JON-PATRIK PEDERSEN, PhD
The symbolism of butterflies as representing struggle, stasis, and transformation has certainly become hackneyed, but can still be potent. While painting this watercolor during the era of the coronavirus, I was not consciously intending to evoke these ideas, but I can’t help but consider that I was thinking of the cocooning we have all had to do, and the hope that the trauma this has been for individuals and society, in general, will lead to renewal and growth.
Untitled
(Watercolor, 6” x 6”)
We have been forced into an “introspective position,”which is not natural to and is avoided by many, and because of this some people are discovering aspects of themselves they were unaware of or had not had the time to cultivate. I have certainly seen this in my clients, some of whom are still struggling to survive, and others who are developing “wings” to carry themselves through this challenging period. And I am aware that being able to spend more time making art has been my way of coping and redeeming the suffering I have felt and witnessed.
Two Poems
Everything Makes Me Cry
Before this storm of virus and hate descended I would tear up at the sight of a father simply kissing his child, or a video of a soldier home from war
being greeted, ecstatically, by his big dog,
or of two tots racing toward each other, one black,
one white, and hugging with innocent joy,
and I would smile and say I was going to write a poem
called Everything Makes Me Cry.
And now I see a woman weeping
beside her elderly mother, now gone,
a father raging over his son bleeding
beside a police car,
and a mother wailing,
for more reasons than I will ever know,
and I hear Amazing Grace
over and over and over
and over and over again.
I’ve come to hate that song.
And I can’t stop crying.
SLAM, WHAM, BAM, THUD
Do you remember the cartoons where Bugs Bunny is grabbed by the ankles by a Bad Guy and is effortlessly swung over his head, then slammed to the ground on the Bad Guy’s left, and then his right, and then his left, leaving Bugs with what must have been a serious concussion? This is what doing psychotherapy feels like in this period of social unrest. I am Bugs, and I guess Life is the Bad Guy: A student in his 20s asserts that All Lives Matter is all that matters. Slam. (I confess: I argued— but I didn’t charge him for the session). Then an artist, out protesting for days, says he’s “all for the looting.” Wham. A scientist says she is speechless from all the violence and injustice. Soft Thud. A despairing biologist experiences my attempt to comfort her as insensitive. Bam. The graduate student who says nothing about any of this. Stars Swirling Around My Head. The MBA who sees nothing wrong with slavery as long as it doesn’t affect the economy. Slam, Wham, Bam. And the young man about to be a father, afraid for his wife and baby-to-be. Thud. And after all this, my head has bumps, my body hurts, but more than anything, my heart aches.