What kind of activity is best for someone with a very, very bad back?
The
activity that helped me the most came into my life as a kind of lovely
fluke --a series of Feldenkrais sessions, the gift of a friend. This
bodywork program was thoroughly amazing in its effects -- incredibly
powerful -- but I have no scientific grounds for praising it or
recommending it. I hope to be able to resume some Feldenkrais now that I
have been through several revision procedures and look forward to
earning a better living than Social Security currently affords me.
Bicycling?
I could not balance on any kind of bike with the flatback. My head and
torso were heading swiftly toward the ground whenever I strove for a
quasi-vertical posture. I miss biking enormously, as I had loved riding
all my life from third grade on. It was just too dangerous for me once
the sagittal deformity became disabling, and possibly even more
dangerous once my spine was surgically rigidified, making it nearly
impossible for me to “break a fall” in the normal way. (Even on foot,
especially where pavement needed repair or was coated with winter ice, I
have fallen flat on my face several times, on one occasion giving
myself a black eye on the sidewalk. And just last week, while attempting
to descend a stairway at an el station -- the elevator was out of
commission -- I inexplicably lost my balance and landed flat on my
back.)
In
my last few pre-revision years, as my flatback deformity gradually
closed in on my life, hopes, and powers of concentration -- as I learned
firsthand the sheer depth and demoralizing chronicity of brute physical
pain that we humans must endure at times --- as the boundaries of my
life shrank to lilliputian proportions, sometimes confining me to my
small apartment till I had to break out or start feeling slightly berserk -- the activity I kept up intrepidly, stubbornly, obsessively,
devotedly, and with great and sustaining gratitude for what remained to
me even at the farther reaches of this infernal deformity, was regular
walking.
Those last few pre-revision-surgery years, I always had something to lean on, of course. As I traversed the streets and sidewalks of my city and a 'burb or two, I most often relied on one of those small walker-shoppers, outfitted for my idiosyncrasies, with its
incorporated compartment for my briefcase/spare shoes/Diet Mountain Dew
supply/latest writers' journal -- whatever tended to soothe my maelstrom
of worries and anxieties.
Once
I reached the end of a particular hike, at least one way, and decided
to stop off for printer paper, shampoo, or flaxseed cereal, I switched to the
assistive device most widely favored by flatbackers wherever we may roam
(at least if we reside in industrialized societies replete with
such emporia as Target and Home Depot): the blessed and salvific
Shopping
Cart. This ingenious invention provides every kind of support and
comfort a flatbacker could require, with the
possible exception of built-in speakers and a sexy crooner reminding her to "lean on me when you're not strong . . . ."
In
general I made a point of walking aerobically at least every two to
three days. I aimed for six miles a week and often doubled or
tripled that. This was literally the only exercise I remained able to
do, and I found it reasonable and helpful for me. It combined well with
everything from my own version of metta
(loving-kindness) meditation-in-motion, as I began to cull some of the
methodologies from Hindu and Jewish sources, to the related idea of
mindful walking, a kind of Vipassana meditation performed in slow motion
rather than seated on a cushion. The latter has been popularized most
notably by Thich Nhat Hahn, a Buddhist monk, peace activist, and founder
of the Order of Interbeing as well as of a minimalist community and
retreat center in France known as Plum Village. I’ve never been very
adept at his slowed-down, meditational version of walking, however;
somehow I find my energetic race-walking meditative and
generative in its own way. The more I speed up, perhaps because of
increased oxygen flow to my brain, the more easily I write many stanzas
of spontaneous poetry in my head, or visualize new collage themes or
assemblages to initiate back home in the dining room-cum-art-studio.
Someday
someone may make it possible to record such creative inspirations while
in motion. At present it seems to require just too much multi-tasking
to reap the physical and mental benefits of a brisk walk while
extracting some Smart device from one’s pocket and noting one’s
brainstorms on a tiny touchscreen. (This might be less of a feat for
seasoned teen texters.)
Interestingly,
surgeons I interviewed en route to revision rarely asked me about
exercise. When one did, I reported that I walked six miles a week. He
scoffed, “You don’t walk six miles a week!”
“Yes, I do,” I insisted.
I
suppose my walking stretched doctors’ credulity in part because it may
be hard to imagine a deformed person willing to exhibit herself in
public that way. But that was one inhibition I got over early. I
was already on every woman’s postmenopausal journey to deeper self-acceptance,
and I was not going to let some oddity of personal appearance or a few
shocked stares from strangers set me back.
Harvard researcher Lisa Iezzoni, MD, MPH, notes in her book When Walking Fails
that the disabled are typically expected to hide themselves away at
home for everyone else’s comfort. I figured if people were uncomfortable
at the sight of me, however, then they could stay home.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
An Artist's Prayer
God in the hot encaustic wax
God in the paint and the palette knife
And God in the whimsical blog post
And God on the wall at Facebook --
Tender with with every foible:
Our cyber-self-promotion
Our private doubting and fearing
Our just not hearing
Architect, poet and author, cantor
Dwelling among us
Warming the room
(God the warp and the weft
The yarn and the loom)
I praise Your presence in the strangest places --
You who dance with the pixels,
Defining that elusive spot
Where poet and pointillist meet
I feel Your hand move mine about the keyboard
And pour myself once more
Into your great safekeeping
Relinquishing map and blueprint
Renouncing all planning and trying
(Can this be dying?)
I come to rest
In that inchoate space
That nameless grace
Beyond description
Acknowledging who moves the brush, the pen
Across each pristine page
Who sings the notes just audibly enough
For our transcription
I cede You all of me:
Each dark insomniac question,
The ego’s tedious whine
The motley fears, the bad digestion
My reconstructed spine
All that I thought was mine
Abba, Ima, Midwife, Maker,
Endless compassion streaming in
Calming sustenance above the din
Melech ha’ olam, Ruach ha'olam,
Empathic Rabbi, sweet Kwan Yin
I cannot count the times
You found me supine, flailing
Besieged and set upon
Despairing, failing
And raised me gently to my feet
And choreographed my journey on.
Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez
Funny Thing About Writing A Blog . . .
. . . You find yourself repeating yourself without even realizing it.
Embarrassing as this may be, it can have its upside. By seeing what you are saying more than once, you may begin to discover what topics or aspects of life are more important to you than you realized.
I seem to have quoted William Carlos Williams on poetry at least twice in this blog. In fact, I seem to have written repeatedly about the healing power of poetry, which is not something I normally think much about.
"Consciously," I tend to associate spiritual healing more closely with artmaking, Vipassana meditation, maybe a few body therapies I've been fortunate enough to experience (e.g, Feldenkrais).
Yet before I ever heard of most of these things, something in me was driving me to read and write poetry almost as if my life depended on it.
I remember sharing poetry with a kindred spirit at Walter Reed when I was 14, the summer I spent a week or two there getting sprung from my very last cast (hallelujah!). I wish I could remember her name. She was a beautiful young woman, one year older than I was and everything I was not, or so it seemed to me then. Most of us on the Women's Orthopedic Ward had fairly large problems: spinal deformity, bone cancer, paraplegia. Not to underestimate or downplay this one young person's condition, but in a way she was special. She had recovered from childhood polio with damage to only a single hand. She even had a special, classy sort of doctor: not the usual assortment of motley orthopods who trooped through the ward, but some elite, rather aloof specialist known as a hand surgeon whom she saw at his specially appointed office in another part of the medical center.
I remember her kindness, her lack of judgment. Back home, few girls that pretty and socially graceful would have chosen to be my friend. Maybe this girl was different in some way -- different in the way I was myself, intolerant of any sort of hierarchy or class system or categorization of the cool vs. the uncool -- or maybe we found each other simply because an Army hospital ward is its own kind of democracy and no patient is in much of a position to act snotty. In any case, we soon discovered that we both loved Edna St. Vincent Millay. Actually I had only read one or two of Millay's lyrical pieces -- "Listen children, your father is dead" -- but my new friend had a whole book of her sonnets, which she freely shared with me.
