Emergence

In writing group tonight, the prompt was to reflect on the questions you currently have about your writing. Here's what I wrote.

How do you write about the drama that is occurring in the inner world - the rich and complex landscape of dreams, active imagination and synchroncities? How do you tell the unfolding story of the evolving psyche in crisis, the breaking down and reassembling of the persona into a new and more unified Self? How do you do this without seeming ridiculous, absurd, self-indulgent or just plain nuts?

In 2008 when I retired from teaching, I thought that I would finally be able to devote myself to writing. After 34 years of nurturing thousands of young writers, of being the mid-wife to the emergence of my students' stories, it was finally going to time for me.

The retirement coincided with the my children's graduations from college, then law school and graduate school, their growing independence and their marriages. Even MORE space and time for me to write, free from the constraints of motherhood, needing to spend less and less of my intellectual, emotional and psychic energy on the well-being of my children.

If only.

Instead of plunging into the writing life, I entered a quagmire of confusion, which lead to what, looking back, I now know was a breakdown. Well, maybe not a breakdown, but a dis-location and dis-integration of what had once been my oh so tightly held together identity.

With teaching no longer part of my life, I lost my public role. With my children no longer requiring my daily attention, I lost my private purpose and when I would sit down at my computer in my comfortable and lovely book-lined office, with all of the time in the world at my disposal to write, nothing worthwhile would come.

In his work, Carl Jung describes the process of individuation and the cataclysmic changes that can occur in the psyche in mid-life. I was able to postpone this eruption through my immersion in my family life and work until later - post mid-life and post menopause.

"What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate," he writes.

The holes created by the dropped stitches in the garment of our lives become too enormous to ignore as they threaten to engulf us -- if we do not allow ourselves to confront all of the aspects of ourselves we discarded in the construction of our personae.

And so it was that I found myself in the darkness of my life, wrestling with ghosts and shadows.

Emergence happened slowly for me, with no plan. First a mosaics course at Main Line Arts Center, where I relished breaking glass and reassembling the shards to create new images.

Next came photography where I started snapping my shadow everywhere - on the pavement, in the sand, in the ocean.

Then one day, while playing with a picture of tree on photoshop, I accidentally discovered a way to split the image and refract pieces of each picture back on itself, revealing a strange and new dimension with spirits, goddesses, mythical creatures appearing in the the spaces between.

A map of my inner journey.

I followed these images with ones of my face, splitting then recombining two left halves ( pretty, full-faced, inviting) and two right ( thin-faced, hard, unapproachable).

I began ordering materials from art supply companies, tiles, paints, adhesives, ephemeria and wood. They'd arrive on my doorstep in huge cardboard boxes which I would eagerly unpack, placing the new items on the window ledges and the worktable I'd purchased and planted opposite my writing desk.

I turned my photography into note cards and ceramic tiles, lined my shelves with mosaic boxes, mirrors, trays, vases, all made too quickly to give away to family and friends. My office of its own volition had been transformed into an art studio.

Last month, I took a collage class. It was here that I finally found the language I needed - a language of image, size, shape, color, context, juxtaposition - material that can convey and carry the complexities of my dreams and inner drama.

The pieces of my deconstructed face became part of totems set inside the refracted tree photos.

Colored glass fragments formed flowing tree-women whose arm/branches swayed in the pale blue sky - each glued piece grouted together with a paryer for healing and wholeness.

And the one I just envisioned today --- a round,fecund earth mother goddess, all breasts and womb, inside of which a beautiful tree is growing. The roots of the tree extend down through her feet and toes to the earth below as her branches reach towards the sky.

And on each bough? Thousands and thousands of buds, each one containing a brand new folded image just on the brink of blooming.

I am going to begin making this one tomorrow.

Breaking Glass

I am taking a mosaics class. I don't know if I consciously chose this class because I am in the process of falling apart, or, if as unconsciouses are want to do, mine selected it for me from a random list of classes at Main Line Art Center.

When I was a girl, I made things - pretty objects out of clay or yarn or fabric. I molded beads and pots, knitted sweaters and knotted macrame necklaces, I batiked pillows, and wove blankets and wall-hangings.

Then, one day, I stopped. No longer using my hands, I ceased living in my body and began spending all of my time in my head.

Pure mind is how I saw myself. Cool, crystal clear thought and theory. I could think my way out of my body, not feeling or sensing the concrete world around me.

