Colour

 Goethe's Colour Wheel

What is colour? Is it intrinsic to the object or a creation of neural processing? An article I found here entitled Colour Plays Musical Chairs In Our Brain intrigued me. 

"One view," says Noë, "is that color is a property of the surfaces of objects, not the property we naively think we see, but maybe something like a disposition to absorb and reflect light of certain wavelengths... another view is that... color happens to us. The leaves in the tree are not green. Greenness is just something that happens. In me it’s a kind of sensation that is produced thanks to the activation of my nervous system by those leaves." 

 So, what do you think? What is colour, anyway? 

Dear Sylvia

This post inspired by DVerse ~ write a poem about an imagined conversation/interaction with a famous and/or historical person of your choice.

image credit: Miss Cartier

"An owl's talons clenching at my heart." 

I have found no way out of the mind, either.

Did he annihilate you? Did he crush your flesh?

Why did you and I desire the thing 

that would destroy us

in the end?

Why?

Why did you do it?

When did 

thick and sluggish
cease to become
enough?

Why did so many people

fail you?

Why could no one

see

your despair anguish,

piercing through 

that veil of

paper thin feelings

which weighed so heavily 

in your mind and on your soul?
Could no one see through
the veil?
I think, perhaps, 
many,
finding it tiresome, 
chose not to.

How do we banish

that dark, shadowy thing

which lurks within?

Oh, how I wish

I could talk to you.

How I wish

I could 
touch you,
through your words,
sodden
with your pain.

Is it wrong of me,

is it schadenfreude
or perhaps, selfish,

to want to experience 

your pain and despair

through words
you've written

so that I feel

less solitary

in my own

pain and despair?

The Scintilla Project, Day 7

image credit: Rubber Slippers In Italy

This post is inspired by The Scintilla Project, day 7 prompts ~ (A). Write about someone who was a mentor for you and (B). What have been the event horizons of your life - the moments from which there is no turning back?

(A). Write about someone who was a mentor for you.
He watched me, from afar, for at least a year before we spoke, before we first met. I, a naive 17 year old catholic girl did not think it creepy to have a married man stalking me. In fact, it made me feel special, pretty, important. I liked the seemingly random sightings at the shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon. It didn't take me long to figure out his schedule and make sure to take the same bus home from school. Yes, I was still in school; grade 12 to be exact. An entire day centred around one very small moment, in which I walked past him on the bus. This stranger, he consumed me. Suddenly my whole life revolved around him, around his timeline. I never thought it dysfunctional. I never considered the appropriateness of a thirty-something year old married man making the moves on me, a 17 year old girl who'd never been kissed.

We met. In an instant he grabbed my heart with such a fierceness, never to let go. I loved him so intensely and obsessively. It hurt to love him. I raged at the confines of our relationship, caged as it was by his familial obligations. Parts of me wanted to let go. Most of me simply could not. I could not let go of this relationship anymore than I could survive without a heart beat. And so I hung on. And while I longed for some one true and steadfast, as I watched my friends, one by one, get married and have families of their own, this entrapment of a relationship felt quite safe to me. He never demanded sex, in the way that men do when they feel they've earned it. 

Going against his better judgement, he became my boss, creating a position for me in the government department branch which he headed. Windows had just come out. DOS was still the norm. Corel Draw was on version 3. He taught me all about computers, the nerdy nuts and bolts stuff like DOS lingo. He purchased my university text books. He proofread my essays, helping me streamline my writing. Looking back, I think he felt like more of a father figure/mentor than he did a lover. And I lied to myself, refused to believe that, as long as I remained, clutching onto him, waiting for his marriage to end, I would close myself off to any other possibilities, to any real chance at true love and devotion.

image credit: Tristam Sparks

(B). What have been the event horizons of your life - the moments from which there is no turning back?

The divorce became final on December 25th, 2011. We filed jointly. When we signed the various documents that filing entails, I knew in my heart of hearts that I'd reached the point of no return. We'd come to a mutual agreement that divorce seemed like the best step we could take to save the we of he and I. You see, divorce didn't end our relationship, it provided a new beginning. A new beginning at which I can no longer reach for that which dissolved into dust behind me. Martin and I see each other several times a week. We live in the same building, on the same floor. We share often share the supper meal together. He remains devoted, as ever, not really needing a piece of paper or jewelry to live monogamy. I realize, now, that he never, ever did.

Still. My divorce has been this dirty little secret I've chosen to reveal to very few people. As in, I could count the number of people on one hand. I so proudly displayed my married status on Facebook before the divorce. Now, though, I've chosen to leave that space blank. I do not feel pride in my status as divorced. In fact, I feel a spectre of shame wash over me whenever I think of myself as divorced. I failed the relationship. I could have done some things differently. I could have been less of a selfish and manipulative control freak. 

Guilt. That's one of those few Catholic remnants in me that refuse to die. Then there's belonging. Society tells those of us who aren't married that we don't belong. Marriage seems like a kind of society-sanctioned co-dependence ~ two become one. Co-dependency had a stranglehold on our marriage. It provided a vehicle for dysfunction to creep into the relationship. Divorce has sliced through all that. We're still together as a couple. We definitely still love each other. And we each have the solitude which our introverted selves require, solitude which tradition married life does not provide. This, I believe, strengthens our relationship. 

“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” 
 ~ Katharine Hepburn

Scintilla Project Day 2

 

image credit: YamiCHi

This post is inspired by The Scintilla Project's Day Two prompt B ~ Tell the story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3….)

