Tea and musings around liminality

Yesterday I sat at a table lit by the golden light of the late spring sun, enjoying the feel of a soft breeze contradicting the warmth of sunlight on my skin while the glorious sound of birdsong gently caressing my ears in the café at the Blaenavon World Heritage Centre. On the table was a lovely pot of tea and a home-made fairy cake (small ‘cupcake’) topped with vanilla buttercream icing and my journal-sketchbook into which I would be recording my thoughts and observations. This was a treat after picking up a batch of mugs that I’ve had printed with a piece of my artwork and a short greeting for my lovely year 11 class who are leaving on Thursday. That will be a day filled with tears and joy, a liminal moment for the pupils as they stand on the threshold of the next phase of their life. The leavers’ assembly being an opportunity to mark this transition point, a liminal point, with celebration, with laughter and with the memories of experiences.

The view from the window was of the neglected graveyard attached to St Peter’s Church which falls away towards the valley bottom as the café abuts the eastern edge of the graveyard and I realised that I was sat at a liminal place, but not one of one phase of life to another. This liminal place marks the boundary between the living and those who have passed out of this earthly existence.

As I realised this, a pair of magpies flitted from tree to tree, their tails twitching as they settled on branches, and sunlight on their plumage revealing the iridescent purples, blues and greens that are so often missed. A solitary cabbage white butterfly careened from plant to plant, it’s pale colour standing out against the brown tangles of brambles and the bright greens of spring growth, signs of life surrounding the memorials of those long dead.

Magpies are associated with bad omens, and one such superstition is that if you see a single magpie on the way to church then death is close (myth-making at blogspot). Considering that many churches have a graveyard around them or close to them, then that is quite true! I love magpies and the other members of the corvidae family of fine feathery friends, despite their gloomy reputations.

As one thought bounced to another, I realised that I too, was at a liminal point in my life as I continue to work on unravelling the tangles of the past through journaling, meditation, self-hypnosis, gratitude and pennies-dropped-epiphanies as I’m becoming more aware of the inner critics and their continual sussuration of negative messages about me. I’m learning how to dis-empower them, little by little, and I may be approaching a turning point for myself in how I view myself and what my beliefs are.

The grave markers were splotched with lichen and algae, patterns reminding me of growths of penicillin on laboratory agar plates or stale and mouldy bread. Tumbled tangled brambles wrapping round them, seemingly pulling them down, down, down into the ground, the Earth reclaiming what had been taken from it, and with it the memories of those long passed. Despite the pull of time and neglect, the taller columns and headstones bravely rose above the tangles, holding their heads up high in the sunshine, proud of their leprous appearance, suggesting age and longevity, that they remember even if the living no longer do.

Others, however, seemed to be surrendering to the gradual depredations of time. Their sharp leaning stance, the first phase in laying down, showing an acceptance of their fate. No one alive who remembers them, who cares for them enough to tend to the memorial of a life once lived. The connections between the present generation and the past generations fading and weakening with time as symbolised by the tumble-down state of the gravestones. This was reflected in the laughter and chatter of the living enjoying beverages and vittles in the bright, warm, life-giving sunshine. The proximity to the necropolis and it’s visible symbols of death, funerary rites, and grief having no effect upon the high spirits of the living.

Perhaps that is because a wall, a visible boundary separates the activities of the living from the area of the dead. If we were to dine and party on their graves, perhaps we may feel differently, irreverent perhaps; an attitude maybe not unique to our own culture or time. I saw this video about dining with the dead in Georgia on the BBC news website earlier this week, and an example of how different cultures approach death and the places of the dead and how rigid and solid the boundary between us, the living, and our deceased friends and family are.

Death is, essentially, a great leveller; the great and the good lie alongside the poor and meek. Only the memorials tell us who is who,and only a skilled osteologist would be able to tell which was which were their skeletons disinterred and separated from any clothing, jewellery or other funerary offerings that they were interred with. To most of humanity they would be the remains of people, equal in death as they were not in life. Given enough time, all return to the Earth, return to what we were created from, very few leaving traces that will last for centuries, millennia or the aeons of time.

