Impulsive Arts

A Complicated Heart

My husband has never been a traditional romantic, and there were times in the beginning, when girlfriends would rhapsodize about such things, when I thought I was missing out just a bit - flowers, extravagant gifts, surprise holidays.  I watched and listened over the years though, and I also heard the complaints, the frustrations, the aloneness that so many married women take for granted. I began to realize that the extravagant gesture is not infrequently a facade, a brightly packaged but utterly inadequate substitute for deep commitment and real partnership in the unglamorous everyday of life and home and children.  So on this Valentine's Day, I give thanks for the rich, complex, and completely un-Hallmark-ish love that I am privileged to share with my beloved.

Giving Back

I've been thinking for some time about the idea of "giving back".  I cannot escape the fact that the ability to choose to do something I love, and be paid for that, is a rare privilege, and one that depends on circumstances largely not of my own making.

The majority of the world is concerned with basic survival - finding food and water for themselves and their children, avoiding armed conflict. They can't afford to be choosy about "fulfilling work" - they struggle to find anything at all that will generate enough to barter for their next meal. I think I have learned enough rudimentary economics to let go of the belief that hanging onto my own misery would somehow atone for theirs, but I absolutely cannot accept this happy life as though it were somehow all mine to keep.

Therefore, starting now, 10% of all my net sales profits will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Silent Poetry Reading

I do not partake of poetry nearly as often as I intend to. While that would be fine stuff for a resolution, this day of silent poetry reading is also a way to remember.

Initial

Out of infinite longings rise
finite deeds like weak fountains,
falling back just in time and trembling.
And yet, what otherwise remains silent,
our happy energies—show themselves
in these dancing tears.

Rainer Maria Rilke, via

Womanly

I thought that this post from my knitting blog might be equally pertinent here:

With all the spring fervor percolating lately, Madrigaia (Viva Voce) has found its way back into the CD rotation. This is an incredibly talented seven woman vocal / percussion group from Winnipeg. What I love about them is the voluptuous, raw womanly energy that permeates their songs - the very antithesis of insipid, male-created girly pop.

The album never fails to remind me of a pivotal experience in my sense of what it means to be a woman. It was a bridal shower, given by a patient of mine in honor of her eldest daughter. She was Syrian, a single mother and devout Muslim who had taken her children and fled for her life from a bad marriage. The majority of the guests were women who had immigrated from Pakistan, India, and other Aisian and Middle Eastern countries. These were not women with easy lives - many were my patients, and I had spent a great deal of time observing and working through the pain and isolation of cultural restrictions magnified by language barriers. Many had non-specific chronic pain conditions that I believe were their only viable means of expressing distress.In that hall though, filled only with women, they seemed lighter - embracing, laughing - Sikh, Muslim, Hindu - there were no barriers.

We shared a wonderful feast... and then the dancing began. I suppose it would properly be termed belly dancing, but it was not about costumes - it was spontaneous, unselfconscious, joyful, and thoroughly, vocally, loud. I was drawn into a sense of strength and community that I had never before experienced. My constricted, "escape oppression through achievement" idea of feminism had never entertained the possibility that being "womanly" could be anything but a state of socially imposed deficiency. I felt at once ashamed for having underestimated them, and tremendously privileged to be included in such a sisterhood. I began to see myself and the women I cared for with new eyes, and to celebrate things womanly. I began to see the tremendous creative power in childbirth, and the curvaceous beauty of milk filled breasts nourishing a child. Lately, I have also dared to express these things artistically, though not without a slightly anxious glance over my shoulder at my conservative upbringing.

The Spiral

Symbols are a fascinating topic. Representing a way to communicate ideas and beliefs about our place in the cosmos, they may be a personal talisman or public statement. Although they have been appropriated, labelled, relabelled and venerated, feared, or reviled according to political and religious expediency over history, their meaning remains personal to the wearer.

The spiral is one of the most fundamental and universal of symbols, likely in large part because of its ubiquity in the natural world. It is an ancient goddess symbol, representing the womb, fertility, perpetual cyclical change, and the creative energy of the universe. There are conflicting reports of the meaning of clockwise vs. counterclockwise spirals, however, they generally represent dualities such as summer and winter.

Personally, the meaning I attach to the spiral is loosely associated with the spiritual tradition of the labyrinth. It reminds me of the cyclical nature of my body, and of the universe - the seasons, the ceaseless turning of the planet. Traced outward, it represents the growth and learning that occurs with each cycle - coming back to the same place again and again, yet seeing it anew. Traced inward, it reminds me of the process of meditation - moving ever closer to that point of perfect stillness at the Centre from which all things originate.