Trauma & Art

Spring cleaning

Over the weekend I allotted a little time to do some spring cleaning, and also tried to fit in other activities, and so I did not have time to create the audio I had intended to make. I even got round to doing a little weeding in the garden, some throwing out of old articles, recycling of a few books, and I also went to the cinema because I like stories. Actually, I think I am a sucker for a good story. We watched an interesting multi themed film, The Professor and the Madman starring Mel Gibson and Sean Penn, with some powerful acting and scenes.

I also took some time to reflect on politics and spirituality because…..

Even though I have distanced myself from party politics over the years, I still think that politics are important because from one perspective everything, including the private is political. Our personal experience and larger socio-political structures are interconnected and interdependent more than we are usually aware of. Local and national elections are approaching, and so I reflected on both the necessity to vote and what a ‘good enough’ vote decision for the better good both locally and nationally could look like. If power is also diffuse, embodied, discursive and enacted rather than just concentrated and possessed by some, the act of voting allows for some level of exercising power and shaping the ways of things.

Early spiritual wounding and cultural conditioning and my awakening process required I explore this field, a processing, healing and expanding through exposure experience, but I sort of went down a rabbit hole, as I over indulged in acquiring information, while neglecting other things. The lesson learnt is that I still tend to ignore the dash board of my body., often brushing aside bodily knowledge and intuitive knowing, which are always available.

Today I drank tea on the patio and I thought of how we internalize the landscape we live in. It inhabits us. The Greek landscape is a lot of blue, blue skies, blue seas, and a lot of sun and light. It stirs my heart and it reminds me of beautiful poetry of the rugged terrain, of the trees and of the sky and the sea

‘You spoke about things they couldn’t see and so they laughed. Yet to row up the dark river against the current, to take the unknown road blindly, stubbornly, and to search for words rooted like the knotted olive tree- let them laugh. And to yearn for the other world to inhabit today’s suffocating loneliness, this ravaged present- let them be’ Giorgos Seferis, Greek poet awarded the Nobel Prize in 1963

ΕΠΙΦΑΝΙΑ  – Γεώργιος Σεφέρης

Epiphany, 1937 by George Seferis (Translated by Edmund Keeley)

The flowering sea and the mountains in the moon’s waning

the great stone close to the Barbary figs and the asphodels

the jar that refused to go dry at the end of day

and the closed bed by the cypress trees and your hair

golden; the stars of the Swan and that other star, Aldebaran.

I’ve kept a rein on my life, kept a rein on my life, travelling

among yellow trees in driving rain

on silent slopes loaded with beech leaves,

no fire on their peaks; it’s getting dark.

I’ve kept a rein on my life; on your left hand a line

a scar at your knee, perhaps they exist

on the sand of the past summer perhaps

they remain there where the north wind blew as I hear

an alien voice around the frozen lake.

The faces I see do not ask questions nor does the woman

bent as she walks giving her child the breast.

I climb the mountains; dark ravines; the snow-covered

plain, into the distance stretches the snow-covered plain, they ask nothing

neither time shut up in dumb chapels nor

hands outstretched to beg, nor the roads.

I’ve kept a rein on my life whispering in a boundless silence

I no longer know how to speak nor how to think; whispers

like the breathing of the cypress tree that night

like the human voice of the night sea on pebbles

like the memory of your voice saying ‘happiness’.

I close my eyes looking for the secret meeting-place of the waters

under the ice the sea’s smile, the closed wells

groping with my veins for those veins that escape me

there where the water-lilies end and that man

who walks blindly across the snows of silence.

I’ve kept a rein on my life, with him, looking for the water that touches you

heavy drops on green leaves, on your face

in the empty garden, drops in the motionless reservoir

striking a swan dead in its white wings

living trees and your eyes riveted.

This road has no end, has no relief, however hard you try

to recall your childhood years, those who left, those

lost in sleep, in the graves of the sea,

however much you ask bodies you’ve loved to stoop

under the harsh branches of the plane trees there

where a ray of the sun, naked, stood still

and a dog leapt and your heart shuddered,

the road has no relief; I’ve kept a rein on my life.

The snow and the water frozen in the hoofmarks of the horses.

Beautiful and Strange Homeland by Odysseas Elytis, Greek poet awarded the Nobel Prize in 1979

I’ ve never seen a homeland more beautiful and strange
Than the one that fell to my lot
Throws a line to catch fish, catches birds instead
Sets up a boat on land, a garden in the waters
Weeps, kisses the ground, emigrates
Ends up a pauper, becomes brave
Reaches for a stone, lets it down
Tries to carve it, works miracles
Gets into a boat, reaches the ocean
Looks for revolutions, wants tyrants.