Traces remain in the bones that remain of their lives; hardship, luxury, adversity, ease all leave their marks in the bones. As the flesh decays, as memories fade, so do the individual stories of each person’s life, the stories that make each of us unique. The funeral monuments may tell us about them, there may be hints of their life in written records, but so much about them, such as whether they were kind or cruel, loving or neglectful, are lost.

Gloomy thoughts? Not at all! I like what the we can learn of our ancestors from their funerary rites, from records, from stories still held in the memories of the living, maybe experienced first hand or tales handed down through the generations. It matters not whether they are iron-topped tombs of the magnates of Blaenavon or the ring-barrows of a person from the Bronze Age, or the fossilised remains of our distant relatives. For many, we can only make educated guesses about their life and times, sometimes more educated than others when written records exist.

Of course, the choice of a place for cemeteries is a story in itself. In ancient times where a lot of effort was expended to bury a few in monuments such as cairns, ring barrows, cists, long barrows, then they weren’t just plonked in the nearest available place. The choice of place had meaning, just as the choice of place has meaning to us whether it’s where we go on holiday, where we choose to live and experience life. We choose places that give us meaningful experiences, be they linked to happy or sad times. The same is true when we choose places for funerary rites, whether we choose them ourselves before we die or whether we choose them for our loved ones who have passed away. My father’s cremains were buried beneath a sapling plum tree in a country lane where he used to collect all kinds of fruits and plants to make wine from. A friend’s father’s ashes were sprinkled from a bridge to return to the sea which he loved and sailed while serving in the Navy. Another friend’s father’s ashes are to be buried with his brother, if permission can be gained from her aunt.

If we take time and care to choose an appropriate resting place for the physical remains of our loved ones, I’m sure our ancestors did so too, even though it may not have seemed so to us as in many cases we have no ideas of their beliefs and the practices that stemmed from them. Nor do we know for sure why certain people were accorded such seemingly prestigious and important funerals, whether they were the great and the good or whether their deaths had a different meaning and the funeral a different purpose than commemoration and a reminder of our connections to the people of the past, to our ancestors, to those who have shaped the society we life in at any particular point in history.

I couldn’t help but wonder what stories the land could tell us if we could access it’s memory. I’d love to know what events the stones beneath my feet have witnessed in their long aeons of existence. What lovers’ trysts and promises. What betrayals, joys, toils, griefs. Whose feet have passed over them and what is the story of the lives. I don’t just want to know about the great and the good, people whose lives are most probably fairly well documented. I want to know about the ‘ordinary’ people as well. Everyone has a story to tell, everyone’s life experience is unique to them due to their unique perceptions, beliefs, actions, reactions and personality, and what thoughts and beliefs they had about themselves and others.

Perhaps the land, the position of the cemeteries, their relationship to the use of the land in the past and the present, the stories told about the land, it’s people all serve to keep alive the memory of the ancestors, aiding in remembering their stories and the stories previous generations and in so doing keeping the ancestors alive, in memory, and our connection to them stronger. The scape surrounding the cemetery becomes woven into the stories of the recent ancestors and the myths of the more ancient ancestors, acting as aide-memoires to the tales. Each feature in the land around the cemetery is not devoid of emotion, of meaning, and for each feature these would change as the time of day, the season of the year and the weather changes. We interact with these scapes through the feelings and meanings and the way that we make use of them and that induces a feeling of belonging to them. Ideas such as these are propounded by archaeologists such as George Nash.

I realised then, how much I’d enjoyed writing my thoughts, how going to a different place other than home allowed me the inspiration I needed. It’s also brought up links between things that are occurring in my life at present, and that will help to unravel any tangles knotted by the inner critics in the past.

Soggy Sunday Afternoon…

Self-love, journal writing and letter writing to heal.

It’s been a while since I last blogged something.

