Everything Is Good ... Gone for GOOD reasons this time

Sometimes timing is freaky. I sat down to write this and there was a message from one of my followers. Timing is all. Anyway, I will be online next weekend with studies from the three, yes, count 'em, THREE paintings I am working on. I have been singing a lot. I am not sure that I have mentioned that I sing. In fact, the group of women with whom I sing every Thursday night formed a smaller group that practices before the larger circle. We performed together at a coffee house just over a week ago.

I will be honest. I was hesitant about joining the singing circle. The first two times I went, I was uncomfortable with the GoddessEarthSpiritIsOurMotherLoveUnitesUsIntheInfinite sort of thing. Until one night we all broke into harmonies, and a sound unlike any I've been a part of flew around the room, catching my heart and making me tear up.

We could be singing Blah, blah, blah, for all I care. It's the sound that gets to me. And somewhere along the line I became a clear soprano. I've never been one before. I could sing soprano, but it was never easy. So I can BELT out an alto rock song as well as I could when I was twenty, and that sure is fun. (I sang "White Rabbit" extemporaneously, before the thing started.) But now I can harmonize with a clear, sweet soprano voice that comes from someone else in my body. No. Really. Must be. Can't be me.

And I am leaving for Littleton, NH on Tuesday, to scatter the last of my sister's ashes in the Connecticut River Source Lakes. One of them. We'll decide that on Wednesday. It's long overdue, but I could not have traveled so far until now. Her best friend--my other big sister, to me--and I will go and come back home on Thursday.

ALL three paintings were inspired from my hospital story. It will take a very long time to finish two of them. One is nearly done. As I said, I will put some studies of them in here, so you can see what I have been up to.  Whether or not I will publish the last hospital story remains to be decided. Not for a bit, I don't think. My soul's flitted off to different things for now. I tend to listen to that voice.

AND, I've been using my exercise bike three-four days a week for about an hour each time. This requires a two hour recovery, but it is finally helping me start to lose the sixty pounds I have that I should lose. I've lost ten... in six weeks, which is slow. Still, slow is okay. I am not out to win a beauty contest. My goals are clear: to get as healthy as I can get and to keep walking. Period.

There was one week that was brutal, but it was only one out of the last five or six weeks. I was terrified, truly, because both feet were numb for three full days. I could not drive. Walking was odd, to say the least. I could feel the impact of each step when I was barefoot, but not as the sensation of the skin, more as the impact of two solid surfaces. It took a full week for the pain to subside, the swelling to go down, for the feeling to fully return. Didn't want to write about it. Didn't want to talk about it. I simply wanted it to go away. Which it did.

I am struggling a bit with the decision of whether to stay only one more year in my wonderful home, or give myself two years. Money, of course, is the issue. I have limited assets and they will be depleted by half if I stay two more years. I am eligible for enormous subsidy by going into a small elderly or assisted housing place. I don't want to go. And I don't know whether that's a spoiled brat talking, or whether it's a legitimate voice. I have room to paint here. I would not, elsewhere. The wait list is about a year, so I may do it, just in case. I want to stay in my new home. Paint. Have company. Feel this alive.

That's the thing; I am alive in every fiber of my being at last. I have not been like this for weeks in a row ... not for three years now. And even three years ago, it was short-lived. Since Jean Ellen died, I have been partly numb and asleep inside. I was awakened when one man returned. He brought out the Jetty in me again... I have to admit that about him whether or not I want to! He did. I almost lost her again when I lost my health, my career, and my home all at once, but nope. She kept yelling at me to let her come out and play.

And one day last week it occurred to me. He was the one who had said, "I wish you could wake up every day and Jetty could tell you what she needs: to rest, to sing, to write, or to paint ... or all three, without your having to worry about money, without your having to panic." I turned that into MY words as soon as he was gone. And I resented him because HE was going to rescue me.

Blecchhh.... pity pity pity. Since when have I thought I needed rescuing? Ugh.

Well, last week I realized I WAS asking myself that question every day and had been for a month! Only in his words, with the addition of "to focus on getting stronger, to dance" in there. And I am trying to put the money stuff OUT of the picture again for at LEAST six months. But I do ask myself that question. And the answer lately has been all combinations of focusing on getting well, dancing, singing, and painting! AND, without the OR!

Sometimes one steps away from the computer to fill the well. That's all. It is always temporary. I cannot imagine my life now without writing, including my blog, even if only fifteen of you eighty-eight are willing to hang in there with me.

So I will take pictures of my paintings, tell you their stories, and ramble on and on next weekend. Thanks for thinking of me there, all of you. Life is a miracle to me. Truly. How can it not? A couple of nights a week, I turn out all the lights, I put on my gypsy skirt and a tank top and I dance to music from the nineties, the music I danced my way to freedom after my husband ran out of my life. Peter Gabriel's "Us" and Bruce Hornsby's CD with "Fields of Gray" on it. Not all my FAVORITE music, but selections that I cannot stay still for. And they remind my of those years in my forties when I was slim and strong, but in pain and trying to find my solitary strength and joy. No one can see me, including me. All I know is the music, the dark and absolute abandon, while I set the girl free.

See ya!

Pneumonia and the Safest Place

Betweet 2000 and the end of 2001, my friend who is like a sister to me, and who had two very small children, was struck with kidney failure several times and fought to keep her life. I lived half the time at my house and half at hers. My sister and I had decided to hang onto our home in case G died, which she nearly did six times in a year and a half. We knew we might be raising two children because, by his own admission, C was no kind of a father to raise kids alone. Then my minister, a friend who had helped me through my husband's desertion and daughter's death, whose wife was a dear friend, hanged himself. And my brother was diagnosed with terminal liver disease one month before his older son hanged himself. Then Jack died. Then my voice teacher and choir director and friend of ten years died.

It was not a good eighteen months.

