Do we need crutches to dance?

'Being on one crutch to no crutches is a huge difference.'

(Lindsey Vonn)

Lindsey knows. As an Olympic alpine downhill skier she has personal

experience of what it is like to be so badly injured that doctors

and experts alike doubt whether walking unaided (without crutches)

is even within the realms of possibilities.

Watching the Winter Olympics, one of the commentators

waxed lyrical as Linsey was standing at the gate

ready to start her downhill race: ''This is Linsey's last

Olympics and at 41 years of age and having undergone

numerous knee and leg surgeries, she truly is an Olympic

Champion!''

Then seconds later........... she crashed.......again.

She was airlifted away. But, will she race again once

she is off the crutches..... again?

Who knows.....she sure is a Champion though.

As well as physical crutches, we also have 

psychological ones. (Says those in the know.)

For example:

''That's just a crutch! someone may say during an argument.

This I take to mean that whatever argument we may

have presented, it is deemed as very weak and can't stand on its

own two legs, so to speak.

-Did you steal that toy, Billy?

-Naah, Tommie told me I had to take it or he'd

beat me!!!

-Why did you lie to me?

-Baby, I only didn't tell you the truth coz I didn't wanna

hurt ya. I was thinking about you.

A psychological crutch can be anything that we

think is going to help us get through/deal with a tricky

situation.

Anything, as in denial, pretending, ignoring, disassociating,

avoiding, blocking out, minimizing the ''anything'', etc. etc. etc.

But, also anything as in supporting and helping us

when or if our mobility is inhibited. Crutches also

aids us in giving us more independence and to be able

to do things for ourselves.

Although the term crutch may often be used in a 

derogatory way, the more I ponder and research it,

I wonder if it is perhaps not just another ''tool''

in the ''coping-strategies'' cabinet?

And like a tool can be used in both a helpful or not

helpful way, is that not the same with coping-

strategies? Methinks so.

I don't drink alcohol/do drugs or do one-night stands.

 I did. A lot. But as a

coping-strategy, let me tell you, it sux and is

in no way helpful as far as I can ascertain.

What I have discovered is a helpful

coping-strategy, is to actually deal with whatever

it is that is causing us/me emotional pain or hurt.

Finding the core of the problem in other words.

Although, this does require honesty and self-reflection.

It also requires bravery, patience, forgiveness and

tenacity.

I may tell myself that I prefer my own company,

but..... always?

I may tell myself that people just don't get me,

but.....all the people?

I may tell myself that a few drinks makes me

more sociable...........but how many are a few?

I may tell myself that I'm nice to every one,

except for............. strange and foreign others.

I may tell myself that I'm easy going and happy,

I'm just a little down in the dumps at the moment.

When my son changed from a basket ball surfing dude

to a goth.........my life suddenly became very complicated

and I had to dig deep to find out who I was.

(I mean besides the obvious....his parent)

Suddenly my son became someone new.

I had to decide what or how I was going to deal

with it. My friends told me to kick him out unless

he does what you tell him!

I did do a lot of soul searching and decided that

I was going to understand why! he had become a goth.

He tried to explain and one day....I got it......he was

slowly cracking the cocoon and about to burst forth.

Whatever expectations I may have had(I did), 

I had to just let them go.

I grieved so much that it made me realize that I needed

help. Professional help.

I was ready to find out who I really was

or at least, could try my best to become.

No crutches, just good/helpful coping-strategies.

Of course, nowadays Technology fills all

requirements for what makes a good crutch.

It encourages dependency for....well....most things.

No longer do we need to do our own critical thinking, 

use our own memory, or carry on an authentic

communication face to face voice to voice.

Don't like who you are?

Become somebody else, just code yourself into 

someone you think everybody will like.

Become a catfish, a pretend A.I

or any kind of ''being'' you

hope someone else will fancy.

Our little pocket computers can

add what we need, delete what we don't,

so........ send the rest to the event horizon?

*

''Technology can easily become a crutch,
 something to hide behind when we don't
dare to be who we really are.''

(Citizen Z)

about the image: ''Crutches help me to Dance"

Graphite on paper, edited in Elements.

Observation is not a synonym for seeing..................

Hey there friend, 

Are you up for a little non-scientific but rather fun

little experiment?

Yes? Okay. Lets begin.

Observe the above image for 30 seconds.

Then after 30 sec. cover the image totally with

something impossible to see through.

Trust me. Don't cheat. Cheating will spoil it.

I will now ask you questions about the

image.

1. What is it an image of?

2.What is the most striking(vivid) colour?

3. How many splotches are there?

4. What colour are they?

5. Are they all non-figurative(splotches)?

6. Is there an outline of Africa?

I will get back to you with the answers later.

Synonyms, I find, can at times be very helpful when 

 the ''right word'' lingers on the tip of one's tongue

but refuses to get off it.

Take the the word ''seeing'' for instance.

Is seeing the same as looking?

Is looking the same as observing?

Is ''to see'', ''to look'', ''to observe'' synonyms

of each other?

My ''AI Overview'' says so.

I humbly disagree.

