Found Ithaka...

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

         full of adventure, full of discovery.    

— Constantine Cavafy 

                    

A kind soul from the past reached out to me. I only met him once, but he remembered my passionate nature from ten years ago. What was it about me that stuck in his mind?  I’ve been known to be too much for people at times… & it has gotten me into disquieting predicaments.

It was at his Workshop for American Society of Professional Graphologist’s in New York City that I was exposed to this invaluable yet haunting tool for assessing character and personality.   I  was excited to learn about his work equating Graphology with the Enneagram.   The Enneagram solved a hindering issue I had in my Graphology practice.  It resolved what to do for my clients to help them get unstuck.  To offer them a Guiding Orientation of what to do that would benefit them. This was my conscious mind speaking.  What was going on in my subconscious was a whole other scenario…

Here I was ten years later.  Since the Conference I had amassed any and every book on the Enneagram I could find from libraries, second hand book stores, mainstream bookstores and the Internet. I read and studied  them all. I felt that I had a working understanding of them because of how my graphology clients were receptive to the knowledge… it was an interactive exchange that seemed  to benefit them. 

But for myself… I was in limbo.

At the end of his lecture I remember Claudio Garibaldi asking the audience for a handwriting sample and for us to indicate which Enneagram Type we felt we were. I somehow managed to get my husband to attend the Conference.  We both submitted. My husband wrote and indicated Five. I put myself at Four because of the sense of melancholy in my relationships. The Five for my husband made sense to Claudio, but he felt that my energy didn’t fit the Four. I couldn’t grasp what he was trying to tell me. He offered the  consideration of the One.

It wasn’t the first time that the One was brought up to me.  Usha Mullan wrote three books on integrating Graphology with the Enneagram which I referenced to figure out my Graphology clients.  So I thought to contact her, submitting my handwriting and tree drawings from different decades of my life. Bernadette and Frederic Schmidt also saw me there.

 

Why did these respected authors of the Enneagram choose to put me at One? The One as my home just didn’t feel right. My mentor, Renna Nezos, Founder of the British Academy of Graphology, appeared in my head…she had trouble deciphering my handwriting, but told me that she worked at it.  ‘You’re undisciplined… you must dissolve the hurdles not jump over them.’  This was not a Dominant Sign for the One.

This lack of discipline revealed itself when I discussed my book, Coffee with the Subconscious,  at an ASPG Workshop in 2012. I had agonized for months on how to structure my talk.  I’ll never forget this observation from the audience when I had presented for a Mensa Group… 

‘Your words do not correlate with the image on the screen.’ This wouldn’t happen to a One.

Unlike my Five husband who loves to educate from structured PowerPoints, I tried to follow his recommendation, but failed miserably. It’s something that has haunted me most of my life. The calming compassion of Pat Siegel, President of ASPG, assured me the improbability of One as my home. She offered Four, but when I expressed that my energy didn’t seem to fit there…. The only other place that made sense to her for me was Seven.

 

 Seven’s don’t even know how much they suffer because they don’t have the direct    experience of suffering, but they’re always running away from the present into the                                                         future or the past or into thinking or into dreaming.

There’s a rejection to reality that appears as if reality were not enough, but ultimately reality is painful and this is not directly known.

Claudio Naranjo, M.D.

Whenever I would experience a sad & despondent state of mind,  I would revert my thinking to finding my home at Type Four. What I came to realize is that Fours welcome this state of being, I sought ways to spring away from it. This is what Claudio meant when he stated that I didn’t have that Type’s energy.  

I even entertained that my dismal state of mind could be the result of falling asleep to myself…going along to get along with the difficult relationships in my life in order to avoid conflict.  

This is the Enneagram Type Nine that I tried to make work for a while.

Every time I tried to offer a convincing argument to my Five husband that I was complacent… 

It was received by an incredulous sobering stare.

I’ve been on a never-ending quest to figure out myself since my early twenties. Unlike my closest friends and husband, carving out a specific goal was very difficult for me to commit to. I switched my major several times during college. I initially wanted to enter the Art Department, but since I didn’t have the required Portfolio I settled on History.  I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Literature, Poetry, Greek Philosophy…I had an aptitude for math and could surprisingly solve complicated essay problems in Economics.  When it came to multiple choice exams, the essay usually saved my life.

