What Monkey Doesn’t Know

An event unfolds in several perspectives:

Said the pupil to the sage,

My parents pay your wage.

Said the sage

to the pupil,

Yes,

so that you might become

Useful.

Said the son

to his mom,

Is it true

They pay you

And if not

We’d be dead?

Said the Mom

to her son,

Hold high

your head;

“Monkey doesn’t know

his behind

is red.”

Monkeys….once there was a a very young girl called Little Monkey, or Xiao Hou Zi: she climbed any and everything she possibly could before she grew older and her hips grew too round to resist gravity.  In those years when she was light and flighty, she once came across a band of children grabbing at a small lone monkey in a tree.  She rushed at them, shouting and yelling and stamping her feet.  It turned out to be their own pet monkey, and they were only trying to entice it down to give it something to eat. She was very embarrassed, and as she grew decades older she never forgot that every story has many perspectives. She also retained a certain fondness for furry primates.

Journey to the West is a Chinese classic written in the late 16th century, detailing the many adventures of the Monkey King who eventually becomes immortal and earns a Buddhahood.  He is incorrigibly, gleefully, naughty.  He spends most of his recorded life fleeing the wrath of various deities because he can’t control his impulses. He is a drunken thief , a glutton, and a vandal.  At his worst, in my opinion, he takes on a wager with Buddha himself and flies off to the edge of the universe, marking a pillar with graffiti (his name) and urinating at its base.  Turns out that pillar is one of Buddha’s fingers, and he has never even escaped the palm of his hand. My favorite bodhisattva and patron saint Guan Yin eventually grants his personal request to become :”The Great Sage Equaling Heaven”.  I can see the discreet coughs behind the backs of hands held up by a dozen consorts of the Jade Emperor with the granting of that title, but the Monkey King is not completely without merit.  He spends centuries with masters learning shape-shifting and martial arts: he can out-fight and out-shift everyone and everything.  He has sincerely pursued spiritual enlightenment, despite his naughty nature.  For this he is known mostly under the title of Sun WuKong, or “(Monkey) Awakened to Emptiness”. Guan Yin loves him for his sincerity, and to control his naughty nature she places a gold band around his head that tightens when he gets too impulsive.   It is that gold band you see on the Monkey mask I painted on the paper mache mask in the photo. It is instant feedback for Monkey.

1968, the year I was born in, is an Earth Monkey year.  That would be the most stable, least trouble making type of monkey around…but still a monkey.  I do love stirring up a bit of trouble now and then, and I’ve certainly worn my share of shape-shifting hats over the years and lands I’ve drifted through… monkey, teacher, mother, student, bearer of bands, forger of bands. It never ceases to amaze me how very often so much talent and so much love emerges from so much trouble.

Before I attempted the brush and ink, I ran a test run with generic calligraphy pens and a little gouache. My cat surprised me by padding across the wet ink, so that’s where the flower pattern comes from:)

 

I had to mail order brushes for this project….here’s some photos of my table all set up to go at last, it was so good to smell the ink as I ground it after this long absence.

I think I should keep painting monkeys: they are a challenging and beautiful subject.