Given that my only new year’s resolution was to show more courage in everything, I feel I’m faltering at the first hurdle, the hurdle being the black depression that unfailingly descends on me at this time of the year and only lifts for occasional intervals. Every year I think: not this time, I take steps to keep it at bay, and then there it is again. Today is one of those grey, wet, truly unpleasant, only half-wintery days, it’s not really January-cold, even winter seems in limbo and it might be ever-lasting. Just now I don’t give a damn about a little red bud on a brittle rose-branch, it’s hard to see how I could get excited by it only days ago, as I’m being choked by, almost obliterated by something that I can hardly put into words. Its huge and heavy shapelessness is part of the problem, nowhere to attack it from. It closes in on me, clutches my throat, bears down on my chest cage, saturates my body with dull pain-not-pain, squeezes joy and reason from my brain and fills it with brown sludge. As it’s so familiar to me at this time of the year part of me knows that it will end, as it always has before. Spring will come too, and yet. The worst is that just at this moment even my art means nothing to me, I’m cut off from it. Still crocheted a bit this morning, going through the motions, this is what I do, this is what I want to do, but not feeling it.
This is what I am today.
5 comments:
I know I know I know.....not in this full version, only the small one....so hard to crawl out of the deep hole with your own help, you won't believe in anyone telling you, that it's possible.
But please, don't take all your energies to describe your state...feels like a sad dance....perhaps, like a lesson for yourself:....describe the most beautiful thing you can imagine at the moment with every small detail with every thought and feeling related to this thing...like a meditation.Use the most beautiful words you know!
Tell the ghosts to go home.....
You've got these tiny wings, isn't it?
A big big hug!!!!!
i want to say it is okay to let oneself be in this state...but do not know if that is really the healthy way about it...?
oh Marjojo...it is strange to hear from you the day before receiving such thought-full deeply satisfying feedback (struck and moved, to be so understood like that) and then the next day to know that you've been struggling in this darkness. i wish i could be quicker smarter in responding with more insight to offer.
i hope that today is a better day for you - checked the forecast and it looks like the sun has been out where you are, so that is good, isn't it? last week, it got so warm here, i was so deliriously happy feeling that brief moment of spring coming. false alarm, but nonetheless, a reminder of what to look forward to, or at least remembering how nice it was/could be.
i believe you are living out your new year's resolution. it takes courage to share this, and maybe even more so to confront oneself so directly and openly with what isn't always so light and beautiful. doesn't it?
i have to admit i was a bit struck when you said not even your art meant anything to you. i think the world of you in terms of what it means to be an artist, so for you to say that kinda shook me in my own head for a second there. but i see you as you are however you are and i still marvel at your whole being...
Hey you...
Nice to have you back.
I also fight the black dog at this time of year.
Whisky, cake and a damn good book are the only remedies.
(And kind thoughts from un-met friends who treasure your words and work) :-)
i'm struck by your ability to put this in words while you are in the midst of it. a sign that your creativity, the crafting of sentences, is strong even when the love of making is temporarily in another room with the plinds down and 'do not disturb' on the door.
i have been in that black place though not for some years now (not lastingly) so i feel for you enormously.
when i'm like that i stop breathing and let the blackness surround me, i wait till my body insists on breath and focus briefly, truly, on what that breath feels like as it flows. and repeat.
everything else is excluded from my brain so it's the only time i can get in touch with that clarity of moment without art diverting me.
somehow that used to help, a little. i will be wishing you well daily and hoping your sleep brings relief until the darkness fades.
a link for sometime later, 2 hair embroideries...
http://lauranormandin.com/pages/hair_emb_main.html
There is little i can say except to send love and blessings and reiterate kruses sentiment that although we haven't met your voice, presence and art is very much with me, felt and touched.
Best
N x
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