Art therapy helps us to understand and depict psychological processes. It is often used when you do not know more and cannot express your problems in words.
In our work on this topic, we started a self-experiment:
What does crying look like for us?
What do we feel when we cry and how can we express our feelings?
During my self-experiment, two snapshots of my drawing were taken. While I described the former as more excited and dynamic, and the latter as calmer, I noticed in the following discourse that the Institute determined it differently.
What brings us to these different descriptions?
The institute could only look and analyse the two static images and drew its conclusions from the observation of these.
However, I could still feel the movements that led to the two pictures.
first picturesecond picture
The first picture was created by wild and fast movements and the second by calm and relaxing strokes over the previous painting.
So I remembered the performative gestures during the painting and therefore drew different conclusions from my works.
In art therapy, is the process also important to the result of the expression of feelings?
Are performative processes during painting equally important and relevant for art therapy?
For a sufficient and in-depth analysis of the psychic processes, both are probably balanced. One could even say that the behavior before painting should also be included in the analysis.
This allows you to better understand the person’s feelings.
Expressing and portraying my own feelings was a new and interesting experience for me. I had to deal with my feelings, which I usually tend to suppress in part.
While words could not have described what I was feeling at that moment, the pictures could.
The original title of this post was “Am I depressed or just a migrant?” but the remembrance of feeling the same way I do feel now when I was in Brazil led me to rethink my words.
Migrating is a condition, a shared lonely experience, a challenge for anyones self-esteem. However, I feel that once you’re a foreigner, you’ll always be, no matter where you are. If back in Brazil now, I wouldn’t be an immigrant anymore, but I’d still feel like a foreigner as I felt before.
When you leave for your own will and not for “major” reasons – as war or natural hazards – the thought “how would it be like if I had never moved?” or “what if I come back?” are like small bugs following you around from time to time. Then you remember that there was a reason to leave so much behind. Life starts to be a matter of balancing reasons.
In times like these, I go back to “Cavalo”, music album by Rodrigo Amarante, that used to be my company during my first foreigner crisis.
Rodrigo Amarante was guitarist in one of the most famous bands of the 2000s in Brasil, Los Hermanos. When the band came to an end, he moved to Los Angeles. He went from huge celebrity to unknown small artist and it took some years until he released his first album solo, “Cavalo”, that has this in-between identity issues as one of the big topics.
Being a multilingual album, Cavalo brings a half (sometimes not) – understanding experience. Something so ordinary living abroad. Words cannot afford the meaning of some everyday conversations.
The songs are melancholic but beautiful, like some lonely nights in Weimar. They remind me that to accept my necessity of movement, though painful, is vital.
Since I came to create images with Midjourney, I’ve been trying to test the limits of this AI. Let’s leave all the controversies aside for a moment to use it as tool, to reflect on the inevitable bias of this platform.
Trying to escape from surreal intergalactic scenes and the fashion images I’ve been scrolling on my Instagram, I was looking for subjects that were not just hard to materialise but also hard to imagine – at least in my limited mind.
Back in Brazil, I always wanted to do a photoshoot of men crying but as I didn’t want to use models – and we do have a very macho culture – I couldn’t even imagine being successful with this project. This then felt like a good prompt: Man crying.
/imagine Man crying with tear in his red eyes, smooth face, chiaroscuro, crowd unfocused, many televisions turned on, detailed facial features/imagine Man crying with tear in his red eyes, smooth face, chiaroscuro, crowd unfocused, many televisions turned on, detailed facial features
Let’s start with the referential being. If you ever tried AI you might have noticed how unlikely it is to get a non-white subject if you don’t explicitly describe a body that it not white. This annoyed me in every trial, always getting a white male if I’d just typed “man”.
Now think about your own visual culture. Films, photographs, videoclips – how many times have you watched a black or latin man crying? What was the context? How was the facial expressions? Smooth? Desperate?
Man from Colombia crying with tear in his red eyes, chiaroscuro, street, houses, televisions turned on, wide angle, long shot
Then I wanted to check what a Colombian man looks like on Midjourney. The prompt “red eyes” was a trap, I know.
As a human being we know that red eyes could state that one has cried for a long time even if there’s not apparent tears on their eyes anymore. But that’s too subtle to prompt.
Instead of getting red iris, as I would assume I would get, the red came mostly as bruises and the smooth crying expressions I was looking for never came out. This reminded me that the few times I saw a man crying (not in person) were in catastrophic scenarios.
Reading “The Will To Change” by Bell Hooks I felt like getting deeper with understanding how do I deal with male feelings, therefore, male tears. Being daughter of a father who cries A LOT, my experience with male tears was pretty singular comparing to the general visual culture I had and I confess it didn’t make me better dealing with them.
But I know that images can help us to empathise and, after this exercise, I may go back to the “crying men” project to at least help me to enlarge my own visual culture.
