So that now one would not look at life again and read it as one reads in a book, and learn its constituents as one learns lists; all this learning in the brain, and never in the blood was ended. One could really learn only by being, by awakening gradually to more and more consciousness, and consciousness is born and bred and developed in the whole body and not only in the mind where ideas about life isolate themselves and leave the heart and soul to lapse inert and fade away. Yet never to cease watching was imperative also; to be aware, to notice and observe, and to realize the form and color of all, the action and the result of action, letting the substance create the picture our of abstract consciousness, being always oneself the actor and at the same time the observer, without whom no picture can exist.

— Mabel Dodge Luhan, Edge of Taos Desert: An Escape to Reality, 314-315

A couple nights ago I had the experience of beginning to draw landscape– that is, I had a vision of doing it. My pen began to create in three dimensions, to pull dimensionality from the flat paper into sculpture. Then my pen began to trace upon my own body and I myself was drawn into the living sculpture. I was part of the art while at the same time observing the process. Reading this passage (along with other awakenings of perception that Mabel describes) at last articulates what it is I long for. No wonder I was beckoned toward Taos, and specifically, back to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House!