Watercolor by Nancy Wait 1987

The other day I posted a painting on Tiferet Journal representing sort of the ultimate in balance. I called the picture Portal because I have found that when I am in perfect harmony – or as close as I can get to it, another door seems to open. It’s like I have to come into complete harmony and balance with something in order to be ready to move onto the next level, the next thing. In other words, being in balance with myself and the world around me, even if it’s only my apartment – or a room in my apartment, clears the way for the next step. And there’s always a next step. 

Today, however, I am seeing the importance of being off balance from time to time. When I am off balance I tend to see with new eyes. I tend to see things fresh.

I used to become very unbalanced when I fell in love or become fascinated with someone. My whole being felt upended. I hardly knew who I was anymore, and sometimes I struggled to think where I was. This was understandable, as strong emotions have always sent me into another realm.

I am thinking about this now because the other day I became obsessed with – a gadget! I didn’t want to go to sleep until I figured out how to use it. 

Staying up all night or not getting enough sleep, straying from my ‘healthy’ routines, upsetting my status quo – these are the things that can put me off balance. But sometimes this is good! Eating dinner in the morning instead of breakfast – anything to mess up the schedule. Because it’s when I’m off balance that I make new discoveries. A little more light might filter in from unexpected places. I know from experience there’s a price to pay if I stray too far, but with the passing years I seem to have grasped that law.

Nowadays, I take care to make sure everything is in order before I retire for the night. I put things away and hang up my clothes, don’t leave dishes in the sink, make sure the cats have full bowls of food. Because how do I know how long I’ll be gone? How do I know where I’ll take off to? And how do I know who I’ll be in the morning – or if I will even be the same person? Because tomorrow – what is that? 

These are perhaps the things someone does who is a little unbalanced – and knows it. But I know from experience that when my psyche – my soul – thinks it’s time to move to another level, it will put something in my way. Love, or maybe only a new gadget, but I will have to change somehow – and find a new balance – to accommodate this new thing. And that’s why it’s good.

This painting, Balancing in the Moonlight, is for sale on my art website or as prints or cards. LINK

Watercolor by NW 1987

The mindless place. Oh, I know it’s all Mind, but off with our thinking head, because we are going to the Inner World. The inner world of thought and being and intuitive knowing.

Inner knowing. Poetry. Art. A different patterning of words and images that catches us off guard. Takes us past the barriers of conditioning, of programming, to see differently. Hear differently.

Inner awareness. Meditation. Dancing.

3D moves along particular tracks – the grid of the physical plane. Our minds are the exception. Our minds are free from Time and Space. Inner Knowing enables us to Jump the Tracks of the Known.

I created this painting many years ago, and at that time, I was off in my head a lot. I think that is why I gave the diamond in the center so much heaviness in the lower half, and left the higher half lighter. I needed to stay in my body. Have that awareness of being in my body. Use my intuitive inner bodily knowing.

Some paintings are created for the viewing public, others for a client. And some, as this one was, are created for the artist herself, as she needs to see what the idea might look like, should she attempt to make it into an image.

I wanted to get out of my head. I began with a photograph of myself standing in a stream, and I cut off my head with some scissors and placed the head in the stream. A year or two went by, and I found myself painting this image of a head cut off. It was one way to tackle the dilemma of thinking too much – picture it! And while I was at it, I also pictured an enormous diamond shape right in the center of the body, which was certainly a reminder to stay centered, and possibly also a reminder that my riches were in my ability to stay centered. Headless, maybe, but whole, all the same.

This watercolor is part of a series I am in the process of posting to a new website. I will keep this blog updated as to when the new painting site is ready.

Does the battle never end? Do the fears ever stay away permanently? Have you ever wondered if, in this imperfect, impermanent life, you will ever be released from the fears holding you back from being all that you can be?

Whether you work on your fears or play with your fears or read about how to let go of fear or attend workshops or pray or plead to the powers above, fear is something that can be overcome, and in all sorts of ways—or not overcome, but lived with, dealt with, as best as we are able on any given day, from moment to moment. It is up to us.