To quote a curator Lars Rummel: “The installation creates a space that allows a profoundly human experience without the need to fear the consequences: crying. It reaches out to all who mourn regardless of the reason – to make a connection, create awareness, and have a space to grieve: where no tear is shed in vain. Life and joy can grow out of sorrow – be it energetically, spiritually, or emotionally, it always leads to growth and transformations.”
From Winter of 2019 until recently Kasia Molga has been collecting her tears – first when she cried after losing 3 loved ones in the Autumn 2019. Then with the start of COVID-19 she “trained herself” to cry in order to relieve her anxiety. And then to explore the chemical composition of human tears to see how they could make a healthy tiny marine ecosystem. To use her own tears to host a sea life became a form of catharsis and a constructive way to deal with personal and also then environmental loss. In addition to that Kasia started investigating how her mental health (and level of the aforementioned anxiety) is affected by the narrative of her “online life” – news & info feeds which were curated by algorithms. She started to wonder whether she could use this to cry and thus feed her mini-oceans.
The result: an experience, set in a 4 parts.
PART 1: THE MINI OCEAN COLLECTION There are 30 to 50 tiny bottles – each contains my tears and a North Sea algae. Each has a date, a reason for crying and the name of hosted algae. There is a log of Kasia’s diet from the period of the research, accompanied by a log of presence of chemical elements (N, P, K) important for healthy growth of algae. These elements can be regulated by a diet. Artist wanted to know how she could use her bodily waste to care for the environment, which we have destroyed? The main question she posed here was: “Can I look after my physical and mental health in order to be of ‘use’ to other life forms? Or can environmental health be an indicator of our own health.”
PART 3: THE MINI-OCEAN LAB & TOOL FOR TEARS’ ASSESMENT When ready to harvest tears – or to donate them – one needs tools to catch them, store them, asses their chemical composition (and nutritional value) to match them with the right type of algae, then to mix them with a drop of sea water and algae and place them under some light for a while before closing the tiny bottle. More about Tools for Tears’ Assesment & The Mini-Ocean Lab here.
PART 4: WORKSHOP-PERFORMANCE It is a form of a guided mediation for a group of 10 to 15, led by Kasia in collaboration with the Moirologist Bot, using queues and prompts which I have learnt about while researching what makes us cry. More about the Workshop-Performance here.
I would like to share two of my personal works about tears.
The first one is my self-portrait and tears of anger. About the identity and pain of women.
Tears can express many emotions, but in this work they are tears of anger.
I often feel cut off, vulnerable and aggressive at the same time, or that both genders are in the same body, which is why I shed tears of anger and sadness.
I agree with the Japanese sociologist Chizuko Ueno’s saying that women are a situation, and the dilemmas faced by women and men do not correspond, because a woman’s suffering stems from the fact that she herself is a woman, while a man’s suffering often stems from the fact that he is not a big man on top.
The tears recorded in the form of paintings express the same point of view. Women’s tears are not always an expression of vulnerability, at least not in this work of mine, because I know clearly that the reason why I shed tears of anger is because of my internal helplessness and pain about my biological gender as a woman, and secondly, these tears are also an expression of wanting to resist.
Next is another work of mine called “Tears of Discipline”.
After a painful and sad tear, I used a mirror and a camera to record the tears and habitually wondered: Is it beautiful for me to shed tears like this?
There were many clips from movies and dramas in my mind, and following these clues I searched for information that surprised me. It turned out that many of the messages I received during my growing up process were processed and disciplined, even tears were disciplined.
I am against regulated tears. Tears are a natural flow of emotions. Not an action to cater to the male gaze.
The defensive mimic theory offers an explanation for the striking similarities between crying and laughing.
It states that crying and laughing, as well as other emotional human expressions may originally stem from our defensive reflexes, which were and still are essential to our survival by protecting the body’s surface ((contracting the eyes, pulling the cheeks and upper lips up, lifting your shoulders, bending your knees, the head goes to the chest etc.) which all are characteristics that occur in both laughing and crying, especially as the expression intensifies)
More precisely, they might stem from the act of exaggeratedly mimicking defensive reflexes in stressful situations, especially in situations of conflict.
Throughout processes of evolution, crying and laughing may have proven to be useful social signals, effective for regulating ones and others emotions and thus regulating group dynamics by reducing aggression and evoking comfort.
Its important to note that while mimicking defensive reflexes may be the starting stone of crying and laughing, they now have evolved, through evolution into something much more complex.
Most of my information stems of the article: “The origin of smiling, laughing, and crying: The defensive mimic theory”, which was researched and written by Michael S. A. Graziano(a scientist, author and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University) in: “Evolutionary Human Sciences“, and waspublished online by “Cambridge University Press” on the 03 of March 2022:
The comic I made is about a claustrophobic fart that gets trapped in a small dark room. He breaks out into panic and sheds tears of overwhelm. This scene acts as a metaphor, of being put in a stressful situation, by outside forces, without having a choice, the claustrophobic feeling of overwhelm and helplessness. In the comic, by changing ones perspective about oneself – (the fart realizing that he is not even solid, and thus having many possibilities of escaping )- you can free yourself of this feeling.
