Archetypes

Archetypes have followed me since I took Dan Peters' Myth and the Modern Hero class in high school. In counseling classes we read Carl Jung and so awhile ago I purchased Caroline Myss' Sacred Contracts and her accompanying archetype cards to learn more about myself. According to Myss there are 4 archetypes that everyone has, and then there are at least 8 others that closely shape our personalities. This has been a very fun & eye-opening exercise for me, and has also been fun to talk with Kyle and see what his archetypes are. These are the archetypes that I feel repesent me the best (beginning with the 4 that everyone has)
1. Saboteur
2. Victim
3. Prostitute
4. Child (and I identify with the orphan child)
5. Mentor
6. Damsel
7. Clown/Fool
8. Rebel
9. Student
10. Queen
11. Story Teller
12. Hermit
The most interesting thing for me doing this exercise was how much I resonated with the shadow side (the way the archtype influences us negatively, like always 'playing the victim,' or sabotaging my relationships). I've been working with these archetypes in art, and have found that the two most easily accesible ones (perhaps because within the context of my romantic relationship they rule me the most, or perhaps because I have many fashion magazines with these images in them), are the Queen and the Damsel.

Here's my interpretation of my Queen archetype:


And here's my interpretation of my Damsel archetype:



I'd encourage you to check it out and do it for yourself. You might just learn a thing or two :)

Inner Critic

A prompt from Courtney to represent my Inner Critic through art, and when I was finished, I looked at it and was like, 'wow, that's her allright."

"Unplanned"

Inspire Me Thursday's prompt this week was "Medical" and I couldn't help but think of all my friends who have gotten pregnant on their birth control. I've titled it "Unplanned" from it's original "Unwanted," though both titles bring up my own sense of loss and disconnection as I too feel, through my adoption, that unplanned and unwanted means not-good-enough. Flawed. Not completely whole.

Morning thoughts

I woke up this morning with two thoughts:

1) I believe sleeping too long is, on some level, a wish for death. When I look at the clock and can't bear to to face the world and force myself to sleep so long that I get a crick in my neck, then there is something wrong.

2) Sadness for me is the color yellow and is in the shape of a square. This is a refrigerator leftover from last night's conversation with K. Emotions for him are a all part of one thing, (facets maybe?) and he believes that they speak in order to give him some message, or something like that. I, on the other hand, feel that my emotions are individual entities, separate from my being, and merely dwelling inside. Sometimes they all shout at once and I feel like a mom with screaming kids and all I'm doing is reaching for a popsicle to shove in their mouths to just shut them up for awhile. I feel that my highest potential is the content calmness I feel when I'm completely quiet and still. And that's when I learned another important aspect of relationships...even when you feel like you experience emotions the same way, you don't.

Photographs

It seems the older I get the more my memories are encapsulated in photographs in my mind. Like I'm not sure I remember how gritty and sweet the ring around my lips tasted after finishing an afternoon treat on a family camping trip. When I touch my hair it no longer conjurs up how strawlike the ends felt after chewing them between my teeth. And I can't remember how I related to my cousin equally, before I started seeing her as the 'pretty one' which left me unappily introverted at family functions. Instead I stare intently at the photograph, of two toddler girls sitting happily on the step of our tent-trailer and wonder, what happened to these memories as living breathing entities jostling around in my head? What did the sensation of warm orange soda feel like sliding down my throat and dripping off my chin? What was the ratio of dust to water to form the mud tracks for my brother's army men? And what did the duct tape holding the canvas sides of the trailer together sound like as pine-needles landed in the middle of the night? Lamott said to begin to write with remembering all the details of small events in our lives, like the first day of kindegarten or our Christmas as a 10 year old. I wonder, if perhaps I can start with photographs, until I can remember some memories...

Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day and I stopped at Target for some Miracle Grow soil for my Christmas cactus that has been sitting in its pitiful pot since...Christmas. I made the mistake of re-potting it in my kitchen (there is still dirt lingering on counters and on the floor) and I was so inspired by this that today I went and bought some pretty gerbera daisies to brighten up my place. And I realized that I garden like a little kid, but it is was so fun. And here is the proof:











Yay for gardening!!!

Both Sides Now

Music has a way of getting inside my skin, walking around banging on memories, rattling the cages that hold my emotions tightly, and tonight is no exception. With a conversation about wedding songs I began a youtube search that left me watching many sappy love songs. Nostalgia tapped on my shoulder and whispered "bows and flows" and it's one of my options for the father/daughter dance. It's sad and slow and almost depressing, but it's fitting, because it was a childhood lullaby sung by my papa.


The imagery of ice cream castles in the air overshadowed the sadness of really not knowing love at all. So I'm sitting here in the dark tonight, with a touch of sunday-nap induced insomnia, listening to Joni Mitchell croon away. There's something to listening to a song repeatedly, to really get in bed with it and know it intimately. To explore each emotion it conjurs, like the feeling of safety, and my father's touch as he massaged away the growing pains in my legs. If not for any other reason, I may choose this song to dance to. Even if the guests don't 'get it'.

