Archive for the ‘Dtwaaz LJ’ Category
Where does fear reside 2?
My mother is writing a book on her childhood experiences in WWII. She is also doing a series of paintings to accompany the writing.The paintings are fascinating. She is a great artist. Most of her works are so realistic that you feel you could reach into them.
But these works are of a totally different style. They are like dream works. She is present in them but detached and unaffected. The scenes are of horrific events, but they are tightly controlled and not frightening. They have the essence of innocence painted by the child she was at the time. It's just very strange, because they are so unlike her previous works. The style reminds me of a painter who does Winter scenes - Moses, only in another universe.
They are painted the way she speaks of the tragedies, without any fear in her voice. She was either never afraid when fire fell from the skies and people close to death grabbed at her arms and legs as she wandered the aftermath, or it is buried and put away. Perhaps the control in the scenes speaks to that. The paintings are illustrations of what occurred, but they won't harm anyone. They won't harm her. I love that.
She wasn't interested at first in doing the artwork. Before she started doing the paintings, I tried to encourage her by drawing one abstract scene and used a very small,specific vantage point. The bomb bursts are twistedly beautiful, as she describes. The fire was out of control as it continued to fall from the sky. You could not see where it began or ended or what the flames held. It threatened. The threat was very close.
My mother's painting covers the entire area, seeing it from beyond. She is far below, sheltered by the metal roof of a well. The planes are overhead and precise. The fire is deliberate, the hills aglow. It's beautiful in rich, deep tones. The fire threatens in a different way. It is the fact that there are more than hundreds of these fire bombs bursting into smaller fire setters falling, too many to stop them all.
Actually, now that I think of it, it reminds me of the spiders again...thousands of baby fires.
Maybe, she is of a stronger ilk, and was not afraid. Her home was on fire. She prayed for a way "in" to the house. And suddenly there was a blanket she had not seen at the edge of the well. She poured water on it and draped it over herself to run in and save her parents' funeral shrine. They had both died years before. She had been given away to an uncle, but was returned shortly after his death just to see her mother die as well from illness. All that was left was the shrine. She said she wasn't afraid. She had to retrieve it.
How can you not be afraid? I "fear" my empathy is misguided when I try to help with the book, because I may imagine, incorrectly, the feelings. I'd imagine fear.
Yet she keeps saying that my writing (working with her on the book) isn't expressing enough of the emotions she felt, and I should know what they were.
I suppose I do...betrayal, despair and resilience. There is much sorrow and a certain amount of resentment to particular individuals. How can I express how much she wanted her mother to show affection towards her? She really swings wildly between hate and love for her. Her mother was abandoned by her family, and she was essentially abandoned by her mother.
Generations go by. I'd have to say our relationship was similar years ago. I felt abandoned. My parents would get angry and I wouldn't hear from them for years. My daughter must have felt abandoned by me in our divorce. Is it a natural part of life or an ongoing disfunction?
Oh well, I suppose that fear resides in me more than my mother. I'll have to remember that when I try to look at things from others' point of view. Obviously, a person has to be careful not to project their own emotion into the view.
Where does fear reside 1?
There were spiders hatching outside on the edge of the roof at the edge of the doorway. Hundreds of tiny babies dangled in the air on fine webs moving gently in the breeze. They were likely garden spiders, hopefully not the type that grow to the 2-inch size that I often find in the tub.Of course, I didn't get rid of them, reminding myself that they are harmless. I was entranced, revolted, apprehensive, and nauseous. They're harmless. I was not breathing, and finally gasped and turned away.
It awoke a memory that was once at my grasp at all times, but it had been put away. The memory itself doesn't feel scary at all, now. I was just surprised that I'd buried it for at least a short while and it took a visual to release it again. Even so, it took awhile to remember what bothered me about spiders. Is that self-protection? Many years ago, I'd walked through a double or triple web of black widow spiders hatchlings. There were more than hundreds in the back yard amongst my ceramic molds and the adirondak chairs and I was covered with the spiders. I grabbed a pretty heavy-duty insecticide and doused myself. After that it took months or maybe years to get better, with tremors and symptoms of panic. I couldn't breathe. Who knows, perhaps the toxin caused part of it. Maybe it was unnecessary. I read at one point that they aren't venomous, but most internet articles show now that the young are highly venomous. I thought they were. What to do? The choices - get bitten by a bunch of venomous spiders or poison myself with toxin. Was I shaking from exposure to insecticide or panic disorder? The tremors eventually went away. Life unraveled. I let it all fall apart. It was my tipping point in a bad way. The doctor said the stressor was the last straw to break the camel's back and I would never be well again.
Looking back, the doctor was wrong, simply a bad doctor. My life has been very stressful, but I haven't folded.
I'm not afraid of spiders. They don't invade my dreams. It's only a web covered with hatchlings that messes with my mind.
