“In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind.”
Blaise Pascal
August has arrived in a heat wave, though not the “dome” that brought in July. Wave, dome – both feel pretty damn hot with a bit of wind blowing, deluding one into thinking “ahhh, it’s cooler now.” Cloudless skies continue, but the persistent blue of a month ago has given way to haze with smoke from the still burning forest fires that have disintegrated villages and have others on evacuation notice. Sun glowing red in the morning, redder at night, now later to rise and earlier to set.
Though less now, I’m still attuned to school year rhythms, where notions of work would begin to appear on the horizon, readying for start-up later in the month. It was a few years ago I wrote that August – always for us in the northern hemisphere, the last month of summer – feels to me like one long Sunday night. Today, Sunday, this first day in August – almost a decade since I left full-time employment to free-lance – I still feel that flutter in my belly. A cocktail of anxiety, ambivalence, anticipation, acceptance – the ingredients in this order, though amounts may vary.
I’ve alluded to and explicitly written over the past several weeks, that it’s been a “wobbly” time, difficult even some days. Writ large: the world trying to move beyond a virus that simply will not let us go, mutating faster, and exponentially more contagious. Here and abroad, again a season of relentless burning and unprecedented flooding, evidence that while the world was in retreat for eighteen months, climate change was not. Fractured and collapsed infrastructures. An apocalyptic unveiling of grievous global injustice and racism. Right now to my way of thinking, the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games appear the perfect metaphor. Writ small: me trying to find footing in a “re-opened” community, and province deciding to toss out all covid public health protocols, where I continue to monitor if and who to hug, how close to sit, where and when to wear masks, when to travel to see my parents. Sleep disrupted by the heat and a habit of worrying about unknown “what nexts”? Sensing another turn of the wheel and breaking of the “kitsugi” bowl to allow something – yet defined – room to emerge, then to be mended with gold. Sitting in such threshold space is often difficult for me when it activates old trauma reactions that vacillate between brittle anxiety and a listless, deadening loss of focus – both leaving me wrung out.
“The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling.”
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, 2004
And so I turn to gazing into the backyard sky and trees, onto the garden beds that are finally reviving. I walk Annie early before it’s too hot, enjoying the silence of our slowly waking streets. I listen to the water falling in the fountain – and while a far cry from my beloved Niagara River – let it soothe. I light the kitchen candle when loss’ grief comes calling. I take pen to page, not as often, and often reluctantly, to write anew.
imaginea whisper of a breath
“Beauty enchants us, renews us, and conquers death.
Piero Ferrucci, Beauty and the Soul, 2009
Wishing you all that is good and true and beautiful in your lives, dear friends. Much love and kindest regards.
I’ve been thinking about intention – what it means, or more accurately, how I’ve interpreted what it means to have and to hold an intention. I’m wondering if maybe I have it all wrong. That maybe, contrary to goal-setting parlance (think SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely), when I have been too “smart” as I strive to realize my intentions, I have created suffering for myself and even others in my life. This, taking shape over the past few weeks as I’ve been in conversation with several women older than me – creative, inspiring, bold women who are arriving for me at precisely the right moment when my sense of self has been wobbly. Further, my Dream Maker offered confirmation today, wherein her gift of a predawn dream I see and hear two of my elder “heart sisters” describe their knowing about the current plight of our world and the compassionate actions needed to respond. Too, I am with a younger “sister,” each of them, not coincidentally, published writers. In response I say, whispering for the feeling welling up inside me, that it is not about the “what” or even the “how,” but about who these elder women are, who they have become as they have lived their lives day by day, that has shaped what they now know about the truth of these things, about the wisdom they are and offer us now.
A bit of the back story…
Over the past several months, I’ve stepped into what I have understood is a writer’s world – conferring with my local writer-in-residence, participating in virtual “open mic” nights where I read my poetry, submitting to calls and contests (and learning the requisite skill of rolling with rejections), attending workshops on the logistics of publishing and-or getting an agent, reading other poets and writers, following a national writers’ group on social media, joining a local writer’s circle (short-lived). A few weeks ago, following a well-meaning suggestion, I made application to an adjudicated, online writer’s retreat. While I had a few misgivings, and a lot of ambivalence, I went ahead, spending time creating the required documents and a bit of money for the admission fee. The boon was having tangible evidence that I had, for the past decade, been making steps – soft and slow and steady – towards this dream of becoming a “Writer.” Then, within days of pressing “send” on the application, I received an invitation to be a “participant-observer-scribe” at a creators’ retreat in the foothills during the same week. Apparently, who I was and how I had “shown up” in an earlier conversation with one of the artist-hosts was enough to be asked. I needed only a breath, a pause, to say “yes” to this sweet, juicy invitation.
