Antidotes to Fear of Death

I’ve been back at my Monday morning drawing class for the past couple of weeks following the mid-term break.  Today we were invited to bring in an object “constrained by form”  which speaks to us as an ‘antidote to the fear of death’.

I brought my mother’s wristwatch, one of the very few items I have that belonged to her.  It’s a Timex watch she bought from Long’s Drugstore when I was about 10.  Sometimes I wind it up and wear it.  It keeps more or less accurate time.

One of the gifts I claimed from the death of my mother, when I was 16, is the awareness of mortality.   When I got a little bit older, I was able to reflect on her life and I realised that she had waited until too late to start making positive decisions and choices based on her interests, well-being and desires.  Besides going to college at age 50 and leaving an unhealthy relationship with my father, I wondered what else she had left too late.  My mother died from cancer when she was 55.  At a very young age I decided that I did not want to follow in her footsteps and wait until it was too late for me to live my own life.

In a way, she gave me the gift of time which is symbolised by her wristwatch.

Anyhow, here is my drawing, followed by a poem which my drawing teacher read to us.

My mother’s watch, charcoal, 24 x 36cm, 2013

Antidotes to Fear of Death

Sometimes as an antidote

To fear of death,

I eat the stars.

 

Those nights, lying on my back,

I suck them from the quenching dark

Til they are all, all inside me,

Pepper hot and sharp.

 

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself

Into a universe still young,

Still warm as blood:

 

No outer space, just space,

The light of all the not yet stars

Drifting like a bright mist,

And all of us, and everything

Already there

But unconstrained by form.

 

And sometimes it’s enough

To lie down here on earth

Beside our long ancestral bones:

 

To walk across the cobble fields

Of our discarded skulls,

Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,

Thinking: whatever left these husks

Flew off on bright wings.

 

 - Rebecca Elson, 2001

My mother’s watch

Imagine a Woman

“Our Lady of the Starlit Night” by Elizabeth Gibbons
8″ X 18″, Mixed Media

Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

.
© Patricia Lynn Reilly, 1995

Mermaid

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, 2007

Mermaid

Enticed by her siren song
I walk to the edge of the sea.
She flirts and flounces
spuméd ruffles tease my toes,
beckoning me,
drawing me in.
Gently tugging and loosening
my ties to the land.

Wrapt in a tourmaline gown
shot with sun-diamonds,
she twines my ankles
with seagreen grass.

I am buoyant,
borne aloft.
I succumb to her rhythm
slowly twirling,
with just one toe
in the shifting sands.

Gently carried by the tide,
I am held in her liquid embrace.

- Melinda Schwakhofer, 2007

Scriptorium

Scriptorium, literally “a place for writing”, is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes. Written accounts, surviving buildings, and archaeological excavations all show, however, that contrary to popular belief,  such rooms rarely existed: most monastic writing was done in cubicle-like recesses in the cloister, or in the monks’ own cells. References in modern scholarly writings to ‘scriptoria’ more usually refer to the collective written output of a monastery, rather than to a physical room.

Well, the Schwakhoferian Priory has a pop-up scriptorium where I’ve been scribing the words to the poem written by Brother Steve onto the valance for ‘Enter the Forest of Dreams‘.

I’m using a font called Stonehenge from dafont.com.  I had briefly considered ordering Thermofax screens and screenprinting the poem.  When Steve and I were in Dublin last month we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.  I quite liked the idea of scribing the poem, even though it would be more laborious.  As Steve said, ‘The monks had bugger all else to do (besides scribe)”, but I figured that I could take some time over it and do it à la main.

I printed the poem, taped it into stanzas and placed them onto the valance to make sure I was happy with the placement.

To transfer the text onto the fabric, I ordered a couple of brown fabric pens.  I did a trial run on a scrap of fabric to test the crispness of the line and the colour.  I decided to go with Sharpie Ultra Fine.

Next I pinned each stanza onto my Cut n’ Press ironing board.

Then I pinned the valance over the words and traced over them with my fabric pen.

The natural light in our kitchen cum scriptorium is pretty bright, but today I used our newly installed kitchen light to direct a beam right onto my work surface.

I’ve been scribing just a few lines at a time to keep my hand steady and my concentration fresh.  Once I’ve  finished I’m going to design a booklet to display with the bed, so that people can get an idea of the story behind it and to see the valance, which will be hidden beneath the river and the forest floor of my River of Dreams bed quilt.

Sister Melinda in the Scriptorium

Enter the Forest of Dreams

Sleep. Let the forest enfold thee.
Watch. Let thy eyes see light in shade.
Hear. Let thy ears be open to silence.
Dream. Let thy soul be still.
Love is imagined.

Walk. Let thy soul be thy compass.
Feel. Let thy heart be bold, and cautious.
Know. Let hope take root, deep anchor.
Touch. Feel the river flow, and its bounty.
Love is found.

Sleep. The world is done.
Sleep. Thy love is found.
Sleep. The dream is made.
Sleep. This earth is thine.
Love lives.

Steve Coxon
April 2012

Love lives

I asked Steve to compose some words for me to inscribe on my valance.  He emailed me a poem last night and I read it first thing this morning.  Then opened it a second time, read it and printed it off.  Both times it brought tears to my eyes.  It rings so true and each stanza relates to an element of the bed.  The words and language fit what would be inscribed around a monumental brass for a medieval couple.  It’s perfect.

I could go on to say that Steve is like Mozart* in that he conceives or is gifted an idea, slips it into his jacket pocket, close to his heart, fingers it from time to time, listens to it metaphorically rustle when he leans over, then Voila!   One day, he sits to write and out it comes.  Flowing from his fingers.  Perfect.  No editing.  And nine times out of ten,  it doesn’t need any.  (But I’ll be the first to let him know if it does.)

Anyhow, with no further ado -

Enter the Forest of Dreams

Sleep. Let the forest enfold thee.
Watch. Let thy eyes see light in shade.
Hear. Let thy ears be open to silence.
Dream. Let thy soul be still.
Love is imagined.

Walk. Let thy soul be thy compass.
Feel. Let thy heart be bold, and cautious.
Know. Let hope take root, deep anchor.
Touch. Feel the river flow, and its bounty.
Love is found.

Sleep. The world is done.
Sleep. Thy love is found.
Sleep. The dream is made.
Sleep. This earth is thine.
Love lives.

Steve Coxon
April 2012

In the Forest of Dreams

* I have it on good authority that Mozart used to compose music while he was playing billiards, then sit at his escritoire and write it down as if he was taking dictation from God.

Fortitude

New Years Eve.  Thinking of my blessings,  being with my husband, calling a few close friends on the phone, enjoying wonderful food and drink  .  .  .  .  .

Thinking about which word chooses me for 2012.  Fortitude.

In the midst of all of this, I honour my Mvskoke ancestors and am grateful for the fortitude given to me from my Tribe.

Even though this letter, beautifully read by Johnny Cash, is about the Cherokee Removals in 1938, it captures some of the experience of each of the 5 tribes removed on the Trail of Tears.