poetry

Unnecessary Violence- random archiving of my Shadow Work Journals 1986 to present. Sample 9: September 1, 2004

| Kat Thorsen

This daily archiving series is about organizing and dating my journal collection, as well as acknowledging the self-directed violence as important therapeutic shadow work. Processing my projections and darkness.

There is much joy in the pages. There is also a lot of pain. I try not to judge my younger self. Who I was then, who I am now- inseparable. I continue to be sculpted.

Some pages are just… yuck. In particular, the divorce process.

Holy fucking shit. I have come a long way. Big breath in, big breath out and release.

See:

Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992

Sample 2 Date Dec 15 1994

Sample 3 May 16, 2000

Sample 4 August 14, 2002

Sample 5 June 13, 1990

Sample 6 August 23, 2019

Sample 7 December 17, 1995

Sample 8 October 23, 1995

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 [My “hard copy” collection- this blog has certainly been a journal as well]
Today: Journal Start Date September 1, 2004

Cover

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Sample Pages

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Sample Writing

September 1, 2004

Interacting leaves me tired. I’ve got to start anew, again. 

September 4, 2004

Maybe this is my lesson. That I can be right. To not diminish my rightness. Recall the Seattle bus incident and dumbing myself down to appease J____.

There is new grief and loss with each lesson learned. Did I waste all that energy silencing myself? Afraid to argue? Afraid to hurt others? Is this not me trying to control?! Is this not passive-aggressive on my  part?! Does it not diminish me when I try to avoid conflict?

September 8, 2004

The feeling of being in limbo is itself a loss. Even if the situation turns out fine. 

September 13, 2004

Can one express anger yet remain eloquently silent?

“I forgive you.” What does this mean? To me it means letting go of the past and its negative power over me. It means accepting all of it – good, bad, beautiful, ugly – and understanding it has shaped me…

Safe space. This is what I have created for myself and my children within the walls of my home. Can I extend this to my interaction with others in my life? 

Therapy notes: I and Other- presence, but maintaining I. Read Harriet Lerner’s “Dance with Anger” and the children’s book, “The Giving Tree.” PTSD, years of process, grieving, trauma, caregiving. Unprocessed grief. How to accept anger, express it, control it. Tactile, values, routine –> MUST divorce, in all its definitions. Art, analysis, family ties, self-confidence, decisions, archetypes, concrete examples, suicide, choices, independence, disentangling.

September 15, 2004

What are my goals?

My children’s independence, to write books, to work with teens, self-sufficiency, quiet life. Muteness.

September 26, 2004

Had a meeting over coffee on the porch at Mamma and Pappa. Pappa and I felt like there was a light directing us back to routine, back to excitement over work.

October 3, 2004

The seven drops [from “The Out of Sync Child has Fun”]

  1. Drop your voice
  2. Drop your body
  3. Drop your TV remote
  4. Drop your guard
  5. Drop your defenses
  6. Drop your batteries
  7. Drop your misconceptions.

Sample Drawing

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Sample Quote

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Flu poem. 

| Kat Thorsen

Walking my old dog in Stanley Park today oh so slowly.  My body brutalized by flu. Every joint aching.  My head pounding with a migraine.  Can there be creativity in that?  If I can stay truly present- not deny it or be annoyed by it- what words come out?  Where does my mind go if I ride this?  I let the words flow and type them into my iPhone…

These ghosts and angels

These relics of the past

This hope and the hopeless

The gentle and crass.


The pterodactyl yawning

Sacred robust

Fragile precarious 

The weight of the bus


The root and the rooted

The foot of a tree

The story left buried

Released not yet free


Let me just lie here a little while on this dirt floor shh… shh.. at the foot of this tree with a root for a pillow shh… shh… let me just close my eyes and try to stop the pain and nausea, pull a leaf over to over my shoulder, curl my left arm around my old dog shh… shh… let me just lie here awhile in the shelter of the rhododendron bush.  I don’t ask for much just a few minutes of shh… shh… and the root can wrap around us and pull us deep deep down into the dirt floor and I’ll just shh… shh… be here forever…

Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand. – Yeats

| Kat Thorsen

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WHERE dips the rocky highland

Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,

There lies a leafy island

Where flapping herons wake

The drowsy water rats;

There we’ve hid our faery vats,

Full of berrys

And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child! 

To the waters and the wild 

With a faery, hand in hand, 

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

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Where the wave of moonlight glosses

The dim gray sands with light,

Far off by furthest Rosses

We foot it all the night,

Weaving olden dances

Mingling hands and mingling glances

Till the moon has taken flight;

To and fro we leap

And chase the frothy bubbles,

While the world is full of troubles

And anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child! 

To the waters and the wild 

With a faery, hand in hand, 

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

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Where the wandering water gushes

From the hills above Glen-Car,

In pools among the rushes

That scare could bathe a star,

We seek for slumbering trout

And whispering in their ears

Give them unquiet dreams;

Leaning softly out

From ferns that drop their tears

Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child! 

