Reading at Greg Kucera: Remembering Alden Mason

Alden would say “ Lets hit the road Jack!” and the day was his Oyster. For so many of us, the adventures and wonder Alden brought to life was rare and a precious kindred spirit from childhood.

Dear Alden,

In my young life you were a spark.....related by a family of souls as you would say about auspicious connections.

In this pool of kinship with the land, nature reflected everyday images back transformed into dancing animals, spirit friends surrounding us everywhere. Red cliffs of the southwest towering, resonated with the faces of ancestors and frolicking goblins. Imagination driving into the unknown yet always feeling at home.

Telephone poles turned into totems of talking shapes. You danced to Fats Domino wherever you drove.

You drove me to the outer edges of the Skagit River to see mounds of earth changed into turtle backed alligators and flying teradactyls overhead where you grazed cows as a child.

The caw-cawing sound of the rocks springing up to meet your feet as you dove down the path to Larabee Park, eager. Always seeking the next awesome adventure and sight, paddling to find tafoni at the lowest tide, ancient clam dwellings you’d say. I remember you with great whiskers or antennae tuned in to the cartoon labyrinth we were walking along the beach.

Trundling down to Castle of the Rocks Oregon and Goblin Valley Utah, eating only salad bar and oatmeal, nuts and fruits.

You hiked three miles and back to paint at Arches and down into the valleys where the fossils of your imagination were alive and well thousands of years later.

Your soul speaks loud and clear for many years to come, existing in all of us.

Crazy synchronicity followed you, such as meeting a friend in the alley of a remote village in Africa you thought was dead, friends I would meet with you on a wilderness trail or remote fishing lake I had not seen since day school years.

You are a magnet for magic.... the unfathomable and unseen matrix which binds us. A shaman of modern times cloaked as an artist painting spirit animals. You reminded us from where we came so clearly.

Alden had a vision which was complete and unchangeable. He knew the rest of the world was crazy. You spoke of the world as being a conspiracy against your success and yet when i look at what you created and were recognized for by so many, you did it! You beat all the pitfalls in spite of it all.

You, crazy unstoppable tall bird man walking didn’t miss a beat in the end.

You have been such an important friend through the years. I am sad you are gone and know you are dancing the boogie woogie in the toothpaste clouds of our imagination.

Thank You for living your dream, an Aboriginal at heart.

Aggribuggy Alden! As you used to say, Hello and Good Bye in a New Guinea language.

Adoration with the Unknown

What happens when you work when you are really agitated? Or when you don’t really want to work? Do you find that there is a deeper meaning revealed and reflection on those days you do work?

As Mary Oliver termed, “the wild heart of the psyche”, asks us to have the discipline to create. Making an appointment with our honest selves, writing about the appointment and about the grief which keeps us from our appointments, with the divine in ourselves. There is grief from the daily routines of driving, grief from shopping and just simply living. This leaves dark spots on the emotion of our creative soul and we have to make up for that by carving out the creative time for our sold to speak. As Mary Oliver says, it is painting or writing about the heart of the stars, not the shape of the stars that she is after.

Attenton, without heart is just a report…..and I find that having faith takes feeling and to accept the incredible depth and abundance that we are taken care of fully and completely by the sun and the water, to accept that we are supported by such a power greater than ourselves is so simple and so terrifying. Because we are so attached and dependent and hold onto so many things as if we need them, when most of the time, we don’t. To be that free and brilliant is terrifying. It starts with feeling. To be able to feel the dependencies within my body allows me to identify a space for letting go. In their place, I call on faith through meditation and visualization taking place. To let my body house the sensation of brilliance is very scary and takes a leap of faith initially. This is where my best work comes from. The creative web is really spun by working from the edge and working from that great mystery and adoration with the unknown.

Theo Jonsson January 23, 2016

Theo was able to visit Margaret in her later years, long after her stroke. Still painting in her home on southern Lopez, looking out over the channel off iceberg point on Lopez Island. She had built her home and studio with her husband Jim FItzgerald, public sculptor. I spent many visits in a sleeping bag in her studio-living room floor amidst oil paintings in the works. I recall her collecting buckets of black beach polished rocks with her from in front of her house where a soft pebble beach extended. She grouted the entire floor of her self built house with these black stones.

Margaret, what gets you going in the morning?

M: Walking, I love to walk.

Is there a kind of ritual you practice around painting?

M: Well, I like to sit and gather the black stones down at the beach. I bring them up from the beach there after I have collected enough. I like to work with the plants.

Why did you choose to live and work here?

M: The light and water moves in such a way. Its exciting and never stops. I like that sense of uneasiness, it keeps me going.

What keeps you painting? I like having problems to solve in my paintings. They feed me and so do the elements here. My mind would become bored without rigor and stimulation.

One of my favorite quotes of hers:

“Each Day the sun gets up and, then crashes into the sea. It creates a space for anything to be done. So, I do it – painting.” – Margaret Tomkins