This lovely ceramic statue sits in the yard beside the Orcas Island Pottery, and teaches me what I need to know about projection. On my bad days she looks tense and anxious, like she's clutching herself, or protecting herself; barely holding it all together. I detect a frown betwen her eyebrows, and the carvings on her cheek look like cat scratches.
But on a good day, I look at her and see a tender maternal figure, serenely embracing the child within, humming a lullaby under her breath as she quietly imagines their future together.
This Rilke poem is for her, and for you:
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth --
it's she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it's you she receives.
You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.
1 comment:
Beautifully put. Viewing art is a relationship. The viewer brings what is of meaning to them to the piece. I don't like it when artists explain their work too specifically. It influences that relationship. It's like a parent butting into to their child's love life.
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