While this might help some people, it is important to acknowledge that the happy end in the comic doesn’t translate to reality and that overwhelm can cause mental conditions like burnout and is to be taken seriously.
This is a short comic I made about a heartbroken dog that can’t seem to stop crying…
Also, I will take this opportunity to do some shameless self-advertising: I post some of my comics on my art instagram, if you’d like to follow me: @marinaramoska :))
After an altercation with a tutor, Yi-Fei Chen created this visual metaphor to show her personal struggle with speaking her mind.
Chen was born in Taiwan, where she was brought up with a strong sense of authority and taught that disagreeing with teachers was rude.
Because of this, she struggled to question her tutors when she came to the Netherlands to study for her masters degree.
“The difficulties living as a foreigner in another country lead to high pressures in the study environment,” she said. “Those pressures had been building for 18 months before finally reaching a crisis point during one of my midterm presentations.”
During the presentation, Chen was asked by a tutor to prepare more work in a short timeframe – something she felt impossible.
However, she couldn’t muster up the courage to say this out loud and went on to attempt to do the work. Soon after, she was sat in another presentation where the dean of the school told her she was underprepared.
“I was stage stuck and did not know how to react, but I did not say my thoughts aloud,” she said. “Furthermore, the reason he was angry was that I might have misunderstood him.”
When a classmate stood up for her and expressed her anger at the tutor’s scalding, Chen felt that her “politeness became her weakness” and was overrun with emotion.
“I was too emotional to control myself, I could not hold my tears so I cried,” she said. “I turned my back to the others, because I did not want people to see me crying.”
Chen has now visualized this personal struggle with speaking her mind as a conceptual graduation project – a brass gun that fires tears she has collected.
This happens in three stages. The user first puts on a mask with a silicon cup that catches the tears. The tears are frozen in a bottle, which is then loaded onto the gun – allowing the frozen tears to be fired.
At her graduation, Chen had the opportunity to point and fire the tear gun at head of department Jan Boelen. She took it.
Neurobiologist Noam Sobel at the Weizmann Institute of Science has peered into subjects’ brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging while only sniffing the tears. When men sniff the tears, their breathing rates, skin temperature, and testosterone levels sank and as high levels of testosterone can be associated with increased possibilities for aggression this is a significant discovery and means of reducing violence.
Based on this, Ken Rinaldo invented a tear gun with bullets filled with women’s tears in an attempt to appeal for the end of all wars and against gun violence.
What does a baby’s crying look like graphically? Inspired by computer graphics artist Georg Nees’ work Schotter, I tried to explore the visual rhythm of four babies’ crying sounds by listing them as tiny dots in Processing. The crying volume affects the size of the dot.
Before I produced this new crying material, I thought seriously about what exactly could make me sad and cry —— It was the unforgettable experience and the sadness of leaving.
In turn, I began to realize that I am about to leave the place where I have studied and lived for two and a half years. Looking back on this time, I was closely connected to the living space I have inhabited here. Especially during the epidemic, I spent most of my time in my room of the student apartment: online courses, doing homework, cooking, and communicating with my parents who were far away from me. More importantly, even with the endless homesickness, this room gradually became my “home”, a place that gave me a sense of security. when I thought of leaving this place, tears flowed down my face. Because it carries most of my memories, in each corner, there are all traces of my life.
So I decided to pick up my camera and record it before I left it.
Technical explanation
I obtained the point cloud model of the room by photogrammetry. This model was computationally generated by about 200 photos that I took. I also animated a short room tour.
Gertrud Koch schreibt in einem Aufsatz über Tränen im Kino: “”Im Kino gewesen – geweint.” notiert der notorische Kinogänger Franz Kafka in seinem Tagebuch. Im Kino gewinnt das Weinen ästhetische Autonomie – Weinen um des Weinens Willen.” (“Zu Tränen gerührt. Zur Erschütterung im Kino”) Hitchcock hat darüber mal in einem Interview etwas Interessantes gesagt, wenn er über genussvolles Weinen im Kino spricht: https://youtu.be/QPGgQjERWUs?t=559 (Bei Hitchcock ist das noch geschlechtlich stereotyp auf die weinende Zuschauerin bezogen, aber trotzdem interessant).
(NILS)
20.11.22
|
| @ ” https://youtu.be/QPGgQjERWUs?t=559:“
Hitchcock:“So what is a good cry as opposed to a bad cry. I
don’t know but she says that.”
sehr interessant: Weinen und Privileg?
