Beethoven's 7th symphony.

Yesterday I posted (just below this) the second movement of this symphony.  Tonight I have listened to the first movement about 20 times so I thought I would share it here.  So much has been happening in my life recently- it feels difficult to know how or what to write about any of it.  So today it is Beethoven.  Everything keeps happening and we all go on and on until we die- but before that- we have Beethoven.  xo

Enamored.

I can not stop listening to this- so I thought I would share it here.

Poem from "The Writer's Almanac".

Voyage

by Tony Hoagland

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
             and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
                                                        by pushing into it—

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

Both sides. (drawing from 12.21.10)

Words and images. Words and images.

The reason I repeat the title of this posting twice is because it is as a sort of mantra/motto for me now.  I am working hard to write and draw about things that are difficult for me to tolerate knowing about- as opposed to reenacting or using the kind of 'performance art' that I have used so much and for so long to describe painful events from the past.  This image is a drawing I made today and each item in the drawing feels like a symbol with a meaning- most of them fairly obvious to me now- some perhaps slightly more complex.  But as I was thinking about this drawing after I made it and some of the imagery and the meanings in them- I was thinking about something that can not be seen in this drawing.  I was wondering:  What if I had made it from a different place?  A different emotional space.

Poem for today from 'The Writer's Almanac'.

Here I Am, Lord

by Michael Chitwood

The ribbed black of the umbrella
is an argument for the existence of God,

that little shelter
we carry with us

and may forget
beside a chair

in a committee meeting
we did not especially want to attend.

What a beautiful word, "umbrella."
A shade to be opened.

Like a bat's wing, scalloped.
It shivers.

A drum head
beaten by the silver sticks

of rain,
and I do not have mine,

and so the rain showers me.

Drawing from art therapy today. (All the way.)

Drawing I made in my art therapy group yesterday.

Small video for today.

I watched this video after I made it- something that is kind of painful for me to do- and when it got to the end- when I read the poem- I started to cry. xo

The good news is that everything changes.

Last night I had a really difficult therapy session.  I cried a lot.  Sobbed actually.  But it was good.  It was very helpful because I started to talk about things that I have been waiting years and years to tell.  And I woke up this morning with this foreign feeling- I was unsure how to even describe it. Then I realized I was feeling a little happy.  Then I did some writing  in a sketchbook about what I had talked about in therapy yesterday and then I had another big cry.  My "usual" response at this point would be to take some anti-anxiety medicine and go to bed.  But everything changes and I am getting better and I didn't have what has been my "usual" response.  Instead I RSVP'd "YES" to this huge holiday running Meetup group where a bunch of people are going to meet and run about 4.5 miles in this cold and wind while singing Christmas carols.  I started my therapy seven years ago this month.  I have been working hard for a long time.  Today is the perfect day to change my "usual" response to my pain.  And I can.  And so I am.  It is possible to heal.

(major) Jenny

A lot of this lately. (Trigger warning.)

I sometimes use the expression "a come to Jesus" when describing a big event or happening.  I try to avoid using the expression when speaking to my very close friend Eve.  But I recently brought it up in a conversation because so much of what has been happening lately- I feel like I am running out of descriptors to explain the "extreme blazing weirdness" that is to really heal from severe trauma.  See- "extreme blazing weirdness"- I just made that one up.  And it is not a great descriptor of what is happening.  It is difficult for me to write about how my healing is going- which is what I really wish I could do here.  I think my greatest fear about writing here is what it has always been- not what any reader of this blog may think- but what I will think and feel when I have written about the truth and have to sit with it in a real way then.  That is one of the main things that has been happening lately- I have been being pretty honest with myself about how I think and feel and then I have been having to sit with a big mix of both very good and very painful feelings.  There have been a number of "come to Jesus" moments.  Several.  Multiple.  And I think that is ANOTHER difficult thing about healing from trauma and dissociative identity disorder- having a divided mind means sometimes coming back to something again and feeling like it is the first time I am learning or thinking about it.  

Today I made a drawing in art therapy- on a large sheet of paper that I folded into several rectangles.  And on one of the rectangles I made the drawing which is very painful and on the other pieces I made a list of the graduate schools I want to possibly apply to, a list of the things I will need to get together for the graduate school applications and the start of an essay explaining why I want to go to graduate school.  So a lot of the paper was filled with ideas and work for moving ahead- and then this one piece- about the past- so painful I thought I would not post it here- and I thought it was too awful, too crass- but everything about the details of rape and incest are awful and crass.  So here is the drawing I made today in art therapy- it is about being raped by my father and the feeling that my mouth was nothing but a place for him to put his dick.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010.

The painting I made in art therapy today. December 3, 2010.

Grainy photo, short poem. Clarity, truth.

"Short Poem"

You slapped my face
oh but so gently
I smiled
at the caress

by William Carlos Williams