Trish Roque's Artistic Explorations » art journal http://trishroque.com Living & creating in the space between thoughts Fri, 04 Mar 2011 16:26:36 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 No apologies for my impeded stream http://trishroque.com/2010/05/no-apologies-for-my-impeded-stream/ http://trishroque.com/2010/05/no-apologies-for-my-impeded-stream/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 08:22:26 +0000 trish http://trishroque.com/?p=275 Here’s a beautiful and inspiring poem by Zen practitioner Wendell Berry:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our

real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have

begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

dharma art journal page

The bodhisattva has to be a warrior - another page from the dharma journal


I perceive my biggest problem to be that I can’t seem to focus on just one thing – there’s the side of me that needs to work with my hands by playing with tangible objects through artistic endeavors.  Make paintings, drawings, jewelry, sculpture, prints, etc.

There’s another part that has the desire to learn everything I can to become a better web designer and WordPress gal. I want to learn to program PHP, not just manipulate the code. I want to get better and better at Photoshop, Illustrator, my Wacom graphics tablet, etc, etc.

I sometimes feel like I’m being torn in so many directions and I catch myself apologizing for feeling like a Jill of all trades but master of none.

My stream turns into rapids very quickly when I’m in this mode. So what to do?

Lately, I turn to sitting. Then I accept this is who I am. And I won’t apologize for that.

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]]> http://trishroque.com/2010/05/no-apologies-for-my-impeded-stream/feed/ 0 What my monkey mind looks like http://trishroque.com/2010/05/what-my-monkey-mind-looks-like-2/ http://trishroque.com/2010/05/what-my-monkey-mind-looks-like-2/#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 05:12:35 +0000 trish http://trishroque.com/?p=270 As I explained in my previous post, I spent all of last week at a mediation/creativity retreat. We focused our creativity on a dharma art journal. This journal was to be a space for expressing ourselves freely and without judgment.

My monkey mind

What the inside of my head looked like (more or less) on day one of sitting


The first day of sitting was actually quite rough. I had a headache that lasted the entire day and my mind would not quiet down. Two words kept popping up to describe what has happening in my head: monkey mind.

I did not invent this description; it came from one of my numerous Zen books (unfortunately, I can’t remember which one). You know this state of mind though.

We’ve all experienced it: the one in which you lie awake at night, sleepless, because your mind is racing a mile a minute from all the thoughts flooding your head.

Well, that was me on day one, only add on top of that a throbbing headache.

So, rather than fight monkey mind, I allowed it to be. Then I exploded in my journal and took 2 aspirins.

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