Once upon a time I loved a psychotic narcissist. I loved him, despite his fits of rage which bordered on abusive, because I believed he filled an empty ache which plagued my spirit. He resembled a grenade with a loose pin. It took me five years to realize how he poisoned my spirit and psyche (and to realize just how abusive he really was!). In that time, I tried so hard to love him better, believing him when he told me, the fault lay within me. I came up with a list of instructions, instructions which answer the question, How do you love a man who resembles a grenade with a loose pin? 

1. Never contradict him, imply that he made a mistake, or imply his culpability in anything
2. The fault always lies with me, and I am eternally wrong and insufficient
3. When he tells me I'm free as a bird, he means a caged bird ~ I am his capture, and live only inside a bell jar of his creation
4. He feels satisfaction only when I behave myself in the bell jar ~ that means making him my world
5. Forget that, when he tells me he loves me, he means it in the same way a fashionista says she loves her shoes
6. Forget about the fact that, eventually his rage will drive him to kill me
7. Never mind that, when he does, he'll lay the blame on me
8. Leave him at my peril ~ when he feels abandoned by me, he'll unleash the full force of his unrepentant rage [see no. 6]
9. Cling to that fantasy-notion of him which I've conjured in my mind, forget about the monster, the grenade with the loose pin; make all the excuses I can for him and his monstrous behaviour
10. Believe his lies, never doubt him, even when I suspect or know of his dishonesty
11. When Police take him away because he is too drunk and belligerent, take that God-given opportunity to RUN, make a clean break from him

Sunrise

“The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” 
~ John Muir

“What breaks in daybreak? Is it the night? Is it the sun, cracked in two by the horizon like an egg, spilling out light?” 
~ Margaret Atwood

“You may not be down to your final heartbeat, but you may be down to your last paycheck, solution, or thimble of faith. Each sunrise seems to bring fresh reasons for fear”
~ Max Lucado

Reflections

image credit: More Raindrop Reflections, a photo by RoxanneGalpin on Flickr

I miss you. However wrong that seems, I miss you. Despite the monster you became, the one I had to run from, I somehow have this delusion that you loved me. I tell myself that a sociopathic narcissist lacks the capacity to love. And then I lie to myself, insistent upon your love for me. Am I deluded, or a liar? I’m never sure. I can only describe our time together as surreal. I feel as though the monster wasn’t you. As though, you liked to play with gamma rays in your younger days and that’s the cause of that raging monster which manifests itself inside your body. How can that monster, who deliberately set out to physically harm me, be you ~ a loving man who held me tightly in the aftermath of a frightening nitemare? You became a frightening nitemare, one from which I had to escape, fearing for my life. How is it that I can still love you after all that?
 ~Roxanne Galpin

I wrote that almost two years ago. And yet, the sentiment still seems quite real to me. I made quite a mess of things by taking a beautiful dangerous angel as a paramour. I will call him my paramour because he was forbidden fruit for me, a married woman. I committed an unforgivable faux pas. And sent my marriage into pain filled ruins. What I did was, to me, unforgivable. And fraught with so much pain and longing. A longing that darkens and desiccates the heart. Oh, did he hurt me. And still, with the approaching holidays, I find myself thinking about him. I don't understand how love can overlook all the pain my paramour inflicted upon me.

He frightened me with his drunken rages. He violated me, disregarded my whimpers of pain and pleas for him to stop. And still, I loved him. He raged at me. Time and time again. He struck me, and left a bruise. And still, I wanted to make a future with him. Why? Did I think that I didn't deserve any better? Did I place such little value in myself? I don't have the answer. Perhaps I never will. I'm just beginning to learn that I do deserve better, much better. And so, I keep myself at a distance, prevent myself from thinking of him. For nothing good can come from thinking about my paramour. It would be so easy to pick up my phone and text him. And then I ask myself, what's the point? The answer? There's no point. Only anguish, self-inflicted anguish.

I've learned to savour and cherish the now and all it's richness. I've learned that wrapping myself around the past, however painful, brings nothing but aching inertia. I've learned that, all along I had a man who loved and cherished me ~ my one true thing. I've learned that, sometimes you have to burn the house down in order to rebuild it to it's proper and beautiful form. That's what my life has been about these past 3 years ~ disassembling and reassembling. When I think of the pain I caused my one true thing, I shudder. And when I think of the forgiveness I received from him, I feel so humbled.

I think of healing as a life long process. I think that I've yet to forgive myself for the chaos my decisions and actions caused my one true thing and others who love me. I also think that every unwise decision we make and every painful obstacle we encounter make us the person we've become. And every circumstance that renders us bare and exposed ~ i.e. leaving almost everything I owned behind to go to drug treatment ~ teaches us the true value of life and the people in it.

Not everyone gets a second chance. I did, though. And I feel incredibly grateful for it.

No Words

I cannot go on like nothing has happened. Because something has happened. 26 lives were taken, 20 of them tiny lights that had barely begun burning, and 6 of them teachers, wives, daughters, aunts, mothers, sisters, friends. We are NOT supposed to worry about our children's' safety when they are at school. Children should not feel unsafe at school. Children should not worry about the bad guy coming back to get them. Parents should not survive their children. This is so wrong, so against nature. I watched the news coverage Friday evening, and it gave me chills. It also left me feeling so incredibly sad.

image credit: greenleaf-stock

This is not the time to talk about gun control, or about the social and moral underpinnings of society or about this culture of violence that seems to have swept across society. This is a time to grieve. Plain and Simple. 40 parents are reeling from the loss of their 6 or 7 year old child. Wrap your head around that. Hug your children and other loved ones. Remember the reason for the season. (Hint, it's not presents or shopping or amassing more and more stuff.) Love. Just love.

Light

The picture is mine, taken on retreat [here]

The words are those of Martin Luther King.

I Believe ...

Flowers