A month ago, after submitting my story of aging with grit and grace (one previously invited but rejected by another journal), the editor emailed not only her delighted acceptance of my story, but her intuitive sense that we shared enough of something to engage me in co-visioning the next iteration of her life’s work. We’ve now had our first and second telephone “dates” and like the retreat, I’m sensing something sweet and juicy in this imaginal space of possibility.
Then, in last week’s Zoom call with another older, wise woman, our hellos quickly shifted to her acknowledgement of me as her role model for embracing a creator’s life. This became the last of a curious, totally unanticipated trifecta of affirmation.
I have friends and acquaintances who are “Writers” – published, with agents and royalties, followers and fans, accolades and awards. In my mind, this has been the bar to which I would aspire and intend. I now realize I borrowed a trajectory of “success” that by thinking I would, or should follow, I’ve nearly missed other signs and opportunities, invitations and affirmations – different from what I’d expected. I forgot that now, in this stage of life, I am to discover more how to “move at the pace of guidance,” (Christina Baldwin, The Seven Whispers) and how to trust a different value, that of my being, of who I am.
__________
Last week we finally got to see the “Immersive Van Gogh” exhibition after nearly four months of postponements due to covid. I’d first heard of this show in 2019 when my roommate in Morocco would be seeing it when she visited Paris after our trip. Upon entering the hall, we are reminded of Van Gogh’s story – of being deeply sensitive, impoverished with mental health challenges, and of never having been seen nor valued for his remarkable, innovative creative expression – an expression that tremendously influenced the world of art in later years. As I stood surrounded by huge images of his priceless paintings – paintings that in his time were ignored, even disdained, I was moved to tears by this evidence of his unquestionable brilliance and devotion that, despite a prescience revealed in his letters that he would die unnoticed, persisted to his last days, when he died at his own hand.
(Edit: I just received this link from one of my readers – a short excerpt from an episode of Dr. Who, featuring Vincent Van Gogh. It moved me to tears, and is an answered prayer of sorts, as when I stood last week at the immersive exhibition, I prayed that Van Gogh would know of the impact and influence of his art in the world today. – https://youtu.be/_jjWtUpqV9w)
I thought, too, about local musician Ellen McIlwaine, a pioneer slide guitarist, who with her magnificent voice and masterful, intuitive playing, blew the doors off contemporary music genres. She died last month, within a few weeks of a diagnosis of esophageal cancer, leaving in her wake world-wide accolades and tributes. In her last years, virtually ignored by the music world and unable to get gigs, she drove school bus. Hearing her last interview recorded shortly before her death, I was struck by the stories of her immeasurable brilliance and tenacity, she a woman in a man’s world of music, going unnoticed in her final years.
__________
So perhaps it is about intention, though discovering, or maybe it’s remembering, some vital criteria: It’s less about “me” (ego), and more about “thee” (creator), and learning to discern the subtle differences. It’s less about striving, and more about noticing the nuanced and the nameless. It’s less about being “smart,” and more about sensing signs and saying yes to invitations. It’s about soft and slow and steady…staying the course…surrendering. It’s about what tastes and feels sweet and juicy. It’s about following a thread that is often more apparent in retrospect. It’s about trusting, in however it is to be revealed, that:
“What the world needs more than anything else is for each of us to have the courage to follow our calling, step into our true vocation and share our creative gifts with the world such that we conspire to co-inspire each other (a true conspiracy theory!) to do the same, thereby virally activating the collective genius of our species.”
Paul Levy in Carolyn Baker and Andrew Harvey, Radical Regeneration: Birthing the New Human in the Age of Extinction, 2020.
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Essaouira Edges, Morocco, 2019
Lately, I feel quite fluid in what I write in this space. It’s certainly less about what I “definitively” know and more about attempting to describe the edges of something honest and necessary – a “felt sense” of things that matter to me, and might, perhaps, to you. Maybe after all this time wishing “to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding” (John O’Donohue, Fluent), this self named daughter of Niagara might be.
Thanks for reading along, dear friends. Much love and kindest regards.
