11/11/10 - parallels

It seems only appropriate that we are running this 'Run in Parallel' spread as we cross the date of 11/11.  Ceci left a phone message for me earlier, suggesting that today held great potential as a gateway date.  I have been holding our recent conversations to my heart and actions; expressing my excitement with zbook to my colleagues and family. We are in final countdown/preparation mode for a presentation of our collaborative zbook work at our "origin" point of UCSB.  Before faculty and students, we will be sharing story and images and creating an experience of our personal and collaborative narratives, spreading the inspirational impulses of zbook.  It's a seed pod bursting opportunity we've been taking steps toward for some time now.  In many ways, it feels like a jumping board, like a springing platform into a pool of something still as yet unknown.  We both agree that the manifestation of this symposium opportunity in the fall is completely in line with our mutual electricity in this season of wind and shift from light outside to light inside.  Looking at the image of "parallel", this emerging internal light is reflected magically in the luminoscity of this spread...it is infused with some serious incandescence.  What's amazing to me is how this spread transformed from something quiet and flowing to something pulsing and rushing.  As we were entering zbook in the last couple of years to bring closure and breadth of crystallization, we most often played in watercolor to cohese each spread.  On this spread however, our brushes stroked into life with these shimmery acrylic paints we both have had on hand in our painting quests, and the outcome shocked this piece with dynamite.  We should search our archives to see if we have an image of this spread pre white and purple and bronze, to view it in its quiet, browner stage, when it was mostly running words.

As I look closer at this spread, I see homage paid to a few striking moments in time.  In the following image, there is a note of the PSL family in the LA House.   The picture which arises for me in relation to that note is an oscillating scene, like a sticker with two images which flash through movement of  hand or head... one is a golden glowing room with a long table and a bronze lighted chandelier around which a dozen feasters are holding hands as a gray haired uncle offers prayers of Thanksgiving for the communion of family and friends; the shifted image is a blue black hue with jacuzzi drifters and moonlight sifters, overlooking a twinkling valley of lights.

I simply love how words and color wrap around each other.  The quote enveloped in pearlescent copper at right here looks like my lettering, though I have no recollection of its utterance context... most likely, it came from the jacuzzi!... "GUARANTEED"

On another note, it sure is strange how children bring challenges to streams of working time; they are so invested in every moment of the present, they cannot often be deferred to a future time when all other work is complete...isn't that an amazing gift to all of humankind, continuously renewed in each birth ... little bundles of the here and now - see me - help me - love me - leave me to myself - a constant cycle of learning and letting go for a parent.

So, I take my advice, post script to "Run in Parallel'..."walk in tennis shoes"!  Good advice!

-Be well and take care, -J. G.