and so what now?

Yesterday, after not having slept for a very long time, I published long pieces here on the blog written from a place of despair. I deleted them but one thing remains: rage.

I am an angry woman, and I have been angry for longer than even I imagined. For this moment I am going to set aside my gratitude and relentless pursuit of God's grace and voice the darkness alone, without trying to balance the madness with words of hope. I am going to falter, maybe for just a moment, in my faith that what God asks of me is good works, and that even the smallest good works meet that mandate. I am going to rage against powerlessness. I am going to doubt out loud that there is a higher power who can hear prayer, any prayer; those spoken with grand passionate volume or the silent and softly whispered prayers of the naive, straight from the pure heart of just one child.

I am so angry at the greed that clearly infected an entire generation of what should have been vetted financial geniuses, greed that endangered shareholders and every citizen of an entire nation, greed that brought us to an unprecedented financial collapse, a collapse that will require a unique description, not "recession" or "depression". I am infuriated that there is even a concept on the table in Congress that any of these people would have any kind of "parachute". They should go the way any of person caught stealing..."please leave your keys and your badge on the desk, security will escort you out. We will send you your personal belongings after we have searched them for evidence of any further wrongdoing."

I am angry at the suicide death of a man who I have always silently believed saved my life. This man was a good man...a brother, father and husband. I only had a couple of opportunities to wander around the woods and rivers of Connecticut with him and a crew of others, and now he is gone we have lost a person who taught many about the wonders of nature with his own contagious wonder. I am the only one who knew he saved my life once. He did it so deftly and with such skill that my fear was instantly evaporated. I wanted to appear cavalier about what happened, and so I did not laud his heroism...I kept the depth of peril to myself. I only spoke of it in the abstract...rules of the river or other fast water. Those closest to him fought for him valiantly, but the disease he and I both have took his life anyway. Perhaps he will have saved my life twice...his suffering and that of those around him may have led me to a path of safety from suicide, and his death will heighten my vigilance against the symptoms that can sweep me swiftly into dangerously fast water.

I am angry that another family, stewards of our agricultural heritage, could not set aside their differences, differences I understand very well, and save a farm. I am angry that farmers are dying breed. I am angry that as much as I love the land and the Connecticut River Valley's rich and fertile soil I could not, physically or financially, grow food or flowers for a living.

I am angry that my personal struggles keep me from waging war to preserve open space for agriculture and nature...and that in my town more taxpayers think that we can magically keep development away by simply pulling the "no" lever on every budget vote. I am angry that some of our best and most skilled citizens and staff can be silenced, chased and beaten away by those who believe everything can stay the same as it always was.

I am angry we can only shrink what we teach our children in schools strapped financially, we can not expand or explore progressive education designed to nurture the skills our next generation will need to win the battles we are losing now. This kind of education must be smuggled in the back door, by teachers and leaders who bravely teach their best, always refusing to leave any hope for any child behind, despite the hurricane force winds of a national education crisis that has broadly painted all who educate incompetent, or even more ridiculous, greedy for pay. I am angry as I watch children skimmed off the top of urban schools and whisked off to new magnet schools. The progress "no child left behind" has made is that only the poorest of the poor, the most educationally needy, will be left to flounder in schools labeled "failing". They will have lost their only entitlement, their right to an equal education.

I am angry that few understand poverty is and will remain the powerful undercurrent at the bottom of every crisis we face globally and locally.

I am angry our health care system is broken, not by the greed of medical professionals, but by the insane costs of monstrous government bureaucracy, greedy pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists, and insurance companies who have needed to keep their profits high enough to invest in now failed financial institutions. As a country we are nowhere near prepared for the costs medical advancements have made that lengthen our lives, longevity we should celebrate, but that will force more and more of our elderly into unresolvable poverty and perhaps even a longevity that severely diminishes any quality of life.

I am angry government has cost all of us our individual rights, at the hands of a political party built on the value of individual rights and LESS government interference. I am angry the same people set back science in our country, not just on one front, declaring any single human cell life, and at the same waded in to a marriage, into the sanctity of a "proper" marriage, to deny a conversation between husband and wife is not enough to fulfill an expressed desire, a right to die with dignity, after all hope for a meaningful life is lost. We are not free to choose what "meaningful" is. As we battle over single cells, entire species are wiped away and climate change is declared a myth~ just climate change, just pure empirical data, before we even begin discussing what is fueling it. Individual rights and scientific pursuits, swept away, perhaps unrecoverable for a lifetime.

