Leaking emotions..........

-I don't know how to explain it other than to say that I feel

like I'm ''leaking'', she said.

-Leaking? How so? I asked.

-It feels as if no matter how much I try to keep my

emotions all locked up, they are somehow still slowly

leaking out of me.

-Why do you have to keep your emotions all locked up?

Why can't you express them?

-Oh, no, that won't do. Expressing my emotions will

make me weak.

-Weak? 

-Yes, only weak people express their emotions.

-What makes you think that only weak people

express their emotions?

-That's just how it is. Well, that's what I was taught anyways.

-So, if you were feeling hurt, you had to pretend that you weren't?

-Oh, yes. 

-What about when you were feeling angry, upset, or annoyed?

-Usually if I showed any of those feelings I would be sent

to my room and told to stay there until I had calmed down. 

-Didn't that make you feel even more angry?

-Sometimes, but I learned how to swallow it all. Although,

there were times when I would scream into my pillow just to

 get it out.

-What would you do if you were really sad?

-The same, cry into my pillow. 

-So, if you were not allowed to show your feelings, what

about your parents? They never showed their feelings either?

-My father, not so much. Although, when it came to things

not doing what he wanted them to do he could really

blow a gasket. People, on the other hand, he seemed to have

 more patience with.

-What about your mother?

- I have seen her get very emotional at times.

-How would she deal with her emotions?

-I think that maybe she was brought up to ''put on

a happy face'' whatever she was feeling.

-Is that what you are trying to do? I mean, something

like that. Like hiding or subduing your feelings?

-Although I've never been told this in words, deep down

inside of me there's a voice telling me to ''keep calm

and carry on'' no matter what I'm feeling. 

To be strong, to not let feelings overcome me, rather,

.......overcome them by being pragmatic.

-What's different now then? Why do you now feel as if

you're ''leaking''?

-I don't know. 

-Let me ask you this. Do you still really think that

expressing your emotions is a sign of weakness?

What if you are leaking because the time has come

for you to start expressing your true feelings?

If not to others at least to yourself.

-But if I do that, will not others view me as weak?

-Well, some may but some may not.

Going through something really traumatic in my early

20's I was faced with a dilemma similar to yours.

Lucky for me however, someone said something to me that

changed my life: ''It takes strength to accept and

own one's weaknesses.''

Feelings, are not signs of weaknesses, rather, they 

assist us in identifying issues we need to deal with.

Pretending that we don't feel what we are feeling

will not make them go away. Doing so often just

intensifies them.

Acknowledging what we feel is important, 

identifying what kind of feelings they are is

also important, and so is expressing them in

a non-threatening and conducive way.

-Like how?

-Beginning our sentences with ''I feel angry/sad/upset/confused

etc. etc. when............'' instead of ''you make me......''

-I see, so to stop the ''leaking'' I need to

identify what I am leaking and why?

-I think that would be a very good starting point.

-Okay then. As I'm feeling parched, can we have that coffee

now, please?

Feeling in dire need for a strong coffee myself,

off we went to the nearest café.

''When we deny our emotion, it owns us.

When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and

find our way through [the pain] it.''

(Brenè Brown)

about the painting: plastic mask glued to large 

canvas, painted with acrylics, some Elements editing

Title: Help! I'm leaking.

What's the point of life?

-What's the point? he said.

-What do you mean? I asked.

-I mean, what is the point really? From the second we 

draw our first breath, the process of us dying begins.

Darn, that's a chilling statement methinks.

Although, also true.

However, true as it may be,

between drawing our first breath and exhaling our last,

a lot of life and living happens.

I've pondered the question: ''What's the point of life?''

many, many times.

What I have discovered is that perhaps: the point of life

is to find it. (the point)

But,

perhaps there is no objective, singular, immutable, irrefutable,

point that drives us all.

Perhaps there as many different ''points'' swirling about

as there are human beings.

(''Points'', as far as I can ascertain, are highly individualized.)

What if life and living is a continuous flailing about

collecting, exchanging, finding and fulfilling different ''points''?

