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Perspectives

June 5, 2024 //
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My walk this morning was early, quiet, solitary, and thoughtful. Pleasant. Nice way to begin a new day.

When I started down the trail, a glance at the sky in one direction revealed dense dark storm clouds, homogenous and gray. Looking the opposite direction the sky was bright with promised sunshine later, and shades of peach and gold. Between these, fingers of clouds stretched across from one perspective to the other, feathering away to nothing into the clear skies from the stormier view. I walked along thinking about perspective.

This morning I am missing my Dear Friend who died earlier this Spring. There is so much I would share and talk over with her. There’s a particular feeling of rather acute loneliness that turns up within me each time I remember, again, that there’s no point in writing an email to share some particular moment with her, to get her perspective, or to share my own. She was always first to see new paintings (after my Traveling Partner, who is right here), and first to read new writing. Now… funny; I haven’t painted anything at all since she’s been gone. I take fewer pictures and rarely share them. I walk on with my thoughts, feeling the solitude from a different perspective.

…I have an appointment with my therapist later this month, but it’s nothing like talking and sharing with a Dear Friend…

I’m 61 this year. In about 7 days actually… I feel strange that there are so few around anymore who will care about that at all, or even know about it, if I don’t mention it. 61 doesn’t “feel old”, from this lived perspective, but I’ve lost (or lost touch with) many friends and family members who might once have been celebrating my birthday. It’s a strange feeling. I walk on.

I find myself feeling a bit blue as I walk. I wonder whether it may be some lingering effect from tinkering with my medication in order to do the requested diagnostic test. Seems possible, but I don’t really know. I keep walking.

By the time I am back to the car, I feel rather as if I’ve experienced an entire day’s worth of emotion and shifts in perspective, simply walking along with my solitary thoughts. I’m okay, and I am okay with having emotions (and thoughts about those), but it still feels strange and somewhat empty this lack of my Dear Friend to share some of this with. It’s not as if she were my only friend, nor even the only friend I regularly email… but it’s her perspective I am missing so painfully. I’m very aware of that, this morning.

…Every time I think I might like to paint, or feel inspired, or feel that inner tug to return to the studio, my heart seems to answer “why bother?”. This is an unexpected outcome of my grief over this particular loss…

I relied on this Dear Friend’s perspective as counterpoint or reinforcement of my own for some 25 years. I guess I am not surprised that I miss that. I know I am not surprised that I miss her.

Tears fall as I sit with my unexpected moment of grief. My grief expands as my tears fall. I cry over the loss of my Mother, although we never forged a close adult relationship, and were rarely closer than “pleasantly civil”. I grieve that lack of intimacy and connection. My tears fall for my Granny,  too; she did much to raise me and prepare me to find my own way as an adult and she was more mother to me than my Mother was. I’m not criticizing; we expect too much of women, and motherhood isn’t a good fit for all of us.

…I guess I am just feeling kind of alone with the years this morning, as I approach 61. Strange that it hits so hard on this quiet morning, 7 days from my birthday. Stranger still to feel this way when I am truly not “alone” in life. I have a loving partnership, and a handful of good friends (though some are distant), and the fond regard and esteem of many others…

Feelings are not facts. The map is not the world. The forecast is not the weather. I sit with my emotions and breathe. This will pass. I will begin again. I’m okay for most values of okay.

I give myself a moment for gratitude and reflection. I take time to consider more immediate worries than my lingering grief over lost dear ones. My Traveling Partner’s health is top of mind, often, lately and I find myself wondering if the weight of my worry over that may have provoked my thoughts to turn elsewhere for something that feels more “manageable”? Interesting perspective…

…My Traveling Partner pings me a greeting. He’s awake. It’s time to head home, and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, gratitude, grief, health, inspiration, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, women

Finding Inspiration

December 16, 2023 //
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This morning I took a walk in the cold of the frosty morning, just as daybreak arrived. No pictures. Just walking with my thoughts, and taking care that I didn’t slip on an icy surface along the way. Now I’m home, sipping coffee, sitting here with my thoughts. Same thoughts? Same thoughts. I am thinking about good and evil, right and wrong, and the excuses we make. I’m thinking about the inexcusable horror of war and how terrible and pointless it is. I’m thinking about inspiration, and things I’ve seen that I’d like to put on canvas. I keep the sound turned down low on the playlist I’m listening to, in case my Traveling Partner calls out from the other room to get my help with anything, while he recovers from an injury.

…There’s a bit of grocery shopping to plan, an errand to run, and I’m overdue to finally unpack from my trip to the coast (which now seems so long ago). There are dishes to do. Meals to plan. Laundry to wash, fold, and put away. Life. Adulthood. Taking care of things that take care of me. Sometimes it seems pretty fucking endless, ridiculously repetitive and without any lasting outcome of value. Processes and practices work that way, I suppose. I take a breath, feeling my fingers dance across the keyboard as my thoughts flow across my awareness and on past. I exhale, still finding contentment in these simple things. It’s enough, generally…

I saw a gorgeous sunrise while I was on the coast, and it’s the sort of sight that fills my thoughts for days and lingers in my recollections. Such sunrises are the stuff of inspiration, for me. Sunrises are a little on the nose as metaphors for new beginnings, but there it is; simple and true. Believable. Real.

