[This is the sample of the first Polyhymniade as written for the thesis. Pls see previous post for clarification re. the 99+]
“During the last twenty years, under the catalytic impact of Freudian thought, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, social psychologists, and other workers in the behavioural sciences have met in professional seminars and foundation-financed conferences in many university centres.”
The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan
It is undeniable - listen to that word - that I draw because I feel, at times, excruciatingly existentially lonely. Not depressed, trapped, unfulfilled. It’s a constant deep yearning, like a current. A recurring question: is this all? White and Educated and Straight and still so ungratefully and disappointedly unsatisfied. It is not even true that I draw because I feel lonely. I draw because I have an encounter with that that is complementary to me. I draw because I disappear and then I don’t feel [lonely]. My end and my beginning at the same time, my personal ouroboros. Not on that paper but standing in front of that paper; meeting the paper I meet the Divine. My loneliness as my grit, my impatience. This yearning and craving for this encounter. There, never displeased even though there is no encounter.
I was crossing the street in Piazza San Cristoforo in Udine, and I saw my reflection in a dusty window of a shop, and I did not recognise myself. I am merging memories, but it could have been the same day that my sister arrived by bus. I met her at that crossing and she was crying. Then the bus left, and I saw this other woman. My body sweating, energies leaving my frame and yet I saw this reflection and did not recognise me. I tilted my head ever so inquisitively and I had this surge of impetus of going and making and creating and directing and exploring and writing. All at once. I saw the seven chakras merging at that crossing, St Christopher watching over me, quizzically, asking: “Are you ready [to leave]?” Those people walking past: what do they know of connections, oneness, TS and RD and ee, and the collapsing of skin after skin, my body scratching on stones? Scratching against convictions, conventions, and creeds, armed with questions like an aggravating child. Who, What, When. Why? Why? Why?
Did anyone ever tell you I was your Father?
I have seen a video today of a dog, within the annihilation in Turkey, burying her dead puppy. I didn’t go to any funeral in 1976; I was too young. I feel I am carrying unburied cadavers with me all the time. My backpack is full of untold stories of silent children. Why am I here, then? All the words filling these books don’t mean a thing. All those stories of apples and snakes and a pregnant earth and blue gods I have been fed are at times enough and yet never complete.
That hot summer day, crossing a street and not recognising myself in that window of a closed shop, I saw this vision of a white room, a large white Kartell table right in the centre, surrounded by clear acrylic chairs; and there, around that table, there were S. a geologist, F. a natural science student, S. who new literature and travelled the world, G. who knew everything about maths and the arcane connections, D. who knew about old stories told around fires, at night, up in the mountains. And many other faces with no names. We were all excited about our algorithm.
… an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
I could see it all, at that crossing. And it filled my heart. I could see the overlaps, the connections, the links. My knowledge was enough to ask questions and understand the answers. I could easily spot incongruities and mistakes, but I could not formulate new connections. I needed more. I didn’t know enough; I never know enough. But I could see us around a white Kartell table, a think tank of rascals, captivated by knowledge, and bewitched by the unknown. Fictitious masks of unaware people populating my vision.
This idea is still here. Standing in front of that paper, I can see unseeable threads, albeit with my eyes closed. I perceive changes in currents through my hand holding the pencil. It’s a dance without ever having to learn the steps. It’s hope that lead me here, from crossing that street that hot summer day, carried on the shoulders of the saint, a traveller protected by the sacred and the profane of an ivy tattooed on my right ankle. Around me shattered boundaries. A deep sense of deserving to know. Pencils and journals in my parents’ old green leather suitcase and this loneliness in the soul. Still looking for connections. When in 1996 nine prophesies landed on my lap and demolished the dogmas of a church enforced by men who did not read as much as I did and women who drank wisdom from pulpits, I learned that you can’t un-question the unknown when you can now see.
In front of this paper, I am closer to the centre of the lemniscate. There is a greater sense of devotion to my research and if it has to be solitary, let be it. I had to break to be reborn as a person; then I had to be broken to understand what I wanted. When all broke down the third time, I choose to go back to that metaphorical crossing and to look for myself in that dusty window. And here I am, now, in awe and constant surprise, at my Ikea white table. The chairs around me are full of books, printouts, sketches. A candle is always lit, Blue Sage is burning. In between conversations with Professor D Pierce, I am aware now of this alchemical work that happens in the background. It is a work I trust. My allies are the whole salty ocean, fresh words, and a new name. I have guardians in snakes and crows and large motherly whales. I have a protectress whom I trust when I am led into nightfall and who teaches me discernment. Most of all, I have learnt to trust my intuition and my sensory responses. Crossing that street, my weapons were RD Laing, TS Eliot, and Harold Pinter…
I dreamed I was a butterfly
dreaming it was me
So, now, Hekátē, protect my body and the entire soul of me! Hugging a roll of paper, sniffing its fibres, craving for my hands to get dirty. Powdery. My encounter tastes of felt-connections that I perceived as chaos at the beginning and sought-connections that now I savour as belonging. There was once a woman who crossed a street, out of place, space, and time. But then she had no parameters, no units of measure, no language to express what she was experiencing, this wholeness and oneness of everything. The seed was right there. This woman in front of a dusty window did not see herself, but I meet her imagination and courage on paper, every time. And now, I can bet you that she recognises me. This drawing morphs into a Sumero-Semitic serpent, a kundalini wagging her tail to the rhythm of a Kool and the Gang song, turning my Muladhara into a 1980’s disco. The more she rises, the larger the tear in my ontological plane, that hole where immanence and transcendence meet. In that liminal space between pencil and paper where everything belongs to everything else: within, through, upon, from, on and of itself. On the paper, this is my immanence experimentation; but Gilles is mistaken because there is nothing wrong with transcendence, too. Imagine transcendence seen from within itself! We don’t see the ouroboros from the outside, but by sitting at its centre, as mercurial visionaries. There the unconscious initiates a work. Oh, Carl was such a badass! So, where is my misconception, if any? The Fallacy of the Tomat Convergence!
Why do I feel this disconnection now? Is it the need for more caffeine or have been away from the paper long enough?
Carl G Jung - e.e. cummings - Gilles Deleuze - Harold Pinter – Hekátē - Ikea - Kartell - Kool and the Gang – James Redfield - Numb3rs – Perception - RD Laing - St Christopher - TS Eliot