I am sitting at a pine desk that overlooks trees and rooftops. There is the sound of passing cars, a drill, sea gulls and Edward and the Magnetic Zeroes (a mad LA band playing out of the computer). This is my first day after waking up in my own home in Portland.

It is an exciting moment! And one that demands much writing in journals and looking out of windows and pondering, watching and listening, but I am besieged by work these days, so I am trying to contain my excitement. I am attempting to tether myself to the desk (albeit a gorgeously situated one) and focus. Stay with the screen, stay with the project, stay with the words.

Which brings me to the day's topic: focus. Are we able to focus anymore?

I have taken on a few clients who I am working for on an hourly basis. Which means I need to very carefully note down how many hours I work for them (I am a Buddhist, and cannot lie, and am taking great lengths to be accurate in this).

And it's proving to be shocking. I appear to have a one-hour attention span, after which I automatically have to stop what I'm doing and leap onto something else. I do not seem to have the ability to stay present, on one thing, for longer than 60 minutes. Now, it's not that I'm lazy. I jump into something else, and work on that, then leap back and continue where I left off. I blame it partly on recent full-time jobs where I was multitasking many different elements, and thus working on five projects at once.

But it still makes me think, deep down, that there is something amiss here. Are we all becoming instantaneous junkies? Are we losing the ability to stay still? iPhones and Gmail and Pandora and Google News and Facebook all are training me to jump from topic to topic. Cannot stay too long, quick dart over there! Something new to stimulate me! It becomes like an addiction.

I see it when I pull out my meditation cushion and sit down, and close my eyes, and start to focus on my breath. I see how my mind wants to keep jumping. But the key is to stay still. To sit and be patient and remain with the breath. Don't give in to that urge. Don't jump up when the mind demands it. Just breathe.

And you know what happens when we remain still for just beyond our comfort level? When we go past that trigger that normally throws us into something else? It's painful for a moment, but then... ahhh... something shifts. We meet contentment. We feel a sense of calm and inner peace arise. We get a taste of the sublime. And then, it's like all the creative power comes through. All that power that lies in the subtle mind, below the chatter of distraction.

I am seeing, more and more, how my meditation practice and my life intersect. I need to train my mind to stay still, and I know that as a result, my work will improve. I will be able to go deeper, to find the solutions, to touch the creative space where the ideas dwell. And if it means turning off my web browser for three hours, I think it's a habit I need to start to cultivate.


(Image from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org )

I've had the luck of late to once again transcribe the words of artists, curators and critics from this year's ART HK International Art Fair, and the Backroom Conversations program organized by the Asia Art Archive. I've pulled my laptop out into the garden with my view of blackberry bushes dripping with fruit, the occasional skunk walking by on a mission to the compost heavy with remains from Shawn and Amanda's wedding last weekend.

I've opened iTunes on my iPhone, slipped my earphones in, and have been transported to the halls of the Convention and Exhibition Center in Hong Kong, and the latest innovations in contemporary Asian art. On quite a few occasions, I've pressed stop, sat back, pondered the combination of New England country bliss and extraorindary thoughts of artistic inspiration, and decided how lucky I am to be able to do this.

I wrote down the rapid words of William Wells, co-founder and director of the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo. I heard his amazing insight into the Egyptian revolution and how artists have fought for freedom and for their voices for so long. I heard a panel discuss ink painting and whether it's contemporary or not. I sat there and heard Wucius Wong discuss leaving the small islands of Hong Kong to the mountain ranges of China. I heard about the moving tent cinemas of India, and a new way of viewing the Gutai artists of 1960s Japan, the direct connection between Pollock's drip paintings and Shiraga Kazuo's mud painting. All these  artists looking, looking, watching the world and capturing it.

Artists remind us of what's real. We get so caught up in the media, the stories of the day, the Google News list of things to fill your mind with. We are sometimes unable to see the human condition at the heart of all these stories. Artists offer us that. They dismantle the idea of ever having objectivity, and give us the view from their minds, from their lives, from their experience. They provide their story, and we understand humanity by peering through.

Artists inspire me, they remind me to keep on tracking down my experience. To keep thinking deeply, to keep questioning. To wake up.



(Photo credit: Isamu Noguchi, (1904–88). Source: Wikimedia Commons)

There is a song that comes on, and turns my head into a cinema. It starts with pounding drums and a meandering melody. It is by the band Lamb, and it's the opening tune of my movie. It flashes across the screen and shows the slowed down swipes of a solitary person going about the forms of 24-form tai chi. The dance of the moon. Shadow boxing.

Except, of course, I haven't made the movie yet.

It's driving me nuts. I cannot get this story out of my head. It has been growing and breathing and living and demanding its existence for eight years now. No amount of shutting it away in boxes, or ignoring it or telling it to just go away will work. It continues to raise its head and look me deep in the eye. Write me. I am here. Get me out.

And I look away.

Because, frankly, I don't know how to write a book. Or a screenplay. Or anything longer than an article. And this is an ungainly creature with long limbs and an assortment of personalities that ebb and flow. It has no defining shape and no clear message. It is bloody confused.

But it calls out to me...

And when this song came on i-tunes just now, when the slow dance of the drums moved into the air about me, it made me stop. It brought me back instantly to that place that I have created in my mind. That alternate world where words form the buildings and the air and the sky. A place that is born from the depths of dan tien and the imagination. A space of kidney and water essence, the deepest part of my spirit moving into form on the page. Revealing itself.

So I send this plea out to the universe, like the golden arrow shooting out from the fair lady weaving shuttles near the end of the 24 forms: How do I get there? How do I get off my lazy ass and get writing?

Anyone with any ideas on how to kick start the creative process, to get out of the slumber and into action, send 'em my way!