Our eyes are not like cameras.

What our eyes do is pass along fragments

of information that they have acquired and then

the mind fills in the rest. (Meaning, purpose, etc.)

Although we may experience seeing as a 

continuity, such is not the case.

We all have to blink and when we do so,

.........we miss ''a bit''.

What we experience as non-stop-seeing is less

 ''seeing everything'' and more ''seeing with bits missing''.

Which in my view is good. I mean, just imagine

really seeing everything. How would the mind cope

with such a bombardment of new information? 

Yikes!

According to those in the know: Every act of 

seeing is filtered through and guided by the question

whether we know what ''it is'' or not. 

How we answer that question is guided/determined

by the answer we come up with that fits into that 

which we call, ''reality''.

Observation and seeing is, so say the wise ones, never

neutral. We don't simply 'see', we select/chose.

However, observation, and what we thought we knew

about truly seeing stuff went out the window when

a clever Dutchman fitted two glass lenses into

a tube in 1608.

He managed not only to make far away things

seem right there in front of us(enlarged),

but he also expanded our way of thinking.

In my view, he broadened observation from 'passivity'

to becoming an 'activity as well.

Observing is more than seeing, or looking as far as

I can ascertain. Observing is revelatory, it's moving

slowly enough to allow for details to emerge, it's

having the patience and making the effort to

set the mind free to search for 'it', the still unknown 

and un-named.

Now, lets look at........looking.

Looking is something we can do without actually

seeing. To look, is to direct ones eyes/gaze in

a specific direction. 

Someone calls our name in a crowd.

Instinctually we turn in the direction of

the voice and look for who we may think could

be the caller.

Some people go to museums, galleries, exhibitions,

etc. etc. equipped with their phones and with

lightning speed look at their screens, press the 

button and then move on to the next exhibit.

Endlessly toggling between screens, objects, 

real spaces and real people.

Constantly exchanging an actual experience for

a simulacrum, or an effigy, or a binary code, or........

really???? an A.I. 'doll'?

Why rest content to hand over our precious

and longed for fundamental good 'bits' such

as relationships and communication skills

to an asinine technology?

Why not instead set some time aside every

day and just observe..........reflectively

and sincerely, real life and real people.

'Old ideals are crashing on all sides, and the

precise uncompromising camera vision is, and will be so,

a world force in the revaluation of life.'

(Edward Weston)

(Sorry Edward, but we're already there methinks.)

about the image: Ink, charcoal, acrylics on cardboard

and some editing in Elements

Answers: 1. A baby inside a womb with parts of a map of

Africa and almost USA behind it. (Or whatever you think)

2. Electric blue

3. 14

4. Cornflower blue with white-ish spots

5. The second last splotch on the top right

is an owl's face

6. yes on the right hand side

There's another fun little test you can do: when you're hanging out

with someone, suddenly tell your friend to close their eyes

and then ask them to tell you what colour pants, or shirt,

or jacket you are wearing.

Splitting up is never easy...........

I looked at the clock.. 

3:45 am and yet not a minute of sleep.

Although I had gulped down another two pain-

killers, my head was still pounding.

It was eerily quiet bar from my thumping heart

and blistering headache as I kept staring at the ceiling.

I had to get up.

 I got out of bed and walked in to 

my son's empty bedroom and laid down on his

bed. Laying down on my son's bed, the ''absence'';

the absence of my son, of my partner, of my home

and of my life felt so crushing that I found it hard to

even breathe. 

But although I felt as if I was dying, I had to find

some kind of inner strength and pull myself

together. I had to be strong for my son.

-How? How do you pull yourself together when

you're mere pixels strewn all over the floor?

How do you pull yourself together when you feel

betrayed, ripped apart, walked all over and

discarded like a ticket stub?

With those thoughts on replay, eventually grief and

 sadness overcame my inability to sleep so

finally I fell asleep.

A few hours later I woke up, got out of my

son's bed and straight into a cold shower.

Although the cold water helped some,

my head was still pounding and knowing

what was on the agenda for the day

made me feel awfully nauseous.

Standing in front of the mirror getting 

dressed I was surprised to see that

looking back at me........was a ''whole''

person not a big, open, oozing wound.

Huh. My ''front'' was holding.

Maybe I was going to be able to

deal with it after all.

-Hop in, said David when he picked me up.

-I have the worst headache, I said as I hopped 

in his car.

-Understandable. What you are going to have to

do is heart-wrenching. Believe me, I know.

I've been there too.

-Thanks David, I am really dreading it. Thanks

for coming with me.

When we arrived in the city we were lucky and

found a parking spot almost immediately.

The walk to the court house would be short.

However, my head was aching so badly that I was

worried that I was going to end up with

my head stuck in a lavatory dry-heaving

and unable to speak.

-David, stop. I need some water quickly.

Can you get me some, please, I said and sat 

down on my haunches in the shade from a leafy tree.

 Holding my head in my hands I told myself: 

I can do this, I can do this.

-Here. Drink as much as you can, David said

as he handed me a bottle of water.

The water made me feel a bit better

so we kept walking.

