NON-FICTION — AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Chapter 31 — Resisting The Call To Self-Awareness

Kintsugi: Making, Breaking, and Putting Pieces Back Together Again

Back home in Canada, life became another busy round of family and friends and activity through the summer. The energy levels surged and surged, as I was constantly surrounded by family for the first six weeks back home. When the house finally became quiet, I set to work repairing the patio deck. I unconsciously knew I needed to keep busy. M also found ways to keep busy as she got involved with a Women’s Build project in the nearby city of Saskatoon.

In September, we began another round of visiting family which included me flying on my own to British Columbia to visit my mother. It seemed that no sooner had one journey ended when it was time to head out in a different direction on another journey. It was as if we were, unconsciously avoiding being alone at home.

It didn’t take much of an excuse to find someone else to visit. As life began to slow down in the late stages of autumn we decided to book a three-month winter stay in Mexico.

By the time November 2008 arrived, we took another road trip to see M’s brother who was experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s. The rounds of visiting continued well into the early winter. We finished off the year with all of our children and grandchildren coming to our home to celebrate Christmas. Sometime during all of that activity, I had set up a blog site which was to focus on Jungian psychology and photography.

In January 2009, we flew off to spend three months in Yucatan, Mexico. I began to wonder, ‘Are we running? If so, what are we running away from? Or, was this rush to Mexico simply a well-reasoned plan to enjoy sunshine and warm temperatures during the coldest part of a Canadian winter?’ The answer was simple. Yes, we knew we were running, we just didn’t know why.

We arrived in Chuburna, Yucatan, Mexico and were happy when we saw what would be our winter home at the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico. It was a world away from the bustle of Cancun where we had stayed for a week only three years earlier.

We were slow to begin exploring beyond the paths we walked for the first few weeks. We had found themselves immersed in an interpersonal quietness which we both desperately needed. With the waves of the ocean as background mood music, it was as if we were living a meditative life. We were finally able to relax. It was the first time we found themselves alone without the distraction of others and activities. And, for the most part, it was good.

However, being alone together and wondering what to do, what to say to each other to fill the long hours began to stir things within both of us. We were faced with ourselves as individuals, different from seeing each other in our roles as teachers or parents or grandparents.

We were both out of our natural elements of career, family, friends and community. There were just the two of us beside the ocean. Even our life in China had somehow managed to fill most of our time with work, students, friends, and curious Chinese people.

There was always something to do, someplace to go when the silence became too heavy. So, we turned to doing what we had always done in the past, we went walking for hours in every possible direction.

There was a difference this time as I wandered with the camera. I slipped into thinking and viewing the world through a psychological lens. There was a pronounced focus on things broken and abandoned and feminine, the power of the feminine in my photos.

I took a photo of M walking through a set of poles set into the water with her hands uplifted while a flock of seagulls appeared to be obeying her command to fly from their roosts on the posts. Somehow I had captured the image of a goddess, a magical image. Here was proof that M was my Magical Other.

On one of our walks, we came across the ruins of an old stone building only steps away from the sea. An old, dead skeleton of a tree stood between the ruins and the beach. I took photos and wrote blog posts to go with the photos. In one such post I exposed more than information of the scene. I had unconsciously set the opening scene for a journey of self-exploration which would continue for years into the future.

“The roots of the tree are found at the beach’s edge, where the brush meets the sand, only metres away from the seashore. Like the ruins which are out of view, the tree is stripped bare, exposed to the core. I identify with this tree and somehow that is a bit troublesome. What if I were stripped bare of all the masks, all the ruses and illusions created by my conscious and unconscious self?” [Personal journal, January 15, 2009]

I found myself resisting this journey. I focusing as much as possible on staying undercover, preventing my inner self from being exposed and vulnerable. It became a battle of control, self-control. Who would win the battle, my soul or my ego?

I had worked too hard in the past to achieve some sort of psychological wellness. That work had been done and there was no way I was going to go back down that road again.

“As for my inner self, I know I don’t hardly try enough to take care of psyche as I do of my physical home. And in noticing the simplicity of a Mayan home, I realised that the undressed ‘self’ has its own beauty, a natural beauty.” [Personal journal, January 30, 2009]

There was a woman living alone in the casa beside our house, a woman who soon became a friend, especially as a friend for M. That friendship was vital. I couldn’t hold off the demand of my psyche. I had finally begun a psychological journey which had been delayed for too long.

Friends from our home in Canada were staying in the nearby town of Progresso for the winter, friends who joined forces with us for a road trip through the Mayan Yucatan and the mangrove swamplands near Rio Lagartos.

As always, I took a lot of photos of birds, architecture, people, and other curious things that caught my eye. When the trip was done, I slipped into a quietness signalling an approaching depression.

Previously

I want to thank the following people for reading this story:

Brian Lageose, Robert, Dennis Koluris • M.Sc., Bill Harris, Mariana Busarova, Alberto Ocando, Chase Dalton, Mr. Plan ₿, Harshil Mevasa, Author, D. Denise Dianaty, Loicrees, and Buddhi Ruparathna, Lady De Ville, Pete JJ, Tina Here, Patricia O’Neill, Domino Cat, Lisa Duffy-Korpics, Sai Ezra, and Trinity Ellis, Author

I also want to welcome my new followers, hopefully new readers:

JJ Hart, Patrick L. Cheatham, David Pearce, Ciorhan Nicolae, Drunken Wanderer, Ulysse Carter ✦, and JF Weehawken