Quiet inside

Silent Monks

Clever video. I laughed and laughed.

Sort of in stall mode. Doing mundane things, laundry, some reading, mostly moving from spot to spot, a kind of low key restlessness. I imagine the DSM IV (V? VI?) could become the largest book ever in its  efforts to describe and label all of the oddities we humans demonstrate. It's laughable and ridiculous. However, we are a curious species, as are all animals I think. It seems instinctive to learn, to know, rooted in enhancing survival but also as with everything else rooted in survival, desires can get twisted and misshapen into an unrecognizable state, and/or the roots lost in time.

I imagine that many behaviours are intended as positives, as kindnesses - I believe this. Of course the outcome is a crapshoot. We barely know what motivates ourselves let alone others.

Some people seem very connected, very comfortable in their bodies. Can name, point to exact locations of turmoil in their bodies. Their bodies really speak, or rather, they can listen and hear what their body tells them. I think we give ourselves away all of the time. Sometimes it is obvious to others what we are about, and we are blind to it. Other times, people really know themselves. I know my body speaks to me, gives me clues, shows me things, tells me things, most often I am oblivious to its 'withinput'.

Sometimes I'm just not present in my body, I think pretty much everyone has experienced this. Being on autopilot. Sometimes it's about escaping sometimes it's just autopilot.

Just kind of quiet inside, watchful. My body wants to move. Yesterday I was in the garden again, trimming, raking. Lots of large maple leaves around. Windy today some rain. A fall day. Our fall and winter seamless.

I am worried though about the dearth of ideas artwise. I am working on a couple different pieces, some with merit, but overall it feels lackluster, aimless, going through the motions. Yeah, so stalled. Yesterday, sitting in the garden, pulling grass out of the plant whose name currently escapes me (euonymous??) and it occurred to me:  I am 47 yrs old. The first (I remember anyway) time sort of being struck with the fact of my age and wondering what my life is about? It's never too late, it is said. I hope I am on the right track, even though I feel slightly derailed (someone put a penny on my track). I am not really too excited about anything right now. I do not feel driven by any ideas. Probably time just to look at lots and lots of art and walk.

We are getting a puppy, this is good news. I am terrified at the prospect as well. Doubting my ability to care for something other than myself. Fearing failure, fearing to taint, poison a life. I know there will be challenges, and overall I feel I can manage, and I won't be alone. There are just times where there is no self-faith. But today is okay. I'll go get some pumpkins, try and carve some weirdness.

Headcase and Straitjacket

Some more of my work. I wore the straitjacket around my downtown, interesting results, people were a lot kinder than I had imagined. The images are depictions of trepanation.

Saw my therapist yesterday, I see her about once a week. Talked about some experiences, talked about how I'll have a memory (I can't call it intrusive because that dishonors the person I recall) immediately followed by a color commentary by my judgmental self. So for a treat (my therapist suggests I "treat" myself after a tough session [it's difficult to use adjectives like tough because all I am doing is talking, on the surface anyway, but the tough part is seeing their faces, seeing the impact their agony continues to have, I am reluctant to see my pain in the same light, because for me I judge it as removed, vicarious]) I got another holes # 7&8 installed in my ears).

How can I say it's tough for me when I didn't see what they saw, didn't hear, smell, watch, feel what they did, but here is the not-so-silver lining of having the imagination I do, it was never hard to conjure a pretty graphic picture of their experiences. And of course, each person could paint a very detailed picture of what happened. My double edged sword aka empathy, which I am grateful still to have (although I see that this developed as a survival skill from very early on in my life, see it was very helpful to be able to read the room as it were, to detect trouble - now I just can't shut it off) could get pretty close to each person as they were reliving, and I tried hard to create a place of safety where a person could release their particular poison. What never occurred to me (and what she, my therapist pointed out) was that not only did I hear of hundreds of others' horror, I also witnessed the relentless impact on them. As a human being (sometimes I think I am human) it is not normal to remain unmoved.

So the cumulative impact of the graphic stories, the cumulative impact of being with people in such evident anguish - this is what I live with. And most days I dismiss my "impact" as less than. It's certainly not the same. I liken it - whereas each person I worked with having had a "s"load of acid thrown at them - to perhaps a few drops spilled on me in my efforts (I tried to help, I really tried, I made many mistakes, times where I was unprofessional, times where I didn't know what I was doing but thought my good heart would be enough, too many times left reeling in the wake of what people are capable of). So I think that after talking with a couple hundred people, trying so hard to be their ally, to be an authentic witness, to honor the courage of each person's risk in speaking out, that's a couple hundred drops of acid on me.

