I’m sitting in the cold. It’s a foggy autumn morning early in November. I’m perched on a fence rail, not especially comfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to be worth complaining about or changing. It’s still dark. When I sat down I turned off my headlamp. I don’t really prefer walking with a headlamp; the spooky shadows in the periphery of my narrow view are sometimes unsettling. I can hear the traffic on the nearby highway, although there isn’t much of it, and the predawn darkness is so quiet, my tinnitus ends up being the loudest thing I hear. I sneeze unexpectedly, and somewhere nearby I am answered by the “gronk!” of a goose on the marsh, as if telling me to “keep it down”. It’s early. It’s quiet. The moment is mine.
The clouds overhead leave room for stars to peek through. I sit with my thoughts awhile. A raccoon and her youngsters walk past me, on the other side of the trail. She sees me, but doesn’t seem concerned or even particularly interested. She clearly has places to go. I sit quietly, watching, breathing, listening. I see the first hints of daybreak on the eastern horizon, a jagged sliver of sky between strips of cloud.
…How am I in this much pain??…
I sigh to myself. I meditate in the cold and watch the sky slowly lighten as dawn approaches. I think my mortal thoughts. Life is too brief, I find myself thinking. By the time we mostly figure out the stuff that matters most to us individually, we’re nearing the end of our precious (and limited) mortal lifetime. Seems a bit unfair somehow. I think about my Granny, my Mother, Grandmother Doris, Meemom, my Dear Friend, my girlfriend T, Laura-the-actress, other women in my life, gone now. What did they leave unfinished? What has been lost to time and mortality, gone forever because what isn’t shared may never be known? I think about art, and paintings yet to be painted, inspiration yet to be acted upon, and how irksome this finite mortal lifetime can seem. There’s so much to do, and to feel, and to experience! Where will I find the time?
The trail has slowly become a slightly paler smudge of darkness between meadow and marsh. I don’t feel like turning my headlamp on, and I’m not in a hurry. I have the moment to myself. I decide to sit awhile longer before I head back up the trail to begin again.
I’m sitting quietly with my thoughts, sorting the real from the unreal, and working to process troubling details of both. Emotional work still feels like work, sometimes.
Sooner or later someone you care about deeply, someone you love and loves you in return, is going to say some terrible shit to you, hurt your feelings, or create turmoil and sadness in your heart. That’s just real. Humans being human. That’s generally more about them, and not about you at all, regardless what was actually said. How you respond to it, how you deal with it, that’s the bit that’s you, and it defines your character. Just saying. Forgiveness, empathy, kindness, and compassion, can all be difficult to practice under trying circumstances. Still worthwhile for someone you love, right? It’s hard sometimes. Human beings can be pretty spectacularly vile – even towards someone they say they love. I sit and think about that for awhile.
Lately my disturbed sleep has been more likely to include nightmares – genuinely horrific, emotionally loaded, inescapable proper nightmares. I’ve begun experiencing reluctance to return to sleep, and experience suggests I need to take steps to break this cycle before I develop a more serious sleep aversion that could quickly undermine my mental health. Visits to the Nightmare City don’t become less frequent with increasing sleep deprivation, I know this. Self-soothing becomes more difficult over time.
“The Nightmare City” 11″ x 14″ acrylic w/glow on canvas
I remind myself to rehang “The Nightmare City” where I can see it if I wake during the night. Seeing it helps anchor me to the here and now when I wake from traumatic nightmares. There’s so much chaos in the world right now: violence, genocide, femicide, and murder. I guess the nightmares aren’t so surprising. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Pain complicates things, too. Stress over my Traveling Partner’s wellness and recovery from his injury and surgery adds to the emotional load. Yeah… not surprising. What matters most, now, is dealing with all of it, supporting and caring for myself skillfully, and taking appropriate self-care measures.
It’s hard to know where to start sometimes. My “inner demons” dance in the shadows of lingering chaos and damage, taunting me with the shards of lasting trauma that fuel my nightmares. Tears start pouring down my face just recalling some moments of “then” and I tremble with ancient fear and anxiety that I’ve somehow “saved for later” from so long ago. “It’s not real, it’s not now.” I mutter out loud through clenched jaws. I force myself to breathe. Exhale. Relax. I set the pain and recalled trauma aside. I’m okay right now. I feel like I’m having to “handle it alone”, which feels incredibly sad and lonely, but… aren’t we all dealing with our own bullshit and baggage mostly alone? Making our own journey out of the mire? Walking our own path? Having our own experience? It’s not “personal”, just human.