When I don’t write, I scare myself by thinking I’ve forgotten how. Like the first day in a new season back on a bicycle, or snow skis.
I know they say it’s simple, like riding a bicycle – you never forget. But I forget that when I simply take my favourite fine black ink pen to write on simple white lined paper, words, which have been patiently waiting for me, arrive.
Sure, they might need some dusting off, some spit and polish.
But words, carrying and conveying feelings and emotions, images and impressions, questions and doubts, come tumbling out
often in a coherence that startles me revealing a wisdom reminding me I am paying attention even when I think I’ve forgotten how.
This supper a somber affair. The feast of Passover always is, but tonight is more so.
A foreboding hangs in the air, though it appears only the man they call Jesus knows its source. The other men, twelve in total, follow their master’s lead, talking quietly among themselves, unsure of what is unfolding.
I am the unleavened bread made special to order for this gathering. My flavor is bland but when I am broken and dipped into the finest quality olive oil, I come alive in the mouths of those who chew me. I fill their stomachs with a hefty goodness.
Now I hear the man they call Jesus say I am his body. What does this mean?
Now I absorb my cousin, the heavy, dark red wine that each man sips, as the same man says, it is his blood. What does this mean?
Together, I and my cousin, the fruit of the vine made wine, are proclaimed the body and blood of this man. I know not how this is so. But I do know that as each man slowly chews me, and reverently sips my cousin, savors us together with this man’s words, we warm their bodies as we nourish and enliven them.
Now, we are part of them and what is to come.
Now we, in each of their bodies, travel to the Mount of Olives, the home of our friend, the olive oil.
Now, I sit heavy like a stone in their stomachs as they hear their master tell them they will fall away from him. I feel their stomachs clench around me.
One man, emboldened by that inner alchemy between me and my cousin, steps close to his master and passionately declares his love and commitment.
Now, this same man, resisting the bile rising in his gullet from us as we sour in his belly, the reaction to being told he will soon deny his master three times, more passionately denies this.
Soon, for some, our life giving to be denied, too.
– KW –
An experiment in Midrash, the ancient Jewish practice of re-imagining sacred text, I wrote this piece during my participation last spring in the Abbey of the Arts “Soul of a Pilgrim” online retreat. As weekly my photo and poem feature, I’m posting this a day early, in acknowledgement of the Last Supper, commemorated in the Christian tradition on Maundy Thursday.
“Must be brain freeze,” I just tapped out to a friend, as I’m late again for this week’s post.
It. Is. Cold. An Arctic vortex has descended upon the prairies. Years ago, I recall my city’s well-loved and highly respected meteorologist calling it “the dreaded of all meteorological phenomena: the Siberian High.” Sunshine and signature Alberta blue skies, but with wind blowing steady, take those already frigid temperatures well below zero – centigrade or Fahrenheit – and drop them at least another ten, dangerous degrees. Since the weekend, weather apps have shown red banners and yellow exclamation points and maps show red across the entire province.
But last Thursday, in advance of its arrival, we waxed up the skies and went out to our local provincial park, Blackfoot-Waskahegan, for some easy-going cross-country skiing. As it had been several years since I’d been on the trails, we took a practice run the week before in the new-this-year tracks set on the golf course. Quiet except for the scratch of the skies on snow, my breathing, the squawking and chirping magpies and chickadees, it was heaven sent, though for now, on pause.
Sunday, dressed warmly in a fleece lined wool toque, down parka, gortex snow pants, shearling boots and new “extreme cold” Hesta mitts, I met many folks on the paths, similarly bundled, each enjoying our daily walks in the sunshine. An hour later, the mitts standing up to their reputation, my hands were sweating. The wind blew in that evening, and now even Annie, ever ready to brave the elements – except rain – is less than enthusiastic to be outside. She’s conceded to wearing her boots again with her stylish coat, and we manage a walk around the block. But she didn’t hesitate or pull the other way when I turned down the street headed home. Yesterday after sending her indoors, I took on clearing the sidewalk and driveway of hard packed snow. Got nearly 10,000 steps with it all. That sunshine is a powerful draw. But right this moment, in a day just beginning to clear, she’s napping on her cushion by the space heater as I write.
A year ago today, we were making our way to Sevilla for a winter sojourn in Andalusia. Right about now we were napping in a cozy sleep pod at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Later in the afternoon, we’d catch our flight to Sevilla, check into our hotel, and enjoy our first of many “al fresco” Spanish tapas. Smoky olives, sweet red vermut on ice, grilled octopus.
