“No one holds the single key to Wisdom and Truth, but everyone holds the key to Love and Compassion. Don’t let anyone tell you what to think …think for yourself…listen to what is authentic and sincere within your own soulful heart.”–m.c.reardon
Gango Editions now carries over 50 of my images in their art catalog. Some of my newest images were currently previewed at the West Coast and Framing Show in Las Vegas this month. Many of these photographs will be incorporated into my portfolio over the next few months.
As always, all of my images are available as fine art giclee prints, signed/numbered and shipped with a Certificate of Authenticity. You can order these directly from me through my portfolio.
Enjoy!
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This lovely card is one of many in a book of vintage postcards I found on one of my artist’s dates at the Mill End fabric store. It reminds me of my great grandmother, who would let me look through her boxes of toys and cards when I was very young. Now her home belongs to strangers and the monkey tree that stood for many decades in the front yard is gone.
Yet beauty never changes. And neither does Love. Which brings me to the piece below, emailed to me by one if my very favorite people. Enjoy!
Installing Love
Tech Support: Yes, how can I help you?
Customer: Well, after much consideration, I’ve decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?
Tech Support: Sure, I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?
Customer: Well, I’m not very technical, but I think I am ready. What do I do first?
Tech Support: The first step is to open your heart. Have you located your heart?
Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they’re running?
Tech Support: What programs are running?
Customer: Let’s see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge, and Resentment running right now.
Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own called High Self-Esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off?
Customer: I don’t know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?
Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge and Resentment have been completely erased.
Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?
Tech Support: Yes but remember you only have the base program. You need to be running Love when you connect with other Hearts, and then upgrades are exchanged automatically.
Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, “Error—Program must run on internal components.” What should I do?
Tech Support: Don’t worry. It means that the Love program hasn’t been run yet on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others
Customer: So, what should I do?
Tech Support: Pull down Self-Acceptance, then click on the following files: Forgive Self; Realize Your Worth, and Acknowledge Your Limitations.
Customer: Okay, done.
Tech Support: Excellent. You are getting good at this!
Customer: Thanks.
Tech Support: Now copy these files to the “My Heart” directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure the old programs are gone for good.
Customer: Got it. Hey! My Heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on the monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over my Heart. Is this normal?
Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes a while, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is freeware. Be sure to share it and its various modules with everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.
Customer: I will. Thanks so much for your help!
Author unknown
‘A lover’s lessons’ by m.c.reardon
A man’s true heart is private, not gregarious.
There’s angst and anger, discomfort and generosity, sorrow…and quiet joy. Both a child’s heart and the heart of a fierce warrior reside within a man’s chest, full of sacred truths and ancient spells.
For the magic elixir of a man’s true heart is his tenderness, that which brings a woman to tears in joyful gratitude, making the world stop, just for a little while and sigh in perfect communion, as the stars whirl overhead in sparkling satisfaction…
“Don’t wait for me to tell you about my inner state–I have to keep quiet about it; it would be bothersome even just for myself to account for all the changes in fortune to which I had to submit in my struggle to reach a state of concentration. This reversal of all of one’s strengths, this change of direction of the soul never takes place without a series of crises. Most artists avoid these by taking recourse to various distractions. But it is for the same reason that they never again succeed in reaching the center of their creativity from which they had set out at the moment of their purest momentum….”–Rainer Maria Rilke
After being extremely focused on meeting a few deadlines at the beginning of this year, I have had to spiral inward, regain some sense of balance and begin to work again on those projects that have no definite deadline, those that I feel have been neglecting. My journey brings me to the above quote by Rilke, one of my artistic mentors, who reminds me that all who seriously pursue their creative work struggle with achieving a much treasured but extremely elusive “state of concentration”.
There are so many reasons to not do the creative work, that for the moment, has no specific or inescapable deadline. So many distractions (including my border collie who is currently using his nose to push my hand off the keyboard). So much busywork. Plenty of small insignificant details to worry the day away until the day is done and the fleeting spirit of creativity has given up and left the building.
For me personally, I struggle every day to just clear the decks and do the work without deadlines, allowing the pressure within me to finally ease into it, to express itself, maintaining hope in my heart that when this piece is finally completed, it will manifest its own currently unseen opportunity for display, publication or sale as many of my previous works have done before. But still, there are a few potential pitfalls:
1) Deprivation by not allowing the creative self the time to work on these kinds of projects. Dangers exist for ultimate starvation of the self to the point that no more work comes forth, the spring no longer flows or the jumps in ability and creative epiphanies offered in the act of ‘just creating’ are lost forever.
2) Fear that the final work will not be wanted or accepted by anyone, that it was a complete waste of time and goes absolutely nowhere but into an endlessly obscure closet where it gathers dust and is forgotten.
3) Outer circumstances change, so much so that the work becomes so incredibly different that the creative self is stymied, stuck, unsure of what step to take next. This uncertainty becomes quicksand which finally pulls the piece into its quagmire and it is lost until the end of time.
The bright side of all of this is that sometimes, there is a very good reason for a piece to still stand incomplete. It is asking for time to percolate or ‘cook’ as a good friend once said to me. Or it means that it needs to wait out a current cycle of change before it can reveal the next stage of its own beauty, as another friend explained as to the reason why a breathtaking piece she created for me took so long to complete. My own experience proves the same in that a novel I’ve been working on had to percolate for many years as I gathered research and let it simmer to the point that now I am sure that it is time to finish it…once and for all.
So what remains is the need for one to learn to trust the moods of the creative self, since its need for action or inaction may hold a much needed pearl of wisdom or it may offer a new perspective that greatly enhances the overall impact of the work. Trusting what you and your creative self see for the piece takes a lifetime of practice, but with practice comes knowledge, structure and a level of creative ability that could never be previously imagined.The bottom line? Just make yourself work when you’re stuck and you are painfully aware of it. For 5 minutes, for an hour, for an afternoon. Trust that the creative work will reveal where the thread lies that you must follow…if you only stop and listen.
Happy New Year!!!! I hope that this year gives us all a little more hope and a few more opportunities to show the very best of ourselves to the world…
I am starting off the year in high spirits as Gango Editions accepted 16 of my latest images just before the holidays started. I expect that many of these will be featured at the West Coast Art and Frame Show in Las Vegas on January 30-February 1, 2012. These should be up and running in Gango’s online catalog soon. I will be sure to post a hot link here when it is ready. In the meantime, here’s a sneak preview of what is to come!
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It’s been awhile since my last blog post because I have been busy meeting submission and competition deadlines. There’s also the West Coast art and Framing Show coming up in Vegas in January 2012 to get ready for with Gango Editions. Which means a new short story, a submission to compete for gallery space for a local b+w photography show and 30 new images to be considered at Gango. I am so looking forward to the holidays!
Here’s a handful of new work for you to enjoy. Have a peaceful holiday season….
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