And at the end of that time (G is STILL with us), my women had an inkling that I would fail if I did not get the hell out of Dodge for a bit. So Nancy, who was going to take a professional photography course in Santa Fe, consulted with my sister about sending me with her. They colluded, this bunch. And for Christmas of 2001, I had a ticket to Santa Fe and a hotel to stay in and ten days to call my own!

Perfect. And it was. Only on the plane ride home, I contracted an odd strain of bacterial pneumonia. Four days after I was home, my fever spiked and I was terribly, terribly ill. I saw the doctor and he gave me two choices. "The hospital today, or you do absolutely NOTHING for the next three days, let other people take care of you, do your breathing treatments religiously and find some way to keep your breathing deep and even. I will see you then, and if you are better, you may continue that way. 2/10ths of a degree higher temperature, you are in the hospital. And do NOT lie down to sleep at night."

Painting My Way Home
I painted. I remembered, in my counseling, yes, I DID do visualizing when the flashbacks started to come. I learned to keep them from coming by a strong, strong visualization of the safest, most serene spot I could imagine. I had two. One was at Sandy Hook, New Jersey. I gave that painting away. The other, my fifth painting ever, is this. I am sorry about the reflection. I gave it to my sister when she was having a particularly rough time two years later. I worked on this every day, played Handel's Watermusik in the background and focused on breathing. It is just watercolor. I surrounded myself with New Hampshire pictures. Water. Granite. Pine. Mountains. The Flume. The Basin. Roadside rushing water. The Lake. You name it. At the other end of the room I did the same with pictures from my Runaways to Red Bank. Nothing but Sandy Hook, West Long Branch, the ocean, rocks. sand. I would move back and forth between paintings, then the couch, paintings, the couch, for about eight or ten hours. I had a gallon of ice water there as well, and a cooler with more ice.

By Still Waters, Peace

From this painting everything else has sprung. I am a woman of granite and water. Mad rushing water has smoothed my edges. Pools of calm reflect the colors of ages. I am a woman of pine and birch, of seasons and extremes, of dark and light. (Well, and I'm just plain nuts to boot, lest you think I've gone all mythical mystic goddess on you.) Northern writers have just as many layers as the southern writers do. It took me until I was about forty-five to know that for sure.

I guess I'm blogging more than I thought I would. Oh, well. Here is the mother painting for me. Again, apologies for the reflection's muted color and lines, but perhaps you can get the feel of it. Oh. I finished both in nine days. On the tenth I rested! No hospital. I was very close to well.

And whenever I look at this painting I seem to automatically breathe more deeply, and I disappear there to rest.

An Old Memory, An Old Blog, Another Painting...

 Not only did I complete a sketch with a gameplan of how to render it with my preferred artist media of watercolor, tissue paper, lace paper, and pen; I also worked on the painting I began in...

 "Excerpt from "Finally-translating-inspiration-into a Painting"

The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting -- the one I began on my retreat --upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.


So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.


And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.


And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.


When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at,  by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.


"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.


I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.

 This first gives a close up so you can see how it is I layered the water. There are about four kinds of paper in the collaged water, each torn strip had been previously painted, then new layers of blue washes were applied. A hint of white caps is done in white acrylic. The leaves were done with three layers of craft weight tissue paper, pre-painted in various shades of yellow and flame, each painted separately, glued together, then glued to the painting. Details were then painted so that I could make them as realistic as possible.

I have done it this way to replicate my little girl wonder at the water and the enormous leaves, as I would position myself so that I saw absolutely no land.

The second gives the beginning of how the whole will look--I've not yet done the single white pine bough that intruded on all views from the left. That bough nearly kissed the window in my mind, but perhaps you can get a little of the feel of the water. The way I work, this painting is perhaps a little over halfway completed. Regardless of when it's completed, this is directly from, as Bruce Coltin so precisely described it, a conversation with one of my ghosts!

The leaf will go off the frame, as will the water.  The whole painting is taped to a board, so I won't get the full effect of a white matte until it is finished. I do want this painting matted white, because the screen frame was bright white. At least that is how I remember it vividly, and how I felt. The leaves are actual size of the largest maple leaves.

This is the first painting where I've finally been able to get a digital image that shows the layer upon layer upon layer that goes into  much of the work.  The mountains in the painting that is my permanent banner reflect approximately twenty layers of paper, all in different variations of white, some toward the top with the irridescent pearl white, some with tinted white washes. I get lost in some odd zone when I am layering papers. It is a free sort of activity, painting sheets of paper, tearing into approximate shapes, gluing with intentional folds, painting again. Most of the time it is almost entirely right brain, with the sporadic left brain--fold this one here. No. Re-angle that one before it dries. Take that one off and put it there. Almost rhythmic.

Okay, so I lied. I cam back already. Today is the day I have a meeting--spiritual stuff--at 3, dinner with the wackos I love at 5, song circle at 7. Painting or doing a lot of sitting activity is not possible if I want to have fun this evening. How I missed singing for five years--it feels like a miracle to have found a group where it does not set off the trigeminal nerve. Where the sound is about hushed harmonies!

That's all for now, though! I do love it when people yell at me to shut up and run with it. More than one person has told me to stop thinking so hard and simply paint, sing, or write as the mood hits. I'm not a good listener...

Thanks.

Memory, Memoir and ... Just a Bunch of Rambling

I realize I've gone longer than I want to without posting. Why? I have been working on a new post and I want to cut some of it, and I have needed to let it percolate a bit.

On the other hand, I always find it interesting reading about the process of writers or artists of any medium. I include the "practical" arts, making little distinction among artisans, artists, writers, what have you. I mean there are cooks/chefs who are artists in my book. ANY time engaging in the creative process is a  large and important part of a person's life, I feel artist is good generic word. I so often see that the process is very much the same. We are inspired to create and we start to act on that inspiration. Sometimes we get all tangled up and must start again. Or we must "edit" our finished product, or it can change along the way. Potters, quilters, cooks who stray from recipes, writers, painters, photographers, metalworkers, sculptors--you name it. I call it art.

