Let it Snow... Huh? Nothing at all profound today.

Yes. Well, some of you  may know that Connecticut was in the dark for all of last week. I exaggerate. Only about eighty per cent of the state was dark, and I live in one of the towns that was hardest hit. As I write this Monday night, big chunks of my town and two of the towns adjacent are still dark. This is a situation we will have to sort out--negligence and apathy. I live in what some call the "quiet corner," which has often translated into the "Backward pore folk" corner.

In the late 1970's I worked at a university library way across the mighty Amazonian Connecticut River. One must understand that, in Connecticut, if you lived on the west side of the river, my side was seen as some foreign world of nothing but woods and farmlands. No one actually said outright that we must be uncivilized, but they came close. I was in a play and invited my colleagues to come and see me. They arranged an expedition, thinking they could see some quaint old-fashioned stores and perhaps take in the buccolic scenery.

When I saw them after curtain calls, one woman said, "Well you actually have a SageandAllen's store here. And a Stop and Shop!"

"Yes, Clara, and we got us indoor plumbing just t'other day."

"Well, I thought that this was all country out here. I didn't realize you all had..." Her voice trailed as she suddenly realized just how condescending and insulting she was sounding.  "No, but you have regular stores and everything and... I'll shut up now."

Thirty years later we still are the forgotten towns when it comes to prioritizing funds or aid. We have the flagship of our university system, but people seem to think that other than that, we are a vast wasteland, except, of course, for our mall. Connecticut is the land of malls. If you do not live within twenty minutes of a large one, you are considered underprivileged. My town has three huge malls within twenty minutes. Truly, just how lucky can one woman be.

I hate malls. Sorry. I just do.

Anyway, my power came on late Saturday, thank goodness. My apartment complex is located in an area that has at least five other large complexes within about 3/4 of a mile, square. It is the most densely populated area in the town, yet we waited six days for the power. I could not get out of the complex for two days. For all six of those days, one of the streets had no exit at all, except by winding through our complex. There are still trees HANGING across roads. Poles partly fallen. Big branches blocking roads. One of my friends could not get out of her street until Friday. Fortunately she and her husband are campers and had a gas stove as well.

In this day and age we expect our electric companies to be able to get us back on the grid in short order, but our company is far behind the times. And if I had had to listen to the president say that the company exists to serve its customers, I was ready to throw a shoe at my tv. It exists to serve its stockholders. The president got a three million dollar bonus--for cutting 20% of our crews, I guess. And not paying bills. And having antiquated lines and transformers.

I am grateful to the Canadian crews who came, some of whom are still here--from Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec. We have crews from Kentucky, Massachusetts, the Carolinas, Tennessee. I don't know what other states sent us help--I think they said it was TWENTY states. I am so grateful to them all.

Last week was a lost week in some ways. In others? I now know my neighbors. We watched out for one another, making sure things were okay for each other. I had FIVE friends show up at my door, panicked because they could not reach me, worried I had fallen. I stayed six days with one of them and not ONCE did she complain. She gave me her room, so I did not have to use the stairs. I made dinner and brunch for a crew of our friends on night and one morning.  We played games. I read five books.

Friendships were deepened. Acquaintanceships were solidified.

I am home and never have been more grateful to be here. The management team had generators here by Friday morning, because it was to be cold Friday and Saturday nights. We did not know when we would be on the grid again. I know they all worked well into the evening all week, making sure all the tenants were okay. They listened patiently to tenants SCREAM at them to fix things... as if they could. They showed up every day, working in jackets, sometimes wearing gloves to work in the mornings. Their generators gave them power to work, but not for heat. I stopped in every day, as did two other of the FIVE HUNDRED tenants, to let them know we knew it was not their doing, to acknowledge that it must be a hard time for them, too. They were without power in their homes, too. Two women had to bring their children with them each day.

It has been a hard time, but not without its blessings.