I will never stop being angry at the spectacle of watching poor people die days and days and even weeks after Hurricane Katrina had long passed through. It was a national shame I hope we will never repeat.

I am angry our larger health care advances have been to repair brains and burns and the lost limbs of soldiers who would still serve their country given a chance.

I am also selfishly angry. I live with the kinds of chronic illness there are no big fundraisers for, that have no cool little rubber bracelets, the kind we don't talk about, the kind that people whisper about. I am angry that there is some reason pharmaceutical companies spend huge money to advertise anti-psychotic medications. Are there enough psychotic people out there to warrant that kind of advertising? Then again...do you have any idea what these medications cost? Who is the intended target of these advertisers? I am betting your average psychotic joe or jane isn't rushing to the doc to get a script...not like, say, the little purple pill.

I am angry at the new assaults on my body. They are temporary and should resolve in a few months, but they are side-effects of my treatment, not new disease.

I am angry I must depend on the generosity of others, like my parents, who should not have to be caring for their 46 year old daughter. They drive me around when I can't drive, and launder money for slow-to-pay insurance companies, enabling me to keep seeing the specialists who help the most, specialists who must employ huge staffs so they can accept insurance, but who must pay themselves and their people this week...not in 90 days or six months or even, in some cases, more than a year.

I am sad that this will be my last blog entry. My desire to work and sell what I am good at is under assault...by the economy, by my health, by my desire to make art AND still teach. That art and the students I tutor must come first. Teaching any subject feeds my soul in the same way making art does. I have surveyed those who have purchased from me, those who are my friends and any one else I could ask. The message is clear: the easiest way for them to see exactly what is for sale is a website. This week I also learned that one of the other tools I use for marketing is technically flawed. I will keep journaling, on my own, and maybe someday find a way to write something more useful. I have a lot to say.

Maybe there is one bit of gratitude that will surface here. Thank you, Helene, for reading and encouraging me. Your words are not lost on me and they will keep a dream of mine fueled for a different time. In the meantime, to my great fortune, you are right next door.

good friends, neighbors, and our favorite things

I could write and write and write. Instead today I will simply say that our neighbors, Fred and Helene, have been a great gift in our lives. We spend time together impulsively...when we find ourselves with a moment or an hour or so to sit and enjoy the fruits of all that planting labor and can share and catch up on each other's doings...and try to worry less about the "not doings".

A recent Friday they kindly had Donna and I to dinner...it all came together perfectly. Before Donna got home from work Fred and I were chatting, looking at this gorgeous gate and enjoying the day. Helene came along then we had drips and drops of rain. Faster drops moved the conversation to their screened in porch and before long a spontaneous dinner plan was hatched. Donna came home, delighted to celebrate Friday with friends. We shed the worries of the day, grabbed some melon we had to offer for dessert.

The food and company were joyful for me. Helene is an outstanding researcher so she has all kinds of stories to tell about her finds and people she corresponds with. Fred dreams big, like me, and we commiserate about the demons of perfectionism. Our conversation topics range from tools and yard maintenance, mowing and weeding and cute furry garden destroyers, on to local history, flea market finds or religion, literature and philosophy. Nothing is off limits.

They are away this week, being grandparents in California, but their cottage garden is keeping us company in their absence, and you can see how heavy with morning glories the gate that leads to Fred's young orchard is. The variety, Heaven Blue, is a favorite of my father's, and he generously shares seedlings he gets from a local nursery. The row of 4 homes, from Voto's to our house, the farm house and my sister's place all have some, and this year they have been better than ever on picket fence, a comfort~ joy in the dawn stretched into the afternoon as the oaks across the street keep the blooms open far into the day.

We share plants back and forth....well, between my folks as the other next-door neighbors Donna and I have been lucky recipients. I am hoping that we can offer from our own divided perennials one of these seasons. Fred salvaged some Rose of Sharon, almost bare root sticks, set aside to be thrown away at a local nursery. He nursed them along himself and the rewards have been wonderful. This is the best shot I could get of one bloom of vigorous plants on the path through the garden gate path has at least 4 different colors, if not more. There are so many more blooms and colors and I am hoping those flowers will give them joy after a a happy journey.

