Worlds Apart
There are many permutations of how the world goes round. We all have different experiences and lenses through which we act within it and all live in different realms while on the same plane of existence. Our ability to show our perspectives to others is a remarkable feature of our species. We have an ability to empathize in such a way that I leave my world and journey over to yours to see how it all looks to you. I can’t feel the experience as you experienced it, your qualia, but I can gather an understanding and it will likely change my own view of existence.
It is a type of transcendence in which I travel outside of my lived experience to something I have no acquaintance with.
We have a desire to share who we are with others and to show them a view that they don’t have.
When you are the only one that experiences the world in a particular way, it becomes very lonely, we want companionship in it. If my personal sphere is pursued to the exclusion of others I alienate myself. We feel valued when someone sees our view and we learn to love greater when we see theirs.
Myth of the Vacuum
A big breath pulled in,
No planets or stars were lost there,
Just a child or two, when they couldn’t follow the path home.
Their mother waited for them at her front porch.
She sheltered her eyes as she looked over the hills.
The green land darkened slowly,
until a large blackness could be seen.
The ground shuddered and those poor babes were swallowed.
The mother’s chest began to beat ferociously.
The aching could be felt like a loud drum.
Her ribs imploded to the sucking swells of her burdened heart.
Breath upon breath was heaved in,
and a vacuum formed there.
The edges of her form began to bend in,
and she was sucked in and swallowed whole.
Mommy Dearest
I think about motherhood often. I am a mother and it resonates deeply with me. Among the socially acceptable facets of motherhood to talk about are the unsightly, sad, and often tragic aspects. And even though that is how I will characterize it, I hold those experiences close. It contextualizes the suffering that we go through for the sake of someone other than us.
We have a marshy existence within our sexual beings, and it’s this swampiness that sustains life.
There is the blood, the goo, the fluid that mothers contain and spill out for each child. Sometimes we carry new life and sometimes that new life becomes death and we spill that out too. We embody cycles of potentiality, sometimes fulfilled, and each month most of us will see it isn’t. This is an intimate part of being a woman. We feel the pains of life and death within us. We are bonded to the earth, to existence. We find meaning and symbols within the harvest, harsh winters, and the fertile spring. The universe is consistent with itself and we see representations of ourselves within nature. I feel empathy for the various creatures in the wild that give birth and fear for their young against the elements of this harsh world. We will always have this in common.
Women experience the potentiality of life, feel the pain, and deal with its suffering. Not all women become mothers but they are tied in the same way to the earth and it’s repetitious demands. And they will inevitably understand their own bonds to nature because of it.
Love and suffering are commingled within our bodies and it may seem unfair to many, but to me it is a well of strength.
House of Mirrors
I see myself through you, as you see yourself through me. We are mirrors for each other, even though those mirrors are not exact. They reflect off of this mirror that reflects off of that mirror and so forth. Distortions abound, but nonetheless, they impact the way we see ourselves.
This immediately makes it seem that our person is never constant. And it isn’t really, especially when we take in account the variable of others. Each person draws a different aspect of ourselves out, and the way they respond to us gives a different impression of who we are through their eyes.
Relationships are fascinating because they develop and teach us not only about the other person or even the relationship, but about who we are in response to it. No one is unchanged in a relationship. We either evolve for better or worse within them, but we are always changed.
The question at the heart of this is, do we have a self that is untouched by others, that is solely our own? I don’t think so. Even if your mother died at birth and you were raised by nature, your in utero experience as well as anything outside of you, shapes you, whether the other is nature or human. We find out who we are in relation to existence. In relation to anything else outside of us.
We understand ourselves through reflections. I see who I am when I look into a mirror, I understand who I am when that mirror is you.
The Dance
There was a moment when I walked across the mountain tops and decided to descend.
I slowed as I came upon a path where a young woman was sitting. I spoke to her and she looked at me.
She whispered to me. I beckoned her to come closer, and she did.
She began to stroke my arms, but I pulled away. She reached and I put her hands to her sides.
I told her to wait.
She took her clothes and rolled them in a ball and handed them over to me, I told her to wait.
She kissed her arms and her hands and offered them to me, and I told her to wait.
She crept into my shadow and breathed into my ears,
but she could not wait.
“I will feed you, but you must feed me” I said to her.
