Life, death, and abstraction

At first I wasn’t going to write this post because it seemed too personal. But then I couldn’t justify the difference between reading my poetry to 150 people at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, as I used to, and putting it on the Web. Anyway, this came up because of the week-long kundalini yoga workshop I just finished at Kripalu, along with another 3-day course just a couple of weeks ago. I love kundalini because it works on energetic alignment as well as physical; when I do it, I feel as if I’m straightening out my brain.

In the workshop our teacher showed the TED video by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, describing her stroke and the experience of coming close to death (note: it’s inspiring, not depressing, otherwise I wouldn’t share it; I’m not into depressing).  I had a similar experience—without the stroke part—and hearing it so aptly described and close to my own, was startling. I’d also never heard right and left brain function defined precisely this way: that the right brain thinks in pictures and is about the collective, while the left brain is linear, wants to name things, and is concerned with establishing an individual sense of self. I used to owe it to my lack of formal higher education—and that could be part of it—but now I also understand that from going to the other side and coming back, where everything is new again, I developed the peculiar ability (which both helps and hinders me) to stand outside a thing or situation and see it without the names or the layers of meaning society has given it. I can still often look at humans and view them as an alien might coming across them for the first time—and believe me, compared to other animals (I think it’s the lack of body hair with the thatch on top), they ‘re completely weird and funky-looking.

I also realize now why I’m so ardent about letting art speak for itself, about allowing for the possibility of emotional response rather than always having to define it or give information that makes it seem rational. This is why I rail against the museum wall texts and idiotic artist’s statements that become the lenses through which art is viewed. Art, like music, is a language without words, and the way it invokes sensation is mysterious and inscrutable. I’ve chosen to be an abstract artist because it’s an investigation into making something that’s essentially unknowable, where the possibilities of interpretation are boundless.

But then I’m also a writer, which gives the lie to it all, as I go about creating defined situations in order to promote undefined ones. Life is a paradox.

WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

They say write about what you know

Well I know

about death

I have felt death’s

icy numbness

creeping up my legs

toward my heart

I have seen faces

hovering over me

as I am pumped full

of the

blood

of strangers

I have felt my body

dissolve

into a pillar of

pain

Don’t scream, the doctor said

I have wished for death and prayed for life

to a god I didn’t believe in

but promised

I would

If I lived

I have known an aloneness beyond description

before descending

into unpeopled blackness

And I have wakened

to the cruel bright whiteness

of a recovery room

too loud, too alive

with voices

footsteps

the clatter of metal against metal

My husband, noting I am conscious

fills me in on current events

Watergate

Nixon

He and Willy had been talking about it

In the car on the way to the hospital

and now he is giving me

an update

And I’m feeling guilty

because I’m alive

and I don’t believe

in God

After two weeks I go home

everything is strange

I feel like an immigrant

newly arrived

who happens to speak the language

but doesn’t know the customs

and no one I meet

has been where I’m from

So now I know about death

but I’m no longer afraid

I believe in a god

And I’m not married anymore.


Copyright © 1994, Carol Diehl

Carol Diehl, Alexandra, 2011, pastel and pencil on board, 9' x 12".