This 2009 journal entry and image were made at the Gap during some visual research for my thesis:Tired of the density today, the heaviness. Tried to find the place where J jumped from just a few short weeks ago. From the description I got from T, I think I found it, which means that neither J nor M could face jumping into the crevasse, the bared throat.
Found somewhere to sit, on a huge expanse of granite, against a rock, slightly out of the SW wind. Looking west, to the Celtic home of death and renewal. Absorbed in the black and white on my tiny page, the backlit rocks and the winter-lit sky.
The mass of rock beneath me moved. It swayed, I swayed. I was near the Natural Bridge and thought it might collapse, taking me down with it. I wanted to run, but my brushes and ink were strewn around me, I didn’t want to abandon them and that was enough to ground me. I stayed, against my instinct and with my rational mind that told me this was just not possible. But I still waited for the tidal wave.
I remembered the kundalini energy that rises from the base of the spine, the one that creates that rocking sensation. It’s been there many times before, in meditation, in the sweat lodge. That feeling that I am riding on the back of a giant heaving serpent – a dragon.
The rock and I were one. The fear was my fear, always had been, is still. Isn’t real. The universe is inside me, is me, and the rock, the sea.
I could watch the sea rise and fall dispassionately now. Calm.
Today that ‘longing’ was with me, that soul-wanting-something-so-bad. Not a bad feeling, but plaintive, crying out. I don't want to die, just to disappear into this. Like J and M maybe....
The gulls were crying out too. Souls of the dead - wanting - something. I’ve never seen them there before, one then two – M and J, soul-wanting still.
It was the alchemical power of the drawing that moved me, made me sway, ride that dragon. Just energy, neutral, neither harmful nor safe, kind yet unkind, good or evil – just there.
