(a touch of love)
Here is a hotchpotch collection of autumnal musings and playing around with ideas, images and words, no doubt quite clumsily. This is inspired by a nearly 90 year old artist I know, who has dementia. Over the past year, he has transformed in painting style; from striving for perfection most of his life, to whimsically experimenting with the abstract and semi-surreal. ‘Why not?’ He says. ‘I’m enjoying myself!’
Meanwhile, my father settles into a hospice far away. The beginning of the end. He was once a young man with obsessions, and a thirst for head-spinning, wild adventures. New versions of himself emerging and retreating, almost with the tides. He can’t run from himself anymore, he has to stay in one place now, and I’m not there. I wasn’t going to write about him this time, but I can’t help it. I wish I could pop in to see him, give him a hug, have a cup of tea.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings – all in the same relationship.
Women Who Run With the Wolves (1)
My autumn began back at Callington Road Nature Reserve, with the Michaelmas daisies, ferns and firethorn bushes. My dog leads the way – winding footpaths, snags on brambles, a hum of traffic with not a car in sight; on account of the dense musky-sweet foliage packed into this small, secret patch of wilderness. It is here that last year my daughter said, “I feel like Tarzan! To be honest I always feel like Tarzan. Tree world is my home”. This year she is already starting to act like a teenager; surly and stubborn. Next, she’ll stop climbing trees, start surfing the web, dodging disembodied predators. In my day, they had faces and bodies, would get you drunk or drugged in bars and pubs. At least there was something physical, somewhat known; albeit beguiling, and then out of control in an instant, but still with the slim possibility of escape. Like a flame in the night, a blazing furnace, and then if you’re lucky – bare feet on snow, running, like a wolf. But how does one escape from the ether? How do I prepare her for what trickery there is to come?
Back to the comfort of familiar local parks. Ponderings and wonderment under the autumn tree – each leaf fluttering in emancipation from the branch and afforded one wild dance, as it spirals and loops its way down to its neighbours, who are resting on the yellow, orange, gold and peach circular rug around the base of the tree – a select few giving my head and shoulders a gentle pat as they pass over my still body sitting on my favourite bench.
A few brief encounters over the past few months, got me thinking about how we hide our wildness, and whether some of us express it via our dogs. Noticing ironical dog-owner pairings and their paradoxical behaviours: The silent, shy goth with a dissonant Dachshund. The aloof, angular teen with a snuffling, roly-poly Pug. The wide-eyed, wiry, timid recluse with a half-blind, bellicose, bulbous Bassett-hound. And me, reserved and polite while my dog plays the fool with a puppy in the park, despite his arthritis. I took my dog to a few sessions with my previous therapist and he tried to sit on her lap. I was both amused and embarrassed. I wonder now though, what he was communicating that I couldn’t. I’d love to hear if people have other examples of this. There’s plenty of research about similarities between dogs and their owners and both expressing similar emotions, but I can’t find anything yet about the opposite.
I welcome autumn this year, with it’s fresh energy to spur on the little bit of acumen I need for new ventures and transitions. And this week, the shining full moon seems to spark something to life in my psyche. Though as I anticipate the last leaves falling and the enthusiasm waning, and make preparations for the long, cold, dark nights ahead; the year thus far reverberates around the recesses of my mind. The meaning of love, and what happens to tarnish love. Love and rage, love and shame, love and refrain. Love and loss, love and blocks.
Love has many faces. And if you love, you have to be strong enough to look upon all of them.
The Philosopher and The Wolf (2)
© 2023 Psychodography Blog
REFERENCES
- Rowlands, M. (2017) The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons From the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness. Granta Books.
- Pinkola Estés, C. (1992) Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine Books.
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