F for Fear. F is the 6^th letter of the alphabet. How does fear relate to the sixth sense? Take away the F for fear and we have the word EAR. All we need is a T-H at the end for it to spell Earth. Is Earth the fear-planet? Or is it the Love Planet? What does your EAR tell you? What does it say to your sixth sense? The word EAR – when you add up the letters in numerology, equals six. All these sixes! Hmmm…..

And six, what does the six mean? In the tarot it’s the card for the Lovers. It’s the card of Union. Divine Union, union of lovers, union with self. Three plus three, the Divine Triangle come together with itself. The Holy Trinity coming together with its earthly reflection.

How can love overcome fear? By opening up the heart, opening the heart chakra, we rise above the solar plexus where the ego resides, where the power of the personality resides. There’s a reason why the lower three chakras are located below the waist, and why the heart, throat, third eye and crown chakra are located above the waist. Above and below. We live in a world of duality of Above and Below. Of Night and Day, of Fear and Love. A world where energy rises, and the sun rises, and the moon rises. A world of openings and closings and endings and beginnings. Of new and old and everything in between. Because it’s all impermanent – in this world of matter in time and space and 3D.

We also live in a world of ritual and ceremony. And now, as we move into the calendar of shorter, darker days, and into the festival of lights, let us take a look at our fears. Let us dissolve them, even for a moment, or only in our imaginations, and set the tone and pace for the new year ahead. Dissolve them, love them, own them, let go of them. See their value. See if they have outlived their value, or not…

On Tuesday, December 6^th on my blog talk radio show Dancing in the Shift, we are going to look at the ‘f’ word, F for FEAR. I invite you to submit your fears to me either publically in the comments box below, or privately message me. Because I am going to read aloud the list of fears we know so well, and then I am going to burn them in a symbolic ritual.

'Floating' by NW 1985

‘Willingness to Shift’ is the title of my blog talk radio show today, (LINK) and these are the paintings I have chosen to illustrate the Shift. They are all watercolors. The first one I did back in ’85. I remember the feeling of being ‘cut loose.’ Being free to float. Feeling myself unanchored, in a new space. An unbelievably rich new space!

The second and third paintings illustrate the sense of shifting from one plane to another, or shifting to different planes,

watercolor by NW 1989

spaces, states of mind. I was very intrigued by angles at the time, and what angle I was looking at a thing or judging a thing or perceiving a thing. I had the sense it was all about invisible yet very real angles of perception. I felt ‘out of time,’ out in space—a new kind of space.

Then, just as suddenly as these images appeared to me, they disappeared. Shortly afterwards I got pregnant by choice, and entered into Time again. The kind of time that all expectant mothers and new mothers enter into, counting days, weeks, and months. Then counting breaths, then counting and measuring baby’s progress.

watercolor by NW 1990

But a few years after baby popped out, I popped out again too, into the Timeless once again. Into the more Universal sense of Time and Space I had become used to as a painter. I spent the next dozen or so years trying to meld the two states, Local and Universal. It wasn’t easy being ‘here’ and not here. I tended to go off somewhere and get a bit lost at times.

I see now that I was going through the integration process, integrating the different energies within, in order to clear my passage.

Living the dichotomy of being ‘here’ and not here can be tricky. It takes practice. And most of all it takes a willingness to receive directions from one’s co-pilot, whoever that might be. The designated driver, as it were. Someone outside oneself, or a being within. Or it can shift between the two.

I’ll say it again. Gaging the layout of this new land can be tricky. There isn’t a map, or at least not the kind we are used to. I think we have to create our own. Through expression of where we are now, where we are now. Now. And then let the moment go….

Listeners? That would be my blog talk radio show, Art and Ascension.

Readers? That would be my memoir called The Nancy Who Drew,  published last summer. I read some excerpts on the air HERE.

Now I am writing the sequel. And for some reason, best known to the gods of story-telling, the narrative begs to be told out loud.

Episode One begins tomorrow, Tuesday, October 11th 2011 at 5pm EST.

The words refuse to sit quietly on the page, and indeed have refused to come to me in anything that resembles freshness and frankness unless I am going to be speaking them into the ether, into my microphone, perhaps even into your ears.

Perhaps this particular narrative needs my expressive story-telling voice, with relevant music breaks, much as in the beginning, the story refused to reveal itself other than by mute but expressive and colorful paintings.

