Letterbox Monsters

I did not fill in the forms,
or pay the bills,
or check my statement.

Nor because I am lazy,
or inept,
or even stupid.

But because the envelopes
have claws,
and sharp teeth.

Stranded

I'm back, it seems, and it must be true because I wrote as much in my other blog. So why am I feeling ship wrecked again? Days of enegetic planning, days when I know I can do anything, are followed by days when I can barely keep awake for more than a couple of hours. Days when tears come from no where to silently overflow for the most flimsy of reasons.

Lost. Stranded. Transparent.

Today....

someone said I should believe in myself more. It has been said before, but somehow I can't. Me wandered off and got lost many years ago. I took her place. A brittle facade that fools most of the people, most of the time.

The Madness of Art

I remember my grandmother telling me that 'most' comic geniuses were 'terribly unhappy' people in private and that other famously 'mad' artists, actors, etc., had 'tragic' lives or were 'eccentric'. Words like 'mental health'. 'insanity'' or 'madness' were never used. Her depression and agrophobia (so obvious to me in hindsight), were 'nerves' and my own sometimes strangeness merely the result of being 'highly strung'. Many years later, when the darkness finally came rolling out of the cupboard to engulf me, my then husband, insisted on telling people that I was suffering from 'stress' .

Although mental health issues are now far more openly discussed in the press and other public forums; although the originally insensitive handling of Frank Bruno's breakdown by some newspapers could cause an outcry of disgust and an outpouring of public sympathy; 'madness' is still 'the other'. Something to be viewed with sympathy laced with fear and embarrassment from a distance. Better still, to be ignored or made light of in the hope that it will not prove contagious. Perhaps fear of the mentally ill is really the fear that our own demons will be awoken by proximity? (It is ok for the famous to be mad, they can be viewed from a safe distance.)

What has all this to do with art?

Despite the fact that society is far more open about all kinds of things than it was in the past. Despite more widespread acceptance of difference, we still live in a world defined by conformity. In the 21st century there is more room for individuality than there was fifty, forty, thirty years ago. But we still educate our children to 'fit in'. The boxes are still there, they have merely been redecorated.

Creativity is not top of the list of skills to be taught in schools and originality is often drowned in the need to pass exams and to meet accepted criteria. Art is taught as another subject to be passed by those who are 'good at it'. Yet creativity is a fundamental part of our humanity. Take a closer look at the person who maintains that they have no artistic talent, at the one who maintains that they have not a creative bone in their body. Some where you will see their art shining through.

The one who spends hours in the shed building models, tying flys, rebuilding an engine, a car, a motorbike. The one who effortlessly turns a building into a home, who can place a cushion or a flower in just the right place to take your breath away. Open your eyes and see the same dress on a dozen girls, yet each one made somehow different. Walk into a craft fair or wander the internet and catch your breath at the sheer volume and diversity of skills and artistry that surround you.

If art requires madness, then we are all mad. But does madness require art? Yes. In the same way that all of us, the one and the three in four, require a voice. Those of us lost in the shadows are so often voiceless. Silenced by pain, by memories, by lives lived upside down and inside out. We are still only human. Creative beings with a need to join our song to the symphony around us. So like so many others, the sane, the bad, the good, the mad, the young, the old, we lift our paint brushes and our pens and sing our stories into the world.

A New Year Begun

It seems a very long time since January 2004. An ocean of months. This time last year I was wading through a dark treackle of despair that clung to my skin and sucked my body into a failed oblivion. I had thought there would be no more new years eve's for me. Yet here I am, twelve months later, further foward and yet at the same time trapped like a fly in amber.

It is not a subject suitable for polite conversation., suicide. Especially the failed, attention seeking sort (that is how it is explained, I have seen the unspoken words hovering behind smiles and eyes that slide sideways avoiding contact with that which must not be acknowledged). My crime stays with me. Not forgotten . The memory, the thought walks beside me every day. It sits next to me, holding me close and whispering its siren words in my ear. A call I must refuse to hear, not because it does not entice but because I do not belong to myself. My failure closed off opportunity for freedom.

