Trauma & Art

I have written elsewhere on the significance of the various art material and media when creating art or when engaging with art journaling. I will not go into it now, but water colours and other paints allow for a different process to unfold in comparison to charcoal, crayons and pencils, which allow for more control of the process of creating. Additionally, as I use water colours to art journal I realise that the media itself is linked to both earlier and deeper aspects of experience and memory, as if the liquid and transparent media reflect the fluidity and transparency of my experience and allow me to go all the way back to the uterus and to my original blueprint perhaps. Anyway, in my very early years I had a beach accident and the use of water colours brought up neglected spiritual aspects of the event. Ultimately, the deeper we explore our traumas and accidents, and life experiences in general, the more in touch we get with our spiritual essence or aspect of self.

Sort of relevant

I am sharing a poignant passage from the novel A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I heard about it in a podcast I listened to by Gretchen Rubin, who says that in the novel, Nao, who’s a teenage girl in Japan, is very worried about several serious problems, and she’s reflecting on a conversation she’d had with her great-grandmother, who is a Buddhist nun:

It’s the cold fish dying in your stomach feeling. You try to forget about it, but as soon as you do, the fish starts flopping around under your heart and reminds you that something truly horrible is happening.

[Great-grandmother] Jiko felt like that when she learned that her only son was going to be killed in the war. I know, because I told her about the fish in my stomach, and she said she knew exactly what I was talking about, and that she had a fish, too, for many years. In fact, she said she had lots of fishes, some that were small like sardines, some that were medium-sized like carp, and other ones that were as big as a bluefin tuna, but the biggest fish of all belonged to Haruki, and it was more like the size of a whale. She also said that after she became a nun and renounced the world, she learned how to open up her heart so that the whale could swim away’.

And a short piece form a longer text that Rick Hanson has written in his Just One Thing series this week with the title Get Out Of The War.

‘By “war” I mean here a mindset, not combat between nations with tanks and bombs. The “war” I’m referring to is an attitude of conflict and animosity toward a person, object, or condition. Parents can feel at war with a misbehaving teenager, and certainly vice versa. Neighbors quarreling over a fence. Spouses edging toward divorce; divorced parents continuing to battle over holidays. Someone stuck in traffic, at war with other drivers. Ideologues reviling the other side. Kicking the chair after stubbing a toe against it.

The summer when I was 16, I worked as a camp counselor beside the Pacific Ocean, and there was a lot of skin diving (without scuba gear) into the forests of kelp. One time I foolishly swam into a thicket of kelp, thinking there was clear water just on the other side, but there was only more seaweed, with thick orangish leaves and long strong vines reaching up from the seabed below. I was trapped, running out of air, and began to panic. I battled the kelp, thrashing and jerking, which only wrapped it more tightly around me. After I don’t know how long, a clarity came over me and my war with the kelp ended. My diving mask was around my throat, my snorkel ripped out of my mouth, and I’d lost a fin. I slowly disentangled myself from the kelp rather than fighting it, working my way upward, finally clearing it, seeing the bright silver surface of the ocean above my head, and rising up to it and then the precious air.

We need to be able to stand up for ourselves, deal with tough things –including nearly drowning – and change what’s wrong and uphold what’s right. But when we do this while also caught in anger like a swimmer caught in kelp, that’s not good for us or others……’

 

Mater Dolorosa: The Unruined Heart by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

‘The swords through your heart are not the ones that caused your wounds, but rather, these swords of strength were earned by your struggle through hard times.

Sword of Surrender is one of the swords. It means the sword to use to withstand this time of learning. Isn’t it true sometimes that learning is really painful, or really hard?

The second, Sword of Veils, pierces the hidden meaning of this time to cut right through all the fog, all the veiling that occludes the center, the core, the sweetness, the heart, the hope, the jewel at the center of the wound.

The third sword, a Sword of Healing, to lance open one’s own agony and bitterness to let it drain away.

The Sword of New Life to cut through, to cut loose, and to plant anew. Long ago, people used their swords to plant with. They would drive them into the ground, pour the seed, take a step, drive the sword into the ground, plant a seed, take a step. Because there used to be farmer warriors who were holy people and they used their swords for everything.

Sword of Courage is the next one: to speak up, to row on with, to touch others with. Remember to be knighted, a king would touch the sword to the shoulder of the knight: meaning you can take this blow. You can take this. You are strong.

The Sword of Life Force to draw from, to lean on, to purify.

The Sword of Love is often the heaviest to lift consistently. The sword turns one away from war, resentment, retaliation, and instead helps one to fall into the arms of immaculate strength at the center through the Holy Woman’.

A PROCESS: ART JOURNALING …..

Mother archetypes and summertime events:  Kiama and Bondi Beach,1960s,/ Syros, Paros, Athens, 1988,1998