Emergence 2024
In November 2024 I had an exhibition with a good friend and colleague, also psychologist and artist, Juan Van Wyk. The images and associated text speaks of the journey leading up to the exhibition for me.

Mother
Mother. The first touch, smell, taste. The first sound. The first “other”. The first word. The first concept beyond words.
Mother. The first visceral experience of the world. The first attempt to connect. The first request to the world. The first relationship. The first expression of need and discomfort. The first soothing, comfort and warmth. The first discrepancy between need and reality. The first limitation, imperfection. The first frustration of need. The first absence, loss and pain.
Mother. The shaper of the phylogenesis of a species, of the most primary and essential experience of what makes us human, of living together in mutual cooperation, touch and caring. The foundation of nurturance, belonging and acceptance.
Mother. Just another person, with a mother. The cross-generational distortion of Mother. The fall of Mother. Mother as Atlas, carrying the emotional security, responsibility and duty for an entire race, for an entire lineage. An impossible burden resting on the shoulders of a fragile being who can only fail.
Mother (mother). Revered. Judged. Longed for. Carrying the projections of all in struggling with the pain and imperfections of the world. Because mother can never be Mother.
Mother, and mother. A difference obscured. A critical difference. The difference between divine and human, and her being just another person.
Finding mother among all of this.
My mother.

Father
Father. The shadowy figure at the edge of growing up, the scary one, the angry one, the irritable one, the silent one.
Father. The seed of the unknowable other. Seeing and dreaming things yet to come. The pain of a rational man who saw beyond the veil, the powerlessness.
Father. Entangled in the stories of others, obscured, distorted, hidden. Getting to know him, the man. Just a man.
Father. Walking his own path of guilt and shame. Atonement. Changing, softening, caring. Showing the way of compassion in his own fragile way. Showing that people can change.
Father. Now, many years later, revealing more fragments of his story. Witnessing the grief and loneliness. Witnessing the silent burden for the sake of others. Just a man, knowable.
Father. Vulnerability. Sacrifice. Integrity.
My father.

God
The minister came to our door and my dad said he does not believe in that stuff, meaning the whole business of selling religion door-to-door, and church, and so we were branded the atheists who lived next to the church because of a misunderstanding
On Sundays we mow the lawn and work the garden
While the church-people walk past us on their way to god
And the boy I was feel ashamed from the stares and judgment
Of these nicely dressed-up people filled with the love of Jesus
So somewhere I stopped believing
In this god who seemed just too human:
An anthropomorphic convenience useful but not true
One side punitive, demanding subservience, threatening hell
One side all loving impotence and illogical
So instead
Inside of me I found (created) a place
Where I am carving god
And have been doing so for 50 years
Trying to get beyond the layers that we stuck to him/it
Sticky layers of need and wanting and existential dread
With this blunt knife (me)
One day when I have carved to the bone
I hope this carving comes to life
And flies away
And God will be free for me (from me)
For a moment
I don’t know if it will happen,
But I have faith

Dragon
It feels the world:
A noisy and invasive place, riddled with wrongness
Each interaction causes it pain because it cannot Not see and feel
The layers of hidden demand and need and coercion that happens between people, the violence of words,
Speaking soft words with smiling faces talking about “we”
Utterly alien, deeply disturbing
A visceral dissonance
This is a strange place where it does not belong
And where it is judged and shamed and silenced
For feeling (too much), caring (too much), saying (too much)
This place, these people
And so, it retreated inside its cave (me), a coiled intensity
And in me created an internal world that is vast, complex and magnificent
Carving out the deep spaces of who I am
Bringing forth life, complexity, beauty
At first a retreat and an escape
But with time, more,
My own world, the essence of who I am
This coiled serpent inside
This fiery furnace of volatile intensity
You are the worst of me
You flood me with anxiety, you overwhelm me
But also, you are the best of me:
My creativity, my passion, my caring
My very humanity
We will struggle to the end, but I choose you because you make me the man I want to be
We are one
I am dragon