It was a lovely book -- a special, grown-up book -- for marking and celebrating my emergence from plaster after eighteen months in casts.
. . . and if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body limpid with desire?
I had just begun to understand such things, at least partially. Such things come to be understood, at least initially, through our physical organisms. Kim Rosen, writing of a somewhat comparable adolescent experience with a poem, writes, "At the time I did not understand how the rhythms, tones, and movement of a passage permeate the body so that the experience described becomes the experience directly lived."
Suddenly at 14, I was in a position to let things "permeate the body," as I moved back into my body after a considerable absence.
I had gone into the first cast nearly flat-chested. I emerged from the last one with a woman's breasts. Getting used to this change was an amazing and somewhat lengthy experience, that June in Walter Reed.
There was only one place on that ward you could find any privacy to speak of -- behind a curtain in one of the ersatz "booths" in the ladies' room. Fortunately there was never any waiting line for the booths, since it took me forever to (supposedly) finish peeing. Whenever I had the chance, I would spend the longest possible time behind that curtain. I would reach up under my shirt or nightgown and cup these two new parts of me in my hands -- incredulous, disbelieving -- just trying to get used to having them and to grasp (grasp literally, in fact, with my own two hands) that I included them now -- that they had come out of nowhere during the months of plaster and were apparently here to stay.
I've wondered sometimes just how it was for other girls, like my hospital friend -- for the large majority who did not have to grow their breasts in secret. What was it like to see yourself develop over time, to graduate from one bra size to another? My only frame of reference for the whole process was a period of pain on one side of my chest, a few months after I came home (in a cast, to another hospital bed) following my spinal fusion. I was rubbing against the cast there, and it hurt, and I couldn't sleep. My mother called the orthopedic specialist on our Army post -- the guy who had initially referred me on for all the plastering and bone-cutting that marked my early adolescence -- to ask what could be done so I would not hurt so much. He said to give me aspirin and wait for the next cast change several months hence.
Puberty. My puberty. How could I have survived it without poetry?
I guess that's what I get repetitive about without meaning to -- the core-things, the things that have sustained me. Stuff that might just bear repeating now and then.
Another fragment or two wafts back to me from my poetry-enabled youth -- this, I think, from Theodore Roethke:
Dark, dark the night, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill:
Which I is I?
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Embarrassing as this may be, it can have its upside. By seeing what you are saying more than once, you may begin to discover what topics or aspects of life are more important to you than you realized.
I seem to have quoted William Carlos Williams on poetry at least twice in this blog. In fact, I seem to have written repeatedly about the healing power of poetry, which is not something I normally think much about.
"Consciously," I tend to associate spiritual healing more closely with artmaking, Vipassana meditation, maybe a few body therapies I've been fortunate enough to experience (e.g, Feldenkrais).
Yet before I ever heard of most of these things, something in me was driving me to read and write poetry almost as if my life depended on it.
I remember sharing poetry with a kindred spirit at Walter Reed when I was 14, the summer I spent a week or two there getting sprung from my very last cast (hallelujah!). I wish I could remember her name. She was a beautiful young woman, one year older than I was and everything I was not, or so it seemed to me then. Most of us on the Women's Orthopedic Ward had fairly large problems: spinal deformity, bone cancer, paraplegia. Not to underestimate or downplay this one young person's condition, but in a way she was special. She had recovered from childhood polio with damage to only a single hand. She even had a special, classy sort of doctor: not the usual assortment of motley orthopods who trooped through the ward, but some elite, rather aloof specialist known as a hand surgeon whom she saw at his specially appointed office in another part of the medical center.
I remember her kindness, her lack of judgment. Back home, few girls that pretty and socially graceful would have chosen to be my friend. Maybe this girl was different in some way -- different in the way I was myself, intolerant of any sort of hierarchy or class system or categorization of the cool vs. the uncool -- or maybe we found each other simply because an Army hospital ward is its own kind of democracy and no patient is in much of a position to act snotty. In any case, we soon discovered that we both loved Edna St. Vincent Millay. Actually I had only read one or two of Millay's lyrical pieces -- "Listen children, your father is dead" -- but my new friend had a whole book of her sonnets, which she freely shared with me.
It was a lovely book -- a special, grown-up book -- for marking and celebrating my emergence from plaster after eighteen months in casts.
. . . and if the man were not her spirit's mate,
Why was her body limpid with desire?
I had just begun to understand such things, at least partially. Such things come to be understood, at least initially, through our physical organisms. Kim Rosen, writing of a somewhat comparable adolescent experience with a poem, writes, "At the time I did not understand how the rhythms, tones, and movement of a passage permeate the body so that the experience described becomes the experience directly lived."
Suddenly at 14, I was in a position to let things "permeate the body," as I moved back into my body after a considerable absence.
I had gone into the first cast nearly flat-chested. I emerged from the last one with a woman's breasts. Getting used to this change was an amazing and somewhat lengthy experience, that June in Walter Reed.
There was only one place on that ward you could find any privacy to speak of -- behind a curtain in one of the ersatz "booths" in the ladies' room. Fortunately there was never any waiting line for the booths, since it took me forever to (supposedly) finish peeing. Whenever I had the chance, I would spend the longest possible time behind that curtain. I would reach up under my shirt or nightgown and cup these two new parts of me in my hands -- incredulous, disbelieving -- just trying to get used to having them and to grasp (grasp literally, in fact, with my own two hands) that I included them now -- that they had come out of nowhere during the months of plaster and were apparently here to stay.
I've wondered sometimes just how it was for other girls, like my hospital friend -- for the large majority who did not have to grow their breasts in secret. What was it like to see yourself develop over time, to graduate from one bra size to another? My only frame of reference for the whole process was a period of pain on one side of my chest, a few months after I came home (in a cast, to another hospital bed) following my spinal fusion. I was rubbing against the cast there, and it hurt, and I couldn't sleep. My mother called the orthopedic specialist on our Army post -- the guy who had initially referred me on for all the plastering and bone-cutting that marked my early adolescence -- to ask what could be done so I would not hurt so much. He said to give me aspirin and wait for the next cast change several months hence.
Puberty. My puberty. How could I have survived it without poetry?
I guess that's what I get repetitive about without meaning to -- the core-things, the things that have sustained me. Stuff that might just bear repeating now and then.
Another fragment or two wafts back to me from my poetry-enabled youth -- this, I think, from Theodore Roethke:
Dark, dark the night, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill:
Which I is I?
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Poetry for What Ails Us? Don't Be Too Quick to Dismiss This Far-Out Prescription!
Do you like poetry? Do you hate poetry? Either way, I urge you to check out this singular book by Kim Rosen, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.
I'm still reading and savoring this treasure on my Kindle. (The book-book comes with a CD, and the ebook also includes audio downloads which I have been unable to accesss. I eventually bought the paperback as well, mainly to get the CD -- which merits a review of its own; it is a truly special experience, a coming together of various poets' voices in a variety of ways, and it may echo in your head long after you have heard it once or twice.)
Not your preferred way to spend a Saturday night? I guess you must have missed that great show on HBO with Russell Simmons and Spike Lee which grew out of the Brooklyn poetry slams. (I absolutely must note here that the poetry slam concept actually originated here in my home town, Chicago -- which has also been home to the Poetry Foundation since 1912.)
