This meditating Goddess is connected to invisible source above. The life force moves through her endocrine system like sap through a tree, and indeed her body is deeply rooted into the earth. She provides a safe home for owls, ferns, leaves and stones, cradling them within her.
The night of February 3, the crows and the cormorants come with a message of major change. They fly over a calm ocean with an active, but not foreboding sky in the background. When they arrive this way in huge flocks, organized and purposeful, they always bring news – a psychic heads up if you like. The next day, February 4, I received an invitation to a wedding in Tulum on the Yucatan Penninsula in Mexico. This will be a very special trip. My husband Tom and I will be meeting the people who live there – our friend Xan is marrying a Mexican citizen.
To me, going to Mexico signals a major life change. My friend is moving there, opening a gallery there, offering me a place to show and sell my art. This is a passport to jungles, Mayan ruins, iguanas, white beaches and Mexican art. The crows have me learning Spanish and ordering books on Mayan art and culture. The crows have me painting 6 shaman, etched into a canyon wall. I will eat, sleep, think and dream of Tulum until I get there and perhaps for ever after.
In this dream, I am leaving a place which is both WSU, where I went as an undergraduate in 1968-71, and Camp Zanika Lache, where I attended Camp Fire Girls Camp for so many years when I was a child and young girl. Mom and Daddy are here on the campus, too, also getting ready to leave. I am walking just at dusk to find them.
I walk under a Doug fir past a closed up log cabin, following an old path that winds past the cabins and connects them through the forest. Quartz chunks line the path. In the dimming light, I spot a particularly large piece of rock crystal and pick it up.
It is a huge quartz crystal surrounded by crystalline shapes like petals. I look at the other quartz pieces lining the walkway and many are partially defined crystal blossoms, but none so fine. I decide it is okay to keep it, and I hold it in both hands as I round the backside of the cabin and walk into the deepening gloom of the forest toward my parent’s cabin. The crystal emits a low, yellow light.
She says your novelist-within can be programmed to work on the story even while you’re doing other tasks. Students are receptive to the term “Secret Partner,” but lately I find that I also use the term “Wonderful One Within” for my students.
However, that is a simple binary of inner vs outer, and any artist knows the situation is more complex than that. So next, I introduce the idea of The Editor. I have them personify The Editor in writing and in drawing; in that way, they can externalize and begin to make choices about when The Editor does and doesn’t appear.
But the real situation is yet more complex than that. I have learned through Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art to externalize Resistance, which has revolutionized my ability to stay on task. So there we have four aspects of the personality externalized: outer me, Wonderful One Within Me, the Editor, and Resistance.
Then who are the rest of the figures who recur repeatedly in my drawings; for example, Turtle, and the woman named Nightwinds, and the crazy-eyed Cubist screaming head called Teecher, and the Silver Fox who showed me the way to the past and to a new direction in art, and the tiger cub who embraces turtle?
These aspects of the deep personality enchant and empower even as “they” lend “us” –who ARE all these people? 🙂 — their unique gifts that help “us” navigate “our” lives. Secret Partners, Allies from the Dream World where our Night Vision guides the way…
Friday, February 1, 2008. Late night drawing-colored pencil. I am still on the market for gel pens which will provide more contrast. I have painted a lot this week. I am starting to log in long hours at the easel on consecutive days.This is my first ever opportunity to do that and certain things are becoming apparent.
I do not paint alone. I seems to me that I have many, many supportive helpers and I do not know exactly who they are. Sometimes I think a specific famous painter – I hear a wry comment from Kahlo in my head. But more often I sense entities that certainly help me and oddly enough, I think that sometimes I help them.
I do not have elaborate theories about who these people are. The more I read about science, the more I realize that the idea that man is the only intelligent entity in the universe is almost certainly as ridiculous as the idea that the earth is the center of the solar system. As ridiculous as the idea that men are somehow closer to God than women. As ridiculous as the tragic and mistaken idea that man should have dominion over the earth.
It seems almost certain to me that there are many forms of life and I hope to the Goddess that they area more intelligent than we are. I am beginning to be suspicious that parallel realities are abundant and that none of this is even slightly woo woo. I am reasonably sure that science is a long way from nailing down the answers to most of the really big questions. I feel that it would be dishonest of me and a waste of time to develop a strong belief system. I guess I do not put a lot of stock in belief systems. In the meantime, I have allies in unusual places and my life seems to be working better because of their welcome presence in my life. And no, I do not hear voices and they do not tell me to do anything more threatening than “more thalo blue please.”
This blog post is commenting on Cheryl’s post and her dream sketch of 1/22/08 titled “Many dreams of a chicken with a golden egg.”
I read an article by Martha Beck, a life counselor, in current issue of The Oprah Magazine about the power of making a list of what you want. Several stories were recounted—one was about a woman named Helen who had been given a terminal prognosis of cancer by her physician. She pared her life back to the core (sound like anyone you know?) discovering only what was of supreme importance to her. Then her doctor said the diagnosis was in error—and she lives on a new woman.
