There is a book, a book i have by my bed, it is not an easy book. Like many good books it can be read in “various ways”. Like many books it has layers, rooms. The books that means or have meant, something in my life are a bit like a painting about which you can appreciate the whole or the detail, the technique, the materials composing it, etc.
Its title is “Donne che corrono con i lupi’ {Women Who Run With the Wolves}. it is a reading book, a guide, a psychology book, a voyage, and much else.
{The following is a translation, by me, from Italian – as I do not own the English version}
C. P. Estés
“Healthy wolves and healthy women have some psychological traits in common: acute sensibility, playful spirit, and great devotion. Wolves and women are akin by nature, knowledge curious and they do possess great strength and resistance. They are deeply intuitive and they are intensely caring of their ones, their partners, the group. They are expert in the art of adapting to the ever changing circumstances: they are fiercely strapping and very courageous”
I love this book, I FEEL it. It is a book every woman should read. It is a book most women do not need to read, because they are just wolves, yet, awareness is knowledge, and knowledge is inner strength. It is soul, it is celebrating this wonderful magical thing called life, it is understanding the depth of soul.
To me it is so. Often when I read such things I feel quite small and yet at the same time “capable”, full of potential. Most of all I feel I have a lot to learn, and I love learning.
Wanderings of my mind while reading Jose Saramango during a commute.
I do speak, I do speak my heart, I do speak my thoughts, I do speak my emotions, I do speak my dreams. Sometimes i do that in words, however we are not just words so I do speak and witness how I am through my actions, my smiles, my simple movements. Don’t we all do that? Aren’t we all mirrored in the things we do and say and all of them describing and painting what we truly are?
Besides all this I do stay silent too though. When doing that I do “listen” to myself. In the end I do try watching within much more than people think. Honestly, expressing my thoughts is for me another way of listening to myself. As I do write these lines I am learning about myself. on’t we all work like that, after all?
It is when I listen to myself that my deepest thoughts get to life and blossom. It happens when I walk, when I see the smile of a child, the kiss of a lover, a man adjusting his hat, listening the absurd things people say, or having sun beams hitting my crazy self.
I love to smile, to giggle, the laughters, the beautiful simple things, the stories that speaks to my heart kidnapping my attention. I love what makes my soul vibrate. I get magnetically attracted by the things emoting me and those teaching me something, those makes me struggle to make time. So, I do that, and then I come back to my routines feeling richer, and more capable to give. Often feeling an urge, the urge to witness what I felt and to share what my soul has distilled as beautiful and (to my soul) worth.
They say “names” contain souls. They say that by living we do “discover the Spells” which belongs in the simple magic of life. They say it is a personal path, something private, they say they grow with us. As such, they gain and lose power depending on us. It is so because Spells are “spells” when we put meaning in them and thus is letting them out of our lips it becomes vibrating energy, a dance, between the one pronouncing them and what they produce, what they give us. I do not know if I read this somewhere, or it rather is something that slowly I started believing, a belief I reinforced in me through trying to perform my dreams. To be honest I very much think it might have been a concept I might have read in a fantasy novel of pixies and fairies, a thought-seed, but I thought about it, throughout my life. It is a thought that is planted in me and keeps coming out, and it certainly is something I feel holding truth (to me).
This is why for me “I Love You” can be a spell. This is why for me it is, because when I say it I put meaning and purpose, and I can’t say it lightly. To me that is a spell, it is powerfully magic when it gets out of my lips, and it must be truly meant or I’d break something. Not all of us are the same so for someone such same energy might be held in a hug, and what is a normal act or word, or phrase for someone might held the sacred for someone else.
Purpose, meaning, dedication.
This is how words, or acts, can become sacred to us, when said/done with purpose. This is why they can cease to exert their magic (and they fluidly do so) when the purpose is gone, the purity and meaning in them is gone. This is why we need to take care, I do keep holy my own spells.
This is why heart’s truth, dedication of mind and humility are key ingredients to have simple things of life to become the most powerful spells. Once they reach that status and accumulate their energy they can drive us, make us fearless, confident inside and peacefully happy.
