And so I sit, and I wait, and I write.
'If I could really believe that there was a presence, a golden presence, there... that had my back... All the time... Then that would change everything. That would change my whole life forever.'
I found myself saying these words, or something like them, yesterday in a session with my biographical counsellor, as she showed me an image I had picked out in an exercise we did in person in London last year.
Arrayed before me in that exercise were a selection of images and gradually, slowly, I let myself be drawn to one.
Not thinking, just allowing.
The image I was drawn to, shown to me on a Zoom screen yesterday, shows a golden presence - an angel, if I'm being honest.
Around and behind it are other figures, and in front a small, blue-grey (or at least that's how I remember it) figure in the centre.
That figure in the centre, alone and facing the others, is undoubtedly me.
The truth is that my belief system doesn't really allow for who the other figures in the picture might be.
I found myself cursing the age I was born into.
If I had been born into a different era (or to a different family), then I would have had something solid to fall back on: all-powerful, vengeful God, with a white beard in a sky, perhaps.
Or Odin and the other gods in Valhalla.
Further back and elsewhere and it might have been Zeus or Jupiter.
But I'm here in this age.
Born in the 1980s, growing into an adolescent in the 1990s, becoming an adult in the 2000s.
And in this age, we don't really believe in golden presences that have our back, wherever we are and wherever we go, do we?
Well, I know some people do. And I envy them.
I envy them their sureness.
I sit and wonder... how can they be so sure?
The doubt, the aloneness, the separation.
All of them might be different if I could really believe that there was a golden presence that had my back.
All of life might become more effortless, more easeful, more trusting.
Or it might not.
The archetypal father, or king, or God.
Who I can believe in.
Who can save me in the dark moments, the alone moments.
But all I have is this writing practice.
Slowing down, one Friday morning, closing my eyes, and asking 'What wants to be written today?'
And seeing the golden presence, opening around the small, blue-grey figure in front of it.
And sensing that that is what wants to be written today.
Even if I'd rather not write about it.
Because I'd rather not write about it.
And so I sit, and I wait, and I write.
—
This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.
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