Chiaroscuro
“In each
of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and
regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We are each of us our own chiaroscuro,
our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid,
something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. Because there is
a lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the
time.”
Libba Bray
The word, chiaroscuro,
refers to the deep variations of light and dark in a painting. I
remember an art class I took in Raleigh decades ago, in which we
spent several classes simply mapping out the variations in color,
shadow & light; how to mix one color of paint to give four or
five different hues—light to dark. I was surprised to learn that
artists see this way—simply in depth of color and scale.
I was young then; what can I say?
I had an interesting
conversation with a friend yesterday, about the idea of light and
dark in people. Where does it come from? Is it genetics? Is it a
product of our early childhood? Why is it that two people from the
same family can grow up to be so very different? Why is it that a
difficult childhood produces both productive, functioning citizens,
and sociopaths in the same cohort of brothers and sisters? Do all of
us have it in us to choose what we will become, or is it the luck of
the draw? Big questions. Most families must wonder about them at some
juncture, because most of us have families like that.
We all have a shadow—that
part of ourselves of which we are unaware. Some of us have a very
dark shadow, and some of us are completely unconscious of our light.
On any given day, at any particular moment, we may be operating from
that shadow-self, and be oblivious to it. The thought may cross our
minds, “what made me do that” or “why did I say that.” We may
wonder why we are feeling angry, or sad, or unusually delighted for
no identifiable reason. As Libba Bray says, “there is a lot of gray
to work with.”
We can catch a little
glimpse of our shadow in the things we project onto others, in the
labels we hang on them, or the names we call them. Donald Trump is a
classic example of this—Little Marko, Crooked Hillary, and such. It
is well to be aware of the people whom we most admire, or can't bear
to be around—they mirror a little piece of us. But most of all,
know that we are equal in this respect—we have darkness, and we
have light, and all the variations in between. We are
chiaroscuro—“our own illusion fighting to emerge into something
solid, something real.” We can forgive ourselves for being human.
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment