Walking Brushes

I haven't blogged for quite a while because it seems that my life has been so full lately.

As I watched our sumi-e teacher do his demonstration last week, it occurred to me that he makes his brush walk! I know that he has been doing this for a very long time and it makes me wonder if I will ever be able to make my brush walk across the paper as he does. Each one of his strokes is beautiful--with the flick of a wrist, he can create a flower, the tail of a bird, or other great images. I create mine with the flick of a risk. Most of his paintings are done without actually looking at something, as most of the students--at least me--do. I imagine it is from years of studying nature and really being in tune with the tenets, zen principles. I rather like it when we read one of those principles at the beginning of each class. I can't do great strokes of the brush yet, but I can interpret the tenets.

One of the tenets last week was about everyone having a nature--if we all remained in our nature, it makes coexistence easier. It is when we disrespect the nature of others that problems occur.

I digressed once again. My thought about walking brushes is that we each have a brush to walk. Mine may not be in putting a painting on rice paper, my brush may be something else. I know that I have walked a "teaching brush" for most of my life, and now I am walking a "freetirement brush" which consists of doing all of the things I like doing and exploring other "brushes" which are foreign to me.

Find your brush and use it!