Rosen says we place way too much emphasis on trying to understand poetry, analyzing it to death. She maintains that poetry really comes alive in the body and thus in the soul. The idea is to find a poem that speaks to you deeply and take it into yourself, make it part of your breathing and dancing, your journey, your quest for healing. She says that poetry can heal us. She won't get any argument from me. But don't worry that her suggestions have anything to do with the old stuff, the rote memorization we may have been assigned in elementary school. She counsels a whole other way of getting into a poem and letting it into you, and she predicts that it will change your life. I can personally attest to the truth of that assertion.
Other cultures know all this already -- way better than we do out here in the ad-glutted, mall-ridden, frenetically monetized U.S. of A. I don't really have any viable theory of why we are so conflicted about poetry, why some of us are positively repulsed by it, and plenty of us never think about it or deal with it at all if we don't have to.
In 2006, in the heart of Baghdad and in the midst of ongoing clashes and explosions, a thousand people -- both Sunni and Shiite -- came together in a gigantic tent to share poetry, to dance, and to weep together. Soldiers from both militias ended up joining in, and volunteering to guard the premises. The first such gathering was followed by many others. Poetry broke down the barriers between the factions and became a powerful force for peace. It satisfied some fierce craving people may not even have known they had -- some profound and urgent need that seems endemic to all of this earth, to all of humanity, even if some of us do not yet realize just what it is we are thirsting for down there in the depths of ourselves.
According to Rosen, "in many parts of Latin America, Ireland, and the Middle East . . . it is not unusual for spoken poetry to be heard as part of everyday conversations." According to her students from Ireland, people in that land routinely share poetry by W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas well into the night at the neighborhood pub. She also notes that in Iran, poets are national heroes -- and that fans line up in the bookstores of Tel Aviv for a new volume of poetry the way they do here for a best-selling vampire novel. Cubans spray-paint the poetry of Antonio Machado on walls. In the Middle East, there is one TV channel devoted exclusively to poetry -- inspired by the most popular prime-time program in the region, a kind of poetry recitation contest along the lines of "American Idol" which has more viewers than news or sports.
It is impossible to summarize this wonderful book in a brief review, or to distill its major points. The author has spent years studying and teaching poetry as a pathway to spiritual healing, and she has so very much to say on the subject. She shares her own experiences of darkness and despair, relating how bringing poetry alive within herself brought everything else into alignment -- how a true encounter with poetry, a long love affair with a special poem, can strip a human being down to her authentic self, and return her to a sense of oneness with everyone else, and mold her into a formidable force for teaching and healing others.
Rosen provides clear guidelines for doing this -- for adopting a poem and taking it to heart, living with it and nurturing it and letting it sing in your blood and bones. These are really very practical and comprehensible instructions, although I realize that in my enthusiasm, I may sound rather mystical or oody-doody about the whole thing. It is really not some esoteric byway of civilization. It is a crucial, essential part of our heritage, spanning the millennia since Neanderthal peoples, or so some scientists theorize, first spoke to one another in a language which was more like a kind of poem, or poem-song.
Of course the author scatters various poems throughout the book, including some of my own all-time favorites. If any specific quotation may conceivably deliver her message "in a nutshell," it is these lines from the physician-poet William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day for lack
of what is found there.
I'm still reading and savoring this treasure on my Kindle. (The book-book comes with a CD, and the ebook also includes audio downloads which I have been unable to accesss. I eventually bought the paperback as well, mainly to get the CD -- which merits a review of its own; it is a truly special experience, a coming together of various poets' voices in a variety of ways, and it may echo in your head long after you have heard it once or twice.)
Not your preferred way to spend a Saturday night? I guess you must have missed that great show on HBO with Russell Simmons and Spike Lee which grew out of the Brooklyn poetry slams. (I absolutely must note here that the poetry slam concept actually originated here in my home town, Chicago -- which has also been home to the Poetry Foundation since 1912.)
Rosen says we place way too much emphasis on trying to understand poetry, analyzing it to death. She maintains that poetry really comes alive in the body and thus in the soul. The idea is to find a poem that speaks to you deeply and take it into yourself, make it part of your breathing and dancing, your journey, your quest for healing. She says that poetry can heal us. She won't get any argument from me. But don't worry that her suggestions have anything to do with the old stuff, the rote memorization we may have been assigned in elementary school. She counsels a whole other way of getting into a poem and letting it into you, and she predicts that it will change your life. I can personally attest to the truth of that assertion.
Other cultures know all this already -- way better than we do out here in the ad-glutted, mall-ridden, frenetically monetized U.S. of A. I don't really have any viable theory of why we are so conflicted about poetry, why some of us are positively repulsed by it, and plenty of us never think about it or deal with it at all if we don't have to.
In 2006, in the heart of Baghdad and in the midst of ongoing clashes and explosions, a thousand people -- both Sunni and Shiite -- came together in a gigantic tent to share poetry, to dance, and to weep together. Soldiers from both militias ended up joining in, and volunteering to guard the premises. The first such gathering was followed by many others. Poetry broke down the barriers between the factions and became a powerful force for peace. It satisfied some fierce craving people may not even have known they had -- some profound and urgent need that seems endemic to all of this earth, to all of humanity, even if some of us do not yet realize just what it is we are thirsting for down there in the depths of ourselves.
According to Rosen, "in many parts of Latin America, Ireland, and the Middle East . . . it is not unusual for spoken poetry to be heard as part of everyday conversations." According to her students from Ireland, people in that land routinely share poetry by W.B. Yeats or Dylan Thomas well into the night at the neighborhood pub. She also notes that in Iran, poets are national heroes -- and that fans line up in the bookstores of Tel Aviv for a new volume of poetry the way they do here for a best-selling vampire novel. Cubans spray-paint the poetry of Antonio Machado on walls. In the Middle East, there is one TV channel devoted exclusively to poetry -- inspired by the most popular prime-time program in the region, a kind of poetry recitation contest along the lines of "American Idol" which has more viewers than news or sports.
It is impossible to summarize this wonderful book in a brief review, or to distill its major points. The author has spent years studying and teaching poetry as a pathway to spiritual healing, and she has so very much to say on the subject. She shares her own experiences of darkness and despair, relating how bringing poetry alive within herself brought everything else into alignment -- how a true encounter with poetry, a long love affair with a special poem, can strip a human being down to her authentic self, and return her to a sense of oneness with everyone else, and mold her into a formidable force for teaching and healing others.
Rosen provides clear guidelines for doing this -- for adopting a poem and taking it to heart, living with it and nurturing it and letting it sing in your blood and bones. These are really very practical and comprehensible instructions, although I realize that in my enthusiasm, I may sound rather mystical or oody-doody about the whole thing. It is really not some esoteric byway of civilization. It is a crucial, essential part of our heritage, spanning the millennia since Neanderthal peoples, or so some scientists theorize, first spoke to one another in a language which was more like a kind of poem, or poem-song.
Of course the author scatters various poems throughout the book, including some of my own all-time favorites. If any specific quotation may conceivably deliver her message "in a nutshell," it is these lines from the physician-poet William Carlos Williams:
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day for lack
of what is found there.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Expectations
Back in the Pleistocene when you were young (oh, say 15 or 17 or 20), did you ever picture how your life might be at age 63?
I certainly didn't -- not consciously. I never even imagined reaching such an advanced age. Yet below the surface, I am sure I must have had firm expectations. I must have known that my life would be much like my parents' life was when I was 20. What other example did I have?
I would live in a wonderfully tasteful, not overly large house in some pleasant suburb. I would be living with my husband, who would look much like my dad -- pleasantly paunchy, bespectacled, balding; thoroughly benign and kindly. We would each have our armchair after dinner, or our spot on the Ethan Allen couch, as we tackled the hopeless task of getting through a towering mountain of magazines and journals that resided beside us on an antique table picked up in England some time before the birth of our second child. Our two modest cars would be safely in bed for the night, out in the garage. Our children would be long gone, off to their own families and careers, but perhaps a mutt would remain with us -- snoring in his own designated armchair. We would sip our coffee while exchanging occasional erudite remarks. . . .
