The Blue & Yellow Post

Life goes round in circles.

It is this process of repeating things that creates the pattern of our life.  Some of those patterns are unique, but most are reminiscent of other, collective or universal patterns. In these we share histories, geographies, myths and dreams. They may have a different personal colours and shades but many of our life patterns are similar to other people’s. I find this immensely reassuring.

As individuals we repeat certain lessons, behaviours, or thoughts for as long as they serve us.  Even negative patterns. After that, we try new ones.  Now this is nothing very earth shattering, but it always surprises me, in those unguarded moments to actually see the patterns - like wind washed sand,  circles within circles of filigree lace.

We repeat patterns because they are reassuring and sustain the image we have of ourselves: as successful, caring, creative, provocative, entertaining, funny, serious whatever.  They’ve worked before and will work again - for this is the concept of self-efficacy. 

One such useful technique I have is to write my way into new life situations. I have done this a couple of times in the past, and I believe I’m doing that now, with this blog. The result of the writing will be known much later.  18 ago I was in a bit of a mess. I was depressed, alone and retrenched from a job I had enjoyed immensely. My brother had just been married and following the wedding I decided to go home to the USA with my sister Cate, her husband and their twins who were 3 at the time. I stayed there for 6 months. Blissful and joyous.

Over that time, I wrote. I wrote 2 stories. One was called “How to make a career out of choosing a career to make” and the other was a stream of consciousness, regarding my own fecundity and depression. In that second story, I played the central character who thought she was a turtle, who deposited hundreds and hundreds of egs, and the second character was a psychologist called Stephen who tried to address this psychosis.  This story I kept private and no-one knew of it at all.

It repeated itself, however in the following way. 5 years later I married a psychologist called Stephen. Like the theme in my story, we had trouble conceiving. As one of many treatments we visited a chinese herbalist who prescribed - you guessed it, crushed turtle shells. Of course I discontinued treatment and alas remained childless.  At the same time Cate sent me a postcard out of the blue, with a picture of a turtle. This turtle was part of a polynesian myth in which she gave birth to all the peoples of the south pacific, hundreds and hundreds of eggs.  Neither Stephen nor Cate knew of my story. Nor had I read the polynesian myth before. 

I love that sort of synchronicity. It doesn’t change the outcome, but it does change the energy around it - marking it as moment of significance.

Several years ago, a psychic I have seen several times, told me my life was an open book. The first half was written but the second was completely blank. I asked if this meant I was going to die.  She told me that it was blank because that half had yet to be written.

So let’s see where the Blue and Yellow Post ends up. Perhaps a year or two from now, there will be a pattern, like another pattern, reminiscent of a further pattern. And I’ll know it had served the right purpose.

See you in the next chapter

I paint. I paint with oils, acrylics and watercolour. I guess my favourite medium are oils - because they are so seductive. Depending on the medium you use, you can get all sorts of transparent and rich colours.

Right now I’m wrestling with 2 paintings. Both are based on photos I took on a recent trip. The wrestle is with the process and I guess the outcome.

My problem is that I don’t want the work to be a replica of something I saw, yet I do want it to replicate what I saw - if that makes sense. The images that are pre-occupying me are steps that lead into the water. In both, the water seems so mysterious: one is slightly more bouyant or playful and the other receding with the tide - revealing the rich variegated stone patterns beneath.

I work with the forms yet all the time resisting them. I want to shape and push the forms, to stretch them so they don’t resemble the starting point, and then reconfigure them to make sense of the whole picture. This means continually massaging how they relate to each other on the canvas. I enjoy the colours, the balance, the solidity and fragility of some elements - and have immense fun with the texture of the paint itself. Yet I wrestle with the fact that it should look more like life, more like the original picture, more like reality.

People who see my work - describe it as impressionistic.  Is that because I can’t reproduce forms realistically? The reason they say this is because each painting has a feeling of transience and movement.  I also think they are impressionistic because I use the knife more often than I do the brush.

Another pecadillo, if you like is a lack of planning. I prefer the painting to emerge as I go along. I like to be suprised at what the painting process delivers - almost magically. It may not resemble the starting point much at all, but it comes to a point when the work is finished and I’m happy to let it go as an impression of the starting point.

Nearly every time I look at my work I feel good about it and about myself. Which is a world away from what I was like when I was a teenager or young adult. In fact, I would recommend painting for all depressives and those working on the renovated self. It’s a great way to fall in love with life and with your participation in it.

I knew a woman once, whom I thought was quite a gifted painter. I couldn’t understand why she judged her work so harshly, refusing to pick up the brush for many years after a “bad” experience (ie a painting she didn’t like). I’m not saying don’t strive for perfection, but really - the world is full of critics enough, why would we add another one to the equation?

