Second skin
I've spent the past few days consciously avoiding the news coverage and endless social media posts regarding the Stanford rape case. The cries of outrage directed at the perpetrator, his father, the judge. And to be honest, I've especially avoided the victim impact statement from the woman involved.
I didn't read it because I had a pretty good idea of what it would contain, and when I finally did read it today (to obtain a context for my own - these- words that simply needed to come out), it was indeed what I'd expected. Heart-rending and horrible and visceral, without a doubt. But also uncomfortably close to home.
Without any intention to belittle the events that occurred, I do take issue with the lynch-mob mentality that pervades the Internet, these outcries that, in many cases, snowball into something even more ugly that the precipitating event. And promptly get forgotten as soon as the next rallying cry comes along.
Again, without any intent to diminish the horror that was visited upon this woman, and certainly without intent to oppose the ridiculous leniency of the alleged punishment that was meted out, I would beg to suggest that the young man in this case received a far more severe treatment than most who perpetrate this crime.
Most of them, in fact, don't get punished at all. Or blamed. For them, life goes on as normal.
Rather, it's the survivor (I don't like the word, but I object even more strongly to the accepted term, victim, because that perpetuates the state of violation) who bears the brunt and pays the price. All too often, she is blamed, perhaps not in so many words, but tacitly, in innuendos and what ifs and should-have-known-betters. Or she blames herself, because the person who did it refuses to recognize the violation, the fact that something incredibly precious has been stolen and sullied. And into this void flows copious amounts of shame, which settles in for the long term, as an intrinsic part of the self.
And nobody wants to talk about it. She doesn't either. It's too awkward, too painful. The shame needs to be shut up in a little box of darkness and she needs to protect it against any incursion. Her dirty little secret. Forever.
If you are reading this, I can guarantee you that someone close to you carries such a darkness in her. It could be a cousin, a colleague, a friend. She's grown a second skin that may look happy and rosy and normal on the outside, but under that skin is another one you don't see, much more bruised and broken than you'd imagine.
So rage as you care to about this Stanford case. But realize that it's a case study among far, far too many.
Mutiny, devilry and ennui
When you have a dog, there's a type of silence that can only be defined as suspicious. Perhaps it's akin to a parent's sixth sense: I seem to be able to distinguish between a somnolent silence and a seditious one. When these two were puppies, the latter invariably involved copious amounts of shredded toilet paper. Ever since The Great Underwear Ingestion Caper of 2014, when Arwen ate what turned out to be a very expensive pair of unmentionables and spent two days in intensive care, the instinct kicks in stronger than ever, and silences get investigated.
After a week of glorious heat, it's turned rainy and much colder. As in March-like weather. This morning, I was intending to take the dogs to the park and throw balls for them, but as I was rounding up dogs and balls and bags and everything else I needed just to get out the door, the skies opened and it bucketed down. Plans changed: winter coat (yes!), poncho and boots were donned, Soleil was put on a Gentle Leader (which she despises) and we went out for a boring old leash-walk.
Arwen - who will gleefully and unthinkingly launch herself into frigid lake water at the first chance - hates the rain. She sags and sulks and dawdles. Soleil, meantime, swans down into the grass and smears her head along the ground in attempt to rid herself of the hateful headcollar, brushing against the shrubbery and inviting all of the mosquitos out to play, as I slap violently at my own body and say a word that rhymes with suckers.
I've been working on a nitpicky assignment for the balance of the day, and there came a point when the senses focussed on the fact that there was an odd silence and the dogs were nowhere to be seen. I tracked them down in the living room, where they were in the process of dismembering the rotund little toy known as ''Farty Sherlock''. There were fluffy white guts everywhere -along with two (mismatched) socks and a running shoe - and two grinning Labradors in the midst of it, intent on de-farting the top half of the toy. Clearly they had seen the need to make their own rainy-day fun.
