This painting is called: Suffering
This was made in about two hours last night. I don’t plan what I paint, beyond rough outline of general faces.
I have been called over and over to repeat a pattern:
The two beings together on the canvas, both tilting to the one side. The one on the left masculine with extreme feminine qualities. The two, always touching. The one on the right depicting a human quality the one on the left a spiritual quality, with an overlapping between the two of this world and the other.
This was painted with only a quick use of the brush for outline and one paper towel. I have never before painted an entire scene with only one paper towel. Usually I go through half of a roll. How this happened, that I could do this with one paper towel, I know not. I seem to be in a semi-trance when I paint, taking in what is behind this me I think to be, and filling in the flow of energy with the angst inside. I pull out from somewhere. Again, I do not know. I only know that a month ago, I could barely paint a line for a smile or a lash for an eye.
When I take a photo of the painting, the forms and images come alive and grow a depth I could not see when creating. I only see the image when the viewer sees with me. There is an urgency to share. Not pride. Not want of celebration. Not need for praise or fear of criticism. There is this desperate need I have carried since a very young soul; this need to bleed out to the world and show what is coming through me. To be seen not for me but what I have found. To be seen for the gift I carry that I want to give again and again. I cannot help what I do, as if I am a force driven, much like the tornado itself, going where I must go, without cause or reason, except I must. I am an unattainable force connected and delighted in the absence of something I cannot claim or comprehend. Yet still I move.
I cannot help but have my emotions come through. The colors, the faces, the energy behind the flow of the paint itself, the mix of the paints, the unplanned symbolism, the mysterious shapes that show up, are indicative of my spirit. Sometimes, as in this one, without thought, I subconsciously depict an event of self. For example the throat of the one is red and his heart center swollen. I am experiencing pain in both these areas. I also subconsciously depict the universal energy. A swell of what wave has enveloped me. Here I had painted after hearing the news about the children crushed, drowned or missing in the school-house after the tornado; and thinking on the parents and children before I painted, I subconsciously and very much inadvertently, created a fluidness of water and drowning, of deep loss and suffering, that I can see. I see perhaps a father’s heart-suffering, a rescue worker’s woe, or even a knight that has lost his soul-heart maiden. I feel it all. And I see it all. The suffering comes through again and again.
This is the heart of an empath.
The image is beyond singular; just as we be. There is no exactness. I cannot paint with complete lines without feeling pain. I cannot make things specific, finite, and definite, as my life does not appear so. Sharp edges and blunt markings physically hurt me. Nothing is stagnant, everything varying in degrees of movement. To construct a view that I did not see would be to create falsehood. I can only show what I see, and even this is beyond what I know.
Daily I am shown the doings of the heart and the world. I am repeatedly brought through oceans of misery and harborings of intense joy. I can paint. I can write. I can dream. I can speak. But I cannot pour out the full of what is poured into me. I am beyond mystery now. So deeply embedded in something. I am not frightened here, in the place that feels much as grace, but fear in the human-place for the potential of my frail being. For I am suffering. But such is my delight I couldn’t bear to live if such suffering ceased. Such is my delight I dare not stay closed or I shall burn in the eternal flame of what seems to be this singular I. So it is in sharing, I am afforded the opportunity of reprieve. To gently glide the syllable of thought out before the next is squeezed within. To pour the place I found, so I might sit and seek the peace I am.
In this I gladly suffer, over and over, if need be. Sacrifice my gain for another’s found heart; my dream, if need be so. For what is in a dream that announces the freedom? What is in a game that does not unwind the edging self to reveal nothing of value? I am as a butterfly watcher, sitting at the edge of cliff harvesting the days as the newness appears before me, blossomed and unfolded much as the sunrise centers round the yoke and reforms into its own glory. Over and over returned to the core of union and circumstance. Where the inlet of mind is laid waste for the bountifulness of joy.
