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| The Pocock Diaries:
Scripts From An Open Heart Installment III . . . Mary Pocock |
The Pocock Diaries is a work in progress - this is the third installment. If you missed installment I or 2, begin here. Entries will be added each month. Some excerpts of e-mails will also be included. And please feel free to send along your thoughts or feedback to The Pocock Diaries
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* * *
Quiet pearls
drop from the sky
And remind me
Who I am.
A deer nearby
just smiles.
* * *
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Illness has a way of intensifying life. Desire is pervasive in the human realm; we always have a choice of its object. Making friends with our own mind, knowing thoroughly our likes, dislikes, habits and motivations, allows us to creatively rearrange those impulses we want to change, eliminate, replace or not attach to. It is important to know what dictates our behaviour and identity - and to know it arises from habit energy and the choices we make.
When illness becomes severe, we humans, being meaning-makers, keep things under control by inventing narrative. To die is not to have a story, to be no longer human. Our instinct is to create a narrative that will survive; keep our human edge within reach.
Some lean toward romantic storytelling (and indeed illness seems romantic to many - as seen in films), others toward irony, and those who adhere to modernism try to incorporate the transcendent, the infinite lying dormant within us, into the narrative, in an attempt to bring purity back to the experiences of birth, death and in - between.
My own story is tinged with modernism and defined by creativity. When I am not under machines filled with radioactive dye, or seeing oncologists or naturopaths or waiting in rooms I get a strong urge to decorate, I make my living making and teaching art. |
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I have learned much in this respect and have examined the art making process, since my diagnosis and subsequent tumor growth.
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A sadness echoes
deep inside me |  |
I open my heart
and set it free. |
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Life seems to consist of birth death and in-between.
We have a mixed metaphor for birth, dread death and give not much thought to the in-between.
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| I have been meditating and doing chi gong and yoga, then drawing, in the mornings I feel well enough to, since I was in chemotherapy in 1994. I began to see parallels between drawing and yoga in process, goal, intent and result. I researched this similarity in my art classes. I realized that greater awareness, increased focus and concentration leads to better art making. |
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| A few years ago I was teaching a group of 7-11 year olds. When it came time for oriental brush painting, we meditated first (simple breath awareness), then let the brush sweep the roll of rice paper and individual sheets of coloured construction paper. Tim, who was seven, came to me with a painting and exclaimed Look, the only thought in my mind when I painted this picture was crab. And I looked at an animated, beautiful lively painting of a crab. He had captured the movement and the "feel" (character) of a crab. Other children produced similar drawings that could only be possible if they could hold the intent and character throughout the drawing. | |
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| There will eventually come a time when familiarity, intentionality and practice meet and the result is fluidity. The moment a piano becomes an extension of a pianist's hands, |
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the notes seem to flow from her or his being. This spontaneity occurs with integration. In this activity, form becomes content and the process and product reflect each other. |
| We can also integrate illness into our story and survive our own death somewhat, by recognizing the purity of our own inner core. | | |
If my human death comes
fear not, for I will be
far beyond that realm of
birth and death
cradled in the purity of
phenomena
sitting, knee deep in the
empty
waiting for the power
of my intent
to spur me along
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"Think often of the speed with which all that is and comes to be passes away and vanishes...
Scarcely anything is stable, even that which is close at hand. Dwell, too, on the infinite gulf of the past and the future, in which all things vanish away."
Marcus Aurelius
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