You see, as much as I feel that this is my story, the story has a mind of its own. The creative impulse must be obeyed, lest it dries up, packs up shop and goes home.

Episode One is ready to go tomorrow. Episode Two is almost finished and I’m looking ahead to the third. My goal is at least two, and perhaps three episodes a month, for as long as it takes. At the end, I will publish the text, and I’m sure I will be very glad to. Meanwhile, I intend to enjoy this process of letting the river flow in the way the river wants to. It’s the only way to keep the words coming. Trust me on that!

Meanwhile, thank you in advance for listening, for reading, and for any comments you might care to share. I can only hope that your experience is as enjoyable as mine as been, preparing these shows for you.

When I first began drawing from life, it was about expressing, showing, telling, what was before me. I was happy when the drawing of my ceramic coffee pot actually looked like my ceramic coffee pot. I wasn’t very good at flowers, but I drew vases and cloth dolls really well. And then I went to my first Life Drawing class at the Art Students League. I was twenty-eight, but it was still a shock in the beginning to have a naked person to draw from. What a giving of themselves! What generosity! And for peanuts. Sorry, I mean, for art.

The newness of it wore off quickly. Right away there was an intense need to focus. To match what the eye was seeing to what the brain knew, and send it out through the hand, through the stick of charcoal, and onto the newsprint pad.

First came the one-minute Gesture Drawings where we all warmed up, then we had several five-minute poses, then the twenty-minute poses. It all took a bit of getting used to. The studio was large and full of students, some of whom were quite marvelous artists already and were just there to hone their skills. Only a few were just beginning as I was. So I found myself fairly intimidated when I went around looking at other’s work as we all did during the breaks.

Then something amazing happened. The second day of class, or maybe it was the second week, I realized I was picking up the model’s feelings. I could feel the model. Just as a psychic or an empath might feel someone’s emotions or be able to read their thoughts, I could feel this woman’s body. It was in the line that I drew of her back. A curved line. Oh, there must have been other lines on my sheet of newsprint. I was probably in the middle of the drawing. But all I remember seeing was this one line. One line is all it takes, you know. One curved line that told me everything I needed to know about this girl, the model.

My first reaction was astonishment at this unknown power I had. The next time I went around looking at other’s work during the break, I couldn’t help noticing that however beautiful and accomplished the drawings were, most of them looked like a generic female form. It could have been any number of women they were drawing, not this specific one. The instructions, or the task we had, and it was very clear what we were supposed to do, was to get the pose right. And then the shadows. The instructor never asked us to feel what she felt like. In fact his paintings, charming as they were, were practically all the same. Pastel colors of his vision of the female. He obviously didn’t care who the female was. She existed only to allow him to portray his own personal vision. Which is fine, of course.

But what I was seeing in my own work was something different. I saw that I was picking up her feelings. I didn’t know much about vibrations then, and picking up energies and so on. And I didn’t have to know consciously, because it was happening naturally, and all I had to do was to continue to let it happen, continue to translate the energy into charcoal lines on the newsprint paper before me. Drawing then became a form of excitement for me. I was still some years away before I started to paint my own feelings—painting figures from my imagination, but when I did I was so moved by what I saw – what I was able to express (finally!) that my life was turned upside down.

We all know that saying, The truth shall set you free, and I can attest that indeed, it does! The one truth that there can be no argument over – the truth of my own feelings.

And yet, you might be surprised at how many people tried to argue with me. “What is that?” or “You can’t paint that.” Or “That’s not right.” Excuse me? What’s not right? In your mind?

I had to leave art school when I realized that the instructors were more interested in having my work be what they thought it should be rather than what it actually was. And then over the years I was more fascinated by my own renditions and what I could create, than in making them ‘saleable’ pieces of art that someone else might like to hang on their wall. Painting my ‘truth’ was the only thing that mattered, for I had begun to see. And I saw that I spoke in a kind of sign language. A visual language of form and color that expressed my feelings more than words could ever do.

The trouble was, no one else understood, really, what I was trying to communicate. People would complement my colors. “Oh, that’s a nice blue,” someone said once. I was devastated, because I wanted them to see what I saw. To see what I’d done. But no one saw. Then I tried to write about what I had done. But my writing was totally abstract and vague. It was poetic, but vague. And this again was a great disappointment. In order to convey my thoughts properly, I had to actually give up painting and drawing and go back to school to learn how to write, which is a different language with different rules, but eventually I saw that writing had an equally great power all its own, which indeed could be mastered, for now I was learning how to create a picture in someone’s mind. The reader’s mind.