The moment when something becomes a “spell” in our life, that is a gift. It is also a reward for our humility in loving and believing, and always gift.
Those are words by “Frida Kahlo”. I love her works. She was such a WOMAN, an example, a force of nature, an example of dedication, passion, fire, believing in pursuing your ideas and dreams, and more than that.
I do paint too, I do paint with words, I do paint with how I live, I think the whole of us do paint. I do not have the skills to create beautiful paintings in the normal sense. Yet I feel I do paint too, everyone of us do it. We do paint with every action we take, every breath we take. Every word we say is a brushstroke. Then, in my case I do happen to paint … with words, as I am doing now. Maybe it is an act of exhibitionism, or maybe a need, or maybe none of the above, but is it important? Life, living and breathing it, that is the important thing, in the end.
With words I do paint my love, its sacred lust too. I do paint the holy power of sensuality, its delicacies and its fury. I do paint my dreams and my fears, my hopes and my disappointment, my rage and the tearing tenderness that needs expressed even when I’d wish it caged and hate it to exist.
I do not paint all this because to preserve it from death, I do not fear that. Nothing of this will ever die, it will all survive, in me survives the heritage of all the people who touched my life, making me who I am, so I think all of the amazing, exploding, screaming feelings and sensations I got in me, they will survive, whether I paint them or not. But I do.
Then why do I paint them ? Why do we paint them ? Is it because I think I am able ? Is it because I think I am particularly good ? Is it ego ? Why do some people paint openly, while others do it within?
I do not know. The truth is: I humbly and stupidly do not know.
I know I cannot go without doing it, though. I know my brushstrokes are sometimes naif, primitive. I know they are irregular, sometimes incomprehensible, imprecise. I know sometimes they cut like blades, other times they are caresses, They can be luminous, dark, dim and way too often I do feel them not be enough to depict what I feel. This is all I know.
I do not paint because otherwise these flowers will die. They will not. I do paint because doing that is part of me.
“Some people leave a marriage literally, by divorcing. Others do so by leading parallel lives together.” /John M. Gottman/
Cards on the table, this is sincerely one thing I have seen happening often in a relationship, be that a marriage or otherwise. “Together but separate”; this, to me, is the definition of a sort of long drawn slow suicide. Perhaps this is also why I value so much communication, checking-in, openness and vulnerability. For me relationship has always meant believing it will be a lifelong travel. Either this or i would not have gone for a relationship. Not having a roommate to share chores with and a roof over our heads. It is the reason why I believe in (to the point of sometimes craving for) connection in a relationship. What I mean is Genuine, Authentic Connection. Connection and commitment. The ways of this “connections” are not the same and having the same dynamics for everyone, but it is the key, however this equilibrium is realised. It has to exist and be of a type that is fulfilling for both. There can be less sharing, no complete mutual giving, it might work, in case it is explicitly clear to both. The kind of bond I call a “relationship” is something different. It is my personal take for it, not for all and not to be necessarily agreed. It is just how things are for me. To me it means making the choice to be invested, loyal, honest and patient, over and over again. Choosing this even when the two are exhausted and stressed out. I aim at being someone who makes the other “feel” more than think and to which the behaviour of the other gives the same feeling back, someone who wants it just as much as the other “needs” it. I am someone who misses it when this is not realised and work for it, and yes I feel weird when this is not understood, it does not change me and how I behave but a part of me is unable to comprehend deviations from that. I think in relationships one must be someone who understands and more importantly, accepts. Someone who allows being loved and is open to that, craving it too. And even when the two don’t seem so get it, they try, hard.
