prologue
“My heart is so small
it's almost invisible How can You place such big sorrows in it? "Look," He answered, "your eyes are even smaller, yet they behold the world.” Rumi This past dry season, by a strange and insidious process of reduction, I reached a dead end in myself. To any observer who knew me, the facade looked the same, the eccentric self-expression strong, somewhat rebellious, and free; but there was no longer any correspondence between my inner life and its outward expression. I called myself "the Dead End Girl", jokingly, but it was no joke.
It seemed as if all the negative patterns of my life were being reflected in a kaleidoscope. And if you looked toward the centre, where resided my Being, the psychedelic configurations repeated themselves at an increasingly concentrated rate; so concentrated in fact that it seemed there wasn't any space left for me. Or so it felt. I knew then I had to completely break through to the other side, or die. Perhaps breaking through was just that, a kind of dying, the little death I had heard of somewhere. In either case, I knew there was no escape. Not this time. All I wanted was to be left alone to die, to absolutely die. Physical death would not have been sufficient. I sought annihilation, the absolute obliteration of consciousness. Only then could I truly rest. Only in oblivion would memory and suffering cease. How this was to be accomplished I had no idea. I thought it could be as simple as willing myself in a heroic moment to stop breathing. There didn't have to be anything dramatic or tragic about it. It could simply be a final act. Now each day is a deliberate and painfully conscious struggle through the medium of my art to arrive at a different and, I hope, larger perspective of myself. I sometimes feel I am in hiding, like a wounded animal that seeks a dark burrow within which to lick its wounds; only not as sad as that. Rather, as if gesso has been applied to an old canvas that is tattered at the edges, and I begin again to apply the colours composed of memories, letters, conversations, and stories told again and again. I have adopted a solitary existence and live through these days painting and writing. I have renovated an old barn on the property of some friends and I am quite comfortable here. It serves my purposes for the moment. I have space enough, everything I need to work, and I remain alone with my introspection. Below the window a shallow river runs by; it whispers stories as I watch the moon. Always, through some strange quirk of logistics, the moon shines on my bed no matter where I am in the world. I bathe in the moonlight at night as I bathe in the stream each morning, washing myself in the soothing, cooling memory of another stream under another moon far away now. Still the memories of that other stream trickle clear and close, still bubble up to the surface, still wash over me. Perhaps this river will carry this story too, whispering it to another attentive ear at another destination further on its path. Maybe this river will find its way to that Other and tell again the story we have been composing together for so long. Who knows? And I wonder now if the telling of it will have the effect of an exorcism? Will I somehow be purged in the end? The suffering, I know, is a necessary tool for transformation and for this I should rejoice. It is the stuff of my awakening. But when in the throes of it, the pain is so blinding and creates such confusion, I cannot imagine the end result, I cannot imagine there might be an end to it at all. In my heart I know this is the way I have chosen and therefore must believe its higher purpose is ultimately my own edification. Yet, if the telling is a tool that will facilitate the cleansing or only serve to extend and exacerbate the suffering, I cannot know in this moment. This is the jealously guarded secret of Time. Nevertheless, I have the impression that, one way or another, I will be purified. The distortions however are so many, and the healing of the heart a tricky business. How a state of wholeness is to be arrived at and sustained is another matter altogether. The tendency when wounded is to close the heart, to encase it, to shut out all tender feeling. But the price one pays for this act of disassociation is too high. It must not be allowed to become a way to live one’s life. Undeniably, it negates even the possibility of entering love. And a life dammed against love is the greatest affliction of the soul. |