However, she finds now that whatever she wishes for weirdly and magically appears. It is she who said the pull quote, “[From my Core of Peace] everything I think seems to materialize…I swear, if I held out my hand and said ‘apple,’ one would appear.” The author goes on to say, “She held out her hand in illustration. Another friend pulled an apple from her bag and put it on Helen’s palm. We laughed…nervously” (Beck 68).
Beck said that is because Helen’s desire now comes from her Core of Peace. She no longer concerns herself with living in The Shallows. She has passed through the Ring of Fire where all desire is burned up and come to dwell in her Core of Peace. From that center point “ask and it shall be given to you.”
I see this as a correlative to where we both are in our lives now; we have had experiences that have peeled us back to the Core; however, in part, we still know what it is to want something from “The Shallows.” And we know the heat from the Ring of Fire when we try to drag something from the Shallows through the flames to the Core—it gets burned up!
If your grant is written from your Core of Peace and sent out into the world, the answer will come one way or another. If not the grant, then from some other devious angle. But you cannot win if you do not play!
Your picture is interesting because the goose that is laying the golden egg is on top of the figure’s head where it can’t be seen! The brain is bubbling and the brain bubbles are coming out of the mouth—what is that? Soap for Truth? Rabindranth Tagore talks about laughter being like “foam on the flood” of being. Foam is a transitional substance combining air and water—so something about transition?
If I look at the face in another way, the foam represents hair coming around the shoulder–and is that a yellow ribbon or a pink ribbon and what does it represent to you?
The face looks like a Greek or Trojan mask–perhaps even Aztec?
Beck, Martha. “Go Tell Alice.” The Oprah Magazine. February 2008, 64.
Tagore, Rabindranath. “The Gardener # 84.” The Literature Network. 2000-2008. 2 Februaury 2008. http://www.online-literature.com/tagore-rabindranath/2955/
84
Over the green and yellow rice-fields sweep the shadows of the
autumn clouds followed by the swift chasing sun.
The bees forget to sip their honey; drunken with light they
foolishly hover and hum.
The ducks in the islands of the river clamour in joy for mere
nothing.
Let none go back home, brothers, this morning, let none go to
work.
Let us take the blue sky by storm and plunder space as we run.
Laughter floats in the air like foam on the flood.
Brothers, let us squander our morning in futile songs.
So this is a learning curve, the technology needed to make this blog work well. I cropped this image but could not retrieve it to use it here. No matter. This is a scribble drawing and it is as good as anything to speak to my life right now. I finally renounced working a day job. It is now up to me to see what my life can actually generate. I never wanted to be an entrepreneur but now…
Today I packed my beat up 1999 red Subaru Forester full of paintings, carefully wrapped and packed. Expensive frames, original art. I made the short trip into Kent to hang the paintings, only to find that the facility was locked. No one there. I called of course. The woman I talked to was not drunk but maybe something more serious. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t string words and thought together. Lots of that going around these days. What is wrong with people? Really? I finally called her sister and she was well grounded. Hang art tomorrow at noon. This is good.
Today I received a new print order for a Mickey’s Dragon. This early evening, a call from someone that owed me money. A credit card number and then a new commission from the same person. I am giving art and my art business just about 100% of my focus and attention and many things are falling into place. I couldn’t prove it by money just yet but the art itself is moving along by light years, or so it seems to me. I feel just slightly crazy -it feels so right and yet so out there to concentrate so intently on what I have always wanted anyway. Giving in to such a lifetime compulsion could be viewed as neurotic. I think that many artists go down in history as somewhat crazy. I am beginning to understand how that happens.
I do not see myself as mentally ill but I suspect that most people do not ever become consumed by art. It is not something we choose – art is more invocation than inspiration and I can feel that in myself. I did not imagine this compulsion toward art – I do not have that power; it started so young. By 3 years old and unrelenting throughout my 61 years. Art is a stalker and a deadly one at that. I truly believe that it would have taken me out in one way or another if I had not said yes.
Underwater Vision [Vision sous-marine]. (c. 1910)
Jan. 28, 2008
This morning, Peter told me about the French painter Odilon de Redon, so we visited the online exhibition at MOMA http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html
Although I loved his paintings, this exhibition is primarily lithographs in three themed categories, metamorphosis, Monsters and Tales. I believe he is popularly known for vases of flowers, but here we see his Surrealist visions such as the smiling spider and the hot air balloon drawn as an eye. Gauguin said that in Redon’s work, “dreams become reality because of the believability he gives them.” Redon draws from studies of nature then imagines alternate visions of hyper-reality from there.
