On the Self-Portraits...

I was born in the middle of last century. The years wear like veils of washed light. Perhaps that's why people dissolve into light as they age, in their eyes, their whitening hair, when the blood that fills their veins flows under their skin like the pale light past sunset.

My brows droop, but if I lift my head high and open my eyes wide so my forehead wrinkles I can see. This is how I took the photos, in the bright sunlight eradicating the crows feet, the jowl, because I wanted to see my own eyes. To read what was there. To read myself.

And I found myself impenetrable. I couldn't put the cross-currents together, how I am composed of opposites.

All I could see was bursting light in the room, flooding the walls, the carpets. The being in the photographs is nearly incidental. Sun on translucent skin. The windows of the eyes filling with flooded light. Solar prominences. Sun-washed fields of light. Disappearing into a brightness of the flaming dance of love.

Self-Portraits

Inner changes? I'm feeling depressed, most uncharacteristically, which implies withdrawal of energy, transformation of the depths. What I'm feeling is a strength and a softness coming, these already as I define myself - independent and sensitive - but more so. Whatever anger I once had is long washed away; I am one of those people who loves to laugh. When I took these self-portraits today, I wasn't sure who I was seeing, pensive, yes, but lightness too.



Sunday morning: It's passed, only an evening or so, but uncharacteristic and thus important to pay attention to whatever newness is arising. An older layer of thinking passing away for a newer, fresher, more innocent self to emerge. If that makes sense! I edited the blurb to better reflect the inner process... I like the image of going to the depths to find the light, yes, the shamanic, visionary journey, and each time the depths are different and each time the light is a more complete spectrum of understanding.

There is a negative conventional view of depression. It's not seen as part of a larger process of the psyche in communion with its depths, nor the deep changes that may be occurring because it's seen as a problem, as anger turned in, that needs therapy and/or anti-depressants, and so the whole process of inner discovery is truncated. How can we develop wisdom when we are afraid of our shadows?

The sadness has always been in me, it's there in my photos as a young child, it's still there. Yet I am one of those people who loves to laugh, good deep belly-laughing!

I think I'm moving away from any sense of judgment, of applying systems of thought to people's actions, events, the way things are, that layer of thinking is disappearing, dying, thankfully, most thankfully, and a greater strength and softness is emerging.

The moment of 'depression' has passed and I'm feeling my usual quietly exuberant self today, ready to continue manifesting my dreams.

'portrait' & 'in the café'

portrait

colour scores your skin
like massage oil,
almonds & apricots,
mandarin
& magnolia.

I paint you with strokes
of my heart.

*















in the café

bushel of gold apples,
........some darkly bruised;
bushel of dark purple plums,
........ripe.
gourd of stone vegetables
........fired in kilim
...............zucchini, squash,
......................yam.

polished granite tabletop
woven rattan chairs.

sultry jazz.

custard tart glazed
strawberries, blueberries
kiwi, peach.

sipping espresso
& cappuccino
coffee.

the late hour
our intense bond.

The White Ocean

She stopped to rest.

Momentarily, in the field of pure possibility, her position unfixed, indeterminate.

Without hovering, or insecurity.

It was an image of being in the vast field of life.

Without knowing. In a position of unknowing, positionless, I suppose. Existing without location or momentum. Vibrating with possibility. It wasn't exciting or fearful, just what is.

Nothing is fixed or certain, though there are always solutions to problems.

Then she continued on.

She didn't doubt her certainties.

Still painting...

How little space for painting! This is the corner. You can see the original sketches from which I composed the composite image I posted last week. What's nice is that if I don't like the way the painting turns out, I can create another one. The painting on the board is influenced by the one on the wall, isn't it. I did that one in Vancouver and it's quite large: Celestial Dancers, 2004, oil on canvas, 4' x 5'.

(click to enlarge)

The Waterfall is Truth

A moral universe?

No!

Nor a religious one.

The will to truth is different. Where stated actions and actions match. Where the description of the deed and what was done match. Where there are no discrepancies. Where what is done is what is said was done. No lies, deceptions, hypocrisies, veils. There is something that wills clarity, a force, a power, a drive towards.

This will to truth that's inherent in the structural energies of what composes the universe, oh, how I must sound!, who knows what to call it, is evident in the Scientific Principle. Verifiable truth. Then it's a trustworthy knowledge on which action can be based. It's there, and it's strong. I feel it everyday.

Call on it! Call on the truth, it'll come. What was obscure or hidden will become clear. Truth will expose the lies. It's a trustworthy force.

Two and two equal four because truth favours clarity, predictability, stability. Truth is a will and an organizing principle. Listen to me rant! Me, who loves 'shades of grey' and thrives on paradox!

Truth isn't ultimatum, nor is it like light opposed to darkness. Not like that at all. The real workings, that's truth's domain.

And perhaps it's the heart's view. The beating heart needs truth.

Gates of Truth are a Waterfall

It's always seemed normal. What everyone does except me. I don't because I can't. I've seen consequences. It's against my ethic to knowingly create situations where others will get hurt. I want relationships of integrity. Love means too much too me to play around with it. An intense woman of intensities, I don't need to take more than my share.

It's been around me all my life. Nothing new. I'm blasé about it.

And then, finally I understand betrayal, this particular humiliation, pain. A breakthrough. Increase in understanding, empathy. To know how it feels helps me to be sensitive, more so because experienced. How a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome takes over as scenes of deception are played and replayed in their horrifying truth.

I think there is a will in the structure of reality, something part of the energy of the universe's being, towards truth. In all things. The way it works; what really happened. It is not the nature of life to hide its realities. Revealment, over and over of the secrets of nature. Of each other. Of our atrocities.

I think it is there in the core of my being, expressed in the archetypal imagery of my dreams, represented in me thus.

The will to truth.

When I encountered her as the strange and fragile Maat, the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth I understood how old. Always ultimately the truth, a tallying in the hereafter, in the karma which determines the future of the soul.

The ledger of life. When dishonesties are exposed.

The universe has a force of
truth to it.
Incredible. How this is.
But it is.

II

In my inability to comprehend
myself.

I feel like a collection of attitudes, beliefs, feelings, thoughts and sensations which are in constant flux.

Whatever is now is all, and it can be diametrically opposed to yesterday and not seem inconsistent.

When I say I love you, I do, though it is a complex unfolding.

Leafless vines cling to the walls, ready for Spring, the verdant carpet. The concrete waterfall is a melody of its own. Pigeons hop along the top to drink and bathe where the water crests forth. As I sit nearby on a bench, my notebook is sprinkled and I look up to see a tiny wren on the naked branches ruffling its tail feathers. "Little bird!" It shakes a few more drops that fall on the cement walkway in front of me before it flies off to my laughter. My baptized book.

This little notebook
of my truths.