« VLC's Last Day | Main | How's the Llama? »
August 27, 2005
Lifeline
You bloggiefriends think you know me pretty well by now, and in fact you do. But there are things you don't know about me. Some of them you don't want to know... I am world-renowned as the Queen of Too Much Information... but some are relatively harmless and family-friendly.
For example, I bet you didn't know that I am an art person. That is ART PERSON. No, I don't draw or paint or sculpt... my finest artistic effort was a little stick figure named Will that my mother and I drew when I was small and invoked whenever we needed some cosmic help getting something done... but I love art. I practically minored in art history in college. One semester, I designed my entire course schedule around the concept of looking at pretty pictures. Three art history classes and a course on fractals. Very, very pretty. I chalk up this love of art to the artists in my family: my grandfather was a professional painter and photographer, my cousin in a very successful movie set designer and art director. I also credit my parents, who used to drag me to the North Carolina museum of art time after time after time. I complained, but secretly I loved it, especially the Egyptian art. I had a major obsession with all things Egyptian when I was a child and at one point read about fifteen Cleopatra biographies and was fairly convinced that I was in fact her reincarnation. Yes, I know she was not Egyptian, but Greek. She used to fantasize that Alexander the Great would be reborn and would come to sweep her off her feet, and look, she caught Julius Caesar, to which I say, "You go, girl!"
Anyway, I love art and I love art museums and I was downright obsessed with the Yale Art Gallery when I was in college. I knew every work, every room, and studied the fantastic installations in that little museum until I could show you every brilliant angle and give you some kind of interpretation of what it meant.
If I ever ask you to go to an art museum, I am trying to seduce you. [It suddenly dawns on MR that I have asked him to go to the art museum. This must mean that I am trying to seduce him. I know that might seem obvious to all by this point, but I've learned in the last few days that the men in the R. family can be a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to matters re: girls.]
One of my favorite art history classes in college was a seminar taught by Jules Prout, a *(^^ing brilliant art historian, on the works of Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Wow, it was a rockin art history seminar. Hours and hours of staring at Homer and Eakins works in the art museum. I was on an almost constant art buzz.
In the last few days, for reasons apparently unrelated to CR, a favorite painting by Homer jumped back into my head. You can go look at it here. It's called The Lifeline.
Apparently back in the day they used to rescue people from sinking ships by firing a thing called a breeches buoy out of a cannon onto the deck of the sinking vessel and then running this little pulley back and forth to the shore with people in it. Pretty scary way to travel... it had a piece of floating cork that would for the most part keep the person inside from drowning, but there could be a considerable amount of time spent under the water during the trip.
I was drawn to the image of this painting again recently because I found myself using drowning as a metaphor in attempting to describe an experience that felt to me like being pulled out of the water. The first time I saw The Lifeline when I was in college, I was struck by the sexual imagery (I was constantly being struck by sexual imagery when I was 20, and if you were honest you would admit that you were too) but didn't look far beyond... looking at it now I am entranced by the sight of the powerful lines that anchor the ship to the shore as the unconscious woman is reeled in by her faceless rescuer. I have the odd, sometimes entertaining, sometimes irksome habit of seeing other people's thoughts and feelings almost as though they were literal, physical objects... for instance, I can have my back turned and be playing with the food processor when MR has a briefly distressing thought, and I will feel his thought like I've been hit with a small laser beam and turn around to say, "What's wrong?" This ability makes me empathic like Deanna Troy, and a bit annoying to anyone who is trying to hide something, but it also makes me unusually appreciative of anyone who is able to extend a psychic lifeline to me in a time of need.
My recent experience of being "pulled out of the water" was a short, sharp shock [HW: Pink Floyd quote is intentional.] But looking at the painting caused me to reflect once more upon the gentle, life-saving reeling in effect that MR's writings had on me as CR pulled me out of the water of ill-health and anxiety. I felt him pulling me up through the electrons, across the distance [nearly 3000 miles! Yikes! Glad the long distance part is over!] and through the seemingly impersonal format of email that wasn't even to me! His writings to the CR Society list gave me a lifeline to ride to the safety of my now CR'd lifestyle.
In writing the blog, I hope to throw to you a little lifeline. Whether or not you jump in and risk the stormy seas of hunger, conflict with family and friends, and just plain lifestyle change, is up to you. This journey isn't easy, and the waters can be downright rough. But like the rescuer whose face is obscured by the red scarf in the painting, I won't let you go. I'll keep showing up, day after day, writing you the silliest details of my life and the best recipes I can come up with. To paraphrase Don Henley: I will stand here in this fire with you.
I wonder if there is a limit to how many times I can legally quote pop music before I have to start paying the artists royalties. Let me push the envelope here, with a mixed metaphor of sorts:
And will you stand here in this fire with me?
And are you ready for another life?
I bit that bullet, I took that vow
And everything is different now.
Love angel music baby
Hurry up and come and save me.
Love angel music baby
Bloodsugar, sex, magick.
Eggwhites, brewers yeast, flax oil, kale.
In my mouth, in my kitchen, in my measuring cups and not particularly good measuring spoons, be the essence of the radically extended life.
The Goddess is coming. Drink to her, burn perfumes to her, and consider adding some protein to your breakfast. Cereal is for losers.
Posted by april at August 27, 2005 12:49 PM