Holding On, Letting Go 3.27.2015

Holding on, letting go

In today's meditation, I found that too must have happened in between last week and today.  I was mindful of thoughts and tangential mind wandering.  Ideas and memories.  I sat for extra time to allow for the clutter to stop and to just be in the moment with nothing. I became aware of discomfort, fatigue, and head pain.  I tried to notice and accept without judgment.

The image that did appear were hands: initially as open palmed hands, the left resting on the right.  Then they moved, opening up into themselves as if dropping something or letting something go.  I noticed that I started to move it forward with adding details.  I stopped myself because I wasn't sure how much of it was contrived and how much of it was spontaneous.  The details included sand falling through the hands.  Later I saw a rose being held in the open palmed hands... white or white with pink, becoming red.  But again, was I forcing this to happen?  It seemed so... Then I did have a spontaneous image that disturbed me and I intentionally chose to not paint it.  A tree trunk on the left side of my view had a small hole from which a grey menacing, sharp-tooth filled snake jutted out.  Mouth open and fangs ready to strike... but at nothing.

I returned back to the hands and my wandering mind.  Breathe. What could this all mean?  The hands reminded me of holding on and letting go.  I have held these thoughts and ideas and memories without a way to sort them, connect them, understand them, or slough them off.  Perhaps today the hands transitioning into letting go was me saying it's OK to let them go, gently, with compassion and without forcing myself to understand.

July 11, 2015. Alone time together: Co-creating with Jess in our first attempts to create a framework.

Alone time together

Michele and Jess (above) & Michele's journal alone (below) c. 2015

Watercolor, oil pastel, markers, pen, colored pencil & collage in journals

My experience seemed strange... how my image began.  I was really unsure.  I worked with an open journal-- an open book. I created a blue frame.  Each side reminded me of a first page and last page, respectively. The words, "In the beginning" and "In the end" were added.  All drawing then happened on the right side.  I felt frustrated with the face in the crease.  It was intended to be a face as I literally followed natural lines and creases in the fold, and marks on the natural paper in the journal.  It started as realistic with colored pencil then morphed into the abstract with oil pastel.  I watched myself add random marks that became a wing.  I smudged, added a hand holding the wing/feather, and included "words" in the background.

I couldn't add to the left.  It didn't feel "right".  I paused and observed... nothing came to mind.  No desire entered me to add anything.  Maybe I was feeling like I couldn't reflect back, or maybe it was simply a struggle in not knowing HOW to begin...  Maybe I have more focused vision of an end product.  I am thankful that Jess and I were meeting to use art making as a process to inform our intended professional journey of writing together.  

Time and time again, the art shows us what is on our minds.  This is not conscious, but the material behind consciousness.  It is latent.  It pushes us forward.  Sometimes our defenses react and work extra hard to keep the information away and out of sight.  Reflecting back, I think the latter was true for me.  How could we develop a project without a foundation?  How can we put energy into a finished project without any real foundation established (or made conscious) to support it?  These are aspects I need to explore both alone and in collaboration with Jess.

I closed the exploration by turning the page.  I left an impression on the left side by rubbing the back of the right. In enhancing the words "In the beginning", the "N" became an "M": "I'm the beginning".  Is this where our writing project can start?  Can it start with "I am"?

Looking at our books together we discovered several interesting elements: Color, placement, and form.

Color: The warm tones of pink, yellow, and orange that exist on each of our right-sided pages.  We sat across from one another.  While we shared the materials, there was a very wide variety of mediums and color palettes.  We sat outside on steps with the materials between us.  We each started with our books on the concrete.  As I became increasingly frustrated with the face, I turned slightly away from Jess and held my journal on my lap.  We were not conscious of the similar colors until we put the images near one another as in the above photo.

Placement and form:  I see patterns of boxes and forms that resonate between our images. The wing appears reminiscent of the blue, purple, and grey lines extending to the upper right hand corner of Jess' image.  Jess' building shadows also seem to appear in the black area in the crease of my journal and between the pages.

So what happens next?  From this we decided that we need to meet again for more art making, alone together.