We grow up and change. I won’t say evolve because evolution follows a prearranged path. We constantly change directions and objectives. Other things excite our interest, other things provoke our fears, other things hurt us when we are children, adolescents, young, mature, old….
Once, while I was moonlighting as an English teacher, I showed the students a photograph in a school handbook: An empty park covered in snow, few naked, grey trees, a lamp-post with a cap of snow, a bridge, in front of the railing a couple with grey coats stands, with their back facing the lens, under a red umbrella, their bodies touching.
“What kind of feelings does the photograph arouse? ”
The children say “melancholy”, “sadness”. Possibly they meant “emotion”. I ask “why”.
The colours, the loneliness, winter. And a girl around fourteen answers: “They remind meof my parents”.
“And this makes you sad? Why? ”
“Because I do not want to become like them”
Old? Conservative? Stressed? Tired of life? I did not ask anything further. This was just a class, oral practice not therapy.
However the photo really offers itself for analysis, auto (self) – analysis, now, in my early forties, a working mother of two and many - many things that would please me to do but I don’t have the time anymore to do things for myself.
This is how I interpret the photo now, analyzing the symbols:
The empty winter park is the modern capitalistic landscape, where few people exploit everybody else plus nature, where no one feels safe but nevertheless is unwilling to team up with others like them, not trusting anybody, unwilling to share.
The couple in the photograph is my husband and I. We are gazing at the river, the flow that would exist if the river were not frozen, if the money we lack was available, the time we could use to feed our souls and spirit was available. We have however one another, our love, a cheap, red umbrella between us and the winter, two coats and our bodies to keep us warm.
The children are not in the photograph. The children are in another photograph, they are building their dreams in the sand in front of a vast ocean, under a sun that lights up and warms.
As adolescents they will go through a landscape full of alternations and winding paths that cross over and over again, full of idyllic corners and dangerous jungles and I’m by no means certain that our directions will help them find the way, because our children are not ourselves. They will choose their own path.
What I cannot see is what comes after. Does spring come? When? When you win the lottery? When you at last find a job that would be full-filling instead of draining? (Do such jobs exist?) When we embrace buddhism and distance ourselves from everything, being neither afraid nor hopeful? When we retire and have the time we lack now?
Tomorrow does not exist in the sense today exists. Nor yesterday. We live the moment, otherwise we live in the twilight zone.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not miserable. I am not happy either. In Greek “I am” describes both permanent and temporary states perhaps because our ancestors believed also that life is now. ( In English there is a tense, Present Continuous, to describe temporary actions but not temporary qualities). In Spanish there are two verbs, “ser” for permanent states/qualities and “estar” for temporary ones. (This is why I love learning languages, because it broadens the mind, not as qualifications for a “better” job).
My “Now” may be (estar) happy or miserable but I, rationalist and idealist, veterinarian and artist, mother and woman, working woman and syndicalist, philomath and pleasure seeker, I have continuity. I change (fortunately!) but I am not self -alienated.
And I keep wishing to share things. For me this is the starting line of an artist, not just to express oneself. Otherwise, why write poetry if no one is going to read it? Why paint? Why play music?
That’s why I created this blog.
Because I want to find others that love the same things as I do, others that care, others that constantly check themselves to make sure they haven’t by any chance betrayed the child and the adolescent that still exists inside them judging them, others that still want to change the world.
Because I do not have the money the publishers ask me in order to publish my poems and I want everybody who still reads poetry to read them, without having to pay for a book.
Because the internet cannot be controlled yet from the ones in power and from the law of profit and among the noise of the web you can hear melodies.
Because it is in my nature to communicate.
My recordings will be thoughts, ideas, experiences, what each one of us sees through the view point that we call “self”, the ghost in the brain machine, nothing supernatural but still incorporeal, as incorporeal are feelings.
ENTER
Once, while I was moonlighting as an English teacher, I showed the students a photograph in a school handbook: An empty park covered in snow, few naked, grey trees, a lamp-post with a cap of snow, a bridge, in front of the railing a couple with grey coats stands, with their back facing the lens, under a red umbrella, their bodies touching.
“What kind of feelings does the photograph arouse? ”
The children say “melancholy”, “sadness”. Possibly they meant “emotion”. I ask “why”.
The colours, the loneliness, winter. And a girl around fourteen answers: “They remind meof my parents”.
“And this makes you sad? Why? ”
“Because I do not want to become like them”
Old? Conservative? Stressed? Tired of life? I did not ask anything further. This was just a class, oral practice not therapy.
However the photo really offers itself for analysis, auto (self) – analysis, now, in my early forties, a working mother of two and many - many things that would please me to do but I don’t have the time anymore to do things for myself.
This is how I interpret the photo now, analyzing the symbols:
The empty winter park is the modern capitalistic landscape, where few people exploit everybody else plus nature, where no one feels safe but nevertheless is unwilling to team up with others like them, not trusting anybody, unwilling to share.
The couple in the photograph is my husband and I. We are gazing at the river, the flow that would exist if the river were not frozen, if the money we lack was available, the time we could use to feed our souls and spirit was available. We have however one another, our love, a cheap, red umbrella between us and the winter, two coats and our bodies to keep us warm.
The children are not in the photograph. The children are in another photograph, they are building their dreams in the sand in front of a vast ocean, under a sun that lights up and warms.
As adolescents they will go through a landscape full of alternations and winding paths that cross over and over again, full of idyllic corners and dangerous jungles and I’m by no means certain that our directions will help them find the way, because our children are not ourselves. They will choose their own path.
What I cannot see is what comes after. Does spring come? When? When you win the lottery? When you at last find a job that would be full-filling instead of draining? (Do such jobs exist?) When we embrace buddhism and distance ourselves from everything, being neither afraid nor hopeful? When we retire and have the time we lack now?
Tomorrow does not exist in the sense today exists. Nor yesterday. We live the moment, otherwise we live in the twilight zone.
Don’t misunderstand me. I am not miserable. I am not happy either. In Greek “I am” describes both permanent and temporary states perhaps because our ancestors believed also that life is now. ( In English there is a tense, Present Continuous, to describe temporary actions but not temporary qualities). In Spanish there are two verbs, “ser” for permanent states/qualities and “estar” for temporary ones. (This is why I love learning languages, because it broadens the mind, not as qualifications for a “better” job).
My “Now” may be (estar) happy or miserable but I, rationalist and idealist, veterinarian and artist, mother and woman, working woman and syndicalist, philomath and pleasure seeker, I have continuity. I change (fortunately!) but I am not self -alienated.
And I keep wishing to share things. For me this is the starting line of an artist, not just to express oneself. Otherwise, why write poetry if no one is going to read it? Why paint? Why play music?
That’s why I created this blog.
Because I want to find others that love the same things as I do, others that care, others that constantly check themselves to make sure they haven’t by any chance betrayed the child and the adolescent that still exists inside them judging them, others that still want to change the world.
Because I do not have the money the publishers ask me in order to publish my poems and I want everybody who still reads poetry to read them, without having to pay for a book.
Because the internet cannot be controlled yet from the ones in power and from the law of profit and among the noise of the web you can hear melodies.
Because it is in my nature to communicate.
My recordings will be thoughts, ideas, experiences, what each one of us sees through the view point that we call “self”, the ghost in the brain machine, nothing supernatural but still incorporeal, as incorporeal are feelings.
ENTER
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