any of my work from psychoanalysis to art is meditative.

It is not out of humility that I say I do not find this painting beautiful, I found the process of creating this painting to be beautiful.

Lately I have been arriving at a new conclusion.  Joy is not what we are waking towards.  It is beauty that speak to us in a way that never betrays us.  What I find beautiful, I can not be dissuaded from.  I know beauty when I see it and I can not be talked out of what I find beautiful.  In a way it is beauty that leads to truth for me.  My aesthetics are the most informed aspect of my character, and I never set out to have that be the case.  It happened along the way.

Le Lac St. Jean,

writing with light

North of the Laurentian Mountains, just south of what my grandmother use to call the
great woods there is a Lake that is nearly cold all year long. It is a beautiful lake and the
last time I visited my homeland, I made it a point to see this lake. It was a great experience
and I remember the lake this way in my mind.
I love Canada
dr. albert dussault
mindfulness in psychoanalysis

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Even as the Wind Takes the Sails Away

 

Even as the wind takes the sails away,

and the faintest hint of a mast disappears at the horizon,

even at that hour of the day, I am still here with you in my arms.

 

Even as the waves swallow the bridge and the vessel begins to descend into the darkness

I have a lingering memory of you keeping my soul alive.

Even if the waves engulf me and my heart sings a last melody,

I have had the good fortune of a taste of that autumn nectar.

 

When it is here, it will have been worth while if I can say, for certain, that I have loved,

and heard the beating of another’s heart in mine.

Cold winds may make me weary,

a covering of ice will chill me to the bone,

but as long as I have a breath there is no darkness in the beauty of your light.

You who have been my guiding star,

you who held my tomorrows when I had no strength to hold on,

you who vanished one lonely night,

you still guide me as I descend one final lap and swim into the jaws of eternity, you did this for me.

If you know who you are, Thank you.  If you were lost forever that winter of our discontent well these words will have served me well as a final yell into the universe…it was worth it after all.

Summer’s Last Hour, Summer’s Last Flowers

 

When October goes the snow appears.  Or so it seems.  The transition of a simple moment, one minute it is Indian Summer and the next it is New England dropping leaves and acorns and the skies turning a darker shade of grey and the wind and cold are coming over the lake with a vengeance.

Nonetheless, October remains one of my very favorite months.  I love how it comes in radiant in color and brilliant in shades of of yellow and reds and russets. I love the smell of the fallen pine needles and I am reminded that life is a cycle and a very short one at that.  If we are given one chance, how lucky we are to have had consciousness, and if we are given a second chance how special we must feel for not having lost it–yet.

October is about aging it is about having all the energy of June just older and wiser and a bit more crunchy.

October is a lesson a preparation for the eventual final winter that will one day arrive in the night and be the thief it has always been portrayed to be.  October is alive, but it echoes with a call from the wilderness that is unmistakable.

 

In the short amount of time that I am here, I am glad when October reminds me to appreciate the vestiges of summer’s last hours and summer’s last flowers.

light in the forest

 

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

~ Mary Oliver ~