She nodded and began to speak, she danced, and she almost fell off the side of the mountain.
She grabbed my arm, I pulled her back and we danced off the mountain together.
The Man in the Attic
I held a stick within my hands
I held it skritchy scratch
It was long and gangly and dead and
much bigger than a match
I swung it in the air and
Whoosh!
It made me smile and laugh
I ran and swung it round and round
while on the stony path
Then I stopped and stood
and then
I threw the stick an
Smack!
I made the stick proud that day
when it caught that bad man's back.
Periphery
The moon pulls our eye.
Darkened grounds, low lit,
And the earth sighs.
Gentle streams of light,
Feed on our arms and thighs.
Rivers reflect a further guise,
A thing obscured from our sight.
As bright lines draw the edge of leaves,
And milk drips glint with reverie.
Minds soon forget the cloak.
Orbs grow to see the sun at night.
Black trees and shadow skies.
With endless flutter and howling cries,
as the ether fills with spotted light.
Rising up,
Radiance lures our eyes.
Hungry to see, surrender,
And not become blind.
Hills fade and colors transform,
From the corners we almost see it.
And we can only know, when
it leaves us all behind.
Implicit Potential
I’ve been nude modeling for over 20 years. I’ve never actually thought of myself as a nude model. Not even now, even though technically I am. I enjoy understanding sexuality through art though, and it isn’t limited to photography. It can be a film, painting, writing, etc.
As a wife and mother, exploring sexuality isn’t typically deemed acceptable. For a young single woman it’s forgivable, but not as a wife, certainly not as a mother, and definitely not as you age.
These are social norms which are implicit in our culture and tend to enforce themselves through shame. There are many evolved reasons for these standards, some of which aren’t applicable in today’s world. This is why challenging them is important, because they may simply be residual. But, it’s also common to throw the baby out with the bathwater and abandon everything old for something new. We can’t be that naive about sexuality though. It is dangerous, but all things powerful are potentially dangerous. We have to understand it’s potentiality to embrace it well.
Shadows
Strength is something we can demand of ourselves. I don’t become strong because it’s willed upon me, I become strong because I exercise my will upon myself. We have a choice in how this is built. Strength is presented differently, but felt concretely. I have needed to exercise this recently within my life. Being challenged externally doesn’t determine growth, but meeting the challenge because we demand it of ourselves is how strength develops. But for what reason? Why would I put myself through such a grueling process? To prove that I can? In some ways, yes, to know that I am capable. It’s incredible how much I can withstand for things I care so little for, “shadow careers” as Steven Pressfield calls them in his book, The War of Art. How does one apply a developing strength to be a lever to offset the fear surrounding our true callings?
Strength doesn’t remedy fear and for many fear won’t disappear. We can’t be comforted into creating the world we wish to live in. And it’s tempting to go on believing it will be a soothing transition into self discovery. Hopefully it is, but there is no guarentee. We value what we work for and the world we truly value, will most definitely be one we’ve earned.
To be continued…
Dying to Live
Every day is filled with moments that time claims for the past. We hardly have enough presence for the moments we are in. Before we know it, life has swept by and time will claim us for the past as well. As much as we all wish to exist in perpetuity, we just won’t.
There is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance with the concept of death and because of that, many go on living as though they will never die. There isn’t an urgency to live, there is almost no awareness that we will die. We are all surprised when we reach a certain age that we thought would take a thousand years to get to. I am certainly guilty of this.
So, how do we leverage death to give us life? Steve Jobs was one of those that could do this. He found inspiration in knowing he would die, so that he would succeed in life. The acceptance of it seems to free people to live. An example of this would be anyone that engages with extreme sports. They are more than aware of the possibility of death, it is part of why they do it. This is the kind of resolve we could all have, to accept death and pursue life despite it.
“Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.” — Steve Jobs
Answer the Question
Asking ourselves meaningful questions is a necessary part of unveiling our understanding of life. So many of us don’t feel qualified to answer the questions though. We push the question to the other or even to the unknown to answer for us because we are afraid of the responsibility it bears. If I answer the question, I’m expected to follow through with an explanation. Many times these explanations may demand evidence through one’s life. If I posit that ‘such and such’ is truer about existence, I may have a higher expectation of proving the answer. Who wants to alter their life when it’s easier to watch others do it and then follow suit when we know it’s a winning hand? We either lead or we follow.
