“If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.” -Doug Larson
I admit it: I am a hermit. Disappearing under a rock or into a cave for several days is my kind of thing. Creativity seems to do that to a lot of people, or so I’ve read. However, my recent reclusiveness comes from writing and lots of it. I plunged into an apprenticeship program with the Christian Writers Guild, took to the task of bombarding two local newspapers with opinion-editorial letters, and write articles for a new bimonthly magazine. I am loving nearly every bit of the spectrum, except for the part where I’ve kept pretty much to myself for the last decade (I don’t think doctor’s visits count for much). I complained to my counselor, though, that over the years my vocabulary seemed to self-destruct as the pain increased. The problem is I really want to make a writing career work for me. I feel compelled and called to it, or perhaps by it. I did not stop writing for personal use, but doing so only carries me so far.
So I climb, one tiny step at a time, towards a goal that seems so out of reach I feel like Sisyphus with the eternal boulder. Meanwhile, the English language is moving in fast-forward without me. Too bad I can’t set my DVR and watch what I missed later.
I recently interviewed two professionals regarding post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and how equipped the largest town within a sixty-mile radius was handling the issue of mental illness. The pastor of the church I attend, albeit infrequently, told me our congregation was “poor” in dealing with mental health issues, and people are reluctant to say anything because it makes them appear “weak in their relationship with God.” The licensed clinical social worker I see as a client had this to say, “Isolation and poverty in small communities can be a breeding ground for generations of abuse, which can lead to PTSD and other anxiety-related mental illnesses.”
My pastor, although trained in psychology, was reluctant to use clinically-given diagnostic names to illnesses because he did not like the use of labels. However, the LCSW, had a different opinion. “People want to know,” she said, “it gives them the feeling that they are in control.”
Many people resonate with her opinion, including myself, precisely because knowing gives one a chance to know how to move forward. I understand deeply what it means to have no where to turn when needing professional assistance, whether it is for PTSD, bipolar, or fibromyalgia.
As Christians, we often say “God bless you” and are on our way. When someone continues to suffer without a place to turn to is like telling a person to take a heavenly trip. If Jesus came into our earthly existence to give us hope, how can we do any less? Let the Easter message be the haven where physical needs are met — then the spiritual ones are accepted more easily.
I haven’t disappeared from the blog world. Not yet, anyway!
Recently I finished a set of seven collages for the 12th International Collage Exhibition and Exchange due in March. Dale Copeland from New Zealand is the organizer – kudos to her for making this event possible and past events successful! I hope to see many of the same artists I have read about in this year’s exchange.
Here’s a sampling of my work to be exchanged:
Beauty of the Eye
Fertile Soil
New Mexico Tribute
Looking at these now, I can critique them all day long – I didn’t use enough materials, I had too much white space, the composition was not balanced, et cetera – but the point is that I tried. I tried and I learned…that I want to do this again!
Recently I purchased the book, “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” by Daniel Ladinsky. A short attention span like mine, replete with fibrofog, likes Daniel’s page-or-less poetry that is fairly easy to read and comprehend. A random page-picking revealed my very first love poem from God entitled “Hey“. The last two lines mirror how simply I have been pared down:
I have been saying “Hey” lately too,
to God.
Formalities just weren’t
working.
Whether or not you agree with my concept of God, you may find the irreverence of a three-letter word works well proffered as prayer. I do, especially now when an acute viral infection earthquakes my chronic pain. In this season of well-wishing, giving, and never-ending scurrying for one day of hopeful celebration, it is my prayer that you, too, will offer your own prayer to the eternal Creator Who loves you.
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to life. ~C.S. Lewis
Lately I’ve been focusing intently on a mixed-media polymer clay art project that is building up the ol’ muscles ravaged by RSD and fibromyalgia. Every day I wake up, excited to work with Art, which competes with my husband for being the love of my life (to be fair, I know that I am in competition with my husband’s love of hunting and being a woodsman). Art, or should I say movement in general, is so painful that it prompts my brain to say, “Why are you deciding to get out of bed today?” It is more necessary that I move now than if I were completely healthy because I have little to no reserve healthiness to fall back on. So, I kick my feet out from under my bed covers each day and mentally prepare for the fight.
However, it has not been as much of a struggle as dealing with the pain when a friend is broken somewhere in his or her life.
Right now I have a good friend whose heart is heavy. She is what I might refer to as an “art friend” because I met her through a shared artistic endeavor. She is incredibly talented, but right now her love for art is on hold. Her spirit and heart are heavy. To me, the worst part about it is that I am in another state and cannot be with her now. My humanness in dealing with illness reminds me that others are human, too, and need compassionate care. My heart cries, “How I wish I could help!” This hurts more than any physical pain I currently experience. Although art and friendships are not crucial to survival, it’s apparent they are fighting for that coveted top spot, otherwise I may not feel them at all.
Recently my blogroll pal Jenny Ryan announced that her blog, “Using My Powers For Good” will officially be changed to “Cranky Fibro Girl”. Her reasoning is completely understandable to me, as she says the person she started out as four and one-half years ago writing witty observations about everyday life isn’t the same person who has fibromyalgia today, one who may make it as far as the couch from the bed.
