Discovering Katherine Mansfield

I've been forcing it.  Trying to pry myself open.  After a long week of creative hibernation.  I needed to keep the sensitive capability to draw out meaning from every moment at bay.  For emotions and sensations in the middle of the political workplace are too sharp to lay my thoughts on.  They pierce.  What's more is that they remain unabsolved of a possible redemption.  

I had a long discussion with Dad about the difficulties of making decisions.  I told him about what I faced at work and I saw in his face a contorted look of disbelief.  So he shook his head and told me to make people attend the trainings they needed so they will learn because it will be too hard to do it on my own.

It's all easier said than done.  I circle in this story of a family organizational saga.  Much similar to the saga of the school my grandparents left behind.  Only now do I understand how difficult it has been.  

So I keep prying myself open.  Searching for anything that will let me release all my thoughts or at least have them identify to something.  Something I need.  Something I want.  And I find Katherine Mansfield in one of my blog subscriptions.  A collection of her quotations about the volumes of letters she's written in her day.  I love diaries especially of writers.  How they write about their creative process is something that is always mystical to me.  I chewed on her words like food.  And it's settled me into a more quiet rhythm.  That which can absorb again the details of life like the noonday sun that's angrily shining in through the windows.  It's 34 degrees (celsius) outside and I don't know how long the weather will be this way.  They've forecasted a rainy week and I am really hoping for it to be so.  

Katherine Mansfield's House

“Why is it we so love the strong emotions? I think because they give us such a keen sense of Life—a violent belief in our Existence. One thing I cannot bear and that is the mediocre—I like always to have a great grip of Life, so that I intensify the so-called small things—so that truly everything is significant.” 
- Katherine Mansfield

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Art and Business

Letting myself unwind for the past couple of hours after an intense dialogue with executives on business strategy and leadership philosophies.  I ran into this video.  Aside from faith, what motivates me is my passion for art or any related artistic experience.  Finding a relationship between deepening my faith and learning about how artistic experiences can help this deepening process has been an ongoing pursuit for me since I graduated from business school.   I've realized how art can help me become more grounded and reflective in anything I do which translates to almost a prayerful experience.  This helps me understand why faith is needed in pursuing any experience and in understanding the aspects that strengthen faith, I am able to keep up with my perseverance of pursuing any experience.  An elective I took up in business school called "Self-Mastery and the Arts" has convinced me how important the impact of art is in one's life.  In that study, I also learned ho
Read more

Lectio Divina | A Reflection on Yehuda Amichai's "The Amen Stone"

Image
It took me a week to finally choose a poem I resonated with among the six poems I was assigned to reflect on through the ancient practice of sacred reading called  lectio divina .  The experience of being in a writing course (albeit online) has given me the liberation to explore the power of words and unearth the gift I know I've long locked within.  The gift of realizing I have the same power as well. My writing process was a painful unraveling.  I could not write immediately.  I could not catch the thought and pin it down on paper.  I tried reading other books that would get the flow of creativity going and to no avail the anxiety caught on and forced me to take a break.  So I did.  And went back on it again this weekend.  I had to recalibrate my mind for 2 hours.  Removing the residue of the business mind that forces me to constrict my definitions of life in a less human sounding voice.  I began my  meditatio  of  Yehuda Amichai's  "The Amen Stone".  
Read more

Anxious No More

Image
There are many interesting things that have been happening to me these past 3 weeks. It's been a journey out of and into another chapter of my life.  And this chapter is the chapter that makes me face that thing I want to do the most.   Write.   The stories on this page have been slow because I've been trying to discover what it is that I want to really write about and when I ask myself this question, I begin to ask myself the most important question: what am I really about?  It doesn't feel so difficult to ask now compared to before.  I'd squirm and I'd let my gaze wander off into a blank wall or I'd stiffen up and change the subject because I don't really want to dig in too deep and ask myself that because I fear the answer to that question.  I fear having to say it out loud.  I fear having to type it out here.   What am I really about?  I don't really know.   I don't really have it all figured out just yet.  It's been a while
Read more