Drawing stars back in the sky

“Always make a definition or sketch of what presents itself to your mind, so you can see it stripped bare to its essential nature and identify it clearly, in whole and in all its parts, and can tell yourself its proper name and the names of those elements of which it is compounded and into which it will be dissolved.”

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 3:11.

Sometimes numbers only make sense when we start to draw them, shift them around on the page, try to find the balance point. Or when we move. During a time of great stress, which felt like mourning, I decided to walk to the beach and watch the sunrise for 40 days, just to see, with my own body, what this number is. If it is anything?

I saw rocks turn from black to silver in predawn light. I saw pale slashes of red bloom in the grey for seconds only. On clear mornings, palest blue washed the background sky, while a radiation of gold condensed at the horizon. Then the arc, the first crest of the sun, this brilliant burning. It’s hard to describe the jolt of joy every time I saw that arc. On some mornings shafts of light crossed the water and lit my feet. Other days I’d be on the beach in the dark asking: is it ever coming up?

For the first time in my life it occurred to me: the sun has been coming up for millennia. Something Ekhart Tolle wrote flickered in my peripheral vision: there is no time.

One precious day, the full moon sank to the west while the sun rose in the east. I was on the rocks as usual, waiting-meditating (for the war to end, a war which had only just started). My dogs milled about eager for something to happen. I looked over my shoulder at the full moon and thought: if I run over to that patch of beach, I’ll be able to stand between the sun and the moon, for a moment. So I ran with the dogs to a sand dune where a line sprang between the sun and the moon, and I stood on that line. 

My body understood: I am on a planet moving through space. 

Remembered joy. I feel it now, writing this, a radiation which starts at my feet and emanates from my chest, and I have to tell you this surprises me at this moment, I thought I could only feel it then: on that line between the sun and the moon.

Recently, I tried Fleur Wood’s idea of 100 days of creativity. My rule for this one was simple: make something every day for 100 days. Sometimes it was only two rows of knitting. I painted, drew and wrote, some of the writing exists here in my last three posts. I re-drafted and sent eight new chapters of the novel I thought I’d never finish (still haven’t) to my dear friend Elena. I noticed: fear wasn’t around so often as it used to be. Performance and getting-it-right drifted into the background in the light of: just-make-something. 

I started surfing playfully again, after a nearly year-long hiatus of fear-numbed-swamping. At some point, I swapped out a word and surfing became prayer. Blow-back spray took my tears. Wind carried my keening. My hands hovered over soft bubbles of foam. Gratitude. The sea, as it grew colder, concentrated into blue glass. Light tessellated underwater, crabs walked and seaweed rolled.

I interviewed Claire Beynon. She said, ‘drawing lights the way.’

For days (weeks) after that interview, I have no ideas for my next post here. Usually I’ve got some inkling of a story from my work with the Heritage team at the library. But I had nothing. 

Then one morning, I startled awake, thinking of an image, a lucid dream:

It’s the very old past, and a woman stumbles to her knees. She’s silent, knowing there is no hope except to hope for the end. She’s cowed at the feet of a young teacher, the people who have dragged her there and want to test his knowledge of the law. They’re fed up with this radical young guy, his ideas which push against the old traditions. They’ve got him this time. They’re on the steady ground of rightness, the evidence is all in. Her hands which made bread in the morning kneed dust, instead of the sweet crush of rosemary she breathes the crowd’s sweat. Her heart beats wild and hopeless. Her life reduced to: an example. 

I resist hard. I’m not going to write about that.

I decide. I’m going to draw for 100 days. See if I can find out what Claire and Marcus mean when they say: ‘drawing lights the way,’ and ‘draw what is before you.’ And then I’ll write about drawing.

The lucid dream won’t leave me. I’m not going to draw it. So I examine it in my mind.I think of my interview with Claire Beynon and ask what is at the back of the work?

In the lucid dream: I’m sitting behind the teacher. I’m listening but I don’t want to be visible. I’m shining with fear, I’m in a cloak. I realise at once I’m myself, I am her, and I am the crowd holding stones. I’m afraid for the teacher.

I’m not going to write about that.

I talk at length with my friend Carolyn McCurdie about judgement. Is judgement at the heart of war? The need to be right? Judgement rises in me all the time. I talk with Carolyn about not wanting to write what seems to be asking to be written, and she says, ‘We are afraid of judgement.’ Ah. Clunk. And I’m back in the story I woke with.

There is a magnificent and volatile silence. The woman on the ground lets tears fall, the last water she will know, the last day.

The teacher draws on the ground.

Wait? He’s drawing? I’ve always skipped this bit. Considered it a mere piece of narrative pacing. 

A new question forms: can drawing lead to — mercy?

When the teacher finally speaks he starts with: let. In my seat behind the teacher, I so desperately need everyone to put down their stones, I think: ‘let’ is not the right word. Don’t say let. Ekhart Tolle chimes in: put aside the need to be right.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 

There’s complete stunned silence. Everyone looks inside themselves. Stones fall to the ground. I feel the relief of this release from the net of judgement, free to live without violence. The woman’s life is returned to her. Her life absolutely matters.