Being immersed in the blatant sexism, racism, seeing and living in this world that is so insidiously violent towards woman, assaults things that permeated the everyday, this was my baseline. On top of this, the rampant despair of my "clients" - there needs to be a better word for all of these brave souls. Crisis work EVERYDAY. Suicide intervention, pretty much EVERYDAY. These are not lightweight situations. These are situations where the Chaplains, the Commanding Officers called me and ask what they should do.

This is where I feel like I'm entering into the realm of whining, of wallowing, but I'm trying to understand what happened, without the harsh judgments of my mind that undercuts any "evidence" I bring to the table.

So I often stay at home to avoid jump starting my empathy, I live in a small town, it's not uncommon to see/run into a former client. My immediate reactions is always fear, then guilt: I assume they have only hatred for me. Here are many retired veterans living here. I don't call myself a veteran, I reserve that term for those who served directly in combat. I don't feel that I have earned it.

Time to face the day, going to an art talk, gonna hang around arty types, phew.

Be kind to ourselves

Networking rocks!

This is a link to an article a new friend wrote, partly about how amazingly creative she felt in Nicaragua .

And check out her blog. We share similar thoughts and experiences. A very powerful writer and fearless performance artist.

Impact

My Cousin Cathy

life on the muskoka river

This is my cousin's blog. Wonderful writing, with lots of "didn't see that coming" twists.

A new, old friend of mine was talking about the magic of childhood friendships. Cathy and I spent so much time together as wee ones. Drawing, playing, she introduced me to Frampton Comes Alive - a classic amongst classics. We drew comics and pretended we were spies, we wrote letters back and forth that were addressed to planets and such, back when no one's suspicion would be aroused and thus we wouldn't be seen as a threat to national security.

Magical friends that's what we were and it turns out, still are. It's good to reconnect with her. And I can't wait for her next Friday Flash!

More bad language

So I've been feeling better lately, ever since we came back from the BVI. It's a no-brainer really because it was a beautiful quiet place where we were very active together and sharing a great deal of nature together, this where we are at our best. I think it also reinforced the many things we have to be thankful for. So how come the doubts start to creep in? About whether I am truly laden with some "conditions" or I am just lazy. Many times when I feel that I am functioning well, then I think, so what's the big deal? Why the meds, why the therapy? Then, why am I getting help?

$^%*$^%*&$%*^&

What the hell really. Just mindf**k after mindf**k (I'm feeling coy). When I am feeling NOT sad, then I start to load on the guilt, the judgments, like for instance:

LAZY!

selfish

user

cheater

liar

man this is nasty.

wait there's more!

failure,

hurter

coward

Many time I have felt cowardly, that I didn't stand up better or differently. Effing guilt.

Toaster's up!

Hurray

Horizontal Violence

This is Exit Wound.

After a walk with a friend in the rain yesterday I got to thinking about the impact of trauma. In particular my paranoia, mistrust and fixation on betrayal. There is something about betrayal (real or imagined) that really fucks me over. Years ago in elementary school, a bunch of kids (most of whom I thought of as friends at the time) passed around a petition to get me kicked off the basketball team. Seems they considered me the coach's "pet" and thus a no-talent, a pretender to the game as it were. The bright spot was the older student who took me aside and told me and the unknown parent who put a stop to it. This older student was and continues to be my revelation; my proverbial beacon of hope. I didn't know she knew I existed, so pale a ghost I was. However for the rest - you left your mark. You dug a big hole and shoved me into it and I'm still trying to get out of it, days where I am out of it but still far too close.

The first betrayal I can remember (the real first happened when I was far too small, less than a toddler spotty memories, immense pain). It was a scorcher. Searing me so all my juices stayed inside. I was already a shy little thing (thank you military for curing me of that, at least enough to allow me to operate in the real world), already vulnerable, too sensitive (apparently), so small in my sense of being and these little kids, oblivious to the damage they would cause, likely oblivious too they targeted me (the weakest in the herd?). I have been advised that they were too little to know what they were really doing, that's difficult to swallow. Sadly we have the capacity for cruelty even while we are so small. I hope they did not know what it would do to me, then that means I went to public school with a several dozen sociopaths.