(HELENA)
10.02.22
Hitchcock sagt also, das weiß er nicht, was good cry / bad cry voneinander unterscheidet
er kam wohl nicht in den Genuss des crying
wobei es ja weniger um Genuss geht als um einen Überlebensmechanismus zum Stressabbau
oder eine Kommunikation als Hilferuf
oder
oder
oder
alles wichtig
(HELENA)
13.02.22
das Bild einer schönen Frau, die erfüllend weint uff
(HELENA)
|
| @ “wobei es ja weniger um Genuss geht”
Weinen auf einen Überlebensmechanismus zu reduzieren geht aber gerade am ästhetischen Weinen vorbei, das um seiner selbst willen genussvoll durchlebt werden kann. Eine Möglichkeit, Good Crying zu denken: Im Kino weinen wir angesichts einer Fiktion. Wir wissen, dass das Erfahrene und Ergreifende nicht in einem herkömmlichen Sinn real ist. Das verwandelt auch die Tränen.
Befreit vom existentiellen Gewicht, das traurige Tränen im Kontext der gewöhnlichen Lebensrealität begleitet, kann das Weinen im Kino als intensiver Affekt erfahren und als Lebendigkeitsgefühl genossen werden.
Weinend treten wir aus dem Bannkreis unserer eigenen Biographie heraus.
(NILS)
Wenn wir es aus dem Bannkreis unserer Sozialisation, Geschlechterkonzeption raus geschafft haben
Schwäche zeigen war verpönt; und Jammern ist ja eigentlich auch Schwäche zeigen, oder?
(oma)
[…]
weißt du, wie reagiert wurde, als Kinder geweint haben?
(ich)
wenn Kinder geweint haben?… „ach plärr nicht so; sei ruhig; hab dich nich’ so“
(oma)
egal welche Ursache?
(ich)
jaja, also uns hat jedenfalls niemand bedauert. Da hat niemand gesagt: ach du armes, hast du dir weh getan, das gab’s nicht. Plärr nicht so. (lacht)
(oma)
also sehr abweisend
(ich)
jaja, auf alle Fälle
(oma)
kannst du dich an ne Situation erinnern und wie’s dir damit ging?
(ich)
eigentlich nicht… aber ich weiß noch, wo ich mal richtig rotz zu Wasser geheult hab, also zweimal eigentlich, da haben sie mich aber einfach heulen lassen und zwar einmal, da war ich ‘n bisschen zickig. […] Und mein Vater wollte Sonntag früh nen Spaziergang ins Feld machen und ich wollte nicht mit und dann auf einmal wollte ich doch mit und da war er aber schon weg und hat nicht auf mich gewartet, ist nicht nochmal umgekehrt. Und da hab ich so geheult und geheult und geheult; da hab ich Blasen geheult. (lacht) und da haben sie mich aber einfach gehen gelassen, da hat niemand gesagt hör auf oder was. Da saß ich eben in der Ecke und hab geheult.
Und einmal war ich im Wald, da hat mein Vater mich auf ne Decke gesetzt, die Decke seh ich noch vor mir […] und hat gesagt: wartest mal, ich will mal da und da hin, gucken ob’s schwarze Beeren gibt und als Kind kam mir das ewig lange vor, dass der nicht wieder kam und da bin ich aufgestanden und bin heim gelaufen (lacht) und das war weit. […] Da bin ich durchs ganze Dorf bestimmt ne Stunde oder halbe Stunde gelaufen und hab Rotz zu Wasser geheult (lacht) das weiß ich noch.
[…]
Jedenfalls da hat mich auch niemand am Heulen gehindert; das fand ich eigentlich schön, so zu heulen; manchmal hab ich – hat mir das auch wirklich nichts ausgemacht zu heulen.
(oma)
und die positive Reaktion war also keine Reaktion, also nicht zu schimpfen…
(ich)
jaja, richtig, das war schon gut. Getröstet hat mich bestimmt niemand; aber nicht zu schimpfen, das war auch schon gut. Dass einen jemand getröstet oder bedauert hat, kann ich mich gar nicht mehr erinnern.
(oma)
aber wünscht man sich das manchmal in dem Moment, was denkst du?
(ich)
ne, wär ich gar nicht auf die Idee gekommen.
Ich mach das auch lieber mit mir alleine aus, ich brauch da niemanden.
(oma)
hat sich das irgendwie dann geändert als du nicht mehr Kind warst?
(ich)
auch nicht, ich bin da nicht so sehr emotional und wenn ich dann doch mal ne Krise hab, dass ich am besten meine Ruhe hab. Da brauch ich niemanden dazu, der mich dann tröstet.
(oma)
und ich wollte mal fragen, wie du das bei deinen Kindern dann wahrgenommen hast.
(ich)
ich werd’s genauso gemacht haben, wir haben auch kein großes (?) gemacht mit den Kindern. Oder die irgendwie bedauert oder sowas. Die waren auch ganz schön hart gesotten.