Image to the left, “Smiling Spider”; yes, there is a wolf-spider smile down in the terrifying darkness…
“Caught between description and dream, the observed and the imagined, Odilon Redon’s (French, 1840–1916) work transformed the natural world into dark visions and bizarre fantasies. Delving into the imagination, Redon created a universe of hybrid creatures, offered his own interpretations of literary, biblical, and mythological subjects, and presented the environment in a singular way: we see grinning disembodied teeth, smiling spiders, winged chariots, unfamiliar plant life.” (quote from the online exhibition at MOMA)
The “grinning, disembodied teeth” refers to a wonderfully strange litho of teeth looming out of a library shelf–the reference is to an Edgar Allen Poe quote:
“The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the 
Not a speck on their surface – not a shade on their enamel – not an indenture in their edges – but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! – the teeth! – they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development.
Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire.
All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They – they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression.”
That is from a longer perhaps we could call it a creative nonfiction piece called “Bernice.” You can read the whole deliciously over-wrought piece online, here:
http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/eapoe/bl-eapoe-ber.htm
January 27, 2008
Snowbound!
At any rate, it is 8:30 am, and the snow is coming down at a very brisk pace. We like to be inside and “watch the woods fill up with snow.” Peter is reading bits out from a book on Elizabethan Stratford–that ducks weren’t allowed out into the streets, and to gather goslings in the morning, the goose girl shakes a paper bag with pebbles in it–I didn’t think they had paper bags back then?
I teach a class in Creative Nonfiction, and another in Creative Writing, and journaling is at the heart of these classes. I have been journaling constantly, daily, but in image rather than words. Sometimes my mind has been so full of words that my head rattles with them the way the goose girl shakes a bag of pebbles to call the goslings in the morning.
It has always been my longing to have time to dig deep for a pure language, rich and clear, complex and comprehensible. But so much teaching on a daily basis of language skills of all sorts has obscured the time it takes to find the road of silence that leads to depthful writing.
Cheryl gave me the black journal and showed me how to use colored pencils to keep a journal of “memories, dreams, reflections,” starting with non-threatening scribble art. I still scribble, but I find that less interesting than journaling to active imagination where I let the image emerge on the page, open to the influences of Dali and Kahlo, the greatest autobiographical Surrealists.
I love the way Surrealism takes disparate pieces of memory, image, and emotion, and makes a new landscape of truth. It is a way of representing fractured time and the shifting canopy of memory in art. There is an emotional satisfaction in that.
Lately, I have taken to drawing the landscapes of very specific memories. Like all humans, I suppose, I fear losing my memories, so often are they reduced to fragmented emotion, the flash of image. We are haunted by these every day, as if we walked in the perpetual drifting haze and snow of our own dreams and memories without acknowledging them.
My Mysterious Night Vision Journal is like an infrared camera that sees in the dark. These sketches are snapshots of lost worlds.
T.S. Eliot in “The Wasteland” spoke of his method in that great poem, which was to assemble those “fragments shored against my ruin.” I am a scrap booker, a crazy-quilt maker, a journaler in word and image trying to look past daylight to give life and line to the parts of me that live in the shadows.
I do feel that I live in the eternal Zen present, but that in the present moment are the many wavering veils of the past.
This morning, I remembered sledding with my siblings down the hill in front of our house, and I tried to draw that memory as I sat in front of our big picture window blowing snow and memory…This shows larger and better on the Picasa site at: http://picasaweb.google.com/sandramardene
Jan. 28, 2008
When I look at my picture of us four kids sledding, the small figures of the children become as elements of the landscape. What predominates is what was supposed to be Horse lake Road going down to the bus turn around at the bottom of the hill where the mail boxes, the creek into the hills and road come together. Instead, it looks to me like a terrifying train tunnel through time that pulls the viewer without lingering into its maw.
Not all the images have coherent stories behind them, but that one was about being at Dinner Plate Rocks up on the Malaspina Strait and learning about a shipwreck where a family, including a seven-year-old girl had drowned–their kitchen crockery, including their broken dinner plates, washed up on the beach, giving the name Dinner Plate Rocks. I wrote a poem about that, but the sense of the place has lingered in the dark.
Shipwreck at Dinner Rock, Malaspina Strait
Can you scry the patterned stone,
trace the crystal surfaces of stone?
(Salt and green, salt and green.)
Because it is said the stones remember all.
you explode pink granite
(quartz, feldspar, mica) crystal
by crystal until molten molecules spin
in a slow, rose mist;
and still they tell you nothing.
(Salt and green, salt and green.)
It’s not for the rocks to say, here
a child, shipwrecked, lost
all seven years of her life. That
is the speech of the cross on the rock;
but when the splintering mind
splits the silvered wood of the cross,
a hand reaches out for the dust.
(Salt and green, salt and green.)
The light, the light, the light.
Cedar bones and granite stones,
you reach for meaning here,
cheek flat to the flat,
silvering hair, passing light;
but all there is is all
there ever has been, maybe less:
salt and green the sea,
the sea, the rock, the light,
the light, the light, the light.
