I have a gift that I discovered in my twenties. I could read art and know how the people who made it felt when they made their art. This gift has developed a great deal since I started working with people to lessen their suffering, using art-making in the process. Today much more information comes to me through people’s art. And more still comes through my own art-work, done in people’s presence, or when I am aware of them.
I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator. I wrote for children and a little bit for adults. I came to NYC in 1985, 40 years old, married with three children and started a new career as an illustrator only. A few years later I became involved with Chan Meditation Center and studied meditation and Buddhist knowledge with the late Master Sheng-yen from Taiwan. For twelve years I was in a process of deepening my meditation. I had many more experiences and insights and my life changed. After having illustrated more than 40 children’s books and writing two of them, I left this career too and went to NYU to study art therapy.
ByGiora Carmi
At first The red and the green Fought with each other And each of them was pure Then the grey opinion said That they were bad And had to be hidden From the public Parts of them As is always the case Showed up Anyway Unstoppable And right But not any more Pure and innocent…
ByGiora Carmi
The pilot is still hot From life Memories Scratch him like stars But the fields grow dark The sun gets caught in a barn The wheat stalks lower Their heads And as the pilot still flies Through the dust of the world The lakes underneath Go deep to no bottom. My friend told me he…
ByGiora Carmi
The mind creates magnetic fields Within what do they live? They live in the truth The truth is everywhere And it is the only thing That cannot be destructed Therefore It is not a thing Trees grow from the earth They eat the earth and drink water They soak the sun They breath the air…
ByGiora Carmi
There was some noise in his mind He saw something He read About a man Ancient drawings And faces And there was the pain The lack of sleep The struggle He turned to peace And out of nowhere From far and from close Softly touching Orbs of air Or softer than that Came He closed…
ByGiora Carmi
Birds can fly They are not afraid of heights A bough Is a home for them Sometimes they would fight for a good one Then they’d sleep Almost standing Birds start to sing Even before the sun arrives Birds are soft And hard And I What is hard and what is soft In me? What…
ByGiora Carmi
The mountain range is dreaming It throws little lakes around And casts reflections In ochre and purple When the sun goes down To meet the mountains The mountains cry To the sky And the other little mountain Alone at the side Oh, Is in awe The pain in my feet is hard to take. The…
ByGiora Carmi
All the questions that we have Lead us to one final question And all the power that our questions have Comes from leading us to this The question is: Who am I? Or what am I? And there is no answer to this question Because we are the freedom To be as we wish Or…
ByGiora Carmi
My old brother sits in the room of our childhood The trees in the yard Move slightly in the wind Inside of his body The clouds, one big one small Throw a ball between them A picture that he made one summer Still hangs And every step that he took Upon the reddish earth of…
ByGiora Carmi
A rock and a shadow Stand on the flexible green And a cloud comes To cover them It turns out The shadows have been going on From far in the past And into the future Unfinished life forms have only to ascend As the blue haze is hinting To come to a place Of peace…
ByGiora Carmi
I would like to add something to the previous entry. In the composition there are two spots that have some uniqueness, some characteristics that are different from everything else in the picture. These are: the area that looks somewhat like a head with dots inside and the area that represents the pain. Here they are:…
ByGiora Carmi
Thoughts go right Feelings aim left White is all around Red is where it hurts And if this makes you want to ask Let the questions go Sink instead To where the questions come from. I’ll go line by line in the end. But first I’ll say this: The poem is how I read the…
ByGiora Carmi
In the beginning there was a face With jugged lines As if hacked From a Redwood tree Then the forehead From which the stories came cleared up And you could see the endless sky And you could see the forest As it hugged the flowing waters Carving their path in the earth From ice to…
