I set the alarm for 5:15AM, and wake up to the phone ringing at 6:53AM instead. It's the Baltimore Farmers Market Bazaar organizer, Pooja, wondering whether I still plan to come to the market. I thank her for her patience with me, roll out of bed, wash my face, and head downtown, to the interstitial space under the freeways, where farmer & craftspeople & shoppers of stripes gather every Sunday morning. Inner Beauty will get there when Inner Beauty gets there, I had said the night before… I am discovering this body is no longer of the nature to be easily coerced out of its well-deserved rest. Each time the Inner Beauty setup is a little different. This time, when I sit down at my little table to draw the day's sign, the results look like this: My crafts-neighbors are delightful - Steve the tie-dye man, and Norma & her partner, who make jewelry. It's kind of a cold morning at first, and so I wrap myself up in the yoga blanket I brought along, and wait to see what will come along. Soon enough, delightfully, what comes along is my sister-in-law, Kate, and her two boys, Atticus & August. They go off on a quest together, and come back a few minutes later with coffee (for me) and mini-donuts with sprinkles and powdered sugar (for everyone). The two little boys and I improvise some Inner Beauty Special String Practice. I ask them, When do you feel safe, and happy in the world? When does it feel really good to be you? August says right away, When I am laughing! So he chooses a blue string, and I tie it around his wrist as a Laughing String. When he feels sad, which we agree happens to everybody, I tell him he can look at his string and be reminded of laughter. Atticus says he feels really good when he is swimming in the water like a mermaid, floating and spinning. So he chooses a red string, and I tie it around his wrist as a Mermaid String, telling him he can remember the feeling of being free in the water, whenever he likes. Heart, mind & body nourished by kindness, coffee & donuts, I go back to people-watching: pit bulls walking loyally by their people's sides little kids in vegetable carts and red wagons dyed-hair ladies stiff-necked men a baby with a big pink bow on her head a plain woman buying a big necklace for a daughter carrying beauty a mother with flowers in her hand and a newborn in a stripy sling couples whose movements match one another a bright little girl in braids, wearing a shirt that says THE BEST IS YET TO COME busy nurses in blue scrubs, walking fast ladies shackled & shellacked in beauty, teetering out of contact a young woman with a yoga mat in her bike basket, walking slowly & contentedly past everything people of all ages, genders & ethnicities in Ravens shirts of all numbers: ARVIS, FLACCO a tall man with blocked shoulders, and long dreadlocks in a lush knot a young woman with a scrunched-up face, sucking something cold out of a big styrofoam cup I see you. I have been you. Here we are. Jake, recently retired after a hard last year of work, stops to see what I am doing. I explain the practice, and give him an Inner Beauty Passport, which he tucks inside the magazine he's carrying. On consideration, he tells me, You'll do just fine. A weirdly comforting benediction. I tell my neighbor, Steve, that seeing so many people walking around the market with dogs is making me miss my Chloe-beast. He tells me his beloved dog went to sleep last month, after eighteen years of life together. Seeing people with dogs makes Steve feel free, he says, because he doesn't have that responsibility anymore. He says it'll be a long time before he gets another dog, because there's a great sadness at the end of that, and he doesn't want to deal with that now. When I explain the project & offer him one, Steve goes right for an Inner Beauty Passport with a wolf on it. You, too? He asks. You've got dark aspects, too? I tell him, pretty much everyone. So many people's response to the Inner Beauty Passports is, Oh, man! I really need this. Essentially, these little books are issued as licenses to know what we already know: we are complex, chaotic, wise, kind, self-obsessed, self-sacrificing, related to everything, isolated, futile, finely-honed, loving, hidden, obvious, inheritors and makers of big messes, resolvers of big messes, dreamers, doers, thieves and treasures. It's all there, and the more we acknowledge all aspects of ourselves, the more we can become transparent & open to what is, moment by moment and step by step.
Here are two unhelpful (& closely related) attitudes that we humans tend to drift into:
Whenever I find myself in a situation where people who are in no way previously acquainted are behaving with astonishing goodwill and delicacy of intent towards one another, I think this kindness is happening all over the world, and yet it is largely absent from our public discourse and news media. True, beautiful actions of people in Germany, Iceland & Hungary towards arriving refugees have been widely reported, but 99 times out of 100, the news-fart floating across the screen or the airwaves will be related to some scandal, tragedy, or feud. So, what a pleasure to find myself with my beloved friend Nico, in Philadelphia's Clark Park today, offering Free Inner Beauty Portraits to all comers. The neighborhood around the park is diverse in all imaginable ways, and the people walking by our table seemed primed to be curious & open to new ideas. Free Inner Beauty Portraits is this practice:
Most of the photos above were taken by Nicole Arcilla. Thank you, friend! Thank you, everyone who stopped to draw with me, or with each other. Thank you, spontaneous & much appreciated donations of gas & toll money. Thank you, Friends of Clark Park, who work to incarnate music, art, food, and vibrant, green public space in this city. Long may such gestures of love resonate, and long may we speak of them.
