"Wanna see my Dream?" Adrien Ari, age 4
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(first answer. don't think) What do you see in this portrait?
It is simple yet complex. The lines are strong, confident. The hand is free, fluid. One continuous motion for each of the limbs, and the body. Perhaps even the filling in of the head. The face is featureless but the body is evocative. What does it evoke for you? I don't know who made this drawing. I don't know anything about it except how it makes me Feel. I don't know what The Artist was feeling, or if it expresses what he or she wished it to? How skilled are any of us at expressing what we wish to? For me, the arms are where the interpretation gets tricky. We raise our arms in Celebration. In Defiance. In Prayer. In Powerlessness. And even knowing there are Other Options, I still see in this drawing what I first saw. |
This Untitled Portrait may not have elicited the same interpretations from you had I chosen a name for it, for then you would have been predisposed to see it how I see it. We Grown Ups spend a vast amount of time Naming Things. My guess is we do it to minimize our Fears, our Uncertainties. To better understand Our Place In This World, to solidify our Roles. And by naming something we feel better able to exert some control over it. But naming also minimizes Possibility. Something Scary stays that way, shoved into the Category where we keep the Scary Things. And even when the danger has passed, when our knowing outweighs our unfamiliarity, Something Once-Scary can continue to elicit Fear, just for Old Time's Sake.
Powerlessness is what I feel most profoundly right now, and it wriggles inside me like the Spider the Old Woman swallowed to catch the Fly. In that story, The Old Woman swallows impossibly larger beings to rid herself of the smallest one. We don't know why. Perhaps that is what I am doing as well. Swallowing task after task to rid myself of the discomfort of being a Teacher of Little People in My Empty Corner, for Who Are We without the roles that define us?
"Nobody told me there'd be days like these", to quote John Lennon. "Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, mama."
Days of Uncertainty. Fear. Powerlessness. Days of Social Distancing made a smidge less lonely by the web we fashioned some decades ago. By our willingness to Inquire and Reassure. By our Empathy and by our Compassion. By tugging on the Sticky Strands that hold this web together. Reaching Out and feeling the perceptible sway each loving tug produces, gentle and other-wise. Riding the reverberations that link us even as the Strands have quieted to Stillness. We are in fact both spread out across the vast habitable places on this planet, and as undeniably Connected as we Feel. Both are True.
There once was a girl. A typical girl, both ordinary and exceptional, because of course, that IS the basic recipe for every single one of us. Ordinary and Exceptional. Her eyes and mouth were hidden inside the swirl of her head, which made some people Confused. Or Worried. Or Mistrustful. Or lots of other icky sensations that wriggle and jiggle and tickle inside us when we can't be 100% sure of something. Or Someone.
But when you looked at all of her... really looked... you saw what her featureless face was so ill-equipped to say. She was Radiant. In the tilt of her body. In her little toes turned to one side. And in her arms, her graceful, single-swoop, upturned arms, you knew she was brimming with Light.
At least that's what I see. It's all about our Perspective. What we focus on. What we disregard.
Powerlessness is what I feel most profoundly right now, and it wriggles inside me like the Spider the Old Woman swallowed to catch the Fly. In that story, The Old Woman swallows impossibly larger beings to rid herself of the smallest one. We don't know why. Perhaps that is what I am doing as well. Swallowing task after task to rid myself of the discomfort of being a Teacher of Little People in My Empty Corner, for Who Are We without the roles that define us?
"Nobody told me there'd be days like these", to quote John Lennon. "Strange days indeed. Most peculiar, mama."
Days of Uncertainty. Fear. Powerlessness. Days of Social Distancing made a smidge less lonely by the web we fashioned some decades ago. By our willingness to Inquire and Reassure. By our Empathy and by our Compassion. By tugging on the Sticky Strands that hold this web together. Reaching Out and feeling the perceptible sway each loving tug produces, gentle and other-wise. Riding the reverberations that link us even as the Strands have quieted to Stillness. We are in fact both spread out across the vast habitable places on this planet, and as undeniably Connected as we Feel. Both are True.
There once was a girl. A typical girl, both ordinary and exceptional, because of course, that IS the basic recipe for every single one of us. Ordinary and Exceptional. Her eyes and mouth were hidden inside the swirl of her head, which made some people Confused. Or Worried. Or Mistrustful. Or lots of other icky sensations that wriggle and jiggle and tickle inside us when we can't be 100% sure of something. Or Someone.
But when you looked at all of her... really looked... you saw what her featureless face was so ill-equipped to say. She was Radiant. In the tilt of her body. In her little toes turned to one side. And in her arms, her graceful, single-swoop, upturned arms, you knew she was brimming with Light.
At least that's what I see. It's all about our Perspective. What we focus on. What we disregard.