Art Takes, Outtakes, and My Take

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!)

Never give up on your dreams!

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.

My home is wide open blue sky

The kind tourists take pictures of as they drive by

A Southwest that is safe

Open markets, multicultural plays

Art not subjugated to juried stays

A cafeteria pick of foods

Whole grains, smells of roasted chiles, too

High desert dry air

Colors rich, placed everywhere

Hot air balloons free to roam

Hideaways not always known

Trilingual sounds

Mountainous grounds

This is my home

~Copyright J.M.Rogers

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.

Every Day I Fall More & More in Love With You

Aren’t the copper stickers lovely? This is a Paper Wishes exclusive design that I altered to my liking and gave to my husband, who loved it! See Paper Wishes and check out their card making supplies or the Personal Shopper for Cardmakers.

30 Things About My Invisible Illnesses You May Not Know

1. The illnesses I live with are too numerous and complex to list here completely. The main ones are (in no particular order) Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia type 1 (MEN 1 syndrome); atypical Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (RSD/CRPS); fibromyalgia; mixed bipolar.

2. I was diagnosed with it in the year: 1993 (MEN I); 1999/2000 for the other three.

3. But I had symptoms since 1984 (or thereabouts) for bipolar, 1987 for MEN I, and early 1999 for fibromyalgia and RSD/CRPS.

4. The biggest adjustments I’ve had to make are giving up my career and former way of living, then swallowing my pride to ask for assistance.

5. Most people assume I am pretty healthy and normal based on the way I look and act in public.

6. The hardest part about mornings are waking up to the intensity of pain after the nightmares and long periods without sleep.

7. My favorite medical TV show is House. My husband and I like compete to see which of us will come closest to figuring out the final diagnosis.

8. A gadget I couldn’t live without is an electric jar opener.

9. The hardest part about nights is trying to catch some zzz’s and needing to talk to someone when everyone is asleep and hubby is working.

10. Each day I take greater than twenty pills & vitamins. (No comments, please)

11. Regarding alternative treatments, I love them and use them as much as possible.

12. If I had to choose between an invisible illness or visible I would choose not to choose. I believe it is important for people to understand invisible illness as much as possible, and if that is what I have, I will share what I know.

13. Regarding working and career – well, it was very, very difficult to give up, not only on my dreams, but having to leave the stimulating environment I was in and giving up what I worked so hard to do.

14. People would be surprised to know: I’ve been told that I am still a funny, unjaded, interesting person. I don’t know about that myself.

15. The hardest thing to accept about my new reality has been that I am a much different person than I was only a few years ago, and trying to reconcile who I was then with who I am now spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

16. Something I never thought I could do with my illness that I did was live this long with intense pain and other chronic problems without going stark raving mad!

17. The commercials about my illness: I am proud to see bipolar brought “out of the closet” into a more positive light. Fibromyalgia is being treated as a more serious diagnosis throughout the United States, but the medications need serious looking into and adjusting.

18. Something I really miss doing since I was diagnosed is speed walking, hiking, and in general, being much more active than I am able to be now.

19. It was really hard to have to give up being able to wear certain clothes. No joke!

20. A new hobby I have taken up since my diagnosis is making cards and minibooks.

21. If I could have one day of feeling normal again I would hike, go spelunking with hubby and friends, learn to surf, play a soccer game, and host a huge outdoor party at sunset for everyone I love. Can I cram that all into one day??

22. My illness has taught me that I am stronger in spirit than I think I am, but also more fragile in body. It has taught me how wonderfully the body really is made.

23. Want to know a secret? One thing people say that gets under my skin is: “If you’d do THIS, you would feel better.” (e.g. exercise, take a particular vitamin, see a particular doctor, et cetera). It puts me in a position where I feel I need to explain myself, and I shouldn’t have to. I do exercise and have tried nearly everything I can to balance my illness and life out…and that’s mostly the key – balance – and not an obsession to do everything at all costs.

24. But I love it when people genuinely want to know something I can share.

25. My favorite motto, scripture, quote that gets me through tough times is: Proverbs 3:5,6 “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” Anything by Weird Al Yankovic makes a good second.

26. When someone is diagnosed I’d like to tell them I will share my resources with them, and they can always contact me when they need to.

27. Something that has surprised me about living with an illness is that I was still able to make friends with people I never would have imagined – who needed me as much as I need them.

28. The nicest thing someone did for me (actually me and my husband) when I wasn’t feeling well was: Our church took care of everything we needed to get to the Mayo Clinic, and then provided us with several weeks’ worth of home-cooked meals. There’s been so many nice gestures I can hardly remember them all.

29. I’m involved with Invisible Illness Week because it helps me when I can share about my illness, it helps others to know about me but also to know that just because someone looks a certain way doesn’t mean they are what you might think – not judging a book by its cover. It doesn’t mean I am lazy, I brought this upon myself, or that I do not have enough faith. It does not exempt me from learning about others, either, or continuing to try living life the best that *I* can.

30. The fact that you read this list makes me feel that it is important enough to you, and perhaps I am or someone you know with invisible illness is, too. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it! Please feel free to pass this along if you so desire, and ask questions if you need to.