Ahhhh memory. “The power to gather roses in Winter.”
During the next few weeks, to mark the occasion I’ll mix an Americano cocktail (first enjoyed during my first visit to Andalusia in 2017) with a slice of orange (not Sevillian, too bitter), chew on Spanish olives, and “gather roses” as I wander across the pages of my journal and photo book from last year’s last trip before the pandemic.
And now, after finishing this post, I’ll check to see if a walk is doable. And then, inspired by returning to reading Melanie Falick’s beautiful story of hand makers and DIYers, Making a Life, I’ll continue embellishing the sweater I knitted a few years back. Worked from a pattern I’d rejigged, with very fine lacy yarn – a silk mohair blend – it’s rife with mis-takes and mis-stitches, too big, and too disappointing after numerous tear-outs and restarts. After taking it out from hiding a few months ago, glancing at it every now and then, holding lightly what and how to proceed, last night I took needle and thread and using a running straight stitch, took in the sides and arms in an exposed French seam. I roll hemmed the entire sweater, again using a straight stitch, letting it show. Then, with a skein of similarly spun yarn from a sweater my mother made for me years ago, I’m running it though those uneven ladders to bring in texture and colour. A true “wabi sabi” creation, using what’s imperfect with what’s on hand, to make beautiful.
Like the little water colour I did while attending a conference last Saturday on Medieval Pilgrimages. Bored with the academic posturing and paper reading, and needing distraction to sort and discern what was of value for me, I adhered to the principles of intuitive painting – no premeditation, design, or meaning – and simply worked with colour and stroke. And then, almost as an afterthought, used a fine black pen to outline the shapes that emerged. Delightful, colourful, nonsensical.
“Ways to trust one’s own wisdom to bless the imperfections to see and make apparent the inherent beauty to smell crimson roses even in Winter when her blizzards blow and blind.”
Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill — more of each than you have — inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your work, doubt their judgment.
Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; There are only sacred places And desecrated places.
In reflection to a prompt from last week’s theme in Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist – “Creative Work as Vocation and Holy Service” – a powerful memory was evoked of a group activity of deep listening and sensing into space and collective. Thirty or so of us standing in a room led by a famous percussionist were invited to make a brief improv musical composition using only six sounds, one of each assigned to each of us, to be used only once. Like the maestro, he signaled the start and as I listened, waiting for when to make my contribution with my sound, it became apparent that staying silent was most needed for the coherence of the emerging melody.
“Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”
Mary Oliver, The Messenger
Over the years, calling back that visceral experience has always been a profound, astonishing even, lesson of the discernment and value of silence, stillness and spaciousness in works that matter.
Last week that memory gave me a fresh way into understanding my place right now. The waxing and waning between finally feeling – after several fallow and lost months of grieving my sudden, unexpected arrival at “retirement” – for the first time in my life, a deep contentment with not working, AND, too, missing the ways in which I had worked, been of service, made a living. Missing the known and felt meaning and value I gave and received for my work. Such missing occasionally “stings” as my circle of women friends are still so employed or creating their “encore” careers.
“Our daily work may rise out of our true calling in the world, or it may just pay the bills; either way, we each have a vocation. We each were given certain gifts to offer in service to others. Our calling is deeply connected to our creativity. The truths we long to express in the world and the way we feel moved to give form to beauty are signs of the Spirit at work in us. Vocation is a daily invitation to be fully who we are and to allow our lives to unfold in ways that are organic to this deepest identity.”
Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist’s Rule, 2011
So how, now in my autumn years, will this unfamiliar “non work” become my “love made visible” in counter-cultural, less obvious, silent, still and spacious ways? How, as I find myself living a long-held dream of having expanses of time and space, unfettered by plans and obligation (thanks in part to the pandemic), may creativity emerge as vocation, take form as holy service? How do I learn to be astonished?
A cursory inventory:
Shifting my perspective to give value to home care, meal preparation, dog walking as my labors of love.
Trusting that the beauty I notice and express, via written word and photograph – in my blog, on social media, in my practice of hand writing note cards sent to friends – are an offering of my life as poem and prayer.
Remembering my meditation and prayer, a lit candle, and passing thought for another, known or unknown, are silent weavings for healing and community.
Giving space for my holy grief, holy gratitude and holy love creates space for others to do so.
