Horses
At the Venice Biennale last month the first pavilion I entered was the Belgian one, this year represented by Francis Alys. I looked in the catalogue which was a facsimile of his sketchbook. In it I saw a horse standing over a reclining figure. I was reminded of my times with my horse all the days when she would stand over me as I lay curled upon her floor like hair or straw or air. (And then when I saw the photos I took on Iona on the beach holding the 360 degree camera over my head but it caught my hair laying like some strange grass or weed washed up by the sea or erupting; a strange wave of hair out of the sand).
Reading a new book in bed about dreams and Leonora Carrington I discover that she too had a close connection with horses, and one in particular from her youth: like me. We were both carried as we grew from girls into women, carried on the backs of horses.
Horse’s tongue mothering me, washing and grooming my back, my neck. How I need and needed to feel this.
Art saves. It allows for the expression of what is unconscious and what could damage our bodies. It gives holy expression to our pain and transforms.
Fathers and Animals
I’m beginning to see, thanks to my new painting, that my new father might be half animal and half man. Little Kate will be happy with this I think. She thinks about being washed by a mothers tongue like animals do. I need more Scala Pink.
Descent
I dream of watching a whale’s fin rise in the water, swim for a while, then regularly and rhythmically descend beneath the eaves. My shamanic teacher is beside me. I waken and think about the shamanic work and the dream is telling me to ask it to be with me in my work on descending.
Dream, early December
A fragment. Of a tiny hole in a wall of bricks/rubble/partial plaster( as in Italy) and the small square hole has tiny pieces of rubble and sticks in it which I had to take out. I had to go through this hole to descend to a dark place beneath. I did manage to energetically get through he hole by shape-shifting. I’m reminded of a dream from a couple of years ago, in which I had a needle stuck in my throat, and I asked the man in my life (then) to take it out for me. He was unable to accomplish it. So I did it myself, with a mirror. In the end it was not difficult, it didn’t hurt, and there was no blood.
Solstice
As I drummed I saw my body full of flames, many little fires all over my body, all burning sweetly, steadily, quietly. I was told to let go of anything which distorts the flames, suppresses them or causes them to burn in a distorted or distorting way. There is a connection between the fire, flames, and music which I don’t understand yet. It’s to do with the way things grow when there is harmony; an elegance and an ease in the development of form.
In the meditation around the chakras it became clear that traces of energies which are no longer ours or which don’t belong to us or help us can be released and visualized as tiny energetic petals falling away to dust.
In my own meditation on the crown/headdress and the drawing I can now see how closely it resembles a tree and how far down the energetic roots grow. I was told I need to manifest all I’m given spiritually, and to work with an energetic staff. Having a holy appendage. Crowning different parts of the body. Maybe the breasts, belly, sexual area. Draw this…
Notes from the end of the blue notebook
Gabor Mate p 133 The Myth of Normal.
“Since emotion is the engine of maturation, when children lose their tender feelings, they become stuck in their immaturity.”
“The child’s expression of feelings cannot threaten the attachment relationship with the parents.”
“We have instilled in her the anxiety of being rejected if her emotional self were to surface.”
“By banishing feelings from awareness, we merely send them underground, a locked cellar of emotions, that will continue to haunt many lives.”
You’re shielded from grief but need joy to discover this.
Free play 1:1, agenda free vital for the development of neocortex engaging joy and imagination.
….
More notes
Dream on 22.12.22 about Heaven coming down into the body. Like a V or birds wings appearing to break the body in half and yet not…the Heavenly energy does not break the body, it imprints itself on the body precisely as bird’s wings, flight, might do. Or it opens a space within the cells of the body to know the vibration of Heaven within the body. This was the sense of the dream. Then I was ill, so had plenty of time to reflect on this.