A painting is a rectangle with marks and shapes and colors. How on Earth can these marks and shapes and colors be said to mean anything? We’re each moved by, touched by, natural forms, elemental forms, in the landscape. We find them meaningful.
Earth: low, below my feet. Mountain and Valley. Rock. Dense. Horizon.
Water: River, lake, ocean, rain. Life. Horizon.
Sky: Spacious, above me, heaven, vast. Horizon.
In a pub in Seattle in the 80s, I met a Scot. We talked long into the night over too much Guinness. Near closing bell, he asked “Wha’ is it about a stone?” I responded with weighty adjectives like dense and opaque and heavy. He waved his hand, “Nah!…the fluidity!”
My mind opened.
It’s all fluid. All moving. Earth, Water and Sky flow with and against each other. As the world heats up, their interactions are all the more exciting and dangerous, in ways that outpace our ability to stay safe and comfortable.
To be still and to contemplate openly, to see movement and not grasp it. The mind moves just like earth, air and water. Without ceasing.
The most concise and complete instructions for meditation go like this:
Body like mountain
Breath like wind
Mind like sky