I thought of this tonight around midnight, as I walked the blocks down Devon Avenue from Western Avenue to California. It was Saturday night. As on other Saturday nights, Devon was bustling, with people of all ages going about their business despite the late hour. The people who made the most vivid impression on me were a group of men and women I had also seen on other Saturday nights, going to or from some social or religious gathering. They seemed to hail from Western Africa, although I was not at all sure of the country. They wore the most gala garb, both men and women in elaborate headdresses. Not for the first time, I had a powerful impulse to stop one of the women and ask her who they were and where they were from and what they did every Saturday night, in their lovely outfits, wafting perfume . . .
I myself was in jeans and athletic shoes -- my uniform -- hauling my boxy little cart full of groceries and other necessities, the pile of stuff secured by my ever-present bungee cord. I remembered shopping trips as a child, with my mother -- unloading the Ford or the VW bug just outside the kitchen door. I marveled at the fact that I have never really driven a car; that I do all my shopping on foot, sometimes hiking for miles.
I was on my way home to a small urban apartment on a quiet street lined with old trees. My building is also old, dating to 1927. I have lived in this building for more than 12 years with my grown son. My husband lives somewhere else -- has since 1998.
My parents had steady jobs. There was always enough money. They were financialy prudent and went with the program.
In almost every way I can think of, I have broken away and set myself adrift. Not willfully, you understand; I did not will a sudden devastating spinal deformity, a series of major surgeries, an income reduced to my monthly stipend from Social Security. I did not expect or plan on a marriage from hell. I always expected to have two or three kids, instead of a bum back. I still dream of owning my own little abode. I don't know if I ever will. I am not entirely sure it matters terribly much in the vast scheme of things. My apartment is cozy and pleasant, and I can almost afford the rent.
I make art. I am writing a book. I go to aquatics classes at a medical fitness center. I am good friends with my son, who is 30 years old and still getting his bearings. I would love to have a husband I could adore as my parents adored each other -- someone to grow old with contentedly. That wish may be as amorphous and evanescent as the image of owning my own place.
I am a little bit lonely.
I am not entirely sure where I am. I guess I mean that in the existential sense.
I am actually not really sure of anything.
I hope that this will turn out all right.
I certainly didn't -- not consciously. I never even imagined reaching such an advanced age. Yet below the surface, I am sure I must have had firm expectations. I must have known that my life would be much like my parents' life was when I was 20. What other example did I have?
I would live in a wonderfully tasteful, not overly large house in some pleasant suburb. I would be living with my husband, who would look much like my dad -- pleasantly paunchy, bespectacled, balding; thoroughly benign and kindly. We would each have our armchair after dinner, or our spot on the Ethan Allen couch, as we tackled the hopeless task of getting through a towering mountain of magazines and journals that resided beside us on an antique table picked up in England some time before the birth of our second child. Our two modest cars would be safely in bed for the night, out in the garage. Our children would be long gone, off to their own families and careers, but perhaps a mutt would remain with us -- snoring in his own designated armchair. We would sip our coffee while exchanging occasional erudite remarks. . . .
I thought of this tonight around midnight, as I walked the blocks down Devon Avenue from Western Avenue to California. It was Saturday night. As on other Saturday nights, Devon was bustling, with people of all ages going about their business despite the late hour. The people who made the most vivid impression on me were a group of men and women I had also seen on other Saturday nights, going to or from some social or religious gathering. They seemed to hail from Western Africa, although I was not at all sure of the country. They wore the most gala garb, both men and women in elaborate headdresses. Not for the first time, I had a powerful impulse to stop one of the women and ask her who they were and where they were from and what they did every Saturday night, in their lovely outfits, wafting perfume . . .
I myself was in jeans and athletic shoes -- my uniform -- hauling my boxy little cart full of groceries and other necessities, the pile of stuff secured by my ever-present bungee cord. I remembered shopping trips as a child, with my mother -- unloading the Ford or the VW bug just outside the kitchen door. I marveled at the fact that I have never really driven a car; that I do all my shopping on foot, sometimes hiking for miles.
I was on my way home to a small urban apartment on a quiet street lined with old trees. My building is also old, dating to 1927. I have lived in this building for more than 12 years with my grown son. My husband lives somewhere else -- has since 1998.
My parents had steady jobs. There was always enough money. They were financialy prudent and went with the program.
In almost every way I can think of, I have broken away and set myself adrift. Not willfully, you understand; I did not will a sudden devastating spinal deformity, a series of major surgeries, an income reduced to my monthly stipend from Social Security. I did not expect or plan on a marriage from hell. I always expected to have two or three kids, instead of a bum back. I still dream of owning my own little abode. I don't know if I ever will. I am not entirely sure it matters terribly much in the vast scheme of things. My apartment is cozy and pleasant, and I can almost afford the rent.
I make art. I am writing a book. I go to aquatics classes at a medical fitness center. I am good friends with my son, who is 30 years old and still getting his bearings. I would love to have a husband I could adore as my parents adored each other -- someone to grow old with contentedly. That wish may be as amorphous and evanescent as the image of owning my own place.
I am a little bit lonely.
I am not entirely sure where I am. I guess I mean that in the existential sense.
I am actually not really sure of anything.
I hope that this will turn out all right.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
[Artsy Interests?] A Rare Rave Review
I don't know when I've waxed so enthusiastic about a product I reviewed for anyone. (I don't write too many reviews, and the ones I do write are mostly for Amazon.) This is a quick review I just posted at Jerry's Arterama regarding an itty-bitty bottle of something called Schmincke gold powder.
(Note: I don't know how some of my praise got classified as "Cons." Everything I have to say is a "Pro,"with the exception of the brief health and safety hypothetical.)
Not my usual blog post, but what can I say? If you are an artist, and if you ever use metallics, you will love this stuff. It's magic.
By Poetryperson from Chicago, IL on 10/30/2012
Your Rating: 5 stars
Headline: Definitely "Unparalleled"
Pros : Unique Gilding Medium, Dazzling, Great On Painted Tyvek, Fun, Creative, Unique
Cons : Small Amount Really Lasts, Reasonably priced
Best Uses : Greeting cards, Decoupage, Mixed-media Work, Paintings In Any Medium, Holiday Ornaments, Collage, Art
Describe Yourself : Artist
Primary use : Personal
Was this a gift? : No
This is an extraordinary product. I decided to try it after coming across a casual reference to it in an artists' publication. I ordered the "rich gold" and now plan to try the other hues as well. In my experience, this fine-particled powder is unsurpassed in adding indescribably brilliant metallic highlights or accents to any item painted with watercolors or acrylics. (I expect most artists will find it optimally effective when used judiciously; a petite bottle goes a long way.) So far I have used it in jewelry-making and mixed-media work, particularly when incorporating Tyvek. Just one caution: All of the labeling is in German, which I do not read -- so I am just guessing that one should exercise the usual caution accompanying any potentially "inhalable" powdered pigment. (It might not be the safest bet for use in artwork with young chldren.) Otherwise, I can not say enough good things about this surprising and novel product. I very seldom write a rave review of anything, but when I first dropped a few grains of Schmincke's into a small spritz of clean distilled water on the surface of an acryolic painting, then watched it "blossom" into figurative fireworks, the effect -- which was one of clarity and refinement; no tacky, glitzy, bling-y stuff here -- totally blew me away!
(Note: I don't know how some of my praise got classified as "Cons." Everything I have to say is a "Pro,"with the exception of the brief health and safety hypothetical.)
Not my usual blog post, but what can I say? If you are an artist, and if you ever use metallics, you will love this stuff. It's magic.
