Red Road (Self Portrait Challenge)

I walk this road with my dogs every day. Walking through golden early mornings or the late blue afternoons. Sometimes I run until my chest aches.

For me this roads leads to sanity. Listening to the trees, looking at the clouds piling up on the horizon, loving the way the dogs say hello to the world.

A mood grabs me

A mood grabs me, slips down the lump in my throat and starts turning and turning in my stomach. It is digging for truth sending earth flying, making my heart choke.

I build careful mental constructs against depression possession. I roll into a small ball. Logic runs the show.

In the middle of the night I question myself mercilessly. I turn thoughts this way and that not stopping until I cry.

I relax and fall into a deep lake of sadness. I roll a stone into the exit. Confusion is left outside. The water laps gently. I come up gasping for light. I’m trapped in my sadness. I can not recognize truth.

I run and run from depression until I am so tired. I turn every thought this way and that.

And then one morning I wake up. I lay down my arms knowing that I cannot control my being. A butterfly flaps her wings in my heart and a hurricane starts in my head. I close my eyes. and My heart opens and embraces not-knowing. My eyes are full of tears, my heart is scared, my body is restless. I breathe into my toes. Deeply.


Five hours later. Alive, awake. My dogs are eating. Outside the wind is blowing. Yellow flowers catch the sun.

Gratitude and freedom

Today I say thank you. Thank you that Maya is happy at her new home, that she slept indoors last night, that she received a chicken drumstick this morning and that she has made new human and dog friends. To me she was not just a dog. She was a smile with a tail.


I’m as exited as a school kid. Today is the last day of work, followed by two weeks of holiday. Two weeks! I can’t wait. It has been a long year filled with new challenges. But now it is all over. All over till next year. I can read and write and paint and sit in the sun and take my dogs for a walk and play with my boyfriend as much as I want. I have nowhere that I have to be at a specific time and no time sheets reflecting every minute spend working.

As free
As the moment

Before
Reflection

Maya

Today I say goodbye to my puppy Maya. I know I’m doing the right thing, she gets sick and bullied often but she also waits for my car every afternoon with a big smile and runs ahead of me with her tail wagging. She gets a bone every morning, a walk every afternoon and runs around all day with her siblings.

She sneaks into bedroom when she believes no one is looking and puts her head under my arm. When we chase her out she steals a sock on her way out.

She has the biggest ears and saddest liquid black eyes I have ever seen on a dog. She looks like yoda from Star Wars.

When I think of letting her go time slows down and becomes heavy.

Red Self portrait two

The photo shows me reflected in my little red car with my boyfriend’s big red bakkie (pick-up truck) behind me. The cars are pretty symbolic of our lives at present. My car is a small red town traveller. It gets me to work and back and has low fuel usage. Florian’s bakkie we take on rural roads where my Fiat would be swallowed by a pot-hole, it takes him to townships where roads are non-existent, it rattles and roars on the highway, it has no air conditioner and it is extremely heavy on fuel. We use my car most of the time. But when we want to get away from it all and take the dogs with us we use F’s car.

I would love to have a lifestyle where I can get rid of little red car and drive the big, resilient red car. But I love the comfort of the small red car. The way she nips into parking spaces, the blessed cooled air, the funky red leather seats, the sound system blaring and the smooth ride.

For me the office is blue and ordered, with air conditioning. I spend my days analysing and simplifying processes. Home is red. It is filled with passions, shared laughter and conflicts. Sometimes things at home gets confusing, it boils with unexpressed emotions and suspicions. I yearn to get away to a place where people put on a cool work mask and the day is spend classifying and arranging life into neat best practise processes.

I find myself balanced between my present life and my future. I yearn for that future, I want to let go, surrender and take life one day at a time. But I fear giving up the comfort crafted from receiving a good salary. I want to have the time to explore myself at home but I will miss the mental discipline imposed at the office.


The question is really: “Can I create a space at home where I can diffuse red with blue and create purple? The purple of far of hills, peaceful yet filled with possibilities?” Mmmm, I think I will spend the weekend setting up an office at home. A peaceful burrow filled with purple shadows and reflected sunshine.