The first moments of a new day; steps on a path.
I sigh and dry my tears. Nightmares aren’t “real”, and anxiety is a liar. I breathe, exhale, and relax, and lace up my boots. It’s daybreak. A new day. I’ve left the Nightmare City behind, and I’ve got this path ahead of me to walk. It’s time to begin again.
Nice break from the day-to-day, and I definitely needed it. Now it’s back to life, back to reality…. and, oh, hey, there’s a song for that. I add it to my playlist, queue it up, and sing along as I drive to the trailhead feeling grateful that I took today off to “reacclimate” to real life after I returned from the coast.
I slept deeply last night, the first really good deep sleep I’ve had in days – since before my trip to the coast. I rarely sleep really well in a hotel. I often sleep poorly at home. I don’t take it personally or fret much about it anymore; I have sleep challenges and I’m pretty accepting and real about it. Sleep disturbances have been “a thing” for me since I was a child. I’ve experienced multiple parasomnias, some of which persist to this day, and some that I seem to have “grown out of”, or recovered from with medication or therapy. I don’t think of them as “part of who I am” so much as relatively commonplace challenges I happen to endure. I’ve long since given up seeking a root cause or wanting to assign blame. It just isn’t about that. I’m generally grateful to sleep well and deeply. It’s quite a wonderful experience when I do.
Watching the traffic pass by, waiting for the sun
The morning is dark and foggy. I watch the traffic pass by on the highway and sit quietly with my headache (which is a 7 out of 10 this morning) and my tinnitus (which seems to be turned up to 11). Unpleasant, uncomfortable sensations on an otherwise pleasant morning. My head is filled with the remnants of surrealistic dreams of running down forested paths between festival tents and brightly painted caravans, and strangers doing strange things. I was playfully evading a group of my friends for some reason, and woke before I could figure out why some angry old man was hucking tangerines at me. lol
… How’s that for having nothing at all to do with reality?…
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I am vexed by this headache. I feel certain I have “things” to do today… but for the moment I don’t recall what, and there’s nothing on my list to guide me. What am I forgetting? Anything? Is it just that nagging feeling, unattached to anything real? I sip my coffee, and wait for the sun.
…Fuck this headache, though…
My Traveling Partner definitely missed me while I was gone. The reality of having me back home, in his presence, with all of my issues, and very authentically me, this woman that I actually am, wasn’t embraced with the same enthusiasm, or so it seemed to me. I’m sometimes quite frustrated by the sensation that the woman he loves so deeply may not actually be the woman I am. I’d love to be able to see myself through his eyes…both the version he holds in his heart when I am away, and the creature who vexes him so when I am with him. I wonder what I might learn about myself – or about my partner?
Daybreak comes.
The gate to the parking lot finally opens with a familiar rusty screech and a quiet clang. The timing has changed. I take note. Reality legitimately does not care about my expectations one bit, and it’s a useful practice to reset expectations with new information. I try to do it often.
It’s still early. Chilly morning. I’ve got a warm shirt on, and a comfy zip-up fleece. The sunrise is orange through the mist. I lace up my boots and grab my cane. Good morning for walking and for self-reflection, and a good morning to begin again.
Imagine for a moment that you are a traveler on a long journey, arriving at an airport perhaps, after a long flight. You’re groggy from lack of sleep, long hours, and you are deeply fatigued. You’re in a strange busy place, noisy with unfamiliar language, brightly lit, chaotic – and you are hungry. Hungry and fatigued, to the point of tears, in a foreign place. You don’t speak the local language. You enter a Strange Diner, are provided a seat, served a beverage, and given a menu. The menu is… vast. Huge like an unfolded paper map. The print is tiny. You don’t read the language, or understand it when spoken to you. Everything is strange. You feel a little lost by the incomprehensible selection on the menu in front of you. You look around at what other diners are having, point to a picture, figure it’ll do and hope for the best.
Eventually, over time and repeated return visits to the Strange Diner, you learn to fold the menu accordion-style, as you see other diners doing. You pick up some of the language a little at a time, and figure out the characters that make up the language on the menu. You learn the table manners by watching other diners, and you pick up some of the culture and behavior of “the locals”. You begin to conform. Conformity is comfortable. The menu seems more manageable folded small, revealing only the few familiar options you feel safest with. Comfort feels… comfortable. Safe. Easier.
