Tag: #drawing

Negative belief #452: “I don’t have it together.”

sketch of balancing toy

Maybe having it together has nothing to do with those benchmarks of graduation, certification, publication, validation?
Maybe having it together isn’t about someone else’s notion of 
achievement. Or being better than anyone else. 
Or that winning makes someone else a loser. 
Or that trying and failing is somehow shameful. 
That you have to be balanced all the time.

New belief: “I am on a journey, doing my best. Imperfect.”

That means when the anxious zinging starts, the uneasiness arises—I can just FEEL it and stop trying to bargain it away, hoping when I do THIS or THAT—whatever new thing I find lacking, like say, being organized—that when I achieve that thing, I will be “together” at last.

Imperfect. Not great, never was. See what is, and build from there. Stop pretending. Let what is reveal itself.

Perfection is deception. Perfection is a poison pill packaged and sold next to the botox and collagen injections. Perfection is the woman on a pedestal who cannot squish mud between her polished toenails. Some warped white-washed selfish notion of perfection, I think, lies behind the toxic, racist Make America Great Again slogan—the notion that rewriting the past will coat every ugly truth in the golden light of remembered sunsets past, and save us from ourselves. No. Recovery from perfections micro and macro requires seeing what is, ugly, messy, real.

I will treat you gently, Perfection. You are bone-china blue-white transparent, so damned fragile. I pack you up in a pine box, swaddle you in virgin cotton balls grown and picked by browner hands in hot sun, oh porcelain beauty, flowers fine painted with single-hair brushes by small hands in some far-off land, petaled curves over and over perfect, while outside the sun and rain and wind are lost, years are lost, squinting childhood away, lost.

Perfection, you voracious beautiful wicked thing. I hold you, marveling at how I carried you proudly all those years, thinking it was an honor, my duty, my job?

I’d smash you, and maybe I should? But I fear I’d want to reassemble you somehow, find a way to make you whole again—and so I would waste more time.

Because you are just what you are, shiny prize, symbol of false wholeness.

I will nestle you in this little wooden box, so like a coffin.

I will bury you outside in the moonlight before the hard frost comes, bury you under the cherry tree with all the other beliefs I have, at last, I hope, outgrown.

the news scares me

drawing of coffee cup and newspaper with a scared looking creature and an ominous eye in the shadows of the coffee cup

I came across this pencil drawing titled “the news scares me” that I did several years ago. (Seems it’s not a new trend, the news, being scary…) This is a reminder to anyone who’s feeling overwhelmed by the state of things not to despair, but to keep doing whatever you can do to make the world a better place, in whatever ways are within your means. Small actions, large actions—just take action. Do what you can do. Meet the world with love. And laughter. And anger. And hope.
Happy Sunday.

tips for after the apocalypse

sketch in journal of lamp, coffee shop, phone

My drawing prompt: headline in The Guardian: “Five handy tips for survival after apocalypse.” Sometimes I don’t feel like writing in coherent linear form (generally, after reading the news)…when I draw I can return to a centered place.

What helps you feel good? Do it. For five minutes, ten, whatever fits in your life.

a letter from my worry stone

drawing of a hand with a worry stone

Another day, another prompt. Today I let my worry stone do the writing. Find something or choose someone, and let them write to you. See what happens.

Dear E,

Finally. I get to tell you my worries. About damn time. Our relationship, up until now, has been entirely one way.

From that moment on the chilly October morning when you stooped down and plucked me from my place in Mississauga, on the shore of mighty Lake Ontario, and tucked me into the tight pocket of your skinny jearns — I have been your captive. I have worried, too, even though I know it’s futile. Worried I’ll never see the sky again.

I long for another sight of that last sky, low clouds backlit by the sun, turning it and the shining water to silver. Silver sky, silver lake, and that smudge of Toronto on the horizon. You think I don’t know about the things of man? (or in your case, woman?) — Oh, E, I’ve been soaking you up for months now. I know everything and now you’ve let me speak. I may never stop.