Sitting with the questions of my heart, in the tension of knowing a greater plan is at work, revealed only – word by word, brush stroke by brush stroke, action by action – in the ordinary living into each day.
Learning to “move at the pace of guidance,” heeding the wisdom of energies seen and unseen.
“We make what we make, we give a gift, not only through what we make or do, but in the way we feel as we do, and even, in the way others witness us in our feeling and doing, giving to them as they give to us…a work and an identity that holds both together, not only for an end, but for every step that shapes an onward way.”
“Keep it simple, keep it kind” to grease and ease passage through resistance into the Dance of Sacred Yes and Sacred No. Known and named resistance for one so facile with words – spoken and written – knows Body Knows and will slipstream with Her own Wisdom, shape shift to Truth.
“By the sacred yes or the sacred no I mean that affirmation or negation that comes from a deep place of wisdom and courage, even if it creates conflict or disagreement. The sacred yes is not willful or egocentric, but rather is willing and surrendered. The sacred no is not rebellion or refusal, but always the necessary protecting of boundaries.”
Richard Rohr, in The Artist’s Rule by Christine Valters Paintner
The Deal struck – leave words and utterances behind for Body in its silence to teach, with music of shaman’s dream to guide.
Kneel before the altar. Candle lit. Head bowed. Stilling, silencing, falling into the cave of the heart. Listening to a beat older than time. Imaginal images flutter through time and space.
SACRED YES sees ancient Sun Dancer, pierced with deer cord bound to Tree in Life Hoop’s center. Face to the sun, sweat and blood streaming. Is this not a Sacred Dance to the Sacred Yes of Life? Elephant Matriarch swinging her massive head and trunk, warning all to beware as she guides her family through danger. Arms suspended as Seaweed floating on the ocean’s surf. Then outstretched seeking surfer’s balance as he rides the Wave. Now bald Eagle silently soaring, high wide view of land and sky. Hold hair tight like Kali, Durga. Bounce and bound like Ape. Silent belly rumble and laugh. Inhale deep. Exhale deeper like bellows. Not a word. Not a sound. Felt Sense Flashes. All a truer expression of that commitment to Life through its ages, when all Bodies knew. Then rest, dream of YES, slip into Dream Time to bring it through, to be it, to be with it. No words needed. Body knows. Space surrounding Body holds vibration and emanation of this Dance to SACRED YES.
SACRED NO awakens to Tibetan bells. Flowing gentle melody instantly illumines Sacred No is always in service of Sacred Yes. In obedience bows to Life. Bending forward to purge the false yes, compliance, making small, resentments and envies – all taken as truth those lifetimes of lies. Rising up, strengthen arms and legs, back and front, shake head free of delusion, break free of an invisible bondage as concrete eggshell shatters. Drum beat evokes fierce warrior. Strike and chop and kick and stomp. Claim and proclaim. Power and empower. Swoon with sudden sick feeling as Ego slips in guised to taint and turn the Sacred against itself. BIG MEDICINE here. Stand still. Is not standing still on one’s ground like Mountain the Sacred Dance of the Sacred No? Then sway and soften into Life, like Tree who knows to withstand Storm he must give and bend. Be fluid, fluent like River flows. Dance SACRED NO as betrothed partner to SACRED YES. Shape shift through Ego’s seduction. Discern the step. Quiet presence, fierce with fight. When to be loud with silence, soft with strength.
“A thousand half-loves must be surrendered to take a whole heart home.”
For the past couple of months I’ve been participating in another Abbey of the Arts online program. “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist,” a thirteen-week study into the archetypes of contemplative and creative – two of my deep affinities – was another of those intentional activities undertaken to flourish during these darkening, distanced days. Again, each week corresponds to a book chapter, this time, The Artist’s Rule, authored by abbess-host Christine Valters Paintner.
Too, each week follows a similar agenda. Monday is a live video session with a couple of hundred of us tuning in globally as Christine welcomes us into the week’s theme, guides us in meditative reflection and journaling, gives the week’s overview and invitations for creative process, and answers questions. Tuesday features a scriptural interpretation by Christine’s husband and theology teacher, John. Wednesday is devoted to the sacred practice of Lectio Divina, listening with the “ears of the heart” to a scripture or poem, pondering on a word or phrase that “shimmers.” Thursday and Friday are for creative expression via writing and or art making. Saturday for closing reflections and “catch up”; and Sunday for rest and integration – what I like to think of as the yogi’s savasana. Throughout we’re invited to share our reflections and comment to each other, with the proviso that no advice be given. Instead it’s the application throughout of what “shimmers.”