I learn from the process as described by others.  I feel less alone. And I feel supported just by reading how other people wind up changing their focus smack in the middle of a project!

But, all this remembering is sure getting in the way of this memoir-writing stuff! It's a total pain in the hoo-hah, I can tell you.

As I started to look at my 300 pages (no exaggeration there) of memoir material and began to choose material where my mother and our relationship were more of a focus, well, then my dad leaped out and said, "GAWDAMMIT! I have something to say." He will not brook SHUT UP from anyone--it was true in life and quite clearly is true from the Great Beyond.

The Demon Was a Boy... Darn it all
And now? Much to my confusion and sometimes distress, the humanity of brother Jim is leaping into my brain. This is hard, yet necessary. It is not so much that I blocked those memories, but for years I had to focus on what I had blocked and simply put them aside.  Now HE won't shut up, either.

The theme broadens then, and I wonder what I want to say and I wonder whether my story will have meaning beyond an interesting read. I find it presumptuous to begin a project and feel that MY handling of life would be any kind of inspiration to follow. Yet what I still find miraculous is the mind that tucks so many wondrous memories in with the horrors, when I blocked out the pain so long ago. It's as if I wrapped the pain up in a whole lot of packing paper, but tucked prisms in there along with each horrific memory. And as I try to figure out where to put the one who was most monstrous, damn it all... turns out that, yes, he was just a baby once upon a time. And a small boy. And a ten-year-old who practically carried his little sister home one day, so she would not burn her bare foot on hot tar. And a teenager capable of showing me true tenderness.

And then, where two of the men start yelling, the third's not far behind.

Jack starts yelling at me, too. "Yo! Jetty. What about when we went to the lake with Feej and sang on the dock. And how I wouldn't let you go in the back room at The Depot when someone was singing up front. And what about when I thought I'd be a minister and you would not hang out the clothes ... and..." Yeah. Right. WhatEVER. So Jack had his dark side even when we were kids.

I look at all the stories, and, believe it or not, I have not told them all in here! I look at them and over and over what I see is a collection of people whose personalities themselves were rain forests of wondrous light and terrifying darkness.

I was the heroine of light, right? Not so much. Inconveniently, I remember my darkness as well.

And Our Heroine Had Her Demons, too  ... No Surprise, I'm Sure
When I was twelve, I was asked to baby sit for a teacher's little girl who was four. When I was there, I kept having images of pushing her down the stairs, of pushing her off a swing, of things that terrified me. I did not do anything to hurt her, but I told Mrs. Richardson that I felt I was too young to care for her little girl. She thanked me for my honesty. I cried through most of that night, believing I must be some sort of demon straight out of hell.  I refused to EVER baby sit through my teens. By my twenties, however, no such visions came to me in the presence of small children.

The lesson was there, though. And I had many demons of my own, biting at my heels. I was hell-bent to self-destruct off and on until at last I sought professional help. And I'm thinking that I cannot leave it out or the book will not state the truth. Truth, as opposed to the facts. Honesty without hiding, without leaving out what is not pretty about me, not just them. (I hate that. It is just so much nicer to stay aloof, to imply that I was pure. But that's also boring, so what the hell.)

So what is the thing I want to say? And do I need to know before I put it all together? The "books" say I should. The "experts" say I should be able to state my theme in a sentence or two--clearly, concisely.

And So It Goes...
And I say, probably I have to simply ramble and THEN see what route I wound up taking. AFTER that, the editing with a HATCHET will be needed.

Unless, of course, I change my mind!

There is something about the men in the house. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--those tee-shirts from Jim's girlfriend at the time. The women did not tend to speak up without risking the sarcasm of the Holy Ones. My mother took the brunt of the derision, and that is part of her pain, as well. My sister absented herself from most of the competitive bile from "the boys." She was judged by them, regardless.

I leaped in with both feet, mouth a-blaze, and held my own when I could. I learned to slice people to ribbons at an early age. It saved my skin in junior high, when I was so often the target at school.

Daddy said I came "out the chute going 'Oh, YEAH?' and never looked back." Interesting metaphor... Nevertheless he is right. And I have been struggling for a week with the new stuff that keeps gushing from deep inside, like a geyser from the middle of the sea.  And I am not sure but that this is the thing about it all.  My story reads like a novel. A sweeping southern saga with layer upon layer upon layer.

My mom told me I could NOT be a southern writer, which made me very angry. I was drawn to them. They could tell the scariest, most painful stories without ever losing the beauty of it all.

So I'll just dive in and see where it goes, for all my trying to find focus. I will allow the Carson McCullers and Harper Lee inside run wild.  Maybe there are two books in one. I have no clue. But you are all along for the ride, so ...

Now I will delete the old draft, because I've covered it all here! Undoubtedly, you'll read some of the story in here, but I know I have to keep some of it for the book now, not the blog. So I'll write about other things.

PS
I'm not looking for words of support or comfort. It isn't that. However,  if you all have some story of your process--preferably the part that makes you NUTS, that would be great! And by the way, long comments are ALWAYS welcome. And it can be all about you. That's fine with me. I learn from comments-- A LOT sometimes.

Running too Fast and Forgetting to Breathe

I have been using this month to begin the process of developing some structure for myself.  While I was a pretty disciplined and successful copy writer for more than a decade, I had a few regular clients and I knew their needs and schedules.  My back had its own schedule and I knew it by heart, by feel, to my core.  Everything fell apart three years ago.