You picked me, palmed me, smiling. I do fit perfectly in your hand, and your happiness that morning filled me with excitement. So at first I was swept up, pleased to be going somewhere new. You were in love, blushing love, your core worries blotted out in the gush of that. It was a little dull, absorbing your petty insecurities. Mostly I sat on your dresser, alone. You only held me when you felt lonely, and how tiresome that was.

I fell in love with you a little, though. The way you do when someone trusts you to hear their deepest fears. Still, after nearly two years, I miss sprawling in all weathers with the others who were born with me from the crumbling bluffs when winter ice thawed one spring and we all slid free to the lake shore.

Sometimes you worry about the ice melting, which makes me recall the cold years I spent, inching along, swept up in the belly of that glacier, like Jonah in the belly of a great fish.

Your pocket, though warmer, reminded me of that time.

I guess it is my fate, being swallowed and carried. I have stories of my own to tell, beyond your worries of — oh, what don’t you find to worry about? As you hold me in your left hand I soak up your troubles like the earth soaks up rain.

Yesterday, you thought back to the windy morning we met, to your spinning thoughts, to the way you couldn’t believe how beautiful the world was, the water, you thought, looked like a great silver tray polished by the cloudy sun, and the geese flew low over the calm surface. You remembered that feeling, and wondered if you could ever feel just that way again.

And I try to emit an answer into your palm. I try to tell you, no. You will never feel that way again. The woman of that day, elated, heart bursting with love and hand sweaty with worry over losing love, she is gone now.

She had to get swallowed into the darkness, like the glacier, like the belly of the whale, to discover that no matter how dark, you must stay and let the darkness be your home, accept it, know it. And trust that in three days, three months, three years, three eons — sometime, somehow, the silvery light will return. Because it never really leaves.

So you can go back, looking. You can even retrace your steps on the shore of Lake Ontario. If you do, please put me back near the crook of that inlet, the place the geese gather at dawn and sunset. Take me back, even though I cannot revisit that day, either. It is gone. All my old loves will have sunk down or washed out into the lake. But it would feel so good, to tell new friends old tales. To laugh together about worrying over flesh and blood and human failings.

Perhaps I will lie under the sky, let your many worries loose in the breeze. Do not fret, E, about growing old. Let that one go. Only worry about not growing. Your fear of infirmity is comical to a stone like me, dependent on nature to move me at all. And still — I have, over millions of years, seen much of the world. Seen beauty you cannot even imagine. Do you understand?

The world will hold you, if you just let go.

Surrender. Let go of me, of controlling things, of fearfulness. I think you are figuring it out, just a little. From the darkness, you will emerge, you already are — to find the next world you are meant to explore.

with love,
Basalt

photo of Lake Ontario, silvery in the morning light, with geese.
The shores of Lake Ontario, where I found Basalt.

Dear Judge McKeon

drawing of scared girl

Dear Judge McKeon,

A 40-year-old Montana father raped his 12-year-old daughter. Repeatedly.

You sentenced him to 60 days, of which he will serve 43. For good measure, he must pay $80 and “future medical care for his daughter.” You mean, I think, for his victim?

Forty-three days in jail for raping his 12-year-old daughter. Repeatedly.

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and never will sleep the same again.

There’s a call for your impeachment now, but you’ve made your decision and moved on. You mention it was a hard decision for you.

Forty-three days in jail for raping a 12-year-old. Repeatedly.

Yes, it would be hard for anyone with an ounce of humanity to come up with a sentence like that. But you know, girls and women—incest victims, domestic violence victims, women who have had a drink or worn a tight skirt or did something to anger a man—there’s always some kind of “exception” for that. Because deep down, Judge McKeon, you and a lot of others still believe women are the property of men. I’m sure you’d swear that wasn’t true. But your actions reveal your real feelings. That girls and women are not truly deserving of protection and equal rights when it comes to what happens to their own bodies.