If we are discriminating with our queries about life, we may be the only ones fit to answer them. This is where we are at a crossroads. We either accept what is, or we seek to understand. One will likely leave us forever unsatisfied and the other will be a meaningful pursuit.
We may not get truth from our answers, but I believe the pursuit has at least a chance at getting closer to reality.
One
When I was first married, the ceremony and everything surrounding the sanctity of this kind of union made the purpose of the couple very clear, ‘you and your husband are now one.’ The individual ceased to be as important. I tried to grapple with this as best I could as a 22 year old woman. I had just begun to really form myself when I was then expected to reform into less of me and more of us. I don’t believe it is as explicit as that, but the tremblings of society are felt in any divergence from the expectation. The way you dress, how you raise your children, your sex life, your friendships, they are all under the watchful eyes of social norms. It is disconcerting to have a woman be friends with another man when she is married and vice versa. Engaging in ways that were excused because of youth and singledom become problematic as a married person. It makes other married couples uncomfortable. Suddenly there is a challenge to the way others live their lives, not even intentionally, but it is a threat to the calm waters they so painstakingly try to maintain.
I think about the concept of milestones quite often. I would say that I have a visceral reaction to it, but I actually know why I respond so vehemently to the idea. The expectation to graduate high school, to then go to this college, to find your “one and only”, to become the engaged couple, and then the married couple, to then the married couple with a child and so on. What follows with this blueprint is not only the trajectory of your life, but the trajectory of how you act within each of these milestones. You are no longer the individual, but you are “the this “ and “the that”. You stop exploring life, because here is a road map for you and included with the road map is a set of ideals, personality traits and emotions that you don’t need to think about anymore.
The problem is, it doesn’t work. The dissintegration of numerous relationships and families tells us all, that this is not working. Not only are we feeling like we are supposed to go down particular paths, but they are paths that have broken off and leave you lost.
I believe the answer is in cultivating the self along with the relationship. I don’t necessarily think the idea of “being one” is completely wrong, because there is a lot of solidarity within a relationship, but the idea of dissolving the self for the sake of it, will only lead to pain. The reason you are even in a relationship is because someone recognized your individuality and you recognized theirs. To cease cultivating that within a relationship rids one another of the reason it even began.
Another Way
What universe is the artist trying to create? And when they crouch to the ground to observe their creation, what particulars have they organized to point back to the stars?
Define the Undefined
The artist is not a painter, or a sculptor, or a dancer. The artist is a creative that expresses through mediums, the mediums don’t define the artist, the artist defines the mediums. Give me a box so I can step outside of it—that’s the artist.
Art for whose sake?
It’s a difficult question to answer when you aren’t clear about the purpose of your work. Who am I intending this work for? In regards to art, the objective can become convoluted, because it’s easy to assume that the title of “artist” takes care of the explanation for art. An easy way to evade the answer is to say art is for art’s sake. As though art is an entity, but that explanation lands at the feet of no one and will have little to no impact. What is art for and who is it for, is what we need to understand.
Is it merely the expression of myself through various mediums? Well it certainly could be. I would liken that type of art to a diary and most people don’t care about the contents of anyone’s diary but their own. For me, that isn’t what my art is for. Art is not for the sake of itself or just myself, but for the sake of others. Art is a vehicle for vision and a way to commune with one another.
It’s usually easier to identify who you intend your art for than what it’s for. Expounding on our understanding of the role of the artist, both personally and theoretically, will help in discovering what art is for. I will delve into this more in a future post.
Drawn Out Time
Recently I’ve been attending figure drawing sessions. It isn’t the first time, but it was the first time that I drew the same pose for two consecutive hours. I am impatient and tend to rush through creative projects; it’s a flaw in which I’m seeing more clearly. It isn’t to say that nothing meaningful can come from less attention, but it began to emphasize my weaknesses and my crutches, thankfully. Sitting with something, and allowing yourself to confront it slowly and methodically, like with a figure drawing, challenges you to look closer. Shadows you didn’t see, gradients that didn’t reveal themselves to your eyes, begin to come to the surface. Even with writing, if you sit with it long enough you will begin to see the awkward phrasing, or the lack of congruence within your thought processes. Again, thankfully. This practice becomes contemplative and self reflective as you ask yourself what am I not seeing and what am I not hearing.