I don't think they know. But my little world fell apart. And even now I feel like such a wimp for even writing about it, so harsh is the auto-judge there are far worse things in the world a person can go through. But it's my truth, or at least part of the story. It is to this "incident" that I ascribe my incapacity for trust, for love, my pervasive fear of everything (I can now proceed despite it, in most cases, thank you). See, now I expect betrayal, anticipate it, see it when it really isn't there but it seems I cannot judge nor separate the real from the imagined - it all feels the same. It's another heightened sense, part of the hyper arousal spectrum I suppose.

Any injustice leveled towards me or not, it is the biggest trigger (is there another word for trigger - I'm getting sick of it, another depleted meaning). Spark? Kindling? Nope. I'll work on that, maybe make up a word.

Injustice abounds in the world. And when I was a social worker, it permeated my caseload. Too many soldiers deemed disposable. So much heartbreak, heartache (too much?), so much agony when encountering the great lie of war. The torment when you realize you have been selected not for this honor but as an instrument of capital gain. So the hunger to live an honorable life is satiated in the battlefield, the brotherhood of war, the sisterhood of war. The war against women (in case you missed it, there is one - and strides against the enemy are often won through guerilla action) the oldest ongoing "action" in history.

We few, we happy few, my ass. "As commanding officer, my job is to delude my men into defending my bosses' property (or more often to steal someone else's)". That wasn't in my officer handbook. May as well have been. Stripped of tools, helpless to intervene or the repercussions of intervention when intervention is clearly called for. A convenient target of hate, a distractor from the true villains. Paolo Freire understood this, he called it horizontal violence. What happens when the marginalized have no one to turn against, in self defense, so they turn on each other. I see women do it all the time. I guess at the root is survival, but such cost.

A several millennia-old lie that still works because the vulnerable targets of this lie still seek something to believe in.

Sewing the Black Ribbon

What to talk about?Making art sometimes flows so easily, it's finding some materials and putting them together according to some of pattern/order/configuration that I make up as I go along. It's a constant dialogue of when to do this, start this, stop this, it's immediate and intuitive and this is what leads to my best work. When I take time and think about things I start to get lost, doubt creeps in, so when I start to flail creatively, it's a sign I need to step away. So I'm trying to do this, to follow this mode of making. I think being away from the actual making for 2 weeks was far too long, I need to always be working on something, that's what is best for me, the best means to access that conversation that issues forth from my purest self. Balance I guess.

It's like writing this blog, I seem to feel most assuaged when I write nonstop, when I just keep going as a stream of consciousness, at minimum it empties out, orders, streamlines the thoughts milling about upstairs. My elevator does go all the way to the top but gets stuck there sometimes, the in and outflow are not well synchronised. So my mind has been blank, my well of creativity is overdrawn, somewhat, I got excited sewing the black ribbon together, and when I rearranged the bottle caps according to colours I felt excited then too, it was soothing, satisfying even. So these are the moments i am learning to notice, then to hear and then to understand as markers of ideas that can take me places.

It is what I hope my art can do too. I may not have the voice, the soothing words, the context wherein I once dwelt, but this new one as a practising artist (the words sound strange) is another way to channel my desire to make a good difference in the word, to astonish people, to simultaneously demonstrate that i have not only seen and/ or heard and/or felt but I have understood. Making concrete the thought trails, the myriad trails broken in my brain many of which remain vital to my survival (redundant???). Pioneering my own brain is interesting, maybe only to me but I am thinking it's the only way I can get through, never around. Mining my neural net for gems, precious metals, or not so precious ones yet useful practical metals! we are all elements each of us a conglomerate of elements in modules of same, yet each unique, each with our distinctive properties of bonding, volatility, natural state: gas, liquid, solid. I understand electricity, currents flowing along the most direct path, always, always finding a way to complete a circuit. This is what I seek, to complete my circuit, to be whole. Is this why the circle resonates so much? Why much of my art is or alludes to circles and circuits and spirals. I think the spiral is closest, and what nature emulates most , and I am a creature of nature, yes?

Why on my recent trip seeing the shells, my fascination with them, the patterns of scales on the fish, the turtles, all very soothing and humbling - nature has all of the ideas. Growth rings, calcification, as we age just as I can see in older shells, the individuality becomes more marked, scarring, historical markings, each of us is our own biography - written, held in our bodies. The memories I can't recall still exist, stored somewhere in my body, perhaps for future reference, mayhap not. Maybe the blanks will never be filled. Calligraphy of memories.