Monday, October 3, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
From the use it or lose it school of life:
• To strengthen my damaged vision, I will practice seeing by making art.
• To strengthen my foggy thoughts, I will practice mindfulness.
• To strengthen my wheezy lungs, I will breathe light and life by running, hiking, kayaking, and dancing.
• To heal my sad heart, I will love and be loved.
• To heal my sick stomach, I will stop swallowing my grief and fear.
• To heal my aching shoulder, I will reach higher and hug more.
• To strengthen my foggy thoughts, I will practice mindfulness.
• To strengthen my wheezy lungs, I will breathe light and life by running, hiking, kayaking, and dancing.
• To heal my sad heart, I will love and be loved.
• To heal my sick stomach, I will stop swallowing my grief and fear.
• To heal my aching shoulder, I will reach higher and hug more.
Vision
My vision is failing. Not entirely, but it isn’t perfect any more. I have glaucoma and hyperopia. I can see far better than near, and I need glasses. My eyes are too full of fluid, despite that I have cried almost every day for months now. It isn’t the same fluid. There is also lots of water in my dreams. Drowning fluid, quaking fluid, sad fluid, but that is beside the point. The focus of my vision is no longer on the right spot. It is a bit too far within me (too much introspection?), millimeters beyond the vitreous humor. My optic nerve, the connection between my vision and my perception is thinning. My retinas are cupping. It isn’t right. I ask why. Genetics, predisposition of about six different types, and something else.
My stomach hurts every day. All my life I have put my grief and my guilt and my fear into my stomach. My stomach kindly takes it in, ties itself into knots around it all, and lets me get on with what I must do. Until it can’t hold any more and it seeps out. This time I think it seeped into my eyes. There’s a logic to it, if you look at it just right. I’ve been working so hard. Harder than I’ve ever worked before. I’ve convinced myself that I must succeed in becoming a nurse or die a failure. That was stupid. It isn’t true. Any more than it was true that my mother died a failure because she finally surrendered to her own pain and grief and mistrust after decades of splinting and patching and medicating herself through what she had to do and what she had to bear. Any more than Liam died a failure because he had hardly even begun to live. Any more than Tom will die a failure because he can’t stop MS from stealing away his strength, his patience, his music, his ability to wander through the mountains on his two good legs. Life can take everything from us at any time. It isn’t a failure of will. It’s a fact. We can only succeed at being humble and powerless. We all fail in the end, or else nobody does.
Today is foggy and dark. I know I should be seeing more than I am. Having learned at last that sometimes the body bears messages for the spirit, I have asked myself for days, “What am I not seeing?” I know what I am seeing, and it is good, though it isn’t enough. I see my children, my husband, my family and friends. I see people in need. I see illness, injury, death, and so much loss. I see mountains and forests and the salty sea every chance I get. I see the work I need to do, the books I must read, the values and skills I must learn, the tests I must take and the people I must help. What I haven’t been seeing is the light at the heart of it all. I need inspiration, breath of life. There is no God for me, but there is something more to see than beauty and pain and the passage of time. How many times must I learn that I need to make art? I need it the way some people need to pray. I put one color next to another and I can suddenly see the tapestry as a whole again. It ceases to bombard me with confusing images of need and desperation, projections of my own fear, and settles into a rich and nurturing whole. I need to be who I am in the midst of it all, and who I am is an artist. Art is how I see everything, including myself. The thing I have not been seeing is my art.
My stomach hurts every day. All my life I have put my grief and my guilt and my fear into my stomach. My stomach kindly takes it in, ties itself into knots around it all, and lets me get on with what I must do. Until it can’t hold any more and it seeps out. This time I think it seeped into my eyes. There’s a logic to it, if you look at it just right. I’ve been working so hard. Harder than I’ve ever worked before. I’ve convinced myself that I must succeed in becoming a nurse or die a failure. That was stupid. It isn’t true. Any more than it was true that my mother died a failure because she finally surrendered to her own pain and grief and mistrust after decades of splinting and patching and medicating herself through what she had to do and what she had to bear. Any more than Liam died a failure because he had hardly even begun to live. Any more than Tom will die a failure because he can’t stop MS from stealing away his strength, his patience, his music, his ability to wander through the mountains on his two good legs. Life can take everything from us at any time. It isn’t a failure of will. It’s a fact. We can only succeed at being humble and powerless. We all fail in the end, or else nobody does.
Today is foggy and dark. I know I should be seeing more than I am. Having learned at last that sometimes the body bears messages for the spirit, I have asked myself for days, “What am I not seeing?” I know what I am seeing, and it is good, though it isn’t enough. I see my children, my husband, my family and friends. I see people in need. I see illness, injury, death, and so much loss. I see mountains and forests and the salty sea every chance I get. I see the work I need to do, the books I must read, the values and skills I must learn, the tests I must take and the people I must help. What I haven’t been seeing is the light at the heart of it all. I need inspiration, breath of life. There is no God for me, but there is something more to see than beauty and pain and the passage of time. How many times must I learn that I need to make art? I need it the way some people need to pray. I put one color next to another and I can suddenly see the tapestry as a whole again. It ceases to bombard me with confusing images of need and desperation, projections of my own fear, and settles into a rich and nurturing whole. I need to be who I am in the midst of it all, and who I am is an artist. Art is how I see everything, including myself. The thing I have not been seeing is my art.
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