Symbolism of Stairs: A Life Art Exploration
/When freeze is no longer an option and causes more discomfort than comfort. And yet still, we can’t stop feeling dead.
Inside, underneath these couch potato numb freeze states is someone screaming in agony to be let out. Making art is sometimes the only action I/we can take.
When freeze is no longer an option
And on top of that I’m frustrated with this art making because it seems to not be making any difference. I’ve lived my life with the belief that art heals and yet here I am still locked up. I’ve worked for the last three years on a book that is about the intersection of art, creative process and healing. [for info about the book go here] I feel like a fraud. How can I go forward and publish and do all the publicity of talking confidently about who I am and what I do? Am I allowed to be honest? I’m still depressed and shut-in. I’m still not the activist I aspire to be. I’m still not contributing to a beautiful just world. I’m still finding it difficult to connect with others.
This has something to do with a life art exploration I started in the end of May. Photographing myself on stairs. Wanting to understand the symbolism of stairs from my nighttime dreams as well as in life. For the last ten years, I’ve been going backward down my stairs because of pain in my knees and ankles. After recently breaking my ankle it then became painful going up as well. In multiple ways, in my life, this feeling of being stuck was showing up (on top of that theirs the actual quarantine). It’s that dysfunctional nervous system that has the brakes on even as we hit the gas. Can’t go up the stairs and can’t go down. Just stuck.
(press on any image to see larger)
While I’ve been in and out of trauma freeze states for the last 10 years or so this recent discomfort, (and maybe it is more of a discomfort than a freeze this time) is that something has come to the surface. I touched on it in my book, but now it’s clarifying in the stew of my consciousness. Understanding that my personal trauma has been at the service of white supremacy. The learning trauma tells me I’m too stupid to contribute to any activism. The pre-verbal sexual trauma that wants to just stay small, hide, and live in safety keeps me from taking more visible actions of risks against systems of racism, colonialism, and patriarchy. And so on, all the layers! Including how it intersects with the privilege of wealth and white skin that has its own ancestral form of trauma inherently in it.
Understanding that my personal traumas are NOT personal is key to activation out of my shit and hopefully finally coming out of isolation to be part of creating community of culture (as Resmaa Menakem says in My Grandmothers Hands).
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In my book, I explore the symbolism of doors. I used the practice of putting myself in doorways to deal with my feelings of not wanting to leave the house. Similar feelings still present but this time showing up in the symbol of stairs. Doors to me are a threshold, a stepping through from one place to another, from one reality to another. Stairs are similar, another kind of threshold but rather than being on the horizontal plane stairs are vertical and seem to be about a longer passage. Christianity has indoctrinated us with the belief that going upward is a goal and better than going downward. Instilling in us the binary of heaven and hell. And what about those of us that are designed to live between or to have access to it all–the threshold/stairs actually a place of home.
In the following images, I explored messages I’ve learned from Trees as well as my dreams. Our spine is a passageway for life; it is The Tree of Life within giving us access to worlds, to life, to life, to life. I have known this in my own body as true and yet I obviously keep forgetting, hence whatever practice or art helps us to remember.
Note, I am non-binary living in what most people perceive as a woman’s body. I’m aware that my shape is similar to many ancient goddess images. This has been confusing for me, like there’s a cultural pressure to accept my body as feminine because it is round and has boobs and nipples. I propose that we all consider that our culture is pretty fucked up in its binary thinking and we don’t actually know how humans perceived The Goddess.
I think many of us queer folks are finding ourselves having deep somatic spiritual experiences that are showing us the lies we’ve been forced to consume about gender and about who we are allowed to be within our assigned genders. I pray that our body/minds may be free of these lies and so too the gods, goddesses, spirits that have been miss represented for the benefit of patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, etc.
The symbol of the Tree of Life is a great example of non-binariness or that which is all-encompassing. I am the Tree––tall and erect and I give shelter and beauty for others. I am also the cosmic egg that holds all life (in many images of Tree of Life you will see it standing inside a rainbow like egg). The Tree, while growing upward towards the sun is also growing wide and deep below into darkness. All of these realms, above, middle, below, providing nourishment for The Tree as well as creating worlds for others to inhabit.
From that understanding of the connection between stairs, our spine and Tree of Life I then had an “aha” after creating the following two images.
There’s something called the polyvagal ladder! (read about it here keep in mind that this too is based on a hierarchical idea. But I took it as a sign that there is a connection between the symbolism of stairs and the nervous system). This was a new term for me. I feel these two above images are a message from my body to spend more time touching, playing with, and activating my vagal nerve (it can be activated by making sounds and can create a calming response). Funny cause I’m also feeling called to start singing more again. Laa wee ohhh Ooo yay!
Meanwhile, I’m now able to walk up my stairs again pain-free! I started to practice going up one step at a time, pause let my body calm, then another step. This came from a practice I learned from Jane Clapp (she does this through various challenges of balance) about using the body’s natural “righting reflex” to I guess, retrain the nervous system to not be afraid of taking a step up, wow. Now to work on going down the stairs, eek. Maybe this life art process stuff is working?