July 9, 2024,
Early gray-blue morning, Saint-Malo.
Like every day of the year, I aspire to join the studio. The throbbing center of my existence, I have until now sometimes invested too much in it through the prism of discipline and production. But for a few days, this space has been rejecting me, stuffed with my overly voluntary, almost martial approach. It vomits me: impossible to take 3 steps in there.
I know it is urgent to take stock. It is time for a big tidy-up and to take a step back. Sorting, cleaning the place like one detoxifies a tired organ will not take place before the months of rain and storms that will follow the autumn equinox.
It's summer. The season is against me.
So for the first time, I have to practice abandoning “Doing” in favor of “Being.” And I cannot express how difficult this exercise is, starting with purging it of all pollutants such as judgment and guilt.
I also hear that sitting on a cushion every day is not “Doing Nothing” either: there are forms, rituals, a certain relationship to time:
“ I + Meditate ”.
This practice is part of a series of active commitments that I have been involved in on a daily basis until now.
“To be” then… Let go of the effort. Just breathe, look, maybe walk and explore aimlessly the country paths around the house. It’s like bungee jumping, I’ve never done that and I’m scared.
August 19, 2024,
Cloudy afternoon, Saint-Malo.
I am learning.
I am learning to no longer have an agenda, to forget the phone, to slow down, to untie myself, to untie the days. It is difficult and from the palimpsest of these detachments and renunciations emerge the questions of the reason to paint or to abandon, to leave or to anchor oneself, to forget oneself or to reinvent oneself…
Soon, it will be the August super blue moon. My contemplations bring me back to the same celestial event of the previous year, the one that accompanied the passage of my friend Aviva Gold* to the other side of the visible.
These last few mornings, as I scribble in my journal, Aviva's voice, aura, energy impose themselves on me with force: she asks me if I would agree to transcribe a text, something already written.
I now think I formally accepted with a resounding “Yes,” but strong in my recent progress in “The Art of Doing Nothing,” I procrastinated — rather embarrassed, I confess, by the nature of the request and its terms.
I am quickly called to order: after ten days without opening a notebook, “they” inform me that I had been released from my commitment; the transcription project would now be entrusted to a more diligent channel, in Iceland.
Offended, I then set to work seriously and diligently, and this without interruption until the end of the transcription in September.
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*Aviva was one of my teachers and a friend in painting. See the article: https://www.carolinemaby.art/post/aviva
October 19, 2024,
Morning mist, Saint-Cast le Guildo.
From a few weeks of writing came this collection called “Dungkar”, which means “Conch” or “Shell” in Tibetan. I didn’t choose this title, but I like it.
“The Voice” had announced 45 very short chapters to me. It stopped after the 45th one.
The text seems to have been addressed to me in the first instance, for personal reasons including that of realigning myself with my commitment as a painter.
I sought to understand the meaning of this experience, as well as the best use to make of the collection. Rereading it invited me to reinvest the studio, with a newly disposed heart and mind, and to approach the creative process by another path.
In the happy prospect that you would also resonate with this notebook, I have finally decided to share it ~ as it is.
I would be happy to send a free copy in .pdf format (in French only) to the newsletter subscribers who are interested, upon request to hello@carolinemaby.art
~ Meiun Caroline Maby
You can also encourage my work and buy " DUNGKAR " ( ~ in French only ) :