A Labyrinth of Contradictions
A Labyrinth of Contradictions
How we can hold the two opposing sides within us together.
The official designer of the Surrealist exhibitions, Marcel Duchamp, gave the 1947 show the form of a labyrinth. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek labrys, meaning a double-headed axe with the two sides representing summer and winter. The labyrinth is the place where opposites are reconciled.
The walls enclose a secret in the form of the Minotaur: a dual being, half-man, half-animal. Within the labyrinth, André Breton writes, "Life and death, real and imaginary, past and future, communicable and incommunicable, high and low, cease to be perceived as contradictions.” The labyrinth became the emblem of Surrealism, embracing this reconciliation of opposites from its very beginning.
Now, 77 years after the initial opening, I entered the exhibit, recreated at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
I had been thinking about this reconciling of contradictions a lot lately. How instead of being forced to choose one part of me, to learn how to hold both of them together. We’re often asked to choose one thing: one home, one job, one sexual orientation. A cleaner way to define ourselves to others. But often times, I feel the tension of having to choose one thing. Maybe I want to try having a home in several different places, and work different kinds of jobs. I think thinking about how we can hold these oppositions within ourselves without choosing one. Maybe that’s the only way to get out of the labyrinth in the end.
Everywhere I looked in the exhibit, there seemed to be motifs of eyes. On one wall, they played Hitchcock’s thriller Spellbound, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. In 1945, Salvador Dalí moved to Hollywood to work on the film with Hitchcock. In it, a psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory. The dream sequence played on loop, and I looked on at the celestial, floating eyes staring back at me.
At one point, a man takes a giant pair of scissors and starts cutting into an eye.
As someone who has had their eyes cut into from all my surgeries and implants, it was hard not to feel this in a visceral way.
Everyone is familiar with Shakespeare’s famous line from one of his sonnets: “The eyes are the window to the soul.'' Maybe I was underestimating how they could be portals to the surreal subconscious as well.
What could my eyes teach me? What could my pain teach me? What was waiting for me in my subconscious?
On a different wall, I passed by this painting.
During his second trip to Paris in 1931, Romanian painter Victor Brauner painted a fictional self-portait with an enucleated eye.
Seven years later, as he tried to break up a fight between fellow artists Óscar Domínguez and Esteban Francés, he lost the use of this very eye. This premonition earned Brauner the honor of being permanently associated with the history of "objective chance" dear to the surrealists.
Writer Pierre Mabille wrote an article entitled "L'œil du peintre" (The Painter's Eye) about this episode in Minotaure magazine, emphasizing the birth of "the work as a messenger for the unconscious, heralding both his personal future and that of society."
Again, I felt floored.
I had experienced fears around writing about my eyes for the past two years while putting together a health memoir, and this painting confirmed my fears were valid. That to focus on a hardship can give it the ability to materialize. That attention gives it power.
When I write about my medical traumas, and put myself back in that mental headspace, I’m worried that by putting more energy and undue focus on it, I’m not letting myself move forward. Or, even worse, that it’s posing a threat to my good health in some way. That it will affect my future, like Brauner’s painting.
Of course, processing your emotions is essential, but it’s another thing to keep revisiting and opening a wound that is ready to close.
This feeling is part of the reason I’ve decided to pause working on the health memoir. To focus, instead, on where I am now and take it day by day,
The last piece of art that stuck with me recently was a mural I saw at Hulaween, a music festival I attended in Florida. I was there this past week to lead my ecstatic dance and journaling workshop. It was an incredible experience, and I will write more about it very soon!
After the workshop, later that night, I went to go visit an art mural maze. There were giant stretches of art of all different styles, but one really stayed with me.
It was a bright pink, giant dripping eye and in the veins of the eye, only if you moved in closer to see, it spelled out Love.
It immediately made me think of an experience earlier that morning. I had woken up in my tent where we were camping, and a new friend, Josh, took one look at me.
“Wow,” he said. “Your eyes are fucked up.”
Immediately, I panicked. I knew I hadn’t been sleeping well, and that made my eyes more bloodshot than usual. But still, I felt my body go hot with shame. To think that when people looked at me, because of the stitches from the surgeries, this was their reaction.
Since I didn’t have a mirror, I turned to my friend Amanda, and asked her how they looked.
“A little red,” she agreed, “But not much worse than normal.”
I turned back to Josh.
“Please,” I told him. “No matter how bad my eyes look, just don’t tell me they look fucked up. Please.”
He nodded, and didn’t ask more questions. I didn’t have the energy to explain why it hurt me so much. Usually, I did, but in that moment I just couldn’t bring myself to.
I wish reactions like this didn’t fill me with shame and anger and embarrassment, but they do. No matter how grateful I am that my eyes are better, it’s hard to move past being seen in this way.
When I saw the mural with the veins that spelled out Love, it felt like it so specifically spoke to my constant struggle with my relationship to my eyes. The love was even spelled in a similar place where my stitches protruded! It felt like a reminder to keep loving and appreciating my eyes, no matter how they looked to other people. I know what they’ve been through, and wanted to always offer them love, no matter what.
In final eye related news, I went to an eye appointment last week, and while I expected everything to be okay, my doctor told me he found a complication I wasn’t even aware was possible. It seems that my sclera, or white part of my eye, is looking thin, and it is possible it would perforate if not treated.
He insisted he wasn’t a specialist, so it could be nothing… or something. But he suggested I make an appointment to see someone next week.
I’m seeing a specialist on Tuesday, as if it wasn’t going to be dramatic enough with Election Day. I’m trying to not worry until I have something to worry about. But I can’t help but feel sad at being in this place again, fearful about the state of my eyes after I’ve only received good news for the past year and a half. It’s this in between state that’s the worst - where you can only worry, and have no solutions.
Still, I didn’t fall apart like I would have in the past. I nodded and told him I understood, then made an appointment, and got comforting soup dumplings.
The other hard part about getting tough eye news is it’s hard to relay this news to friends, because I know many don’t understand. Even I don’t understand most of the time, so how could other people with no eye issues get it? It makes it all the more isolating.
But then, I remember how important it is to share anyway, even if I don't think anyone will understand. Because that’s all you can do, and maybe someone will get it more than you realize. Maybe not the exact situation, but the fear and uncertainty that comes with any tough medical moment. It’s why I pushed myself to start this newsletter in the first place, so I’d never feel as lonely from this disease again. So, here I am, sharing.
I love you all, and hope you are having a lovely Halloween month! (I know it’s November 1st, but that means nothing. Halloween forever!)
Love,
Julia
❤️