Castles made of sand

I want time to explore myself, my world and my emotion. I do not want to rush of to work in, sit under neon lights all day and rush home, tired and irritated. A part of me questions myself. “Do I think about this too much, am I incapable of happiness because I always find something to be discontented about, should I be happy to have a job a good salary, someones to come home to?”

I don’t know. But today I do not care. I want to be playing with my dogs, rolling on the grass, spending time rediscovering F. I don’t want to be doing the clinical assessment use case. I don’t care about the business goals, the triggers the assumptions and business flows. I want to live and laugh and swim.

My chest feels like there is a rock expanding within it, my eyes are prickling, my entire body is screaming let me out of this office where people are discussing database schemas.

But part of being grown-up is taking a deep breath and getting on with it. Because I get paid to do this and the money pays for everything else.

But one day soon, I will have the time to grow my own vegetables, live in my cob house, study the tarot, have a baby, take my dogs to the beach, study further, update my blog with long poems, write a script, and finish the painting I have been busy with for the last three years. How do I know this? I know this because I am hunting, every day, for a job that I only need to work at three days a week. And it will happen next year. Why? Because I want it so much that the yearning in my heart turns into a magician’s hand. This hand is building my future, carefully crafting the future I dream of, gently smoothing the clay, turning it around and around to make sure all the curves are supporting each other.

A green day

It has been a long week for me and tiring. I got home last night and one of my pups, usually the naughtiest and liveliest of the lot, was lying in a corner not moving. We rushed her off to the vet. Tickbite fever. Again. My heart is heavy with the knowledge that I will have to let her go. Unlike the other puppies she seems to have no resistance against the ticks found in our horse filled suburb.

I love her so, the sad wise eyes, the manic chewing moods, the lop sided ears. And will she be happy in a smaller suburb with a smaller garden away from our large property filled with us, her mother, brother and sister? Why do I have to make a desicion when I don't know what the right thing is to do?

Today I am laying under a tree. Listening to wind playing music with a hundred leaves, drinking in the green and waiting. Waiting for the courage to stride into another week.

Resting

For now. I've been in training all day and I'm so tired I am staring at the screen blankly. But here is a photo from my walk yesterday.

And I made it through the day and allowed the grommel bear out to roam once I got to the safety of my room. Now that she's had her say she seems ready for a nap.

Truth challenges

Truth challenges me today. I am pre-menstrual. Stuck in a VERY small office with five males all talking at the top of their voices. Working on a deadline for documents that need to be issued to my business users at four this afternoon. I’m not sure whether I should burst out in tears or jump up and rip out a tongue or two. Shouting, who cares what you think – no-one. And chanting to myself. “It’s only the hormones, its only the hormones, it’s only the hormones.”

Day like today strips me right down to a space where I need to decide, do I want to be the kind of person who takes my mood out on others or do I want to allow the freaked out me to curl up into a little ball and take a nap somewhere in my womb? Just focus on the task ahead and keep going. I can cry this evening when I get home.

Reflection

I have been feeling sad lately. Not all the time, only when I lie down to relax. I’m not sure where this sadness is coming from, is it hormonal, is it chemical or is something bothering me that I have wrapped up and buried deep in my heart. I lie down, my eyes fill with tears and my stomach starts churning.

It has been an enlightening weekend. I received a phone call from my brother who lives in San Francisco whom I have not spoken to in a while. Even though he is thousands of miles away from the rest of the family he is struggling with exactly the same issues regarding career and self worth that the three of us here are fighting with. It is as if a trigger clicked in al of our minds at the same time.

Most of my weekend was spend working on a job application for a position I’m really, really keen on. So hold thumbs.

I spend time with a friend Sunday morning, talking about life and relationship. Looking at Florian I’m suddenly struck with how fragile our state of relating is. A million things can and will happen to change it. But will it strengthen or weaken the feelings of closeness? Only time will tell, but I’m determined to absorb our togetherness. The good and bad makin up our composition, the fears and the safety, the irritations and the joys. Because all of these transforms us into what we can never be without each other.

Red self portrait

Red is the colour I wear when I need warmth and colour to bleed into life at the office. When blue fluorescent lights and computer screens beg to be reminded of blood, pulsing with life and vulnerability.

