"Quickening"

 

Lingam

"Lingam" is the working title of this piece.

If you go to wikipedia you can find a dense text about what the lingam simbolizes. The original meaning is the supreme diving being (Shiva) has no sign, meaning that s/he is beyond any characteristic, specifically, beyond gender. The lingam is the outward symbol of "formless" reality symbolizing the merging of "primordial matter" with "pure consciousness". Often it is depicted together with the yoni, together they symbolize the merging of micro and macrocosmos, the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration, the union of masculien and feminine that recreates all existence.

So where did this image come from. This image actually came from a merging of felt impressions. As Spring began quicken in the plant world here in Pozos, the quiotes (the stalks of the Maguey flower) began to spring up in very turgid tall spires across the landscape, looking very much like erect phalluses. And yet they are the stalk of the Maguey flower that it produces once in its lifetime, near the end of its life cycle. They are phalluses that erupt into flower. The sweetest most incredibly nectared flower you can imagine. A feast for birds and the bees!

A masculine flowering I thought to myself!!! This is an important metaphor, rather than the one in which the phallus is a hollow tube for a missle or bullet. These common associations, which lead to other violent metaphors and acts of dominance and violence.

And we think of flowers as feminine, so here in the Magueys we have the representation of the yin and the yang in one!

And then I had a dream in which there was a representation more up close and personal of the greek fertility god "Phallus", of course with an with enormous phallus. Eros erupting around me and in my dreams.

And I got a whatsup image of another cactus in flower, also so sweet fragrance, almost beyond description. And again, so turgid also... again I was struck at the yin and the yang bursting forth, one inextricably entwined with the other. (That flower is in the background of this collage.)

I think I could say more about the formless part... but I will leave it there for now.