December 1, 2009

The Door Called "FEAR"



The door that reflected my feelings about living in the desert was FEAR.
Fear of the unknown and fear of change, and fear of what I couldn't control.
We all have doors that are presented to us like this.
Sometimes we push past our fears and turn the handle and open the door and walk through.
Sometime we are forced to open the door and we are pushed through.
But we all have experienced that door of FEAR, metaphorically speaking.
So what would a door of FEAR,  look like to you?
I am again reminded of Susan Sorrell's class for searching for our Personal Symbols.
So this is a quest, embodied in a story quilt, that is in search of Personal Symbols.
I did not at first think about the snake being blue representing my fear of running out of water,
But after I finished stitching it and looking at it as a flowing stream, I realized that this was
the perfect symbol to represent that.
The reason that I picked Blue was because it was a vibrant color that would be used in New Mexico, and Van Gogh said that blue cannot be blue without yellow.
The door frame was yellow and so I thought blue would be good for the snake.
Also I don't think of blue Rattlesnakes.  So many of our fears are not founded in reality but in feelings, and feelings are often not rational.
I wanted the head of the snake to be where you put your hand to open the door.  The place where you would least likely want to put your hand, just so you could experience the FEAR.
Because FEAR is an emotion, it is abstract, it is a fifth sense.

You can already see the outline of the scorpion.
Often it is the small things that become the larger issues in our mind. 

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have lived in the desert and snakes were a big fear of mine...so the snake on the door is quite appropriate. Awesome stitching!

Quilt Architect said...

Thank you Ancient Cloth,
We don't have any poisonous snakes here on the coast, it is too cold for them. So living where there are snakes would be a "culture" shock. All the sudden you would have to watch your step, and I think that is what FEAR does to you.

arlee said...

Becky, this could be quite an intriguing series.
That last line "Often it is the small things that become the larger issues in our mind." REALLY makes me want to explore the idea too--but i will not copy :}Perhaps my current work *is* a series about that--as i age, my body becomes more problematic, but more interesting as well:}

jude said...

the consciousness of personal symbols goes way back for me. i think that is how we communicate. i am laughing about someone teaching a class about that. i laugh about everything.

Quilt Architect said...

Arlee, I dare you to copy it. I am like Jude I am starting to laugh about everything. I am not taking anything so serious...there isn't enough time and if you need to copy something or try to copy something of mine then you just go right ahead...you probably will get bored and make it into something else, and maybe I will see the other side of myself in what you did.

Jude thank you for visiting. I agree that symbols goes way back for all civilization. Society has just kind adulterated it with all the advertising so that we have lost our personal symbols. We have just been so used to lettings others create symbols for us and been satisfied with such meager food for thought.
We have to get ourselves back to the garden as Joni says.

mounen said...

It probably sounds a bit funny, but for me actually going through the door is one of my fears.
I'm an anxious person and my fear of what lies without causes me to have to push myself out the door.

Anonymous said...

I find that I am drawn to biographies of women who face their fears and move beyond them, my unique learning tool to try and see how to get to the other side of my fear(s).

Symbols have been lost in our culture, but I think they are making their way back through the blogging world and real conversation.

I want to laugh all the time too, but find it not so easy. I would love to know how to access this genuine and special quality.

Quilt Architect said...

FiggyFingerWork,
I think that that is the way some people strategize doors. My middle son does that. He would rather watch my older son try new things and fail that to actually fail himself. He doesn't like the part of not knowing he can do it. I don't think any of us do, but we develop a strategy to help us.
Sometimes we have to take the advise that my Midwife gave me when I was pushing out a child that had his hand over his head, "Push past the pain."

Quilt Architect said...

I also like biographies of women and men overcoming obstacles. I think that it does give us courage to challenge ourselves beyond what we think we are capable of. It kinda gives us a light on the path and so we are able to keep going.

I like what you said about "real conversation". Why do we settle for trite phrases and cliches when we really need to push ourselves to "see". I guess the symbols are like sign post along the way.

I think that what you are saying is that we cannot see alone. We need each other but only in a real way.

We compromise our self and others when we just live in a perceived "normal" way. When we don't question the status quo.

About laughter.
In my family we used to say, "If I didn't laugh, I would cry."
But another way to laugh more is to have a 16 year old in the house...named Isaac...and then you would laugh a lot more...or cry.