Comfortable

It would be so easy
to be instant macaroni and cheese
sitting on the shelf in a neon colored uniform
with dozens of other boxes all the same.
Familiar.
Uncomplicated.
Always in demand.
Ready to heat and eat.
Overly processed by artificially colored instant American values
and covered in Velvetta "cheese food," one molecule away from plastic.
Bait for the busy and the distracted
and those with indiscriminate palettes.
Bland.
Predictable.
False.
Comfortable.
Offering little nourishment but gobbled down without reflection.
What is a box of macaroni and cheese to the Master Chef
but a shameful waste of potential
that leads to a trail of antacids?

Why Settle for a Palapa When You Can Sit Under a Banyan Tree?

The Tree of Enlightenment by Amy Scholten

What does the word vacation mean to you? Freedom from responsibilities? A chance to relax and have fun? For me it’s an opportunity to increase my clarity and experience things more fully. It’s a clearing out process that happens when we’re in a more relaxed state and different environment. The word vacation ultimately means to “vacate” or leave behind.

This summer we vacationed on the small Caribbean island of Aruba, where my husband Brian has family roots. Once we got there, most of the cares of “real life” were blown out to sea on balmy breezes and washed away by turquois beaches. The biggest problem was a palapa shortage. Palapas are small beach shelters roofed with palm leaves. After standing in line and missing out on a palapa several times, we sought shade beneath a large, sprawling banyan tree instead. The tree sat directly behind a shelter where a young native couple sold tours and water activities to tourists.

With its multiple layers, bidirectional roots, and branches reaching into the great Abyss, the banyan tree is a symbol of the self and its journey toward enlightenment. Still, we grumbled about our fate. How had life become so competitive that getting a stupid beach palapa was even a struggle? With that thought, the balmy trade winds wooshed another insult in our direction: cigarette smoke. I needed no further proof that Paradise was an illusion. I looked over at our chain smoking palapa-less neighbor glued to his computer. Paul Fussel, author of The Dumbing of America, referred to people who couldn’t put their computers and cell phones down, even on a beguiling beach, as “connectivity assholes.”

My plan was to read for a few minutes and then head to the water to get away from connectivity asshole. When I finally shifted my attention off the secondhand smoke, I noticed that the banyan tree was constantly full of birds, birds that were always eating. It would only be a matter of time before we’d be “shat” upon, I thought, hapless and palapa-less, a spectacle for our fellow tourists and fodder for their humorous vacation stories. 

As I made my way down to the water, I sensed something behind me. And then a small and gentle hand suddenly held mine. I turned around to find a little black boy in diapers, smiling at me. He greeted me in Papiamento, the native language of Aruba. I recognized him as the quiet and serene child of the native couple selling tours and water sports.  So tender was the moment that all curmudgeonly thoughts of the day faded in a twinkling. In that instant, I was overcome by a feeling of being held in the arms of a loving universe. How miraculous that a child’s innocence and unguarded heart could be so powerful, like the warm Aruban sun melting layers of ice dams that had slowly been crushing my soul.

The boy’s name was Kiko. For the next few days, I watched him and his family living and working close to nature. Kiko had great freedom for a tiny tike. He toddled down the beach by himself to explore, but always seemed to know when he had strayed too far from his parents. Fully engrossed in all his activities, he was an amazing swimmer and castle builder. Despite a dearth of toys, he never seemed bored, fussy or burdensome. His parents seemed equally serene. His father, Dawid, a tall, lanky young man with braids pulled into a small ponytail, often took the boy out on a paddleboard late in the afternoon. We eventually became friendly with Dawid and his wife Junaida. They were excited to learn of Brian’s Aruban roots.

One afternoon Dawid offered to let me borrow his paddleboard. I had seen only young people on paddleboards, and I had seen several fall off them when boats created waves. Though I felt too old and stiff to get up on one, Dawid taught me how. Awkwardly, I managed, kneeling and paddling and bobbing along into the sunset. The familiar started to shrink in the distance as the waves carried me into the vastness of an unknown ocean, challenging both my balance and my mastery of the oar. It was exhilarating and frightening to see my surroundings from an entirely different perspective. Once again I felt the universe reach out – this time through calming, caressing rays of sun that seemed to awaken an inner wisdom, focus and confidence as I navigated back to shore.

After hours in the water, I settled back under the tree to relax and read, but it was difficult to concentrate. Exquisitely beautiful and flutey-sounding bird calls kept coming from the branches above. I spent 10 minutes struggling to see what the elusive songster looked like. Suddenly, the bright orange and black bird flew down and presented himself right on my beach chair! From his appearance and song I guessed he was an oriole of some sort. Internet research confirmed that I was correct – he was a South American Troupial, a type of oriole.

