I begin reading @lesliestarrohara and @erikaharris's post this morning called Art Your Way to Anarchy.

And I’m about 5 paragraphs in, somehow already inspired. My tea is beside me and my new rosemary plant behind that piece of gnarled driftwood I found on the Oregon coast last summer.

I read further and am swept away with the beauty of the Lewis Carroll quote, that @erikaharris found,

"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”

What a perfect quote, not only for her topic but to just stop and think about. Stop and day dream on it with me for a bit. Give it more that, not just a cursory read over. Imagination is a weapon. I never thought of it as so. But so it is. And then the 2nd part, is reality an enemy to fight? Maybe sometimes it is. I might see it more as a yin and yang, switching back and forth like an AC current.

But she speaks to us about not fighting a war with “hostility” or violence but instead with “honey”. I stop to think more deeply about this, getting up from my desk to refill my cup of tea. I think of movements by Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. Really picturing images in my head of how I imagine it, probably amalgamations of clips you might se of the scenes. And It makes me think that maybe their purposes, no their message, isn’t exactly non-violent opposition but instead just the idea of, “we have other choices,” “we can emulate new ideas to show opposition,” “there are other ways.” Sometimes it’s hard to use language to describe a deep down feeling, an understanding you have, something in your heart and head that you know but can’t express. My descriptions, I feel, about this idea aren’t getting the point across. I’ll keep trying.

It’s the feeling of giving people what they want, giving people another option that is more appealing than the current status quo. You getting what I mean yet? Sure we do it “this” way now but how much better would it be to do it “that” way? Somehow I think of a relevant quote I wrote down the other day and page through my notebook to find it for you, “The delicate balance of taking initiative and at the same time giving back control.” Chew on that a bit. Now apply all this thinking to @erikaharris’s idea of using art for opposition of our current reality to our current option of hostility. It feels like the given better choice.

I continue reading and sipping my tea…

I love her analogy of Lasik eye correction to coming into an understanding of anarchy. I also think of Socrates (or was it Aristotle) and their analogy of the cave when I read this. Once your eyes haves seen the light, how do you show the others without sounding like a complete lunatic? With art?

Next, another quote from Alice in Wonderland.

"But I forgot, you must close your eyes, otherwise you won’t see anything.”

Imagination and its links to freedom. I try to see how this fits into my own life. How does it fit into yours? Do you imagine what your life could be like? Do you act on creating those things you imagine for yourself? I tell myself, “Yes. Yes I do and I am.” Why else did I leave here for a solid year but to adventure out to find something? And with that outward adventure of movement and change I realize I was only looking for something I had inside all this time. Like losing your keys, looking everywhere and finding them in your own pocket, where they’d been the whole time. But I had to leave, to go on that adventure. Sometimes experiences are the only way to come up with your own conclusions. Sometimes following the dream in your imagination leads you to the thing you seek. And usually that thing you seek is not an object at all but a feeling, an understanding that language is too primitive to define.

I continue on reading to a list of books I’m ashamed to say I have not read.

1984, Animal Farm, A Brave New World …

@lesliestarrohara continues on to explain that we should, “Show, Not Tell,” with our particular art. She gives some examples.

I think of bob curled up on the floor balling and reminisce on my own experience of the sorts, desperate loud obnoxious sobs. Yep I’ve been there. And yes I empathize with Bob.

But I forget about Bob when she brings up her next idea.

This “precipice” … I’ve been teetering on it myself.

I think of an indiscriminate person balanced in a yoga pose upon a sharp peak attempting calmly not to fall into a pit of thinking on one side and a pit of doing on the other. But my mind allows the person to falter and fall off into doing. The person falls and becomes me here now at my desk doing this, writing to you.

Her next major premise is that this art we create can be used to show others this awakened state. In her description a freedom we do not yet have.

In her words, Anarchy.

In mine, maybe something a little different, a little more flowery, and spirituality, and nature, and consciousness, but I feel like the ideas are somehow one and the same. And I relate in that my own art, my writing and books yet to come, is exactly what she speaks of. A way of showing others this awakened state, what it feels like, what it looks like.

Her examples of how powerful art can be in transforming opinions and opening societies eyes to alternate ways of seeing excites me. It catapults me into visions of the future and how my own words might affect the opinions and views of others. A naysaying voice in my head says, “no way. I couldn’t be so influential.” But I push myself to believe that little ol’ me could actually be. And little ol’ you too.

She speaks of the possibility of creation through the imaginative wonderings of art and my mind swims in a soup of ideas. How can I participate? “By creating,” that internal voice whispers.

“By what?”

“By creating,” the voice says again louder.

I ask myself one more time what I can do and force the internal voice to say it louder and stronger and unabashedly, “By creating!” Who is there to be embarrassed of but myself I wonder.

I’ve tipped off that pinnacle into a state of doing now. I guess what I found in the past year of searching is the power within myself to leap off that pinnacle and to begin doing. To begin creating and letting that work be seen.

So here I am.