Yes, I love the process and I do like the workat each iteration. I like its boldness, the “painterly” (as a teacher once described it) style, which I think just means the fact that I’m not afraid of using a variety of and large amount of paint.  In fact I relish in it. Bloke used to find the “mark of bubba” everywhere around our house. A smear of paint on the light switch, on the fridge, on the phone and of course on every wall along my path.

He would be frightened of the work. Not because of the mess, but rather frightened for me I think. He’d notice when the perspective was wrong, or the composition didn’t resemble reality. He thought I’d be disappointed at the end. Of course he was projecting, and when I asked him why he didn’t paint, given that he was an excellent draftsman, he told me that he was too scared. He would spend so much time planning what to paint, that he would become too intimidated to begin - in case it didn’t work out.

I guess I get scared too. Scared that it will end up looking like crap. But I push on through that, it happens about a third of the way through the painting’s life cycle. And I remind myself that crap is all relative. One person’s crap is in fact another person’s delight. Last week I dreamt someone commented on my painting to the effect that “It looks like shit”. “Exactly what part of it and what sort of shit?” I asked in the dream. At the time, I put it down to a heavy night on the turps (booze that is)  because the painting resembled a truncated intenstine, and I did feel like shit the morning after.

So I’m writing this while my two (yet to be finished) paintings dry. I’m writing it to remind myself that the process is incredibly rewarding - with fresh discoveries all the time. And I’m writing it to remind myself that the process itself is a way of wrestling with my own way of seeing the world - ”In real life” or in my head. The view in my head is like “real life” but is mixed up with all the excitement of other inflluences.

Farewelling my sister on this morning’s flight to Hong Kong, and then onto Budapest; cleaning the house and washing the linen in preparation for interstate friends; getting ready for dinner with a close friend and her guests tonight, and remembering how sublime the Merchant Ivory production of “Howard’s End” was last night.

Yes, all of that has an effect on whether I see the water as emerald or mauve, and whether I paint the stones with a dab or a dash and just how much paint - that I’ve just plied on  do I now scrape off - in order to give a sense of well trodden steps.

Magical.

A long time ago someone took this photo. It was the week after the death of our mother. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Just as a picture records seminal moments like these, those same moments highlight the essence of who we are.

I believe those moments of death, birth and marriage highlight a hunger for certainty and meaning.  We make meaning of things with the head and the heart, and for want of a better word, with the spirit.

How much of our spiritual skills are handed down and how much do we acquire? Can we acquire any after a certain age? And do seminal moments up the ante at all?

My own seminal moments include:

• The death of my mother when I was four years old
• The death of my father when I was 30 years old
• My marriage when I was 37
• The death of my husband when I was 48 years old
• The death of my stepmother when I was 48 years old

The primary death of my mother was the defining one.  As one of four siblings we each had a different way of responding to that event. These responses set in motion an entire approach to the way we live our lives.  And this approach is well explained by a particular spiritual system.

The Enneagram has gone the farthest to explaining what these responses were. All of the family is into the Enneagram. So much so, that we’ll describe the behaviour of a family member as a typical 6 or that’s a 3 for you!

The Enneagram is based in a Sufi practice and is a dynamic program to define the spiritual self in relation to others and the world. The system went through a number of iterations to become what it is today.

The system is good for our family for a number of reasons: it is dynamic and inter-related. In other words, we are who we are, in relation to ourselves, to others and to the world. And the best part is that each type is in the process of change and growth. It perfects itself in movement towards or away from other types. 

There are nine types. And each type is defined by a reaction to an impulse (in our case this was pain and fear). No type is any better than another. There are ways to find out what your type is, but I always believe that when you find out your type, you are invariably embarrassed and or humbled by the insight.

We four sit together. We have a 5, two 6s and a 7. Each one of us reacted to the pain of losing our mother in a slightly different - though connected - way. One retreated to the head (5) to find an intellectual explanation; two joined a bigger system (6) to offset the anxiety and belong somewhere and the last one chose the path of sensation to feel alive and to avoid pain (7).

I wanted to write a book with my sisters. Gab was to write the path of epicurean delight – food and pleasure; Cate was to write a dissertation on sense-making and intellectual control and I was to write the third path on myth making and imagination. In the middle of the story, a fairy tale would link and explain the three types. We got so far but no farther.  As it matters more to me, I will pick it up again one day.

The dynamic process of the Enneagram means that as a 6 I have the potential to move towards a number 9. I am not changing types but, if I continue to grow, I can develop a new set of spiritual skills, represented by the number 9.

When I am at my best as a 6, I am self-affirming, trusting of self and others, independent yet symbiotically interdependent and cooperative as an equal. A belief in self leads to true courage, positive thinking, leadership, and rich self-expression.