The Troupial became a daily visitor, often accompanied by a bright yellow female to whom he was very attentive. I held Brian’s hand. “Two love birds in the tree and two love birds under the tree.” When Dawid, Junaida and Kiko left their station briefly, the mischievous Troupials rummaged through Styrofoam boxes of food left on their picnic table. However, they never “shat” on us.

Just as I attempted to return to my reading, a new character—a large, bright green iguana— made his debut. He too, was a “regular” who liked to pose for pictures. Two paragraphs into my book later, another “regular” caught my attention: a lanky young native man sporting long brown dreadlocks and a tri-colored Rastafarian hat. He strolled along the beach with a trail of eight multicolored dogs trotting obediently behind, bemusing many tourists.

As each day passed, Kiko, Dawid, Junaida, the singing Troupials, the posing green iguanas, the Rasta Dog Walker, and the chain smoking connectivity asshole were there on the scene. And then I realized something: we were there on purpose, one big eclectic happy family. The clearing out process had been accomplished. We felt healthy, whole and at peace, with the sun on our backs and life unfolding all around us beneath the banyan tree and beyond.

Would I go back and trade it for a palapa? Not on your life. 

You Are the Canvas

You Are the Canvas prints and cards available HERE

You are a canvas stretched across the frame of the Great Spirit. Your image fashioned by the paint brush of free will. Your color and texture composed of a palette of situations, relationships and choices…and sometimes fate…all unique to you, and all subject to interpretation.  It doesn’t matter if others don’t understand or appreciate your composition. You are of the Great Spirit. No matter what, you are loved.

But your worst fear is being a blank, white canvas…drab and insignificant, even when passionate crimson screams through the pores of your skin and bleeds right through your heart. Up from the depths of your soul is a bright Light that wants to shine into the jonquil sun. It is your birthright to shine, says the Great Spirit! But Light is the delicate flame of a heavenly scented candle. It blows in the winds of a world snared in its own concern and littleness. You must guard it from being snuffed out by oatmeal indifference and graying numbness.

Sometimes you’ll spin in circles or meet crossroads leading nowhere. Don’t drown in indigo tears. You’re learning. A splash of green reveals your innocence and need to grow, to ascend into opaque lavender. This need never dies, but something in you will die if it’s not fulfilled. Pick up your brush. Stretch beyond your reach. Step into a puddle of pink. Scream out to a world lulled and dulled to sleep. Make your brushstrokes memorable! “Fitting in” is a universal temptation but it pares the majestic eagle down to a gimping starling.

The child within you is an incandescent bright gold star. She knows the right shapes and colors if she’s left alone. Do not splatter random, haphazard streaks across your canvas in frustration. Remember that you are deserving of an artist of the highest order. You are the canvas.

Winter Takes Its Fools

 Elk Under the Northern Lights cards and prints available HERE

Winter fools me every year, creeping in on the breeze of a silent night, like twinkly sugarplum fairies prancing past red and gold bangles on a scented evergreen. It stealthily carries the warmth of the hearth’s crackle to the soft blue candles in every window, and then tucks itself under the covers where I’m lulled to dreamland by a barely audible choir that sings of heavenly peace. The house is warm with pumpkin spice and the love of a man and two snuggly dogs. The ghosts of yuletide gatherings softly reappear. Mom and Dad are there, smiling as we open presents. Grandma is at the door with an apple pie. The snow comes gently falling. And once again I’m fooled.

Sometime during the night, my winter bliss is sucked into a polar vortex and I come out the other end of it a dried up, itchy, bloodless clump of frozen meat with icicles in my veins, barely functioning on the waning juice of a drained freezer battery.  I’m a dark and heavily robed scythe-wielding skeleton chipping away at the layers of an ice grave. But my arms are so heavy, so weak. And I’m so hungry...SO hungry. Ravenous….I’ll eat anything in sight just for the strength to tunnel out of this coffin of hell frozen over. But my arms and legs just get heavier, my mind anemic for sun, for hope, for just a flower…

What’s reality? Is it sugar plum fairies? I don’t think so. It’s bursting pipes, stomach bugs, and frozen snot. It’s the reduced visual field of a road-shit splattered car with exhausted windshield fluid.  It’s the biting gaggle of seasonal curmudgeons casting shadows across the wintry landscape of my mind.  It’s the nincompoop wearing shorts and flip flops on a 10 degree (F) day. It’s a frostbitten middle finger in the face of global warming.

