Balance
I am increasingly of the opinion that we go through life both leaving threads to find our way home, and shooting arrows into the future for us to find at a later date. And so it is, that a woman I met and worked with briefly 7 years ago sent me an email at the end of last year regarding an open call for creative writing around the topic of ‘caves’ for a magazine to accompany the ‘Hollow Earth’ exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary Art Gallery.
I’ve never actually been inside a cave, oh wait, I have once, in New Zealand, some sort of black water rafting experience, the ‘black’ referring to the fact that we couldn’t see as we floated down an underground river in an inner tube. Wow, I want a thread to connect me back to her! She was so much more adventurous/foolhardy (delete as you see fit) than the version of myself I am currently inhabiting! (Oooh and a quick Google search has brought it all back, including the magical glow worms on the roof of the cave that were beyond the reach of my myopic eyes!).
How different my submission might have been if I’d
remembered any of that at the time, but I hadn’t, and so a more metaphorical
approach was required, and what flowed was a piece about life on the threshold
of the cave: able to see the light of the sun, yet aware of the darkness behind;
a place of waiting, of watching; balanced between the two extremes.
Ostara is almost upon us, the celebration at the Spring Equinox where day and night are of equal length, a festival therefore of balance: masculine and feminine; light and dark; conscious and unconscious; inner and outer world; and, in nature, a time of sunshine and rain (which as a daily dog walker I can confirm are often found within moments of each other at this time of year).
Mr L, my boys and Simon (my good friend and teacher of Physics) will all confirm that my recollection of what I learnt at school is sketchy at best, but I do know that the point of balance is achieved as a result of two equal and opposite forces, in other words, it requires both. The glory of spring sunshine on the way to my tree this morning, the wind driving the sleet into my face on the way home - living between these two opposites is so much more preferable that the alternative, if that is some sort of constant state of greyness. Yet when it comes to the emotions of joy and pain, excitement and fear, how many times have I tried to protect myself from feeling the full extent of these in an attempt to hold the middle ground? And when, in the intervening 30 years between me and the girl I described above, did I become so risk adverse?
It was with utter delight that I received the news that my piece ‘Held’ is to be published in Response 6, the aforementioned magazine. Harder to write was the bit about me….
Pauline is an emerging artist, writer and arts facilitator, beginning to trust her intuitive voice and watching with interest what unfolds when she says ‘Yes!’ to the things that beckon. In the past year she has exhibited her textile work and had her writing published.
Thus, when the organisers of the launch event got in touch and asked if I would read my piece at said event this Friday, what could I say but ‘Yes’ in the hope that the fear will be offset by the excitement leaving me happy and content in the place in between.
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