For me, there is no limit to the many therapeutic hobbies I can take up. The truth is, though my face often belies a calm exterior, I feel. A LOT. I have numerous outlets, mantras, rituals, and techniques that build me up. One of them from a very young age has been drawing, or as I like to call it doodling-- because the intention is really just about release. So recently, I have been doodling a lot for some reason...and even though I am relatively protective of my private life, I am more than willing to bare myself. Here are some recent doodles and the lessons behind them.
"It Was The First...Always Will Be"
This doodle was made with the intention of being a papercut of sorts. The truth behind it is that I am aware that any experience you have for the first time, any milestone, will always have its place in your life, memory, and heart. There are some things that you can't change or escape. Perhaps decisions, relationships, adventures....the first is always the first. So I told myself to stop hiding from that reality.
"You Can't Go Back"
Another potential papercut, this one is both for me and my friends. The key to life is to keep moving forward essentially. We can never go back, but we can make a better future, and even at times correct our past along the way.
"Will We Ever Meet Up"
This kind of represents how I feel about men and women. It seems like we can be from opposite ends of the universe. One of my friends said it was like women were always a step ahead of themselves, and men three steps behind. It makes me wonder where we ever really meet in the cycle. Can we fully understand each other and live in balance--or we will we always communicate from opposite ends of the universe?
Hmmm...this post ended up being way serious, but as I said....it's all about outlets, being open to express and feel, and to learn from everything...to purging...
Your step thing about how men and women walk makes me think everyone just ends up with someone they don't belong with like as if everyone is out of step. And if your out of step with the one you're meant to be with you end up with someone else, you know? Should just sit down and let a couple guys stumble by till you see "the" guy and you lash your legs to his. I'm sure if you found the right guy he'd try to keep up. However, I digress ... It just made me think of that.
ReplyDeleteI am in awe of your doodles. So thoughtful and creative...so therapeutic for us all. Thank-you for them, Jenn. Love you. xo
ReplyDeleteHmm, I was gonna call off commenting on this one, owing to the three thorny themes therein. You'd been posting once or more a week, and I figured I could wait. Good guess, Greg...
ReplyDeleteOK, concision and celerity call for me to hit one of them only. Let's take the last.
-Because the vast preponderance of us experience life as either males or females who prefer the romantic company of one sex or the other, it's understandable we'd see the two main sexes as diametrically distinct. Traditional social sex roles, which have not exactly diappeared, reinforce that sense of polarity or mutual exclusivity.
Still, males and females clearly share an overwhelming number of human traits (and genes). A book I've learned a lot from thematically emphasizes the extent to which men possess, and sometimes exhibit, putatively female-only traits such as submissiveness, and females do the same with supposedly male traits such as practicality, canniness, imposition of will, etc.
From lit and from life I see a lot of complicated overlap and commonality between men and women. For example, I've been "accused" of being feminine for being very talkative and analytical about relationships and interpersonal interactions generally -- a feminine trait, some people tell me. I dunno; I feel pretty active and practical when I am analyzing and trying to midwife better communication about human situations.
I call that "viewing the episcenery." Silly joke -- scenery plus epicene ( = a Greek term, originally a grammatical term for nouns that have the same form in masculine an feminine genders). Joyce even as a teen noted with interest the thematic import of the surname of a neighbor family -- Sheehy.
Enough enough enough! See, this got too long and chatty, just on one topic, let alone three.
So. Takeaway point: Maybe conflicts between a given male and a given female have even more to do with 1. individual personality conflicts, and/or 2. failure to communicate better until both parties are on similar wavelengths a good deal of time, rather than solely or even predominantly 3. men are from venus, and women are from mars, and the human race is from uranus, and all that.
"Does Little Nell live???"
Greg
wow Greg, all of your comments keep me ruminating for days! I want to throughly respond, but how about via e-mail? Will you e-mail me at hermusj@hotmail.com so my blog isn't the only form of communication! : )
ReplyDelete-->Jenn
Will email a tad later in the evening; you did email me once around mid-July and I replied. But I work a lot online and get about 200 emails a day, so I tend to fall into emailing reactively, and run out of time and energy before getting around to much proactivity... Which is why that email trade was circa ten weeks ago now...
ReplyDeleteG.