Life has been both interesting and uninteresting.  I’ve had a lot of thinking to do, a lot of ‘down time’ has been needed to recover from the emotional stresses and strains of my working life.

I’ve spent a lot of time reading, the latest books are about using a journal as a method of self-love and healing oneself from the events of the past.  Something I need to do.

I have kept a journal for many years now, and I do vent and rant in it and find my way to some kind of clarity.  I have become a little disheartened at times as I seem to end up ranting about the same things over and over.  The books I have read ( Writing to Heal by Jacqui Malpass and Journalution: Journal writing to heal your life and manifest your dreams by Sandy Grason) have shown me that this isn’t a problem, that it may take many times through the same thing to come to clarity, forgiveness (of self and others) and to let go and move on.  In other words, I need to be kinder to myself and not be such an overachieving perfectionist!  And I mean that kindly

My plans for my journal today are to make a list of people who I need to write letters to for the hurts done to me in the past (even if such hurt and pain was not their intent) and to people I’ve not had ‘completion’ with. These letters that will never be sent but will allow me to let out of myself the anger, fear, hate, upset, disappointment and so on, and work my way towards forgiving them and myself.

I’ve swallowed down hurt and upset and anger and fear and so many more emotions with copious quantities of food.  The emotional reactions have been locked away, though they burst out at times, quite explosively at times, and it scares me that this ‘ice maiden’ has such energetic emotions.  I’ve spent a lifetime of nearly fifty years suppressing my feelings, not sharing how I feel with others for fear of rejection, embarrassment  conflict, hatred.  I’m not good at putting into words what I think and feel if I’m upset in anyway.  I am, however, much better at writing things down, as shown in my journaling of the past decade or so.

I won’t keep the letters either.  I’m going to burn each one as it’s finished.  If I need to return to the same person or group of people over and over again to clear things up for me, then I will do so.  I will keep doing this until I can write a letter that forgives them, and one that forgives me too.

Some of the letters may be apologies for the way I behaved.  I do have a tendency to cut people off, dead, if they upset me or betray me in any way.  To keep myself safe, I walk away, ignore them when they are around.  If I’m expected to work with them I can be cold and short with my words, protecting myself with such a thick wall of icy feelings and icy words.

This is kind of a scary thing to do.  It’s not the first time I’ve tried this, but this time has the feeling of ‘the time is now’ about it.  Pennies have dropped about the purpose of the letter writing, of letting out all the things I’ve kept bottled up for years inside me in a controlled manner, the writing being the control.

Art

Art has been pretty much on hold as I struggle with the idea that I deserve to love myself, finding out what self-love and self-esteem are all about, and just letting ideas filter through the conscious to the unconscious mind.  Inspiration for art has been, maybe not lacking, but put on the back burner for a while.  However, there are some creations, some that are works in progress, others that are finished pieces.

The sentencing of Mick Philpott

Jack of Kent – The sentencing of Mick Philpott.

This is a really interesting article and it shows how the Judge made sure that this man would serve as long a sentence as is possible for being found guilty of manslaughter.

It was manslaughter as he intended to save the children who died in the fire, not to cause them to die in order to feed his narcissistic personality.

Bravo to the judge, and bravo to Jack of Kent for explaining so clearly how harsh the sentence really is.

Solitude is not the absence of love – Paulo Coelho

An article from Paulo Coelho‘s blog – Solitude is not the absence of love.

Fifteen Assumptions That Might Be Useful To Make

Reblogged from The Belle Jar:

1. Assume that you are loved.

2. Assume that those who love you find some kind of value in you and the things you do.

3. Assume, however, that you don't need to be valuable in order to be worthy of love.

4. Assume that there is no one out there keeping a tally of all of your failings, ready to throw it in your face when you're either feeling too good or too awful about yourself.

Read more… 241 more words

Things I need to be reminded of on a fairly frequent basis ... nicely done Belle Jar.

Mad March begins…

March Theta 1

10cm x 15cm (approx. 4″ x 6″).  Uni-Pin pens and graphite pencil on acid-free cartridge paper.

