Doodles from my inner nightmare!

So far I've posted journal writings mainly from the upside of my journey around 2001 or 2.  Today I'm going to start posting some entries from the earlier "dark night of the soul" period as I struggled to make sense of and heal from the hell I was in.  One way I turned to was art, or as I referred to it, doodling.  I was not trained in art, but when my sister gifted me with a blank sketch book for my birthday, I began to play with lines and shadow and space...  What appeared was automatic.  In other words, I didn't know what I was going to draw, I just followed one dot, or line, with another, guided by... hmmm... a feeling... a need... intuition... curiosity... a call...  I don't know exactly.  Perhaps it changed.  The pictures certainly look different from each other as if drawn by different alters.  And the more I doodled, the more complex the pictures became.  It seemed that the "mute" parts of me needed desperately to communicate and drawing apparently felt safe.  So even though I didn't understand what the pictures were "saying," I had to draw!!  I even had to drop out of graduate school because I couldn't stop drawing to do my homework!

The following pictures are a sample of the variety of images I produced.  They make a good rorschach test because everyone sees something different in them!

I call this one my Michelangelo because when I look at it, I am reminded of the Sistine Chapel painting where the image of God is reaching out his hand to touch Adams' and there is a space between their fingers.  In this doodle, I see the multi colored wavy lines emerging from the globe on the left as Spirit/God reaching out to instill life in the dead tree (me) who is struggling to hold on.  Perhaps on one level, it depicts the existential struggle between life and death, with the globe representing the life force, surrounded by the clawing, grasping energies of the world that bring suffering and pain, threatening life's resolve to blossom. 

On Borrowed Wings

The innocent breath of a day newborn

Wafts gently from my window to waken.

But I embalmed in sheets of night shall mourn 

To see my cherished refuge taken.

With night I hear myself whisper softly

And dreams dance to the beating of my heart.

But time returns and walls imprison me

So from my captive soul must I part.

Then like a wounded bird that cannot fly,

I drag this broken, useless body.

For day awaits, a hungry cat and sly,

In silence he stalks his fearful quarry.

Then sweet small voice with wide disturbing eyes,

You call out and on borrowed wings I rise.