My folks have at least one of his offerings and we popped one into my yard to replace a red maple sapling that did not winter well.

Maybe it is maturity that makes it easier for people of may parent's age to approach a stranger and ask about their plants or their bird feeders or life in general. My father saw a woman working in her garden and stopped. She spoke of her morning glories coming back from seed...as "volunteers" but what she shared with my Dad turned out a little different, The variety did not Heavenly Blue, but I adore them. The star of pinkish violet set in the purple pops out of the grand green leaves in a small but majestic display. The buds are a swirl of white and pink and purple. The folks used to grow clematis at the back step and it was not doing well the last couple of years. I put my vote in early for a repeat of the annual. We are sucking the marrow out the bones of summer's end and allowed ourselves to enjoy the sun, read and snack on our inherited lawn furniture.

There is always something to see and watch for in just a moment's walk in any direction. I hope you find the kind of treasures we are rich with around here.

work in progress

I am losing my mind.

There is no other
explanation for this
I just wanted to show
the two painting sketches
and new scrafito I am working on,
as of Friday 9-19
and I seem to have a
very ugly conflict of
software applications.
That isn't relevant to the actual making of art
(well it is if you count the lost hours in computer hell)
so I will be away from the keyboard
and working my a** off on actual art-making.
It took 9 days to recover from the
first dental/jaw procedure,
the first of three between now and 11-3.
So I am drawing and working like a fiend
when I feel well, working indoors
rather than haul all my
tools and paper outside and back in again.
Though I canceled participation
in local group shows
I can't let go of the hope that somehow I can pull off
Open Studio in Hartford, but I am only working on the stuff that will be pricey
and in this economy I should do more of the pieces (jewelry and such)
that people are comfortable nibbling up.
Ah well. Back to the drawing board.

back to anger, chasing wildflowers

I have been editing pictures this day until I could not work any more, until I was in so much pain I couldn't bear my glasses on my face. My blogging intent today was to show off my father's wildflower photos. Their blooms will pass but the grasses will change colors as the trees do and there are gorgeous paths to travel. He sought out the rarest sites this time, a yellow patch of flowers that appeared last year but are even more prolific this year. He got close but after a photo or two he very carefully retreated from what may have been an underground yellow jacket nest. He and I both have had very many stings from that kind of encounter and there are chores we save until hard frost, when the risk has passed.

I couldn't resist throwing in the holly hock photo in and if I feel better soon I promise more photos, I will make acrylic paintings or pastel paintings of them. Our neighbors to the North, Fred and Helene, have a gorgeous cottage garden and the gate is loaded with hundreds of blooms of morning glory, and I intend to photograph them too. Fred shared with us some Rose of Sharon he nurtured from teeny tiny plants and they are doing well in all three yards. The cameras are always at the ready these days, both at the farmhouse and here, next door. Dad (Fa, as we call him) has answered my many questions, identifying mystery patches of different colors of wildflowers in new places.

I am back to anger because I loathe this process I am in. I planned the fixes my face and teeth need as carefully as I could, only imagining the three seperate days of the procedures would keep me from work, and to be realistic, a little more, especially in October. I did not plan for complications immediately, or the need for rest. I was thrown by not being able to eat much, making a desperate run to the store for ingredients that would make healthy shakes I could drink more easily. Tea and soup... yogurt and cottage cheese. Donna was very creative with those over the weekend but I must admit I didn't even try to eat when she was at work.

Desperate, I called the dentist Saturday, through his answering service, and he suggested the complication was allergy. It was humiliating to call Fred and Helene, and ask them to list the ingredients of the excellent spontaneous feast we shared Friday. There was no change in our environment or foods that would trigger an allergic reaction. I have never had food allergies. 24 hours of benedryl did nothing to ease the swelling of my face, tongue and throat. I couldn't ignore it~ I headed for our primary care doc, grateful it didn't get bad enough for an ER visit.

There is a saying among physicians...something about when you hear hoof beats they are more likely horses than zebras. I have quite a few zebras in my health history.The discouraging series of events over the last couple of days has more details, and they do not belong here.