Someone wrote to ask if I'd photographed any of the Inner Beauty drawings from Clark Park. I didn't, because I was too busy inviting people to take them home. But here's an Inner Beauty Portrait I did with my friend Cecelia Kane, once upon a time:
Today's a rest and writing day. I started off by finishing up the battery of questions I fill out for the JHMI Long-Term Meditators & Psilocybin folks, as I am going in for my third session with them on Monday. Here's a sample from one of the questionnaires: Yes - it's standardized testing, but check out those questions! I am tickled pink to be involved with the scientific study of mystical states, and the effort to make transpersonal unity experiences more safely, widely & compassionately available. This summer I asked my Embodied Magic: Drawing into Life students at Dartmouth to take on five daily commitments: a contemplative practice, a writing practice, a visual art practice, a physical practice, and an interpersonal practice. I realize, right now in Pilgrimage-land, I've undertaken the following:
I feel protected and inspired by these commitments, and they help focus my field of engagement. Wander around in the art museum? Maybe, but then, where would I find time for tai chi, cooking, and writing? With old patterns & habits dying, I sometimes feel empty and unbalanced, and yet I am learning that if I stay honest in those rough patches, I am often met by the grace and kindness of others. The young man selling me butter, cream, cocoa, chocolate, and an eggplant at the co-op says to me, Enjoy your breath. I am so startled I ask him to repeat himself, and then I smile, Yes! And your feet too. It's good to enjoy your feet. A sleekly compact older man moves fluidly through the dappled light of a sunny spot on the sidewalk. What you are doing is so beautiful, I say. He smiles, shows me something like swimming through the air, and explains that he likes to do triple-flips in the water. I tell him his open-hearted way of moving reminds me of the tai chi Repulse Monkey sequence: … so we goof around a bit together, dancing with the monkeys of that moment. I tell him he has cheered me up immensely, and he takes my hands, wishing me well, and unmistakably inviting me to move on, so we can each get on with our work. The most beautifully bearded Haitian bookseller-lady & I agree that French spoken outside of France is often very delicious. I come home nourished & delighted. Here's where I'm sitting right now, in Nico's kitchen: Bringing together the worlds of experience, without preference, is a profound, ongoing growing edge for me. I am learning to surrender resistance in moving between the sidewalk and the psychedelics lab, the co-op and the embrace of the Beloved, the kitchen and the eternal Now. I am learning to appreciate them all as overlapping, ripe with insight, and boundlessly generous in their dispensations of truth.
Surprise! If I am paying some reasonable amount of attention, it turns out that the Inner Beauty Pilgrimage to the Sacred-Ordinary Everywhere is a multilayered undertaking, encompassing all of daily life, as well as specialized Inner Beauty activities. Today, among many things, it encompassed Pants, or more exactly, jeans. The ones I've been wearing for 4 years straight - inherited from Timothy, who didn't like how they fit - are worn translucent at the butt. Being in Brooklyn, I thought I could do something about finding new ones, and very luckily, as Elana has more sangfroid for this sort of thing than I do, she agreed to go with me. I wanted slavery-free pants, designed for men (because they fit my body better), in a dark wash, preferably already soft, but not fake-worn. I found them. They're as slavery-free as a fancy pair of pants bearing a label that says Made in USA of imported fabric can be. They also have a place to write my name & address, in case I drop my pants someplace rife with postal-compulsive good Samaritans. Then I found a delightful Chinese man with a stately black Singer to hem my new pants. Then Elana (wearing fetching new shorts) & I sat in the back garden of a French bakery for hours, and basked in the glow of each other's majestic presence. In the afternoon, I set out for Philly, and therein discovered both the limitations of GPS, and the non-limitations of the heart to be with What Is. Limitations? Instead of the neat u-turn across 8 lanes that my little talking satellite friend envisioned, I wound up morassed in the line for the Holland Tunnel. Non-limitations? Remembering Kristen Neff's beautiful 3-step process for self-compassion, I saw:
I am now staying with my friend Nico and her marvelous Samoan dog, Ping: Nico's refrigerator says: Confidence comes not from being always right, but from not fearing to be wrong. To wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are. The gift of the multi-decade friendships I have been revisiting in the last few days of the Inner Beauty Pilgrimage is that we have seen one another in all kinds of states: sick & well, broken & whole, deluded & brilliant, impoverished & abundant, and through witnessing it all in love, we have helped one another not to waste the people we are.
