fearsome foursomes / notes on emotional hygiene

To square up is “to turn so that one is facing something or someone directly.”1 It also means to prepare to fight and to balance accounts. This turning towards, this muscle of regard, the acceptance and consent that go with it, is as revelatory as it is liberatory. I’m interested in this squaring up.

A square has four sides. There are also four chambers in the heart, four seasons in the year, four directions. I turn to these four-photo galleries when I the words and I are missing each other. I also find them to be a little tongue in cheek, plucky.2 From that mix, I offer this fearsome foursome: clockwise from upper left — Alexandria Deters embroidery portrait of controversial cult leader Erika Bertschinger-Eicke then Roz from Monsters Inc then art seen from the sidewalk then a piece from Freedom From Fear, an exhibit of Emilio Martinez’s paintings.

In his book, A Year to Live, poet and teacher Stephen Levine talks about relating to our emotions and experiences (our life?) rather than relating from them. To relate to is to witness, respond, rather than be trapped on the hamster wheel of reactivity and judgment. My reactivity is often born of what I have refused to turn to, out of stubbornness, forgetting, fear. The refusal catches up.

Stephen Levine is talking about squaring up. A preferred method of squaring up is in the generation (summoning?) of creatures. I suspect that the attention Emilio Martinez offered to his paintings was the same that he offered to his own experiences. The care was palpable. “Freedom from Fear” is born of close looking at fear, which may require relating to fear as a someone. His paintings are full of someones. His hospitality toward difficulty was so evident, as the description notes:

“His paintings serve as an expurgation of demons—both internal and external—transforming the grotesque and challenging aspects of existence into revelations of beauty and humanity. Martinez's figures, though often shadowy and beast-like in appearance, reveal themselves as tender creatures whose eyes meet the viewer with profound sensitivity. Their intensity radiates from within, reminding us of the essential humanity that exists beneath all surfaces. Adhering to the adage that looks can be deceiving, Martinez's work asks us to look deeper, to find the seeds of grace even in darkness.”3

My experience of difficult emotions, of fear, sometimes feels like demonic possession. Our collective refusal to relate to our intense emotions with any curiosity or respect certainly results in demonic behavior, in cruelty. From what I’ve gathered, ‘expurgation’ is actually inclusion. To include I need to know who I’m including, by face or by name. There I am, in artists’ creatures, characters, beings, drawings. In the way that these figures endear themselves to us, they make way for self-regard; they remind us that we are big enough to welcome all of the sides, all of the heart, all of the directions, all of the years.