looking backward / going forward

Every now and again an old friend or acquaintance will come to mind and I wonder what they are doing now…where they are. Sometimes I Google to find out. Maybe it’s a way of measuring the length of my days in years? Some time ago I found an artist friend through Facebook that I’d known a dozen years ago and wrote about the encounter in my June 13, 2012 post, art then / art now. A few weeks ago I reconnected with another friend through Facebook that I’d known in the glorious, early 1970s (when some of us were still young and others, not yet born). That was great fun.

Last week…in a more serious mood…I looked for a person I’d known six years ago in a cancer support group. I’d been thinking about him for a while. I wanted to thank him for all the invaluable help he’d given me—help that changed the course of my recovery for the better. We both have a form of incurable lymphoma that can capriciously become active or lie inactive at will. I’ve been in remission for five years and wanted to know how he was. I Googled him, and found his name in connection with a cancer support group’s phone listing. I called and was delighted to find that he is a survivor and continuing with his cancer support mission. It felt good to send a message of thanks and affirmation. Many cancer survivors like to pay it forward, including me.

A few days ago, I thought about two persons I’d known from my days in the art world.  Despite that association ending badly, I Googled them hoping to find an avenue for constructive reconnection. To my dismay, I found pages and pages of articles linking them and the gallery to fraudulent misappropriation of federal grant funds from 2004-10. I was shocked and wanted to know what had happened. I began reading the articles. When I got to the FBI Press Release dated December 14, 2011— what I considered the most reliable—I stopped to take stock. My partner and I had known these women for many years. Until my last show in their gallery in 2002, we had considered them close friends. The exhibition—Inheritance: art and images beyond a silenced genocide—was a production showcasing Armenian-American artists and the Armenian people. It was nearly a year’s work and a major undertaking for me as artist, curator and producer.

A few weeks before the exhibition opened, our tax preparer urged us to ask the two women for an accounting of the money contributions that had been donated toward funding the show. Asking for an accounting touched off a firestorm of angry accusations toward us, and threats to cancel the show, which put me in a state of ongoing anxiety for the two months of the show’s run in the gallery. Naively, we assumed the contributions that came in from our contacts were earmarked and set aside. We had virtually no understanding of non-profit gallery operations at that time, and no idea of the potential threat this request to the gallery directors would be.

Historically, the gallery had been an important outreach to the community and an alternative for rising artists to the traditional, market-based gallery system. I do not know how the current situation happened, when, or why it happened. I only know my own experience in what would be my last show there. It had been my labor of love. We were fortunate to receive in-kind donations that included a four-color catalog, marketing/advertising help and a marvelous array of catered, Armenian food and drink for the opening reception.

Everything was in order, but the enmity that ensued—the demands and constant threats to close the show at a moment’s notice made a basket case of me for most of that time. Trust was broken on all sides. What had been friendship for many years became a battleground and a living hell. I didn’t understand it then and mourn the emptiness of it all now. I am sorry to have lost the friendship we had with these two very interesting women, but in light of this new information I am thankful to be on this side of current events…thankful…but still sad to have all that collateral damage sitting in the roadway of my past. I cannot think of it without great regret for relational carelessness and wasted time.

Looking back, I remember the government shutdowns of arts funding hitting the small enterprises hardest. I am not excusing anyone or anything, merely seeing two sides of what has become the vanishing coin of the power-elite. I have compassion for these two people, regardless of circumstances, because I knew them at their sincere best…maybe not as deeply as I’d thought, but well enough. We are all looking for our way…our path in life. I am sorry about detours and sink holes and broken pavement. I do not know where these women are today, or how they are coping. There is nothing online past December 2011, so I assume the allegations are still pending. I am a bit of an idealist. I love resolution and reconciliation. I would like that with these two, but I dare not dream of it. I don’t really know how to swim with the bigger fish and my skin has not yet hardened. ~¿

Waiting

the color of hope

Yesterday, I began thinking about hope—what it looks like—what makes it happen—what prevents it from being.  I am very familiar with anxiety, despair and hopelessness, as well as many additional states of human consciousness residing on the left side of the ‘miserable to ecstatically joyful’ spectrum. I know what these three feel and look like (to me).

