Pre-Completion, Pre-Death

It started with Howard Tonkin's first posting in Gestalt in Organisations group within LinkedIn which was titled 'Midlife and the Great Unknown'. It caught my eye. I opened up the posting and it took me to his writing on another website where there was a video of David Whyte. I have always loved his writing but never heard him speak. So it was really special to see him and especially to hear him. He recited a much-loved poem of mine 'Love After Love'. The way he recited the poem was fabulous. Conversational and casual, the poem takes on a different resonance. I responded to Howard's posting and said that I made a connection between his work and Stephen Jenkinson- the 'Grief Walker'. It so happened that Howard met Stephen recently and I must have met Stephen the week after. While my past postings were connected to the themes of passings and death, in the past few days, I have noticed my attention being drawn to pre-completion or pre-death. In the past, I noticed that I paid attention to beginnings and I registered endings but until my mother's death, I had not felt endings as much as I am able to feel them now. So it is interesting to me that I am almost 'working up the food chain' to notice the feelings of pre-completion. Recently, I have been sensing a sort of shifting- of a sure but steady feeling of an ending presencing itself. I don't yet know what it is. Perhaps it is my work/ time in Poland. Perhaps it's something else. Suffice to say that I feel the presencing and arrival of some kind of ending approaching. It is unsettling. I feel neither the need to run away nor am I particularly motivated to change 'it' in any way. In Gestalt, there is often a recognition of the 'creative void' and the impression I have is that usually it is spoken about as a prelude to the beginning of a gestalt. What I am experiencing now is a something like a no-thing void during the latter phase of a cycle of experience. Since this is new to me, it seems important to acknowledge it's presence. As I write this down, I am aware of wanting to make use of this time to make sense of and figure out what is ending and just following my process and being with this new feeling. The sun has just appeared for the first time today.

Exquisite

Recently, I had the good fortune of taking people round Tate Modern. Each time I 'saw' different things even though I have been to the same rooms over and over. Yesterday, this was the painting of Dod Procter which I saw for the first time and instantly fell in love with it. The display caption said-

'This was voted Picture of the Year at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1927 and bought for the nation by the Daily Mail newspaper. From c.1922 Dod Procter had begun to paint a series of simple, monumental portraits of young women that she knew, utilising the fall of light across the figures to give a powerful sense of volume. The model was Cissie Barnes, the sixteen year old daughter of a fisherman from Newlyn, the Cornish village that was home to Dod Procter for most of her working life. The popularity of this painting led to its being displayed in New York, followed by a tour of Britain from 1927 to 1929.' (From www.tate.org.uk)

Close-up study of brushstrokes showed immense attention to detail. The textures, light, skin tones...utterly amazing. Beautiful. Ravishing.

Post Conference Traces

On the PKP 9.00 am from Warsaw to Krakow.

Two days after the 4th International Coaching Conference.

While travelling on the train this morning from Warsaw to Krakow, between emails and spinning plates, I had time---to ponder and dwell on things. As I looked out of the window, the train, with me in it, hurtling towards Krakow, traces of the conference like perfume, lingered. I was caught by the sight of a single tree- black and resolute- against the still white ground of frozen earth. I was struck by the shape of the tree- like a paper cut-out. I suddenly realised I was able to see more- able to see through them- further---into the distance- through other tree structures---further still into the distance. And so, I was at once stunned and grateful for their graceful nakedness, slipping glimpses of so much more because they were stripped down to their bare structures.

 

Somehow, I made a connection with the conference and found myself mulling over the question that was posed by Laura at the beginning of her session about tools---in my wandering of wonderings, these transparent trees represented the creative tension between coaching tools and our being as coaches. For only four months in the year, we are afforded a depth of view we wouldn’t otherwise have. Isn’t it incredible? Only four months! Maybe, just like nature, we can relax our grip on tools and techniques and bare ourselves to our clients so that they see more and see further through us.