Peter Clothier's Blog, page 181

The Shadow Knows

I sat last night in my circle of men for the first time in several weeks. It's always an opportunity for each of us to take a hard look at our lives, and to explore those parts that are not working for us as they might. These are the parts we are eager, in normal circumstances, to hide, repress or deny, because it is usually more comfortable to ignore them than to pay attention to them. Still, unattended, they persist in causing us pain, and in standing between us and those around us; and ...

Down in "The Muck"

Please read this post at today's entry in Persist: The Blog.
But before you do... here's the tail end of a dream that puzzles me:
I'm at a meeting or workshop of some kind at a sea-front hotel. All the participants are men. The only part I remember is a process where we walk around this big room, confronting other men with a slap on both cheeks. I am not sure whether I am supposed to slap my own cheeks first, then his, or vice versa. It's also unclear how hard the slap is supposed to be: ...

Huh?

This morning we had the interesting spectacle of Senator Carl Levin asking questions of a Goldman Sachs executive and getting a bit testy because the man was not answering his questions. The fact is, the two were on different planets, if not in different universes. It would have been funny, were it not so dreadfully revealing of the culture we have created.
The questions--really only one of them, repeated in different forms at least a half dozen times--seemed clear enough: Goldman Sachs, if ...

Sangha

What a pleasure it was to be sitting in sangha again yesterday, for the first time in several weeks. We have been kept away by the family visit, obligations in Los Angeles, our recent Santa Barbara trip... and on at least one occasion, as I recall, by sheer fatigue and the need to spend a Sunday morning at home in bed!
The sangha, of course, along with the Buddha and the dharma, is one of the three refuges, and it sure felt like one yesterday. Just the ritual of taking off the shoes and...

Breakfast.... and Home

Yesterday, Thursday, was the last day of our Santa Barbara jaunt. After packing our bags and checking out, we headed north and up the San Marcos Pass to join the very beautiful, very narrow, steeply winding road...

...that leads to the delightful aerie...


... where Seyburn Zorthian and her husband, Mark, roost. Seyburn, attentive readers might remember, is the artist whose friendly encouragements were instrumental to bringing me to Santa Barbara, and in particular to the Contemporary Arts...

Two Studios, One Museum, Another Speaking Gig...

A lazy start to the day--no exercise this morning, not even our usual walk. But we did treat ourselves to a cup of hotel coffee, before heading up to top of State Street and around a couple of corners to visit our new friend Hugh Margerum's studio...

... where we were impressed by his colorful abstractions, which combine organic with suggestively biomorphic forms in canvases of varying sizes--and in a plethora of drawings that have a whimsical energy and charm. It seems that everyone around ...

A Walk, a Hard Rain, a Lecture...

Up in time for an early walk along the harbor before the rains came in. A cool morning of low clouds and gathering winds...

... but beautiful along the shore front nonetheless. Walking past the marina, we headed out along the breakwater, pausing only to watch the harbor patrol bring in a large boat for winching up out of the water...

... for inspection? For repair? We did not hang out for long enough to find out. Out along the breakwater, we admired a lingering egret… and a giant...

To Santa Barbara

An eventful day, yesterday. Our new assistant, Emily arrived in good time to say hello to George, who will be in her charge for the next three days, while we are in Santa Barbara. We left the pair of them on good terms, and drove up through relatively easy traffic, first to Ojai, where our friend Peter Sims lives now with his wife, Yvonne. Peter is a faithful member of our artists' group, and we were impressed, as we completed the one and a half hour drive, that he manages to make it nearly e...

In a Nutshell

My obsession this morning? What to say to 260 undergraduate students that they don't already know, or aren't already learning from what I am sure is a fine faculty of teachers? As I mentioned Saturday, I'm headed up the coast to Santa Barbara today, to speak to those undergraduates--and perhaps a few graduate students and faculty--at the College of Creative Studies. It's a larger audience than I'm used to, and an audience of a different kind, younger, doubtless extremely smart and well-inf...

I'm Back in the Saddle...

... again. As the old song says. I felt a bit rusty last night, speaking for the first time in a few weeks at a gathering of, mostly, artists in a Beverly Hills studio. Luckily for me, there were plenty of glasses of wine passed around before I spoke, and the atmosphere was friendly and well-disposed! This afternoon, I speak to a group in a former hanger at the Santa Monica Airport which has been converted to accommodate a good number of artists' studios; and next week, I head for Santa B...