…There is so much you haven’t explored, so much you don’t know, because you’ve chosen conformity, comfort, and safety, again and again, in the Strange Diner. Most people do. This Strange Diner is your life. The menu is as vast and interesting as you allow it to be. It is as narrow and predictable as you insist on it becoming. You are making choices.
What might happen if you were to unfold the menu? Maybe just a fold or two at first, a peek at other options, other flavors, other experiences… other choices. Life’s menu is vast (so vast) – there is so much to choose from, and each new choice could open still another folded section of that menu to reveal still more experiences to choose from. There is so much to see, do, and experience. So much “flavor” to life that you’ll never taste, however boldly you choose from this vast menu; there isn’t enough time in a single mortal life to taste it all.
Many years ago, when I was first “trying things from the menu” as an artist, I decided against pastels. My first choices were based first on ignorance (I really knew very little about art, generally, or painting specifically – only that I wanted to do this thing). Later I made choices based on my assumptions about various mediums – and myself as an artist. I like things “easy”, there’s no point saying otherwise. I folded the menu, concealing the options to do with pastels (and sculpture, lithography, anything to do with fine metal work… lots of stuff disappeared from view based on how I folded that menu). I simply didn’t consider them. I was a different sort of artist, and I focused on the menu items I was most comfortable with, myself. I made my reasons make sense to me – and I made my choices. I wasn’t even unhappy about it, not at all – it all made sense to me. That was enough. I enjoyed my art. I didn’t give pastels another thought – that section of menu was concealed from me by my own hand, and it disappeared from view. “Out of sight, out of mind” – quite literally. Life (and art) moved on. The menu stayed folded.
Recently, it became clear that my physical limitations were becoming a constraint on my artistic work. Big canvases yielded to smaller ones. Homeownership placed firm limitations on storage space – and work space. More choices. The menu folded, again. Still more recently, circumstances put a new choice in front of me; give up my studio to make room for my Traveling Partner’s son to move in for some temporary-but-undetermined time, or go without help caring for my Traveling Partner while he recovers from surgery. Well, shit. Not much of a choice, but doing so would constrain my artistic “freedom” still further… wouldn’t it? Over days, I considered the “folded menu” (metaphorically) in my hands in life’s Strange Diner…
…So, I carefully unfolded it, revealing so many artistic options I had mostly given no thought to… I could return to working in watercolor, on paper… why had I given that up? What about pen & ink… drawing instead of painting? Fused glass? Origami? The menu quakes in shaking hands, reminding me that choices have consequences, and not all choices are a great fit for the need of the moment – or the artist that I am. Like someone with a bad case of munchies on a limited budget, I stared at that menu for… days. I thought about the options. How they might fit into my experience. Was it too late for a change? (The equivalent of giving up on it as “not really hungry after all”, I suppose.)
Tucked in a little box, in the corner of a drawer, hidden behind my carefully kept watercolors (it’s a very nice set that I rarely use but definitely love)… a small box of iridescent hard pastels, never used. Why do I even have these? I still wonder… My Traveling Partner and I watched a video – serendipity is definitely a condiment in the Strange Diner, it sits on every table. Pastels appear on the menu in that moment when serendipity hints at something more to a small unused box of pastels that has gathered dust in a box of art supplies since the early 80s. It no longer matters why I bought those then, what matters is what I choose to do about them, now.
The menu takes on new color – quite literally – as I consider pastels. Oil pastels? Soft Pastels? What brand? What colors? What surfaces and what tools? As exciting as trying an exotic new dessert, I make new choices, and try new “flavors”. By July, I’ve given up my studio at home, and purchased a basic set of soft pastels to “try out”. I’ve built a playlist of artists’ video tutorials, and gathered some useful reading material. I study the new medium thoughtfully. On July 10th, I paint my first small piece using the new medium, and distract myself from my timidity by doing it while I was on a conference call during a work day, letting the medium guide the work.
“Recollection of a Sunset” 3″ x 6″ soft pastel on La Carte Pastel Card, 2024 (I’m not saying it was good, just that it was first.)
