Beautiful despair
I am starting this project. The final acceptance of everything.
It will be like Dzogchen throutgh art.
And I start from this painting, which I did at night, around 1 am, with the experience of this strong and crazy pain that was sharper than the usual, to which I have gotten used already.
I prop the painting up against the basket with the pencils and brushes on my table and the light from above is good to it, emphasizing the texture of the canvas.
My general view is that there is the group of many colors, heavy on the upper right and after some space there is that brown branch, maybe falling away, overwhelmed by the weight of that group and even breaking down .
Then there are two penciled dry and sharp branches and something strange, also penciled on the upper left. And of course there are the shadows, the areas I painted with pencil.
What do these do to each other?
The big multi colored area seems to have a lot of sadness. All the shapes are sending fingers or hands to nowhere, searching for something they already know they won’t find. Presenting again and again the idea of I want but I know I can’t. This creates a very disquiet, nervous cloud. It is beautiful in its sadness. It becomes almost like a tapestry or a physical “thing” and it even has some shadows, to show that it is real, it is three dimensional, and you can touch it. These are thoughts becoming things. There are a few places where a few parts become messy, blending into each other uncontrollably, crying into each other.
The introduction of the penciled branches into this area introduces another distinction into the game, between more real and less real or maybe between soft and hard. The bareness of the penciled branches feels poor, hungry for love, hardened by hard life. It seems that the lower penciled branch supports the whole cloud on its back and keeps it from hitting the brown branch harder. That brown branch is losing in a way. It is falling down, broken, as if escaping the vengeance of the colorful cloud.
The only hope that this falling brown branch has is that it will find something good when it goes up along the left side of the painting, but the place it comes to is empty. There is only darkness there, a tear-drop and an empty shape.
So where is the power in this picture?
The power is in the observation, in the ability to see all of this so clearly with all of its complexity and simplicity. It is like a poem on despair.
In summary the picture says:
I’m searching. I know I’m not going to find. I am beautiful but sad. I am helped by dry and dead sticks, which are searching just like me. But they are already hardened by the experience of not finding and they do not even have hope. Some part of me is afraid of this despair. It is trying to escape, still hoping to find love and fulfillment, but we know already, looking at the picture, that there is none of these in it.
It is funny that what looks in superficial sight beautiful and maybe playful and colorful actually describes sadness and despair.
So was I desperate when I drew this?
No. I was shocked by the intensity and sharpness of the pain that made me jump out from bed and come here, to this table at night, I remember what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to disperse the confusion that I felt and the shock.
It did this to a degree. After that I slept.
The beauty was very important to me. Without feeling the beauty I would be dissatisfied and restless. What does it mean to me?
When a painting comes out beautiful (For me, as I experience it), I know I have connected to my larger aspect, the non physical part, the real, what we sometimes call “home”. Connecting with the real, all that is not real will start moving. Movement is life, is health, is hope, is everything good. This is the principle of all healing.
I have to give some background.
Everybody believes that what I have is a degenerative disease. People who have this don’t heal. They progressively (what an unfitting word) become more debilitated. Living in this environment, I totally believe that I am healing. Parts of my feet that were totally numb for maybe twenty years are hurting now. All through this healing process they kept hurting more and more. For everybody else this was a sign that things were getting worse. For me it is a sign that life is coming back to where it was blocked. I don’t know why I wanted my healing to hurt. But I know that like everything else, this too is a decision I made at some point. I spoke about this little kid a few entries ago and he may be the source of this idea.
When the pain became too hard for me to take, I looked for some medications and I thought about it as some aid to help me pass these last stages. I needed to sleep. But the medications started to have an effect on my alertness and sensitivity to the subtleties of my perceptions. This was too much for me to give up, and I let the medications go instead. My sharpness of sensitivity is back and I have to deal with the pain without the help of the meds. It will be through the acceptance of my response.
intuitiveflow 