Coat
of Many Colors
20 X
25 watercolor, 1982
spiritual trailblazers
the story of
this painting
.
.
The minute I heard
my first love story
I started looking
for you, not knowing
how blind that
was.
Lovers don't finally
meet somewhere.
They're in each
other all along.
Rumi(1)
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.
.
The
Story of this Painting
Man in rainbow
black shawl, firekeeper. You hypnotized me with your exotic, brown
eyed power. Burning fire, boundaryless, stay in your circle, don't
consume me. Yet I reach out to handle coals as you do. Two pronged
deer antlers, a sacred tool of firekeepers came to my hands as I walked
in the hills. Now I too could stir the fires glowing ashes and recite
important words. The water drum sounded its love affirmation for the
earth, the fire played its air harp, women transformed into ancient
muses reciting poetry, but my words were hiding. Men put on the masks
of bards and sang great tales of grandeur. My body ached. Do I have
permission to go to the john? Who's writing the rules here anyway?
I smell vomit, one drops in exhaustion, another shakes away her ghosts,
slowly the night wears on. The firekeeper sits, a rainbow mountain
of strength, his eyes viewing distant places looking through me. How
I wish to know what he sees. Darkness caresses my eyes. Moments, aeons
pass and I look up to see an ultramarine blue sky. The fire roars
at the dawn and a white eagle soars from its center, up through its
spiraling life. My song comes as I witness the new day's birth. "Thank
you for the spiral dance, one with the spirit."
Lifetimes later:
Dreaming of brown bears I wake up. A shabby motel room on my trip
through the southwest doesn't feed my need for entertainment, so I
flick on my mind channel and remember someone I shouldn't. Deciding
to meditate and watch my breath instead I feel myself rising. From
my body floats a woman with outstretched arms, woven colors softly
flowing from her back. Before me descending is the dark rainbowed
black shawled man, so beautiful I am transfixed in awe before him.
We embrace and he melds into me, both dissolving into tingly warm
colors and light.
Even then it took
me years to understand that this man of power lives inside of me.
This butterfly cloak, my vision, my life spread out behind me, a rainbow
cloak only I could weave through action in the world.
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.
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Lovers think they're
looking for each other,
but there's only
one search: wandering
this world is
wandering that, both inside
one transparent
sky. In here there is no
dogma and no heresy.
Rumi(2)
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1.
Rumi, Open Secret, Quatrain #1246
2.
Ibid., p.27
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