LAST ENTRY

2010-08-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

Does nobody understand?
-James Joyce, 1941

Truth in Boxes

2009-07-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

I took a spontaneous trip across the country to be with my sister who has just found out some horrendous news. I just felt I should be with my family and no quicker than I bought the ticket, I was on the way to the airport. I brought along my big Clairefontaine journal thinking that I could make my way through more of The Artist's Way, a book that my friend Melanie recommended to me to get me 'unstuck' creatively. I haven't written in this particular journal in a while, and chose it for its size which appealed for travel.

On the plane, I decided to go through earlier entries and meet myself on the page, a process that can be jarring to say the least, like stepping away from one of those marks on a wall that shows how much you've grown in a year or two. I usually don't want to revisit the site of any previous scribblings, but I had ample time on the red-eye and so with a handsome measure of trepidation, I cracked her open to see what I would find.

Cue the hair to stand up now...this is what I opened to...

"It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct then your life will be safe, expedient and thin." -- Katharine Butler Hathaway

I had no recollection of copying this quote in my journal. I had no idea that my 'deepest instinct' blog title had an origin in something I'd read sometime in the last two years. I was profoundly affected by discovering this bit of kismet on the plane, as I traveled back to where I'd been raised and what I'd tried so hard to leave behind.

This notion of 'fear of consequence' has far-reaching tendrils for me. Consequences are many giant mental dominoes that will fall no matter what direction I think of turning toward. Yet, my instinct is to want to come back to my heart and live according to its calm and constant whispers. When all is said and done, I am willing to be a fool, albeit a sincere one. I don't want to sit on the porch when I'm an old woman and decide that I played it safe and thin.

My sister and I helped my mother move into her new house in the southern Ontario heat. At times we talked, but there were also moments of pregnant silence. It was sort of a reverse funeral, we were unearthing the past, not burying it, but there was still a pervasive quality of an ending, not a beginning. Box after box I looked through my mother's life, from her childhood through her married years, the family years and up till present day, as she lives in widowhood. I chatted with a friend later online that none of it seemed real any more, boxes of photos from Ireland and my father's clothing and shoes my mother wore when she was thirty years younger... it all seemed irrelevant and I couldn't find security that I craved. There was no safety of a childhood room to return to. Each box punctuated the unreality of living, of collecting and trying to keep safe those things which one feels one cannot live without. It is all illusory.

The consequence of living by instinct and heart may be that I live a messy, unpredictable and insecure life. It might look to outsiders like I've lost my mind. I may seem as though I am devolving or unstable. I have come to believe that I am actually less encumbered the more props I let fall. There's nothing unstable about me, although it may appear so. This part of the journey, the falling away of things and people, of roles, of expectations, of going deep, of getting empty-- it isn't expedient or safe or thin. It is painful, the worst pain I've sustained. It is slow and methodical; it is labyrinthine in nature, not expedient. At times the metronome of my thoughts have slowed to what could only be called Twilight Zone slow... but it has also been invigorating, life-affirming and blissful.

I imagine my old-lady self. I'm sitting on my porch somewhere (I'd love it to be New Mexico, Georgia O'Keefe comes to mind.) I am looking up at the stars, remembering this time of rebirth and those significant loves of mine who figured so prominently during this metamorphosis, now scattered to all ends of the earth. I am smiling and feeling gratitude for this young woman I am now who so ardently seeks her own truth.

There are no boxes for my children to unpack. I have only my paintings, my books and my writing. I am light and ready to leave as I came. I blink like a wise old baboon, slowly, as I look up and take it all in.

No, there's nothing thin about that moment.

Deepest Instinct

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Truth in Boxes