Newsletter No. 545

‘That is meaning,’ said Sarah. She went on to ask begging aside, how can one come to appreciate the innumerable facets of life? This time, the high school boy divulged his innermost desire: reading Sociology at the university. What mended the rift and made his wish come true were love and understanding: the parents who fancied a rosy path for their son as a professional chose to let go and support him to study the subject in the UK, through which the gifted child may survey the beautiful lives he marvelled at and loved. Ars Longa, Vita Brevis Sarah told me a psychologist should possess a sober mind and a feeling heart. She should put herself in others’ shoes but also be able to bail herself out. But humans are sentimental beings; how can one be completely detached and master this balancing act between sense and sensibility? She conceded, ‘Psychologists are a high-risk demographic who may prove impotent in curing themselves. I always warn myself not to be too absorbed in my subjects’ quandaries, and to learn to detach.’ Oil painting and music are balms to the psychologist and also muses to her healing work. She noted the striking parallels between counselling and oil painting: both of them welcome correction to improve on their expressions. Each painting, like a child, is unique, because one cannot mix the same colours twice. Painting requires patience. ‘If you put in a wrong stroke, the paints will not dry in a week, nor is it feasible to use a dryer. Just like we cannot force a child to grow up.’ Speaking of music, another passion of hers, Sarah pointed to the corner where the cellos stood majestically. ‘Life is so busy that by the time I get home I’d be too tired to do anything. This music corner allows me to switch straight off from the working mode to self-expression.’ She explained a psychologist has to understand her own emotions before intervening in a case. ‘If you are not aware of your own mental state, you may not be as empathetic as you like to be.’ She added, ‘Music is my strength and stay, which allows me to savour my own emotional undulations and empowers me to weather the storms.’ She stood up the cello and set the bow across the strings. Its solid, deep and elegant tone reverberated throughout the room and transported us to another realm. ‘Cello’s deep voice resembles human wail,’ she remarked calmly. I reckoned that was unmistakably her voice: warm, thick and tender, with elegiac undercurrents running beneath her composure. During the interview, the psychologist shared with me her favourite German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) and his artworks. Probably because of the loss of mother at a young age, and the tragic death of his younger brother who drowned in a frozen lake as he came to the painter’s rescue, melancholy, desolation and hints of death permeate Friedrich’s canvases. The lonesome figures under his strokes, such as the wanderer standing above the wreaths of fog, the man and woman holding each other’s hands on the prow, and the woman at the window all have their backs to the spectator, and we are unable to see their faces. Still, their presence wears a forlorn and sorrowful complexion, and crystallizes intense emotional tensions. The wanderer, standing on a rocky precipice and gazing afar, seems at once to conquer nature and to acquiesce in his own insignificance in it. In Two Men Contemplating the Moon , the tree is uprooted, with the claw-like branches colonizing the dusky sky. The waxing crescent moon gazed at by the men, however, signals hope for redemption. Probably such is the landscape of life: at times full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, yet at times teeming with profound revelations and meanings. At times so dark as to have all hopes extinguished, yet at times exuding such luminescence that seems to last forever and makes one unwilling to let go. Just like a psychologist who is indescribably moved by her subjects and their plights and couldn’t help identifying with them, and yet who still has faith in the power of healing. Sarah asked me at some point: Is this your dream job? Where will you be after 10 years, at CUHK or elsewhere? I think there’s no forever in this world. As described in a poem by one classical Chinese poet, handwritten by Sarah and pinned both on her door and above her desk, many things are just footprints in the snow. But some footprints are more indelible than others: how words and art move us, what one soul communicates with another, and what life’s changes counselling can bring. The painter’s jagged career and posthumous life is such a case in point: suffering obscurity in his later years and after his death, the artist had another blow dealt to his fame due to the Nazi’s appropriation of his works. But like a butterfly, what he has painted eventually managed to break out of its cocoon and, in its imperishable and simple way, holds humans in awe with its divine grace and beauty. Amy L. 莎拉臨摹卡斯帕·大衞·腓德烈三幅作品，由左至右為《霧海上的浪人》、《帆船上》和《窗邊的女人》 Sarah’s renditions of three paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, from left to right: Wanderer above the Sea of Fog , On the Sailing Boat and Woman at the Window 04 # 5 4 5 | 1 9 . 1 0 . 2 0 1 9