[…]
Da kam er mal nachhause, hat beide Arme bis zum Ellenbogen und beide Beine richtig blutig aufgeschlagen gehabt und da ist der nicht auf die Idee gekommen, vorher heim zu kommen. […] Da hat er einfach weiter gespielt. Also die waren auch ziemlich hart im Nehmen, weil wir die eben nicht bedauert haben.
(oma)
denkst du, das lag daran?
(ich)
mit, ja. Und weil’s eben auch so war […] weil die anderen auch so waren.
[…]
ja…
jedenfalls deine Mama war auch nicht emotional
ist sie auch glaub ich nicht…
also ich würd sagen auch nicht sehr mitfühlend mit anderen Leuten
bin ich aber auch nicht
(oma)
denkst du, das hast du gelernt oder denkst du, das … ist einfach so?
(ich)
ja schon, das ist schon auch gelernt. Das ist auch vielleicht wirklich noch vom Krieg her und von der ganzen Erziehung damals und wenn ich mir jetzt unsere Alten angucke hier, ich hab ja mit ganz alten Leuten zu tun […] das gab’s einfach nicht […] heulen und jammern, das war sowas verachtetes; das hat man einfach nicht gemacht und die sind bis heute richtig… sagen wir mal hart gesotten, hart im Nehmen. Wenn irgendwas ist, die überspielen das, die reden noch nicht mal drüber, weißt du? … Das steckt schon noch drinnen.
(oma)
hmm. ja, irgendwas steckt drinnen auch in den Menschen, wenn sie’s halt nicht äußern können.
aber wodurch genau man das lernt, weniger mitzufühlen könntest du nicht sagen?
(ich)
na weil das eben so ist, weil man das eben nicht anders kennt. Genauso wie Kommandoton. Ich hab mir da gar nichts bei gedacht, für mich war das ganz normal, dass zum Beispiel ne Oma oder auch erwachsene Leute die Kinder rum kommandieren. Und da hab ich das erst an eurer Reaktion gemerkt, wo zum Beispiel mal der Richard gesagt hat: Oma, wir haben ausgemacht, dass ich jetzt Kommando hab. (lacht) Ich hab ja gar nicht gemerkt, wie ich rumkommandiere. Da denkt man, das ist ganz normal, verstehst du? Dass die Kinder gesagt kriegen, du machst jetzt das und das und das, klare Ansage. Wenn du das nicht anders gewöhnt bist, dann machst du das eben so.
(oma)
hmm… und du fühlst weniger mit Anderen mit, weil mit dir selber nicht mitgefühlt wurde?
(ich)
ja, das kann schon sein, das war so üblich. Und ich find ja immer noch, wenn jemand zu mitfühlig ist, das ist dann schon wehleidig. Da kommt man schon in die Richtung Mitleid, Selbstmitleid und so.
(oma)
| oma durfte nicht weinen
| und jetzt will sie nicht heulen
| und ihre kinder wollten auch nicht
…die ich nicht gestellt hab.
konntest du nicht, obwohl du wolltest?
wann hast du gern geweint
wann weinst du gern?
kannst du das verlernen?
kannst du das gebrauchen?
wie fühlt sich mitgefühl an?
das Gefühl, wenn du beginnst, zu weinen?
kollektives Trauma
dicke & dünne Haut
erinnerst du dich an Situationen, in denen ich geweint habe?
WER KENNT MICH EIGENTLICH WEINEND?
WEN KENNE ICH EIGENTLICH WEINEND?
ich erinnere mich, dass ich nur ein einziges mal in der Grundschule weinen musste, nein zweimal und darauf war ich stolz? oder ich war beruhigt
01.12.22
ja, ich finde Jammern bringt überhaupt nichts, nicht demjenigen der jammert und schon gar nicht den Anderen […] aber Weinen kann ja auch ne erlösende Funktion haben, dass du dich eben richtig entspannst und mal locker wirst und … entlastend, wenn du mal richtig geweint hast.
(oma)
ja voll, und du hast ja auch gesagt, dass du das gerne gemacht hast als Kind.
(ich)
ja (lacht) aber jetzt kann ich nicht mehr weinen.
(oma)
ja also darüber hab ich auch nachgedacht; also denkst du, dass du das verlernt hast?
(ich)
ja ja…
(oma)
und das ist voll schlimm!
(ich)
…ja es wär schon manchmal ne Erleichterung gewesen, ja.
und wenn dann knietsch ich höchstens mal ein paar minuten rum, aber nicht richtig weinen
… ja es wirkt auf alle Fälle erleichternd
ja, Spannung abzubauen.
[…]
es gibt aber auch alte Leute, die weinen viel, meine Tante Hanni […] ist ja über 90 geworden und die hat erzählt, sie weint oft. Sie liegt in der Nacht im Bett und denkt über alles nach und fängt auch mal an zu weinen … die hatte aber auch viel erlebt […] und ihr erster Mann, also ihr – in den sie richtig verliebt war, als sie jung war, der ist im Krieg gefallen.
