In the cold, clear sun this morning, I thought that it might
be a good thing to call up the main symbols I use in my life. Always an
advocate of finding analogies for my insides in my outsides, I think it has not
occurred to me before to collect them in one place and ponder how I have used
them. A little symboleering analysis: I
like arches, stone walls and towers, high trees and birds, and the sky in all
its weathers.
The big one, of course, is the River. A very conscious
comparison, I have used it over and over in poetry, in musing, and in art to
represent the flow of my life from its springing source to its eventual
molecular mix into the big waters at the end.
This has been the vision driving the choices I make from day to day.
A second symbol, although rarely used consciously, is the
Train. One of my favorite intersections with the Grateful Dead is their train
songs: Monkey and the Engineer, Casey Jones, Tons of Steel. Trains are big and
powerful and they take you from one place to another in style (or at least they
once did, don’t get me started on AMTRAK). I think of them as situational,
having impetus and threatening to jump the tracks. Like a lot of the projects I
have worked on. Trains take stamina!
Another is Buildings. I love engineers and the miracles they
construct and am fascinated with the required nuts and bolts. I remember a line
from a therapy poem I wrote in my early 20s, that “My strong, straight building
leans” after some embarrassingly dramatic experience. Even then I subconsciously
“constructed” my life. Now I consciously
use Buildings as metaphors for my future, as I did in Bridges: Using Symbols to Build Your Life (2014).
And Bridges! How could I have forgotten about Bridges:) I
didn’t actually forget, but it comes last to mind this cold sunny day. I LOVE
my bridges, all up and down the Mississippi River at familiar bends and twists,
places to get from one side to the other, graced with arches and fretwork to
entice my imagination. Here be the crossings.
By now I have entire emotional landscapes attached to the
places I walk, the city that surrounds me. I find it comforting and
stimulating at the same time, and setting up storyboards for a new direction
can call me up from a slump or back from an ill-conceived trainride. A mode of
personal introspection that suits me to a T(r)ee.
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