In search of colour again.

It's happening again, the itch for colour.

I've nearly gotten through the time that I told myself I'd definitely put off seeking colour, the time to give things to get settled. It's not that I've been consciously pressing against that boundary, not seeking to get beyond it, not like I have imminent plans to go forth and get inked as soon as my self-declared restrictions go down, but it's a boundary; like all boundaries that are important to me to know about, I'm aware of it, my consciousness of it is something that underlies my thoughts.

I watch the constraints between self and that boundary go, and the things I set aside until then come back to me, to reintroduce themselves to me, to make sure I haven't forgotten. And the world throws up reminders around me -- today watching the ballgame I noticed an armband tattoo on one of the players, either new or just something I never noticed before -- elisem gets a photograph of her new lovely curling leaf and posts it to her journal -- someone on wyrdsisters asks about whether anyone else has ink of spiritual significance, comments on the lotus, which is a motif in one of the images that I don't have. And, tangentially, a post to nonfluffypagans about the spiritual utility of pain, of ordeal.

Transformational experience, the marking of transformational experience, the shaping of self with things that leave their marks -- invisible marks manifesting as external marks, sometimes, which is part of what I'm thinking is what the hunger is, the yearning for coloration. But there is also there the yearning to embrace art, embrace creation, to become one with it, to be it; the yearning to incorporate other, to incorporate difference, to manifest colours that humans do not produce on their own, to carry representations and images always, without having to put them on or carry them. Initiatory experience, transformation, embracing; a complex weaving. And more than that, which I can feel but not verbalise, images, sensations, knowledges, flickering:

The blue lotus unfolding for dawn; the white unfolding for night. Clay, smooth and rich in my hands. Serpent's coils and cat's eyes and plumage of peacocks and water birds. Vines, twining around the arm like the memory of Dionysus or the suggestion of kundalini upraised. Curved around the egg that was self and past. The gaze of infinite, inexorable patience. Scream of a hawk.

There is something interesting about claiming the body by marking it as one's own.

On a darker note . . .

While is is arguably good for me that I am again able to be outraged by bottomless pits of stupidity, and even quixotically joust against their displays thereof; while it is arguably for the best that I can be stung deeply by people perpetrating misinterpretations and as a result accusing me of vile things; while being able to live as a whole person, including the dark and the angry, is a nice change from where I was a month ago . . . .

. . . I could really do without the cornucopia of opportunities to recognise my restored capability on a day when I'm feeling cold, lonely, vaguely abandoned, and emotionally crippled.

But the silver lining to this cloud is that I'm in perfect empathy with my narrator. Perhaps this will be useful if I ever remember how to write.

[ While I'm using Bonfire's icon for this, I'm (barely) keeping him off sole front. And I'm not letting him type. It would just worry people. ]