Pain and Suffering

There is a difference between pain and suffering.

I don't want either in my life, but I think I'm coming to understand that pain doesn't have to equal suffering.

I was told by buddhists that suffering is a result of unmet expectations. Which of course means that if you adjust or do away with expectation you won't suffer.

If you expect to live a long life free of pain, and you don't, you will suffer.

If you expect someone to agree with everything you say, and to always be sensitive and outwardly affectionate, you will suffer.

Slightly different examples, but both true, and both important.

So I'm trying to keep this in my mind at the moment.

My want is hard to combat though.
I feel like a toddler - I want everyone to love me. I want everyone to be with me all the time. I want everyone to be happy.

Which is unrealistic, and will only lead to unmet expectations (if ever there were unrealistic expectations, I think mine are it).

And sometimes I'm ok with not having those expectations met. On some level I think I need to suffer. I feel like, on a very naive and romantic level, suffering is what I deserve and what will finally make me a legitimate artist, or person, or whatever.

But is that true?

And what a strange position to put yourself in - if you set yourself up to expect suffering, and you do experience it, your expectations are met but you suffer anyway. I've avoided unmet expectations, but suffered anyway.

Besides which, why should I suffer when I know that suffering isn't romantic or philosophically crucial to artistic endeavour?



This is what I'm thinking about this weekend. And I know full well that this conversation is just as likely to be something I'll have on my own for the rest of my life. And I don't expect (pun?) that I'll magically transfer it to active practice fully. But who knows, maybe?

Maybe we aren't all doomed to be monumentally articulate on our short-comings, while similarly spectacular in our failure to put that knowledge to work.

And maybe that won't make me any less of an artist...

And maybe that doesn't matter...

Saying Goodbye

We attended Brian's funeral this morning. It was heartwarming to see so many people there, and heart-breaking to see the obvious pain that Pam was experiencing. I thought, not for the first time, "We should re-write this shit." Because death, cancer, and loss - who would wish it upon anyone?

I've been so worried this week. N wasn't keen on going to the funeral, because he wasn't sure he'd be able to handle it. Which, to me, seems to be the reason to go - if you're that upset about something, avoiding an outpouring of emotion is dangerous; It only ends up worse later.

But he made the decision to attend (after I'd decided to stop pushing the issue - so I guess I wasn't helping). And it was hard. We left straight afterwards, not waiting to speak with everyone because he couldn't handle being with other people.

I love him, but he just isn't built to share the load. He carries it, buries it in his chest, and then throws himself into distraction. Allowing himself to let it out a bit today was good though. I'm proud of him.

And now we have the rest of the day off to deal with the aftershock.

Being together is a good thing. Hearing about Brian and his life reinforced how important it is to spend good time with the people you love. And to express your love as often as possible. Vulnerability is hard, but you really don't know how long you have and if you can maximise the positive things people have to dwell on when you're gone, all the better, I think.

Vale Brian.

Rough - Untitled

Get home
Throw on your painting shirt
and stand at the easel, dry brush in hand.

Don't think about before
Don't think about him
Don't look at your fingers

Blank canvas waiting.
Breath to intake.

Drip paint onto the floor
and it pools like so much
expectation.

Everyone has something.
A stretched canvas of something.
But the sea has crawled back from the shore.
And the roads only go so far
before they are dirt.

And knees crumble under weight
and time, and men die.

Tomorrow.
Tomorrow will come whether I paint or not.

GOMA + QAG

Today was an Amanda day.
I went on a date with myself.

That sounds very enlightened and adult and everything, except that I had initially planned on going with a friend - but she got held up having way too much fun with a date.

And also I didn't feel very much like an adult due to the fact that I had to wear a scarf to hide a giant hickey on my neck.

Nonetheless.

I started off with a magnificent haloumi sandwich and a long black at the QAG Cafe. Then moved on to the GOMA to see the Hiraki Sawa exhibition. Which was so amazing. So simple. But so ... meaningful? Broad? I don't know. I could have stayed in there for an hour at least. (I didn't - too many people got in my way).

Then I walked around some more exhibits - Japanese Art since 1989 was very interesting and beautiful. I think I'll have to go back to make more notes, but the themes and ideas that have been played around with would never occur to me. I loved it.

And then I headed over to QAG and looked around the Madonna Staunton exhibit.

