This piece taught me how to paint! In the original, I thought of Lisa Frank—which led to the purple table & blue sunflowers, and the rest unravels from there.
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I thought about the phrase on the planter labels for, let’s say, a long time. It had to be something that recognizes the project: this idea that we’re in a period of renewal that refuses acceptance of the way things are, that it is what it is; a period that reverses our points of view.
The words came to mind during days of silent vipassana meditation. Walking out of an affective sit, I hear Alan Watts in my head: “All space becomes your mind… [time carries you along like a river… and you no longer have to fight to kill it]” (1966). It was one of many recent moments where something I knew made sense for the first time—via thinking less, feeling more.
But if I were to articulate “All space becomes your mind…,” I’d mention how vipassana has us feeling sensation, neutrally, throughout our bodies, finding all pain and pleasure as part of the “equanimous” mind thus extended to all space within. Add to it Alan Watts: that “the world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside.” Or, more basically as Buddha teaches: that our thoughts are not our own—that “all of nature thinks, and human consciousness is a reflection of the consciousness of all” (Parry 2015). &, of course, Krishnamurti, who writes of an attention without centre.
Then I’m thinking of Carolyn Elliot in Existential Kink (2020)… describing how our current experience is the subjective projection of our entire lives: that everybody is a light wearing a unique, snowflakey lampshade of a psychological schemata that their light shines through. I wonder literally if all space becomes our minds, what kind of world have we created? And like this, there’s the mindfulness of making worlds where everyone can live peacefully with everything they need.
I added the Statue of Liberty to highlight the influence of not only the U.S. but imperialism writ large and the myth of freedom within capitalism. In a culture projecting an idea that anything goes in pursuit of the “new,” I hope instead we can reflect and readjust in favor of restitution and reparations.
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Elliott, C. (2020). Existential kink: Unmask your shadow and embrace your power. Reveal Press.
Parry, G. A. (2015). Original thinking: A radical revisioning of time, humanity, and nature. North Atlantic Books.
Watts, A. (1966). The book: On the taboo against knowing who you are. Pantheon Books.…...
p.s. the irony of this message is not lost on me. To be equanimous means nothing needs to change. In this equanimity, we find peace and quiet, the end of suffering. Still, direction is important.