Red is to humans what green is to plants. Tears makes one’s eyes turn red.

Truth unfolding

A long time ago, a few years after I came out of rehab, I was sitting on the back lawn, yellowed by winter. Totally bored. I decided that I need a career. I wanted to have something to do. I also wanted to see the world and have adventure, like people in books and movies. I did not want to make lists about going to the library, buying potatoes and remembering to phone a friend forever.

While studying I was pushing so hard. I started feeling stretched and tired and crying a lot.

In order to cope I had to ask for help. Suddenly something new entered my life. Someone opened a door and while staring at the swimming fish and the yellow Chinese tassel moving in the non-existent wind I saw myself. I saw who I was, who I no longer wanted to be and who I wanted to be. I did not really need other’s to feel sorry for me, I wanted to be someone worth admiring.

I pushed and pushed through one, two, three jobs, striving to impress. Ignoring the fearful voices in my head saying, “You can’t do this, I’m tired, I’m lonely”

I kept coming back every time I could no longer keep going, to stare at the yellow tassel and the swimming fish.

And it was great. I had so much energy. I was giving up a part of myself that I have related to forever. A sad, deep still space. I could not move forward while lingering there.

Then suddenly it all stopped making sense. I did not want to rush anymore. I felt like I travelled so fast that I lost parts of myself on the way. The empathy, the feeling, the sadness, I missed them. I wanted to rest in that quiet space again.

But I was scared, what if I lost everything? What if I started travelling backwards? All the way back to the lawn? But I was not happy. I could not remember happiness. I was just pushing and straining and trying to get there. And I no longer trusted others to instruct me. What they were saying did not ring true.

I started praying and sitting in the garden. Just feeling the yearning and wanting so badly the answer, wanting to feel ok. I felt like trying could not get me there. I have tried everything. I would sense my longing to change coupled with not knowing how to change, not knowing what to do. I started feeling empathy with myself. How could I be angry with not getting it right when I so badly want to do the right thing? But I do not know what, why and how.

I now have the career I wanted. I am building towards finding something more. When things start to get too much and I start feeling lost, which I do all the time, and angry and frustrated and ungrateful I can return to the new me. Who is really the me that was always there pushing, but now she knows she is not always supposed to know where she is going and she does not always have to feel good. As long as she has the yearning, together with the resting and the pushing, the birth will fulfil itself. In small cycles, like a flower resting on water. Following its reflection outwards.

A new language

The reply from liz elayne got me thinking about the new language that we forge on blogs.

Unlike a conversation or letter, it is not direct. Our audience is not known. But unlike a movie, the audience and story teller can have direct conversations. We never know who is having a conversation with us by saying yes, I know, I have felt.

This unknown dialog is a conversation of emotion and memory, triggered by images, photographic or created with words.

The blog is like a virtual personality, we tell a story of ourselves whereby we can explore ourself and others can explore us and themselves.

Someone can pick up a conversation hours after we had it and through their memory resonating with ours, reply - unbound by time and space.

When I express a feeling and for the first time I feel as if someone truly know what I mean because they feel it too... I wish I could find words to express what it feels like. But I can't.

Reflections of truth

Today I wake up feeling confuddled. I feel like my brain is still nestled under my duvet even though I am standing staring at the duvet lying (not a spelling mistake) on the floor. My stomach is churning and I feel tearful. WHY? I was still ok when going to bed last night.

Doing my qigong I concentrate on the me who want to have a life of beauty while holding the me who am filled with resentment against going to work. I have one of those moments when everything slows down. I am just the me, breathing in the morning air, feeling curious. There is always a moment of reality and awe where rest and unrest meet. A feeling of absorption when frustration meets truth.

Light and shadow

Firstly I want to say Yippee. I got a comment from someone whose site I’ve long admired and enjoyed. And I have had comments from a blogger, previously unknown, to me who already feels like an old friend.

Here follows an explanation of a revelation that have been expanding into understanding and then contracting into truth since Friday.

