What is it?

When my friend Debbie saw the picture of the sculpture I did months ago, she said, "That's the nicest one I've ever seen ... what is it?" :)

Last Monday at art therapy I played with clay for the first time in weeks and weeks. And I came up with this ... thing. And even Maggie, who is the sweetest, kindest, most non-judgmental person in the world looked askance at it and said it was weird, LOL. I really don't know what the hell it is. I guess it explains partly why I have this trepidation when I think about going and playing with clay lately. Maybe I'm worried about the weird things that come out :)

And yes, yes, I know this ... thing looks very penile. Which was annoying, you know, when I noticed it, because I was right in the middle of my anger spew about men, where I could barely even look at them in the street, so maybe that's why I bent it in half, LOL (apologies for grimace inducement, blokes). Perhaps in Freudian terms this thing demonstrates some latent desire I have to be a lesbian, who the hell knows. The head reminds me of a telephone, but it also reminds me of that giant hammer in Pink Floyd's The Wall. The body looks like poo. The tail is obviously mermaidish. Maybe it is some uncsonscious allusion to shark fins (hammerhead = shark along with the mermaid tail) but shark fins hold no relevance for me at all, and why the hell is it sitting on a cushion? Maybe it is a representation of my incorporating some more of the male side into my personality, the ying - or is it the yang? Maybe I sound like a total tosser :) (I do love a bit of psychobabble, gotta say). I was wondering what you guys think it is when you look at it :)

Or maybe it means nothing. There's an idea!! To not try and work out the hidden meanings behind everything I do! But still, that is the whole idea behind art therapy, after all. I was actually going to work on this thing further, and I was going to maybe make a friend for it, but then I forgot about it and left it in the boot of the car and now it's gone leather hard. Still, it was just nice to actually make anything at all.

I have really lost momentum and confidence to explore in the past few months. It feels like it is starting to drip back again, very slowly. And with it has come an understanding and appreciation of how much I need to feel safe to be creative in this way. Like, 100 times more than I orginally thought. I clam up and it shuts down like catatonia and it amazes me, the way we do that for our own self-preservation, and how it is like a way of enfolding ourselves into ourselves. I like to think that God is in this ages-long-even-past-this-one process of unfolding everybody, in our own time and way, very very slowly, so that we come to it ready to fully immerse ourselves into the birthing task. Or alternatively, we come kicking and screaming and get through it anyway. Which I suppose is what birth is, right?

I am beginning to get on top of my detox now. The worst of the effects are behind me, and I am almost up to the maximum dose. Which is amazing when I consider how I felt when I had that first dose. But still, this is what I keep seeing in life in the past year or two, how it is that we can always go further than we believe we can. I can definitely feel some improvements in my health, although I've been so stressed out with other shit that now things are settling down I will really be able to see how far it's all come along. The whites of my eyes are getting whiter than I have seen them in years, which is really kinda cool. My anger has spent itself like a fish Gollum-slapped against a rock. This is a beautiful thang.

(It was interesting today, reaching Richard Rohr's book, to note his observation that maybe getting angry is often something that women need to do but find difficult - overcoming the "this doesn't look nice" thing - while grieving is something that men need to do but find difficult - overcoming the "I can't do powerlessness" thing. I can't vouch for men, but I would definitely agree it is the case for women. We are far too concerned with appearing "nice" to other people. It is good to be able to look back and see how all this anger spewed forth, old anger that I have had in me for years and have always been scared of expressing, you know? Always this fear that somehow it would come out like boiling water from a kettle and scald the entire universe. But it didn't. It came out safely, with no harm to anyone else. That is like some sort of a grace, you know? I plan on allowing anger to assume some sort of rightful place, where I can express it without repressing it and making it bigger.

You know, it's funny, but I always thought I had pretty reasonable boundaries. Like Mocca said to me the other day, people generally have a pretty reasonable idea of where they stand with me. And yet, there always seems to be a converse with everything. That is so, but then there are parts of me that are just all over the shop, and it is a real discomfort to really start to acknowledge them. Example. The other day a girl from down my street was standing in the street talking to me and Lester. And she came inside the front yard, to where a large yellow-flowered shrub lives, and grabbed an empty plastic soft drink bottle from where it had been thrown into the middle of the shrub. And she said, "I suppose I should get this. I threw it in here the other day." And I was thinking, "Yes, you little bugger, don't throw stuff in my front yard" - even though it's not really my front yard but the boys', but it's on my property, you know? And I was thinking, "Shite. People really do disrespect me sometimes. I didn't realise it before. But I'm not gonna just allow them to do that anymore." But obviously I was going to wait until next time to try that out, because instead of saying, "Yes, don't throw stuff in my yard, thanks" I said nothing in answer to her. Then, the weirdest thing, she just threw the bottle back in the shrub again. Like, as if because I didn't say anything it meant that I didn't care and it was okay for her to do. We people, we really suck. I walked away scratching my head over the fact that I didn't say anything to her, and that she threw the bottle back there again. And it didn't made me angry at all, but it kinda made me sad instead. It was like a demonstration of something I've been learning lately where we all take miles when people give us inches, and how it's like we all have radars on each other, and can spot the people with the deflated boundaries, and we just take advantage. And we do it without thinking, unless people begin standing up for themselves. Why don't they teach this shit in school as well?

Anyway. Tonight, when I turned into my street, I was thinking about how long it has been since I have felt that sense of optimism about the future, that bubbling of potential, the excitement of growth and having fun again. It's a different thing to hope. The hope comes from God, and it sits in the middle of the dark, not determined by circumstance. The optimism I always believed I would have, being of a generally sunny disposition, until the Great Desert Dwelling began. But there are glimmers again. So tonight, I tried it on again for size, that feeling of optimism. Driving down my street. Can I feel optimistic about my future again? And I felt it. It bubbled. I can feel it now, inside. I can see not only a light at the end of this tunnel. I can actually see, at least at times, the end of the tunnel.