Begin again.

I breathe, exhale, relax, and look over the many pictures I took on my recent coastal getaway. I spent most of that time working, and so most of the pictures are of the view from the balcony or windows of the hotel room where I stayed for 4 days, with a handful taken on this or that walk on the beach on a lunch break, or some opportune moment when the tide was low. It was time well-spent. I reflect on the time, now, hoping to prevent the nurturing emotional gains of rest, resilience, and introspection from slipping away in the chaos of returning home to an injured partner, and the busy whirlwind of pre-holiday life, generally. Breathe in. Breathe out. Look at the next picture. Repeat.

My Traveling Partner asks about breakfast sandwiches and whether I might make some…? It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships

Whose Side Are You On?

November 12, 2023 //
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We’re more divided than ever. More diverse in the specificity of our intersecting identities. More willing than ever to set boundaries and make it a fight. We do more out grouping, in spite of being more aware that out grouping is a thing – and that it causes harm. We’re very inefficient creatures as far as making social progress that benefits us all, are we not?

So… What do you really stand for? Whose side are you really on? In life? In love? When you “take a side”, are your eyes on a shared win for humanity – or are you hoping to “win an argument”, based on individual values, special interests, or some particular selected weird bit of dogma that you’ve become fixated on, or perhaps adopted when you were so young you mistake it for “natural law”? I mean, we’re all human, our biases are very real, and our cognition has legitimate limitations and… quirks. We aren’t even all reliably decent people (still people, though). It’s not just about global conflict – it gets right down to individual relationships. We’re human.

…What do human beings mean when we say “equal”, or “fair”, or “morally right”? How do we define the value of a human life – and what does it take for any one of us to turn on another human being and decide that their life lacks value? I don’t have answers to any of these questions, aside from my own answers that I trust with a certain amount of skepticism (being wholly aware how human I am, and how prone to error). I do think these are questions we should be asking, and discussing in an honest and vulnerable way, open to changing our thinking for the betterment of human kind. For the betterment of the planet, and of life itself. Yeah, and as individuals, too.

I was reading an article recently, about healthy relationships (I have to work at mine, in spite of our deep love for each other; love doesn’t come naturally to me, I think). The article identifies some things that I hadn’t thought about in quite the way they suggest – I won’t break it all down, because you’ll no doubt have your own thoughts, but these things seem worth considering necessary in a healthy relationship – and I suspect this applies to how we relate to “people” more broadly, too:

  1. You’re actively interested in each other’s lives.
  2. You’re aware of your “attachment style” – and what other attachment styles exist, and how those function – and you’re working to develop a healthier attachment style, yourself.
  3. You don’t avoid conflict, but you don’t “fight” – you work as a team to solve problems, and achieve suitable compromise when necessary.
  4. When you address conflict, you’re open to discussing, facing, and resolving big fears and issues, not just small ones.
  5. You support each other without scorekeeping.
  6. You have your own identity and understand that other’s do, too.
  7. You create emotional safe space for each other and hold space for growth and change over time.
Incomplete work-in-progress. “Toxicity”, 11″x14″ acrylic mixed-media on canvas

Hmm. I sit with my afternoon tea and a half-finished painting in progress (a mixed-media trauma portrait), long overdue to be completed. It’s been holding me back now for… almost 8 years. Has it been so long? Wow. Too long to let pain fester. She smirks back me as I work, but her gaze is less commanding as I work out my hurt, my anger, my aggression, my doubt, my sorrow… a brush stroke here, a small bit of story-telling debris inserted into gel medium over there, another touch of glow… I smile to myself. This feels good. I don’t have words for this – but I have paint and canvas, and time to begin again.

I sip my tea and reflect. I watch the paint dry and consider the next step – like spell-casting or prayer, this is heart-felt work, and my heart feels it. I feel heard. I feel inspired.

…I’m out of small canvases. LOL

I think about my most important relationships over the years, and how I fit into those. Where I got something right. Where I clearly got it wrong. Where my nature and my character put things right… where they contributed to how wrong things were. Where wanting things to be “easy” made it so much harder to build a healthy relationship. Where my chaos and damage broke things down. Where it wasn’t that at all, but I still got it so very wrong. It’s a lot to take in, but… isn’t love worth the work?

I don’t need to take sides, I’m not arguing. I sip my tea, breathe, and begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Uncategorized, women

A Better Use of My Time

November 12, 2023 //
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I woke early. It’s a Sunday. I had hoped to sleep in, but it’s not that day, not that experience.