[…]
(oma)
[…]
wenn was schön traurig ist.
(ich)
ja, ich weiß schon, da kommt mir aber höchstens eine Träne, mehr nicht.
Aber das gibts schon auch … Zum Beispiel im Film oder so, wenn du so mitfühlst. Früher im Kino, ja, manchmal hab ich auch mitgeheult im Kino
… Oder hier das Buch […] ich glaub da hab ich auch geweint als ich das gelesen hab […] das ist sowas von traurig.
(oma)
ich hab auch […] voll geweint. Das fällt mir jetzt erst wieder ein, da hab ich richtig geweint. Da war ich aber – da wars bei mir selber nicht so leicht und dann hab ich das in so ner Nachtschicht zu ende gelesen da war ich in Italien. (lacht) Und dann hab ich so übelst lang geweint. Das war schön…
(ich)
[…]
aber es kommt echt auch drauf an, in welcher Lage man grade ist, haste recht.
(oma)
ja, kannst dir ja mal wieder nen Film angucken. (lacht) nen traurigen Film.
In the brief time between Christmas and the New Year, everything seems dead. In the northern Hemisphere, at least, it’s cold, wintery and grey, everyone has gone home for the holidays and the streets of student towns like Weimar and Jena are suddenly eerily empty. What can you do if you’re craving warmth and life during this week? Well, I personally decided to go to the botanical garden in Jena to look at some plants, and ended up thinking a lot about crying, tears, and what it means for us as humans to observe nature and project our own baggage onto it.
Ah, plants. They’re all around! On the street, growing between cobblestones, hanging from bookshelves in messy WG-rooms… They’ve been around a long time, obviously. As have we. And it’s safe to assume that plants have always had a special meaning for the people that interact with them; from houseplants to the trees in your favorite park, they are something like silent companions, a reminder that not everything was made by human hands, and that there are things that grow and change without us, and live on after we’re dead.
Crying is also a fundamental part of the human experience, and sadness is something we like to project onto other beings and things, be that out of a desire to connect or just out of our self-centered view of the world. I recognize sad faces in power outlets, in air bubbles in slices of bread, and, of course, I recognized tears and “sadness” in the plants at the botanical garden in Jena. I saw heart-shaped leaves and droopy flowers, and thought of how plants and tears are connected on so many levels, which led me to my theme of Chlorophyll Tears.
A common first association for us is the classic image of the Weeping Willow, a tree that literally has the word “weeping” in its name. Its sad, long, limp, drooping branches grow downwards, as if it just couldn’t be bothered to try anymore (we all know that feeling). What I didn’t know, is that there is an entire category of trees that also have the word “weeping” in their names, like the Weeping Flowering Apricot and the Weeping Atlas Cedar, that also share these same characteristics. They can also be found in graveyards, which brings me to the connection between plants and death, and, by extension, grieving.
I realized that there are a lot of examples in fiction of characters in stories who die and are buried under trees. In the original story of Cinderella, for example, her mother is buried under a Weeping Willow; in the new stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio, Gepetto’s human son is also buried, and a tree is planted on his grave. In Sleepy Hollow, there is literally a tree that is called “The Tree of the Dead”, under which the Horseman had been buried many years before. These are just some examples, but it is definitely something we see often. In this way, some trees become a “designated crying place”, a place to sit in the shade and grieve the loss of a loved one.
It also seems as though the tree symbolizes a continuation of the life the person has lived; in a sense, they “live on” through this plant that now nourishes itself from the decomposing corpse. In their project, “Capsule Mundi”, designers Raoul Bretzel and Anna Citelli created a burial method that has exactly this intention; a type of egg-shaped “pod” where you could be buried, onto which a new tree could attach its roots and grow in your absence. It’s also hard to ignore the presence of flowers at funerals and memorials, as well as stories like that of the “forget-me-not”, which reference grief and attribute the blue color of their petals to tears. Death is every living thing’s final destination (except for maybe that immortal Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish). Therefore, it’s somehow poetic that the plant kingdom also takes part in our human rituals, provides comfort and brings beauty to the sad happenings of life. In many ways, death connects us all, regardless of our taxonomy.
But enough about us, what about them? Do plants feel pain? Do they grieve? Cry, even? I suppose that’s what we want to know about every living thing, or sometimes even non-living thing. Typical humans, projecting their own feelings onto completely nonsensical contexts. I, for one, have been googling for as long as the internet has been a thing, always trying to find out if my pets could feel the same things I could, if they cried too (I was a crying enthusiast as a child, and, honestly, still am). I never had my own plants until I started university, and then my thoughts went to them. Do my houseplants get sad? Do the trees in Germany get cold in winter, and cry, just like us, international students from tropical climates?
