When I came across
the story by Franz Kafka of Josephine the Singer, it was one of the most joyful
LMFAO moments. I felt as if I had been included in an intimate way with the
insane humour, but kindly mocking voice of
the universe and that was a relief. If you don’t know the story it is a short
story about the artist and her audience. From Wikipedia...
Josephine is a rarity among the mouse people, for she
has the innate ability to sing, which none other in the community has
displayed. She can not only sing, but she can sing beautifully, helping all the
mouse people tolerate their unusually hardworking lives. Some of the mouse
people claim to dislike her and do not believe she is truly singing, while
others adore her and consider her a communal treasure; regardless, all the
mouse people gather round to listen to her, and once she is singing, forget
their reservations about her; they use her feeble vocal cords to their utmost
strength, and treasure her delicacy.
As a Josephine, I
know her well, as she mounts her little pedestal and sings in her reedy little
voice. My existence is as of little consequence as a treasured member of a
short lived mouse colony, but the rest of the parallels are snortingly funny if
you let them be.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_the_Singer,_or_the_Mouse_Folk
Many years ago my
beloved was under a great deal of stress and I was woken by his restless
dreaming in the middle of the night. He was laughing out loud in his sleep and
intrigued I asked him in the morning about his dream. He said he was walking a
tightrope in his pyjamas, and quite ridiculously used a gun to shoot the end of the tightrope loose so that he no
longer had to worry about walking along it. It marked a turning point in our
lives and is an image I will treasure.
The universe sends us
many images to short circuit a crisis and to help us to see the world in a new
way. I have always used a Zen technique for problem solving, of throwing the
whole kit and caboodle up in the air and wishing for the things I want most to
be the ones that land. This week I have been thrown a wobbly one with an eye
problem that has thrown my world out of balance (and in extremes of imagination
has reduced my eyesight to walking with a cane.) A trifle melodramatic I know,
but looking through a dodgy lense this week my worldview has greatly changed.
I live in car
dominated world from which I have been excluded this week. I see myself as an
artist but without my eyes, can I still be one and without my eyes can I still
lip read to be part of the conversation? My peripheral vision has been affected
and since I have always been a big picture type of person physically my view of
the world has been narrowed down to my immediate and selfish ones so how do I
maintain my intellectual persona? Is this what has happened to Australia? We
have become dizzy from staring in panic at our immense borders and have become
sun blind so need to now just tend to our own selfish little needs?
I will stand here and
sing in my croaky little crackle “We are a part of everything and everything we
do impacts everything else because that’s what the universe has shared with me
this week.” You can put it to any tune you please.
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