Jung says that in the process of building our persona in the first half of our lives, the version of ourselves we create to interact with the outside world, if we ignore particular aspects of our psyche, say our sensory perception or our emotions, we do so at great peril. The shadow craves the light, he says, and that which we keep in the darkness of our unconscious will one day come to us as fate.

When I entered the mosaics class that first morning, I was still feeling a bit shaky. This fall marked the first semsester in thirty-six years that I wasn't teaching and it was the first time I had been in an art studio. There were three long tables lined up in a U and women were unpacking large canvas bags and laying their tools, materials and works in progress out in front of them.

One woman invited me to sit beside her and another took me out into the hallway to show me the large boxes of tiles, dishes, cups, bowls, vases, mirrors that were available for us to use.

The women continued to greet each other as they entered, catching up about their children, their families, their summers. I was the only newcomer to the class, but the others all made me feel welcome, eager to share the variety of projects they were working on and the interesting materials they were using like broken tiles, beads, fused glass, ceramics, bone china. Some worked small reassembling delicate pieces of shattered china; others worked large piecing together huge shards of colorful smashed pottery. Some were making useful objects like flower pots and bird houses; others were creating intricate pictures as detailed as a fine water color painting.

"I've been doing this for three years," the woman to my right said. "I've been doing it for five," said the woman to my left. She moved in and said a little more softly, "It's my therapy."

I was starting to relax, feeling like I'd made a good decision in selecting this course, but my anxiety returned when the teacher called roll and got all they way to the end without saying my name.

"Who are you?" she asked, looking at me with not unkind eyes.

"Marsha Pincus," I replied just as she was saying, "Oh! You're registered for the 1 o'clock class."

I panicked. It was just like this newly broken down fragmented version of my self to screw up the schedule -- I had been doing this a lot lately --- missing appointments, mixing up times -- my not so unconscious rebellion against decades of rostered structure: 8:09 to 8:54, first period; 10:13 to 11:01, lunch; 3:03,dismissal.

I was about to start walking towards the door when I heard her musical voice say, "They must have made a mistake in the office. I'll tell them you're in this class. I see you already feel at home with this group. Stay."

The process of individuation which one can experience in mid or post mid-life involves the total breakdown of the persona. It cracks and crumbles, no longer able to contain all that is going on in the psyche. And presumably, or so I have read, after the breakdown and fragmentation, one becomes whole.

I wonder how this happens. Will there be a soft whoosh one day followed by a ka-chung when all of the pieces fall into place? Or will it be more gradual and painful, like the knitting together of broken bones?

The teacher, Carol, has us go around the room and introduce ourselves, each woman saying what brings her here, what she is working on in her mosaics and where she is in her life. When it is my turn, I say my name and start to tell my story --- the one I have been telling lately about my life --- how I taught writing for 36 years, how I spent most of my adult life supporting and inspiring others, how this class is going to be a turning point for me, an new begining, but before I could finish, the friendly woman who'd offered me a seat beside her exclaimed, "You're that famous English teacher who taught all of those kids to write plays!!!"

"I used to be," I managed to say starting to shake.

Later, she told me her name is Judy and that she taught for 39 years at Community College and that she knew my friend Adele Magner- the founder and director of Phildelphia Young Playwrights. Before her death on January 6, 2000, Adele had been my closest friend, mentor and advisor. Ten years older than I, she was my guide and I could always count on her to show me the way through whatever was coming next in my life.

I reached over to touch Judy's arm after sharing our stories and memories of Adele. A warm current pulsed through me as I felt Adele's loving presence beyond the grave.

In the Jewish tradition, a groom breaks a glass beneath his foot, right before the couple's marriage is officially declared. There are lots of interpretations for this ritual, but the one I like the best goes like this - the breaking of a glass marks an end to what was and points simultaneously to a new beginning. After the breaking of the glass, the crowd erupts in joyous cheers. "L'Chaim!" To Life!"

After the class was settled in, after all of the announcements and introductions were completed, I went into the hall and gathered dishes from the bins of offerings on the shelves. I stacked them neatly at my spot on the work table.

And Carol, with the kind eyes and musical voice, came up beside me, put a dish in one of my hands, and a pair of tile nippers in the other, then holding me steady she said,
"Okay Marsha! Let's break some glass!!!!"

L'Chaim!