November 2011
Crisis, age 51, Paris
November 3, 2011
In those early days, I was carrying too much shadow, too much shame. I bent, swayed, nearly broke under the weight of it.
I’ve been living behind a death mask, pretending that wasn’t so, pretending it was alive and functional. The mirror cracked. Boom! death mask split asunder. Thank god. Down on my knees, I thank god for splitting asunder the terrible joke that was being played on me. Freedom-a long hard road, grief, pain, a dying one more time. The loss of the existent body, failure, down, down, down even further. What more could be asked of me? Surely there is no lower to go? Wrong. Plunged down and down into darkness, bleakness, inability. The body refuses. The body still carrying shadows which swamped it. The body couldn’t breathe. The body could no longer live. Overtaken, over run, the rats ran wild. Fetid. squalid sewers. Sewers of my mind, sewers of my self. Death once more. Or death averted.
My whole life I’ve waited to be born, my whole life in limbo, my whole life dying, trying, resurfacing, emerging, sinking down. What is this uncomfortable energy? This dismissiveness I feel, this avoidance? I project the father. He thinks I’m stupid, not worth talking to. Indeed, in the transference I feel myself stupid, nothing to say, nothing of note, of worth. A part of her attempts banter, and fails. Obviously it is the wrong approach. I do not need the blessing of the father to be ok, even as my father slips away.
Chipping away at the external structures in order to get to the cold. Let me carve you. Let me sculpt you. Let me make you anew.
I always cry in art galleries, museums, touching my aching soul which still does not express as much as it needs. I know I need to write a song to my mother. And I need to make it real, to put it into music, not to just have it be some idea. So many years I have journeyed with the father, and mainly they have been shadowy fathers, fathers with dirty secrets, fathers who share their secrets with me and expect my silence. Always I have given it. I say no more, no fucking more.
I scramble blindly in the dark, always hoping my senses won’t let me down this time, will keep me safe this time. Down on my knees. Down on my fucking knees, crawling along, always crawling. Nosing out what is, trying to discern what stories it is the walls are whispering and what are the warnings they have given me, on dark shadows some stories cast. Dark, long, tall, over engulfing shadows. Where’s the light? Where’s the fucking light?
Me, I couldn’t draw death, or carve death, it’s too close, not yet detached from me, hovering urgently at my feet still, always waiting for the opportunity to reign supreme, to darken the skies, to have the final word.
I’ve been swimming in troubled seas too long, this malaise which has swamped me takes me further into its depths, bids me plunge further in: let go, let go, let go into the inky sea.
Everyone’s looking for gods. Where do we go to find them? Me, I went inside first of all, I went outside. I scoured the hills. I sink to my knees, I am filled with the grace of flowers, of love opening like flowers, of hope, of heart, of dreams, of desires. Give me peace.
I have to hold my face up with my hands. My hands are my voice, they re so tense always, gripping, holding on, fearful of being pushed off, dismantled so they hold on desperately.