The paintings

The paintings became my view of how the nonphysical must look, in a sense. I think of them as vibrational art.

I did the same thing almost every day. Meditate for fifteen minutes. Write a page or two in a journal. Then paint. Before the cruise, most of what I made was about inner and outer being, and about love. Hearts, figures holding each other. It wasn’t about reflection yet.

Before the cruise. Figures in warm and cool oil pastel, with journal writing running through them.

Also before the cruise. A heart with a spiral at its center, from the work about love and inner and outer being.

After the cruise, it changed into something new. I started writing my journal directly into the paintings. I’d lay down oil pastel, thick, and then carve the words into it with a knife. Then I’d paint over them. Then I’d write again, and carve, and paint again.

An inscription layer. The journal entry is carved straight into the pastel. The entries were what Abraham calls rampages of appreciation, and they were deliberately general, nothing in them to resist: I love life. I love my flow. I love my energy. I appreciate where I am and what I am becoming. I appreciate contrast. I appreciate my clarity. I love feeling guided. I am inspired. I am connected to all that is. That, over and over, filling a seventeen-by-eleven art notebook. The first ones I scratched in with the point of a fountain pen. Then I started spraying glue between layers to lock each one down before the next, and the glue hardened the pastel until the pen couldn’t cut it. So I switched to a little pen knife that had come in a set of art tools I’d bought at random, and that’s the knife.

Why a knife?

It started as a way to journal and paint at the same time. It turned into the most natural way I’ve found to show the part and the whole.

Here’s what happens. You carve a sentence into the pastel. The blade leaves a ridge. Then you cover it with a new layer of color, and the sentence disappears. You can’t read it anymore. But the ridge is still there under the new color. The next layer has to go over it. The knife catches on it the next time you carve. The old sentence shapes everything that comes after it, even though you can’t see it.

Up close. The knife cuts down through the newest color, and the layer underneath shows through the letters.

Here’s one of those pieces, from the first carved layer to where it ended up.

First: a layer of blue and yellow, with a journal entry carved into it.

The same piece later. The carved words stand out in green.

Later still, after more layers. A spiral has come up through the surface. The writing can’t be read anymore, but its ridges are under every stroke.

Where it ended: three fields of color. Every sentence carved into it along the way is still in there.

You said the paintings changed again later.

They went digital. I started photographing the layered pieces with a camera hung over the work, with the loose pastels and the wrappers stained with other colors lying around the edges. Then on the computer I’d select one section of the photograph and mirror it, and flip it, several times, until it became a symmetrical image.

What surprised me was that what I selected decided everything. The whole final image came from one small region, reflected. A tiny part of the surface, a few ridges and one patch of color, became a complete picture when it was mirrored. The part carried the whole.

The painted surface. A spiral in blue and violet, worked over earlier layers. Part of this surface became the image below.

What it became. One selected region, flipped and mirrored until it was a whole.

That’s the theory in a picture.

That’s what I thought too. Vibration, then progression, then more layers and more vibration, then a unique perspective, flipped and mirrored into a unique image, carrying a flow that came from inscriptions nobody could read anymore. The paintings became my view of how the nonphysical must look, in a sense. I think of them as vibrational art. The titles came from the same place: Vibrational Reality, Soul Vibration, Harmony of Inverse Realities, Inverted Source, Blossoming Conscious Currents.

Did the theory come from the paintings, or the paintings from the theory?

Neither came first. They grew up together, the same way everything in TSR grew. The method was intentional. It was the most natural way to watch each layer inform the next, and to watch the whole thing move along the axes I was thinking about. And I’d stare at a surface until a concept clicked, and then the concept would change the next layer.

On October 7, 2019, about eighty days after the hot seat, I drew the whole thing by hand for the first time, as rings: expansion dilation across from time dilation, lenses and wells, Tuning on one side and Focus on the other, and an E in the middle that I labeled “the valve, the blend.” Some of the names have changed since. The structure hasn’t.

Is the surface ever finished?

No. It has a history. That doesn’t make it finished. There’s always room for another mark.

Chapter 14 · The Knife

Why a knife?

You said the paintings changed again later.

That’s the theory in a picture.

Did the theory come from the paintings, or the paintings from the theory?

Is the surface ever finished?

The rest is in the book