As it turns out, trees do, in fact, emit ultrasonic sounds (A.K.A. screams?) when they are distressed, for example, when they don’t have enough water. The xylems that carry fluids from the roots to the leaves start picking up air particles when there is no water left, and after a certain point this can be deadly. There are scientific projects in motion that aim to pick up on these frequencies that we cannot hear, so as to quickly water trees at risk of dehydration.
These ultrasonic sounds are, of course, sounds, however, could they be categorized as crying? In a way, the dehydrated trees are suffering, and are expressing their suffering. It’s a natural occurrence; they can’t control the sounds they make. They react to a circumstance that brings them pain, and so do we, when we cry out of sadness. We also don’t always have the intention of crying; we sometimes also cry alone, we make unintelligible noises, too. In that sense, I suppose trees do cry… And we can’t hear them.
So as an exercise, I’d like to suggest you check up on your houseplants, and on the trees you see on your way to work or class; offer them a kind word, a gentle pat, a cup of water, and tell them it’s ok to cry; if you’re a crybaby like me, they’ve probably seen you cry a lot too.
Language loss is a common issue faced by children of immigrants who where born as the first generation in dominantly western countries. Due to that we may forget our first language if not used daily or struggle to maintain fluency in it because of various reasons. In some cases, this has a significant impact on our cultural identity and the ability to communicate with our families and communities, and therefore as well on our mental health as BiPoCs in a predominantly white society.
Immigrant children are not only placed in a society that is systematically racist but specifically in an educational system that is not supportive in all cases of multicultural identities. Depending on the status it can be hard to provide a adequate surrounding where children of immigrants can embrace both of their languages.This lack of exposure and use can lead to a decline in their language proficiency, particularly if they are not receiving support from their families or communities.
I would like to draw attention to the struggle that many people like me face in western society. The feeling of not being able to communicate even though you want to is painful, and this kind of language barrier is closely linked to feelings of shame and sadness. Coupled with the cultural differences and the values that set you and your parents apart, this experience can be very confusing for the relationship between you and your family and your own identity.
This interview will show you an insight into the topic from the perspective of my American-Vietnamese friend David.
Feel free to comment or to share your experience with me,
Multiple joys, multiple relationships, multiplied jobs, multiplied dreams I speculated on, and multiplied realities I raced to be part of, were reduced and calmed in the very first days of this year, leaving just the adjective ‘multiple’ behind, in a quite different context.
one and two
I have eaten 6 mandarins in the last two days: two in the B3 department, while waiting for further instructions; one on the way to the Stätionare Aufnahme; two at the final destination in the C4’s waiting room; and one while waiting for the first drops of cortisol to enter my body, announced to produce a bitter taste in one’s mouth.
Entering the C4 building means seeing ‘these’ faces, and jumping from the question “why am I here?” that manifests my anger, and the injustice done by the higher forces, to a certain comfort, which always happens when one makes acquaintanceships within a context.
This bond is present in our eye contact, the little smiles drawn on the differently born, differently aged, and differently sick faces, and the codes of confirmation that we are belonging to this multiplied version of the life. The most obvious sign of bonding is nodding: either several nods followed by gently closed eyelids, or one, sharp and precise, that establishes the thought of a nodder in a form of a statement.
6
For these days, I’ve been wondering, but failed to ask in my broken German: which cities are the photographed on these photorealistic pictures hanging on the C4 walls?
Before I failed many questions in German, I failed to paint a photorealistic scene of the white horses running on the meadow during my bachelor studies, which was a huge disappointment for my whole surrounding back then. I gave up and bought myself a good camera since I could not find a reason good enough to compete with such a device. I am quite sure now that it was me in resistance, more likely than a lack of skill to depict the horses.
For a hyperactive, always on-run lady, for one that plans enormously while living in the future, that is in control of everything, for such folk, or anybody else, it is extremely hard to accept the fact that such a disease can enter their bodies and impede them in any sense. Can you fail a disease? Not in a sense of giving up life, but rather a failure that tricks the brain, so it thinks there is no disease at all.
Besides my C4 friends that share the infusion and waiting time with me for two days now, I have experienced some quite new, I dare to say interesting body sensations during the examinations. Different body parts of mine were electrified with the needle producing this strange effect of an inner massage, or the sensation of having your index finger directly in a power socket. Another needle, obviously bigger, pierced the particular point of my lower back, targeting the little gap between the vertebras of the spinal cord. The transparent liquid was sucked out from my back filling 2 little glass containers. This uncomfortable pain, more of a pressure feels like a tiny hand that tries to pass through the even smaller doors in my spine, and gets stuck for some minutes, leaving this feeling for some hours later – as if your whole back body opens, air comes inside through this tiny hole and you can breathe through the pain.
