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10 May 2015 Journal – I dreamed of going down an almost sheer grassy cliff towards the sea below, and then worried if I was stuck, if I could climb back up, or if I would slip right down and be killed. I clung.
I thought yesterday about anger – my anger: how it enrages when “you” annoy me. It is destructive. I wonder how much its presence distorts my view of life, persons and journal. I see the rage outspoken; it accumulates all life’s disappointments into a tirade.
Rage is usually the breaking wave of a long historic swell, and it uses the rock it finds. It uses the rock it finds to blame; but the rock is not to blame. The love or the man or the woman or the child or the political situation is not to blame. They help the wave to break. This is an interesting angle. Then rage (however furious) is a valuable condition, to witness and to walk with. Can I next time, say to it: “You are valuable, you are a breaking wave, you release fire and salt, you are more than what or whom I think you are….” ?
The rage won’t like that, because its nature is to pile the entire cause onto the person who offended, and on ME. The raw force of feeling pushes physical pain in belly, tension, collywobbles, incoherent speechmaking, off-the-wall, out-of-order and frustration. These are all invention! Try telling that to my rage, next time.
A drawing with eyes closed
It passes when it is shared. After we talk, it becomes a vibrant – if un-smooth – channel and transforms to love and relief – on a wall outside at night in Canfield Gardens with my tiny phone. I am when it is full on, scared of what it might do – it wants to upset everyone and their social arrangements, it is ME-ME-ME. A Capricorn has a slow fuse but a long one, and when it gets going, it is volcanic. The bit is in the horse’s teeth, and galloping, and the rider cannot control or stay the horse, but whispers along the reins: this won’t help, you are too angry, you won’t be able to say it like this, try saying this instead, remember to make it a discussion, do a deep breath, (I don’t want to) – do another one, you are in the Great Work (so what?), what would an alchemist say? (don’t care). The bit is in the horse’s teeth, and the horse’s mouth is insensitive to my hands.
Your response when I am angry, is to value and allow the feeling and to help it to lighten up and laugh. The splatter of wave-break words falls out of sight, because with the current some of them get said, some of the eggs get laid, some of them splash on the rock.
Stephen Szegedy Szuts at Caunce Head, Cornwall
There is a deep need to be honest. This fuels the rage. But look: isn’t the truth itself the long historic wave from the ocean? The anger is the white bit crashing over the rocks. Truth comes out and changes the setting between two persons. It shares. I carried a cargo of personal opinions at the crest; I give them all up. I suddenly see that you have, I have, the freedom to be who we are. And I say to you: I love this peculiar way we are. I will talk, but at a trot, not a headlong gallop.
I think I am a failure but this is NOT TRUE! The anger is a gold-rush. The waves which peak as anger, close to land, are generated far back in the subconscious sea, and arrive rhythmically. They carry a glorious energy, like a concentric sound wave or song. These waves travel and break around all our coastlines, and from above, they form beautiful interwoven crescents and wrinkles as they bestow their beauty on the land: as life breaks forth.
WOW! How unexpected, this morning. What a fish!
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And now: down memory lane (May 2015), I find something for dog lovers:
… with David and Maya yesterday. I dug a large hole for the smallish hedge tree we hope to transplant – it is drinking water in a large bucket for a day or two, it hasn’t much root-ball left. I made a soft path along the “tunnel” to the garden, with two bags of woodchip, so it doesn’t get muddy. Maya loves the woodchip smell and lay down on the pile before I started to rake it. David was having a sharp pain day and couldn’t go out.
I took Maya for a long walk up to Sandy Heath woods. Her guard dog nature is increasingly focused on David and on me, and she never goes out of sight: she turns to see, she stops and waits. Sometimes she comes to rub my legs joyfully – “thank you for bringing me here.” Her black panther beauty and pointed ears sway her lean hips, kool cat, along bluebells, wild garlic and uphill down dale through the woods and under dense beeches, oaks and alder – beautiful companionship and love – she meets and plays briefly with a variety of other canines, learning the pecking order while I chat with their owners. Some of them are nervous.
On Sandy Heath through the oak meadows, we came to a pond up there, with a beach of tiny dry stones. She looked at me – Yes you can go in the water – in she went with big splashes and lunges, to fetch bits of wood I threw for her – and out of her depth she swam powerful doggy paddle, smiling sharp white teeth pink tongue snorting, then big shake-shake sparkle when she came out.
Poor David was horrified to hear this news (on our way home), having just cleaned the pad of fallen black hairs, and mopped the floor – he thinks the ponds up there are filthy, and it is actually the first time Maya has gone SWIMMING, because the brook where she plays is not quite deep enough – but she came home clean as a whistle, I dried her in the garden with a towel, and groomed and brushed out her loose hairs, and she ran indoors just a bit damp, and eager for her wolfie supper, and glossy shining black velvet fox all over, to lie down on the floor and enjoy us while we wolfed our M&S ready meals and stretched out our feet.
… took Maya around bluebell-oak-wild garlic Big Wood. She is a very powerful creature and might give me a black eye with her big loving nose and warm musky kisses, if I’m not careful. D says she is quite naughty at the moment, and he teaches and trains her constantly. We talk about her all the time eagerly, and billows of love roll over her. I combed her again in the garden – her winter coat is falling out. I never truly understood dogs in people’s lives – (Dubi wasn’t really a dog, he was a Saluki) – until this one, who is profoundly and archetypally dog. The dog-human wavelength is vibrant and mysterious.
Dubi in the brook
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Vision: how beautiful the tough stuff anger is, with all the pain and sharp animal energy it carries. How astonishing is the wave pattern, woven around our coastlines, the way the bird-shapes burst from the rock. The beauty is lived and acknowledged, sometimes with difficulty, always with reality. I have with this, a LIBERATION – the visceral golden truth of what my private relationships have at their core – and to this I remain true and undivided.
The moment contains no name
or word.
Yes, and the sweet human
friend in their faces
and their laughter at restaurants
like a child with daisies threading split stems –
the magic circle lets you go and takes
you up, again and again
and over and over
with human beings;
the lover, the Friend,
the “one thing” (they say)
is the play of the waters … so I do not get those
“Solemn Meditative States”.
Poems of Eclipse, 1999
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom. See also Aquariel and Gene Keys Diary.
All art and creative writing in this blog is copyright © Janeadamsart 2012-2020. May not be used for commercial purposes. May be used and shared for non-commercial means with credit to Jane Adams and a link to the web address https://janeadamsart.wordpress.com/