For some of us it may be important to know what

specific ''points'' are important to us.

As for instance: It's important for me to be happy, to do

well in life, to be healthy, to be a good person, to believe in

something bigger than myself, to care about others, to

care about the planet, etc. etc. etc.....

Knowing what is important to us can provide us with a sense

of purpose, a direction, a sense of ''control'' 

and perhaps even a feeling that there is a ''higher'' meaning

to our lives.

Though it is true that from the second we 

draw our first breath, the process of us dying begins.

It is also true that from the second we draw our

first breath, the process of life and living begins.

What is the point of life?

To live every moment of it.

As every single human being has a point of beginning

and a point of ending,

 thus,

 what we do and how we live our lives 

between the beginning and the end,

is ultimately, 

(in my view,)

 what really matters.

''The mystery of human existence

lies not just in staying alive,

but in finding something to live for.''

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

about the image: Acrylic on wood board

''Light equals life''

                                                                             

Belief systems, we all have them, but do we know where they come from?

-Mum, there's something you need to see, said my son.

-What? What is it? I said as I stepped out onto the verandah.

-Look. Look up there, he said and pointed to the night sky.

I looked up and saw four red glowing spheres of light

swirling and configuring themselves into different shapes.

The way they moved was really strange. It seemed as

if whatever they were, they did not behave as any kind

of aircraft I had ever seen before.

Soundlessly they hovered, dropped, looped, until

finally they made themselves into a geometric diamond 

shape that they held for a few seconds. And then...they all

took off in different directions and just vanished.

-You saw that, right? my son said.

-Yes, I did, but as to what it was I saw, I have no clue, 

I answered.

The next day I googled numerous sites trying find out

if there were any known aircrafts that could do/behave the

way the red spheres of lights had done, but I found no

answers. 

I decided to put the experience in the ''too hard'' basket.

Which is where it would have stayed had we not encountered

the very same phenomena just a few weeks later.

This time we were sitting in my car. 

While waiting

for somebody we were giving a lift to, there the red spheres

were again. Just above our heads. They did their ''thing''

and then soundlessly...…vanished.

I have never been into Science-fiction, astronomy, or

cosmology so I have never really spent much time

pondering questions such as: are we alone in the

Universe or are we not?

How do I make sense out of the red glowing spheres?

How do I fit the experiences of them into my belief-system?

We all have belief-systems. We use them to make

''sense'' out of and deal with the world we live in.

A belief-system is an ideology/set of principles/values/morals

that we use in order to help us interpret and understand

 our everyday ''reality''.

In short, a belief-system are the ''stories'' we tell ourselves

about ourselves, about others, and about the world we

live in.

Have you ever found yourself saying ''that's just wrong''

without really knowing why you think so?

Or ''I don't believe that's true'' without really having

considered if you know all the facts?

I am certainly guilty of having done so.

According to those in the know, we develop

our belief-systems during our childhoods, so, long

before we have developed any kind of critical

thinking skills.

For many of us it is during adolescence that most

of us start to question whether we ''believe'' or agree

with the worldview we have been taught by our

families/care-givers, teachers, communities, friends,

etc. etc.

Discovering that we no longer agree with the belief-systems/

''blueprints'' that for years have guided how we

view and experience the world, can be

quite disconcerting and confusing.

 When we go through life experiences that challenge and or

contradict our belief-systems, (cognitive dissonance) we often

try to deal with it by either justifying or rationalizing

 away our unease by altering/adjusting our ''blue-prints''.

However, adjusting/altering our belief-systems is often

tricky and can bring with it a lot of change.

''If I have always believed xyz to be true, if it's not,

what then am I to believe?''

If we are feeling that we're no longer sure of that what

we believe to be true really IS true, may I suggest some helpful

questions we can ask ourselves.

What is the underlying source of my belief?

Do I have any facts or evidence to support

that what I believe to be true is true?

Is what I believe to be true something

I feel or something I think to be true?

Is what I believe to be true something

I want to be true or something I know

to be true due to facts?