Under Montana state law, your sentence to the rapist should have been steep:

“A person convicted of the offense of incest where the victim is 12 years of age or younger and the offender 18 years of age or older at the time of offense shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term of 100 years and fined an amount not to exceed $50,000. The court may not suspend execution or defer imposition of the first 25 years of the sentence.”

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and never will sleep the same again.

These things—things like incest, things like raping your own daughter—these things happen in the night, usually. Hand over mouth in the dark, whispered threats from a man who is supposed to love you and take care of you.

You’ve made your decision and moved on, Judge McKeon, but that little girl will never be the same.

The victim’s grandmother made a plea that shatters my heart, and apparently justified your joke of a sentence. She said: “What [the defendant] did to my granddaughter was horrible, and he should face consequences. But his children, especially his sons, will be devastated if their dad is no longer part of their lives.”

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and never will sleep the same again.

Maybe the little girl never really knew trust, even before the rape. I can’t decide if possessing pure, innocent trust and losing it is better or worse than never really having it at all. I fear for her. There seems no one she might trust, and you, too, failed her—utterly, miserably, unforgivably.

I bet you’d point out that her own mother asked for a reduced sentence, citing the rapist’s sons “need to know their father.” These are words, Judge that should have set off clanging alarm bells in your head.

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl tries to sleep and never will sleep the same again.

She cannot sleep the way children should be able to sleep. She cannot relax. Her body, like that of all trauma victims, is now rewired, set to red-alert. To sleep well again will take years of love and therapy. To trust again may never happen. I hope she will find peace and healing. But it’s a hard road to go alone. And she is alone, it seems to me.

Perhaps her mother can sleep well? I wonder if her father can? Can you?

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky, a little girl is all alone. Her father raped her, repeatedly, and no one testified on her behalf. No one.

No one testified on her behalf, Judge McKeon, which should have told you something. Your empathy, your humanity—should have roared to life when no one testified on her behalf.

Instead, you say you gave it consideration. The fact that no one testified on her behalf was “weighed in” to your decision.

Experts and friends of the rapist noted that the accused was employed and had a supportive community and thus was, in their opinions, apparently just the sort of pedophile that could be magically rehabilitated without a lengthy sentence.

I’d like to ask a question of the court. Why is there “leeway” in an incest case?

If he had raped his neighbor’s 12-year-old daughter, would you be so casually lenient? If he had raped a 12-year-old related to you, would you feel he could be rehabilitated, would you agree with his wife if she said he’d made a “mistake?” Would you think him being in the lives of his sons was a good idea, a good reason to suspend his sentence?

Somewhere under the wide, wild Montana sky a little girl is crying, and thinks no one hears her.

I wonder, Judge McKeon, how many other girls you have sentenced to life?

For make no mistake, she faces a life sentence. I hope that little Montana girl somehow feels the love of the millions of women and loving, kind men who are with her in spirit, and that it gives her some small amount of strength.

A million signatures on a petition to impeach you is not enough to help her heal. But I think impeaching you would be a start. It would be a start towards a world where a little girl has the right to sleep deeply, trusting those around her to love her, and keep her safe in the night.

Sign the petition here.

 

Sources:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/20/498676414/montana-judge-faces-call-for-impeachment-after-incest-sentencing?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2046

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/judge-john-mckeon-defends-sentence-for-fathers-rape.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

letting joy surface

iliketodrawI’m realizing the things I liked to do as a kid are still the among the things that bring me the most joy–drawing, writing, exploring. Untimed things. Things with no real point or purpose, except to be free and alive. And they were the things I seemed to think were ‘frills’ when I entered adulthood. I let them go, or (worse) tried to make them things I controlled, like I thought grown ups should do. Isn’t it an adult’s job to worry, after all?

Anxiety for me happens when I try to control things that are beyond my control–which seemed the whole theme of adulthood, until I figured out it didn’t have to be.

What brings you joy? Give yourself permission: make some joy today.