“Everyone carries a shadow”
Were you there too, I ask the woman with the veil of Japanese silk. Were you there with me on the beach, shadowing my walks, my quick plunges into cold water, were you waiting for me by the low fire, thirsty for creek water, a glass of smoky whisky at dusk? Were you light, lighter than air, a goddess holding up the burden of the sky?
Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. (Jung, Psychology and Religion,Collected Works 11, 1938), 131)
Was I with you a year or two later when you stood in the studio while he prepared his palette, were you there when I held my baby in the French restaurant and tried to shield my breast from the painter’s gaze? Who was my host for the meal? Who was also the voyeur? When did I leave myself behind and when did you look away? I want to know you now, not as my shadow, but as part of my integrated self. You hang on a wall in someone’s house and the only means I have to gather you in, to absorb your shadow, is to talk to you now in the photograph I have of you, your abdomen smooth and clear, not troubled by births and age.
...Theresa Kishkan 