I missed my connections in the blogging world. I missed my connections to friends who live far from me. I missed my studio and my beautiful paintings and photographs on my walls. Just things. But ALL my things are gifts. Every piece of pottery, every picture, every little doodad... gifts from friends, from my sister, my parents, or handed down bits of family history. I have bought very little--the couches, two chairs, two tables. I have antique oak chairs that were my great grandfather's, and my great great grandfather--the traveling quack-- I have his desk. A bit of cut glass from my sister's best friend's grandmother. A dish from my mother's mother.

I missed my things because they live with stories, with the richness of family ties. I see the people, not just the thing.

I am rich beyond measure. I am home.

I won't revise this. I don't particularly care about the quality of writing today. I write simply because I am filled with gratitude today. Never have I felt so keenly the joy of being home. Never have I been more aware of how UNalone I am in this world. I am poor when it comes to income, but that's all. It's NOTHING in the light of the last ten days.

I am home. And tonight I will curl up on my couch, writing and working on my book. And tomorrow I will begin the painting I had just taped down when the power went out. And I will look online for images of snow on fall leaves... it was beautiful. To see yellow and flame maple leaves on snow... a once in a lifetime sight. Thank you Carl for the quick pic you sent!

Thank you all for reading what I write, and thank you to some in particular, who have reminded me that even in this "virtual" world, I am not alone. And I am not forgotten. Neither are all of you, as will be evident as I periodically blog hop to catch up on your lives.

I am such a lucky woman.

What now you may ask?

Water, water everwhere, nor any drop to drink.
Water, water everywhere, and MY how it doth stink!

Yes, dear readers, I have been wet vaccing in the basement, three times a day. Ah, the glamor of it all. But the song "Workin' in a Coal mine, goin' down down down" Keeps floating through my brain, which sort of takes the onus off.

And moving furniture to polish my wood floors and my kitchen floor. Climbing on stools, reaching above my head to get books off the shelves so that I could Murphy's oil then lemon oil all the wood. Hey. I mop n glo'ed with a TOOTH Brush to get around the wood of the banisters. Somewhere in the last two weeks, the nasty little demon in charge of turning perfectly sloppy women into anal housebodies who walk around with Swiffers singing, "Wake up your room!" (Sorry to you who are younger, it's a line from a simply horrid commercial from the sixties where a bedazzled housewife sang as she dusted, "Wake up your room, wake up your room, with natural wood-scent Pledge.)

Anyway, this disgusting demon told me that I must do the corners. That I must be on my knees getting that waxy build up from the floor, that nameless gray goop that accumulates. And I did.

AND rode my exercise bike.

I would sit at the computer to write and my mind quite simply went, "Duh? Arrr?" Think confused Scooby Doo. Then I had to tutor Adam about rhetorical devices in two essays, by Elie Weisel and Alexander Solzhenitzen. And then come home early from his house to wet vac the basement again.

My house is once again officially on the market. I look over the last year and realize that nothing has changed except me. My financial situation remains precarious, but the fight for social security is done. That brought me a peace I cannot measure.  I go through weeks like the last two and continue to accomplish what should be impossible for my back to bear, but I do it... and my back cannot bear it so I pay dearly.

However, then I come out of the payback and there is humor. THAT is the change. I rediscovered my sense of the absurd and my sense of proportion and perspective.  And somewhere or other, I've lost the ability to worry about it all. A loss for which I am grateful beyond words.

Truth be told, the last two weeks have been simply horrible. I could not walk yesterday more than about five steps at a time. When I say I could not walk, it is a literal comment. I had to hold onto things or I collapsed. The pain has been beyond my ability to cope at times.  I could not stand up straight no matter HOW I tried.

I finally took this as a sign that perhaps it was time to lie down, although I did not read the sign until I'd been up stumbling around with a Swiffer and my can of Pledge for an hour. There is no twelve-step program for stupidity. Not really.  I've been looking... obsessively of course.

