October 28, 2005
A BABE IS BORN
On October 23 at 9:49 a.m. in San Francisco my beautiful niece Indira (I have three beautiful and splendid nieces) tenderly attended by her husband Tim, gave birth to their first and long-awaited child. I did this picture for them which I'm sharing here so that the celebration can continue. Welcome to the planet, Tess!
October 26, 2005
CHANGES AFTER INNER WORLD-TOUR
Since taking the Barefoot One up and down the crowded rooms of my psyche, I have felt a change coming on. I want cleaner, simpler, lighter space, inside and out. I'm now planning to re-organise, de-decorate and clear out my apartment. But I'll start with this page . What do you think of the new look? I might change it all again.
VERY LONG (probably unnecessary) FOOTNOTE TO NUMBER
FIFTEEN
(you
have to go and look at the full interview first here.
This is only a footnote!)
Sometimes
I think I use too many words. Sometimes not enough. Sometimes
I have to explain things to myself because I haven't
fully grasped what came out the first time. That's
the case with No.15 and I'm writing these notes for my
benefit and anyone else who may identify.
The house itself looks rather scared and scary. Not exactly welcoming. And why did I start the tour from the head rather than the front door which leads to the reception room (ie right here)? God was obviously bewildered though too polite to say so. The building's transformation after the tour shows that I can be flexible when under the influence of a stronger power, even to the extent of total shape-shifting. H'm. This has certainly happened to me when drawn irresistibly to certain magnetic personalities, always male for some reason. God of course is neither one or the other although, h'm, why did I choose to draw him as male? Never mind the boring Freudian stuff, let's keep going.
My
command centre looks chaotic because so many messages are
constantly coming in from both outside and inside. Not literal
messages like emails, phone calls etc. (I don't get a lot
of those) but impressions, ideas, sensations, sights, sounds,
words, images, feelings, moods, memories. They pile up helter
skelter and I feel I'll never be able to sort them out, decide
which are urgent, vital, which are of minor interest and
which are just rubbish to be discarded. Yet this is where
I make decisions and give orders to myself. What does this
say about my ability to be in command of my life, eh? Those
arrows swarming in from within and without are needle-sharp
and have no trouble getting in. (Note one big arrow coming
out: that would be the words I speak or write).
God's
spot-on comment that I don't know what real chaos looks like
probably caused this re-formation. All the separate bits
of messages lying around have fused while the arrows on top
seem to be off on some quest of their own, nothing to do
with me.
I've got to examine this version more closely to figure out what it's saying.
Liberation? If I keep playing
with the shape it might take off. No command centre at all, only a space
ship travelling towards.....?
The steam-bath temperature of this room wasn't obvious to me until my Visitor
pointed it out. It was only then I realised that wishful thinking uses up
a lot of energy.
The fantasy that I'll possess all my treasure islands once I've done all that's necessary has put me in a hothouse dominated by twin towers: self-improvement tower and ivory tower. I splash around the hot water of my wish-pool wrapped in clouds of steam. It feels like action but it's mostly hot air.
Giving
that picture a distorting tweak made it more real: ie more
like the fantasy it is. I
can see it swelling psychedelically to even greater Disneyfication
until it bursts like a balloon and I'm left with the reality
of doing the work, right now, right here, little bits at
a time.
The temperature cooled considerably and the towers inflated so much they burst, releasing my trapped turquoise blue hands. Will they now be free to thumb nose at self-improving ivory-inlaid orders?
The Things-Which-Have-Power-Over-Me
room doesn't need much explanation. Can an inanimate object
have power over us? Of course it can. Try turning off a mirror's
power without smashing it or turning away from it. Okay,
you can do it if you've reached a state of perfect detachment.
But if not? We can choose to do without many things (as we
may well be forced to do in future) - car, computer, tv,
gadgets, newspapers etc. but then other things take their
place. When I lived in Paraguay we
did without electricity and much else but wood became one
of the power-objects: having to find it, chop it, carry it,
light it, burn it, stop others from stealing it. Those kind
of things took up all our time.
In
this transformed version, the things are still there but
they're insubstantial, floating among clouds. Their influence
is gone because they've lost weight.
They look like paper cut-outs or subjects for a still-life. So I'm the one with power now - I can use them, they can't use me.
I think I'll try a paper cut-out collage like this, why not?
And
here we are in the blog-room, the showroom. God doesn't want
to offend me with the cliché "interesting" so
he asks a naive technical question (heh, haven't you done
that when faced with an artist's work you don't know what
to say about?).
And then he makes a really perceptive comment:"It reminds me of an ancient Egyptian temple". Bingo!
That's when it hits me that my blog page, opened out into room-shape, really is like the inside of one of those Egyptian..um..those floor-to-ceiling painted and carved..er...tombs. Well I am not best pleased with this insight for obvious reasons. In spite of my love of Egypt and fixation on having been Hatshepsut in another life and everything, I have no desire to be buried on this page.