• Amazing early abstract stuff- her understanding of colours is amazing
• The collage work is suprising - I mean, it all seems so accidental, but ends up making very strong statements...
• The assembly piece that was fixed on the wall was awesome: 2 folding chairs attached to a canvas frame (sans canvas), with a piece of wood that had obviously been used to prop up paintings (splatters of colour haphazardly across it, dripped), and a hidden vinyl cover. It is so simple, and yet it invites you in; asks you to participate.
• The smaller pieces made on September 11th 2001 were amazing too. Just ink on paper, with impressions of her hands and arms. 

Finally I wandered into the Australian Art section - just the 40s-70s section.

• James Cant - the Lunch Hour 1945. Very striking. Big message, under layers of deep colours.
• Geoffrey Miller - Forrest and Trees in the Moonlight: oh my goodness. I need those prints. Exquisite use of line and colour and so very careful, but not tight.

In the end I spent about 4 hours there, and it was just lovely. I find when I go to an exhibition with someone else, there is always a reflexive sort of self-awareness: have I been looking at this for too long? I don't understand this - what if I look dumb? Have a skimmed over this too fast? Are they bored?

On my own, I was entirely able to look as long or as little as I wanted. And because the galleries are in my city, I can rest assured that if I want to return to understand something better, or look again, I can. Easy.

Plus - bonus: I wrote a poem with random thoughts that occurred to my during my time there. As ever, it says more than I intended it to. So I like it.

Gallery of Modern Art - 11 January 2015

The art is behind you, Amanda.

Come to an image by its words
and forget the context. Come to an image
by your tongue.

Come closer to see yourself in the glass
and step back to see better, the contrast.

Your shadow is pressed on the paint,
your thumbprint stain.

We’ve stumbled into a room
full of safety pins, reclining and open
in expectation of pin pricks blooming blood -
tuck in your thumbs.

It isn’t safe, after all.

FFS

So today was, in a couple of key ways, a shit-storm.

Found out an old friend died last night. He'd been sick for a long time, but it was a shock nonetheless.

Then, less than half an hour later, I found out that my best friend had had an emergency c-section and given birth to her second child, a son named Gus.

I burst into tears at the news.

How does that even happen?

What if she'd gone too?
How lucky am I?

Fuck.

I'm so sad and so happy.

And then I spent the rest of the day hidden beneath layers of thought and attempts to process said thoughts.

Which naturally led me to feeling like shit when a friend attempted to offer support, but I could only give her half of myself.

So. What a day.
At least when I got home N gave me a massage and I ate a good curry.
And now - bed. Because tomorrow is another day... which hopefully will be more mundane.

Poem for the New Year? - Kristina Haynes

I keep trying to write the most important poem.
About boys who stay away and the mothers 
who find themselves loving them despite 
their vacant beds. About sad songs that are 
beginning to skip because they’re played too often. 
About hunger and frustration and nostalgia 
and sadness. About the things I always talk about. 
I run around town in black tights and black heels 
doing errands and trying to look important, adult. 
I kiss the faces of strangers hard enough to leave 
craters behind, forget to take my birth control 
but it’s not like I’m having sex so what’s the big deal? 
Everything is a question. Everything is like I’m 
eleven again, taking out a hand mirror, studying 
the new parts of myself. How spooked I was 
to realize I was becoming a woman, my mother’s eyes 
in my face, my father’s nose and lips beneath. When 
I was younger I couldn’t keep track of how often 
strangers would thumb my face, talk about my eyes, 
touch my braided hair. Say, “how pretty.” Say, 
“aren’t you just the most precious thing?” I haven’t 
been touched like that in years. The strangers 
stay away, but there is a bed across town 
that I know better than my own.

—	Kristina Haynes, “Poem for the New Year?”

Elegy Owed - Bob Hicok

In other languages
you are beautiful — mort, muerto — I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone — picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin — what I hate
about stars is they’re not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you,
you’re not those candles either, how often I realize
I’m not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I’d be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say

 

 

Hellfire

Australia once again faces massive destruction through fire. 

I know if I was back in SA, there would be nothing I could do since I'm no longer involved with firefighting. But sitting up here in Queensland I feel useless.

And scared.

Fire is a completely understandable phenomenon from an intellectual perspective. Heat, oxygen, fuel and chemical reaction equals fire. 

But experiencing fire is something else. A bushfire, a raging fire - hellfire - it's different. It is visceral. It roars and cracks and groans. From a distance it looks slow and cumbersome - up close it twists and jumps and rages.

So I sit here in my office, with a fan blowing warm air away from me, and I worry about everyone back home. Yes, this here is home - but back there, that was my first home. And really, anywhere that holds people I love is home. 

I can only hope (which feels like a prayer to no one in particular) that this beast of a fire dies down. That the firefighters stay strong and dogged and defensive. That no one is lost.