Anxiety, that memory file of unrest and dis-ease, comes in neon variations of brilliant orange, disorienting magenta, brazen fuchsia, magnetic blue, electric purple—all colors except for green—the color of gardens and the earthily serene. Despair, a cousin by marriage to Anxiety, comes invited in by Emotional Pain, with its outer coat of sadness and discord. These haunting dragoons appear in coats of mossy earth tones, capable of generating into steely gray without much warning. Hopelessness, and its deeper shadow, Depression, are big wingless, flocking birds. They are hard to separate and harder to overlook. They come in hot and cold grunge fashion with overlapping shadows of midnight blue and lamp black…often with vivifying streams of hot pink or red flashing throughout.

Some people are hard-wired in ways that make them vulnerable to all of this. Others less so. I am one of the former. My glass tends to be half, to three-quarters empty (as the saying goes). And when it is full, I am overwhelmed by the fullness and feel joy—a state about as common as a four-leaf clover. Happy is a far more common state, but I do not know what it means. I hear this word everywhere. What is it and why is it so sought after? I have not found Happy to have much consequence. It seems ephemeral, like smiling and laughing. It is not fulfillment and it is not joy. I blow my birthday candles out, open my cards and feel happy. I hold my adorable kitties in my arms, hear them purr and feel happy. Far from being lifted or resolved, the concerns I carry are only set aside for a moment or a while.

My goal is joy in exploding colors of the rainbow—the same experience as being in love—an experience of complete, indescribably harmonious fulfillment. I get that when I dance at my InterPlay sessions and am transported beyond my self…into my Self…together with God. My cup is not half full or all full, it runneth over. How this happens is pretty simple: I drive to the place where the InterPlayers gather, participate fully and receive not only happiness, but Joy. It is a type of prayer and worship. Each time I go, I make a down payment on more of it. I haven’t lost my concerns or troubles, I’ve turned my mourning into dancing for a while and the color of anxiety/despair/hopelessness lightens. It does not disappear.

I make this happen because I take steps to be where it can happen. But sometimes joy seems to materialize out of thin air. One minute you are heavy laden with perhaps weeks, months, even years of travail that never seems to lessen or resolve, and then in a flash you are filled with joy and feeling ten pounds lighter…light enough to think you may fly if you so allow…light enough to welcome hope. That is an altogether different sort of happening, one seemingly begotten, not made.

Since 2000 when the film, The Perfect Storm entered our theaters and homes, we have adopted the film’s title to refer to tragic situations composed of parts and pieces of unpredictable events in relation to the fallibility of human decision-making. We often find a modicum of comfort in saying: “It was a perfect storm just waiting to happen.”

Last Sunday, at the little church at the edge of the city, where I worship, I had occasion to experience what I can only describe as the opposite of the perfect storm. I call it The Perfect Rainbow. Days and weeks beforehand, parts and pieces of unpredictability were coming together on many fronts, along with loving, careful,  human decision-making and the result for my partner and me was a deeply fulfilling experience that turned the water in our glasses into bubbling  champagne. More than three years of struggle and emotional pain were met by joy so deep, words could not be found. Had I the room to dance it and witnesses to join in, I would have surely outdone myself. Even now as I write this, my body wants to dance. It was a perfect rainbow after the thundering, crashing storms we’d experienced since returning to the church after an absence of thirty years. The events that led to this perfect rainbow were beyond counting and beyond orchestrating by any one person. Surely the Grace of God’s Holy Spirit was creatively present all the while.

I can still see the rainbow. It’s full from one end of the sky to the other and it brings me hope. The color of hope (for me) is the rainbow, full and audaciously beautiful in even a leaden sky. Storms will surely continue to come and go, but I saw a rainbow on Sunday and I’ve tucked it inside where all my memories reside…the good, bad and the ugly. I’ve given this one a special place. If I should forget its whereabouts, I trust a reminder will come one way or another, even in a perfect storm.

a note on another note:

Before my valentine salutation yesterday, I wrote about my search for an visual enhancement for our church lectern, appropriate to our Lenten theme. (See posting, on another note for February 10th) For those who wonder how it all worked out, I can happily say that, 1) I have relearned my laundry lesson and 2) my intuition about the burlap being appropriate did turn out to bear fruit.