Now, as I start my new life with new parameters, new brick walls to avoid, and free of anyone's deadlines but my own, well, I find myself a little unnerved. I have been reading some books on the new publishing world--on my Kindle, of course, which is only fitting. It would seem I must develop a platform; yes, I knew this already but I didn't know it, if you get my drift.  This home blog of mine, this testing ground, this home base for some internet relationships that matter to me ... well, it won't cut it for a platform. Again, I know this in my mind, but it is unlikely I will abandon it. It serves a deeper purpose for me.

I just read an article in this month's Poet & Writers' Magazine about the Internet and how it can interfere with a writer's creativity. I could cite it more carefully, but what I read was more of a jumping off point that is combined with the three books I've read in the last two weeks about marketing a book in today's world.  The message is clear in all of them; I must build a platform long before the book is even written. I must join networks of people who share my interests, who are likely readers of a memoir I would write.  I must write SHORT.

Oh. My. God. Help me.
I have to re-enter the world of Twitter. I do not LIKE Twitter. This does not mean I don't appreciate its uses; it means simply that I hate Internet/text/chat speak. So much room for misunderstanding, for lazy communication. On the other hand, I know that I am often lazy in my meandering trips to nowhere on my blog. I am lucky that some of you enjoy the ride without particularly worrying about the side trips and the fact that there may not be a particular goal. But I have to start finding things to write about on a regular basis, things I can put into 500 words, or perhaps 750.

I have to tweet, post status updates, comment, write, connect. CONNECT. CONNECT.

And I have a wonderful compendium now of ways to do this, most of which I kind of understand, despite my protests to the contrary. I just don't know which of them will help my actual writing. Which will contribute to the act of getting the thing done? My blog right here does that. Reading the blogs I do help my writing. So I know I must keep this going and I have to incorporate reading YOUR words, thinking about them and commenting on them.

I have seen some of you do a fantastic job of building substantial followings and, when I think about it, I realize how you do it. Part of it is your frequency and the variety of your work. Or the fact that you connect with people who do what you do. Linda Lou is a marvel to me! And I watched Donna take off. I read blogs which have thousands of followers and I wonder how you all can write so often and so well, about so much. (Naturally, in this frame of mind, I see only my shortcomings. This ain't about logical thinking today!)

But my goal was never about how many followers I have had. My goal was to have followers who wanted to come back, even though I am sporadic here. My goal was to find my own voice and to use it; to learn how to write what is painful or horrific, without making people want to run away screaming into the night. It's cool to see the number grow, when I publish every week, when I explore new blogs and comment. But that's not the object for me.

The article I just read talked about how the social networking can also divert us from the very thing we started networking FOR! To create a welcoming platform for the book we want to write, or have begun to write. It talked about how we have to walk AWAY from all the networking and unplug ourselves in order to produce, to give our creativity time to percolate.

Well, then I hit my brick wall this week and got the shakes and put myself into a dither.

Visions of Hell
This is a talent I have; perhaps it is an artform for me. I'm not sure.

I have about four upright hours in every day. Occasionally I have as many as six, as long as they are spread out with many long breaks. By upright I mean sitting UP. I have to lie down a lot, and I DO mean lie down. I can one day perhaps get one of the Dragonspeak programs and do more. But for now it hit me that I have a great deal of work I must do online to lay the groundwork for being able to publish this book I am also working. And I have FIVE paintings in the works. Suddenly, it all became overwhelming to me.

How do I give time to it all, every day, and still have a life with the people I love, and do my laundry, and my grocery shopping, and, well, leave my apartment? Not to mention go to the gym nearby for about four hours a week so that I can KEEP WALKING?

I began to sob, not just cry. I threw an all out hissy fit. I got scared. I am sixty years old in June and I have only JUST adjusted to this new and frail body I do not like, to the point where I can consider starting the program to perhaps make it stronger and maybe add another half hour or hour to the productivity.

And then I began to laugh. How come AlAnon still helps me? ONE STEP AT A TIME. One DAY. One Hour. I let it all gang up in my mind. I must do all things on every day.  I must build a network of thousands by next Tuesday? And I must start my hour and a quarter workouts THIS week THREE days a week immediately.  And I must twitter, begin a new blog, write on this blog, read ALL the blogs I've missed, develop a webpage, compile a list of existing contacts, AND read the three memoirs waiting for me--in the coming week.

There is no time. I must also complete at least twelve paintings by 2013.

In four hours a day.

Or I am a failure.

It's good to be a grown up...

Step Back and Breathe
My brothers and sisters all called me in the same twenty-four hour period after one of my mom's most infamous binges after my dad died. I had almost the same conversation with each.
Sibling: Mother is drinking. Did you know she drank like this?
Me: No shit. [sorry. In this case, the word fit. I'd been screaming about it for twenty years.] I've told you she was an alcoholic for years.
Sibling: Well. Yes, but I never knew it was this bad.
Me: silence .... then, What's your point?
Sibling: What are you going to do about it?
Me: Get the hell to AlAnon.

I went to my first meeting that Wednesday and got me an ODAT book (One Day At A Time). I sat at that meeting and listened, then went home and read all 365 days that very night. Like so many before me, I figured if I did it all at once, I'd be cured real fast. They reminded me to slow down.

And so it has been as I've been doing my research, as I have been allowing myself to actually take my dreams seriously and lay the groundwork.

Mommy, I am telling them what we had. Honestly, I am. And I am shining as hard as I can for you.

But I sure do wish you were here the way you were when I'd run so fast I'd fall; to lightly tip my chin up toward your face and say, "Jetty, Jetty. Breathe. Life is not a race. Sweetie, catch your breath and try moving one foot at a time so you don't get all tangled up and keep falling down. You'll get there in your own time." And then kiss me on my nose.

I guess maybe I'll just breathe. And write. And get there in my own time now, one word at a time, so I don't get myself all tangled up and fall down.

OOOOHHHHHHHMMMMMM.... Oh. Wait. I'm not supposed to be saying that with clenched fists, huh.

