Self-Image
O tyranny of reflective surfaces. She glimpsed herself in the mall’s plate-glass entrance, her mirror-image lumbering along. “That’s not me, that’s the opposite of me,” she told herself as she pushed the door clearly marked pull.
At home she saw herself as pithy, as in “concise and forcefully expressive,” as in succinct, crisp. Saw, as in “to know.” Know, as in “to feel,” deeply.
Many days began by the pond where the empathic tulip poplar served as confidante. It appeared awkward, all elbows, still it raised its limbs in celebration or supported a weighted sky or shrugged in despair, depending upon her mood.
Please note that use of tree personification, in this instance, is not a manifestation of lonely isolation but acknowledgement of nothing missing, something found.
She belonged to the land and felt herself to be multi-layered like the trees. Heartwood encompassed their pithy centers. Heartwood, as in a tree’s supporting pillar, good-heartedness, as in her core strength. Five senses absorbed and metabolized the world, nourishing a creative drive. Then the protective outer layer, her skin, which could, at times, be thin.
~Anatomical Study~
1. Exterior Analysis
2. Cross Section of Trunk
She loved art and music early on—drawing, working with clay, singing in the grammar school chorus. Granny examined her child-paws and said, “Look at these long fingers. You have piano-player’s hands.” She played, Chopin and Mozart, mainly in high school. However, if she’d chosen the performing instead of visual arts in college, she’d have studied dance because of her long fingers, and what she fancied would be the graceful lines of her hands’ extensions.
Everything is connected, in her thoughts at least, which moved in ways impossible to map. She forgave her mind its lapses, believing wondering and wandering to be similar—the former, a type of seeking; the latter, a way of happening upon.
She didn’t believe in God. Experience confirmed the existence of a worldly spiritual plane—how else to explain the beautiful logic of pond ice?
Earthly life, just count the rings. Hers are circular, too, but connected end-to-end, forming an ever-widening spiral of expired time. She imagined it collapsing onto itself when she died, becoming a simple surface, like a record to be played. Hers would render the single note of an oboe, held, its sound mournful, yet sweet and filling.
Love, love, love this visual essay, Cheryl. Beautiful. Thank you.
Your such an articulate and accomplished writer. You are able to take us places we would never even imagined. I enjoyed reading this. You have such a brilliant mind. It was refreshing!