After cleaning up all the mess in the dryer, I spread the burlap out on the ironing board and pressed it as flat as I could, then hung it up to dry overnight. The next day I looked in on the piece, which had acquired approximately 1 to 1-1/2 inches of fringe on both sides of its 48 inch length.  It hung there in its ugliness for most of the day while I set about searching in fabric stores for a piece of cloth that would speak of homespun, and be a naturally neutral color. After hunting high and low, I came home with 1-1/2 yards of unassuming linen, but no sparks had flown from this selection. I left it alone on the table and read another chapter of Taylor’s previous book, Leaving Church.

I could not get the burlap out of my mind, despite its menacingly ugly color and stains. By evening I wove a plan to color it with fabric spray, and began rolling through a number of color choices, settling on a variety of interlaced of tones. It is winter here and there is a ton of snow outside where I would have to do the spraying, so I went to bed with a plan to start the next day.

The next day was Saturday. Although the sun was out and the air beginning to warm up, I still couldn’t open the back door. Resourcefully, I devised a plan that would allow me to suspend the 48 inches of ugly burlap outside in front of the garage door. It took only a second to realize that my plan for multi-coloring was off the mark, so I just started spraying with ivory, then quickly switched to flat white. Each swish of white spray brought me joy. I knew this was the way to go. It took a heap of spraying to bring this remnant to a visual semblance of human/humble. While it was drying I flew back to the fabric store for the piece of purple I saw in my mind, draping along the left side of the human, humble, now whitened, burlap. I flew back twice. The first time I chose two beautiful fabrics based on color and texture that turned out not to fit the bill at all. On my second tour I found a dark purple, plain-knit jersey that spoke to me: Take me home, I’m the one! I was skeptical and concerned about all the money I’d already spent, but determined to listen to the intuitive voice over the, let’s just get it done, voice.

So I brought it home, set up the whole thing and there it was, like magic: the human/divine connection creating yet another altar in the world. I am pleased and relieved this is done. I am ready for my cataract surgery tomorrow. They say I will see instantly, but the following several weeks could be a bit of a trial. If I’m lucky and receive perfect vision, I won’t need glasses anymore. If I am not, I will have to hobble along for the 3 weeks it takes before receiving a new prescription and the additional week or two before new glasses are sitting on the bridge of my nose.

******

The surgical center just called. My appointment time is 7:45 am. By 9:00 the doctor will be making a small incision in my right eye, removing the failing lens and slipping in a new model straight off the assembly line. I don’t like to think about that. I prefer to think about the 5 mg of Valium I will get before, and the lovely nap I will have all afternoon long. After that…I throw myself on the mercy of all that’s good and holy.

update and post script

My posts have been few and far between for a while now. I have been on a journey and not through yet, but thought I’d just try to bring this blog somewhat up to date before doing so becomes a gigantic, uphill climb with a backpack too full of stuff to sort out, let alone write down for public consumption.

This year’s summer was a hard trek, but in a different way than last year’s summer when I was torn into pieces by the church we were invited—then uninvited—to join. Last summer the pangs of betrayal I experienced were felt in the warmth of my family—Big Dawg, Adopted Daughter Bettina and I. We set about fitting into the little church that welcomed us in on the rebound. We were beginning to breathe, but by September Bettina’s cancer returned for a fourth and final time. She died just ten weeks into the new year.

I was completely absorbed in caring for Bettina, and completely involved in helping her to die well. For a long time afterward I was equally absorbed in the loss of her and of our family of three. There were many losses since my cancer diagnosis in 2006 and they came swarming together in a great anguished whoosh. The repercussions were enormous. By spring, I no longer knew where I belonged or why. I was a traveler on the grief road without a sense of direction…just drifting in deep pools of sadness and disconnection. Toward the end of spring and the beginning of summer, quite unexpectedly as if by magic, I became a mother-in-law and a grandmother. There was no time to practice. The summer wore on and still the quiet, disconnected sadness. I yearned for spiritual connection and began attending Catholic Mass, while at the same time continuing in my position as visual art maven at the little quirky church on the edge of the city. The grandchildren were pinpoints of joy—lone stars in a dark sky. I became a woman with many faces, but no mirror in which to see them.