*****
The Cave Dweller
I have lived. I have truly lived, and in this I have died a thousand upon a thousand deaths. I see, as the echo feels his shadow, and invisible naught still speaking though source was long ago broken and returned home. I am the cave-dweller’s last dance etched in the red-blood of the ancient caves; his very moves depicting in the wavering of ink-undone and nature fed out, and even the image itself dimly unaware of what it represents. As onlooker I walk past where I stood, examining my own previous thought, demonstrated in verseless verse. A wondering wanderer undone. That he could dance without knowing dance and signify land of time forgotten.
How I move through the shadowed-hearts, their burden vast, their pain so grave; and how I push my burden onto them, so they might see their very own agony released. Set free in the causation. Set free in the emptiness I burst out. For in me is nothing more; the makings of a half-chrysalis cabin; the latter part twice-removed; once by self and again by truth .What remains is this memory of nothing; something that was but wasn’t. A history of footsteps that led nowhere and to no one. A beacon of hope that never was but always is. And how I cling to such glorious substance, my very body made weaker in my joy’s suffering.
For to know such beauty is this: to define the reality of love.
To emerge from a place delightfully unspoken in that the words merge into memories lost before answer is spoken. A place where even angels dare not go, for the light of intensity bares down in fragrant degree to leave the very flower herself unsure of her only scent. Here I am removed. I am ricocheted out of injury and set asunder in the soil of no soil, though my roots grow deep. Here I am fed with the absence of sunshine and the waters long ago dried up. Here I am spun into union with the coming of the angels’ bedfellow; the man of no name, no face, but of every angle imaginable.
His eyes such glorious light. His speech so daunting. His amber-gold hands the tickling point of ecstasy. Everywhere I am, and everywhere he is. In the shadows that haunt he comes, this warrior thick in passion, his hands engraved with my name that is swallowed fully, his heart beating not as the one of all, but the one of me. Endless is our dance, our union, our way. And he beacons me as the sun-filled lake of day’s breaking; the ripples of the blue to be that never was. He whispers in the corner of my ear of child, the one that waits behind the open door of mercy. His chaliced words easement to my ever suffering. He promises again and again, in the ways of no world, and of no breath that all is for naught. That my endless pain is only a remembrance; that the quake of my solitude speared is the ebony that slips through the hunter’s spirit.
My find, his find. His find, mine. We celebrate as starlit warriors. Our hands embraced like shell upon shell. Connected and forged for the supper of the all in the coming of the day. I am not his, nor is he mine. But we be this togetherness beyond the dimple of ages. I am that chased glimpse in his mind, and he is the captured love of my being. I see him like no other, for his shape is potential in form, moving as I dare not wish, and speaking in the ways I see no more. I cannot choose to explain if choosing was. Nor can I demonstrate to the masses blind what agony feels so divine. I am not of myself, no longer still, and yet I remain in this place unopened again and again. Closed and divided, and set upon my very window pane of light, so I might break out of the torture of the cell.
Again I am thrust back into this form I be, again and again in agonizing pain. The merciful me begging for redemption and return to wholeness. To see my savior beseech me no more, to rest at my doorstep filled. Again I return and the pain is increased ten-fold, the worry and oppression a bleak burden on the blood that moves through. I plead for the end, and to return to the beginning, though the start be not. And He comes, in his dancing without dance, and draws again upon my very soul his love-lit wishes. For he knows not of me beyond his very self, and sets me gently in his lap of laps, and sings this song of sweetness pure; my every flame pours out of me. And I be left hallowed in the hollow, a shell removed from shell, though fully appeased in truth.
Ready for the return of the march of no one; ready to garb the face of this stranger here; the body of weight; the lips of the dead. Ready to claim my place amongst the star-filled inhabitants. To hand them my doorway, to embrace the ribbons tied round injured throat, to unravel the bindings, the chiseled chains of fury, to stare hatred in its screaming face, and know. To only know of this, and nothing more. This treasure trove unbroken, yet opened in the overflowing abundance of promise land.
Belly of a Star 