Friday, April 27, 2012

“Despair is a Sin Against Imagination.” – Innuit Saying

“A story is the relationship that you develop between who you are, or who you potentially are, and the infinite world.” – Shekhar Kapur

Journal Entry: April 27, 2012

Sitting quietly, I breathe in deeply into my belly button.  Life flows into every part of me and I am renewed and reborn.  Silence. Fully inflated belly.  I am round like the earth.  Bigger than the roundness of earth.  Now the breath flows outward again.  Deflated, the death feeling comes to the body.  Who am I?  Inward again, the momentum draws even a larger circle within.  Who breathes me in?  In that last hour, will I know?  Which "I" will know?  The one leaving or the one staying?  What story will be revealed to me in that mystery?  Will I return to the Garden of Eden?  Will I enter a great mansion?  Will I leave the back of a great turtle?  Whose story will claim my last breath?  Breathing outward, the question disappears.  Continuing to inhale, my body disappears.  My last thought is: How can this feeling be expressed in art?  The story lives on.  It is all I know.  Everything.


“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing?  When did you stop singing?  When did you stop being enchanted by stories?  When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”

- Gabrielle Roth




 

1 comment:

Susan Williamson said...

What an inspiring entry both words and image. I wish I could remember who said that when you feel depressed, you should expand rather than contract. Your art reminded me of this.