Letting in the Light

11-6-17 Letting in the Light

It’s a rainy day again, cool and dark. Yesterday I finished another drawing which has shifted in meaning since I started it and so I am looking for a title according to what it is now saying. It is in the genre of The Inside and the Outside Are the Same.  There is a woman in a dark room, (a large box, a small house, a one-room apartment) she is opening the door and light is coming into her space. It’s a small room full of accumulated stuff and a chair for sitting. There is not much to sustain a person physically and it seems the clutter is a psychological stash. A tree is to one side of the house and branches are coming in through the open ceiling. Outside, within a landscape, another person looks out of a doorway. A sidewalk connects the two doorways and merges with the light that enters the first woman’s apartment. (Is the path then really a light that connects the two people?)

The second person within a doorway has no visible house and her doorway appears to come directly out of the landscape. Her space, physically and psychologically, is embedded within the environment, within Life, and it could be said that this is also true of the person in the dark box house. We can imagine that we hold thoughts, memories, and feelings within an interior psychological space. We feel this (to be true) and then we notice that this interior space is within the larger outside environment and therefore the inside and the outside are together, parts of the same whole.

Within this dark room, the interior space may be functional, but it is limited. We can contemplate the advantages and disadvantages of the small dark box. Is it a secure space or a confining space?  Is it a place to escape within, a place to mull over the personal experiences we have had, a quiet meditative place? Or is the room, dark and depressing, full of the layers of accumulated memories that can be endlessly searched through and reviewed for new insight? To stay too long within the confines of the dark space will not sustain us – no light, no water, no food, and no contact with other beings - human, plant, or animal. Light must enter the dark interior, experiences (insights, new views) must be brought in, and the door to the other must open. 

We may need the interior for all that it is, but it is also apparent that it is not the only space that we have. We don’t need to be locked in. The door can open wide, the accumulation can be cleared out, and the curtains that enable a view to the outside world can be opened. The Tree of Life coming through the ceiling knows no boundaries.

(Image: Letting in the Light)