As fast as I can there will be more work. While I recover I have been using classmates.com to find old friends I left behind. I was not in touch, fearful that the lesbian thing was too much, fearing my "crash and burn" pattern would horrify someone. I have to say the process of letting people know what a difference they made in my life has been rewarding, I feel a bit redeemed each time I come across someone. It is making my little infirmity into grace, chasing wildflowers and old friends, finding both.

on the run, practice stillness

What do you pack when you don't know where you are going or how long you will be? If I can't do that for my purse right now, in this moment, what can it be like to be in the path of a deadly storm and trying to choose what to bring? What can it be like to not know if your home will be home anymore?

I want to help. I just want to just help... fix IT. Turning off the news doesn't help.

Did you ever just get in a car or a plane or train or bus so you could get there NOW? Get to your loved one, get to a stranger alone, find a way to do something, anything?

I have run toward things like that, but not in a long time. Never too late, right?

And no, I am not driving to the southeastern US right now. I am having lunch and packing a purse full of practical things. I will figure out what to pack for the longer journey later. For now I will just be. Stillness is a hard thing to practice, and it is going to take a mammoth effort. It is temporary, this stillness, but it serves a purpose.

I am up to the task.

always blog when grateful

So I had a bad day, but the blog is about art so the topic is art and here is the latest work. These things have been around here and it is time I get this stuff posted. Then I have to do more! I am thinking I may have to do the darker stuff on a nameless, traceless blog, or bury on my computer as a novel, perhaps a thinly disguised memoir.
I have been very grateful to get good feedback on the writing and I haven't journaled in too long. We all have plenty of stories to tell and I love to hear them as well as tell them. I have this luxury of time right now. Well it isn't a luxury actually. But I am going to make it one.

Let's just celebrate life. I am going to take advantage of this "luxury" of time to tackle a painting series I have had planned for a while.

Autumn is upon us and the colors of the sky and intensity of light can't be matched. Good painting weather. This monarch color is going to give me momentum to the new paintings. The photo this is from Connecticut Wildlife, a photo by Paul J. Fusco. I have tracked butterflies and identified them since I was a child, drawing them in less and less childish ways as I grew older. Paul works for CT Department of Environmental Protection and his photos and illustrations are admirable. I went to Sessions Woods in Burlington for a birding walk he did and I must do more. I am grateful to have completed the Master Wildlife program offered by DEP and enjoy the volunteer assignments I have taken. I have plenty of my own monarch photos that will work as well. I was pastel experimenting and the picture was right there. Because it is not from my own original art references I would not sell this piece and the Broad Brook Art watermark was accidental.

The black and white works are 5" X 7" scrafito . I may have mentioned this before, but a thin layer of india ink is applied to a layer of fine white clay on compressed board. I wear white cotton gloves to keep any oils on my hands from hardening the surface of the ink, otherwise the lines are not as easy to control.

I use various tools and I the very fine lines I do wearing a magnifying glass. The detail I can get this way pleases me. Crazy detailed black and white birds and smudgy thrilling color sketches. Woo hoo!

My college art professors were always saying you have to pick something...printmaking or painting, sculpture or pottery. You have to specialize, have a recognizable, signature style, something everyone who sees it will know who made it. I peaked, learning art, my junior year of college. Maybe because I couldn't choose. And not choosing gave me all kinds of other opportunities to learn and teach all kinds of subjects.

If you study the long careers of artists like Picasso you know materials are fluid, colors and styles keep evolving. Then there are the tortured souls like Van Gogh, who can't shake the image in his head; painting must happen, over and over, like breathing. The paint was giving him his whole breath. He made most of his entire body of work in about 4 years. He was manic depressive, like me, although the used term these days is bipolar, and there are shades of grey within that definition, kind of like the spectrums of autism. When I see Van Gogh's work in person and I want to weep, not just because the color is delicious beyond words, the brush strokes genius, but because I know he was afraid his illness would rob him of the paint...his mission in life. You can see it in his eyes, one self-portrait after another.

I have had that all-consuming fear. We have treatments now, but when the pictures won't come, when the brush and pen are uninspired, life just isn't the same. The illness itself is shameful enough, but the loss of the pictures that filled your head as long as you can remember, the way you have always seen the world...it can be an unbearable soul sickness.