I had bought the expensive package of caffeine-free, deep-roasted coffee before coming to the C4 this morning, aiming to start my new, healthy life along with the journey with the Sick Body, after which dr. Fritsch said that coffee is the only way to suppress the headaches I have been having these days. After I am finished with my 6th mandarine, and the tests’ results are announced for this day I will head to the coffee place and purchase some deep-roasted, caffeine-enriched medicaments.
the Now
With such a condition, it is not about how it is at the moment, but what comes next and how will it affect you. For somebody that never lives in the Now, this could be a unique way to finally trust and dwell in that place, as the only safe space that gives you a moment to breathe and spares you from anxious thoughts and uncertainty of the following days.
Am I awarded here a tiny, barely visible bit? Spared the future rat race, running for everything I can be part of, of the omnipresent fear of missing out while diving into the complete uncertainty, that wipes you harshly with its heavy days of unpredictability. I am not the one in control at the moment, but I have full capacity, the Dragon voice, the unbeatable strength I always gain when out of control, and a new skill – getting a lot of rest.
Dear Now, my old friend, we are starting to bond. We might even make peace soon.
three
I have almost forgotten how it is to have a healthy right hand in these two months. On the morning of the third cortisol day, I can feel a bit more, again, with the 3rd injection of 500ml that drops slowly, entering my veins and making me trust my fingers again.
I have two generations on both sides of my chair: on the left one is a young woman whom I share the metal infusion holder with, I measured – it is approximately a meter between our chairs as if this pole with two bottles of cortisol cuts the distance between us; on the right side, I see peripherally an old lady in the red jumper, that has not moved that much since I entered the room, as if her eyes dived inwards, looking into a depth of her own inner body rather than I hospital walls that surround her.
multiple tears
On my third day, I cried all along the way here with pauses, different paces, rhythms, and amounts of outpourings, inside the three trains and two tram stations. I have eaten one, seventh mandarin that helps kill the bitterness in my mouth, and drank half of the black tea I prepared this morning, as it helps reduce the headaches. On my third day, I am crying with such an overwhelming mixture of pain and hope, thinking of this as a potential adventure, and multiplication that occurred as my partner in future crimes, rather than an enemy.
I trust in you Sick body. I have kissed your carrot-oil-smelling shoulders before each exam because I know that we are born for the great things – the great beauty of life among other greatness.
It is a Saturday – one of those that have no influence on the perception of the day, or the importance of the number or the name of it. As if it would make any difference to call it Tuesday instead. However, even though it does not change anything in my own day, I know that it is a Saturday because there is no photorealism hanging on the walls while sitting in the B4, Ebene 40. Just white. Pure whiteness.
I have never seen my young physical and emotional body in such pain, dear dr. Köbele, making hard each movement and thought of mine, with heavy mood swings followed by tears, no matter what the emotion is. Heaviest tears so far, split in two bodies, separated by a border, covering our faces: my own, and my beautiful mama’s.
Pregnancy and motherhood have been transformative experiences for me that have altered the way I think, feel and react. My initial research into crying and motherhood revealed the hormonal and neurological changes that are contributing factors to this, however social pressure, questions of identity and gender also play a big role. To explore this further I reached out to friends who are also mothers to ask for their stories related to crying in motherhood. Their responses point in many directions: the physical pain and endurance of pregnancy and parenting, stepping into a new identity as ‘Mother’, the bond between mother and child, heartbreak of separation and the joy of growth.
Thank you to all the mothers who contributed stories to this collection.
Do you know how frightening it is to be called with the code ”urgent”? My legs froze today, and my heart blew up, breaking through the thin skin of my chest.
What is it?
2 x 15
Today I had two sessions closed in the strange metal body of that loud machine, two times half an hour inside of the capsule. Surrounded by the disturbing sounds coming from the walls of it, I had a chance to picture my brain cells dancing within the empty skull, bumping onto the walls of it and changing the rhythm according to the song played by the MR.
What is it, dr. Köbele?
“If we find it, you will have to receive a contrast medicine.” they said. My blood was mixed with the gadolinium contrast medium in the second session, which means that they had found it.
The second session made me think: this is the second round or the second encounter of a potentially big change. A big step backward, perhaps, or forwards, inevitably? For the second time, I received this terrible news, still not knowing what is it.
What makes my hands numb for so long? Doctor Köbele?
Integration
Thank you, Sick Body, for being so brave not to hide your most honest feelings and reactions. Thank you for hiking several kilometers and discovering all these beautiful hills today after being exposed to the capsule and contrasts, because you faced those white-coated, frozen, tale-like scenes, long trunks, thin grass coming out of the white carpet, tiny branches that in their extreme geometrical confusion created a puzzle. They looked the same as MR pictures of my brain, doctor – impossible to understand, with the complicated history and unexpected changes, even entity, in a way I understand it.
Lost & Found
Today I lost my earring, right before entering the capsule, and my left glove while running through the snowy hills. But I found the strength to support myself on this weird journey, producing powerful tears that burn my face and melt the snow.
…until you call me, I am not going to move anywhere.
