Watercolours

Coming here to Mexico has been a leap of faith, and a running jump from the frying pan - perhaps into the fire, perhaps not. If it is the fire, then I hope it will be the transformative fire of myth and story. There was just too much roiling and too much compression; I honestly couldn't see my way. So I leapt. Too much on top of too much – is, well, too much.

Hard landings. I have discovered that my emotional domain is a real mess. Much has been quietly held, set aside, mitigated, bracketed and deferred. I recall reading about someone's 'shades of grey and bottled rage'. For me, I see that these energies have been stored in stasis as eddies in the river's flow. Things not able to be integrated or metabolized - something to get back to later, perhaps. I had a chat with Claude about my metaphor, and the language cascade agreed that the best - only - thing to do might be to add new things into the wake of the eddies and thereby disrupt those circular flows, perhaps streamlining them and creating new and different cascades. Maybe so.

Anger in particular has shown its true scale and its scaliness; it is big and deep and wide and expansive. It has dimensions and qualities that I had not recognized – and it has been overwhelming. Giving it its space needs meta-reframing of scale. A passage by David White, from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning Of Everyday Words, has been valuable to reflect on and integrate - it's a work in progress:

Anger might be the deepest form of care for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family, and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. 
Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger always points toward the purest form of compassion. The internal, living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. 
What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our bodies' incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding...

I find myself eternally grateful to the guardian-me, who has safeguarded the rest of the herd-of-me, and I am grateful to have some spaciousness now, to allow the true bigness of these things to manifest. That which could neither be fully contained nor adequately expressed. I feel frequently dwarfed at the scale, character and intensity of this emotion – and of the nature of the delicate precariousness lurking below it. Long, quietly-held breaths, tender things from a tender age. I remind myself that with this comes the capacity to feel other things too - I'm deeply enjoying listening to old Motown again - and also Hania Rani!

And so, here, in this solitude, those marginalized and infinitely circulating parts of me may begin to find their true size. It has been a long journey of much, muchness, raising a child, carrying the weight, a bit solo and after 24 years, feeling the slow, gradual dissolution of that responsibility and an emerging sense of a job well done, and the true nature of the task. I'm reminded of the octopus and the sacrificial care of her brood.

Grievances notwithstanding - to the best of my abilities and resources and the given headwinds; caring for aging parents through sickness, decline and burial; Death of a dear sibling after years of mental illness; the destruction of the house by terrible fire; loss of sense of meaning; loss of home and belonging; financial losses; threadbare sibling relationships - and then an appalling spectre that something is still lurking in the fog - a pathological narcissism maybe still at work?

All this as the backdrop to what I have begun with these miniature watercolours, as a possibly healing process. Certainly, it is a pleasure, and that feels like an antidote to something, and perhaps it's just good juju. I brought along a small watercolour block and a set of Chinese watercolours, and have begun creating little works with colour - a departure from my usual pen and ink. Minimal things that caught my eye, small observations, minor details, and the little things seen.

monor victories? ... temporary ones?

I haven't yet spoken about the dogs...

😱😱😱

to be continued...