Clare Morin
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On Building Artistic Community

11/18/2014

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I first met Mei at a dim sum restaurant in Portland. It was October 2013 and Suzanne Fox and I had put on an event with the curator and translator Valerie Doran. A quiet legend, Valerie has worked alongside the likes of Johnson Chang Tsong-zung and played a seminal role in the emergence of the Chinese avant garde to the world in the early 90s. I had lured her up to this New England sea port to speak about 5,000 years of Chinese art history. 

At this lunch event, Mei Selvage appeared, her eyes wide with inspiration, telling me that she was an artist based here in Portland. It was almost like we had generated the entire event for her - so intensely did she respond to the themes of the talk. The two of us exchanged phone numbers and met up again the following month. She came dressed in a funky Tibetan wool hat and handed me a photograph of one of her artworks, Tao Seeker (below).

​I was struck by this work, its searching, its journeying. 

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Letter to Hong Kong 

9/29/2014

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For the past 48 hours, I have been tied to my Facebook and Twitter feeds. Like a drip, that has been feeding me with news and sounds and sights. I have been unable to leave it. Perhaps it's because I am watching these mass scenes of civil disobedience in Hong Kong and want to be there. I grew up amid those streets - and I can't walk out the front door right now. I'm stuck in the US, so I need to read my way through this. 

I've hung out with Hong Kong's punk rockers and artists and dancers and I've come to know its soul through my work as an arts writer there - one of ancient fishing village meets Bladerunner futurism. One of killer movie industries, 4am cha cha tengs, financial wizardry, and a resilient and utterly unique culture that has grown from its ancient Chinese roots despite all the crap that colonialism has thrown its way. 

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On driving... and the becoming of things

6/30/2014

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Today was intense. It involved tears. You may remember when I gleefully wrote of my first driving lesson. It was two summers ago. I had sat with a group of 15 year olds through a Driver's Ed series (I was old enough to mother them all) and then my driving teacher, DJ, took me out for a spin. That blog contained the seeds of freedom and glee. I did my written exam, got my permit and... two years passed. And not much driving practice occurred.

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On coming home

5/1/2014

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For the past five days, I've been submersed in a powerful peace. The kind of peace that wraps kindness around your temples. That pulls your center of gravity out of your fast-paced head and down into your heart.

​The kind of peace that is like cotton wool headphones plugging you into another soundtrack. Where air and space take the place of busy sound. Where we can begin to slow down the cogs. 

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Pay Attention

4/7/2014

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I heard the news tonight as I stood in the kitchen cleaning pots. Terry Gross's voice cutting through the din of aluminum pans clanging, through the ceaseless flow of thoughts. She caught me mid-air as I moved to grab another one off the counter: "... Peter Matthiessen, who died this weekend." 

Time freezes. Like a bell cutting through the forest.

That feeling when you're out in the woods and you sense a great being in your midst. You sense his passing footsteps.

And because of this, we must stop. 

I pull up a stool at the kitchen table, slowly sink down and hold my face to the speakers. And the obituary plays out. 

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No, I’m not a Spirit Worshiper. Or a Chinese Spy.

2/27/2014

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You may have seen the news reports this week about the group of monks and nuns protesting outside the Dalai Lama’s teachings in San Francisco. You may have seen this video clip where a nun asks him directly to allow religious freedom, and he says to her: “No. This is not religion, this worship of spirit, so that’s wrong.” 

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On movement and change

10/8/2013

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I walked yesterday through the West End of Portland, as a wild wind blew. It was a strangely warm day for early October and a full spectrum of red, crimson, yellow and green leaves were spinning in circles. Pumpkins lay on doorsteps and there was this kind of funny, wild energy to the air, like the Wicked Witch of the West was conjuring something. 

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How to be Open to Inspiration

5/26/2013

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Spring is an extraordinary season to be in New England. Blossoms are dropping off trees. The roads are covered in dazzling red and pink, petals in all directions. The sun has come out and warmed all of us, and life has leapt into this dizzying action. Nature launches it's immense season of fertility — and it affects us all. We all go crazy busy. 

​My most recent new development is that I have started to work with an array of New England poets, painters and visionaries. Some very artistic karma is ripening and it's occurring as naturally as the buds coming to the trees.  

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On New England hillsides with poets...

4/21/2013

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You see that image above - the lone meditator in a forest of tranquility? It's taken from the front cover of Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, a poem written in the eighth century by the Indian Buddhist master, Shantideva. For the past six months, I have been studying Geshe Kelsang Gyatso's translation of this poem in my Foundation Program class at the Serlingpa Meditation Center in New Bedford. 

Because I live in Maine, I cannot attend most of the classes in person. I get emailed the recordings. Once a month, our Maine study group gathers at someone's home to discuss the teachings. But most Sundays, I lay my cushion down before my shrine and turn on my iPhone. I put on earphones and tune in to the words of my teacher and sangha friends in New Bedford, one hour south of Boston.  

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La Nivoire

3/26/2013

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I am sitting in a farmhouse kitchen overlooking a crumbling stone wall where blue tits swoop in to eat sunflower seeds from a birdtable. This is my third day in French life, 11 more to go. Life, already quite calm and quiet in Portland, has been reduced to an absolute stillness here. An old way of life, where the only warmth comes from a couple of stoves so you spend your days sitting in the kitchen with your family, sharing stories and silences. You don't go off and sit on your own in your room because it's bloomin freezing out there. 

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    Peace Blog

    Where I contemplate my meditation practice and how it aligns with daily life.  

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