"The Masks"
By James Ensor 1897

Speculating on the Unknowable--The family is huge and many of us were at the hospital at the same time waiting to see Ferdie, I abandoned thinking about what I was going to say to Ferdie in favor of observing the faces of the family with whom I matured. Sorrow, concern, doubt, fear, grief, faith, denial, hope, anticipation were some of the identifiable states of mind worn by family members as masks of their awareness of the “little death”. The “little death” goes beyond the idea of the death bed towards the greater lesson of change.

Manet's Balcony
by Renee Magritte, 1950

Without our Comfort Zones we are lost!

When faced with death we are suddenly ejected into an unknown realm of Uncertainty and Change. We want to BELIEVE in the permanence of Reality but are temporarily shocked into peering into Reality’s Illusion — behind Reality is a Great Unknown.

The “little death” Everyday-- Everyday we experience a significant change in our consciousness when we go to sleep and dream. The term, “little death”, is often associated with this daily change in our body and conscious mind. While we all know we need to sleep for health, we also know either consciously or subconsciously that we are succumbing to the very shallow edges of the Great Unknown.

"The Nightmare"
by Henry Fuseli, 1781-1782

Welcome to Another Bend In the Labyrinth of the Human Condition--While waiting in the hospital hallway sharing in Uncle Ferdie’s ultimate transition, I wondered where our fears of death begin. From religions to philosophies to rationalizations of war, poverty and neglect, so much human speculation and action revolve around the Mystery of Death. For each of us our fears develop from the many ways we can plug in to this aspect of the Human Condition. For me I suspect it began as a child left alone to face one simple realization; everyone I love could die and leave me alone in a world I don’t understand. And all I could wonder was what’s worse, to be alone in life or dead. Both conditions were equally scary to me.

Simply put life is a process that we control and create by how we think; and death is an essential element of life over which we have no control. Things we can not control throw us into a state of uncertainty. Clinging to the Comfort Zone’s rationalizations and possessions gives the illusion of control over these insecurities about life and death; but blind us to our real potential and teaches us to fear change. This is when the Comfort Zone becomes our prison and diminishes our life potential and experience.

At this stage of my life I’ve decided that death of the body is the least of my worries, but the quality of life is my priority. Life’s no longer about possessions and rationalizations but about staying ‘in the moment’ and not wallowing in the sorrows, angers and regrets of the past. It’s about accepting who I am now and improving the quality of my life experience until that moment I take my last breath and can pass through that Door of Finality knowing I lived my life to its fullest potential and have no regrets.

energy with comments that make it seem they are the only ones with original ideas and all you do is copy THEM. After awhile there is no point in talking with them anymore because according to their perfect perceptions you are no longer worthy of their presence and a target of personal attacks.

It can get that BAD!

These type of people evolve into very toxic personalities to be around. They constantly remind you of how smart they are, how perfect their lives are and how they are the leading edge of thought and creativity;and that everyone around them just isn't sharp enough to understand them. But YET they can't seem to make anything happen until they hijack other creative people's ideas as their own. They depend on and abuse a person's good nature not to bust them and break their delusions they constantly repeat as truths.

There doesn't seem to be anyway to deal with these vampires other than to simply not have them in your life. No amount of hinting or straight talk about their behavior gets through to them. Exile seems to be the only answer. Even at that you run the risk of gossip and back stabbing by these people as revenge for cutting them loose from the creative gravy train.

But eventually they shut up because they can't afford to loose any remaining audience/ friends/ contacts they have. And of course these vampiric pirates must find new creative sources to mine or their work comes to a complete standstill.

And just for the record I'm not perfect and have never made such claims. But I do work HARD to produce the work I do and I can say that it is as genuine as I can make it. There is a definite difference in having life inspire you to work and just vicariously mimicking other people's inspirations and then calling them your own. It doesn't matter what level of genius or creative talent you are, if you're undisciplined and adverse to honest self-reflection you are doomed to become the type of energetic vampire I described above. There's no substitute for the hard work that leads to manifested inspired visions.

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Last year four women began a blog on Yaho360 which is loosely dedicated to art and life. I am a member of this blog and share freely my observations and feelings about everything.