When we reached the court house

David decided to wait in the entrance.

This meant that when I stepped in to the court 

room I once again had to face one of my

absolute worst moments of life

.................alone.

The judge asked me to stand up,

      he asked a question, and then ........ 

just like that.......I was divorced.

15 years of what had been my

family, my home, my place of 

belonging..............gone.

As I stepped out of the court room

I thought to myself: Above the parapet....

does the sun shine, do the birds sing,

and does time really heal everything?

*

Splitting up. Breaking up. Divorcing.

Parting. Severing. Annul.

''Breaking up'' is something that most of us

will probably go through at least once in our lives.

Some say that the person who is the 

''breaker-upper'' usually experiences less

pain than the person ''broken-up'' with.

Is that however really true? And.....by the way,

how does one measure emotional pain?

Any kind of pain? Is not the level of pain

we experience in the ''heart/mind'' of the beholder?

(We have something called mirror-neurons in

our brains that fires up (automatically) when

we watch someone going through something

that we ourselves have experienced. 

Like watching someone cry, yawn, laugh, etc. etc.

We can't help it, we just feel what we see the 

other feel.)

So how long does it take to get over a divorce, 

a break-up and or split?

My own opinion is that it takes as long as

it takes.

Grief, or the hurt from a split, or the loss of

any valued relationship, in my view is experienced

differently by us all.

Telling somebody to ''just get over it'' as I

see it, is disrespectful as well as hurtful.

So is ''time to move on'', or ''you're better off''

or ''time to let go''.(Or drunken rebound liaisons.)

''Getting over any painful experience is not

a straight forward trajectory, it is not time limited,

neither can it be pushed, rushed or crushed.

But whether you will go through it alone

or not, ..... that is optional.''

(Citizen Z)

about the image: Acrylic on canvas title: ''Pain''

War is never the smart choice...........it always leaves broken people behind

When I was about ten years old I found one of my

 grand-parents passports in an old box.

When I opened it to see who it belonged to,

I saw a small black and white photo of my 

Opa(grand-father) and stamped across it was

an angry red J with next to it another stamp

with a threatening looking eagle holding

a Swaztika in its claws.

Holding the passport in my hands made me

feel strange. Although I didn't know what

the symbols meant, they made me uneasy

and anxious.

I decided to ask my mother what it all

meant. Though I would have liked to,

I could not ask my grand-parents as

they had both died when I was but a small child.

My mother told me that before she lived in Sweden

she, her mother, father and older brother, lived

in Berlin, Germany.

 Leonard, my grand-father, long before the 2nd World

war had started and Hitler was still viewed as an

egocentric lunatic, sensed that something awful

and dangerous was on the way and rather than ignoring 

his gut-feelings he acted upon them.

I am unsure of exactly how he managed to

get first my mum and her mum out, and then

 himself and his son out of Germany.

But he did and eventually he and his family was

together in Sweden and then 10 years later...

he and his family all became Swedish citizens.

Fast forward>>>>>>>>> I have just found out

that I am part Jewish.

What did it mean? What did it mean to have

Jewish ancestry? I was intrigued and curious,

so I decided to keep going through some of

the old boxes in our cellar.

I found old sepia photos recording some of my 

grandparents life shot in Germany before they fled which

I eagerly studied trying to find a way to somehow 

''connect'' with the people I saw in the photographs.

My grand-Opa and Oma (great-grandparents) were

among the few kinspeople in the photos

 that I instantly recognized as they were actually

 still alive for a fair few years of my childhood.

(My mother helped me identify her brother,

herself as a young child and some relatives

that I had never met.)

 Though quite elderly, as luck would have it

my two sisters, my brother and I were fortunate

 enough to spend many happy days with

my grand-Oma and Opa although they lived in Berlin.

Our family would drive from Stockholm

to West Berlin which for us kids was very exciting

although also scary as Berlin at that time was divided 

by a great big wall. 

To get to West Berlin we had to drive through

East Germany which was very gloomy, many of

the buildings full of bullet holes and we often

 saw tanks and other military vehicles pass us on the

side of the roads.

Some years ago my older sister travelled to Berlin

to try and find out if there were any relatives

still alive in Germany, but sadly............

war had devoured them all.

 Do you think that it is possible that there will

come a day when human beings will stop trying to solve

problems, issues and miss-understandings with violence

of some kind?

Do you think that it is possible that there will come a day

 when human beings will chose to use understanding, 

open-mindedness and non-violence to solve its

issues in a peaceful and non-destructive way?

 I sure hope so.....

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing........

''War does not determine

 who is wrong or who is right.

War leaves only a frightful sight

of the brokenness that's left after a fight.''

I hate everything about war and how

even when the fighting has stopped,

people keep breaking apart.

I abhor how those who profess to be

seeking peace and freedom for all

go quiet when united resistance calls.

I detest those that hide behind their golden curtains

and fail to show up when the time has come:

''Lovers of peace and freedom for all, 

it's time to stand up and hold our tongue no more.''

What do you think?

about the images: top: mixed media

middle: Elements

Bottom: Acrylic on large canvas