Still, I resist this story for a few more days. I walk with the dogs. The waves are huge, they curl and slap. Salt spray wakes me. Winter sunshine. Driftwood trees have shifted in strong currents. As I walk, I understand: the teacher released himself too. He’s not forced by the word decide. We can extend mercy to ourselves.

So, after days of resistance, I sit down to write this story. I think, I better actually look it up in the actual Bible rather than just writing down my dreams. So I find the story in John 8. And. There’s no drawing. The word is ‘writes,’ as in he “writes on the ground with his finger.” 

Words.

Sometimes research doesn’t help us say exactly what we want to say. What I’m interested in here is the moment of the pause, where our hand makes shapes in the dirt, and in making the shapes profound shifts in perception are possible. The question that remains with me is:

What would happen if we all started drawing? 

I know what you’re thinking: it’s easy for you, you’re an artist. Except I’m not. I’m not actually all that interested in drawing, I’m not trying to draw well, or draw anything that will be seen. I draw to see. I draw to understand. Here’s one, in case you think this is false modesty and I’m really a secret drawing-genius.

I call this drawing of the constellation Taurus: stars fall out of the sky. I use a pen, a pencil if I can find one. I use the cheapest line-free notebook I can find at the bookstore. I have no interest in being good at drawing or getting better. That is not the point. The point is to see what happens if I draw.

In her mind-blowing book Syllabus Lynda Barry brings forth the idea that when we stop drawing, we lose access to part of our brains. 

So I’m drawing for 100 days. Maybe I’m getting back part of my brain. Certainly at times, my mind feels alive when I draw. I’ve drawn the people in the bus, trees, rocks, my writing group. I’ve stopped on the Alhambra football ground in floodlight (straight after Penelope Todd’s book launch of Nell (which is so beautiful, just read it)), and drawn Taurus between a young oak and old one, while at my back young people played rugby. I turned to watch them for a while in the floodlights. This playing. These precious young people not-at-war. Old oaks and redwoods held arms over them. I’m so grateful for this, for their lives. One player saw me watching, in the way a person stops to observe a bird in a tree. I am here too, I realised. The scene I didn’t draw, the rugby, the floodlights, the young people: this is what I recall when I look at the rushed purple felt-tip drawing of Taurus between two oaks. 

I’ve drawn concepts too: stars falling to the ground, because this is what trauma feels like. My next idea for a conceptual drawing is to draw us (you and me) reaching up to put the stars back in the sky. 

STORM
I decide to stay another 
day for the storm, the last
grass of autumn flows like water
wild black poplar leaves brace 
and surrender wrench spin fall so 
like people staggering
slow in the unfamiliar rush. 
I become a whale submerged
in sound I breathe and dive and flex
taps, knocks, clicks and whirrs
hurtling whoosh and gradual roll
I swim lithe and bending
with the eels of the wind in the
call, in the shiver, in the send 
in the go-with, go-with.

~ by Kirstie McKinnon
[first published in the Otago Daily Times].

I had another poem to put here, with rocks and judgement in it, but I decided Storm more closely captures the idea I’m trying to get at: draw what is before you.

Several books sit at the back of this work and have influenced me immeasurably, and continue to be my teachers:

Syllabus by Lynda Barry.

The Untamed Thread by Fleur Woods.

The Power of Now by Ekhart Tolle.

Switch on your Brain by Caroline Leaf.

The Bible.

Rising Strong by Brené Brown.

Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott.

Stitches by Anne Lamott.

How to Raise an Elephant by Alexander McCall Smith.

When I Reach for your Pulse by Rushi Vyas.

Question:

Have you stopped drawing? Or do you draw, and if you do, what does this mean for you?

Possible Study Group Idea:

I’m thinking of starting a study group which runs for 6 weeks looking specifically at the book Rising Strong by Brene Brown. I’ve read this book around five times, and I still feel like, I’m not quite getting it. Conversation is a key to understanding for me, so I wonder - would you be interested in reading it with me and discussing the ideas? Especially the narrative storytelling aspect of ‘owning our story,’ as this part interests me greatly. There’d have to be a few ground rules, as it would be easy to get swamped in each other’s stories I think, so I’d want the discussion to stay safe and interesting, without being too heavy. I’m no expert, so this would simply be a peer discussion group, with maybe some writing, and or drawing. Apologies to those that don’t live here, but for now: this will just be a group that meets in Dunedin at the Blueskin Bay Library meeting room on Saturday mornings for 6 weeks. Tentative dates are late June-July. No cost (oh, except you’d have to buy a copy of the book as the library copies are always out on loan). So far I have sorted the room and have 2 people (yes, that includes me). So I think 3 makes it viable. Send me a message if you’re keen?

Let me know if you start drawing.

Kirstie