The little sock monkey in the pictures is a bookmark, a Christmas gift that I received last year. It's a nightly ritual: as soon as I take it out of the book and place it on the bedside table, Arwen sets a mission of acquiring it, simply because it is not allowed. She's relentless about it, and more times than not she does end up absconding with it, but only, it seems, to have the satisfaction of the theft. I caught her today with it, at the top of the stairs. Unlike Sherlock, it lived to tell the tale...
(in all honesty, I am every bit as bored as they are today, and their antics were a welcome distraction.)
doggy doodle
I'll draw a sketch of thee.
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?”
― Spike Milligan
In whatever I do creatively, be it writing, painting, drawing or photography, I often find myself falling into the trap of making whatever it is I am doing with a view to please others, rather than myself. I suppose the redeeming element is that I've become more aware of this tendency, enough to recognize it and then consciously reorient myself onto the path that I want to follow: even if it may be the less lucrative and more risky one, it is the most fulfilling one.
Just as I don't like looking at myself in the mirror, once I am finished creating something, I don't like examining what I make or reading what I write, because much like the persona in the mirror, all I see are the faults and imperfections therein. The process, not the product, is where satisfaction exists. Believe it or not, this daily blog is way out of my comfort zone, because I hate putting myself out there, and by my ''self'' I mean what I have made or photographed or written. The reason being, each of these things has a piece of me invested in it; it's something I have spent intimate time with. In sharing this material, I am inexorably and reluctantly forced to allow a glimpse into my own soul and spirit, which generally reside behind formidable fortifications.
I particularly love the following quote from John Ruskin, in The Elements of Drawing. “All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.” Essentially, you are pushing your medium of choice -graphite, paint, pastel, whatever - around on a surface, marking, erasing, adjusting, until something real begins to emerge. Something that was in your heart and mind is transferred to the support, sometimes more laboriously than others. Writing is very similar: the words flow, get rearranged and streamlined (ideally, and again, sometimes more successfully than others) into a coherent whole. Photography, I think, is a macrocosm, an instantané of the process: in the fraction of a second that it takes to compose and capture an image, there is a deep yet oh-so-ephemeral connection with what the lens sees. The word photography means ''painting with light'', and it's done at light speed.
The sketch that I am posting today began as two large circles, two small ovals, and a couple of medium-size triangles. Gradually, over the course of half an hour, they morphed into my youngest dog, having a sleepy moment on a quilt. I found the photo last night when I was cleaning and reorganizing things, and the desire took me to draw it. The time spent transforming those basic geometric shapes into something resembling a dog was where the value and authenticity resided: essentially, the intimate connection with the subject. One a certain level, it may be considered nothing more than dirtying the paper, but it's the way the paper is dirtied, the act of dirtying the paper, that produces the true magic.
I think that the following passage does a great job of contextualizing what I am trying to get at with my own ramblings :
“When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lamp post, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.
When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *acedemical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.
But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.
And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
when the rain washes you clean, you'll know
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.
Isak Dinesen
I have seen all three over the past couple of days. Perhaps not the sea, but the lake is a reasonable and accessible facsimile.
I ran ten (treadmill) miles this morning, which was probably not the smartest thing to do, but I just needed to, and I was careful.
When I finished, there was sweat everywhere. It felt great.
I did the first mile in 9:30, last mile in 7:00 - again, probably unwise - the only justification I can present is because I could.
I've spent the rest of the day making hex signs at the re-calcifying and recalcitrant outer edge of my healing, Boston-denying left foot. So far, so good.
I went for a walk after the rain had stopped and photographed water-bejewelled flowers, all the while donating what can only be quantified as a shit-ton of blood to the local mosquito population.
So here are the results. Today it's irises, poppies, alliums, lilies-of-the-valley, johnny-jump-ups, phlox, and tiny fern tendrils. The early summer denizens. The lupines are beginning to pop, but I'll save them for next week.
a fleeting pause...
Gossamer landing
on borrowed perch.
Poised to melt swiftly
into field and forest,
Leaving only an image behind.