If what I believe to be true can be proven

to be false, am I willing to change

my belief?

Personally, I have ventured through a number of 

paradigm shifts (a major change to previously

held concepts) and I'm sure there's more

to come.

Seeing those red glowing spheres of light made

me realize that I had never really contemplated

whether we are alone in the Universe or not.

Or how we determine facts from fiction, 

what we believe from what we know,

what we feel from what we think,

and what we want from what we need.

''External circumstances will not change 

until internal belief systems change.''

(Myles Munroe)

about the image: photo edited in Elements

Will we one day technologize ourselves

so much that one day we will become algorithmically

created creatures void of the one thing

that makes humans humane: The ability to

feel and emphasize with others.

''Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone

in the Universe or we are not. 

Both are equally terrifying.''

(Arthur C, Clarke)

To love can be painful, and yet, love we must.

-Be still my beating heart and do not break, she whispers

to herself.

She stares at her reflection in the mirror.

Where is it?

Where is the gaping wound that is hurting her so much?

Why can't she see it?

How is it possible to be hurting so much without

there even being the slightest physical sign of a wound, a cut,

or a something....anything?

She moves closer to the mirror and stares into her 

own eyes.

Is this me? Who is me? I don't recognize this face.

Where did I go? 

She closes her eyes. They are burning. Smarting.

She sits down on her bed with a heavy sigh.

-Why do I feel so tired and heavy all the time, she asks herself.

She opens her eyes and looks out through her bedroom window.

Only a thin pane of glass is separating her from a burgeoning

natural world yet she feels unmoved by the cawing birds, 

the swaying trees and the clear blue sky.

I should get dressed, she tells herself.

-Gone are the days when getting dressed was enjoyable, she

mutters to herself. 

Listlessly she opens the wardrobe door.

She grabs her comfy jeans, a white t-shirt and

puts them on.

Her back is aching, she has a searing headache, and

lately......toothache.

Dressed, she tiptoes down the steps to the kitchen.

Moving as stealthy as possible she turns on the coffee machine,

pours some milk in her Betty Blue mug, heats it in the

microwave and then.......waits for the cat.

-Life sux but fresh coffee makes it suck a little less, she thinks.

Bang. And then a louder bang. Then BANG!

-Hang on Lovecraft, I'm coming, she says to the cat.

Lovecraft gobbles her food and five minutes later she's

back outside again.

Sipping her big mug of coffee she can feel herself

tensing her body. Her heartrate is speeding up, her breathing

getting faster and her anxiousness rapidly rising.

Soon. Soon he will come down the steps and whoever

I am or try to be, I must now... become.

I must become the comforter, the problem solver, the driver,

the parent, the carer, the nurse, the researcher, the

strong one, the patient one, the ever-loving one,

the Mother who never ever gives up on her sick son.

She takes a deep breath and tries to calm.

-Calma, calma, she tells herself.

As she is sipping the last drops of her coffee

he enters the living room.

-Hello, how are you?

-I have hardly slept at all, he says.

-I'm sorry to hear that, she returns.

Groaning in pain as he walks into the kitchen,

he starts to prepare his breakfast.

-Is there anything I can do? she asks him.

-There's nothing anyone can do, he answers.

She wants to scream ''Of course there is!''

but she just shrinks inside herself and remains silent.

She has learnt the hard way that he is not receptive

to ''pep'' talks.

-I need to go to the shops, do you need anything? she asks him.

-Tobacco, can you get me some?

-Sure, I'll get you some.

She grabs her bag and gets into her car.

As she starts driving she decides to drive to

the beach first. 

Sitting in the car parked in front of the majestic Pacific ocean,

she begins to cry. 

Then, with nobody around, 

she screams as loud as she can into the white noise.

To love, can be hard.

    To love, can be painful.

         To love, can be frustrating.

       To love, can be alienating.

         To love, can be debilitating.

     And yet,

     love we must.