By Poetryperson from Chicago, IL on 10/30/2012
Your Rating: 5 stars
Headline: Definitely "Unparalleled"
Pros : Unique Gilding Medium, Dazzling, Great On Painted Tyvek, Fun, Creative, Unique
Cons : Small Amount Really Lasts, Reasonably priced
Best Uses : Greeting cards, Decoupage, Mixed-media Work, Paintings In Any Medium, Holiday Ornaments, Collage, Art
Describe Yourself : Artist
Primary use : Personal
Was this a gift? : No
This is an extraordinary product. I decided to try it after coming across a casual reference to it in an artists' publication. I ordered the "rich gold" and now plan to try the other hues as well. In my experience, this fine-particled powder is unsurpassed in adding indescribably brilliant metallic highlights or accents to any item painted with watercolors or acrylics. (I expect most artists will find it optimally effective when used judiciously; a petite bottle goes a long way.) So far I have used it in jewelry-making and mixed-media work, particularly when incorporating Tyvek. Just one caution: All of the labeling is in German, which I do not read -- so I am just guessing that one should exercise the usual caution accompanying any potentially "inhalable" powdered pigment. (It might not be the safest bet for use in artwork with young chldren.) Otherwise, I can not say enough good things about this surprising and novel product. I very seldom write a rave review of anything, but when I first dropped a few grains of Schmincke's into a small spritz of clean distilled water on the surface of an acryolic painting, then watched it "blossom" into figurative fireworks, the effect -- which was one of clarity and refinement; no tacky, glitzy, bling-y stuff here -- totally blew me away!
We're Way More Than Messed-Up Spines
As my book gets closer and closer to publication, I find myself thinking more about the Revisionary Woman as a whole person with a rich and varied life. Until now the blog, as well as our Yahoo Groups forum FeistyScolioFlatbackers, has focused fairly heavily on our medical problems, surgical crises, etc. Yet there is so much more to each of us than a bad back and a series of spinal reconstructions!
To focus on work and expertise, for instance, we include professional fashion designers, nurses, lawyers, novelists, nonfiction authors, motorcycle mavens, avid avocational cooks and bakers, devoted full-time parents . . . you name it. Many of us have been classified as permanently "disabled" and have had to give up long-term careers in which we invested enormous amounts of education, training, and real-world experience. Traumatic as this may have been, virtually all of us soon rallied, using our unexpected imposed "sabbaticals" to develop ourselves in ways we could never have foreseen when our jobs ate up most of our daily lives.
Take me, for example. Twenty years ago, I could not have been dragged into a hardware store. I have to smile at this now that an expedition to Ace or Home Depot has become a total pleasure -- at least on "good days" (pain level 6.5-7 or lower), I can window-shop for hours amidst the roof flashing or the PVC and copper piping or -- Lord, help us! -- ALL THOSE POWER TOOLS! Someday I will have my very own jigsaw, a Kreig jig for pocket holes, maybe even a workbench. For now I find plenty to do around my small abode with a decent corded drill and a panoply of bits plus the usual home-repairs basics (wood glue, spackle, anchors, etc.) and the painter's essentials. That's right: I moved into the usual stark white apartment but now have a lilac foyer and a cheerful blue and yellow kitchen with a snappy red set of built-in shelves. My bedroom and bath are soon to become equally colorful. OK, so maybe it takes me days to paint four small walls; that's simply because PT has taught me the importance of pacing myself and taking appropriate breaks. A project is no less well executed or aesthetically pleasing because it took forever to emerge from the blue painter's tape and dropcloths. I also find gratification in any number of smaller projects, from rewiring a lamp to building an (albeit rudimentary and interim) office work table screwed to two old bookcases of the right height for such chores as sorting and collating documents.
Not only am I the resident handywoman these days; I have accidentally found myself the resident artist. I gave up art, for the most part, in the second grade, when a delightful girl called Amy appeared at our school and turned out to be better at drawing than I was. Sad but true. Almost a half century later, newly handicapped and derailed by my spinal problems, walking disconsolately down a small street full of shops, I impetuously wandered into an art supplies store. The rest is history. For well over a decade now, I have found indescribable joy and healing -- of a kind I previously experienced only through reading and writing poetry -- in mixed-media art projects of every conceivable description. For more than a year now, I have dared to call myself a self-taught mixed-media artist without hesitation or apology. My place is bedecked with some carefully curated relics of my learning process, ranging from a fanciful wall hanging to a range of experimental collages and a wabi-sabi assemblage or two.. I craft my own jewlery and dye my own fabrics. I repurpose old clothing so as to feel rather chic even when my checking acccount balance is, say, $3.16.
And, oh yes -- my cooking has improved geometrically over the years! I'll plan to write a whole other blog post on that.
Accordingly, I have decided to expand this (let's face it, awfully quiescent of late) blog from assorted surgical-spinal aspects of my life to: My Whole Life, Uncensored. So watch for favorite quotes, mini-book reviews, descriptions of my latest project or newest discovery in the arena of cool art supplies, recipes, philosophies, hopefully even photographs and more pictorial content in general . . . To snitch from the title of my upcoming book dealing with flatback syndrome and botched back surgery, I am rebuilding my spine and my mind and my spirit and my life. With that kind of wide-ranging agenda, why constrict the subject matter of this blog? Why leave out anything potentially interesting or relevant to readers, even if it doesn't happen to relate to doctors or hospitals or Harrington rods?
-------------------
I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it.
Maya Angelou
To focus on work and expertise, for instance, we include professional fashion designers, nurses, lawyers, novelists, nonfiction authors, motorcycle mavens, avid avocational cooks and bakers, devoted full-time parents . . . you name it. Many of us have been classified as permanently "disabled" and have had to give up long-term careers in which we invested enormous amounts of education, training, and real-world experience. Traumatic as this may have been, virtually all of us soon rallied, using our unexpected imposed "sabbaticals" to develop ourselves in ways we could never have foreseen when our jobs ate up most of our daily lives.
Take me, for example. Twenty years ago, I could not have been dragged into a hardware store. I have to smile at this now that an expedition to Ace or Home Depot has become a total pleasure -- at least on "good days" (pain level 6.5-7 or lower), I can window-shop for hours amidst the roof flashing or the PVC and copper piping or -- Lord, help us! -- ALL THOSE POWER TOOLS! Someday I will have my very own jigsaw, a Kreig jig for pocket holes, maybe even a workbench. For now I find plenty to do around my small abode with a decent corded drill and a panoply of bits plus the usual home-repairs basics (wood glue, spackle, anchors, etc.) and the painter's essentials. That's right: I moved into the usual stark white apartment but now have a lilac foyer and a cheerful blue and yellow kitchen with a snappy red set of built-in shelves. My bedroom and bath are soon to become equally colorful. OK, so maybe it takes me days to paint four small walls; that's simply because PT has taught me the importance of pacing myself and taking appropriate breaks. A project is no less well executed or aesthetically pleasing because it took forever to emerge from the blue painter's tape and dropcloths. I also find gratification in any number of smaller projects, from rewiring a lamp to building an (albeit rudimentary and interim) office work table screwed to two old bookcases of the right height for such chores as sorting and collating documents.
Not only am I the resident handywoman these days; I have accidentally found myself the resident artist. I gave up art, for the most part, in the second grade, when a delightful girl called Amy appeared at our school and turned out to be better at drawing than I was. Sad but true. Almost a half century later, newly handicapped and derailed by my spinal problems, walking disconsolately down a small street full of shops, I impetuously wandered into an art supplies store. The rest is history. For well over a decade now, I have found indescribable joy and healing -- of a kind I previously experienced only through reading and writing poetry -- in mixed-media art projects of every conceivable description. For more than a year now, I have dared to call myself a self-taught mixed-media artist without hesitation or apology. My place is bedecked with some carefully curated relics of my learning process, ranging from a fanciful wall hanging to a range of experimental collages and a wabi-sabi assemblage or two.. I craft my own jewlery and dye my own fabrics. I repurpose old clothing so as to feel rather chic even when my checking acccount balance is, say, $3.16.