There are words and there are pictures, and underlying both is a vibration. A series of vibrations, and that is what we are called upon to pick up and align with and feel. In our very bones.

Available on Amazon.com

I replayed the show the other night, but fell asleep during the gentle soothing tones of  “Kristina,” by composer Michael Kowalski. Today I listened to the rest of the recording, this time not only on my feet but walking around the neighborhood doing errands. I often get my best thinking done when walking to the grocery store. Somehow my mind feels more free to roam without the pressure sitting at the keyboard. Or maybe it’s just that new ideas really are floating around in all that space outside, but only if I’m not particularly looking for them. Outside I have to be more awake, more alert. Listening to the show at my leisure, without the pressure of having to look at clock and switchboard, chat-room and Skype, I heard the phrase “geo-physical imprints and memory bands within the auric field.” It had completely passed me by the first time.

watercolor by NW 1985

I became very excited. Especially as it came after another comment Carol made: Mentally, we want to stay in the comfort zone, but the soul is always lurking to take us into those deeper places.

Hadn’t I devoted years to painting my journey into those deeper places? I called the series Journey to the Deep, and wrote some lines to go with it.

Someone is calling me, down to the depths / I’d rather stay in the day, in light and finite time / Then go exploring, where there is no bottom / No end, or return / But someone is calling me, down to the depths / A voice heard in ancient dreams, beats  / I plunge.

(Detail) oil on canvas by NW 1987

Eventually, after 5.5 years, I accessed a soul memory I could work with. I could have written ‘five and a half years,’ but you see the painting that completed the series happened to be of a building on Madison Avenue. 550 Madison Avenue. (We don’t count the zeros in numerology) The building that was the corporate headquarters of AT&T at the time, (AT&T – the very god of communication itself at one time!) with an enormous statue of Hermes behind the plate glass. Specifically behind the numbers 550. Hermes, also known as Mercury, the Messenger of the Gods, had a message for me. Or at least it seemed that way, though I didn’t realize it until I had painted the building from a dozen different angles. (You can see the series HERE.)

And now I must cut to the chase, because this after all is only a blog, and the story I need (yes, need!) to tell will easily fill a book. (In fact I’m writing it now, a follow up to The Nancy Who Drew ) So here basically is the short version.

Though I realized I had to go into those “deeper places,” those depths, I hadn’t a clue how to do this. Carol Lamb mentioned how we might travel to certain places on the globe—maybe just going on holiday somewhere—and immediately feel a powerful resonance.

But the place I was drawn to was at the bottom of the sea. The ocean floor. I don’t know that you can get any deeper than that other than by drilling through the earth. But I had painting. I allowed my brush to take the lead. I guess I can say I resurrected my geo-physical imprint with oil paint and canvas and a handful of bristle brushes. Maybe that’s what Art and Ascension really means, for me anyway. Using art to reach in, bring buried soul memories to the surface. A past death really, more than a past life, but still hidden away in a memory band of the auric field, out of reach by the mind, yet sensed by the intuitive heart.

Actually, there is no shortcut, though there is a chase often enough, chasing dreams,

painting by NW 1980s

chasing memories. Answering the call. And when it comes,

taking

the

plunge.

NW 1984

Interesting to go back and read my diary from all those years ago.

Excerpts from “Diary of a Painter” (1984)

“I see this woman, Nancy, who is passionately devoted to her work, her work of creating paintings from her heart, her sensibilities, making order out of chaos. Putting form to substance and giving substance to form. Her work is emotional, honest and filled with love and awe and wonder at the universe.”

“Don’t speak it, paint it. Draw it. Let your hand and eye be your mouthpiece. See how the disorganization of your mind shows up in every line you draw.”

“I wish I wasn’t so overcome by emotions. So many things are happening to me, in me. I can’t write about it. It’s too strong. I can’t paint it—yet. I am too overwhelmed.”