Dancer in the Dark
Every moment (movement)
Integrity
As the light falls
And with a ruthlessness accentuates
Light and dark
The exertion of the dancer for perfection
The merging of the dancer and the body
An open dialogue
“Good enough” is not good enough
It is average, mediocre
Like a photograph out of focus
Every movement (moment)
Part of a path (endlessly spiralling, repeating)
Curving into and out of darkness and light
Balanced
With perfect poise, posture
There is no stillness (the luxury of hindsight)
Only movement and action
Self is not a string of adjectives and words, but action
Decision and intentionality
And anything else
Insignificant
I am not the dancer (the means, the vehicle, the body)
I am not the narrative about dancing, dance or dancer
I am not the light
I am not the darkness
I am the weaving who stumbles in search of perfection (integrity)
I am the dance

Washing Peg
In the ruins of an abandoned old house there is a line that must have been put up years ago by vagrants who squatted there and since also moved on, leaving nothing but a washing peg
For as long as I remember I have collected discarded everyday objects and been intrigued by their beauty, things of utility, mass produced in some factory somewhere and yet, on its own, more
I see the story of its life, of the thousand moments and threads of lives that it touched, literally, completely invisible in its service, in its doing
I see a beauty that has nothing to do with “pretty”, but about perfection of function, form and design,
An aesthetic of invisibly doing what it does so well that is submerged in the background of life, not noticed because it plays a tiny part in the flow of living, bringing ease
And this is my joy:
that I see it
the child in me takes joy in discovering and seeing something for the first time, and in that moment, it becomes more because of my gaze, pulled into the foreground where it is honoured for the what and the how of it

Don't Look at Me, See Me
There is a place between self and other
Where both beauty and horror arise
What we see is not what (who) is there
But a projection of the self onto the other
And even though there may be threads that connect the other that I think I see and the self that is projected
The essence of what is seen belongs to the one who sees
Which means we are mostly,
Not seen
When I speak to you, I catch glimpses of the me you see
Some distorted, incomplete, fractured, twisted version of me in you
the projected self (you) onto the other (me)
and the dissonance between me and that version of you that you think is me
(not me)
and the arrogance that you believe you are seeing me
and want to tell me all about me
and always, wanting me to be more (fill in whatever sentimental value here)
but essentially more like you
It is a rare thing to be truly seen
Because being seen means that all of me or you are seen
Not the varnish to make the surface bits shine
Because inside I am not nice, and you are not nice,
And perhaps this is unbearable
So perhaps all I can ask is this:
Stop looking, and
Push your hands into me
I am warm inside

Death
Life is hidden in death
And in death life unfolds to dismember and take apart
To render substance into something that can grow and flourish
Beyond what the corpse could do
That has reached its limits
Life emerges again and again and this is death:
The recurrent transformation
And transubstantiation
Cycle after cycle
A falling apart and return to first principles
An essence purified
This has nothing to do with a morose and morbid fascination with death
But about always knowing that this self, this me,
This woven story of identity,
Is but one of many outcomes and that the next iteration of it (me) can be better
But only if this version of me
Dies
The shamans say that Death is always standing behind us,
Just over our left shoulder
And that we should embrace him as companion
I think I am starting to understand this now:
We have to become Death,
And in doing so,
We become more alive.

Teeth of a Dead Dog
I remember a story about Jesus, walking with his disciples, and as they passed the decaying corpse of a dead dog, he stopped, and commented on its’ beautiful teeth
And when I heard this story for the first time,
I understood something in myself:
My fascination for things that decay, that are broken, rusting, falling apart
When things decay its truth is revealed, the body (of anything) being the recorded evidence of its doing, function, purpose,
And in that moment, it is laid bare (to the bone)
Its essence to be witnessed
There is nothing repulsive in this
It is sacred
So, when my time is done and Jesus walks by my corpse,
I know that he will stop,
(to the dismay of his disciples)
and find something in the mess he likes

Minimum Lethal Dose
I should have been dead
I tried really hard
To get it right
Researched extensively just how many pills
For months collecting two packs (14 tablets) each week, double strength,
Always a different pharmacy so they don’t get suspicious
I needed 100 to get it right
Twice
The minimum lethal dose
I remember the night
I remember dying
This body shutting down
And I remember the hand reaching into my chest
Surrounding my heart
And making it beat again
It is a strange thing to have gone through that door
To have challenged God to show himself
And to have lived
And to have seen Him there
Behind me, saying
“I have always been here”
That night unmade me
And set me free