Number 9, at their best are self-possessed, feel autonomous and fulfilled: have great equanimity and contentment because they are present to themselves. They are intensely alive and fully connected to self and others.

One of my nieces is a 9 so I can learn from her what it feels like to live like a 9. Another one of my nieces is like me, a 6. So if I can live well and fully, I might assist her in understanding herself a bit better.

We are attracted to other types and can understand them. I have a penchant for 5s (given that my twin sister and husband were both 5s). I certainly understand them and I lean on them to make sense of the world inside my head. I also ‘get’ 7s and lean on them when I nudge the bottle or cook up a feast to comfort myself.

So way back when I was 4 years old and the worst thing in the world that could happen did happen; I assumed the mantle of the fearful loyalist. To face whatever it was I had to face, front-on; counter-phobic and confrontational. Confined by and in this awful situation, I was wrapped in a straight-jacket of anxiety. My twin sister, also 4 years old followed another path – one of the eremitic Investigator; equally valid, but different to mine.

Neither of us could tell where the paths would lead. But they were set in motion by this momentous event, and they would diverge many times in the years that followed.

A picture does indeed tells of a thousand worlds still to be lived.  

Once upon a time, there was a fortress like castle that stood tall and bold in a verdant countryside. The castle could be seen from miles around.

It was home to lots of  people: travelling merchants, artisans, storytellers and adventurers, cooks and wine merchants, blacksmiths, jewellers, dressmakers, butchers, grocers and all those in service to the family in charge of the castle. The castle was responsible for the well-being of so many. Each night it hummed with the sounds of songs, music and hard work of those who called the castle home.

The castle was secured by locks and chains. There were chains on the front door and chains on the bridge over the moat.  Throughout the castle, there were chains on all the doors and windows. And down in the dungeons, there were chains that kept the prisoners under control. The chains were a part of the castle. They made the people feel secure. 

The castle was surrounded by a moat. The moat appeared serene and still but deep below it was teeming with many fish and plants. Now and then, one could catch a glimpse of something moving - a shot of blue, a spark of green and a streak of deep and wondrous bronze - colours of a beautiful untouchable world. 

Part of this untouchable world was the most beautiful fish imaginable. With scales the colour of moonlight and a tail the colour of falling stars, this fish had always lived in the moat. Its ancestors had swum up the stream that fed the moat a long time ago.  But this fish had only known life in the moat.

It had been hatched from eggs deposited in a broken crystal goblet. The goblet had fallen to the bottom of the moat many years ago. The gold that decorated the goblet had long since tarnished. The crystal, so brilliant in the past was now embellished only by green algae. The fish and the goblet were one, linked at birth it was to the goblet that the fish returned each night.

Then one day the world changed.

Illness came to the castle. No one knew where it came from, perhaps a traveller, perhaps an animal. Like a wildfire it raged through the castle and the people became feverish, half mad with a desperate thirst, the people drank water from the moat. But it did no good. No soul was saved - children, women and men all died.

The castle chains were broken by desperate people wanting to get away. Even the prisoners were freed to take the dead out of the castle to bury them in the meadows. But once free, the prisoners ran away, and the dead were left to pile up on the castle keep. The family who owned the castle also died from the illness. The last person alive lit a fire on the keep and then left the castle for good. 

In the days that followed, the fire burnt everything in the castle. Even the strong castles walls began to crumble in the inferno. The ash from the fire was blown into the low-lying moat and poisoned all the remaining life.  The beautiful fish tried to hide in the goblet for as long as possible. But soon the dry winds, the harsh sun and smoke sucked up all moisture from the moat. With nowhere left to hide, she floated on her side in the broken goblet and looked up at the castle. What was left of the burnt and broken castle looked back at the dying fish and they watched each other die.

Some time passed.  The winds blew the dust and ash away. The castle was broken down by the elements and soon became just a memory. One wall remained however, but only half as high as it had been. The moat too was barren and bereft with only dried cracked earth in its place. 

Day after day, the sun swung over the desolate scene, alighting momentarily on the gilded edge of the broken goblet. Some seeds from the nearby meadows were blown on the summer breeze to land in it’s upturned cup.

And then the rain came.

It was soft and fragrant rain that continued for days and washed everything, making the world fresh and new. This rain felt like a blessing. And although it was too late for the castle and the fish, it served to cleanse and revitalise the land around. It fell into the moat, and on the seeds that had blown there.

And in the fish’s goblet, the goblet where she had died, a seed took hold. Kissed by the blessed rain, a tiny fragile blossom emerged shaded, in part, by the lone castle wall.  Although it was black and broken and only half as tall as before, the wall was high enough to protect this new growth.

So now, in this land grows a beautiful and rare flower; with petals the colour of moonlight and leaves the colour of fallen stars. It grows in the shade of a broken castle wall and smells in a strange way like the sea.