(Citizen Z)

about the image: edited photo shot with an old analogue Pentax

*At the moment my son and I are going through an extremely

difficult time. Though this post is deeply personal,

my guess is that there may be some of you who

may be experiencing something similar.

If so, know that you're not alone.

Living the Blues..........................

The Blues.

Music that comes straight from the inner most

parts of a human being.

''Gimme a pig foot and a bottle of beer'' Bessie Smith

(famous Blues singer)wailed on the old record player(gramophone)

 and from the first time I heard it, I was hooked.

Before there were vinyl records, there were Bakelite

records, also called ''78's''. In Sweden, where

I come from, they were called ''Stone Cake''

records.

Not long before my father passed away he handed

me a box of his prized 78's records.

As I browsed the content of the box, I was

overcome by childhood memories.

Those records are one of the reasons that

at the ripe old age of five, I decided that I was going 

to become a jazz & blues musician when I 

grew up.

Fast forward a bunch of years.>>>>>>>>

When I was doing a stint in the USA some years ago

 performing with some heavy-weight jazz musicians, one

night Cleve(Cleve Eaton, double bassist with among

others Count Basie's Orchestra and Ramsey Lewis)

 looked quizzically at me and asked: -How come a

little blue-eyed, white-haired kid growing up in

the suburbs of Stockholm ''gets'' the blues and jazz?

(I had told him that I had decided as a five year

old that I was going to become a jazz & blues musician.)

-Uhh, I really don't know Cleve, I just know that

from the moment I listened to my dad's old 78's

jazz and blues records, I had found a music that

knew and expressed everything that was 

in my heart and soul.

That's the thing with the Blues, it's raw, it's honest,

it tells it like it is.

Sometimes with words, sometimes with just instruments,

the Blues tells a story.

A story of what it feels like to be a human. 

When we cry when we laugh, when we love

when we grieve, when we're lonely when we're lost,

when we're happy when we're sad.

The Blues reminds us that we're not alone

when we suffer, when we struggle, when we feel

all alone.

''Every bad situation is a blues song

waiting to happen.''

(Amy Winehouse)

As a child, I used to try to get as close to the sound

I made on the piano as I could.

For hours I would press the keys searching for

sounds that responded to and expressed my feelings.

I discovered that music is a wave of emotion and

experiences in sounds that at times couldn't

be described with words.

''Music, [whatever the genre,] expresses that which

cannot be said and on which it is impossible

to be silent.''

(Victor Hugo)

about the images: top: Ink on paper

Billie Holiday, Lady sings the Blues

bottom: Graphite on paper

Light is more than a photosynthesis.........

Have you ever thought about ''light'' and how amazing it is?

I don't mean in a photosynthesis kind of a way, although

that's amazing too, no, I mean in the way light at times

can illuminate something ''ordinary'' in such a way that

it suddenly becomes extraordinary.

Extraordinary beautiful, amazing and enchanting.

Suddenly the rain stopped.

I put down my book on the table.

A sun beam touched my face and made

me look out through the window.

Hanging on to the edge of a leaf was 

a drop of water. Engulfed with sunlight

the drop glistened and sparkled like

the finest crystal. The beauty of that

drop, at that moment, had me breathless.

What I should have done was to grab my camera

and take a picture of it but I was so enthralled that

I just sat there and watched the drop until it fell

off the leaf.

That experience made me realize how beauty can be 

found in the most unexpected places and unexpected

situations.

This is a photo of some grass growing on the side

of my entrance. There is nothing special about

the grass, but for a brief second the sunlight fell on it

in such a way that it made it extraordinarily beautiful.

This time, I took a photograph of it.

The top image is a photo of broken pieces of glass

on top of a white chalked wall.

What made me stop and take a photo of those broken pieces, 

was the way the sunlight fell on them.

Somehow a broken beer bottle on a white background

 had become an impromptu, beautiful,

 ''art installation'' in my eyes.

Light is a form of energy, a type of electromagnetic

radiation that allows our eyes to ''see'' things.

However, what we see varies from person to person

as what we see, is filtered through our biases, perceptions

and cultural experiences.

