The darkening cathedral: processing the emotion of missing. #grief #saudade #journalexercise

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North Vancouver, December 27, 2012

I feel myself intertwined in the confusion of grief again.  It’s caught up to me and it wants to attach itself to my muddled brain as I try to sift and mindmap my next steps and make necessary changes to achieve emotional and financial balance in my life.  So as I am prone to do, I take out my “toolbox” and journal it out.  To sift through and detach, to clear the mind.

FIND IMAGERY AND POETRY THAT SPEAK FOR YOU.

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Mt. Seymour, North Vancouver, December 27, 2012

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The overhead horizon.  They want to say something, the dead.

They smoke but don’t eat, they breathe but still have their voices.

I’ll hurry through the streets as if I’m one of them.

The darkening cathedral, heavy as a moon, ebbs and flows.

– Tomas Tranströmer, Deep in Europe from For the Living and the Dead (translated from original Swedish by Don Coles)

Avlyssnad horisont.  De vill säga något, de döda.

De röker men äter inte, de andas inte men har rösten kvar.

Jag kommer att skynda genom gatorna som en av dem.

Den svartande katedralen, tung som en måne, gör ebb och flod.

– Tomas Tranströmer, Djupt i Europa from För levande och döda.

DIGEST AND REGURGITATE.

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I feel cleansed and ready to face it all.  To make it work!  To LEAP!  Love you, Mom and Dad.

Recall my post on SAUDADE:

Saudade is a unique Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English.  Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.  It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.  It’s related to the feelings of longing, yearning.  

Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again…  It can be described as an emptiness and the individual feels this absence…  In fact, one can have ‘saudades’ of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future.

source

See also:

Life has no opposite

Healing sock monkey watching over Dad

Document it.  All of it.

We’ve become a band of gypsies

Dad’s inner work

Dad’s last day

A pencil box. Regarded with reverence.

Change.  What does it mean?

Drawn Together

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Mt. Seymour, North Vancouver, December 27, 2012

2 Comments Add yours

  1. Anne Banner says:

    Lovely photos and I appreciate your mindmapping.

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