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.
See previous samples:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal start date December 16, 2004
Cover
Sample Pages
Sample Writing
Sample Drawings
Sample Quote
“… do not guess, try to count, and if you cannot count, admit that you are guessing.” – G. Kitson Clark
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 – even from last week, or yesterday or 5 minutes ago. Who I was then, who I am now- inseparable. I continue to be sculpted.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date September 6, 1999
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Sample Pages
My daughter’s high school…
Sample Writing
October 19, 1999
Slowly seem to be attempting to get back to actually writing personal thoughts in my journal again as opposed to collecting images and research material. Perhaps I am inclined to do this because of the lines on these sheets or because that is what Universe is calling me to do. But is it really any more “journalistic” to write words than collect the artifacts of my life and interests?
[Note: There was of course the daily struggles of money, special eduction services, just being a mother, daughter, wife, artist, etc. Life was puttering along on the Sunshine Coast. My kids and I, super happy. My relationship with my parents, great. I was corresponding weekly with my mother in law. The house was being renovated. I, however, was in denial about a lot of things happening “behind the scenes” – wasn’t writing much personal stuff in my journal, keeping a mask on, not knowing that in a year and a bit the marriage was ending and that I was sharing my life partner with another woman. I really actually thought we were happy. I cannot judge myself for my “head in the sand” approach or him. It was the way it was then. So be it. That time resides in these journals. I leave them there. It has shaped us into the so much happier humans we are today. But the pain that was around the corner, climaxing in April 2001, would at times be soul shattering.]
November 9, 1999
Enjoying my upstairs studio! A ROOM OF MY OWN! And despite the first night of guilt and bizarre feelings of displacement and listening to new sounds – we are getting used to the living room as our bedroom and it looks beautiful.
December 1999 My son’s letter to Santa.
He opened his gift and it was a large Beanie Baby golden retriever.
“There is no Santa.”
It was HEARTBREAKING. I was a piece of shit.
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“His voice, synchronized to the shadow of a pinhead, intoxicates him. He hears a roar where others hear only a squeak.” – Henry Miller
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, as well, and certainly in the daily life “behind the scenes.” The blood and guts of family life.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date December 17, 1995
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Sample Pages
Sample Writing
December 19 1995
The times when my son is down with a migraine, I have to really focus on his health and creating a dark soothing environment around him. It is at these times I see how old his soul is. He has lived many times and carries so much pain and the weight of knowledge and understanding with him. Sometimes I feel that school is killing him. His omnidirectional thinking needs an omnidirectional environment, but a classroom needs linearity… I feel like I’m letting my son down by doing too much. And in the process, I am losing sight of him and his needs. I must find a way to obtain simplicity.
December 27 1995
Christmas finis. Just finished the house. J____ out with the kids. A relaxing, piddling morning. Looking forward to getting on the computer to explore Painter. Also some quiet time to writing my thoughts. “The Artist’s Way” scared the hell out of me, do I dare get back to that journal? Jesus Christ Superstar on in the background. My favourite movie since Grade 6. I am exhausted beyond exhaustions yet cannot go to bed. The head races with so many thoughts that weigh me down. Why is it always these times when I write more? Probably because the words spilled out on paper give me that relief I am searching for. On paper, the thoughts need no longer weigh down my mind.
December 29 1995
We were so distant in the last 2 days, a distance that has been hammered down in me due to over-thinking. But I came back and gave myself to J____ and we fell in love all over again. [won’t bother writing X-rated details here]. God, how I love this man. Our souls will live together forever. While we have our earthly bodies, I want to feel them against each other, loving each and every precious moment.
December 30, 1995
Now sitting at the Sushi bar at Library Square, feeling very cosmopolitan and back on track. Why do I need to write these details as life whirls around me? Perhaps because I am so overwhelmed with the gift called LIFE that in order to DEAL with it, I have to record just minuscule detail.
January 1, 1996
We stayed up until 12:30 AM and we had a family blast. Julian was healthy(!) and Anna was a party animal!
January 3, 1996
I know it is trivialities that I write, but it is exactly these trivialities that evoke the atmosphere of this particular present. This peaceful beautiful existence will evolve into another peaceful beautiful existence, but I do want to retain memories of the particular parameters in which we love right now.
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“I wish I could do whatever I liked – behind the curtain of “madness.” Then I’d arrange flowers, all day long. I’d paint pain, love and tenderness. I’d laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say, “Poor thing! She’s crazy!” Above all, I’d laugh at my own stupidity. – Frida Kahlo
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.