Instead, I have each day to fight through. Daily victory piling into weeks, months, another year passed by. I have made some good things with my battle. Two weeks spent warmed in Tunisia. Bitter lonliness interleaved with quiet contentment under strange stars. The discovery of paints and pencils and pastels. Colours flowing from my hands. New knowledge, new friends, a new and wonderful voice. Hours spent without thoughts or pain, no need to strive, only to be.

I have written less lately. A paint brush fulfilling the role of a pen. I thought perhaps I could make myself whole that way. There is only one me who paints, it is not as easy to fence off the fragments as it is with words. When I write in each of my seperate journals I can see when one begins to seep into the other. Build dams to keep the dark from the light.

Each needs a voice. 'Diet Coke' must remain. A container for the pain of thoughts that writh along their own peculiar and twisted paths.

Red has sliced the darkness of the night once more. Searching for sleep amongst tumbled pillows and tangled covers. So many hours to travel the path that leads downwards. Lonliness and fear has driven me into chat once more for the first time in months. Bright, bubbly, brittle I polish the facade and allow it to sparkle from the shadows splashed with crimson.

Drummers and Road Maps

Often, when I visit Ronni's blog I find her words thought provoking. Usually, I would comment in 'Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs', but on this occasion this seems the most appropriate forum. In a recent entry, inspired by questions asked by Clarence here, Ronni had this to say:

Clarence’s rumination begins:

What I'm wondering is this: What road-map have you followed through
your life? What drummer is playing the music you march to? Is there a guiding
influence, a small, quiet voice you hear that "suggests" a course of action to
take or which choice to make when several are available?

And it ends:
Is there a deeper purpose for your life? If so, what is
it? Where are you going? How will you get there? Is it really up to you to
decide? Who is it that determines what choices are set before you?

It is a valuable exercise, I believe, and an important step in maturing
into our later years to take such questions seriously and to revisit them
regularly. They cannot possibly be answered quickly and easily or maybe at all,
and there are no right or wrong answers - only personal ones. I have pondered on
this one many times: “Is it simply fate that has brought you to this point in
time? Do you ever feel…your course has been set by one much greater than
yourself?”

Reading both entries in full helped to give flesh to many of the new understandings that have been occupying me recently.

I have never been very good at reading maps. When I visit a new place I depend on other people to explain the route to me. It seems that I have been doing something very similar with my life. For almost as long as I can remember I have been searching for safety, for certainty. For that inner sense of stability that would allow me to move forward with confidence. Children look to others for this feeling of security until a time comes when their knowledge of who they are allows them to listen to the guiding beat of their own drums, to draw their own maps. A child who is never able to get to know themselves, too busy staying safe by trying to match their steps to those around them, is rarely able to meet their own needs or find a path of their own to follow.

This has been my life. Desperately attaching myself to the footsteps of others until the voice of my own drummer was silenced. Heard only as cries of rage and despair.

It has taken me a long time to understand that the safety I seek can only be found within. That I must let go of the chameleons masks and learn who it is who stands at the centre. My fear that I would find nothing. That the disguises would collapse like abandoned costumes to reveal nothing but emptiness, is groundless. There is a me. Fragile and ghost like perhaps, but she does exist and if I listen carefully, patiently, she will begin to beat her drum once more.

The dark has a name...

It has been a while since I put any words in this space. Time ran down hill, silencing my voice and making each new day a trembling, fearful clinging onto smiles and common place conversations. As always happens, I have found some firm ground to stand on once more, and as always I have to believe that this time I have found a continent of dry land, not another small island.

This place is neither safe nor comfortable. The earth heaves and spits out fire unexpectedly. So far I have managed to keep my balance. Just. My need to control the elements persists and I wear myself out building walls. Walls that I am beginning to understand keep the dark in, rather than shutting it out.

J. is a good counsellor although there are times when I wish I was never to see her again. And times when Friday morning cannot come quickly enough. Some times I am barely able to heal the fractures in my defences before they begin to crumble once again.

It was during one of these assaults that I learned the name. The dark has a name.

Anger.

Rage.

Fear.

All of those things melted together like the wax from candles. At last, after all these years I know its name. More than that, I know what it looks like.

This dark monster that has haunted, poisened, crippled my life for so long is a child. A frightened, angry child who lashes out. Lashes out at herself. The dark is not behind me, nor beside me. It is inside me.

The child is me.