Let it enter your soul, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKQSlH-LLTQ

Little Red Feather

The little red feather that escaped from the whirring sucking vacuum cleaner is still crouched near the futon, hiding, like I used to, behind the legs of my mother. Little red feather leftover from Halloween wings. It isn't an innate messiness that I possess, but rather an inattention to details. No. Not inattention, just a healthy sense of the picture overall. Forest for the trees. Because in the grand scheme, does the little red feather's presence next to my futon interrupt the overall feeling of my room? These words sound rote and memorized, because of the transportation time between bathtub and computer. Words forced into timelessness without evolution, like our view of the red man, forever standing on the plains of Iowa with a feather headress and a bow & arrow. Perhaps I shouldn't cling so tightly to the inspirations that come in moments of quiet, driving down country roads, hanging delicately in half-sleep, or while concentrating on scrubbing behind my ears. I'm not sure where to go with it all, but there seemed to be a message. Lost in the rote memorization of it all. Shruti gone wrong. But the mere act of listening to these inspirations has caused the antennae on my skin to perk up to the slightest noise or whisper, my eyes to scan my surroundings for similes and metaphors and my eyes to wonder in their most insightful way, what the color of hunger is. I used to think it was merely words that floated through me, sometimes channeled into translation on paper, but the more I learn the more I realize that there are pictures there. Worries. Memories. Imaginations. Ripe for the taking. So I write, and the little red feather hides. And life continues.

My theology

"I can only speak for myself, from what I know," I kept saying over and over again. It had come up in a Friday-night-without-tv conversation in which I explored (and somewhat revealed) my internalized theology. This morning it was still on my mind and I kept seeing a diagram of a person, like the ones that are always in my yoga magazines, with all of the chakras in their own special colors, and all I could see was black.

Ooozing, pitchy tar-like blackness sticking to all my insides. Radiating from my heart. It was a disturbing picture and I put some pastels down on paper to get it outside of me. What to do about this is a mystery, and even more so a mystery that I don't think others have this inside of them. That's why I kept saying I can only speak for myself, because this is my reality, whether it is real or not.

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle

While sitting in my recliner pondering the IMT's prompt of recycling, I looked at my fireplace full of ashes, matches scattered about from lighting candles, and my sketchbook open to a page of practicing with colors. The paint reminded me of fire and so I dribbled and dabbled and this is my entry for this week's prompt. Who knew playing with materials like ashes could be so much fun? :)

This I Believe

This I Believe

I believe that we are all naturally at home in the water. Somewhere between cutting the cord and the initial slap on the back, ushering us into the gritty land of gravity, we have lost the peace and comfort of immersion in a warm body of water. Some of us still have an affinity for water. My webbed toes cancel out my fire sign and I've come across a few throughout my life who also want to crawl inside the sink while washing their hands. Because when life becomes stressful, and the stimulation is hitting me from all sides, I sometimes put my head below the water and feel the warmth spread into my very bones. Under water I feel calm, the sounds from above are muffled and murky and my body is suspended delicately. If I can't manage a body of water large enough for my 6 foot frame I make-do with bathtubs or the feeling of warm water rushing over my hands. I resonate with the sacrament of baptism more than any other. Because crawling back into the watery womb makes me feel safe and when I emerge, even for a brief moment, I feel renewed. And I believe this can be true for all of us.

InkBlots

I found an inkblot challenge in the Inspire me Thursday website and decided that even a budding artist could participate in this art idea.






When I peeled away the paint I looked at the result and thought to myself, "wow, this is what fear looks like." Inspired, I decided to keep making these neat little inkblots, to get messy and let the perfectionist voice take a backseat for once.



I think this little guy looks a lot like a dad at Disneyland. Can you see the rosy cheeks, the sparkle in his eyes and the silly hat, complete with ears? It makes me smile just looking at it.

And these are winged monkeys.

Feeling down? Feeling stressed out? Pick up some paint and make a few inkblots. You'll be surprised at how fun and easy they are, and how getting a little paint on your fingers does wonders for the soul. :)

One a Week

At least weekly (though ideally much more often), I am dedicating myself to creating (and therefore posting) something creative and healing, like a poem or a collage or some free-writing mumbo jumbo (as long as it is not my grocery list journal entries that I so often write...) I'm not giving up my Myspace blog, because that's been a part of my life for 3 years, but I feel that I'm in a blogging rut there, the same old rants and raves against the system. Ideally this space will allow me to branch out into my more creative self And this quarter is ideally more conducive to this venture, with Mondays as my free day for personal healing and growth.

The History of a Scar

I'm not sure the scar has really faded, or if I'm just used to its presence on my face. When I'm lazy, often in the winter, it's hidden under straying eyebrow hairs, so when I'm fresh faced after plucking it sits there smiling back at me. When I notice it perched on my brow I think about my father dancing around as a kid with a hotdog, in front of a mirror. In my head it looks like the scene from Risky Business (which is the only scene I've even seen), but that's how my dad got a chicken pox scar: waving a hotdog in front of a mirror and the spare pig parts knocked into his face and the scab flew off leaving a small crater. My scar and his are in similar places and it makes me feel connected. Though the lesson I learned in it all was that you can do everything right, following all the rules (don't scratch, you'll get a scar!) and a scab can fall off in the middle of the night leaving you with a scar anyway. I can follow all the rules and still get hurt. At least it seems to be smiling, now.