i recently reconeced with someone i spent very inspirational and joyfull time with about two years ago. this is the time where i started my tree paintings, where for the first time i really saw my art as 'bonnie rose art' - it began to show a level of maturity and a life of its own. i felt like i finally knew how to tell the truth with my art. maybe because it was the point of my spiritual awakening when all the work i had been doing to center and find myself finally cracked something open in me to 'see the light'. it also was the time where i was finally telling myself the truth about my behavior. struggling still with the misbehaving - acting against the person i really wanted to be, such as bartending and party party at the row that is full of pretentiousness and false affection.

as thing do, 'happen for a reason', we couldn't continue to be together. complete wrong place wrong time kinda thing. amazingly enough, or perhaps a manifestation created from honesty, respect, self-reflection, growth, "love", we reconnected in a new place and a new time as, maybe not new people, but more realized souls. brilliant thing about it is we had both realized and accepted (before we even reconnected) what went wrong both in the other and in our self during our relationship. he even wrote and recorded a song about it. a line in the song says, 'your making bubbles and i paint them back'. referring to a collaboration art project we were working on when we first dated, where i was painting (in like bubble gum pink color) circles/bubbles all over, really randomly, on this large canvas where there was a handfull of other artist painting as well. he was going to each of them in a row and filling them in black.

the other night on my way over to his place i made a pitstop. in the parking lot, just after the sun set and the sky was a deep ocean blue, there were these really gnarly trees reaching up to the crescent moon that crisply lit the night, i took a quick phone photo of them. i shared them with a friend who's got me recently examining the darker side of beauty. something i havent really done much of lately since Spikes Vampire Bar (burning man camp i was with 4 years) is no more. this inspired me.

last night i was working on four trees, watercoloring away in my bright vibrant colors, thinking about later in the night getting to hang out with the musician *smiles*... reflecting on the research i did yesterday on dreams, dream yoga, and lucid dreaming. where there is much discussion about the importance of awakening and being presents in every way. reminding me that

"…the waking state is not permanent. It comes and goes every twenty four hours. And yet, according to the great sages, there is something in us that is “always conscious,” that is literally conscious or aware at all times through all states, waking, dreaming, sleeping. And that “ever present awareness is Spirit in us”. That underlying current of constant consciousness (or non-dual awareness) is a direct and unbroken ray of pure Spirit itself."

therefore, my negligence of a darker side of my art has stiffened me in awakening and understanding my whole self. even blocking my full potential on the brighter side of my work.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Socrates believed that the only thing that made life useful: Examining the world around him and discussing how to make the world a better place. Without his “examined life” there was no point in living.

so maybe its time to paint some black bubbles. or at least these trees.