working as part of a ‘Japanese 72 season micro-climate’ artist collaborative initiative within Treesisters)

Japanese season called ‘Shubun’ / autumn equinox, 23rd September – 7th October
Micro climate ‘insects hole up underground’ 3rd October – 7th October

My brief, for myself, for this blog, was to use this Japanese micro-climates project, within Treesisters, to bring together my art/spiritual practice and creations, by documenting them as a fuller journal, through my blog….and I am still committed to finishing this marvelous project, as it actually DOES connect me also, physically, to my immediate environment in a deeper way!

Recent, professional, feedback on my blog has been ‘It’s too dense’, ‘Where’s your art?’, ‘I could not find the shop?’….not exactly encouraging….

Life is not easy to navigate.

And the richness of days spent in pure observation, gratitude for what already is and dreaming, paddling, in pools of deep thought and taking the Time to share resulting expressions/experiences in images, already very difficult to edit!

This blog is what it is. It cannot be anything other, without ‘trying too hard.’

A bit more than just consumable ‘art’ …. not really easily digestible….or navigated….or linear…a kind of calendar of one life….moving through space and time in conversation with the world around….and finding inspiration and real beauty in that.

Jumping from flower to flower.

A Rolling Om Production….some might wish it loaded faster….not me!

Something wild is growing in my artden.

I am not sure I understand it fully. It ‘grew’ from a larger, pencil, squiggle experiment.

This is what I saw in it.

I am beginning to add colour using ‘treeblood’, (sap of alder pigment), collected from local trees. This home-produced pigment has such a powerful medicinal smell to it too. Quite addictive!
I have sown many tiny, alder, trees this year (that are now due a re-pot). I am enjoying the layering process.
I hope to plant them out in a couple of years to have a sustainable supply of their remarkable bark and increased shelter to the East.

Now I need black ink to finish this piece.

I am researching making my own ‘ink’ out of oak galls or, perhaps more readily available, charcoal powder, sourced from the charred remains of my old yurt! I am awaiting some gum arabic powder, through the post,…to try this….

Some poetry in this use of ‘yurtle‘s’ old frame.

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And as I work I send my energetic support to all on the streets of London.

To Extinction Rebellion and all those moving now to change the world.

I listen to the radio and search the internet for news.

This is my meditation.

I feel only half-here.

I tell the trees about it all.

They whisper ‘thank you’ on the autumnal breeze.

I also played around with this pumpkin skin mandala…the colours scream ‘autumn’ to me.

I see so many exciting ‘totems’ in its, artificially, reflected joins (image below created from the mandala above, running it through Photoshop effects)….it might be fun to ‘draw them out’…the stories pumpkin told me….

I found myself re-working this original poem of mine too….

Like an Awakening (Part 2).
  
 It’s coming around again, much faster than expected.
 Again, too fast, the need to keep grounded and breathe is overwhelming.
  
 Hard to tell if this is personal, accelerated, hard-won healing,
 Timeline’s artificial, chronological, self-programming
 or really a more global, evolutionary phenomenon….
 
 Observing these returning  tides.
 
 Déjà vu.
  
 The world delights and enlightens, disgusts and shames, with even deeper intensity. 
 Perceiving all, even more clearly, even more poignantly, yet still struggling to express,
 due to the speed and force with which these bass understandings rise up and stand before.
 
 So many branches of this human ‘Tree of Life’…. bursting into blossom…into colour…
such a contrast against the creeping grey.
 
 The entire journey has never made more sense than it does now, in its frictional, spiralling, motion.
 
 We are ‘circling the square’. 
 
 Colouring the grid.
  
 The box-like, prison, that was once a solid cage, has now become 
 a sanctuary, a studio, an echo chamber, a lover, a life’s work, a sky, a canvas, a page….
 
 the boundaries dissolved….
 
 Still happiest alone and re’a’sonating wildly,
  
 The fearful self-isolating exile has now morphed 
 
 into that immense gift, of Time and Perspective,
 
 HOME.
  
 Embrace artistic alchemy and balance that with mother.
  
 Uniquely prepared for this journey. All is in place.
  