I somehow managed to “psychically wake up” my Traveling Partner although I was sleeping in another room. (I honestly just don’t know how I woke him, but he turned up to tell me that I had done so within seconds of me sitting up to acknowledge a new day. “Psychically” covers it as well as anything else for now.) I dress and head out for a walk, hoping he can get some more rest. I choose a favorite trail that’s a bit of a drive to get to; it prolongs my time out of the house.

… It’s a lovely misty morning for a quiet marshside walk. I get back to the car too early to head straight home; if my partner is sleeping, I want to be sure he gets more than an hour of napping! Good time to jot down a few words.

An Autumn Sunday

My plan is to return home, make coffee, and spend the day creatively (and doing laundry, and tackling some outside chores that should not take long). I’m specifically so very hungry to be painting, and shit just keeps getting in the way. Some days it just feels like “everyone wants a piece of me” and there’s nothing left for me at the end of the day… Or week. Routine chores and practical shit that just has to get done uses up most of my time and attention, leaving me too tired physically to then also paint. Time taken in the studio often feels like time taken away from my partner. I could do better. I need to do better. Painting is, for me, both a form of communication and a form of self-care and I am failing myself on this pretty seriously.

I sit with my thoughts and half an eye on the clock.

What an emotionally difficult weekend this has been. I meant to spend most of it painting and loving my partner. I managed to fail on both of those intentions pretty notably. Tears well up when I acknowledge that for myself, but they don’t fall. I take a deep breath and exhale. Another chance to begin again. G’damn we said some pretty awful things to each other. That saddens me. I know I can do better.

So, it’s another day, another chance to be the woman I most want to be, another opportunity to choose my adventure and walk my own path. Adulting is hard, but I know what I want out of my day, even if I am not entirely sure which verbs are most likely to get that result.

… I can at least do my best…

It’s time to begin again. Again.

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Categories anhedonia, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, inspiration, meditation, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights

Art & Life

November 5, 2023 //
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I am sipping my first coffee. It’s quite late in the morning on a Sunday. Feels like a lazy day, but I’m in the studio, after a lovely walk on a misty morning. The marsh trail is closed for the season. The all-year trail is still open, and quite lovely. The trees are wearing Autumn colors, and the migrating flocks of birds entertained me with their murmurations as the dawn became day.

Walking Autumn trails.

My Traveling Partner is in his creative space, printing parts, re-assembling a 3D printer, and doing his thing. I’m in my studio, in a similarly creative mental space. This morning my head is filled with art and meaning, connections and inspiration. I am thinking about the past – and the future. I am listening to music that connects those elements of my life in an entertaining way; Cyberpunk. This Billy Idol album came out in 1993 – well-before I had a computer on my desk, myself. I had read my share of William Gibson, of course, but pc’s were not yet commonplace and “smartphone” wasn’t even a word yet. I had yet to form the future friendships that would come to rely on internet connectivity to sustain them over time. Listening to Cyberpunk now, it has a lot of peculiarly prescient elements that now seem almost mundane and just a little “so what?” I find that quite interesting. It remains one of my “forever favorite” albums. My favorite track? Probably Adam in Chains… I think back on “that time”, and find myself wondering how I didn’t “pick up on” the value of mindfulness and a serious meditation practice then…? How did it take me so long to get here? I remember listening to Adam in Chains with my headphones on, or alone at home with the stereo cranked up, stressed to a breaking point, drifting deeper into a meditative state following the flow of the music…finding temporary peace. It wasn’t a practice, just a moment.

…Listening now, it lifts me and lifts me, and I feel a wholeness and contentment and joy, although the lyrics and music are not of a happy place or time…

I could have come farther, faster, sooner if I had made the connection, perhaps… It’s a complicated journey. I took some detours and some dead-end paths. I’m not even sure I regret those, knowing what I know now; it’s been a life well-lived. There’s no knowing which small detail, changed, would change all the rest. Would I give up even one friendship formed later to have healed sooner? I don’t think that’s a choice I’d want to make. If finding mental health, wellness, and emotional stability would have come sooner, but at the cost of never making the acquaintance of my Traveling Partner…? Would I have chosen sanity over love? I don’t know that I would, given a chance to make an informed choice. Love is pretty splendid.

Art inspired by life, new work in progress waiting for attention.

I tinker while I sip coffee and write. I pause the music when my Traveling Partner pops in to show me newly printed parts from the new 3D printer – pretty amazing stuff, and I delight in both the quality of the results and his obvious satisfaction. I re-connect the Bluetooth antenna to my desktop computer in order to pair the Cricut; it’s a pain in the ass to balance my laptop on my knees in the studio, when I could be using my desktop computer for the design work so much more conveniently, and it’s been holding me back a bit. The beat pounds in my ears as I type. My coffee is still warm, and well-prepared. It’s a good day for art and play and love – I feel inspired.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, inspiration, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being
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