All I wanted to do was write a little story about my travels to Red Bank. My part two of what could be a freaking novelette, probably. But those words do not come just now. Too much sludge and not enough metaphor just now.

Hey, but  I DO remember the winter after my husband walked out.  It was the only other time my basement flooded. Only then it was so bad that we had lovely little waterfalls falling out of the fireplace, glistening in the light. The water was deep enough so you could hear the splash. I had thought of turning the heat off altogether and perhaps having an indoor rink. I had a sign on my front door that said, "Welcome to Cliffwood Falls." (Cliffwood Drive is the street.)

I was determined to succeed, however. I had survived the hundred year old oak falling in the middle of the night three days after Mark left. I didn't ask for his help then. No. I was mighty. I would handle this on my own. A shop vac. I can just vacuum this stuff right up. I'll get me one of them.

Now, ya gotta understand that on those dumb tests where they determine what your aptitudes are, I was in the bottom twelfth percentile for mechanical ability. When I went off to college it took me FIFTEEN minutes of experimentation before I gave up and asked someone to show me how to use one o' them old-fashioned hand held silver can openers. To this day, it takes me two tries to use my nice slick Scandinavian black hand-held can opener to remember how it works.

So for me to go to Sears and buy  myself a shop vac, come home and put it together all by myself? Please. Applaud. Bow before me. I did it. I READ the directions and laid out all the little pieces and put it together without a hitch. I broke for dinner, but had it done before the eleven o'clock news. And it WORKED.  And I think I had to put together at least eighteen, maybe even TWENTY moving parts.

After the fourth day of using the thing three times a day, and hauling it out the garage to dump it, Mark happened to call and ask whether I could use some help that night. His mom had told him about the water. I was going to say "no" but for once in my life, realized that pride is just, plain, stupidity sometimes. He came over and went downstairs and did a long stint. I went down  after an hour to ask if he wanted some supper, and he was busy swearing at the machine because he could not move it over its own wire.

I said, "Mark, it's super full and is sloshing out the top, you gotta be caref--"

He tipped over the sixty gallons and it flew all over the only parts of the carpet that had remained dry. Black, stinky water.  It also got me in the face as well.  I started to sing, "Old black water, keep on rollin'." And then I wailed, "Well keep on Shinin' your light, gonna make EVERYTHING, pretty mama, gonna make everything all right. And I ain't got no worries, cause I ain't in no hurry... at all!" (Doobie Brothers, some time in the early seventies)

Mark looked at me, silent, my giraffe of an ex husband, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his straight lips. "Well. My work here is done. I always have known JUST what to do to make things right. Care to throw the Hoover upright Beats as it Sweeps at my head again?"

The memory of my heaving that at his head, there in that very spot in the basement, when I got him to admit he was NOT considering staying but had been waiting to leave until the kids left... the memory of my having the strength to do it, the look of surprise on his face.

The laughter came, to the point where we sat on the steps and held one another until the tears came. At which point I got up and said, "NO MORE WATER!"

***

And these are the things that leap and cavort through my brain as I slog on through this business of "getting the house ready to show."

• It is not a tsunami in my basement. It's annoying yuck.  
• I am alive, and my home is fine. And my back is better today, so I was able to pretend I was born to polish again today.
• I rode my bike for an hour and a half, singing rock and roll the whole time.
• I have money to pay my bills.
• In these times, in this country? I have everything I could possibly need.

Well. Except, perhaps, a brain capable of coherent thought. I wrote tonight because I was sick of NOT writing. It's what I do, how I enter the world. And bad or good, specious or profound, I write what happens in my little teeny world. The sign that last year is behind me for real is the fact that I am willing to blither publicly, to share how I DO process this life.

Today I move through sludge. Tomorrow I fly. One day I throw a vacuum cleaner at my ex's head. Another I stick a fondu fork through my hand. One never knows.