We had a team build for my company team on Friday. One of the members was one of our company directors with who I have been having a confusing relationship. I am never sure where I stand with her, sometimes she is vulnerable and unsure, sometimes she is mischievous and engaging and sometimes she is irritable and domineering. The problem is I am never sure which person I will run into on any given day which fills me with a lot of fear and uncertainty. Which I detest. I hate feeling like a naughty child, fearing the unpredictable moods of a parent (clue 1). The fist exercise was writing our names on a piece of paper, putting the names in a hat and drawing a name. This was the person we had to watch and give feedback to by the end of the day. One guess whose name I got. Throughout the day she moved between openly sharing and slapping me down when I issued ideas that she did not agree with. By the end of the day I had a splitting headache, I desperately tried to think of something true but nice to say.

I mentioned that she was an intriguing mixture, that she sometimes seemed shy and that she is very honest.

Then I rushed of to attend a script writing workshop. This workshop continued the whole weekend. We looked at the classical structure used for movie scripts. You have your protagonist (hero), and an antagonist (person who exerts an influence on the protagonist forcing her to change). A movie starts with an opening scene, pulling the audience into the world of the protagonist, followed by an introduction to the characters and their motives. A catalytic event happens to the protagonist changing her, a turning point occurs changing the story, conflict happens, conflict climaxes, the protagonist is a new person and the movie ends. I might be leaving out a turning point or two - I have not yet reviewed my notes – it will have to wait for the weekend. A movie is also made up of sequences; a sequence has a beginning, turning point and an end. A sequence is made out of scenes – each with a beginning, a turning point and an end. When planning a scene you ask yourself, what mood does the scene start with, what mood should it end with and what need to happen to change the mood?

I realised that the director at work is my current antagonist. And as antagonists go she is a great one. Complex, human, a little scary, yet struggling to make sense of her life. And I, the protagonist, who am I, how will the antagonist change me? Where will her interactions help me see things about me? Things, were I to change them, would change the way I interact with my life and change me forever. If I were to write a character profile about myself, what would it say? Do I like what it says, do I like the ordinary life of my character? If I was writing a script what would I like to change about myself, what turning points do I need, what do I want to be changed into?

Last night we had supper with good friends, one of them was the facilitator at my team build. While discussing things he said: “She is also a little girl trying to make sense of things”. Thinking about discussions when I got home I realised:

The stronger the force of the antagonist, the greater the chance of transformation in the protagonist is.
I am sometimes a little girl, wanting unconditional love, wanting my every need met, wanting someone to be sensitive to me and who I am and what I need. On the other hand I am a powerful, impatient woman who likes the order that comes with control. The child feeds the need for control; the woman tries her best to create a life in which the child need never feel discomfort. Woe to anyone who comes in between. The woman also knows what she wants in life; she is driven, powerful and ambitious. She sometimes reacts like a sensitive, scared child sensing a rebuff. She is confused and confusing.

Deep inside I know what is going on, I am starting to realise that we are all trying to be someone worthy of love. We all react with anger and irritation or fear and confusion. We love and enjoy beauty. I have the choice to concentrate on this realisation opening myself up to a whole new world full of variance. Often I would rather enjoy righteous anger and self pity. Somewhere through the anger and self pity lies compassion.

And now I rush of to my company Christmas party

Memory fades

My tarot says
You represent mystery - secrets that are yet to be revealed.You find yourself sitting between two worlds: one dark, one light.You tend to hold these two worlds in balance, reconciling the two.Open and welcoming, you invite others to learn your secrets.Your fortune:Something hidden, or latent, in your life is about to come forward.You need to pay more attention to your dreams, thoughts, intuition, and imagination.And if that involves tapping into your dark side, it will all balance out in the end.You have a lot of potential dying to be unleashed, so let those gates open!

I like it. "Something hidden, or latent, in your life is about to come forward. "

I am spending a lot of time wondering about beginning, turning point, end. Is this not every moment in our lives?

An interesting thing is occurring. I am directing my thoughts towards all those non-comment-ers out there. I have read and admired their mails for so long that their non-responses are directing my writing. Like cement directing water towards its original destination but neater, with less colour and prevented from cutting into the terrain it is running through.