“I haven’t been painting because I didn’t know what to paint—or how. So I waited. I waited for it to come. A year I waited. And it came. Last night. The pain became too strong again. Only this time I wanted to transcend the pain of loss—of loneliness, of knowing. Transcend the  particular and become one with creation—the ALL. Life in all its colors. When my love is thwarted, I have no choice but to go the canvas and express even more love. I still have the feelings, the pain, yet it is soothed when I gently stroke the canvas and softly blend my colors.”

“Pulsing throbbing breath of life, inhale the whole and disappear in the cracks between the seconds.”

In the 1980s I wrote voluminous notes and journals about my life as a painter and all the various complicated romantic situations I was involved in that caused havoc emotionally yet fed my work. I am now mining this trove for my next memoir which is about battling the Dweller on the Threshold. I did a month long series on the Dweller earlier this year on blog talk radio – my show Art and Ascension.

More about the Dweller later. But in a nutshell, it can be described as the ‘shadow.’ The battle can be described as that between the lower self and the higher self, the Personality and the Soul. For me in this period, art and painting was the way I dealt with my demons, looked at my shadow, and explored the unknown, making it known.

Then this spring a weed appeared. I had left the flower container on the ledge, filled with soil, and just let it be, and now something else was growing in it. I didn’t notice it particularly, and certainly  not enough to do anything about it,  until the other day when the soil was all dried out and the weed (or whatever) was drooping forlornly. Better water it, I thought. Weed or no weed, it had the thoughtfulness to grace my window box with its presence and it deserved a drink of H2o.

Well, now we were getting personal. So I stood there at the kitchen window, thinking about how trees spring up in cracks in the pavement.

They don’t look like trees at first. They might just look like this one, a green shoot looking for the light. (This is the same window box as above; I’ve just colored it more green.)

But does a tree seed know that it’s only growing in a plastic container on someone’s kitchen window ledge? I don’t think so!

Here is a picture of a tree out back of my small apartment building. Doesn’t it look as if its growing out of the cement container there? Well guess what, it is!

I’m telling you these trees cannot be stopped. I’ve seen shoots sprouting up from cracks in the sidewalks of Brooklyn. (There’s something about Brooklyn…)

Remember the book A Tree Grows In Brooklyn….

That tree was an Ailanthus, or “Tree of Heaven”, native to China and Taiwan, and is common in vacant lots around New York City.

One never can tell…

So I think I will stop calling my ‘weed’ a weed, and perhaps think of it as a little tree, maybe? Because, who knows? (And if you know, then please don’t tell me. I like surprises! I like living in wonderment…)

Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall.

I was looking up. I saw the egg, then I blinked, and when I opened my eyes—he was gone! Not broken or cracked, or shattered irreparably—just gone. And all I saw then was an empty space on the wall. The space where the egg had been. The space where wholeness had been.

Because I was not looking down. If I had looked down, I would have seen Humpty splattered at my feet. An egg cracked open, yoke smearing the ground yellow. Slippery transparent whites oozing from the jagged edges of a shell once perfect and whole.

If I had looked down when I was 14 and 17 and 19, I might have shattered like Humpty. But I was not shattered. I was not looking down. If I had looked down, I might have seen a cracked egg and thought uh-oh, it’s broken! That egg is finished. Finito!  And then I might have thought I was finished too.

And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, Could not put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

Really? How surprising is that? Why didn’t anyone think to call the Ladies-in-Waiting? Ladies, waiting or not, know about eggs. How they appear and disappear at regular intervals. Do the king’s men have bodies like that?

I waited for Humpty to come back. My name is Nancy Wait. To wait is not a passive thing. Not at all. To ‘wait’ means to be in a constant state of readiness. Instead of calling the king’s men, I would have called the Ladies-in-Waiting.

Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall.

Between seeing Humpty up on the wall, and seeing the egg cracked open, there was a period of sailing through the air. There was an in-flight-ness. A voyage before landing. In the blink of an eye—a voyage!

Gravity brought him down. And finally, I had to look down too. But by that time, the yolk had turned hard and crumbled to dust. The white had soaked into the earth. All that was left was the cracked pieces of shell. I think it made a difference, not seeing the spillage, because when I look back at disruptions in my life, I don’t see guts spilled on the ground. I see pieces and cracked bits. I see brokenness, and I see me, sailing on.