Patterns Drawn-Undrawn

Stories written-unwritten. Stories read-unread ...

Ok I'm just streaming these phrases from the back of nowhere

Because right now I am nowhere. 

Interesting that a comment on my facebook cover image by a friend got me spinning this little post out.

She told me to keep looking at it, that I'd see all the stories there.
And true enough I see tales of then and now.

I have been hopelessly ungrounded over the past several days. Earlier posts in the series #inkflowswarm - spontaneous posts about the feelings of the hour - mentioned my domestic struggles. Today I finally gave up on something after losing a good amount of money on it. It was no doubt a foolish gamble but folly invariably begets folly and that's been the pattern this year. A new chapter starts and I am not-so-foolishly putting more money that I don't even know how to procure, on Project Untouchable Waterworks (insert big grinning emoji) hoping before long I can wash a dish or two like normal people do and cook myself a good meal. 

Looking upon this work of floor art, the first story is of myself seated calmly on the red floor sometime during the autumn festive season, finger clutching cotton wool dipping into a bowl of rice paste and running over the surface as my mind wills it. 

The second story is a flashback of my mother seated gracefully and calmly, forming patterns in the air with her finger holding a little cloth rag that's pressed back so the liquid doesn't drip. Mom creating her magical kolams - those divine designs - before the altar and sometimes at the entrance. This is the pre-release choreography, her recce of the air a little above the smooth red-oxide floor-canvas. I was always fascinated by those arcs her gentle hand created while she visualized what would come to life as the floor awakened to white liquid. Her strokes were so light like her movements, graceful and balanced. Her designs were from her head, inspired by traditions she'd grown up with, and her own thoughts for the day. I wish I had found it in me to copy and save them on paper. I have one pattern I got her to draw for me towards the end of her life, in a notebook that will turn up someday from somewhere. I have to recall all those lost designs - for floor art is ephemeral and that is its defining grace - and there was no instant photography then. Fancy a video of her going through the process of creation. Videos recording her at different phases of life from the most effortless when she was strong and supple to the later years when the stiffening fingers would struggle and the struggles would write themselves into the patterns. Those things I have missed and can only ever bring back in dreams. I believe in dreams and I will ask my dream angel to send those my way. 

Maybe there's a photo or two of my altar as it was. It had an integrity to it, a wholeness and a gentle rootedness. I have never been able to bring back that feel. 

So here I am, ungrounded and trying hard to make sense of my roots which I have all but lost in the insanity of recent times.

Returning to the first story, we paint on the floor to center ourselves. We paint towards a center or away from a center, but there is always that center. That's the way my mother made me feel about it. But even as I sit in stillness hoping to touch that center, I find my hands running away on an Imramma*. No plans, no roadmap. My fingers travel where they will, my mind conjures up the most random patterns and they run away with me till I run out of floor.

Which reminds me that my pristine floor is coated with random drippings from candles and I need suggestions on how to clean that off as my rice paste doesn't sit well on that compromised surface. My touch is harsher than hers, the paste thicker. She would grind the rice herself on stone. I used to. I have now taken to using rice powder stirred into water. One day I will revert to the place I belong. Her tradition. And we will write the third story together. I will channel her art, her touch, her dreams. Wish me luck.

*Imramma - literally "rowing about"
Imramma, a word of Celtic origins that means a sacred journey of the soul. A voyage on which we don't know where we are going, but our soul knows the way.