Hello beautiful people,
I started this week with other plans, but something unexpected happened. My partner showed up at my doorstep on Sunday with a massive bouquet of flowers from a wedding gig he’d played on Saturday night!
This has happened before. Russell is a very considerate guy who loves nothing more than free stuff. He also knows that I love nothing more than worshipping flowers, so it’s a good deal for everyone involved, including the flowers, I’d like to think.
But these were not your everyday leftover flowers and they ushered in the question — When beauty shows up at the door, unannounced, how do I respond?
Welcome to Pearls, a space for exploring beautiful questions of art and life.
A secret about Zen Buddhism is that it has almost nothing to do with getting calm and almost everything to do with asking one simple question, “what is an appropriate response?”
The way to “answer” this question is by just sitting and being present with the myriad things that rise and fall while you are on the meditation cushion. Over time, you begin to develop the capacity to notice and to be with all of these things that show up in life, just as they are.
From that steady ground where everything is included - the stress, the beauty, the unworthiness, the ambition, and the love - you can start to ask yourself what kind of relationship you would like to cultivate with each of them.
What is an appropriate response?
Now, back to the flowers. I was unprepared to host something so grand, because I had other stuff going on - researching the ethics of squirrel brushes, not writing my artist statement, stuff like that. I probably make it sound like my life is more frivolous than it really is, but being an artist is my profession and I do treat it as one.
With the freedom and uncertainty that come with this way of life I have chosen, being able to set my own schedule and write my own plans, there is also a great deal of room to respond to what is right in front of me, like it’s my job.
This lifetime I took a vow, to answer the door for beauty.
I believe there is something in the willingness, to answer the door for the beauty, that directly points to what it means to be an artist.
To be continued…
x Jess
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