And I never struggle with that these days. If the art isn't working then I can spend an hour or two with the kids I tutor and my spirit is bursting. For me, teaching kids, especially struggling kids, you have to pull out all the stops, you have do your very best to see through their eyes, what they connect with. When you do that, when you see that magic moment when a child understands he or she can really see their own thoughts in pictures or letters or strings of movements, something magic happens...something they can carry into math and music, foreign languages, language arts, social studies or history. I feel like I can see firing synapses, like watching fireworks. Sometimes I have to reign in my excitement a little...you want them to keep making the connections, creating connections to language, to equations. They don't need to know their sports talent or outdoor recreation can be informed by geometry. It just happens for most. for some, you have to teach it on the court and finish the lesson back in the book. The best teaching tools come from the learner. then I have the advisory crew~ my best teaching tips come from the world of expert teachers all around me.

never blog when angry

Good Lord, save me from myself.

I haven't written in a while for many reasons. I am one angry woman. I want to control things that are not mine to control. I want this blog space to appear spotless, but not without thought. The problem is that reflection is slowed when one is battening down the hatches against the wind, finding shelter in the midst of storm after storm. Maybe that is why running is so good for a body. It might bring time of reflection without being immobilized, paralyzed by rage...or sadness...or any of the other common human conditions.

The collage of people pictures is of Barbette, my sister, and her significant other. He has been quick learning the outdoor chores and he provides a new perspective. One picture is of Mia, his daughter. I didn't have one of Grant, Nathan's son, but we sure like having them here. Nate is very funny and between Barb and Nate the two of them can get laughter going easily. Both Barb and Nate are working long hours so we will see them much less. We will have to make dates to play indoor board games. I wish for them the happiness they deserve.

I want professionals, like the specialist we saw for Donna, to never, ever show the kind of homophobia he did, and I never again want to be immobilized with shock as she was treated so badly. I have to forgive myself for not intervening...but there was so little time for me to act. He spent 8 minutes with us, after a 40 minute wait. He roughly examined her, so roughly I should have slapped him, truly, and I have not smacked anyone since my sister and I wrestled over clothes and games and car seat space. With false authority this "doctor" pronounced that she should "get on with her life, this is stress and you just need to stop taking medication for your pain and discomfort..." I didn't necessarily need to intervene. Donna can take care of herself very well, better than ever, and she has soldiered on, in spite of not feeling well since April of this year. Whither thou goest I shall go. I want my love to feel better, and I want us to have found the answer months ago.

I want my aunt, who has been a role model for me my entire life, to be cancer-free.

I want my partner's father to be safe and warm and happy. I want to help and I can not.

I want none of us to be allergic to anything.

I want to forget the savage crime I survived 13 years ago. I want to be able to face these final physical repairs without fear, eyes wide open.

I want to erase the shame I feel when I am forced to share the truths of my body's uneases. I want to be tough and rugged and unstoppable. I rage at the possibility that I may have to surrender more of my freedom. I want to be lifted above the endless, endless exhaustion. I want to be like all the other kids on the playground. I want to be the sturdy oak, not the fragile orchid.

I want nicotine to be not addictive.

I want world peace, and I want to be naive enough to believe anything harmed can be reversed in the next four years, no matter who leads us.

I want to be calm and joyful and only use this space to show the light side, to show the art work I have been blessed with.

I want to never feel self-pity, and to never blame anyone else for my shortcomings.

I have never been good at the powerless thing. Surrender is not an option. So I will wait as this anger transforms, I will use it as fuel, I will remember it but not forget all I have to be grateful for.

Although, I may have to make some anonymous blog somewhere for the darkest of the dark thoughts, a place to hide the sarcasm and cruel ironies, a bucket to hide revenge in. I may need a place to hide the thoughts of revenge; the messy addled mind of a woman who has endured plenty and knows that many others endure far more.

Have you seen the art work lately?

Posting backward, I reviewed the set of photos that was linked here when I realized it had more old work than I wanted to show, and some more personal work I didn't know I had left in. Yes, yes, we all know about Freudian slips, but this was more a banana peel.

In the releasing of the name "wishhorse studio" and the change over to Broad Brook Art I apparently lost some art publication in the transition.

The hour grows late and the race is on between now and the mouth mess, with the first 3 hour procedure under anesthesia on 9/9. My battle with this seems epic to me...but as 7 of 9 would quote on the television show Star Trek Voyager, "resistance is futile". It would seem that I am trapped, rocketing toward better health despite my fear.

With hurricanes and elections bearing down on us few will have much peace. Be the calm in the storm, follow your heart.