***
That's what I loved about the Jersey shore. You could run into someone who looked like Burt Lancaster one day and sounded like a dockworker, and then be approached by someone who clearly was stuck in "Stayin' Alive," wearing speedos, gold chains that glistened here and there, lost in the fur blanket of his chest, with the short-sleeved shirt buttoned by one button, straining over the not-twenty-year-old belly ... the man who would walk the forty yards to where you  had clearly removed yourself to draw and sit on the rocks, who huffed and puffed his way there to say, "Youse look like ya need company. I got a porsche wit cher name on it."

And I would think, "Why me? Am I wearing that sign again?"

I just wanted to write about my adventures, but nope. For now, my life is wet vaccs, mops, and chasing dust rhinos around my house.

Just wanted you all to know I am here and I Miss my blogging and others' blogging. Sometimes real life--SURREAL life will intrude.

Forgive this entry, if you can. Perhaps tomorrow I can write about the forking incident--although, perhaps I already have. I'll check.

If you celebrated St. Patrick's Day, I hope you had fun. If you did not, I hope the same. For now? I think Jeannette needs to sleep. Perhaps, in the night, the tooth fairy will, since she has no further business with me, find my brain and leave it under my pillow. One can hope.

Today is Better

Phoenix  © 1992, 2009
No room for desperation in the ruins of my heart;
I must be strong.
I am strong from my core that holds my infinite flame;
I have a flame.

It holds passions beyond desire.
Beyond ruins of tortured body,
I am more beautiful than Hippolyta;
I have the Amazon soul.

No room for desperation in this soul where burns my flame;
Only love.
From love born in faith in beauty beyond mirrors;
I see only light.

My soul has no need for mirrors.
It spreads joy,
without begging for a feeding of the flame.
My soul is no stranger to waiting;

It can dance by itself.

I am the patience of mountains;
with my flame, from my soul, I can wait.
I have seen this soul; it is worth the wait.
From the ruins it rises, whole.




Born July 25, 1992, She rises again, today.




I wrote this the day after I confronted my ex-husband about the fact that I had figured out that he was leaving me, not thinking about it.  He was busy running around fixing exterior lights.  I had asked him to go to the Home Depot to get an indoors ladder the day before. He fought me about it, saying I would kill myself on it. I looked at him and half-smiled, saying, "You won't though."

He came home without one, saying, "They didn't have any."  Our son was en route to Indiana, to go back to school. Jessie was still working, still home for another two weeks.

I went into the basement and saw him busy trying to fix something I'd asked him about for weeks--and replacing ALL the ceiling lights.  "Fixing the lights will not keep me all safe and Fine when you leave. You ARE leaving, right?"

He turned and blanched. He began to shake. "Yes."

"You had no intention to stay, to work on things."

"No. But I'm moving into Jay's room down here, so you can get acclimated."

"ACCLIMATED?" I screamed. Next to me was the Hoover Upright, Beats as It Sweeps. Mind you, I was fresh out of the hospital for my tenth round of back crap. I picked it up with one hand, and then with both, I THREW It at him.

He looked so surprised when he caught it.

That was the one moment of laughter in two months of hell, but laugh we did.

And then I went straight to a friend's house, with the words, "Be sure you've figured out where you are going to live when I com back." Not a problem, since he'd already  moved his girlfriend into her own apartment.

But I wrote this poem when I came home the next day. I turned some sort of a corner and was resolved. I felt I was stronger in my pinky finger, than he was in his whole being, and I started to plan. I enrolled in the classes I'd wanted, regardless of my circumstances.  I took steps to make sure I'd be okay for a while. I was determined to succeed, to fly despite the SOB.

And I did... I flew.

Yesterday was difficult, beyond words. Primarily I felt afraid of where I may wind up. Of whether I will find financial solutions in time. Of whether or not my latest DOWN-tick with my back will level off for some years. Afraid that the beginnings of an awakening for this woman's heart (Dormant for ten years, hiding for far longer) would fizzle into nothing again. Oh, hell. Fear is fear is fear.,

I was simply stone-cold, paralyzed with fear. I am not going to make it pretty or worry about the sound of that. It was numbing and horrible.