“Successful long-term relationships are created through small words, small gestures, and small acts.” /John M. Gottman”/
Free reflections by me about the “ma” in art, music, literature plus about Eastern/Western spirituality, awareness and more
Silence, emptiness, its meaning, how it can (or can not) speak to us, has always been an important concept that I often tried to explore in my meditations. Over the years I came to think about it many times, sometimes forced by events, losses, successes or failures, and sometimes just because I felt it like something important, to which I had to find a place and an understanding in my own perception of it. I feel that the depth of its meaning and its presence, is something that exists in everyones life, whether we stop and think about it or not. Although it is (by definition) a silent presence it is something that screams when it is express in art, of by nature, music, etc. No one is immune to that. I am a woman of Western origins but in my readings and studies I have discovered how this has found a central place in the Eastern culture spirituality and approach. There is a word, a concept, describing it and representing a sort of starting point for the voyage towards humbly trying to understand it. The Japanese word, in the pure, beautiful, essentiality typical of Japan culture, is made of a single syllable: “ma”.If someone would look it up in a dictionary or Encyclopaedia, this is one of the possible definitions she would get
“Ma (間 ) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as “gap”, “space”, “pause” or “the space between two structural parts.”
The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, /ma/, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision. Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore, ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval. Ma has also been described as “an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled”, and as “the silence between the notes which make the music” {from the web}
How beautiful is that?
The “ma” is all around us, it is the connective tissue over which all things floats, We are made of substance, so we hardly ever are aware of it, but it is there. Western world is a world full of things, we live in a chaotic world, bombarded by inputs, so we rather stop from one entity to the other, one sound to the next, one meeting to the next, almost never aware of the emptiness connecting us all (and the force of it).
There are persons though, artists, writers, scientists, artisans, monks, moms, and everyday people having a natural skill. The skill to make us “hear” that.
I was listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, performed by Glenn Gould. Nobody ever played the piano like him. Eccentric, insane, outworldish impossible as he was, he just had that ability to stretch the notes to impossibly slow paces, without ever be boring, or dull. He played them with so much soul and with such mastery that as of today no one ever has still come close to that. How did he do that? How could he do that? He simply “had” it. His natural genius was that. To fill the empty spaces with perfectly timed emptiness that simply bounds the listener, takes her hand and transport her in a magic cuddling carpet. It then becomes a speedy rollercoaster. To then place a void, a void over which we are breathless, panting, and we experience it, the “ma”. No, we do not have to have trained ears to experience that.
Writers do the same. Great writers do create that, takes you and then stretch our feelings, so that to make us taste every single drop of it, exhaustingly teasing us and never being dull, naturally. To then feed us with all the colours and then again. – The ma –
Some have a natural ability into that, they sort of naturally relate to it. This is both for Western or Eastern world, even though in my world we do not “worship” the emptiness or ever think about it. To elevate empty spaces into something spiritual and a central part is something more typical of the Eastern World. Japanese iconography is full of it, such as music. Hereafter the work by Hasegawa is an example of it.
To do that in music one has to be able to pull the listener, (reader, observer). Only like that you can take to the edge and then let the listener free. Free to get lost and enjoy the space, free to appreciate the vastness, emptiness, and wander through it, mixing it with the own feelings. Stretching without ever be dragging, or boring.
A musical director once said “to carry on such slow rhythm and direct an artist doing that, while keeping it interesting it requires a total complete immersion, it needs someone whose inner rhythms are very very strong”. I also remember a video of an interview to a famous drummer who once recorded with Miles Davis. Miles Davis wanted him to do a cover and started playing to illustrate what he wanted to do and then added “The only thing you have to to do now is to keep an easy slow pace with the snare, just a snare, like this: fssht — …….. — …….. — fssht” yet, the silence and space between the two sounds was so long that it was virtually impossible to keep it. Absolutely impossible. They ended up with Miles having a mic by the leg and tapping his own thigh by himself
What is beautiful to me is also how this is absolutely universal. How that is the same for all things and the most diverse aspects of life. It is true in relationships, in speaking to friends, in loving, in smiling, in holding something in the heart. Oh my, I SO FEEL IT. I always felt that and once one feels it, it is like a burning fire always there for us, our personal precious “ma”.
I have found out the women are normally more capable of that. We have that patience, mixed with stubborn passion, that makes it easier for us. Mistuko Uchida and Martha Argerich are examples of unbelievable talented pianists possessing that ability. Plus Glenn.
I have another related thing to write about; Rhythm. It will be in another post.
