Halloween

It is 6 days till Halloween. Now that I have an 18 month old daughter, Julia, I find myself looking forward to it nearly as much as I am looking forward to Christmas. In fact, I now look forward to any universally celebrated occasion that has these two criteria: a non-working holiday and it is child-friendly.

Halloween hasn’t always been called that way to me. It had always been All Souls’ day and All Saints' day (and I wasn’t sure which one was Halloween. I later learned Halloween comes from the word All-hallow-even, which means the eve of “All Hallow’s Day”, which is also known as All Saints' Day.) And I have always celebrated it as such – in remembrance of the souls in purgatory and the saints in heaven. I saw it as a religious ritual and if not for the fact that it is a holiday, I get to play with candles while watching over the dead love ones tombs and have a chance to visit (and get visited) by friends in the cemetery, I wouldn’t have liked it much as a child.

Halloween feels like the western and commercial counterpart of All Saints day - and without the saints. While All Saints day reminds me of candles, tombs, cemetery, prayers, vigils, dead relatives and holy masses, Halloween brings up images of the plastic pumpkins, gory plastic masks, Disney costumes, children in malls, candies and anything orange and black. A lot of it had to do with me now living in a metropolitan city, far from home. Having no dead relative tombs to visit and not wanting to be stuck somewhere in the highly populated travel highways, we are at risk of ending up celebrating it the commercial way this year – going to malls, carrying a pumpkin bucket for candies and looking everywhere to see who got the coolest costume. As a new mother, it makes me wonder if this is the way I would "imprint" this tradition in Julia's memories.

I see traditions and rituals to be a time for remembering, for connecting, for celebrating our being a part of humanity. We needed to set special days else we forget, being mostly engrossed with the little things that keep us busy everyday. In Halloween, it is remembering our ancestors, their spirits, and the people who had been once human and had gone on to the other life. It reminds me of the great carpet of life of which I am a thread, the world we live in now and the spirit world we have yet to see. If there’s a small thing I could add on how I’d spend Halloween here in the city, it would be to infuse a touch of history, spirituality and some magic into the occasion. Halloween in certain cultures after all, is believed to be one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world, and when magic is most potent.

(Wikipedia defines the liminal state as one characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives. People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.) "Liminal" is definitely an intriguing word!

I thought I’d write a poem-story, to start a personal tradition, to celebrate the season in a way that maybe our ancestors might have spent each day millions of years ago – storytelling; gathering around a fire and exchanging stories that enriched their imagination and connected their spirits to their past, their present and their future.

The Tree Fairy

Rebekkah looked towards the forest
She feels its pulse; she hears it calling.
She stepped into the night and embraced the shadows,
She knew she was going home.

Darkness enveloped her; she floated towards its heart
Somewhere she saw the image of Silas,
Tied up to a tree, he was in pain.
Begging for his life as he was slowly butchered by strangers.
His bloody hands gripped the tree tightly with each blow,
He called out her name – Rebekkah! as he took his last breath.

Rebekkah felt the tree,
She hears him calling from within.
Her soul yearned for his touch, For her spirit to break free.
She felt her body tingle as a tree branch pricked,
She smiled as it drained her blood
It was part of her now and she was part of Silas.
They, neither here nor there.

EJs Drawings

A quote from the book, “Original Self by Thomas Moore”:
“Poetry in the larger sense of the word – poems, stories, myths, painting, dances, dreams – is the most exhilarating and transporting vehicle for travel there is. More effective than space shuttles, more penetrating than warp speed starships, and more probing than mars rovers, poetry takes us far far away to a reality that is at once our own and absolutely alien.. This would be a trite observation unless perhaps we recalled many ancient teachings that tell of the soul’s journeys.”

A colleague of mine showed me two drawings made by her 5 year old son, EJ. I was struck at how devoid of self-consciousness the drawings were. The lines were drawn with confidence, colors were varied and the style itself was distinctively EJ’s. It was like seeing a part of his world, a world devoid of the “polishing” of society and effects that years of education could impose. On this drawing below, it is a world of insects which EJ is fond of.

I have always admired, envious perhaps is a nearer word, the imagination of children. Often, I find my imagination being encumbered by whatever I have learned and absorbed in the past (which at that time were useful). The nearest thing to imagination that I could “brag” about now is on how I could “imaginatively” think up of ways to lessen my housework. It’s interesting to think that we spend the first half of our lives absorbing almost everything that comes our way – to survive, and spend the other half, unloading the “un-useful” things we have collected along that same way – also to survive (and possibly, to remain sane). It does feel like I am constantly sifting, shaking, swirling - removing the sands and rocks to get to the gold.

In art, it’s not an easy task, finding ones style. But it does look quite easy when I look at EJ’s drawings. Style comes so naturally for him (and children in general) — without much thought. Here is another of EJ’s drawing, his mom told me there is a story behind it. I’ll try to convey it as best as I can, although having transferred from one adult to another adult, I don’t think I’m doing justice to EJ’s original version of the story.

These are Wagee and Mooga. They are brothers.

The one above is their mom.

And they all ended up being eaten by a fierce monster. And that was the end of Waggee, Mooga and their mom. (I tried to looking for the fierce monster – to find if justice had prevailed and the monster was locked up somewhere, like any adult would like this story to end, but I was told that it had escaped to another country called “Trash”).

(It just strikes me, that the word adulterated – as in adulterated drinks and which means substances that should not be contained within other substances are present – has the root word “adult”. Why not “substantiated” or chemicaliated? Whoever had thought of this word may have been running along similar line of thinking on adults..)

I attempted to draw my adult(erated) version of his story.

Magee and Wooga are mothers searching for their children. But they fell into the river and got eaten by a school of hungry piranhas. Magee, Wooga and their lost children have met the same end.

P.S. (And the piranhas ended up being caught by exotic fish poachers and shipped to “Trash” country where they were fed to the greedy fierce monster, which got choked to death by one of Magee’s big earrings).

Thank you EJ for letting me travel with you. It was fun!

Art as an Expression of Self

I was surfing through a couple of art blogs as part of my early New Year's resolution of spending some part of my free time focused on enriching myself on anything creative, when I found a nice list of advice posted in Robert Genn's website. (Robert Genn is a Canadian painter and owns the Painter's keys website.) Here's part of his list which resonated with me:

• Find a sanctuary where you can comfortably work.
• Dedicate at least two hours a day to your art.
• Have more than enough equipment and supplies.
• Set short and long term goals and keep track of progress.
• Think of your work as exercise, not championship play. (This advice really made a lot of sense to me!)
• Explore series development and exhaust personal themes.
• Replace passive consumption with creative production. (This one too!)
• Use your own intuition and master your technology.
• Feel the joy of personal, self generated sweat.
• Be forever on the lookout for the advent of style.
• Don't jump into the ring until you're feeling fit.

Armed with a renewed sense of inspiration, I set forth listening to what my "own style" is. I have realized before that I am not entirely a painter, as paintings and pictures seem to be too "silent" for me, powerful but I guess it leaves a lot for self interpretation. I am strongly attracted to poems but also feel that I would have liked the power of a picture to go with it. So I thought I might be somewhere in between.. I found out later that there is such a term as "Haiga", which is a cross between a haiku poem and a painting/drawing. Suits me well! Here's my attempt at it, which doesn't necessarily follow the 5-7-5 convention of haiku but thought that this form quenches my thirst for creative expression at the moment.

I fell into the sea of doubts

Where a hideous monster waits;

Its tentacles silently finding

The hidden crevices of my past;

Dread spreads through me like poison

I watched the pillars fall

Crumbling in its tight grip

It slowly sucked me whole.