But by midnight, so much was better. So much. Words from friends. Words from a couple of readers. And some strange resolve inside. I found the poem at 2:00 a.m. This poem from another time, another era. Yet it has been something I have returned to at other times, the losses of Jessie, my nephew, my brother, two of my dearest friends, and my sister. When I have once before thought I would lose everything and a friend gave me enough of a lifeline to be able to breathe, to think.

I return to the Phoenix and Hippolyta. Rising from ashes, whole... and the strength of a mighty woman. I never longed to be a sylph, even when our image of  beauty was a model named Twiggy, all bone and eyes. Nope Not for me. I wanted to be STRONG. I wanted to stand tall, but be, most definitely, a woman.

I read this poem aloud, there in the dark, perhaps three times. Perhaps more. Don't know, don't care.

Today is better.

There are no answers today. All that has changed is me.  Perhaps that's all that needs to change.

Jeannette's Wild Life: Part 923.7

I was going to say that here and there life takes a new turn, but when I look at my life, that seems a tad absurd. For me? Here and there life moves straight forward...

I am inserting something here, so you realize that I DO love life. I have learned along the way... And I will continue to learn. Without writing, art, music, friends? Yeah, all this would be bleak, but this entry is about learning to write WHILE I process, not just afterward. And I hope that more than "Ain't it awful?" comes through. It IS awful, but life is hard sometimes. And what I want more than anything is to burst through, like a phoenix, on the other side.


Thank you so much to those of you who have written to say you missed my writing. When you read of what is going on for me, you may realize, I hope, just how grateful I am to know that my writing and my heart touch some people out there.  That my style of expressing myself resonates.

I will write again that my blog is not so much about trying to gather a following as it about trying on my voice. My dream is to write my memoir. (Okay, so one of my 150 dreams, but who's counting!) My passions are writing for "myself" --the blog, poetry, and even working on some fiction again--and painting/drawing. And singing. I don't think I have mentioned that  I sing. I was in three choruses at one point, and I also have always loved singing folk/folk rock/country rock... Oh, seventies stuff, basically. I am lucky that I love so many things, but sometimes it has felt that obstacles were overwhelming.

I'm sharing the story of my health here to simply talk about how things truly are. I am so tired of pretending I'm stronger than I am. Part of my story is who I am now, not just my past. There may be suggestions for work, for opportunities, or simple words of support, just as you have already given.

You all have been wonderful to me; my friends know my health and where it trips me up and where, now it has slammed me upside the head with a plank.

Indulge me, if you want. Feel free to stop half way through and run screaming into the night!

The Long Road Here – the lesser of ten evils

About five years ago I got the shingles on my auditory nerve, right where it touches the trigeminal nerve to my face. It set up a response that never went. Certain frequencies set up vibrations which overstimulate the trigeminal nerve in the right side of my face. I will get horrifyingly sharp pain in my face that makes it twitch and it looks to others, as if I am having a seizure or a stroke. Then my face goes numb and droops. When sopranos sing I run for cover. I cannot listen to live orchestra music. It ended the part of my life that had given me the most joy--becoming part of the greater whole, that ONLY being part of an ensemble brings. Blending in a chorus allows us to lose our sense of self and become something that simply soars.

And just like that, the music I had was gone. I knew no one with whom I could sing the other stuff, but that's a different joy. Until the last few weeks, I thought that was the only one of my passions, however, at risk. And I had found a way to replace that loss with painting...

The Big Stuff

Then there is my back. I had eight back operations in four years, back between 1980 and 1984. I have spinal cord damage. I had scar tissue and disk fragments in the spinal canal. Once you need to actually intrude on the canal? It's all a crap shoot. I had one of the top five surgeons in the country do the last five operations. His replacement was in on the last operation, the ninth, in 1986, two and a half months before my dad died. I was told I'd likely be dead or wheelchair bound by forty. I am fifty-seven. I walk... kind of.  I walk enough, let's just say. NO. I walk AT ALL. It is everything.

