Sweet People

It is lovely to have sweet people in my life. People who are naturally kind and lovely, loving in a pure way. I remember a moment when my niece was ice skating with my kid, noticing her personage and how purely wonderful she was as she was interacting with her cousin, 6 years younger. Her natural yellow curly long hair somehow looks for a moment like she’s an angel. Of course she was teaching her hockey as she was on the hockey and lacrosse, she’s not an angel it was just for a second that you feel when in a state of connectednes in a moment that then dissipates It reminds me of the kind of feeling I get after watching Ground Hog Day. This abundance of love and care that after the movie I fantasize about people getting to that state of pure mindfulness, seeing the scene unfold to me.

My kid is reading an old book of mine, Classical Mythology, and was talking about the characters and the myth story of how the reference to a nightingale to get across the extreme feeling of mourning without end for a loved one; the myth it comes from involving a sister’s husband rapes the sister, and cuts out her tongue to stop her from talking. She makes a tapestry telling her sister in images what happened. The sister to punish her husband kills her own son and feeds him to her evil husband. I think it’s at that point they all turn into birds, the mute sister a swallow, the husband a hawk and the wife and mother a nightingale, always mourning her son in a constant pain. This nightingale story is referenced as a metaphor for terrible mourning, as extreme as a mother would mourn this son she killed. To mourn the one you loved that is dead at your own hand, especially a child, it makes sense the myth involves her forever crying for him and herself for causing his dead. A kind of circle of loss between the two.

And why does the girl with no tongue become a swallow? We wondered. I imagine her forever sad for what her sister did when she told her the stories through images of the rape. Feeling guilty for acts that resulted from her simply communicating what happened so her sister would leave the husband. She isn’t responsible for anything but gets punished for empowering herself and having a voice.

The innocent sister is the one who must find a new way to speak through images, creating art narrating her story. She’s had a terrible trauma that she is able to tell about which you’d think would free her, as being silenced by rape is horrific beyond words, but not beyond images. I image her to be in a process of healing and releasing her secret frees herself. She is warning her sister that her husband is not who she perceives him as, but a monster. One choice would have been to leave at once with her son all 3 escaping and leaving the husband alone. Then he could constantly be eating himself and is it because he feels appropriate guilt of his actions and will be tortured thus; he eats himself until he disappears inside himself and still can’t get away from his deed, Or way imprisoned as has no guilt and wants to punish his wife but cannot. Or he finds them and kills his wife and his son kills him. That story would have no happy ending but the powerless gain freedom and power.

Looked up nightingale symbol and it ends with a poet calls this nightingale symbol of sadness simpleminded and the nightingale actually laughs.

Wow so much in one little myth. In one the two sisters do the deed together but it is better the was she told me. The girl who is raped by her brought in law, the action and the silencing, symbolic of the part of the rape where the vicious not allowed to speak of it. Then there’s the spinning of fabric with the story in images. That part is how powerful art therapy can be with trauma; I see the girl as finding her voice despite the deep

Wounds of what has happened that she can never forget.

This all has nothing to do with the special feelings Groundhog Day evokes. Of course the always sweet and somewhat gullible Rita who is the focus of his inspiration does change in terms of her seeing him as a thoughtless self centered person and he proves her wrong but she accepts his evolution and changes in character until he is “worthy of her”.

In this story the character gets beaten by fate to the point of boredom with himself and slowly sees how not just unique and interesting other people are but also wanting to truly know them and connect with them.

My forgetfulness can make me feel I’m that person who forgot to follow up on something important with a loved one. I also felt proud I put my priorities with a friend discussing her more serious life events than my recent one.