And, oh yes -- my cooking has improved geometrically over the years! I'll plan to write a whole other blog post on that.
Accordingly, I have decided to expand this (let's face it, awfully quiescent of late) blog from assorted surgical-spinal aspects of my life to: My Whole Life, Uncensored. So watch for favorite quotes, mini-book reviews, descriptions of my latest project or newest discovery in the arena of cool art supplies, recipes, philosophies, hopefully even photographs and more pictorial content in general . . . To snitch from the title of my upcoming book dealing with flatback syndrome and botched back surgery, I am rebuilding my spine and my mind and my spirit and my life. With that kind of wide-ranging agenda, why constrict the subject matter of this blog? Why leave out anything potentially interesting or relevant to readers, even if it doesn't happen to relate to doctors or hospitals or Harrington rods?
-------------------
I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it.
Maya Angelou
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Poem for the Day
Lately I have been very remiss about blogging. I've been been distracted by the definitive "Scoliosis Scandal" ebook I'm hoping to finish one of these years, as well as by personal situations and crises -- in particular, one shocking interpersonal offensive so transgressive, so horrifying, that I have not begun to be able to process it; it has brought many decades of profound love and caring, companionable dialogue and mutual respect, into question. All I can do is let it be for now. No matter how hard we may have worked on gratitude and forgiveness, we live in a world where others are never wholly knowable, where they can strike out in inexplicable ways -- can even, without warning, spew foul rage and hatred almost casually, like an old-time guy momentarily interrupting a sidewalk conversation to aim a gigantic black wad of disgustingly chewed, half-masticated, saliva-slick tobacco into the nearest spittoon. If you happen to be the individual mistaken for that spittoon, you may be left dumbstruck, reeling -- wounded, finally, into a kind of icy, shell-shocked paralysis . . . .
But enough of that subject.The Revisionary Woman strives always toward inner hope and healing, regardless of inevitable encounters with pain, uncertainty, horror, grief.; despite -- because of? -- those nights we find ourselves wrestling an unknown adversary to the point of exhaustion. (By the way, who said, "Hell is other people"?) (And what is that oft-quoted line from Hemingway, exactly? -- "Life breaks everyone; but some of us become strong at the broken places" -- I think that's close, anyway.)
For today, I just want to quote and preserve a poem I've saved for so long that it's becoming almost unreadably dog-eared in places. I snipped it from a magazine several years ago and am sorry to have no further information, except that the poet is David Whyte, and the poem is apparently from a longer work called "Sweet Darkness" -- a fitting title indeed for times such as these. I still do not understand it completely. The third stanza in particular remains somewhat obscure to me. But the poem as a whole feels wise and true. It speaks to me deep-down, stirs up a kind of tender, tentative consolation. Perhaps it will touch you too.
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte, from "Sweet Darkness"
But enough of that subject.The Revisionary Woman strives always toward inner hope and healing, regardless of inevitable encounters with pain, uncertainty, horror, grief.; despite -- because of? -- those nights we find ourselves wrestling an unknown adversary to the point of exhaustion. (By the way, who said, "Hell is other people"?) (And what is that oft-quoted line from Hemingway, exactly? -- "Life breaks everyone; but some of us become strong at the broken places" -- I think that's close, anyway.)
For today, I just want to quote and preserve a poem I've saved for so long that it's becoming almost unreadably dog-eared in places. I snipped it from a magazine several years ago and am sorry to have no further information, except that the poet is David Whyte, and the poem is apparently from a longer work called "Sweet Darkness" -- a fitting title indeed for times such as these. I still do not understand it completely. The third stanza in particular remains somewhat obscure to me. But the poem as a whole feels wise and true. It speaks to me deep-down, stirs up a kind of tender, tentative consolation. Perhaps it will touch you too.
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte, from "Sweet Darkness"
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Poetry for Sickness and Surgery?
In my writing on spinal deformity, spinal reconstruction, and life reconstruction, I'm not sure I've said much at all about poetry. I've met so many people who dislike it intensely (including some doctors). Sometimes I think it's a matter of fearing the unknown, or of having suffered miserably at the hands of inept or boring instructors.
As a longtime "closet poet" and reader of poetry myself, I'm encouraged to see so many more of us opening up to it these days. The poetry raps that began in Chicago, thrived in Brooklyn, and became a popular feature on HBO may have helped to show more of us -- visually, powerfully, through poets' spirited use of their whole bodies to deliver a reading -- just how affecting, how exciting it can feel to experience or create a poem. I also seem to meet more and more people these days who have somehow stumbled on a particular poet and have found themselves unexpectedly transported, even transformed. The names that seem to pop up most often are those of Rumi, Rilke, and the contemporary U.S. poet Mary Oliver.
It may not be widely known as yet, but poetry can actually be profoundly healing for those of us with painful and challenging medical conditions. In fact, there's actually a school of therapy focused on reading and writing poems. John Fox may be its best known practitioner. I can personally recommend one of his books, Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making, which I have had in my own library for years. It's full of wonderful quotations, beautiful and moving poems by "patients" (as opposed to known poets), and exercises for eliciting the poetry in yourself. It begins, "Poetry is a natural medicine."
I also love the book's preface, written by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD -- a specialist in internal medicine who now works as a kind of counselor/professional listener/mentor/modern-day shaman with seriously ill cancer patients, as well as with medical colleagues and students who seek her help during times of great pain or crisis. She has authored two poetic books of prose -- of stories, essentially -- Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings, which have often inspired and comforted me on my long journey through flatback syndrome and unexpected disability. (See http://being.publicradio.org/programs/listeninggenerously/)
Dr. Remen's preface to the Fox book on poetry therapy begins: "As a girl, I hated poetry. So much more the irony that I have spent hours, even whole days, writing and reading poetry with people with cancer, with their doctors and their nurses, and with their family members. But this poetry is different from the poetry of my youth. Much of the old poetry was pretentious and erudite, full of references to mythology or the ancient Greeks, poetry whose words I could not easily understand. The poetry of my youth made me feel diminished.
"But this poetry," she continues, "this poetry makes me proud to be a human being." She explains that "[p]oetry is simply speaking truth. Each of us has a truth as unique as our own fingerprints. Without knowing that truth, without speaking it aloud, we cannot know who we are and that we are already whole." (By the way, this doctor has also been a patient herself, with a chronic debilitating illness first diagnosed when she was 15 years old. She has undergone as many major surgeries for her Crohn's disease as I have for my spinal deformities.)
Why do I bring all this up now? To cut to the chase, I have only recently come across the first poetry I've seen which deals specifically with scoliosis surgery. Its young author is featured at the beginning and then briefly again at the end of this article about a poetry therapy conference. If you decide to check it out, I hope will you find it as enjoyable as I did: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178585
Monday, February 20, 2012
Being Where I Am
I've been thinking about a recent post at our website for people grappling with botched spinal surgery. (You can access this group at health.groups.yahoo.com/group/FeistyScolioFlatbackers)
The general topic of discussion was how we feel we're doing, individually, following massive revision surgery to remake our deformed, crippled spinal columns. Some of us are riding around on Harleys and planning skydiving expeditions. Others are doing well when we can get out of bed in the morning. It's important not to compare one's own progress with anyone else's, though inevitably some of us do.