It’s my own self-doubt that keeps me going, that says maybe this isn’t reality, maybe it’s just a snowstorm in my brain, a whiteout in my consciousness.

Against a backdrop of endless gray, a little girl holds my hand and laughs, catching snowflakes in her mouth. There are castles in the air but she can’t reach them without me.  “Please,” she begs, pointing toward the roof. I reach, jump, crackle and pop, breaking through my glacial tomb if just for a moment. I return with an icicle and hand it to the girl as sparkly sugarplum fairies dance in her eyes. A moment of winter bliss returns. And once again I’m fooled.

Beyond Shadows of Darkness

"Moonbeam Ripples Across the Tide" prints and cards are available HERE.

Beyond shadows of darkness you will glide... on moonbeam ripples across the tide.

When we traverse life's storms with deep discouragement, it's as if our burdened arms can't raise the sails. This painting was inspired to remind us that the moon and the stars shine bright and staid over us and that by looking to the light, we will eventually find our way out of the darkness.

One of my sources of light is creativity---channeling my feelings into a painting or poem. When immersed in the creative process, I often reach new insights and tap into a source of universal wisdom and knowing. If nothing else, I experience the process of flow, a positive (even euphoric) mental state that results from energized focus on a certain activity.

It's immensely helpful to have multiple sources of "light" such as supportive friends, spiritual resources, and activities that engage and motivate us. What are your sources of "light" when you're feeling discouraged with life's inevitable problems?

The Tyrannical Facade of the Clock

See more of Amy Scholten's original art at Inner Medicine Art Gallery

The clock rules my life, even more so as I get older. Plunging toward 50, the minutes and hours seem shorter and shorter, the race more urgent. There’s less time to accomplish dreams. More time to realize how much time I’ve wasted on being nothing but a dreamer. In a repeating compulsion to actualize my dreams once again, I realize that maybe I’m better off just being a dreamer. Maybe it’s what I do best.

Contemplation. Imagination. In our time-driven world, these things aren’t seen as valuable, but a waste of time. A life is not measured by one’s inner experience or spiritual attainment but by the rhythm to which she achieves the values that her culture deems worthy under the rule of the tick tocking of a tiny tyrannical machine.  How many are praised for their ability to worship the clock effectively by accumulating money, admirers, symbols of status—a life “well lived” according to someone else, even if they’re not genuinely happy or loving? Even if, in their “productive” use of time, they’re harming creatures great and small because they haven’t taken the time to contemplate who they are and what they’re really doing?

Sometimes I want to throttle the clock, but then I realize its tyranny is a façade, a symbol, and nothing more. In my contemplation, it loses its power over me, at least for a few minutes.

How Does Her Garden Grow?

 "Summer Garden at Dusk" by Amy Scholten.  Amy's original paintings can be purchased at Inner Medicine Art Gallery

Amy, wary, so contrary, how does her garden grow? With seeds planted too late to bear fruit. With compost that ends up feeding the bugs and not the plants. With store bought tomato plants that cost more than the money she saves from gardening. With many busy hours spent accomplishing nothing while dreaming of an ideal future that already happened yesterday, or is happening here and now, only she’s too focused on tomorrow to experience it.

Her garden grows from endless rain, weeds that crush the coveted peas, deer flies that swarm around her head, and barking dogs that want to be fed green and wax beans that haven’t even sprouted yet. It grows from the rocky goddamned soil that she should’ve tested before buying the plastic spider-breeding ranch house that sits on it, which she didn’t want in the first place but bought because of the nice big flat green yard that would provide a perfect garden. It grows from cow shit that she buys, dog shit that she throws out, and all the shit that she doesn’t buy or throw out.

Her garden grows from an almost 50 year old back that’s aching from all the muscle it takes to plow, plant, weed  and water every inch of this bug biting, slug crawling, wormy little dirt farm of diminutive predators that try to eat it. And she wonders if maybe she’s just a little bit crazy!

Her garden grows from grace, because there’s always a drought when she’s on vacation and her half-assed friend barely waters it and what can she do, fire him? It grows because she comes home a week later and waters the living crap back into it and revives it, wondering why her friend said he’d do it when he didn’t.

Her garden grows because of the lure of magical butterflies and splendid September days when there’s a quiet, reassuring hum of crickets that harken love and abundance, as they did years ago when she burst forth from her hopeful mother’s labor, like the sweet, ripened tomatoes that now fall at her feet.