Here's to those baby steps I was writing about!

The Existence of elves, Revisited (July, 2009)

My family life was pretty much about living in a rain forest: lush or rotting, with little in between. I've said that on many occasions. Lately, I've been writing about the hard stuff, and I know that both Robin Hood, from yesterday, and When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer from a couple of weeks ago are two such entries. I have been given so much support for them, that it has renewed the impetus as I move forward with my book.

However, I wanted to revisit an early entry here. I had a whole lot of magic in my early life, and when I started writing the blog I began with some of them. I had almost no followers. Not that it's a crowd now, but quantity hasn't been my goal. I simply wanted to work on my writing--the craft, the art, and the notion that one can convey pain without graphically sticking to horrifying detail!  However, more people have decided to stay and perhaps you might be getting a skewed view of what my childhood was!

One commenter felt he could not live my life with all I have gone through.  I put this little piece in here once more, for those who have never read it, to remind you that I LOVE my mom. And that Jack and I had some magical times. That our world held every single color imaginable, and, yes, to lighten up.

NOTE: I have scattered a few Garth Williams illustrations because THIS is the image of elves I had as a child, from the book Elves and Fairies.  I just thought it might evoke memories for boomers, and give others a feel for the fifties, when my memories were the living events.  At one time I asked my mom whether I could grow up to be Garth Williams and she told me that I would have to work on growing up to be Jetty.  I sulked for easily a whole fifteen minutes.

Enough intro  ... Onward... From July, 2009--moved to today

... [There] were moments of pure joy and absolute beauty in my childhood. In fact, they took up more time and space, and as I explore this art form of memoir in my blog, I think I would rather start here. I would rather begin with the magic that was my mom, Jean Margaret. We'll leave the darkness for other times...
***

Me, around 2
in ecstasy over a feather

Flying Lessons: Proof of the Existence of Elves

Spirituality is a strange thing in the heart of a child. It has wings sometimes; it flies up from the leaves, the grass, through water, from everywhere at once. More than half a century later, I feel it and taste it, hear the echoes of that day. Grown ups call what children feel so deeply “magic,” then try to teach them it’s God. They don’t seem to ever get it; children need no teaching. We know it is all the same, whatever name we give It. The Keeper of all Magic is God.

On the other hand, when I was not yet four and my brother was already six, for us, the Keeper of the Magic was Mommy.

Especially on sunny mornings, when the light threw rainbows all over the kitchen, and she'd wipe her hands on her apron, not even finishing the breakfast dishes, turn to us and whisper, "picnic!" Out would come the hard-boiled eggs ever-ready in the fridge, for deviling. Jacky would make the chocolate milk. I would rinse the grapes. Before you knew it, Jack's enormous red wagon appeared, the thermos was full, picnic packed, and we were gone.

This particular day, Mommy had said to me, "Always remember, Jetty, there is always something more compelling in life than housework."

***

We always stopped on the dirt road beside the hole in the bridge. She’d let us look down at the water rushing miles below. It was on our picnic that particular day that we learned about elves.

“Lie on your backs and don’t make a sound,” said Mommy, doing this herself. “Just look at the clouds and listen.”

At first I didn’t hear much, but gradually I heard it. Soft rustlings, small feet, rushing sounds that had no familiarity.

“Now look at where you hear the sounds,” she said. “You can’t see anything, can you, except a few ants. They are much too small to make such sounds.”

We were stumped. We waited, looking at our mother with full confidence that some new axiom was about to be shared.

“Elves,” she said. “Well, and fairies, too, but primarily elves because fairies tend to fly. It’s the only explanation. They are invisible to us, but they make sounds. What else could it be? If it were birds or animals, we’d have seen them. We have them all around here.” She waved her arms, encompassing the whole woods, it seemed. “And we have them outside the kitchen window, too. Jean Ellen saw them yesterday. We decided you two should know about it, because we want you to help us make them some furniture.”

“In the window box, Mom?” asked Jacky.

“Precisely.”

We sat up and opened our sandwich cookies in solemn wonder. Elves. At our house. First a picnic, now this. Lunchtime drifted lazily into early afternoon, as we named cloud shapes, studied three ants trying to move one large crumb to their home. Mommy wouldn’t let us squash it.

“Only in the house. Outside, this is their spot and we’re guests.”

And so it came to pass that Daddy came home for dinner to find four of his family painting folded paper furniture, and stringing twig bows for a family of window box-elves with whom he wasn’t even formally acquainted. My older brother Jim was watching T.V. He was nine and too old for this “junk.” Jean Ellen was twelve and it didn’t phase her in the least. It was all right, though, because Jim wasn’t much into anything Jacky and I cared about.

Daddy said, “Elves. I see. I’ll go read the paper for a while.” He didn’t even grump about dinner. Just got a beer from the fridge and wandered, chuckling, into the living room. We put the furniture and three bows into the window box and tried not to look for signs of life more than ten times before bed.

I was in the kitchen by 6:00 the next morning, when Mom was putting the water on for hers and Daddy’s tea. I dragged a chair to the window, knocking into washing machine and the mop bucket.

“Hold your horses, Jetty, just hold your horses,” Daddy’s voice was his laughing voice as his hands lifted me onto the chair.

The furniture had been moved and the bows were gone.

“Jacky!” I shrieked. Fortunately, he was on his way down the stairs.

A small, bumpy blue bag was on the edge of the box by the house, in the left corner, the spot most accessible from the kitchen. I let Jacky pick it up and he let me unfold the small note inside, as he emptied out a small mound of marbles of every description. In the tiniest printing that ever was, Daddy read, 'Thank you for the furniture. It’s very comfortable. And the bows work great. Yours truly, the window box elves.'

Later that summer, when I was four, Mommy said we were moving to a new house in someplace called Manchester a whole twenty minutes away. I started crying because there would be no elves.

