Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."
-Katherine Mansfield
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This appears to be one of your more unique drawings, Monika. It definitely has a different flair for me than the others. It feels dramatic in the sense of a Broadway play or musical. I love it. That purple outfit and green shoes! To take philosophical turn, I am also thinking of Martin Buber’s “narrow ridge,” a term that suggests a paradoxical unity of what one usually understands only as alternatives -- I and Thou, love and justice, dependence and freedom, the love of God and the fear of God, passion and direction, good and evil, unity and duality.
ReplyDeleteBuber says, “According to the logical conception of truth only one of two contraries can be true, but in the reality of life as one lives it they are inseparable. The person who makes a decision knows that his deciding is no self-delusion; the person who has acted knows that he was and is in the hand of God. The unity of the contraries is the mystery at the innermost core of the dialogue. (Martin Buber, Israel and the World, Essays in a Time of Crisis [New York: Schocken Books, 1948], ‘The Faith of Judaism,’ p.17.).
I mention this because of your own paradoxical unity regarding the seriousness-play aspect of your drawings, this one included. To assert oneself, to take risks and straddle that narrow ridge is quite serious business, what the theologian Paul Tillich, calls an “ultimate concern.” If we don’t spend this life taking risks, who will? We are here to learn, to evolve, to grow into our uniquity as human beings and assert our distinct personality and intelligence. That is “facing the truth!” Like the purple-donned figure, we’re grounded in our roots and yet always near the edge of our dreams and vision. Like the bird (which is inseparable from the ground), we must tap into our desire and fly, transcend our own psychological limitations. Fear, guilt, and shame are emotions that jettison our true nature and motivation to assert ourselves. Sing, dance, or draw your way to the ledge of your potential. Ask Monika to give one of her dance lessons, she just loves tangoing in purple while helping you find your voice. It is a beautiful voice, it’s yours.
These two figures are really quite a contrast and a surprise to me, as always.
ReplyDelete"Purple" is also the spiritual color (crown chakra) while "green" has to do with the "motor/motivation/action" (heart chakra). So, here the purple guy is all uptight and angular, about to trip over the rope and fall into the precipice, because he is not listening to his inner voice. Luckily there is always a good friend around, maybe in form of a colorful bird who does cartwheels or in form of someone whose named Paul to make you stop and think :)