Summer sounds
Summer music spinsa silly drift of mind,
of playful themes,
and beach scenes,
invoking thoughts of dance.
It sounds like ice
clinking in drinks.
I imagine the feel
of cool sweat beads
dribbling over my fingers,
gleaming on the glass,
and lift them to my neck.
I imagine the scent
of sun tan lotion,
intoxicating
co-co-nut, co-co-nut --
I hear hearts beating.
I see sleepy-eyed bathers
Dreaming in the sun,
They turn their heads
To find each other
Dazzled by the light.
the nightmare that wasn’t
I hadn't thought about writing horror stories for a long time. There hasn't been time to conjure up any stories for that matter.In most dreams for the last few months, I'm working. No matter how ridiculous the scene is - maybe with circus characters, I'm doing research and analysis in the background. That is pretty dull.
The most interesting dream was one that I didn't have at all. It was about a house. I'd been watching a documentary on a murder on TV, and they had showed the home and discussed the evidence. I thought, after watching, that if a person really took a good look at the evidence, it would be solved.
When I went to sleep, the first thing I saw was the house, and I was to enter. This has happened before in other dreams and I am not flippin' going in. I forced myself to wake, but when drifting off again, there was that house, so I awoke again and again.
Then I listened to the night. The windows were open, and sound is exceptionally clear in our area. My personal opinion is that it is probably due to the canyon at the corner of the block. I assume it amplifies sounds somehow, because even sounds you wouldn't expect to hear (like bird's feet scratching on the overhead lines) are occasionally audible. People walk their dogs and you get used to the pattern of sound approaching, retreating, and the number of steps before they fade out.
There were footsteps and no dog steps and they didn't travel far enough. My mind continued to consider the murderous home, and I thought "What if?.. the footsteps ended, because there's a guy out there who's stepped onto the lawn. What if?..that person is planning to climb up on the railing and break into the house?" All the time one part of my mind is creating the scenario, the other part is telling me how silly I am. The ridiculous part of me wins, so I throw open the blinds to look out with the trepidation and resignation of a child who looks under the bed.
And there was this guy standing there.
My first reaction was to convince myself that I was actually asleep, and this was part of the dream I was avoiding. The other part of my mind said "Uh, hey wait, you're awake." I'm sure I startled him and he was just out for a midnight smoke. I shut the blinds. He was very unwell, like death walking. I thought, "What if..he was death walking?" "What if? that's what death does..it just sneaks up on you in your house in the middle of the night?" My mind goes on to perceive death appearing as I would die myself, to warn me but then to say it is too late, and then I realize that I am now dreaming.
---
So, I was thinking about writing horror again, somehow using the nightmare that wasn't for a story, but my daughter calls the next day and asks if I would do some artwork for a children's book.
I said "sure." She hasn't sent me the story line yet, though.
I didn't tell her about horror stories or that grandma is writing a book about her experiences in war and painting vivid scenes of death and destruction.
Loose lips
rambling...The lips are on the loose.
A colleague stepped into my office the other day to inquire about a set of lips left on his desk. He was told they might have come from our department. I gazed at him over the rims of my glasses, and shook my head, "Lips?" I repeated back to him. "Yes, they're some sort of gadget that you hook up to a phone," he replies.
"Oh, I remember those." There were three sets that someone had purchased off of Moot last year in the department. Some of my coworkers really enjoy the website and pick up unusal items from time to time. The gadget hooks up to a cell phone and the lips move when the person on the opposite end speaks.
"The problem," he says, "is that I don't own a cell phone. Do you know who gave them to me?" The lips likely moved on a while ago. I told him I had no idea where those lips had been.
He's a good friend and fellow photographer. He looked suddenly uncomfortable, imagining he'd have to ask someone else who left the lips, and the sorts of silly answers he'd get. It wasn't me. I don't own a working cell phone either. Someone was probably thanking him for doing a marvelous job on writing a program and presenting him a major award (like the leg lamp from "A Christmas Story" only a different body part.)
So to make things better, I changed the subject... to photography and told him about the most lovely scene I had just encountered outside the building on our first sunny day of Spring. The heat and the season had caused the cherry trees to drop their petals in abundance. There were two adorable children in the park scooping up the petals like snow and having a petal fight. It was fantastic watching the puffs of petals punching the air and scattering like fireworks and the children's delight. I'd left my camera at my desk, rats!
But someone else must have had a camera, and a photo of the scene was on today's front page of the local newspaper. I'm glad it was a moment not lost. There's actually been a ton of great photography in the paper lately. There must be a true genius at the beach taking pictures. A steady stream of artistic photos have been appearing for the last few months. This one was local, just on the block.
I'm hardly away from my desk this season and am focusing on the moments of other's introperplexion and joy.
Maybe Sunday I'll take some time for photos.