I have been on disability twice, and both times I worked my way off of it. I created a career from scratch when my husband left me in 1992, one month after a tenth procedure...

I learned to use a computer and was a computer graphics/layout artist for about eight years.  I learned how to draw maps and convert CAD drawings. I did pen and ink thumbnail sketches for brochures and special tourist catalogs, would scan them ... and I had the opportunity to write FOR MONEY. Woo HOOOOOO! I wrote the history of the area in which I lived for a visitors' guide and did about seven or eight pen and ink illustrations for it. I was able to work partly at home, partly at an office and gradually found a way around a body that, basically functioned in one to one and a half hour "upright bites."

When I wrote or drew, I set an alarm at home for an hour, after which I would wrap up what I did, then literally lie down for forty-five minutes before I began again. That way I could put in an eight hour day over the course of twelve or fourteen hours. Mostly I worked no more than six hours that way.  On the days I went into an office, I did my best to work four hours straight. It hurt. Once in a while I could do more. But it was okay because I could rest most of the next day. The trick was to command enough money per hour, eventually, so that I could earn a living without working full time.

It took me until 2002 to succeed fully. I was thrown off of Disability before then, but when I finally got to work for Stanford? When I got my first big contract from them, while I was still doing a bit of design work here and there, I felt as if the world was opening up for me. I was paid to go to California, to do consultant work. And I wrote. That wound up being all I did. I got the commitment because, in a crisis, I was able to dive in and take over the graphics component and do the layout for their print catalog, at a distance of 3000 miles. I was fine about just pitching in when their graphics artist took a vacation at a critical time. Stanford saw that I didn't think of them as a client--that I treated them as if I were part of a team, and I began to get huge contracts. Huge for me. At that moment, too, I realized that I was a writer who could design, rather than a designer who could write.

That's crucial. It tells you about who Jeannette is. I am a science geek. A groupie. To me, interviewing Donald Knuth, Bob Twiggs, Dan Boneh--giants in their fields of computer programming, aeronautics, and computer security--and writing about their work was like writing about rock stars. So I got to write about other people's passions, indulge my inner geek, AND get paid? Wow. I was living an old dream, earning my living as a writer. How proud my folks would have been, particularly my dad... the one who knew I was not destined for nine to five.

Okay – Here it Is, the Unforeseen Toll

What I did not see? Through the years, inch by inch, that alarm clock had to go off sooner. It went from an hour and a half, to an hour, to forty-five minutes... When I stood for more than ten minutes, somehow or other I had to find a wall to lean against, a table to hold onto... When I grocery shopped, I would lean fully forward to support myself on the cart as I walked, and the stores seemed to get awfully large during just one shopping.  The pain increased.

By 2004, though, my contracts fully supported me. And I was singing, which mitigated the pain.  I felt something was missing, but I didn't know what, exactly... and then things turned. The shingles hit in March of 2004 and nothing was the same again. I had vertigo. I could not even hear a phone ring without setting off the facial nerve. Yet I continued to work, writing and writing for Stanford. I could not sing. I stopped my poetry. I could not listen to any music at all. My sister was getting stranger and sort of drifting off, but was pretending she was well. And I couldn't figure out why my legs would get shaky.

I wrote it off to stress. Ever notice how easily we can say, oh stress makes me nuts. I mean, it DOES. But sometimes we need to give ourselves some attention beyond that. I'm a good one for feeling that I am not tough enough. In 2005, the autumn I had three things happen at once. I like this in life. I believe if it's all going to hit the fan, hey, throw it all at once. Why lose the opportunity for the drama? I had chest pains, I started falling for no reason, and I had blood appearing in odd places.