Although the greyness could be lack of sleep and time blotting out the vibrancy of this weekends emotional up and down. Aaargh, I wish I wrote sooner. There were some great moments and realisations.

When I'm scared I bite

I’m feeling distracted and sad today. When I woke up I felt deliciously unfased by having to get up and go to work. I had to talk myself through getting dressed, feeding the dogs (I arrived in the kitchen and stared at the table for a while wondering why am I here). Then the holiday feeling turned into an irritation with not being able to lay down and go back to sleep. I started snapping at my boyfriend and the dogs. Add to this a feeling of guilt at being a difficult person to live with. Stir a few times and add back on top the thick cream of floaty-ness I woke up with and there I am driving to work in my little red car.

While driving I start feeling bad about always being irritable and wanting everything to go my way. I sank down into the part of me that are without defences and wants to be whole. Once I sat there for a while I turned around and looked at the irritation me again. And right there while shooting past and then in front of the Simba truck on my right it dawns on me.

I feel irritated and cross and think everyone around me is an idiot when I feel like a shell-less snail. Imagine this snail heading for a little heap of mouldy leaves to metaphorically lick it’s wounds under and suddenly there is someone else standing in between her and her sanctuary. Someone she might need to impress. Someone she wants to amaze. What can she do but bare her teeth and slither faster, never taking her eyes off her goal – a soft dark place to hide in till a mental shell has been reconstructed.

This is a big realisation for me. I have recently changed careers paths and companies and have therefore been feeling very vulnerable. The result: I have been grumbly and fault finding with everyone and everything around me. And suddenly there is the possibility of escape, of letting go of what my teeth are holding on to and running towards someone with my tail wagging.

Random writings

OK, I know I'm overdoing it a bit especially since there is no-one out there reading all of this but these were already typed up.

My first real boyfriend:
I never before had someone that is just there, laying next to me in the bed, no angst, no expectations, scratching my head and liking it when I scratch his back and not expecting me to be perfect and always look good or giving me the feeling he is just waiting for an excuse to leave. I love the way he is just there. Next to me. Laying in the bed reading, having a shower with me every morning. Sometimes I think I am with the wrong person. He does not see me, does not value me. But then we fight and talk and fight some more and talk some more and there he is there again and I am there again and I marvel at our there-ness. Cooking with me, talking with me. Soft warm skin. Early morning qigong standing next to me smelling the morning mistiness, the sun forming soft halos around the dogs. I am no longer alone. Afgetrokke, he is thinking about something else. In his own world. Where I do not exist. But I can call him back. His head turns, his eyes focus. His white sexy teeth smiles. He answers me. He is thinking of my bum, religion, plants, his job. We are walking down the road with Fey and her three puppies. The moon is so bright. A horse makes a stranger noise. The white wall says we are close to the stop street where the road ends.

We talk about tarot. He does not like doing it too often, he does not want to do it now. I explain, he agrees to do it – he does it differently. I take a deep breath and remember I care. He lies next to me. I hold on tight. He is warm. He is there. I breath. My chest relaxes, the ball dissolves. I breath He is here, laying next to me. I am not alone. It is not important. There are flowers on the duvet. His hair is short except for one hair tat escaped the razor when I shaved his head. It sticks over his ear. I feel his heart beating and I am filled with the simple wonder of laying next to someone else.

My first funeral:
I am sitting in church waiting for the service to start. What should I be feeling? Not slightly bored, that is wrong, disconnected and selfish. My eyes follow the wooden benches around me, the wooden beams above me, the sound of the organ ponderously whining. All the black suits and sad faces. My mother now without a mother. The black choir singing deep beautiful notes. My grandfather alone and absent. So sad. Does he knows how he feels?

At the cemetery, trying to avoid my cousins. Walking along the road. Looking at my shoes. Not knowing how I feel. Not feeling comfortable with not knowing. Standing around the grave. Listening to the Dominee droning. I look up and see my aunt. I have never liked her. She is standing apart from everyone else, looking bewildered. I feel sadness welling up from my heart. All my what and how wonderings disappear. I put my arms around her and feel her leaning into me. We are together in the moment when the first earth hits the coffin. Things do not matter. The black choir sings. We walk back to the car. I wonder how long the journey home will take. Does my grandfather have a grave booked in the same cemetery? Why are funeral flowers so ugly? I remember my cousin wearing a green dress or am I remembering the green dress at my brother’s wedding? During both occasions me and my sister tried to avoid the family, not fitting in.