The very first thing she did, when she got me out of the car at the new house, was take me to our side yard. There was a tree with twisty branches and giant leaves, as big as plates.

“This is a catalpa tree, Jetty. I prefer to call it an elf’s tree.”

I looked hard at the tree, expecting to see a tiny pair of eyes look back.

“Elves use these leaves for clothing, for their bows and arrows, to make their homes, and they use the catalpa beans for food and the pods for boats. It’s the perfect tree for them. Just last week, I believe your father saw an elf or two right on our back porch. Next week, we’ll have to make some gifts as a sort of housewarming, okay?”

Years later, I found her talking to my soon-to-be stepdaughter at the picnic table beneath that tree. All I heard were the words “What else could those sounds be? Catalpa trees are elf trees, actually…” and I went back into the house. Jessie started calling my mother grandma that very day.

***

That was one type of punctuation to bracket regular life. Most days we told her we were bored and had nothing to do, to which she would absently pat our heads, kiss us, and say, “That’s too bad. I’m not.” And she’d leave us to find something to do, not knowing how to be mad at her exactly. She yelled at us when we were bad, shooed us when she was busy, was impatient more than was probably right at times. She was the rule-maker and the sun at the center of our lives, like most Moms. She also held a terrible darkness that could block out the brightest day.

Most of our days, though, as small children, were the stuff of everyone’s childhood in the 1950s and early 60s. The difference was the magic of a Mom who would drop everything to give us pure joy, to find the adventure in an ordinary moment. We had elves. We had rainbows. And we had lazy, deviled-egg picnics that supplanted housework on the priority list for living.

This morning I saw a dust rhino gallop across the living room floor. I thought I'd best vacuum. The sun hit the prism in my window and I went out into the garden instead. I am not sure, but I may have seen an elf leap off the six foot tall lily by my front door.

Small Addendum

How many people got a mom like that? Or ever really KNEW about elves and fairies? Or knew there was something more important, more compelling than housework. Like blogging, for instance?  I miss my mom. On the other hand, I DID teach Claire and Adam all about Santa Claus and how I knew about him through my dad. Yes, and of course, they did not have an elf TREE, but they had a birdhouse with a magic garden around it, and ultimately the elves found that... There is no garden or catalpa tree. I guess next spring, I'll have to make an elf planter because I am really  not sure I want to live somewhere they cannot be, you know?

When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer

Last week I unpacked a box that had my very first short story, written when I was in sixth grade. My mother had kept it. She didn't keep everything each of the four of us did; she kept the things that stood out.  "Rita" was the name of the story, and there was a picture of a dark-skinned girl with long dark braids and clothes that were too big for her. When I read it, a memory flooded back with such pain, that I had to stop.

Then I marveled at what I had done, and I remember that this was the year I thought I would be a writer. My first poem was there, too.

Loneliness
The old man walked out of his shack.
Surveying land and sky
He smiled.
A lone eagle circled into view,
Wheeling and soaring with joy.
It dove out of view.
The old man stood still for a moment.
Scanning the sky again,
He sighed.

And sighing again, he walked in.
(1964)


I remembered our teacher had assigned us to write as many different poems as we could in two weeks, and to include them in a booklet of poetry we liked. I thumbed through and found I had written seven more, but they were mostly an exercise in learning how to use a Thesaurus.  My teacher had written "Oh, my Jeannette. This is special" below that poem. And Mom had written "It is, honey" under that. She must have written that when she stored it away with my short story.

"Rita" was about two little girls in third grade. Our heroine, Annie, had befriended Rita when she entered school in November, wearing a thin skirt and blouse. She had no coat. Annie helped her when other kids laughed at her, worked with her on spelling and reading. Rita had trouble speaking English because she was from Mexico. Annie helped her all year, and gave her some of her own hand-me-down winter clothes because Rita's parents didn't have money. Rita moves away at the end of the story, and Annie says, "I always missed her after that. It was the one year where I wasn't lonely."

I had gotten an A+ for the story. No one ever asked me how I came up with such uncharacteristically somber stories, or questioned whether I was sad or anything.  But that story struck home, and to this day I remember vividly the true story... Susan Hoyt was the new girl. And it was, in fact third grade.

***
She stood in front of the whole class that November day, with Mrs. E telling us we all should feel sorry for Susan because she had foster parents whom she would talk to and set straight about sending her in with proper clothes.

"Now, Susan lift up your head and for Heaven's sake, get your hair out of your face." She got a barrette out of her desk and, not particularly gently,  fastened Susan's bangs out of her face. So now, Susan not only had on a very large puff sleeved blouse untucked, with a skirt that had slid to her hips, but she also had a wing of uneven hair sticking straight out of the left side of her head. The class giggled, but stopped with one look from Mrs. E.

I swear Mrs. E could have stopped a police car in the middle of a chase with that look.

"You know how it goes. I need a buddy to stay with Susan for lunch. Someone she can get along with. Jeannette, you seem a good match."  Mrs. E did not like me, and not many kids did, either. I didn't fit in anywhere, but mostly it was okay. Except when she had weighed me on a cattle scale with G.  We were so big, she said, it's what we should be weighed on. In front of the whole class.

That had backfired, though, because three girls thought that was so mean, they actually started hanging out with me again. They had in first and second grades, but in third grade, when I got kind of big, and mostly I didn't have clothes like them sometimes, they stayed away. But not now. Now they remembered I'd been their friend before, and they would play with me sometimes. The only girl who never deserted me was Paige and she and I played lots of times.

Still, sometimes at school--well, I knew what it was like a little bit for Susan. I didn't really mind being her buddy.  That was the beginning of a relationship that stayed with me the rest of my life. Susan was from Kentucky and her English was very odd. She hesitated when she spoke, and kind of hunkered down when she talked to adults, like dogs do when they are not used to people. I got assigned to work with her for spelling, for reading, and for arithmetic. I think it mostly got me out of Mrs. E's sight and she liked that.