{thoughts and reflections by me, feel free to disagree and find them absurd *smile*}
Choose wisely the one in Your life and if you want to fly choose to give yourself to someone having strong wings.
Choose someone giving you a new life even when rebirth is painful, so to discover who you really are, and grow as a better, innerly richer, person.
Choose the ones who blame you respectfully, instead of the ones comforting you for convenience. Choose the ones standing to confront you, shouting at you at you in tears, but staying forever.
Choose the ones not chaining you to the ground, but rather painting with you a new piece of sky. Choose the ones who do not promise a lot but always honouring their words.
Choose the ones that do not disappoint, because there is no better way to honour life, in its magical imperfections.
Choose the one who changes your eyes and perspectives gives them back to you, and let you see world in a different way, and decide by yourself.
Choose the ones who pushes you to resist, to fight, to smile, to grow, to experiment.
Choose the one who invent new colors every day, has the audacity to put green and yellow together, the cobalt blue together with ruby red, because nothing makes us stronger than respectfully breaking schemes refusing the obvious.
Choose the one who may scare, but will never harm.
In the end choose who supports you in taking one step more, one jump more, one heartbeat more.
“Writing a story is like playing out your dreams while you are awake, you have to be delicate and wildly daring too”.
It is not about being inspired by your dreams, it is rather consciously exploring the unconscious, drinking at it, reach for the life of it and then remould it in words, to create your own dream. This link to the dreamlike world is not something that is equally strong in all of us. I think some of us are just graced/disgraced with this fatal attraction to it. We cannot escape it, so we write, draw, compose, work, run, photograph … to find our own way to make it live in the world. Some people are sort of immune, or indifferent to it. It just work differently for them.
It can be scary, for I personally feel as if the border between this and insanity is sometimes a very thin line. A rope on which I cannot avoid stepping, to cross a chasm that I need to cross in order to be balanced. Creating these universes, these visions, “writing” this way is something I started doing since much before I jotted down a single written word in form of a “real story”. This drives me to dreamlike (#dreams) things, in a way: “to another world”.
I remember the moment it all started. I must have been 9/10 years old, I was still attending the obligatory schools. I did not know at the time but it was a life-changing experience. It was night and I woke up from a dream. Waking up that way broke the dream. I remember feeling lost and the clear sensation of having interrupted something that should have not been interrupted. It gave me a childish sense of false guilt. I left my bed in my pj to go to my parents room. That was something totally unusual for me. Once in front of their bedroom door I did not feel like going in, what if dad or mom would have been dreaming too? I got back to my bed and tried to continue the dream. I closed my eyes and laid down pieces of the dream I had. Images, moments, hints of a possible continuation. The morning after I woke after the dream sort of continued from where it left. Not quite, but it was connected. As I said I did not know at the time, but I now recognise that as the moment that changed it all. The event that then blossomed into how I write, compose, or do anything creative. The realisation that I could consciously connect to my subconscious. Yes, I know I could be considered insane for this (as many other) thing(s). Still, this is it.
Most of the times this is my mindset when writing a little story, a poem, etc. Writing let me intentionally dream while I am still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday’s life. It is also a way of descending deep into my own consciousness and perceptions. Sometimes a way to understand, decrypt things buried deep in me. There are times in which it does not trigger though, not immediately. I have learnt to accept it (#acceptance). When it starts, however, it just flows, I must should handle control as I must do in life, when I totally completely trust (#trust).
Truly, there is only one way. The only way is to speak Thy heart and feelings.
They could be flames, or caresses, they could irritate or sooth. But it is heartbeats, it is your heartbeats offered and plainly, openly and lovingly given. Only if you do it and you do not keep from doing it, you truly love. When she accepts them, all of them, You are truly loved, because you are loved for what you are, in good and bad.
No, we do not have to love because of what we “get in return”, but yes, we have to love sincerely and not holding. That is our responsibility. When we say we love, that means also to do it by sharing also our needs, our difficult and easy things, whenever they exist. If we do not share them, we do not truly love. In the same way, if we will be blessed with receiving the ones of the beloved, we must cherish them, and speak back our heart, or we will not truly love.
Kitty Michelle's Universe 