August was a particularly desperate time and called for desperate measures. I could not relate to the little church and could not keep from receiving the sadness bubbling up within. It was a time of affirming forgiveness, 70 x 7 and then some. My path became stony and disorienting. In response, the little church said don’t leave…let’s talk, and formed a small listening group around BD and me. Many things happened in rapid succession, both inside and outside the group. Issues fell into place as we became aware that four years of losses with little time between amounts to post traumatic stress. I don’t normally cotton with these labels, but this time it is fitting, and we are glad to have this understanding as a way to make sense of our wobbly-top selves. I am grateful to the several persons who were angels unaware in this drama, for I was not always so lovable. These people were willing spiritual conduits, each with a different message, each with a different angel’s feather touch. Each bearing God’s love and grace.

In the end, an aha moment was this:  understanding that in the loose, laid-back character of this quirky little church, lay freedom and trust and possibilities, and in return, I must give it all I’ve got. I’ve been busy ever since, not with more than you younger readers are prone to taking on, but with more than I am accustomed to taking on in quite this faith centered way. There are not enough days or hours in the days, and certainly not enough weeks in the month for me. I am swimming in a rushing river to some where that I know not…every now and then caught by an eddy of old thoughts and memories that must be untangled and set out to dry. In a couple of weeks I will turn a ripe 72… Despite my good health report, I am very aware of the time I have left—sensitized to it. Insomnia plagues me lately. It’s not a workaholic compulsion that is the culprit, it is this sense that I am in transition—in training if you will—for the last chapter of my life as a doer/giver. I am such a late bloomer…I want 20 years doing and giving in the space of 10! Sometimes I feel like a child who cannot wait for Christmas morning. Other times I feel like skipping Christmas morning entirely, for surely a gift with my name on it will be much too heavy for me to manage.

Called by name…that is the word I received many times in the dark chemotherapy nights.

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame  shall not consume you. Isaiah 43

So when I am not wobbling over with extremes of joy and anxiety, I generally say, Here am I. Send me!”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And I said, Here am I. Send me! Isaiah 6:8

can i just say…..

It’s Friday and I really wanted to write this post on Monday when a poor night’s sleep the night before caused  me a full day of misery, but didn’t get to it, so I will have my say today. It’s Friday.

My friend, Queen Bee, when deeply moved one way or another,  precedes a salient point with the phrase: “Can I just say…?” What follows can fall anywhere on the continuum of easy-to-hard-to-hear messages. I don’t expect what I have to say is particularly moving to anyone, so I’m going to borrow from QB and say as she so successfully does: Can I just say…   that I find the popular television show, Mad Men annoyingly unconscionable? Of course the appropriate question is why do I watch it? It is one of the very few well written, well acted programs on that vast expanse of sandy desert called television entertainment. That is why I started watching in its first season. This season I realized that the rank immorality of the entire cast of characters was giving me nightmares, so I began recording the shows to watch during the day when I would not only have time to recover, but could fast-fast forward through whatever I wished. Believe me (if you like), there are scenes one can intuit without any sound at all. This gives me a modicum of control, while still being able to enjoy the several pluses of the show.

Last Sunday was a lovely day and I felt like watching a good show before bedtime. I thought I could handle the mad men and women of Madison Avenue and gave it a shot. It is amazing how little movement toward integrity, and human decency there is in this series. No one moves off dead-center of negativity for any length of time. Each episodes ends with another installment of the tragic, human comedy. I do not find any characters to cheer for. None are particularly likable. All are filled with shadow and longing for a light they cannot see. The majority of them are chain smokers, alcoholics and workaholics with untameable sexual proclivities…a desperate lot. It is a cautionary tale.

I remember the 60’s. I was not working on Madison Avenue, but I was alive and an adult member of society. I do not recall any of this excess. I do recall a general use of Valium, however. People drank and smoked, but if to this extent, I must have been comatose to it. So, what do we have here? Let’s get the details and the credits down before I continue on my rant.