Oh. And my sister had started staying in her room in the other half of her house, for days on end, speaking to no one, and coming out of it only to use the kitchen, or walk through my half to go to the store or to her friend's house to do laundry. (Had to get to the garage by going through my house.) We thought I had heart problems. My heart rate was out of control. Fortunately, my doctor thought to check my abdomen and we found that my gall bladder was shot. And I had the precursors to ulcers.

And my spinal canal problems had shockingly deteriorated in the three years between MRIs. And the problems of trigeminal neuralgia and the vertigo from the shingles? They never went away.

We fixed the gall bladder and I made changes for other digestive situations through that autumn and up until Two weeks before Christmas. I was in PT to go through my second round of training new nerves to move my right leg, to learn how to walk. This set of nerves really doesn't like it all that much, but it works enough.

And I realized that my sister had done nothing for Christmas. Just as I had when my dad was dying, I took over to make our traditions happen. And after Christmas my sister fell apart and was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Okay, Your path is winding,
but where the bleep are you going here?

Why am I saying all this? I never was able to work regularly again. Sporadically, yes, but I had to put myself on medical then  the kind of leave where you take care of a dying parent. My sister died on August 31, 2006. My son moved into her part of the house the following year. It took me nine months to clean up the mess. It was not her fault. Not even remotely. Her cancer had infected her brain and we'll leave that story for another time.

I had some more work from Stanford, some isolated illustrations, but I had a lot to look after and had to recover from the roller coaster that began with shingles. And I had had no time to truly understand the problem in my spine.  I have bits of calcified scar tissue and disk fragments floating in the spinal canal. They move around and rest at horrible places. I had been in pain for decades, but nothing like this. And various parts of me will suddenly not function properly. I also got bitten IN THE HAND--left--by a dog and have some minor residual damage in that hand. And I have the pain in my face that can be set off even today by a backfiring car, the microwave, occasionally the phone. I had to figure out what to do.

Why the detail? I think it's to eliminate the notion that there is anything medical left to consider, to make it plain that what is happening  now is the best that things physically will be. I must accept it, then find my ways around it.

You all know I created the studio. And I had planned out my wonderful art workshops, but the neighborhood blew that. THEN, miracle of miracles, Stanford called. They NEEDED me. Well, of COURSE I could do that. And I dove in, feeling I had been rescued. it was my lifeline, I thought.

In the past three weeks, I had to face the painful, terrifying truth that I cannot do this any more. That alarm clock? I really should not work at the computer for more than 25 minutes at a time now. Sitting or standing, it's the same from my back's point of view. I can stand for about a minute before the throbbing and swelling set in. If I have support I can go further and longer. When I walk on a hard surface, after about 100 steps, the foot begins to flop and I walke around swinging the leg, saying, "ARRR, maties." One day when I was "running" into Walgreen's to grab a few things, the leg didn't work and I realized I was singing, OUTLOUD from a sixties series, "They call her FLipper, Flipper, slower than honey..."

Yeah. Well. I think in television theme  and seventies hippie songs, and that's life. Deal.

It never occurred to me that more than my legs were affected. But I found that pain set up a neurological haze through which I just could not focus for long... not and access the right brain. I found that because that alarm clock of pain for sitting was so compromised, I spent too much time resting, then had to catch  up. I forced myself to focus those forty-five minutes at a clip and for the first three or four pieces, I was great. And I still had a talent for interviewing. People relax and, after about twenty minutes, the really cool stuff happens. They get off the PR line, their set ways of presenting themselves. But the toll was building. I try not to take my medication when I need to write, because there IS that half hour window when I am a touch loopy. It is best to be lying down, and to let it do what it is supposed to. After that, though I'm fine and I paint, I often do my best poetry and right brain work.