This continued on during my British Academy of Graphology days. On the written exams, I missed giving the specific signs that the examiners were looking for, but I was able to capture the character and  personality in the essay.

It took me three heart wrenching failed attempts to pass my Oral examination. 

Why was I afraid to open my mouth… to express myself… to offer my opinion?

The pain buried in my subconscious was towering.

Anne Jelson, my earliest Graphology teacher, was able to analyze my husband’s handwriting, but  threw her arms up in dismay as I pressed her for my analysis. ‘You’re an Enigma!’

My heart skipped a few beats when I learned that Claudio Garibaldi published his book, The Psychology of the Enneagram Applied to Graphology. 

There it was on page 174… I was  FINALLY able to find the dominant signs of my earlier handwriting… Flung out, Thrusting, Confused.  

And on page 175…

‘Optimistic enthusiasts often have Thrusting in their handwriting. When they fail at something, it fazes them only for a brief period and they try again. If they fail again, they simply go back to it until they succeed.’ —Moretti

I finally understood my depressive states.  They weren’t the melancholy of the Type Four.  They weren’t the falling asleep to myself in order to avoid conflict of the Type Nine. My incapacitating states of mind resulted from an overly enthusiastic whirlwind of manic energy.  

It would take me days, sometimes weeks to recover, but then something would rekindle my energy for more.

The most noteworthy evolution of my handwriting since my early twenties is that it became  more Disconnected, Aerated, with increased Heavy Pressure. My energy had become more controlled to analyze situations with better judgement and targeted focus.

Could the reigning in of my handwriting be the visual representation of channeling my subconscious energies to understand the pain that Type Seven’s prefer to run from? 

To dissolve those hurdles that Renna observed.

It gives me a profound sense of accomplishment to unravel a hindering component for my graphology clients. I enjoy spending hours analyzing the evolution of their handwriting and tree drawings along with how they relate to the important relationships in their lives.

Life is about relationships, the resolved and  unresolved… 

This is the first line of my book, Coffee with the Subconscious.

This crippling phenomenon to understand the important relationships in our lives and the how and why we’re affected has plagued me for years. 

Renna used to say to me…’Let light into your o’s and a’s.’ 

It was very hard for me to grasp what she was trying to tell me. 

Hence, Naranjo’s wisdom of the Seven’s elusive suffering clarified this for me.

The Art Portfolio that escaped me during my early twenties subliminally materialized over time. The scattered energy of my earlier years became more purposefully targeted in Creativity.

It even earned me a Scholarship to a four year Art School.

My artwork is full of dreamlike animated renditions of the subconscious. I love doing portraits that are more gestural in quality. I need to feel a connection with the subject to capture their essence. Working with glass allows an amorphous freedom amidst a shattering fragility. It inspires a sense of adventure to accommodate the flame. It’s a balancing act that comforts my inner being, but I still struggle to assign words to my art.

I didn’t know how to think about my most recent piece, Found Ithaka, when it presented itself out of the kiln. My earliest notes for this article mentioned Cavafy, but as I contemplated writing,  those thoughts didn’t return until later. The atmospheric quality of the blue light is reminiscent of the summer that I studied in Greece. The same time as my earliest thrusting confused handwriting. It’s also the occasion when I chose to memorize Cavafy’s poem. It’s my subconscious rendition of the adventures experienced from that ship on the horizon. 

My handwriting evolved … my husband’s remained the same…a little looser perhaps. 

His nuancée intellect and sobering energy comfort my soul. It was his support and encouragement that enabled me to navigate the right sources to learn the science of Graphology. 

A discipline that helped ground my internal energies to the reality of people  and situations. 

And… my Australian friend, Ingrid Seger-Woznicki understood this from our first encounter…

”You talk too fast to be a Nine or Four…and even in misery, you laughed and joked about it… 

you are very vocal and know your own thoughts…all that pointed to a Seven influence to me.”

When I press my husband for one word that describes me…

Zany.

He saw it from the beginning…

It took me a bit longer to acknowledge.