To the waters and the wild 

With a faery, hand in hand, 

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

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Away with us he’s going,

The solemn-eyed:

He’ll hear no more the lowing

Of the calves on the warm hillside

Or the kettle on the hob

Sing peace into his breast,

Or see the brown mice bob

Round and round the oatmeal chest.

For he comes, the human child, 

To the waters and the wild 

With a faery, hand in hand, 

For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

William Butler Yeats, The Stolen Child

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[China marker portrait of Maryellen Groundwater]

The umbilical cord. Mother-daughter journal series. PART 3: Because you are only a seed

| Kat Thorsen

AS I MOVE FORWARD INTO NEW CHAPTERS IN MY LIFE, I HAVE DECIDED THAT IT IS TIME TO FOCUS FULLY ON ME.

(Hello, me!) 

IT IS FINALLY TIME TO PROCESS MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY MOTHER AND ALL THE DELICIOUS, SCARY, INTERESTING, HEART-WARMING, DEEEEEEEEP EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENTS, BLOCKAGES, PATTERNS ETC. THAT COME UP.

FULLY READY.  EXCITED.

—

THE UMBILICAL CORD

Recall PART 1: ACCEPTING THE TASK

Recall PART 2: IDENTIFY THE FIRST MILESTONE

—

PART 3: BECAUSE YOU ARE A ONLY SEED

Before I dig deeper into my journey as a daughter, I am pausing to draw inspiration from poetry and reflect on the potential we are all born with.

I start with the sketch.

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THEN FIND THE POEM.  I love how we can always find just the right one.

Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.

From Pablo Neruda, Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground

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

| Kat Thorsen
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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

A beautiful surprise in the mail! A book of poems by and from the inspiring Henry Denander!!

| Kat Thorsen

THANK YOU, HENRY!

I met Henry Denander when he backed my Kickstarter project, Molly!  I continue to be inspired as I find out more and more about this talented Swede!

Look what I got in the mail today!!!  Henry’s The Accidental Navigator:

Henry’s poetry is evocative of my fave, Charles Bukowski.  How delighted was I when I came across this poem by Henry?!

The package itself was a work of art.  Henry is an extraordinary artist (check out Kamini Press and Henry’s watercolors) and his presentation is impeccable.

Henry's art

My portraits of Henry:

 

Purchase The Accidental Navigator on Lummox Press!

Part 14 daily journal workshop. BE THE MAP. #arttherapy

| Kat Thorsen

Daily Journal Workshop:

Part 1 JUST WRITE

Part 2 DRAW OUT THE WORDS

Part 3 HEART

Part 4 SPILL OUT COLLAGE

Part 5 NAKED SCREAM

Part 6 INVITE ALTER STRETCH EXTEND

Part 7 ARISE AROSE IN 3’S

Part 8 SELF-PORTRAIT. HUMAN

Part 9 WORD CRAZY QUILT

Part 10 VINTAGE WORKOUT

Part 11 GESTURE DRAWING

Part 12 DEAR WORLD. SECRETS

Part 13 NEGATIVE – POSITIVE

—

Take your journal to a favorite place.

Café, Fort Langley, B.C.

Sit for awhile.  Now start writing.  Fill two pages.  Write about what you see and hear in the moment.  Forget grammar.  Just write.  Be present in the moment.

… Some people walking in and out.  A dog stares in the window, his owner walks out.  The waitress delivers coffee and sandwiches.  Her feet shuffle as she walks.  The girls behind the counter chatter about their previous jobs, jobs they want, jobs they’d never want.  The plates clank as they are taken out of the dishwasher.  I take a large sip from my cappuccino and get foam on my upper lip.  An old-fashioned truck drives by.  The windows are steamed up.  A family walks in…

Now randomly move your pen across the words, traveling through them, looping around random words.  Just dance with the pen across the pages, following a sub-conscious road map.

Write out the words that you randomly looped.

Trim up the words, forming them into a poem.

Tomorrow we play with lettering and make a comic book panel.

There’s a blue bird in my heart… Charles Bukowski, poet

| Kat Thorsen

Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 — March 9, 1994)

Coffee and Ink, 1999

 

 

 

 

"For Jocelyn" 2010. My muse, Jocelyn, and I share a deep love for Bukowski.

 

From Bukowski’s AS THE SPARROW

Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.

 

 

 

 

"Jocelyn and blue birds," 2010. Meet Jocelyn and her beautiful tattoos tomorrow night at my art event!

 

From Bukowski’s BLUEBIRD:

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

 

 

 

 

My Bukowski library- note original BLACK SPARROW PRESS editions!

 

Update MARCH 13, 2011:

 

 

 

 

“Georgina Peckhem-Krellner, Cupcake’s best friend. In Buk’s kitchen at Carlton Way,” 1999.   Jocelyn bought my ink drawing at the art event! “the one thing last night i HAD to have.” Jocelyn

UPDATE:

Add more tattoos on Jocelyn’s portrait at Art Hairapy and Suki’s Community Soirée June 26, 2011 (art event, hair show):