It’s now been 86 days – and 16 new paintings. It’s hard to imagine working in any other medium at this point in my life as an artist – a bit as if I’d eaten nothing but burgers and fries in the Strange Diner all my life, then finally tried real French cuisine and fallen in love with food all over again. Artistically, this is very much what has happened. I am changed – because I chose change. I opened the menu to reveal new options. There are soooo many options. The menu in the Strange Diner is disturbingly vast. It’s no great surprise that most of us live our lives keeping that menu folded up quite compactly. It’s more convenient. Less overwhelming. It’s generally enough – but there is more. So much more.
Anyway… I’m just saying; you’ve got options. No matter the circumstances. Whatever has stalled you. Whatever is holding you back or limiting your apparent choices – there is more to the menu in your hand. Unfold it. Take a look. See what life has to offer you from the menu of this Strange Diner. Try something new. Maybe you regret it. Maybe you don’t care for it. Maybe it’s too spicy or too bland. Maybe it’s too strange or not a great solution for you in this moment. You do have choices, though, and life has not revealed all there is to know. Not yet; you’ve still got that menu all folded up for convenience. Go ahead – unfold it.
I’m sitting quietly, waiting for the sun. I’m sipping an iced coffee, feeling mostly grateful, and mostly in love. Life (and love) has its ups and downs. Aging has the benefit of bringing a bit of perspective, maybe some wisdom, but…it also kinda sucks, fairly often. This mortal sack of flesh feels like a trap as often as it behaves as a useful tool. Maybe that’s my headache talking?
I’m feeling vaguely nostalgic this morning, yearning for a “simpler” time that frankly doesn’t actually exist for me. Those recollections of bygone simplicity are bullshit – fragments of experiences that were far less simple than memory suggests, and far more complicated. Memory, in my experience, is much less nuanced than the lived experience in the moment.
I think about walking the cobbled streets of old Augsburg in the 1980’s… My memory lies to me about what a time it was. The reality? Mental illness was overtaking me, I lived in terror due to domestic violence, and I was fraught with constant anxiety (both personally and professionally). The shopping in Augsburg was great. The people were friendly. The climate was delightful. The holiday market was splendid and the cafes were amazing. So… what is “really true” about my time there? Was it grand or terrible? It’s hard to say. Sometimes I miss Augsburg.
My mind wanders to Fresno. What a very different time in my life. I worked my ass off in construction – but only half of the year, generally. The money was good while the work lasted, each season, but I was trading my health for those dollars one brutal hour at a time and struggling to make ends meet between jobs. I was wracked with constant anxiety and being stalked by my ex. I was living a life of unsustainable extremes – the delights were too delightful, the lows were dangerously low. My self-care… wasn’t care-ful. I was “using myself up” without really understanding the consequences of my choices. I cultivated some amazing (lasting) friendships. Because of those friends, many of whom are no longer in Fresno, I still sometimes miss Fresno in spite of, well… Fresno. lol
My mind wanders to “the woods” at the end of the street where we lived when I turned the corner on childhood and began the painful journey through adolescence. I ran the paths through those woods so many times. Walked them on quiet days seeking peace and solitude. I sat among the trees in the summer heat, listening to the trickle of the creek that flowed through the woods and the buzzing of insects. …I was sexually assaulted there. Somehow, I still remember those woods with great fondness (and, to be fair, the trees themselves were in no way responsible for me being raped).
Funny how nostalgia tries to “tidy things up”. Life – reality – is more complicated than that. Understanding (and accepting) the complexities of life is useful for healing. I can choose to hold on to, and savor, all the beauty and splendor of this mortal lifetime, and set aside the pain (mostly), and learn to bounce back, to let go, and to learn what lessons I can. I can savor the precious memories. I can experience gratitude for the wonders I’ve seen and the love I have experienced. I can reject the darkness and refuse to let it own me.
Nostalgia is weird and complicated. I sit with the good feelings, occasionally stumbling on some painful recollection that finds its way into the mix – like stubbing my toe on a pleasant walk. It’s weird, unexpected, and momentarily distressing. I breathe through the painful memories when they come; they’re part of my life, and I am the woman I am today because life is so much more complicated than a beautiful memory. There’s more to my story, more to my journey, than beautiful sunrises.
I sigh and sip my coffee. Daybreak comes with a hint of orange low on the horizon. I breathe, exhale, and relax. This? This is a lovely pleasant moment, and I am enjoying it. Quiet time well-spent on self-reflection and a bit of nostalgia. I don’t read too much into it. This too shall pass. Moments are brief. Change is. It feels like time to begin again.
Evening Light 