Cobbler
This is my journey:
to find that place, the balance, between myself and the world
between my internal spaces and the world of people and relationships
between my own self-regulation and the abrasive noisy world
between my safe space and the needs of those important to me
I know that other place of running around in the street, of passionate intensity
Getting lost, consumed and dissolved in feelings and relationships
becoming untethered where the falcon cannot hear the Falconer
where things fall apart
where I give too much, care too much, burning out completely
I also know that other place where I am so deep in myself
Travelling where none can follow, in the shadow lands,
creating dark dreamcatchers and weaving forbidden magic
Or that place where I fly and create and see beyond the structure, that beautiful place of process and flow
But also, where I cannot hear the need of those around me
where I cannot be present, connect…feel
or simply that I am just so far away
and do not hear the need, the pain, the loneliness
Of those most important to me
The cobbler is at ease on the threshold (or just inside)
Immersed in his mastery, grounded, shielded
But still available, connected, present
Balanced

Body
In my Spring I was
Asleep, detached and disconnected
I could not see what I could not see
Secrets upon secrets
I was married for 3 years and no one even knew
Because I did not share
Anything
In my Summer I emerged
Like a dog in heat, compelled to connect
Endlessly pursuing (and not finding) intimacy
An increasingly lethal cascade of being dissolved in the other
I was awake
But only to find a vast emptiness inside
In my Autumn I had to pick up the pieces
Of the fractured fiction of myself
And start walking the path with a heart
The dancing of the dragons
But also
(for the first time)
Sharing
Opening
In my Winter
The sadness of what has been lost
The shame and guilt
And not being ok
An obese creature running out of time
Rushing towards the end
And now, in my second Spring,
Awakening to the song of my body, of caring for me,
Of loving me

Annemie
I fell in love with what was not there
But hidden
Like holding a seed but seeing the tree it is and will/can become
Not because of me but of her and her path that has brought her here (karma)
And me (mine), Catching glimpses of her (our) path extending into time
And moments on that path
And the gifts I saw in the yet unfolded pattern
And when her unfolding will challenge me to become a better man
And that she will unmake me
And so I was not compelled
Like a moth (me) to a flame (my pattern)
Or a fantasy of unmet need and primal desire
No, by then I had already passed through the valley of death
And chose to walk a path with a heart
And knew that all such paths have a difficult beginning
And so I did not fall in love
And there was no love at first sight
But rather the slow awakening of a path
And a thousand deliberate decisions to die (individually) and grow (together)
And the commitment to be unmade a thousand times
And grow into something (her and me/us) completely Other
Because in truth
She chose me and I relinquished control
Not to a child or girl or women
And not to my pattern
But a fiery goddess that brings life itself
Hiding in the body of a vulnerable child
Hiding in the body of an injured young girl
Hiding in the body of an annoying friendly young woman

Miya
For as long as I remember I was scared that I will be a bad father
And yet you chose us, me:
For it is said that children choose their parents
You have been and continue to be the greatest gift of my life:
A bundle of contradictions
A thousand strange and delightful moments
So completely an individual
But above all, you pull me into this world like nothing else can do
You (and your mother) are the catalyst of who I have become
Your need reaches me when I am deep inside myself
Closed and disconnected to the world
Your voice rips me into Now
And I wish I could be more
Give more
But I have lived so long so deep in me
And I try but struggle to remain in
Relationship
For long
But because of you I keep trying
To untangle myself from myself
To be present
To be here

Disintegration
I look back at all those moments
That unmade me
That hamster wheel of the story of myself I told (tell) myself deep into the night
Each time so brutally disrupted
And each time like humpty dumpty
I tried to put myself together again
And only now I start to glimpse a truth:
That integration is (perhaps) not the point
How much time we waste to spin gold from straw
(constructing self as artifact)
How desperate we are to say “I am” and fall in love all over again with (yet another version) of ourselves
How desperate we are to clothe ourselves once again with stories, labels, meanings, values, morals, ideals
How needy and narcissistic to demand loyalty to the idea of me/you
The name of God: I am that I am
Not the endless toil to find and tell the story (meaning/theme/interpretation) and carry it through the streets like a golden cow to be worshipped and adored
Not the narcissistic self-reference expecting loyalty and followers
But rather
The listening to the still small voice
Beyond dismemberment and integration
Beyond form and pattern
Beyond projections of need and longing
Beyond desire and connection
And this is my journey:
To embrace the vastness that I am
The thousand threads and stories all at once
The irreducible multiplicity that is me
And then
To leap over my own shadow