Imagine a lift – dropping. Air is pinched tight through the holding breath. Stomach pressing against throat’s base. Your footing – gone. You’re falling into a moment lost. Trapped in time, travelling at lightening speed towards a target. And you know what lies at its centre. You wish, like you’ve wished time and time before, for a floor in the falling. A line securing reality to an altered mind. To hold you suspended from the end. Mark a path back. And then … you turn the corner and you’re back where the drop began. Landing on a returned breath. Stunned by its convincing lie.
Footnote: Reposting for ANZAC day for those who experience PTSD. Art (original in colour) by Harley (Manifold).
Footnote: Boots arrived (during the pandemic isolation in March, 2020). In the early stage of the drawing, Boots was leaning against the globe, ground to a halt. But as the drawing progressed, the continents became stars. The biggest, falling right on top of Boot’s head. Stuck, she became in the – ‘in-between’.
But this was not to be the end – of the drawing. Of the world. Boots raised a hand, cautiously turning back a corner of the fallen star. And there, right alongside her, a faintly glowing object of mystery, rolled up, rolled up.
Was it a ball for juggling? Mirroring a juggled conscience? Dropped or forgotten? Left behind or gone astray? Or maybe it was that small thing that so easily gets lost or overlooked? Still there. Still waiting. Perhaps something new? A gift. Small and precious. A reminder that there are things that need much greater care that we ever imagine — and quite often forget. Until something rolls up, rolls up…
When you’ve come from a place of hurt and brokenness and you have lost much and you have these stories and a whole bunch of imaginary friends who continually show up for you no matter what and help you put things back together and you prefer keeping to yourself because when you’ve been hurt or broken you fear the world like nothing else and all the things that could possibly go wrong (again) and you’re fragile and exquisitely sensitive and you want to protect that very precious breakable thing and hiding away feels majorly comfortable and showing yourself feels like being dropped out of a multi-story building but you take fear’s hand and in the other the most strength giving thing you have and together you venture beyond the hurt and brokenness and you’re mildly terrified and slightly excited but you have everything you need to take that brand new step as the one you’ve put back together again and no one can take that from you and you’ve made it and you know from now on you’ll keep on making it and you’ll never be alone again I love you Clunk & Jam .
Clunk & Jam’s Story …
Clunk & Jam evolved from an idea (back in 2008) to create a street newspaper, a printed way to share the art and stories from The Black Dog Project website. This was with some good people who kindly created the Black Dog website – Mike Cairns, Che Douglas and Kareen. Stormie Mills and Miso were some of the artists who kindly agreed to contribute artwork.
A Super Hero heroic friend, is someone who drops in at precisely the right moment, taking you in, up and beyond yourself, with no need for detail or explanation – because they have no need to know.
A Super Hero heroic friend, is comfortable enough in pain and role to welcome you in your own, tenderly cradling your place in time – and leaving the threads alone.
A Super Hero heroic friend’s words not only catch and soothe but wrap around shoulders made soft and light – as you lap long in the lingering warmth.
A Super Hero heroic friend, hovers quiet and long and never really leaves even when you go. Is solid enough to carry you with no show of strain – remaining loyal throughout your endless cause.
(Reposted from 2012. Picture from ‘Coles Funny Picture Book’. Find in Clunk & Jam book.)
“Life is mostly froth and bubble. Two things stand like stone. Kindness in another’s trouble – courage in your own.” Barbara Dinham’s Father. She writes … “The mature conscience of the postwar generation globally dropped do-gooding in favour of analysis and insight into social and political structures that maintain inequality and general injustice. Kindness did not fit into analysis. Being kind was for animals, children, the elderly, yourself even, and maybe the environment. Kindness was too banal for the big social issues. Kindness was for private, personal actions. Yet one of the major social movements of the second half of the 20th century fought fiercely for recognition that the personal is political. So is it time for a new kind of kindness?”
(Barbara Dinham, Director, Pesticide Action Network, UK. Pic and story from book ‘A Revolution In Kindness’ edited by the late Anita Roddick (Body Shop. Reposted from 2010).
I flunked English (and art) and dropped out of school. But I’ve since found reading, writing and drawing provides an essential power source. So even if you struggle with reading, writing, spelling, or your writing’s messy, you can’t draw – keep your mind open to these mediums. And wouldn’t we all have a stronger sense of identity and place if they made studying your ‘Self’ as important a topic as English and Maths at school? And music, art, poetry and film were on the book-list for this subject. But it’s never too late to make your ‘self’ a topic to study – to seek a greater knowledge and understanding of who we are and explore the possibilities of who we can become. And if through this more people felt more comfortable and at peace with themselves (and difference), and more solid in their sense of place in the world – wouldn’t society (the world) stand to gain from this collective of more educated and contented selves?