But for the work that has supported me, I found I could not organize the thoughts well. It took me a long time to get back INTO where I was going. And the pain was building. And suddenly, because of blasting and work that made my house literally vibrate, the calcified fragments moved. One day my right hand got tingly and went numb. I had trouble moving my two last fingers... Now, mind you, because of the dog bite on my left  hand, every ten minutes or so, I will suddenly raise my left arm and shake my hand. The last three fingers get super tingly and when I do that, and flex them and such for no more than thirty seconds, then they are fine again... for ten minutes.

But it didn't work on my right hand. And the pain...

The fragments shifted again and now my arm is okay, but it took nine days for it to return to normal. The horrifying truth was that I no longer could be relied on to meet my deadlines. The problems in my spine are too unpredictable. the pain is too severe. I had to let go, yet again, of something that might have supported me.

There are no solutions for my back. I have beaten all the odds the doctors know. As the last one said, "I think you know your body better than any of us. You are a walking miracle and if any surgeon tells you he or she can fix this? RUN, limp, or CRAWL out. Don't let anyone open up that spine again, unless it is life and death. I am serious."

What Now?
Haven't a Clue, Except I Have to Write

That's why I haven't written. For a few days I couldn't. Then I just did not know how to deal with it. I don't know how to, still. It is all too raw.

Why tell you all? Why not? If my blog is about writing from the heart, writing the truths of my life, well, why not do it? I haven't the objectivity to edit this all, yet, but so what? For once, right here, as I am today, I can share all of it with you. There is no shame, no guilt to this. There's nothing that I have to worry about saying because it is  public.

Sometimes simply writing it down makes it real. To move into full-blown hope, first we have to understand our reality. I process all things by writing. This time I am experimenting by doing that with all of you. This time I am trying to fold it into what I already do.

I hope you will all hang with me on this blog.  I still want to paint, to tutor and to write my memoir. A lot that has happened in my life has made me strong, has given me hope, has made me know that life is something onto which you grab and really hang on. It is a wild, roller coaster ride through a jungle, into space, under the sea, and around again. I wouldn't miss a moment.

Only just now? It sucks. There. How eloquent. How refined. It does. I need to find a way to support myself, but I also want to write my story. My mom's story. A story about a family that was big and loud and completely dysfuntional and overflowing with equally boisterous unconditional love, joy and magic. THAT is my life's work and I need to find a way to do it. My parents' story, our family seen through the eyes of Jetty. Jetty was my family's nickname for me, the baby.

I am all who is left.

The Blog, for ME
This blog is my way to bridge my life between the struggle and the dream.  I usually try not to write about my crises while I am in them, but I could wait a long time before this one's done. And, while you will not see me writing much about this again, I can write about other things. I have perspective on my family, on my history in childhood. And I have not lost my love of... pluots? And all things visceral, messy, juicy, and joyous.

But I hurt. I hurt a lot. And I am afraid. Why wouldn't I be? To deny that it is scary to be without work, without new funds, to be facing possibly losing this home I love? Yeah. That's big stuff. I finally have a studio and may lose it within six months. Yet I have to focus elsewhere. I need to believe that the writer and the painter and the woman who loves life and all it brings will find answers.

But I will tenaciously cling to the hope that I can write my way out of the rest. Love my way. Paint my way. Tutor my way. ALL of them

Okay. this long ramble is done.

And I'll be running around looking at and commenting on your blogs soon. Bless you all for giving me your support, your concern. It means more than I know how to say.  We are strangers to one another, yet we all speak through words or pictures or both, to one another in intimate, profound ways.

In the meantime I will do my version of prayer. I will still the cacophony in my head and I will breathe. I will ask only for the calm, and for the wide open heart, ears, and eyes to feel, hear, and/or see solutions as they are offered to me.

And I will see whether or not this first for me, helps... It's standing  on the edges of things and opening my arms wide and trusting that I will not fall. Simply trusting.

Small PS

One of my closest friends told me I should simply write from my heart and offer it here. He said that I just don't know what good will come of it. He is prejudiced, of course, but just because he loves me does not mean he is WRONG! Thank you. Already, just putting it out there, helps. You were right.