Mad Men, created by Matthew Weiner,  is an AMC production airing Sunday nights at 9 central/10 east coast. Jon Hamm, as the star, plays Don Draper, a handsome hunk of a leading man with a shadowy past and a sordid present. He is professionally successful, but personally without moral compass. This year the writers are throwing in little fish hooks of hope here and there, but the episodes all end in moral calamity nonetheless. This is not entertainment—at least not for me. But the show is immensely popular and has a website, blog and a faithful set of followers. I do not venture onto this website or this blog. I am concerned that I may find even more to rant about. I do not need to take on the angst of the populace. I have enough of my own.

Last Sunday I watched and had a very difficult night of painful dreaming. The next day was a loss in many ways. I slept poorly and that never goes down well for me and my disposition. So this week I will return to my plan of letting the DVR record for discriminant viewing on a day, and at a time when I am ready for Mr. Weiner’s view of life in the 60’s on Madison Avenue. I do wish he would get on with it.

going forward while standing still

Last night baby kitty, Bella woke me up  after  only 1.5 hours of sleep by jumping up to nestle down upon my sleeping body. Normally I would manage this but last night and for the past several nights I have been flushed with concerns and anxieties. I am currently overwhelmed with life in general and mine in particular. I would like to know when the golden years begin. I’m thinking this whole golden years idea might have been one of those advertising gimmicks to sell retirement homes or insurance policies. There is nothing golden going on in my life at present. Definitely nickel-plated.

Big Dawg and I still have 2 houses: the big beautiful one we put up for sale 2 years ago when we answered the call to come follow Jesus with the congregation we were attending at the time, and the charming little cottage in which we now reside. There had been ample time for leadership persons to explain to us that the invitation couldn’t include the two of us, but nothing was said until 3 days after we moved and there we were, sort of like your best friend died without leaving you a handkerchief. Two years later, we still have 2 houses and the strain of floating them, along with all the other vicissitudes of 21st century life is killing us. The strain of having lost Adopted Daughter along with what we’d thought would be a church family, comes home to roost quite frequently. I won’t go on. It will sound like a soap opera.

Two and a half days ago I had what we used to call a nervous breakdown—uncontrollable crying, despair, hopelessness, deep depression. I pulled myself up to a level closer to normal with the help of homeopathic medication, but  I am truly tired, inside and out. The prairie style FLW house we rescued from ignominy and poured so much love and money into has slipped from $479K to $300K and still no real buyers. We are reluctantly preparing to seek renters. This is a band-aid and not a good one, but it might lessen the financial leak. The wound remains until such time as the church that invited us, and then uninvited us, publicly accepts and confesses its culpability to us. Although we have extended forgiveness to them, such a statement would be a very healing balm to our battered selves. In the meantime, we practice the rule of 70 x 7.

Tomorrow BD and I will head out to Minnesota to attend the annual conference of Mennonites and Roman Catholics, called Bridgefolk, to be held at St John’s Abbey in Collegeville. We are looking for something more, but don’t know what it is. I have moments of wishing we’d not signed up for this because I feel so out of the Circle of Light, but we will go and God will bless and life will go on…one day at a time.

whew!

I have been asked to present my work at the Mennonite Arts Weekend in Cincinnati Ohio next February 5-7, 2010. Most sane people will say I have loads of time to prepare and so would I if I were sane. But sanity illudes me much of the time. I am what kind people call, a highly strung individual. Hmm, how high is highly, I wonder? Isn’t there a song about how low can you go? Maybe there’s one about how high can you fly. Me? I fly high…up above the sky, as often as I can (which isn’t all that often, but I can dream). Lately…for the past many, many dreary months I have been tethered to some unfortunate hooha at the church I was attending that filled my heart with angst and debilitating sorrow. I could do no personal work at all and each month that past, I worried that I would have nothing meaningful to say to the MAW attendees grew larger and larger. Yes, that is performance anxiety.

Right now I am flying because today, I managed to plow through the tangles and write a draft of 2/3 of the presentation. Hooray! I feel great about that. I have prevailed. Now I can start selecting the art I want to present and coast for a while. I can even engage in other projects I am asked to do…or that I want to do just for me, without having this performance thing lingering in the back of my mind like a bad conscience.

And what is the topic of my presentation? Well, you are getting to know me a bit by now…it’s Suffering! Okay, not suffering for it’s own sake. Suffering as common ground and sacred space. Something I know a bit about, especially lately. But that’s another story.