It is as difficult as I anticipated. But I am laying aside self-judgment. It is also more joyous than I expected as I revisit being a young mom trying to figure life out. I am grateful these visits. And grateful to leave the pain, of who I was then, in the past.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date June 13, 1990
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Sample Pages
Sample Writing
June 13 1990
Haven’t called any friends lately. On one hand, I don’t want to go on and on about my art which I have been tending to do. I don’t have the poop to have anyone over (at any time of day). Well, it’s a two-way street and they haven’t been calling me either. So fuck me!
Had a nice day with the kidlets. Cleaning the apartment all morning, doing laundry, hanging it – smells so fresh, house dust free, garbage free. Went to Granville Island for shopping at Opus and Kids Only Market, lunch (pizza pretzels), and some play time at the long slide.
Pappa is home safely, He feels good about F_____’s interception with mom’s drinking, but he’s getting the blames and blows.
June 14 1990
Anna is growing up so fast. Sometimes it’s scary. Sometimes it’s fantastic. But it is always wonderful. The main thing is that we raise happy children that love themselves and the world and that have the confidence to make good choices. I have to face the fact that they won’t always be smaller than me and always there for cuddling.
June 18 1990
Don’t forget to work with J____. Not against or for him. Lighten up and move onward together. He’s coming home for the evening.
Kids on the balcony having a wonderful time being naked with sunshine and water, surrounded by geraniums and other healthy flowers.
June 28 1990
“Except by remembering the beautiful little familiar who was so cheerful and loyal to me, and who I so thoughtlessly, out of pride and distraction I betrayed…” [Alice Walker] <– This is what I worry about all the time with the kids and the family – especially the children. Wanting to give them the nurturing and comfort and attention they need. Because I so desperately what them to love me and feel open and comfortable with me. With J____ I don’t worry about betraying him or disregarding his needs, etc.
July 9 1990
Gallery Alpha screwed up – my name wasn’t on the invite. Then they promised me press releases. But my name wasn’t in the North Shore News either. So Mom called them, extremely angry. So J____ and I drove to the gallery for a confrontation. I was dying.
Sample Drawing
Sample Quote
“Even if the music wasn’t about fucking – and because he loved fucking, a lot of it was – it was about the fucking the universe does through us as it joyfully fucks itself.” – Alice Walker
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.
See:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date May 16, 2000
Cover
Sample Page
Sample Drawing
Sample Writing
May 16, 2000
To recapture the connection to the creative process, I must begin from the beginning- and that is to “come back” to the IMAGE/IDEA FILE, to “come back” to my journal- only this way can I begin to explore the central theme to the next body of work- only this way can I begin to UNDERSTAND why I was driven to study the IMMIGRANT, the PIONEER- the woman at the centre entering the new world, with the ancients on her back. In order for this theme to work, I cannot remove myself from it. I have to place myself within the play, as its central character. I have to become the people that I study. Only this way will the work be done, filled with my meaning, have any kind of importance. And it’s only through the journal that I have privacy and space enough to have a world of my own. A place just mine so that I can create SOME THING.
Does the central motherless child/woman recur in my work because of the awe of independence?
June 1, 2000
Struggling, haggard, the forgotten, the overlooked, the lost, misplaced… As Vilhelm Moberg did, I too want to awaken the dead. I too want to conquer fate and oppression. I too want to recall what was past and what has been lost. I want to return this homestead and its souls to life. This little world shall be restored. I want to recreate it.
June 4, 2000
I was going through some journals, while reorganizing my studio and came across the following, told to me by [my son] January 30,1996 [the day before his 8th birthday], on the way home from his after-school science class: “Hurry home. I need to watch the sunset. The sun is giving me my birthday present. When the sun sets and the colours change, the chemicals change. The sun shows me my past. The sun celebrates my birthday’s yesterday.”
July 14 2000
Drenched in memories. Surrounded by photographs. On an island in a sea of memories, emotions, moments, nostalgia, and personal history. Overwhelmed with almost a sadness – as if those moments are lost forever and the sense that I didn’t savour them enough. But the moments are there- in the photos and in the memories conjured and in the experiences that have created my children’s present selves. Their cuteness, their smallness, innocence tugs at the heart. And I feel proud that we could give them such a great life. And hopefully continue to.
Sample Quote
“Through the eyes of the woman we begin to see history as the stuff of daily struggle… Wherever there was a woman, there was a nucleus of a home.” – Lillian Schlissel
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.
