Nicholas Roerich, Tibet, 1936

I needed a mountain lately, a good strong image of a mountain.

I have an altar where I go and sit every morning and there's a blank wall above it, which would be fine if it were a good, tranquil kind of blank, but it's a taunting, unfinished blank with an empty picture hook* and a dumb-looking white chip where the dark purple wall paint has peeled off.

*too inert/short to take the hook down, you know how it is

And in the great conversation I referenced a couple of Zephyrs ago*, the one where the word "dakini" came up, I was given the advice to be like a mountain: steady, unbothered, the weather a total whatever around it no matter how wild

*It was a Skype call with Craig Holliday, who's a wonderful spiritual teacher. Do check him out if you're in the market for one of those.

I love mountains

so this was an easy sell. Oceans, keep 'em. I can't even swim. Sky, what can you do with a whole sky? (The daytime one, that is. BLAH.) Beach, I dunno. Lakes are good. But a mountain is the natural metaphor that gives me the zing that matches something inside.

I went to Google a few days ago to search for mountain art with a certain something to hang on my picture hook and emulate.

And there I found the art of

Nicholas Roerich

Himalayas, 1933

And We Are Trying, 1922

On the Heights (Tumo), 1936

St. Panteleimon the Healer, 1916

ting!

that was the feeling inside, over and over, every time my eyes focused on a new painting

ting! ting!

I was tearing up!   and it was like I was being—not sharpened—but something in me was being roll/shaped into a point, like if I were dough or clay but looser and airier, and I was being made more acute

that's it! the art was making me more acute to look at it no the BEAUTY of the art was making me more acute

like it was giving me—and/or turning me into—an antenna!

A falling-in-love feeling.

And We Do Not Fear, 1922

She Who Leads, 1943

Star of the Hero, 1936

It was a sweet/sad happiness, like I'd found a friend, and not just discovered a now-all-time-favorite artist. Not the artist himself, exactly, but, oh, maybe the artist himself, I don't know. This is hard to nail.

*memory of one of my old acting teachers, another Russian, Leonid Anisimov, and how he explained the difference between emotion and feeling, how emotions are simple but feelings are complex—the former a note or at most a chord, the latter a symphony—and how you can gin up emotions but feelings are visitations that you can only be still and hope for*

When an lonely existential feeling you didn't even know you had dissolves, you feel at least two things blended together: Oh, that was there/Ah, that's gone

but then we had the feeling combo  OH MY GOD + I Just Learned that Beauty Is Not a Concept but a Real Thing Akin to a Physical Force that Refines You  so it was something like  OH MY GOD *TING* I WAS LONELY/BEAUTY IS REAL *TING* BUT I HAVE A FRIEND *TING* REFINED *TING* REFINED *TING* OH MY GOD BEAUTY IS DOING THAT, MY FRIEND BEAUTY IS DOING THAT *TING* MY FRIEND NICHOLAS *TING* LOOK AT ALL THESE MOUNTAINS   And here's something: Nicholas Roerich was a Theosophist, just like my grandparents, who were in India when he was, and knew him. Holy moly. I'd heard his name here and there growing up but breezed on by because you don't stop every time somebody knew somebody and say to whomever mentioned it, "wait, who? would I love him?!"   Also I'd never heard of him so I didn't care. 

I DIDN'T KNOW THAT HE WAS GOING TO BE THE NECESSARY MYSTICAL ARTIST TO COMPLETE MY LIFE OR I WOULD HAVE ASKED MORE THAN ZERO QUESTIONS

Anyway, now you have him, too, if you need him.

        Speaking of Tibet and complicated beauty, please read this wonderful piece of journalism by my friend Tracy Ross

Tibet Is Still Burning

THIS PODCAST ALSO GIVES ME A POWERFUL FRIEND FEELING THE KIND THAT EASES EXISTENTIAL LONELINESS WHICH IS DIFFERENT FROM EVERYDAY LONELINESS

This is a real beauty of a podcast and I can't get enough of it. Russell Brand has become one of my favorite humans. Kind and smart and self-aware and genuinely hilarious.  

I still remember a tweet somebody made ten years ago which made me laugh:  Wanted: Assassin Re: Russell Brand  The construction! BLESS. I used to find him colossally irritating back in his poodle-haired standup era—without actually wanting anybody murdered or anything. This tweet rang my bell so hard I could still hear it a decade later. I think he'd be very good-natured about this tweet now.

 Listen to the Brené Brown episode. Listen to the Richard Ayoade episode. Listen to the Wendy Mandy episode if you're down with the New Age vibe. (I LOVED IT, it got right in the old existential loneliness with a big eraser. Much talk of ceremony and how we're missing it as a culture.)

 What should I watch on a late Saturday afternoon in autumn?

This. 

If you like or love Shakespeare and you think you're the audience for this, YOU ARE. Turn all the lights off so you can feel Elizabethan while you watch. Have candles handy.  

Portrait of Nicholas Roerich with Guga Chohan, 1937

I feel bad about what I said about the daytime sky earlier. I would like to rescind. I just wasn't in the mood for it. I've seen it do great things and who am I? who am I to put it down?                            The ocean, though, like I said.

     DO YOU LIKE THE WEEKLY ZEPHYR ___YES ___NO  THIS IS NOT A REAL TEST YOU CAN KICK BACK AND RELAX