Now, please bear with me for a prefatory comment before I quote directly from the post that stimulated my thinking. This blog -- the one you're currently reading or checking out -- is available to anyone on the Web who wants to view it. In contrast, the content of the "Feisty Forum" is private, available only to those who have registered as members. This policy serves: (1) to facilitate the free expression of all kinds of tumultuous emotions we experience in the process of undergoing major spinal reconstruction, and (2) to protect the sensitivity of personal medical information. Because of our serious commitment to protecting privacy, I have chosen not to disclose the name of the member who posted these comments. I trust she will not mind being quoted briefly, albeit anonymously. She wrote:
Everyone's story is different and everyone's condition is personal so maybe their triumph is walking their dog or going shopping or not having to use their cane that day.
This is so true, and so insightful, and it really hit home with me.
Throughout the past difficult decade or so, I have made a concerted effort to focus on my blessings -- keeping my gratitude journal, for instance, has helped me enormously-- and the idea expressed here, the emphasis on "small triumphs," will help my little Positivity Campaign even more. It's a matter of adopting a particular point of view: "Now I'm going to think about me for a minute -- myself, as distinct from everyone else, including anyone I might be tempted to compare myself with. OK, so I haven't gotten on a Colorado ski lift or a flight to Dublin; not yet, anyway -- in fact, I may never do those things -- but what have I done lately? What small, simple experience has brought me joy? What have I accomplished that I couldn't do before revision surgery straightened me out?"
I take the elevated train once in a while, making sure when possible that I can board or get off at a station designated "accessible." To qualify, the station must have an an elevator, so I don't have to get up and down a long stairway with my go-everywhere shopping cart (one of those handy box-shaped totes on wheels which folds up when you aren't using it -- although mine usually has just a few too many items in it for me to carry them comfortably in my arms or a backpack, should I have to fold up the cart). I live in Chicago, and I often debark at the Loyola University el station. This means transferring self and cart to a high, narrow platform between two tracks and walking some distance to the elevator (hoping that it's not out of service!).
Talk about small strides and simple accomplishments! I remember when I was much more newly revised, barely out of my surgery but eager to avoid a completely homebound life -- and farther back, to when I had not yet had my surgery at all, when I was coping with daily physical agony, a grossly visible and intrusive deformity, and chronic, diffuse apprehension. I would get off the el at this station and struggle with my balance, my memory of too many falls, my concern about any ice that had not yet been cleared completely, my whole baggage of fears and worries. Often I would teeter on the edge of a full-scale panic attack. I generally had a frightening recurrent fantasy of being bumped by someone else in a hurry and toppling over onto one of those much-too-close tracks to my left or right, possibly risking pulverization by an oncoming train.
Mercifully those days are over, at least for now. I get off the train feeling confident and in control, purposefully heading toward the elevator, with my mind on any number of things: a story I may want to write, or the next step of a collage in progress, or a possible reply to someone at the Feisty forum. I may be hoping that my connecting bus isn't too delayed or considering making a stop at the little newsstand tucked away on the ground floor. I am just another commuter on a schedule or with a simple itinerary, free of foreboding, enjoying a warm splash of sun on my face or wrapping my muffler a little more snugly against a chill wind off Lake Michigan. I am fully alive and so very glad to be right where I am, doing just what I am doing.
Recently I've been traveling a little further afield -- heading downtown to explore a bit more of Millennium Park or to see what new and interesting architecture may be under way -- or to window-shop at Water Tower Place, or visit one of the vast bookstores that so exceed what we have in my own neighborhood, or splurge on a small bunch of fragrant cut flowers from a favorite florist for my living room or bedroom.
Recently I walked around a sector of the city that used to be one of my old stomping grounds years ago, when I was young and robust but had a bunch of seemingly earthshaking worries and insecurities I could belabor for hours to some exorbitant, long-suffering therapist on Michigan Avenue. Back then I traversed these sidewalks dressed in my self-consciously chic and tasteful business duds complete with spindly-heeled Charles Jourdan pumps acquired -- during a quick break amidst a frenetically goal-directed business trip -- in the headier neighborhoods of Manhattan in my late twenties or early thirties.
This particular area -- the gentrified, upscale environs of North &
Saturday, January 14, 2012
"Here I Am!"
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Okay, here's just a brief "snapshot" from my own story. An early version was originally posted on a now-defunct private blog last summer.
From the Boonies
April 27, 1966
Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez has invited me, her teenage alter-ego, to join this weird blog. Hey, I am only 17, but if it's existential, I'm in, Ladies -- I really dig Camus. Sartre? Not quite so much. Simone and Jean-Paul actually lived together out of wedlock! I wonder if I would would ever have the nerve. The Colonel (my dad) would have a stroke, and I might have a stork. No, seriously, I know all about sex thanks to Margaret Meade and Lady C.'s Lover. I also read Dr. Marie Bonaparte, but I didn't get the bit about the 2 kinds of female orgasms of which one is the "immature" kind. Was she for real? Was she just trying to get in the boys' psychoanalystic frat? That was some weird book.
So, is that the kind of thing you are going to talk about here, sex and existential malaise? My girlfriend Sharman and I started a literary magazine at school, and Sharman wrote a poem for it called "nada." It was very deep. We love our existentialism, Sharman and I. Sharman has abstract art she painted on the ceiling of her bedroom. We always wear high heels to school. When we walk down the hall, everyone thinks the teacher is coming. We are both on the same diet. We went to the pancake house for dinner last week and ordered the boysenberry pancakes without the pancakes, and would you believe they threw us out? Sharman does not get along with her mother either, mainly because she is dating a very nice boy on the basketball team who is not her race, and Sharman's mother is prejudiced. (Sharman's family is from Australia, for what that's worth. But we have plenty of bigots right here in Alaska, U.S.A.)
I am not dating anyone right now because Roy and I got serious and Roy went to talk to the priest about it and the priest told him to forget about Protestant girls. Last May Roy and I were just 30 minutes late getting home from the junior prom, and who should be pulling in right behind us, in the Ford Country Sedan, but the Colonel! He was actually out looking for me! (OK, so it was pretty late at night, but it was broad daylight because this was May in Alaska. I ask you, what can any two kids do discreetly in Roys' parents' Rambler station wagon in broad daylight?) The Colonel said he was worried that something had happened to us, like an accident. He had me when he was extremely old, 42, so he is more like my grandpa -- a total Victorian-Edwardian mentality. I am a senior now, and I am still mortified.
I can't wait to get away from this place. I will meet mature men and will smoke Viceroys to my heart's content without anyone giving me the business, and I may read some Kierkegaarde. Meanwhile, I have to get through a semester of endless ennui up here in nada. I am not a happy girl, I tell you. I mean, I am happy because I am down to two peaches for lunch every day and my size 7 skirts are baggy on me. But I have a few little problems, like crying for hours and hours at "that time of month" and wondering if anyone will ask me to the Senior Ball. I am starting to hate all these bourgeois rules and conventions, like wearing a damn girdle to hold up your stockings all day and sleeping on brush rollers and being thought weird if you want to do anything other than be a nurse or a teacher or a stenographer or a mommy. I love to write stories and poems, and I love to go to play rehearsals because they take me out of my trivial meaningless life for a few hours. I play Anne Frank's mother and Mike Grube plays Mr. Frank. We rehearse in the auditorium on the actual set, so every evening I get to lie on a real bed right beside Mike Grube. He is so cute in a dark academic way -- a very serious boy, just my type, but I doubt if I am his type. I am no one's type. But you know that poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "and if the man were not her spirit's mate/Why was her body limpid with desire?" I'm telling you, I get limpid ever night at those play rehearsals, lying so close to Mike. I don't know how much longer I can take it. No one in this school knows me. They think I am so nicey-nice and a total prude, and if they ever got inside my head they would be shocked out of their gourds.