Last week – our seventh and midpoint – focused on “Inner Hospitality and Welcoming the Stranger.” Scripture, Rumi’s poem “The Guest House,” and Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness” were frames for supporting the encounter with our inner strangers.
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
Hebrews 13:2
I’m struck how often synchronicity is at play, with the “unexpected” appearance of a poem, a podcast, a picture that deepens, resonates or brings a touch of humor. This favourite appeared on Facebook a few days before the week’s scripture:
Thursday’s creative expression was an exercise to get in touch with our inner strangers via “gush” painting. I welcomed this as an invitation to return to a practice I had left several years ago. I painted according to my teacher, Michele Cassou, and her intuitive process painting outlined in Life, Paint, and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneity.
I’ve written in other blogs about my experimentation in this process, but shared last week in the course, the “back story” of having bought Michele’s book for $2.00 where it sat on my shelf for a few years. That one summer, re-intrigued by the cover, I read it in one sitting. Mesmerized by the paintings, and knowing in my core she was writing truth, and that being sprinkled with Rumi, what was not to love? That I immediately searched online for a class and remarkably discovered there was a retreat being held in – of all places – an obscure little town where we lived before moving to Alberta. It took a few years before the stars and my schedule aligned, but I went for a week, for three consecutive years, to have the requisite hours to go to Taos, NM during my sabbatical year and study at Michele’s master class, where upon my return home, I hosted painting weekends – a life saver for me and those many who attended, mostly women from work – each of us coping with the dismantling of our department and huge work stress-uncertainties.
Too, I shared that consistent with the “gush” practice, and how I entered into this activity, it’s never about product, but about process: attempting to paint spontaneously, allowing the colour and image to come to guide, without meaning or interpretation, without choosing, but following that often, nearly mute impulse. Typically, not shared, as like pages from a journal, paintings often reveal truths and vulnerabilities that others, upon reading or seeing, or our own critical selves, might judge, and then frighten and subsequently inhibit ourselves from expressing. So, too, when a painting is acclaimed, perhaps even a more insidious trap.
Given it had been a few years since I’d last painted in this way, so long that my tempera paints had dried, I took a “practice run”…just to get back into feeling the brush on the paper, my body into gesture, my head out of the way.
A second painting emerged, attracted to colours and a style that have always evoked creativity, life, vitality, desire, the ooze of life and inner fire.
“This is your body, your greatest gift, pregnant with wisdom you do not hear, grief you thought was forgotten, and joy you have never known.”
Marion Woodman, Coming Home to Myself, 1998
The third felt the most unexpected, unbidden, honest. A self portrait. Evoked perhaps from the poem I’d shared earlier in the week describing the impact of getting Bells Palsy in 2013.
“We have lived our lives behind a mask. Sooner or later – if we are lucky – the mask will be smashed.”
Marion Woodman, Coming Home to Myself, 1998
A powerful depiction of the often felt, though less obvious to the outside world – unless I’m stressed or tired – lingering effects: the loss of facial symmetry, the odd tingly sensations and itchiness especially around my nose and cheek, my mouth that droops, my eye that dries or tears up. Not chewing as well, nor singing because of the loss of strength in my palate. Even speaking can be challenging some days. A shyness that developed, though perhaps it allowed for a truer introverted aspect of self to emerge. It certainly broke open my life –shattering the mask that paradoxically invited in a truer relationship to self, in my marriage and in my life. With a daily felt and seen reminder of how lucky I am.
And, in another stroke of lovely synchronicity, this, from the Vancouver poet, bentlily, appeared on Facebook, hours after painting:
“When I start to feel nervous about letting my creativity run free, it’s always because I am afraid of what people will think of what I create. And yet wanting the world to love what you make is not the problem. It’s natural (and financially, it’s very reasonable!). The problem is when I start thinking more about “you” than I do about me…But I still have to trust that if I write my poems for me, you will come. Because if I am too preoccupied with how and what to write for you, eventually, no poems will come at all because I will have lost the “me.”
bentlily by Samantha Reynolds, Facebook, October 23, 2020
Here’s to creativity off leash. Wild and messy and free.
A Wabi Sabi Life 