Today is Halloween for us North American folk, and yet again I found myself in one of our neighborhood community gardens. All alone. Thankfully. Today is not so much about nice blue colorful wispy beautiful leaves, with poetic and profound poetry interlaced, but more about the honest truth about looking deeper at the perfection of imperfection. Another deep look inside.
Not so much willingly brought on my ‘me’, as by one of my dearest firends, pointing out a personality flaw in ‘me’, and me realizing it is a douzy that I haven’t yet really addressed. My heart kind of sank when he mentioned it, because I knew it was so true- though my ego desperately wanted to prove that he was wrong, that I wasn’t what he said, but I know, well, yes I am like that. In fact the truth is that every now and then I close off, shut off, cave in, retreat, push away the world, snarl, get foamingly angry at the smallest of small, send hurtful thoughts to those I love the most in this world, and become exceptionally difficult for those I love to be around. The feelings of pain and shame, of how I have hurt, shut out and closed off my loved ones is a hard pill to swallow. In one sense it feels like a kind of autism, as it is hard to talk and I get obsessed with cleaning, on the other hand it is like a intense version of PMS. Though I know it is not PMS because it usually only comes on after I have eaten chocolate, beef or cheese…
So today as I was trying to figure out if this is part of my personality that is set in stone or this is something I can change. Obviously I can stay away from those foods, but is it the foods, or is it something else, some unconscious force in me that wants to express anger and have some alone time? Can I ever really know the answers to these questions?
With these questions on my mind, my grandpa’s 1969 55mm nikkor micro lens was attracted to a couple of groups of cherry tomato plants. The season is over for growing tomatoes, but the stragglers left on the vine were so beautiful and interesting to me. I started taking pictures of nice round perfect tomatoes, but quickly found my eye being drawn to the old, scarred and beaten up ones. The ones whose guts are wide open for everyone to see, who are past their prime, whose scars aren’t coming off with laser surgery, the ones who are ready to be buried in the earth, the ones who have lived out their lives and are full of pus and stories about what they have seen in this world, the ones who seem to be encased in barbs. (yes I see all of that in those tomatoes). I wonder if anyone else finds these beautiful? I definitely would not be picking these out in the grocery store for my summer salad, but today they are art.
Awhile ago a bunch of us were sitting around our living room, trying to figure out what our life long ‘thing’ was. Someone said theirs was living in a state of ‘crisis’, another friend said theirs was living in a state of ‘intensity’, when I was trying to figure out what mine was, I immediately knew that mine was living in a state of ’emotional turmoil’. I am not really sure what the ‘thing’ is, or what we are supposed to do with that knowledge of what our thing is, but it makes sense to me, that when ever I go into one of these high intensity emotional turmoil times, I go back to God, I go back to prayer, I go back to art, I reconnect with my gifts and my passions, and I uncover a deeper layer of myself- and I also cause confusion and hurt to those around me. My thing, being in ’emotional turmoil’, maybe be a curse, or maybe be a gift, maybe its both and for me the task is channeling it and balancing it, not inflicting its darker spikes onto my loved ones, but also allowing myself to feel it and use it instead of trying to repress it all the time.
I know that just like those tomatoes, I could be the perfect, round, red tomato for the rest of my life and that would be just fine, but I could also allow the interesting thorny scarred up pussy mess of a tomato to sometimes have its place too, that both can live in this world and be admired for their own inherent beautiful qualities. That maybe if I allow them to coexist the latter won’t smash down the door every now and then, beating up everyone in sight, pulling me by force into the nether world…
So now I leave you with this,
What is your ‘Thing’? (If it is possible to describe your inherent life personality flaw in one word)
How is it beautiful and how is it ugly?
Has it lead you to your gifts, or just given you grief?
How have you been able to balance it in your life?
So last night I dreamt that there were all of these alligator like creatures living up in trees trying to eat the monkeys and attack people down below. Everywhere I looked there were these reptiles attacking. So when I woke up, I had to ask myself, Why do I see the world as a bunch of reptiles attacking? And then the dream began to reveal itself to me. Without the reptiles I can’t get to the memories of my own positive qualities. I know when the reptiles appeared in my life and I know what they have done and unlike what the psychology books say, they didn’t arrive early in my life, but only after a half century. They love to torment me, but I know they are there when I forget to remember God inside, that is forget to remember all of those positive qualities that He has placed in there, that only experience and transformation can bring out.
So what is my thing? My thing is reptiles. Well I am glad they were komodo dragons. So my mantra today is finding the positives and then using them in the world, but what is interesting to me is that my thing didn’t start until as I was 50. So if you think that your thing comes from the family you grew up in, just wait. You haven’t seen nothing yet.!!!!!!
But I love those reptiles because they take me to a better place.
LOVE the colors in the pictures! And the questions are really good ones I am going to think on…and I will get back to you. I think I know my “thing” but I have to find a way to explain it…hehe
I LOVE how insightful you are Juliet, though I am sure it frustrates you sometimes, you make the rest of us think