steel braid

steel braid, originally uploaded by Justin Davis Davanzo.

I always liked to color...when I was a kid. I remember a full set of Pentel coloring pens. They were in a plastic yellow folder with a strap the held it closed and black writing on the front, and upon opening it, the rainbow of pens would meet your eyes. I also had numerous coloring books, but my favorite was the dungeon and dragon types. The ones with dragons, knights, battles, wizards, and castles. I may have even had some that were Lord of the Ring specials, point being, i loved to create that world in my own color. I would spend hours coloring in those books on my belly on the floor, many times right next to my best friend Gus and we would talk about the world we were creating or we'd simply not say anything for hours.

My coloring style was not simply filling in the space. No. It was a careful dissection of each moment and part and shape. I would outline the particular spot to be colored and then i would color it in by adding a vertical or horizontal line, followed by another until that space was filled....i guess one could say, i colored within the lines...a very slow and careful process that i loved to do.

I woke up thinking about this today and wondering what I still do like that, and then I realized i do almost everything that way...slowly and deliberately with great care and attention to detail. My brain just works well that way...a focused and designed practice of all things. Granted, sometimes, it slows me down and I don't finish things completely, but at the same time, i realize that my mind works the same way no matter what it is i am doing.

that is a blessing as I grow older because i can start to draw parallels to things that I love to do and how i love to do them...i simply go back to how i worked things out as a kid...how my imagination put me in the moment and the world and the task in front of me....except now, i get to be wise about it...you know, a great teacher always tells us to forget it all and start fresh as if we don't know. That is the place of trust within ourselves...to realize that we have been practicing all our lives and learning and now we get to leave it all behind in a great act of freedom and creativity, because we have it all in our bones and in our minds and in our hearts. Now we can trust that our blood will drive our energy towards something that we always had inside us while forgetting all technique....

closing our eyes with wild abandon and jumping, because we already know we can fly. We have been flying already....

Love and understanding.