So
a radical re-design of the entrance hall became necessary.
The swirling whirlpool swallowed up all traces of entombment
but that's only in this image.
My blog page itself is still straight up and down, columns, hieroglyphs etc. Not sure what I'll do about that in future. Am certainly not going curvy psychedelirious nor do I fancy a minimal absence of everything. Let's wait and see what another day brings.
Finally
we reach the basement. No need for elaboration here,
it's meant to be mysterious and shadowy. The hidden stories
no doubt send cryptic messages up to the command centre
where they lie on the slush pile waiting to be discovered
or rejected. In this first version (look at it here )
of the image it seems carved in stone (ancient Egypt
again?) which would imply an impossibility of breaking
through.
The double meaning in God's "Tell me about it!" inspires the second, liquified and penetrable version. He literally wants to be told my stories and, in the colloquial, agrees that he too can never get to the bottom of all his stories.
And
then he tells me I imagined it all.
Well of course I knew that but it's still a shock to hear it from the most
imagined Being in the universe.
It's perfectly true that I can't focus on myself and on God at the same time.
We don't meet in my inner self, real or imaginary, but indeed ELSEWHERE. I
don't know where.
The whole argument about whether one believes in God falls to pieces if you
change the question to: do you believe in yourself?
If you don't psychologise it, don't interpret it as meaning "do you
have self-confidence?" but just take it literally, you'd have to say
yes, even if you've won the top prize for the person with the least self-belief
ever to have existed.
Because you exist, whether or not you or others believe in you. The same
may be true of God.
October 24, 2005
A MOUSE TALE
At 4a.m. yesterday morning I was relaxing from my godly efforts with a cup of tea and the Argos catalogue when a small dark blur scuttled across the room. It went so fast that I thought I might be hallucinating but when I rose to my feet I saw it streak into the kitchen and behind the fridge.Now I am not one of those cartoon females who climb onto a chair and scream at the sight of a mouse. I approach the subject rationally and my actions are based on logical premises.
I ask myself: what is the purpose of this mouse's visit? Is it business or pleasure? If business, is it planning to take over my home? Is it casing the joint before returning with its army of terrorist relatives who are waiting below the floor boards? Or if it's pleasure he's after, is he a tourist? Is he On The Road, mini rucksack on his back, eager to litter the place after his consumption of my artistic treasures? In either case, I cannot permit his entry.The problem is that he has already entered and that I have no way of knowing how or when or where he and his illegal gang are squatting.
At the moment, I know that he cowers behind the fridge. I get the vacuum cleaner. The rational idea is that he will be sucked into the dustbag where I can trap him before taking him outside and humanely releasing him into the streets of London where he will no doubt find friends and employment. However as soon as I turn on the Hoover, the mouse runs out and then vanishes into thin air or possibly behind the washer/dryer, which is immovable. I consider taking a hammer and smashing my way through the machine. By now it's 6a.m. and I am not rational. I decide to go to bed but not before closing all the doors of my flat and stuffing towels in the gaps under the doors so that the little bastard won't be able to sneak through.
It's just you and me now, buddy. I don't care if you have got a mouse passport and friends in high places, you're not staying here, capish?
NEWS FLASH : I've stocked up on weapons of mouse destruction. They're called Big Cheese Mouse Glue Traps. Poison free and humane, it says. Report will follow if anything to report.
GOD NUMBER FIFTEEN IS DONE
And so am I. This has entailed looking deeply into my psyche and she is an elusive bugger. But the trip was worth it. I have to meditate on this one as I'm sure it's got more in it than meets the eye.Lots and lots of comments, please. You do know that you have to click on the link to get to the page where the full strip is shown?
Today would have been my father's birthday if he was still here. So I dedicate No.15 to you dearest Sacha, you who always asked the question: who do you think you are?
October 6, 2005
BLINDLY PLUNGING
Am absorbed in God Interview No.15 begun before going to Paris and it's exhausting. What I mean by exhausting is that it uses a different part of my brain. Never mind technical explanations, Interview Mode is not like my normal thinking process. There's a lot of staring and waiting. It doesn't proceed step by step, A to B to C. It works backwards as if something already exists which I have to uncover by discarding veil after veil. And the drawing is painfully slow, half a page and I have to go lie down, no, not really lie down but get cups of coffee, tea, cheese, apples, newspapers - anything to break the concentration, distract, deflect. Like I'm doing now writing this. And I get sidetracked by four-dimensional thoughts, related and unrelated. Always always all my life this fascination with the cosmic. I read learned books on the subject (what subject? what is the right word?) only to confirm prior intuitions, images. I am wholly ignorant and yet I know certain things. I have not thought them but merely caught them, like radio waves or fish. Blindly plunged a line into the deep unconscious sea and pulled up something wriggling demanding to be named.