 Learning to balance using meditation and immersed in OM.
 Chanting in the face of fear,
 
 Finding grace in offering hands 
 
 and asking that same awakening force
 to guide them, true, into actions,
 Informed only by 
 Love.
  
 For where there were, previously, too many paths to choose from,
 a terrifying labyrinth of choice and fear,
 There is now only one, holistic, mysterious way.
  
 Continue to proceed with immense care and consideration,
 Learning how, this time with wholehearted dedication,
 To be mindful, 
 Less most definitely more.
 
 Stillness IS my greatest, effective, 'weapon' of choice! 
 
 Like a creature 
that avoids predation by becoming completely still 
and blending, physically, into its surroundings.
 Open and trusting, 
  
 Presenting spirit always humbly to the light, wherever it can be felt shining,
 And learning to
 FULLY BE IN 
 
 That
 Moment……until the next….
 
  
 And learning how it comes around.
  
  
  
 Kat Robertson 2019
   

And wrote this in an automatic frenzy…..

Soul Toll
 
 ‘Pay us to pray for you’.
 We know you do not believe.
 We know you think ‘religion’ when you hear that word.
 It is so far from that limiting construct.
 Let us play the conduits to wholeness.
 We do not need your permission,
 but when we cannot do our necessary work,
 The whole suffers.
 So pay us to say, for you, what you have, now, forgotten how to.
 We exist in a larger, responsive, field.
 We hold a bigger, reverent, view of life.
 We do not yearn for riches beyond need. 
 We are, already, rich indeed.
 We understand the potential of this moment.
 Sit, comfortably, in its vastness.
 You rush, stressed under the burden of its, rapid, passing.
 You seem bound by your urgency to know what can never be known, 
 in your fight for immortality.
 We beat our drums and mark its passing.
 We make the Time to honour each breath.
 While you just breathe.
 Let us weep for you.
 We have enough tears. 
 They are a gift that we are given.
 Your eyes remain so dry and focused.
 We pray you could relax your gaze,
 And feel the salt-sea rising in your veins.
 As we do.
 If you cannot, truly cannot, find gratitude or grace, in all around you,
 Then you are just living,
 While we are alive.
 So pay us to say, for you, what you cannot.
 This rippling illusion, you experience, as you thrash and fight to stay afloat, 
 that dazzles and confuses, as you continually break the surface, 
 shines back the truth for us.
 We take the time to sit still and, as it becomes calm, 
 and are guided to speak to everything we see reflected.
 Contained, caught in that deep pool.
 In the water, that we love, because we are, also, that water.
 We give thanks as we remember.
 You hold inflexible mirrors made of sand.
 So pay us to pray for you.
 This is our purpose here.
 A purpose often lost in poverty.
 There is, what you call, magic in our bones.
 We see light and power beyond imagining in the very vastness that you fear.
 We are learning now to harness this, in this, 
 Our Love.
 Enable this sacred act by supporting us in kind and, by your own rules, showing, at least, this respect.
 You would not work for no-thing in the world that you create.
 So why do we?
 Let us in to work for you.
 We love you too.
 We yearn to be seen by you.
 So, we are humbly requesting,
 Pay us to say what you cannot.
 Pay us, 
 once again, as your ancestors used to, 
 to speak for you. 
 Or find your own voice.
 We know it is there.
 Let us help you find it.

Kat Robertson 2019
 
 
 

So….all in all…..quite a, uniquely, powerful few days.
Not ‘no thing’ at all….

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I encountered this small wonder today while writing this….on a trip out to the compost, barefoot, with a moldy melon.
(One of those bought from a supermarket, that went from unripe to moldy, with no ‘ripeness’ in between)
This is hanging on tightly to my Earth mandala paper, now composting on the pile.
I cannot identify it at present.
It looks a bit like the common large white caterpillar, but lacks the obvious, yellow, stripe. Also rather like a Box-moth larvae…..could even be a sawfly…..?
I think it is anchored now to become a cocoon….it is stuck fast.
I moved it carefully, on its paper, so it will not be so obvious to passing birds etc…

I wonder what it will become?
Although the ‘knowing’ would not take away from its beauty.

Not sure how this connects to ‘farmers draining fields’….but can add that local flooding recently points to the need for farmers to do just that …. and for plans to relocate houses/industry/main roads to be initiated….