The product of a couple of evenings work here.

Imagination

10cm x 10cm (approx. 4″ x 4″).  UniPin pens, Inktense pencils with wash and UniBall Sparkle gel pen in gold.

Just an experiment with a quote.  I’m not entirely sure that it works.

Crazy Time

Work has been manic and very stressful at times.  You’d think that after a full school inspection some of the pressure would ease off.  Not a chance.  Or maybe it has a little, but the staff, including myself, are exhausted mentally and emotionally and are struggling on.

I was away for the best part of a week with some kind of stomach ‘flu or bug.  Usually, I’d bounce back in a couple of days, but this one had me laid low.  On my return I was faced with staff friends stressed out about one thing or another, complaining about the behaviour and attitude of pupils and telling me about the incidents I’d missed while I’d been away.  Incidents that shocked me.  I had issues to deal with nearly every lesson; one of my tutor group arrived in my room in floods of tears stressed about school work and other things, another sensitive boy lost it in another lesson as the boys wouldn’t leave him alone when he was feeling a bit overwhelmed, another pupil had left a class because the boys were picking on her because her gran had died the night before.  All in two hours or so of arriving there.

The NHS

I’ve been getting on my high horse about the UK’s government’s plans to privatise the NHS through the back door.

I’m appalled at our present society.  The NHS, and the welfare state, are paid for by the British tax and National Insurance payers.  They are not owned by the government; the government is merely the administrator.  We, the tax payers own the NHS, as well as everything our taxes have paid for.  They have absolutely no right to sell them off without balloting the people.

It is not our fault the government and country is in dire financial straits.  It is wrong that our taxes are used to bail out the banks and other organisations.  It is wrong that the common people are hit by rising taxes, while the rich are given tax breaks when those who are most in need have to sell their homes, possessions in order to receive the care they need; this will only get worse if we end up having to pay for health care.  I’m sure our nation’s dental health has suffered as a result of the changes made in charges for dental care over the years.

We’re supposed to be a civilised, caring society where all have access to the care they need, regardless of their ability to pay.  Health care isn’t a business, it’s a basic human right, same as education, which has become a factory production line.

I signed a petition about the changes to the NHS and contacted my local MP.

If you’re in the UK and are reading this, you too can sign the petition at the 38degrees website.   In fact, please, please, please sign it.

It’s time the people realise that the government is answerable to us, the voters, that we expect them to manage things to take care of the society that contributes to the running of the country not the people who foul up financially, such as the banks, or to look after those who don’t need looking after as they are obscenely rich.

It seems that the government is stealing from the poorer echelons of society (and that includes the middle classes and professional people) in order to make sure the rich become richer.

Monograms

I’ve been a little busy with some monograms.  They’re either 7.5cm x 12cm or 10cm x 10cm in size.  The rectangular ones are on watercolour paper, the square on bristol board.

Yet another one …

Approx 16cm square.  Unipin pens, Zig Art and graphic pens and water wash, Gold Stickles and silver and gold UniBall metallic gel pens.

As always, this work belongs to me and no copying, distributing, altering or use in any way without written permission from myself.

Theta Mandala 3

Approx 19cm in diameter.

Worked on smooth, heavy cartridge paper using UniBall UniPin pens, Zig Art and Graphic Markers with a wash and tiny spots of a gold UniBall glitter pen (the inner raven has to have a little sparkle in every piece I create it seems … )

As always, this artwork was created by me and so the copyright is owned by me.  No copying, sharing, using or altering in any way without my written permission.

Theta Mandala 1

 

This is approx. 7″ in diameter.  It’s worked using UniBall Unipin pens, Caran D’Ache watersoluble coloured pencils and tiny amounts of gold paint and ink on heavy cartridge paper.

I’m not entirely sure that it works.  I think I’ll have to step away from it for a while before evaluating it with fresh eyes.

In it’s defence, I must say I lost myself in the creativity of the process and it relaxed and soothed me and has let me practice some ideas.