I am doing a zillion things to keep myself occupied, including teaching Sunday School. Last Sunday one little boy came in so somber, the son of our Sunday School superintendent on the Army post. (My parents go to the log cabin Episocopal Church downtown on Second Avenue, but I like the nonsectarian services on post.) Anyway, our unit that Sunday was on missionaries, and I was asking the kids if they knew of any countries where there were missionaries, and the sad little boy piped up and said "Vietnam?" I said, "Wow, what made you think of Vietnam?" and he said, "Because my dad just went there." It all happened overnight. It was a "secret" troop movement, no advance notice -- the Major, our Sunday School Superintendant, must have just driven 20 miles down the road with the others to Eilsen AFB and been flown out to Vietnam, just like that. I can't tell you why exactly, but I was so messed up -- I had such a bad, sad, deep dark feeling about this. I could not stop thinking about it. I am even having creepy dreams about it. There is something hidden going on in this world, and especially in our country, and I do not understand what it is, but something tells me I am going to be finding out real soon.
It won't be long now. I'll be going off to school in the lower 48 and having a real life and finding out what is actually going on in the world. I wonder if I will have great adventures. I wonder if I might someday live with someone, maybe even out of wedlock? Maybe I will finally be free to dress like a truly chic woman and a sophisticate. They sure don't make that easy up here -- you can get your clothes from a couple little out-of-date shops or the minuscule Northern Commercial department store or, if you're totally desperate, the Wards catalogue. Well, at least I can wear "normal" clothes now. Thank God I got that blasted surgery out of the way and got cured of my scoliosis.
I have to go write a composition for Mrs. Kozlowski on my beloved old Olivetti tyewriter, and then I think I will listen to Eve of Destruction for a while.
Take care,
Fairbanks Liz
Here I Am!
April 27, 1966
Elizabeth Rasche Gonzalez has invited me, her teenage alter-ego, to join this weird blog. Hey, I am only 17, but if it's existential, I'm in, Ladies -- I really dig Camus. Sartre? Not quite so much. Simone and Jean-Paul actually lived together out of wedlock! I wonder if I would would ever have the nerve. The Colonel (my dad) would have a stroke, and I might have a stork. No, seriously, I know all about sex thanks to Margaret Meade and Lady C.'s Lover. I also read Dr. Marie Bonaparte, but I didn't get the bit about the 2 kinds of female orgasms of which one is the "immature" kind. Was she for real? Was she just trying to get in the boys' psychoanalystic frat? That was some weird book.
So, is that the kind of thing you are going to talk about here, sex and existential malaise? My girlfriend Sharman and I started a literary magazine at school, and Sharman wrote a poem for it called "nada." It was very deep. We love our existentialism, Sharman and I. Sharman has abstract art she painted on the ceiling of her bedroom. We always wear high heels to school. When we walk down the hall, everyone thinks the teacher is coming. We are both on the same diet. We went to the pancake house for dinner last week and ordered the boysenberry pancakes without the pancakes, and would you believe they threw us out? Sharman does not get along with her mother either, mainly because she is dating a very nice boy on the basketball team who is not her race, and Sharman's mother is prejudiced. (Sharman's family is from Australia, for what that's worth. But we have plenty of bigots right here in Alaska, U.S.A.)
I am not dating anyone right now because Roy and I got serious and Roy went to talk to the priest about it and the priest told him to forget about Protestant girls. Last May Roy and I were just 30 minutes late getting home from the junior prom, and who should be pulling in right behind us, in the Ford Country Sedan, but the Colonel! He was actually out looking for me! (OK, so it was pretty late at night, but it was broad daylight because this was May in Alaska. I ask you, what can any two kids do discreetly in Roys' parents' Rambler station wagon in broad daylight?) The Colonel said he was worried that something had happened to us, like an accident. He had me when he was extremely old, 42, so he is more like my grandpa -- a total Victorian-Edwardian mentality. I am a senior now, and I am still mortified.
I can't wait to get away from this place. I will meet mature men and will smoke Viceroys to my heart's content without anyone giving me the business, and I may read some Kierkegaarde. Meanwhile, I have to get through a semester of endless ennui up here in nada. I am not a happy girl, I tell you. I mean, I am happy because I am down to two peaches for lunch every day and my size 7 skirts are baggy on me. But I have a few little problems, like crying for hours and hours at "that time of month" and wondering if anyone will ask me to the Senior Ball. I am starting to hate all these bourgeois rules and conventions, like wearing a damn girdle to hold up your stockings all day and sleeping on brush rollers and being thought weird if you want to do anything other than be a nurse or a teacher or a stenographer or a mommy. I love to write stories and poems, and I love to go to play rehearsals because they take me out of my trivial meaningless life for a few hours. I play Anne Frank's mother and Mike Grube plays Mr. Frank. We rehearse in the auditorium on the actual set, so every evening I get to lie on a real bed right beside Mike Grube. He is so cute in a dark academic way -- a very serious boy, just my type, but I doubt if I am his type. I am no one's type. But you know that poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, "and if the man were not her spirit's mate/Why was her body limpid with desire?" I'm telling you, I get limpid ever night at those play rehearsals, lying so close to Mike. I don't know how much longer I can take it. No one in this school knows me. They think I am so nicey-nice and a total prude, and if they ever got inside my head they would be shocked out of their gourds.
I am doing a zillion things to keep myself occupied, including teaching Sunday School. Last Sunday one little boy came in so somber, the son of our Sunday School superintendent on the Army post. (My parents go to the log cabin Episocopal Church downtown on Second Avenue, but I like the nonsectarian services on post.) Anyway, our unit that Sunday was on missionaries, and I was asking the kids if they knew of any countries where there were missionaries, and the sad little boy piped up and said "Vietnam?" I said, "Wow, what made you think of Vietnam?" and he said, "Because my dad just went there." It all happened overnight. It was a "secret" troop movement, no advance notice -- the Major, our Sunday School Superintendant, must have just driven 20 miles down the road with the others to Eilsen AFB and been flown out to Vietnam, just like that. I can't tell you why exactly, but I was so messed up -- I had such a bad, sad, deep dark feeling about this. I could not stop thinking about it. I am even having creepy dreams about it. There is something hidden going on in this world, and especially in our country, and I do not understand what it is, but something tells me I am going to be finding out real soon.
It won't be long now. I'll be going off to school in the lower 48 and having a real life and finding out what is actually going on in the world. I wonder if I will have great adventures. I wonder if I might someday live with someone, maybe even out of wedlock? Maybe I will finally be free to dress like a truly chic woman and a sophisticate. They sure don't make that easy up here -- you can get your clothes from a couple little out-of-date shops or the minuscule Northern Commercial department store or, if you're totally desperate, the Wards catalogue. Well, at least I can wear "normal" clothes now. Thank God I got that blasted surgery out of the way and got cured of my scoliosis.
I have to go write a composition for Mrs. Kozlowski on my beloved old Olivetti tyewriter, and then I think I will listen to Eve of Destruction for a while.
Take care,
Fairbanks Liz
Flatback Handbook Still in the Offing
There's been a bit of a delay in the definitive Feisty Handbook. I'm afraid my timeline was overly optimistic in view of budgetary constraints, glitches in contacting certain key contributors, etc.
I am also considering a major structural/thematic/"genre" change: Concise facts interspersed with stories. As Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, argued so persuasively in her 2005 NPR interview with Krista Tippett, We are our stories. Our lives, our world, are made up of stories, not facts.
I have made a provisional decision to use this blog as a kind of laboratory for scoliosis/flatback stories. Please feel free to share yours!
I am also considering a major structural/thematic/"genre" change: Concise facts interspersed with stories. As Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, argued so persuasively in her 2005 NPR interview with Krista Tippett, We are our stories. Our lives, our world, are made up of stories, not facts.
I have made a provisional decision to use this blog as a kind of laboratory for scoliosis/flatback stories. Please feel free to share yours!
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