See first post:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journal Start Date Dec 15 1994
Cover
Sample Page
Sample Drawing
Sample Writing
Pages and pages in my journals are strangely filled with apology notes to J___
E.g. Dec 20, 1994… I apologize for being so rough… You and your interests are sacred to me… Sorry for not thanking you right away… Sorry for asking you about Safeway…
December 29, 1994
Kids stayed overnight at Mom’s [I always called my parents’ house “Mom’s house” or “Mormor’s House,” not Mom and Dad’s…] and the house was so quiet after a hectic Xmas week. I’m looking forward to their voices filling the rooms in about an hour! J____ is low due to much and we had a good talk this morning. I hope positiveness and personal well-being come back too, Thank God we have Hawaii coming up!
January 4, 1995
Listen… listen… I resonate from the pulsating hill of not-yet dry oil- alizarin crimson, painted with the hysteria of a hand not willed by human but by God. Was it God? I thought it was God… that bastard that tormented me down to my aching bowels. Listen… listen… I speak from the depths of the crimson to tell you what happened, to warn you of what I’ve become. I reside in the two-dimension; I craved the flatness, the finiteness. But I tell you, it swells and cascades with the dance of Evil! Delicious evil that promises art eternal.
Let my memory gently lift us back in time… we see the ferry, the ferry that took me to the dock of a tired old man. My baggage was cumbersome, filled with the naive dreams of the artist-on-holiday.
Sample quote
“Did I fear that once I found that buried treasure which I had hidden away I would never again know peace?” – Henry Miller
My Journals:
I was born in 1962 and have kept some form of diary/sketchbook since age 6, but experienced a transformative relationship to my journaling in 1986 when I took Kitty Mykka‘s Creative Process class at Emily Carr College of Art and Design. She called our journals Image/Idea Files – that made sense to me. I now have a ludicrous collection of these files. Their purpose? They are not just for sketching, for keeping a record of life unfolding. A mother’s diary. They are a repository of anxiety. A safe place I can vomit out my despair, my observations, my joys, my doodles, quotes, my ideas, my trivial to-do’s, my bull-shit, my dark side, my anger directed at others and myself, my longing, my self-flagellation. I have always found journaling therapeutic. I realized the other day that they are actually my SHADOW WORK.
Why “Unnecessary Violence”?
There is no greater bully who has victimized me more than me. I want to tell that bully that it is time to retire and shut the hell up. To tap the head of the bully and with an understanding smile, give it a stuffed animal and a comfortable place to rest for all eternity. Thanks for the lessons, but that’s enough now.
Shadow Work:
Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it. Carl Jung, The Integration of the Personality. (1939).
The archiving is about acknowledging the self-directed violence as important therapeutic shadow work. Processing my projections and darkness.
The purpose of this daily project:
I am archiving the journals. Going through each one to remove excess bits and to wrap each one in a paper band and label them with the date. I am 58 now. Entering the (hopefully) wise chapter of my life. There are big personal shifts happening in how I work, how I create, how I am in the world in relation to others and to myself. To move forward, I will acknowledge the past. Once they are dated, I can see what my heart says about their legacy.
Are they letters to my kids?
Journal Start Date Oct 21, 1992
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Sample Page
Sample Drawing
Sample Writing
October 24, 1992
Took the kids up to Hollyburn Ridge for a picnic lunch. Wonderful! They complained just a little. No car sickness. Just a healthy, happy family! Growing up together.
I feel bad about things I think about my friends. I have such a critical mind. And I don’t feel good about myself in their company as a result, But I am consciously reforming, sort of. SORRY EVERYONE. Why am I being polite in my own fucking journal? Avoiding I___. She pisses me off.
October 25, 1992
Is there any hope for living artists? Who can possibly be original, an influence, a driving force? It is all pablum, chewed over and over and finally regurgitated out in desperate attempt to recapture the original thought.
November 20, 1992
I feel such a spiritual connection to this house and those who have lived in it. And certainly when people enter it, they enter my life… Maybe that’s why certain visits exhaust me. T___’s visits never exhaust me. I___’s wipe me right out. What is it? Maybe a sense of tension on my part? On hers? My body trembles and feels violated. I recall her in the summer looking around my kitchen and at ____ saying, “At least I have everything.” Why did I not speak up, scream, demand to know what she meant? Didn’t I___ deserve my honesty? I didn’t confront or question. Did cowardice stifle me?
Sample quote
“I’d see the bearded white man in the clouds. I tried to talk to him, but the clouds would just dissipate. He was unreasonable. He’d never answer me. In rage, I’d climb on top of the house and stand defiantly with a clenched fist raised in anger, shaking and screaming inside my head, “I’ll get you, you motherfucker, one day I’ll whip you.”
– Luisah Teish