Today I got to visit with my friend Louise Brooks & her new baby, Beatrix. The plan was for us to Do Some Inner Beauty Work in Prospect Park. As it happened, the shape that took was: talking for a long time about our lives & what had been happening in them, having a free / not free dialogue under the clearest blue sky, and then walking out into her neighborhood to eat bahn mi. Louise & Beatrix each got a passport, so Louise can keep track of the baby's many names, starting with momo (little dumpling). I walked around with a zafu & blanket & portable Safety Closet tent (with enormous spear-like poles), but the occasion never really arose to deploy any of that stuff. Anyway, blessed times, up to and including the fact of not thrusting the project forward. Wei wu wei is a key Inner Beauty Treatment. Then I went to see Elana Langer, Inner Beauty co-creatrix, at her What I Live By kiosk in Union Square Greenmarket. She chose an Inner Beauty Passport with Mont Saint Michel on the cover, and while she interacted with various baffled & curious visitors, we devoured a pint of coffee ice-cream provided by her kindly dairy neighbors. I had two more Passport interactions with old friends: at a little green table in Union Square with Jon Busky, and at the home of Miles Finley and Jessica Lysons.
It was really hot today, and, on my way out to Brooklyn, I could feel how tired the body-mind was, from so much interaction, heat, & stimulation. Right there on the train, I listened in to the sense of spaciousness unfolding on all sides. I gave thanks. I came home. The day began beautifully - I woke from a deep squishy sleep on an inflatabed in Manchester, NH, rested and quiet, already established in a travel-pattern that feels both familiar & new. Timothy and I have hosted a lot of different people through Couchsurfing, but this was the first time I've stayed as someone's guest, and the experience reminded me of the equanimity wish in the liturgy at Wonderwell: may I let go of the delusion that separates beings into friends, enemies, and strangers. It's really quite amazing to be trusted and welcomed in this way. Thank you Emily! Today's plan was not at all to go to New Haven, but, emboldened by my new GPS - a gift from my beloved & wise parents - I realized it felt totally fitting to include Yale in the pilgrimage, and I wanted to see my old home. So I found a parking spot on Chapel Street, and went to pay homage to this place that taught me so much. I feel like the Universe has a pretty outstanding sense of humor. For instance, I wandered onto Old Campus, and found, courtesy of some China Tourism folks armed with VR goggles and silk scroll paintings, Buddhist Pilgrimage Central. Really? I had 56 minutes, total, so after thanking my goggle-friends, I circumambulated Old Campus, put out some Safe / Resourced / Together fliers, had a lassi and a muffin at Claires, and headed off to NYC. I am now staying with my friends Elizabeth, Alan, and little Hannah, who took me on a harrowing-wonderful bike ride out to the waterfront in Red Hook. Here they all are, after our improvised picnic, and during the course of an epic sunset: It is so good to be here. May the blessings of this day radiate outward to all.
Today was pack, pack more, pare out what does not need to come, say goodbye with tears in my eyes and love in my heart, plug in the fancy devices, hit the road, and zoom south to Studio 550 Arts in Manchester, for a heart-instructions mini-book class. Here's the prototype I made at home before leaving: The idea behind these little custom-instruction booklets is that people can remind themselves of what they most need to remember. My prototype turned out to be super-helpful in encountering reality, which said No one signed up for class tonight! There is no mistake. Enjoy the cup of tea Katherine-the-painter-of-found-things will make you in a beautiful mug, and a talk with Monica, who has an 11-month-old baby, and a surprise - the ancient prototype of the Inner Beauty Compact, from back before it even existed. Pilgrimage - at least this pilgrimage - unfolds firmly in the realm of what is. Sitting on the couch, I wind up talking with Laura, as she arrives for her bachata class. She asks what I'm doing. I show her the compact, & the prototype & she understands immediately. She tells me her son is an artist who tends to be very critical of himself, and then she tells me about a photograph he made: his friend was writing in light, and somehow the E in LOVE got turned around. He was crushed. But his mother said It's perfect: You never know how love will turn out in the end. Thank you, Laura! Pilgrimage: you never know how it begins, or where it goes.
On Friday, September 4th, the Inner Beauty Pilgrimage to the Sacred-Ordinary Everywhere launched with a celebration at Larissa King's studio in White River Junction, VT. Larissa & I collaborated to design & assemble 108 Inner Beauty Passports. They have fancy blue-and-gold foil stickers, spike-tape spines, and covers made of postcards - used, old & new. We printed the inside pages on wide-ruled notebook paper, because it tickled us to think of filling in one's passport as a kind of cosmic homework: During Open Studios, we distributed the passports to visitors, with instructions to write down their own 108 Names - what they'd been called, what they'd called themselves, and what roles they's fulfilled, from the most exalted to the most shameful. In Inner Beauty Land, it's not only Kali & Shiva who have 108 names/aspects: we all do. I set up a station for Inner Beauty Double Blind Portraits: ...and Larissa built a tremendous Safety Closet, complete with a Closet Monster and instruction cards: in this moment I am safe |
AuthorJulie Püttgen is an artist, expressive arts therapist, and meditation teacher. Archives
November 2019
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108 Names of Now