Enjoying an art exhibition with a friend, suddenly before

us was a huge, yellow installation. (Really huge!)

It had an entrance at one end of it so I walked

in to it. As I found my way through it I was filled

with a sense of awe. Actually, I felt as if I had entered some 

sort of a cathedral....a blow-up yellow cathedral 

entirely made out of plastic. 

And the light, mmmm .........the light inside the installation 

was comforting, peaceful and calming. 

I don't really know how much time I spent in the cathedral,

but when I emerged from it my friend

was gone.

Later, when I finally caught up with her, I asked

her what she thought of the ''yellow cathedral''.

-Cathedral? What cathedral? Oh, you  mean that

yellow plastic monstrosity? she said.

Alas, we saw the same thing very differently.

In my view, 

just as light can turn something ordinary into

something beautiful and extraordinary, so can poor/dull/bad 

lighting turn something ordinary into something scary/

threatening/unwelcoming.

If we are seeking to find beauty in the ordinary, 

then a mindset that looks past the obvious subject

matter(thing/person/etc.) is very helpful as is patience and 

a bit of imagination methinks.

Have you ever used a kaleidoscope?

It's quite amazing.

With each turn a new beautiful image appears

as you hold it up to the light.

about the images: photos taken with an old Canon,

 the kaleidoscope image, watercolor on paper

some editing in Elements

Lonely people cast no shadow.............

 ''Les solitaires ne jettent aucune ombre.''

(Lonely people cast no shadow.)

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

not to see them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

not to hear them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to just ignore them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to look down on them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to misjudge them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to forget about them.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to disregard their tears.

Lonely people cast no shadows.

That's why it is so easy

to dismiss their humanity.

(Citizen Z)

''All the lonely people/Where do they all belong?'' 

Lennon - McCartney ask in their song ''Eleanor Rigby''.

A good question methinks.

Some say that although we may be more ''connected''

now then before we came up with the Internet,

paradoxically, we are apparently also lonelier.

According to Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University

psychiatrist: ''Internet-related technologies may give us

the perception of connectedness, the truth however he says,

is that the time and energy we spend on social media etc. comes

with the cost of missing out on more genuine and supportive

friendships.''

Numerous studies have found that spending a lot of time on

 social media can lead to feelings of depression, inadequacy

 and isolation as we compare our lives with everyone 

else's carefully edited versions.

Due to my son's illness I find myself spending a lot

of time in a variety of waiting rooms.

Doing so I have noticed that I am usually the only

one not scrolling or browsing (on) my phone.

I may be wrong, but sometimes I wonder if it is not

possible that our phones may create invisible barriers,

''bubbles'', which makes it possible for us to 

remain in our own ''worlds'', oblivious/unaware of 

the many splendored activities and bustling ''life'' that's

taking place everywhere, all the time, and all around us.

There are many places where we have to wait for our

turn.

At the shops, in banks, the dentists, the doctors, in hospitals,

in restaurants, in coffee shops, at the movies, at the bus stop

the train station, the airport etc. etc. etc.

Could these places not be viewed as excellent opportunities

for making new connections?

For making someone ''visible'' who may be feeling invisible?

The barista handed me my coffee. I still had half an hour to

kill. I scanned the food court and noticed an elderly woman

sitting alone slowly stirring her hot drink and staring into

nowhere. There was an air of sadness about her.

I decided to overcome my shyness and say something to her.

-Do you mind if I share this table with you? I asked.

-Please do, she said and then continued: -I haven't

spoken to a soul for days and I could do with a bit of

company.

Although once having been rebuked by someone for

starting conversations with ''strangers'', I have decided

that there are no strangers only potential friends

 I'm yet to meet.

''One of the most important things you can do on this earth

is to let people know they are not alone.''

(Shannon L. Alder)

about the image: graphite on paper, some editing in Elements

Oh, the reason for the French title is that I met a nice

 French speaking woman while waiting for my

son to have an ultra sound done on his heart. 

She translated it for me and it just sounded soooo good.