Art Is a Spiritual Path by Pat B. Allen

Author:Pat B. Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

Figure 14. Luna Moth/Dancing Girl, by Sallie Wolf. Tape, foil, found stuff.

LUNA: I come out of your past—kindergarten, you hatched me then.

SALLIE: I wanted you. The teacher let you go. I couldn’t believe she let you go and yet I know it was selfish to want to kill you and keep you all to myself, spread flat in a cigar box maybe, on a bed of cotton.

LUNA: I came back to you.

SALLIE: Going to New Hampshire last week surprised me. How beautiful it was. How much I loved the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air. I didn’t need anything else. And then I found you squished on the road it was a gift from my past. Was I a child again in New Hampshire? Just me and my mommy. No kids. No husband . . . Your Oak Park wings are bigger.

LUNA: But not as firmly attached.

SALLIE: I could fix that next week. I think I want to make my moth a girl with two feet to stand on and five arms to try and do everything at once.

LUNA: Balancing will be the trick . . .

SALLIE: The metaphor is always the butterfly hatching out of the cocoon. I’m waiting for a girl to hatch out of the moth!

LUNA: Where is the woman?

SALLIE: She’s in there, I guess. Woman Moth Woman Moth . . . Moth—just slightly more than half the word Mother. . .

The next part of Sallie to emerge is what she first calls the “Me-doll” skinny, like I was as a kid, but with boobs—I thought of them as Big Boobs but they’re not, especially after I bound them with tape and foil, nearly strangling myself to make a neck to hold my head. No face yet. I’m thinking big red nipples—maybe brown. Real pubic hair. This moth and this doll are holding each other up . . . The Oak Park wings may be bigger but the New Hampshire wings are stronger. But I am outside the moth but I need the moth to help stand, to help me dance. I’m dancing with the Moon Goddess. I’m dancing with the Luna Moth . . . no faces yet. No features. We’re still emerging, this moth, no this goddess and I.

In a subsequent session, Sallie continues to work on the dancing girl. Her witness reads in part: The most fun I’ve had here I think is dressing my doll. A black patch of pubic hair. Red glass bead nipples. Wild gray hair. A scarf like I’d never wear. Leggings in blue silk, what a fashion plate. She had been bent, to ride the moth, weighing it . . . Where do these images come from? That doll is me—a climber, hanging by my knees, half-naked—a free-spirited child. That’s who I once was—someone I miss right now. I don’t like the prudish, worry-wart person I’m becoming, always disapproving of this, that and the other thing . . . I don’t know how I’ve become so judgmental except I’m always in reaction against something.

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