One day my mother will be gone too. One day my sister and my father and my dog and Florian will all be gone. One day I will also no longer be here. I hope there is someone to lean into. For all of us.

Random quotes

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille.

I wanted a perfect ending…. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Gilda Radner.

Writing a book is like scrubbing an elephant: there’s no good place to begin or end, and it is hard to keep track of what you have covered.
Anon.

With my new orange bike really big orange bike leaving the camp site going faster and faster along the river on the pavement but there by the river warm but the wind blowing cold blowing in my face my hair behind faster & faster no fear pedalling with power my body’s power the big bike big & bright & orange and me big on the bike & the river big & the river faster & me faster & orange & bright and wild & alone me & the river & the orange bike
Patricia Delorey

And I hear you say,
Let me be wild and tangled and free
Let me run and yell and catch things
And come back dirty and shining, with thistles in my hair.
I am tired of being timid, you said.
I am tired of being quietly, perfectly creative.
I want to leave my closet door open at night
I want to climb out of the window of who I am expected to be
And leap into the reality of wishes, landing in a cascade of
cherry blossoms.
Miriam Rubinow.

If the depth of my feelings
matched the depth of my voice
If I remember the knowledge
of sound pure and full,
If I stay connected to
my breath and stand tall
If I keep my channels open,
will I still be a women?
Adrienne Cugini

Another day another me

Every morning I wake up, I am faced with another me. Sometimes I am wildly enthusiastic about the morning sun, dog ears, boyfriend’s smile. Or tentatively positive about my ability to get through the day and learn something new about me. Some days I wake up snarling at my pillow and some days I roll up in a little ball under the duvet and pray for the courage to go to work and run a workshop with 14 strangers.

Is it always the same inner me interacting with today’s me or is the inner self also interchangeable. Do I have any control over the me who decide to sink into things and expand through allowing myself to absorb?

I tend to believe it a good thing that every now and again the inner self also gets swapped around. It forces me to relinquish control and experience without any filters. Sometimes I get to see live through the eyes of howling fury, I get to rest in the place I go to after crying in fear all night. Some days there is no questioning or angst just happiness to be alive. I am feeling adventurous today (but a tentative daring – I’ll leave a few inner windows slightly ajar and see what drifts in).

Unfurling (...desert wind)

It was Saturday morning and I have had time to unfurl my bullet points into circular shapes moving in and out of their interior dynamics. Sometimes I curl tightly around these dynamics not wanting to see them or have others see, and sometimes like this morning I am happy to watch how their inputs and outputs spirals into and out of them, like mist. Not a heavy threatening mist but the kind of mist that gently swirls catching the early morning sun. I am in the process of reprogramming the way I relate to processes at work. I curl away from them. The workshop participants seem threatening instead of helpful. I am like the child I use to be putting of to school as long as I can. But ever so often I realize that there is so much possibility in these groups, that we are working towards something, together. That there must be a way to harness the positive feelings people have towards rewriting a system and make it a creative process, enjoyable for all. But for that to happen I must relax the bullet points, the need for validation, the assumptions that I know what is going on and the wish to sneak back to my desk to have a cup of coffee and some liquorice. And to allow the emotions that build up the previous day to be blown about into impressive blue, purple clouds, to have the silence hanging for a moment over the landscape, pregnant with possibility, to hear the thunder calling to the lightning and then to have the rain blown about and fierce. Once all has settled, the air is clear, everything looks as bright as pebbles reflected through sunlit water. And the world is filled with fresh possibilities.

After writing this, I tried to post it on the Blog only to discover I forgot my user name password. A frustrating half an hour later my heart was beating faster, my head felt like there was a dry wind blowing through it and my bullet points shriveled into dry hot balls of fury...

The first one

This has taken me a while but here is it, my first post on my first blog. I'm hoping this will lead to many creative moments and realizations and writings.