The Frozen Tiger

A visual time capsule and the inspiration for a fellow writer

Some messages from the universe have been there all along in plain sight: when their time to be seen comes along, they take on a life of their own. Take this framed picture for instance, put together from real bird feathers. Arranged with patience and precision, the feathers depict her underbelly and front of her neck in lighter tones than the rest of her body, all lined with black lines.

The rocks and the tree are also shaped by bird feathers, with light and shadows suggesting that the sunlight falls on the scene from the left of the picture, the direction her body is facing.

Since I remember myself, this tiger frame hung in the dining room of the Athens flat where I grew up. It’s there in this photo from 1969, on the wall above my Papou who is trying to adjust my sandal buckle.

Actually, Baba had bought two of them, one for me, one for Eleni. Manufactured in pre-industrial China, it features a tiger standing on a rock, with the lower tree trunk visible on its left and branches hanging over her head. Her body is facing left, one paw raised ready to dart forward, but her head is turned all the way towards the right, as if she perceives a threat behind her. She is snarling, tail raised high in alertness: “Don’t you dare!”

Over fifty years later, after I was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and started therapy at the beginning of lockdown, my therapist said, “You are too much in your head; you need to get more in touch with the energy of your body.”

What could she mean? It made no sense to me. What other way of experiencing the world was there apart from rational thought and analysis?

She mentioned the image of the tiger from Peter A Levine’s Waking the Tiger.

“Swish your tail, show the world you are a force to be reckoned with,” she continued. “Roar like a tiger – scratchy with sharp nails – intent on scaring off another animal. Get in touch with your angry side, let yourself experiment with voice and movement; if necessary, use a cushion over your mouth.”

At the following therapy session I reported that I hadn’t been able to stir up any anger. It felt silly and self-indulgent: I was still in other-referral mode. Still, I spent the best part of the UK lockdown moving through the standard reading list on trauma: Peter A Levine’s Waking the Tiger and Trauma and Memory; Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score; Mark Wolynn’s It Didn’t Start With You; Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No; Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Things began to make some sense.

When lockdown was lifted, I returned to Athens to carry out the long-overdue clearance of the Athens flat. Along with hundreds of photos, notebooks, embroidered fabrics and bed linen, this tableau was the largest item I had shipped to London. For the very first time I became aware of the fact that hundreds of bird feathers must have been used to make up these tableaux. Were the birds specially bred for their feathers to be harvested? Were they killed for them? How many hours did the artisan spend on capturing this one moment? Was the bird sacrifice worth it?

The more I contemplated the object that I have known all my life, the clearer its message became. I spent years (figuratively) with one paw raised, knowing where I needed to go, but permanently looking behind my shoulder at something outside myself – Mama; the Inner Critic; the society I was co-opted into; the judgments of those whose judgments don’t matter.  Deep down I knew that nothing would catch up with me once I leaped forward, fueled by my own energy; but I dissipated my energy by looking behind me and around me rather than inside me.

The message of the tiger tableau doesn’t end here. The next thread of the story was taken up by Molly Ovenden, a fellow writer and virtual friend at the London Writers’ Salon, who offered to write a poem for me and asked me to share the story of a significant object. The tiger frame, which now hangs on the wall over my desk in London, was the obvious choice. Molly sprinkled her magic dust over the idea and came up with this beauty:

What This Tiger Girl Needs

Toxic thoughts seeping from these

Memories like cages and clipped wings

This soul wrapped up, lost in boxes

Taped up, restricted, a life eclipses

By supposed safety, preserved in a frame

Of stillness carried for these years

Contemplating missteps, seeking direction

Whispers like wishes granted in misty shadows

This soul’s muffled dreams, mourning years

Trapped in one’s mind, longing to roam

Determined for a quest, freedom to find

Awakenings beyond a cub’s yawning squeak

Liberated from formulas in action, antiparalysis,

Dreams like branches rooted in strength,

Rustling broad leaves, falling to plant seeds

This soul caught up in a mighty breath breeze

Echoing voice roaring hearty, life to bring

This soul firm as a tiger of innocence

This soul ignited in lambing life experience

This soul adorned in peaceful power that soars

Awaken, oh my soul, to lift up freedom

In feathers to sing with birds

All what beauty of liberation brings

To complete her magic, she also posted the typed poem with a handwritten dedication, adding the excitement of receiving a real letter to the exhilaration of having a poem written about me.

AND - Molly recorded herself reading it!

To me now, this is the ultimate message of the frame: art is never lost. An unknown Chinese artisan put together a work of art; Baba transported it from the Far East to Greece. It stayed there for over half a century before travelling to London; it shared its message with me and I passed it on to Molly across the Atlantic, who turned it into something even more beautiful.

Molly’s wish came true: her words inspired mine in this newsletter - but the story doesn’t end here either. The frame has outlived its creator and my father, and it will most likely outlive me too. Wherever it ends up, it can continue to pass its message on to its subsequent owners.

This monthly post is extra long, and so I decided to leave out the sections that usually come after the main essay. It’ll be back to normal from next month, promise.