I know she didn't like me because even though I got good grades she always wrote things like, "Jeannette just doesn't seem to play with the girls properly. She plays with the boys, playing kick ball instead of jump rope."  or "Jeannette must remember she cannot be the leader for everything. She must learn her place." Huh???

My mother didn't care for the comments and told me not to pay attention to them and just be myself. That was okay by me.

So Susan and I would work in the back of the room for the last hour or hour and a half of every day. It kind of made me mad sometimes because that was when we had art or music, so we missed it. After a few weeks, though, something changed and I decided that Susan and I were sisters at the soul.

My mom and Paige's mom had put together winter clothes for Susan and they FIT. Her foster parents, which my mom told me were parents that the government assigned for children who were alone, did not buy her anything it looked like. And along the way, five moms sent lunches in with their kids, for Susan, one for each day of school. Susan took to smiling sometimes and she was kind of pretty. I was jealous of her thinness, but one day she told me SHE wished she wasn't so thin. She never said more than a sentence at a time. It was too scary, I guess, but I wasn't sure why.

Until one day.

We were working on a story about a big brother being mean to his little sister and how he had to learn to be nice. After the usual struggle to learn the words, I had Susan read it aloud one more time and she did it perfectly. At the end it said, "And Timmy gave the puppy, his very favorite puppy, to Mary and said, 'Here, I think you should have this one,' and was never a bully to her again."

Susan started to laugh a little. I looked up at her quickly. "He wouln' do thet." And she gave a short, bitter laugh. I said, under my breath, "no kidding." We looked at each other straight in the eyes for the first time, sort of wide-eyed, like deer, and we both laughed until Mrs. E told us to shush.

And I began to pay attention to her more. Things were easier between us and we would joke once in a while, even.  Kids stopped picking on her. They ignored her, but, as I told her, "That's way better than when they notice we're different, you know? First they get used to you, and don't worry, eventually most of them get nicer."

About two weeks after that first story, we were deep into arithmetic. I was trying to show her the fast way to understand how to know the answer to her 9 + table, when the door opened with that nearly silent motion of air that said someone was sneaking in. Susan and I both jumped and turned to the door at the same time. Susan dumped her book on the floor.

Our principle said, "Girls. It's just me, for  Heaven's sake. I didn't want to disturb the class, but I guess it didn't work."

Everyone laughed but us. That's when I knew it. Neither of us liked that sound, the barest click as the latch button went into its part of the door, and that minute when the air enters just before trouble. Susan looked down and she was shaking.

I wasn't shaking on the outside and I just said, "no, Susan, it's safe here." She looked up at me and smiled and I smiled back, but I was sad. Sadder than when she'd stood in front of the class. Sadder than when the kids had teased her on the playground and Paige and I had brought her over with us to play our imaginary dinosaurs game, far away from the crowd. Sadder than when I realized she never had lunch.

When I went home that day and up to my room, I saw that the pull lock I'd put there had been taken off again. I sighed and went to see how Mom was. She was in her chair, half asleep, the glass of golden liquid on her side table. Dinner would be inedible again. "Is Daddy coming home?" I asked.

"No. He's away on business again." Right. That accounted for her, although sometimes it seemed as if there was no accounting for Mom.

Jean Ellen was at college, so I had my room to myself. A couple of my friends would say how lucky I was because they had to share with their baby sisters. Lucky. I guess.

Jack was as sad as I was at dinner and we looked at each other, lost. Mom had burned dinner but we always had to eat it anyway because "food didn't grow on trees." I think that year it may have been starving kids in Biafra, but I am not sure. I managed to avoid going to bed for a whole half an hour past my bedtime, but bedtime came.

About an hour after I was in bed, eyes wide open, the tears filled my eyes and I wondered if Susan was thinking of me, too, as I heard the too-quiet sound of the door opening, and felt the air attack me just before Jim did.

***
Susan moved away that year. My mom told me that she had been put with other parents because she had been hurt in that house. She sputtered about how anyone could hurt a child, and I remember just getting up and walking away.

By summer of that year I had forgotten all about opening doors. My sister came home. And the following year, for some reason, I took to taking a steak knife to bed with me, but I had blocked out the why of it all. For a long time, that door did not open again unless I opened it.  Which was pretty much the case for my memories of that year at home. I remembered only what I chose.

And in sixth grade I poured out the harmless part of the memory, but kept the loneliness I felt that was visceral and always there. It truly was the time when I decided I simply had to write. I had to. And I never stopped.

What about you? 

Was there a pivotal moment you turned to your art to express something deep inside? Was it a sparklingly beautiful time? That would be wonderful to read about.  I do not assume one has to suffer to write or paint or sing or dance or ANYTHING. But it was my moment.

I don't jump at the too small sounds of life any more, though. For which I am grateful beyond all words.

Why Part 2 is delayed--a GOOD reason

I was distracted. TOTALLY distracted. I am about two/thirds done with a coral painting and I decided to give you my work in progress. As you all know I do not have a camera, and the original is about 18 by 22 inches. I had to scan it in seven sections, then tile and blend, and LORD. Anyway, here is a rough idea of what it looks like. Let's see if I can get this inserted properly.

Well, I am not sure how to insert the picture in the right place, but it doesn't matter. I want to put in a particularly lovely coral called a gorgonian fan. It is large, very lacy, and has distinct veining. I have some more subtle touches for othercoral as well, to get the soft coral contrast to hard coral, but perhaps you have an idea. The detailing is left out in some areas because I had to reduce the size of my file. Life with computers. Anyway,  I got so excited when I figured out how to get the effects I wanted that writing flew out of my mind. I bet you all understand.