This lack of energy (which helps aid said crankiness) is a classic fibromyalgia symptom. It reminds me of having the flu in that the first five minutes of every time I awaken I have a small amount of energy. I’m usually trying to cram everything and the kitchen sink into that five minutes before I crash mentally and physically and dive into the nearest cushiony landing. Once upon a time, however, I was a feisty whirling dervish of accomplished overkill like I had a fire lit on my backside and an even hotter fire to my breath. Now I am doing well to exhale fumes, sort of like today.
Today I maneuvered past the oncoming crash by putting on my all-purpose trail shoes, grabbing a spray can of Rustoleum and making a beeline for the outdoors to plant a coat of hammered copper on a metal bench — quite the uncomfortable spot for a crash landing. However, since I was already in the red zone, I didn’t even bother hosing off the dust before I began spraying away. By the time I had pulled the hose to the bench or a sponge with a water-filled bucket I would have stopped right there and not gotten back to it. I’m not “normally” like this, much preferring the most perfect form I can handle in any activity, but these days all I am doing is breathing fumes rather than fire, so I’ll take what I can get.
Wishing all the best to Jenny Ryan, whom I still think is the same witty person, only in a different, uncooperative body. May she breathe fire instead of fumes.
In a tangle of confusion and tears, she bent forward on the couch in her new home two states away, put her hands up to her face, and sobbed through every poisonous memory of the last year. What wasn’t a stabbing pain in each memory, was grief over everything she recently lost – her health, finances, husband, home, and car. She had carefully crafted each aspect of her former life with intensity, knowledge, and love…at least as much love as she knew, which was skewed and bent, causing her to curl into herself like a spent orchid, browned at each exposed edge. Like a sweet caress, soft notes of a famous jazz song swirled into the room, and then through her head. She imagined that instead of pain she would replace it with strong, positive pictorials assisted by Kenny G’s Home.
Call it corny, or wheaties, or some other grain, but that was me eight years ago picturing new, profoundly healing “memories” and thoughts to the smooth saxophone of Kenny G. I was introduced to his music when I was barely eighteen and a boyfriend had the Duotones album on tape. Since then, through CDs, MP3s, and Sirius stations on satellite TV, I’ve listened to Kenny’s music and made it a goal to see him in concert. Twenty one years later I finally was able to see that goal come to pass. While masses of concert-goers flowed past the concession tables to their seats, no one realized for a good twenty minutes that Kenny G himself was standing there (even me, who got the surprise of my life seeing him on the other side of the DVD I was buying until he said something!)
There are few days when my REM-filled sleep is restful, and most miraculous of blessings, today is one of those days. That is, until my wary husband awakens me mid-dream to remind me that I am supposed to get my drivers’ license renewed. After doing Bugs Bunny-like contortions, I realize it isn’t just any day – it’s the day I have to have my picture taken.
You’d think in a civilized society that women would be more acceptable, even beautiful, to others without having to wear a mask, deviously called make up. In a civilized society, one would see beyond the chemical contrivances and bear witness to each person’s soul. After all, we all will look more or less the same amount of dead laying on a coroner’s slab, made up or not.
My genetics state that there were a long line of females before me who wore cosmetics to improve their looks. My genetics also state that if there ever came a day when my face didn’t break out regularly into zits I’d pack the face paints away. Several surgeries and a year of Proactiv later, my skin looks pretty good, so unless someone either gets hitched or is pushing daisies, I rarely touch my facial minerals. You’ll understand, then, why the Motor Vehicle Division in our small town thought my husband might be seeing a new gal when this one decided to remake the face she’d normally been seen bare with.
When I was a teenager no one really showed me how to apply foreign goop to my face, so I learned from the usual media. The media must have been Boy George singing on New Year’s Eve and Cindi Lauper, because I remember several adults referring to my eyeshadow job as the NBC peacock. I became much better, thank goodness not only for me but for my viewers; however, it doesn’t appear that a well-done face job is like having the skill of bicycle riding where it comes back to you no matter how old you are. (By the way, I have to disagree with that adage – I nearly killed myself last time I took up bicycle riding.) Now it apparently takes me forty-five minutes what used to take ten. I broke my mascara wand, and my white porcelain sink and countertop is covered in fine, earth-and-flesh-toned powders. Usually I am waiting on my husband while he preens; now he is waiting on me, albeit patiently, while I blend and wipe and scrape and scream.
For all the work, though, and a few near-expletives thrown in, I took a photo that looks like a deer in the headlights – the same look on my drivers’ license as four years ago. I guess it was fairly worth it.
While ordering at a nearby Schlotzsky’s, my sometimes technically-impaired husband relays, “Hey, they have “wiffy” here.”
“‘Whiffy?’” I repeat, squinting my right eye at him while my nostrils waver, checking if this is some new scent I should inhale. Maybe I’ll like this secret scent and order one of those, too.
“Yes. See? It looks like it says it’s on a hot dot.”
Now I’m really puzzled, and I look askance toward the direction of his forehead nod. The hubby has apparently been reading a sign backwards, as it is pasted on the outside of the window.
I do indeed see a large dot with an arrow, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with heat. “You don’t mean ‘hot spot‘, do you?” Not that it matters to him by now. He’s drooling over the Dagwood-style sandwiches freshly delivered to our table.
“Mmm-hmmm,” he mumbles, taking a bite. “Hot splot. Must be a new promotion.”
I wonder if I should tell him his ‘wiffy hot dot’ is actually a ‘wi-fi hot spot’, meant for computer laptops.
Nah, maybe later. I’ll chalk it up to low blood sugar for now.
