Her Seasoned Passion by Pamela Underwood: Memories of my burned home with bedspring sifted from the ashes.
I’m often asked how I came up with the concept of Middle Sisters Circle (visual journaling for insight, growth and change). It all started among the ashes of my studio and our burned down home.
I want to tell you the story but it has many levels and is too long for one newsletter. So, I’ve decided to tell you in three parts. I hope you are intrigued and read them all. And then, I invite you to Join our Circle!
XPamela
Part One: The Fire
The seed of Middle Sisters Circle was years of daily, handwritten journals after completing Julia Cameron’s groundbreaking book, The Artist’s Way in 1994.
After eight or nine years, my spiral lined notebooks began to stack up in the corner of the studio. They held mostly mundane ramblings, but also a few extraordinary insights. I felt no desire to re-read them but never thought to throw them out either. Then our home and my studio burned to the ground in the 2003 California Cedar Firestorm, along with 2,231 others’ homes.
When my husband and I went back to the land where our home once stood we were engulfed with pungent smoke and ash. I stared, shocked at the grandfather eucalyptus tree, still ablaze. I tried to make sense out of such devastation.
The black ash of our life crunched underfoot as we made our way to the place where the studio had been. Metal flat files, distorted and collapsed, came into focus. The fire had turned a grapevine basket into a pile of fine vine charcoal, metal scissors-once stored in a basket-lay fused in a mound, and there, in the corner, rising above the rubble, was something sculpturesque and strangely familiar. A stack of black spiral bindings stood tall, the wires fused together from the ferocious heat of the firestorm.
Oddly, the pages were visible. But instead of white paper pulp they had been rendered into delicate sheets of black ash. I felt no sense of loss for my years of journals; I just stood in awe of their exquisite transformation, their beauty.
Life went on. We hunted for a rental house, fire insurance battles ensued, I bought a new journal and began again.
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PS. I woke up the morning after seeing our burned home and channeled this poem
My Room
by Pamela Underwood
Open,
Sage green with a view of the mountain and the ocean.
I see it between sleep and waking,
In between dreams.
I sense the antique burl highboy standing vigil,
Waiting for me to rise,
Waiting to greet me,
To support my sleepy stumble.
The paintings on the wall watch while I sleep .
Holding me in the knowing of imagination.
They are my companions.
I begin to stir,
To breath deeply,
Tasting this memory into being.
For it is a memory
Still ingrained in my body
Held in my cells,
Held in my senses
Even when it has been reduced to black ash,
Carried away by the soft breeze
To the ocean,
To the desert,
To Mexico,
My Room.
Part Two; From Ashes to Images!
It took three long years to rebuild our beloved home and studio. I had an even greater need for my daily journaling, so new journals began stacking up once more.
Curious about those pages and pages of scrawled words (that I now realize I would never have read), I began to think of my journals differently. My own handwriting, numbers, doodles and sketches had always found their way into my visual art, so why not make these journal pages the foundation for something new and alive instead of gathering dust in the corner?
Starting with a mixed media sketchbook, instead of the lined spiral notebook, I was inspired by the prospect of re-purposing, re-inventing, re-cycling my journals.
Years before, I had started the practice of quickly collaging the outside of my spiral journals with magazine pictures as a “visual check-in” with myself before beginning to write. So there was already color, image and texture on the exterior. All I needed to do now was take it inside.
After filling every page with a foundation of writing, I opened my journal and began again. Transparent washes of color were added to each and every surface, right over the words. I noticed that, though I wasn’t reading the pages, I was reviewing the words subconsciously as I painted. The words informed the process.
I soon made a deal with my journal: “Whatever I meet in the world that elicited a body sensation will go inside this journal!” National Geographic images of starving children covered with flies were added as I recoiled with respect and sadness. I added images of my ancestors and childhood that held difficult memories and body sensations for me. I made whimsical blind contour drawings of delightful bees as I chased them around the page with my pen. I added fields of purple paint, rubbed fragrant sage leaves into the paper pulp, spray painted old lace onto the page – any and everything that enlivened my body in some way – disgust or tenderness, desire or fear, haunting memories, all went in randomly.
Part Three: Embracing My Journal as My Companion
As soon as I started paying attention to physical sensations as an integral part of the journaling process, I found that I was rooted again, re-engaged with the world!
With time I became more attuned to my sensual body’s response to visual images, smells, taste, textures and sounds. I was in tune with what triggered or enlivened me. When my body became activated, there was always a corresponding visual image I could generate to express my feelings in the journal—even if only with color or shape.
Often, the journal seemed a chaotic mess. But that was okay because this was a safe container, a laboratory for experimentation, a private playground for my psyche. I had no intention of showing it to anyone, so there was no pressure, only freedom to show up, work and play. This was a place where I could safely move toward difficult images that stirred me on a cellular level, with curiosity.
My pages began to hummmm and bloom with texture. They were exciting, disturbing, chaotic, sumptuous, confusing and thought-provoking! The journal became a gathering place for my life – memories, thoughts; things quickening, but not yet born. Future, present and past layered randomly – the starving child informed the ancestor, the ancestor informed the future, the future was informing the present moment. My brain began to re-wire, I began to live a new story. I began to “Re-Story”.
Most of the time it seemed that my daily journal tending was out of my hands. I was merely along for the ride. After awhile I watched transfixed as the pages began to self organize, as if I was only the scribe, doing what was directed.
When certain images that I encountered were uncomfortably intense I knew they were working with me. I reminded myself that they were my images and could be safely engaged with curiosity in my journal. I tentatively drew or pasted them in. I could always tape or clip those pages together until I was ready to address them in my own time. The important thing was that they were acknowledged, they were included and there was the opportunity for them to either become neutralized or integrated into my life in a new way.
My images and I had formed a relationship, a reciprocity, a give and take. They depended on me to have purpose, deepen, shift and change. I depended on them to challenge or delight me. I’d show up regularly so they could let me know what to do next. The more I showed up, the more images came with ease and took the lead.
This very experience is one I’ve shared with hundreds of women. I invite you to join us and discover the amazing images at work in your life!