Oh! There. I fixed it. Simple enough and good enough for my needs.

EXTRA NOTE about the pieced together scan: the water is different. It does not have the puffs effects, but, instead, looks like water instead of sky. The scan bothers me that way. I got tired of tiling in scans that ALL had different color intensities and the sea was just AWFUL in my scan, but i see that in trying to just throw sea in there, it's not right. Oh, well. I am writing this when three people have given me wonderful feedback on it, but it's bothered me since I made the document! Okay. Enough. AND, now I have the gorgonian fan corals on there, and have started placing "orange basslets"--a golden orange fish that is longer than it is wide. I may put a couple of the butterfly fish in it. By the way, the particular colors and corals were inspired by a picture of a Red Sea coral bank. Apparently they go nearly to the surface, and down as much as a thousand feet! Why I have the fascination, I don't know--the gardener I think.

In the meantime, back in "Runaways to redbank" mode....

You will be meeting the Da Silvas, who remain a cacophonous, marvelous blur, as well as a gentleman on the boardwalk who looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams, a buttoned up grandma with perfectly precise pixie haircut,  playing whiffle ball in her pleated skirt and blouse with the Peter Pan collar, a couple who found both me and my penchant for taking pictures of sand formations somewhat odd, and a furry gentleman from some country that borders the Mediterranean Sea, who thought I should spend my fiftieth birthday with him because he was just such a durned stud. I don't know... they FIND me. Plus, I'll throw in whatever flies into my brain. I am undoubtedly blurring my trips into one endless adventure, but I'm sure I really don't care. The incidents live as if they were yesterday's vacation. I doubt you all care, either.

I also started writing plans for running storytelling techniques for nonfiction workshops out of my home... early on I know I referred to my friend's book. I'll get to that another day as well. I don't want to make my fortune doing that... I think it would be fun, and I would like to have it be something that has the potential to be ongoing and pay me enough for the planning, the hosting and, well, thinking to do it. And I would not compete with published authors--it would be a discovery opportunity for all of us, perhaps. We'll see.

As you can see, though, I've not been absent because of some sort of relapse into morosity... I KNOW the word is "moroseness," but I prefer my word. I did, however, decide that my one big gift to myself from the back Disability money would be a GOOD recumbent bike. It is the one vigorous exercise I can do now, and when I can get to the gym, I really work at it, riding at levels 16-20 for a full 50 minutes. I love the adrenaline rush. Oh, hell, it seems ironic in the extreme that a woman with the heart of an Amazon was put into such a fragile body. On the other hand, I may just have the strongest back on the planet, to have withstood so much and STILL support me enough to keep walking... albeit a tad oddly at times, and not for long periods.

Non-Sequiturs R Us
I am rambling, aren't I. I have never been diagnosed with any sort of bipolar disorder, but I find, when I am truly myself, when my body gives me the most trouble, my mind gets manic. The painting I have included has been done in fifteen minute stints over the course of ten days, with only one day off... and I have probably painted 12-14 times a day, with breaks in between. PLUS I made a homemade shepherd's pie--cooking the lamb ahead, boning it then skimming off ALL fat, caramelizing vadelia onions in sherry and garlic with shitake mushrooms, layering the casserole, making mashed potatoes to put on top... it's a long process to do it the old-fashioned way my mom did, so it would never be greasy.

What else did I do? Tutor. But mostly paint, cook, draw up a little business plan and research and order my bike. Sorry I have not written, but ON to reading what YOU all have written. Did I say before how great it is to be back in here? I have an ongoing argument with a friend who just loathes computers. She feels that all connections that are made and remain online or virtual are not real. I've given up arguing but have told her that I'd have felt hopelessly cut off from the world without my computer. Blogging, to me, is the modern equivalent of old-fashioned letter-writing and correspondence friendships. We can do it all faster, and there are "social networking" venues and business networking venues. And there are blogs, which, for me, are satisfyingly rich and varied. Words from people who think and write differently from me--this is SO important. To think, to wake up, to learn. And if here and there someone has pretended to be from a country he or she is not from, oh, well.

That's all for today. No. Really. I promise.

WOO HOO

I have been awarded Social Security Disability. I am eligible immediately for Medicare. The first hurdle toward my reconstructed self has been CLEARED.

I have dreamed of coral reefs two nights in a row now. Time for a new painting, I guess, while I work on the two unfinished.

Such a New Year's gift. The judge wrote her decision BEFORE the Christmas break, only a couple of weeks after the hearing. She was clear and, well, it validated a good deal, this judgment of hers.  I will be able to be financially okay for at least ten months and, hopefully my house will sell before that time is done.

I find myself hoping only to move forward, to not just reconstruct myself as an artist and writer, as one who creates solely what is in my heart and imagination, but to feel that I can tutor as well. I LOVE helping kids unlock their curiosity, finding the words that help them over their own hurdles. It is challenging and fun, too. I am only eight in my brain, so it seems a natural fit, no?

I want the new year to propel me toward simple peace, toward loving my friends better, toward more productivity and choices that keep me on the planet a LONG time.  I want to write the wonder of my life, which was the gift that got me through the pain--the gifts of my mother, my father, and my sister, really. Each had their own whimsy and sense of the absurd that they gave to me.  And the wonder that was my brother Jack's willingness to protect me the best he could from the violence of the other brother. And of our friendship as children and teenagers. In his own disease, he committed one horror, but ONLY one. Mostly, as his birthday draws near,  I remember Robin Hood, calling to me as I hid in the closet. Calling to me when his own torture was over and the monster had wandered off, losing interest in causing him pain. "Maid Marion, Maid Marion. The Sheriff is Gone. It's safe to come out."

And I would untie him and bathe the cuts or the bruises myself. Jack gave me my very life, I think.

It is a new year. Some of the limbo has suddenly ended. I am acutely aware that I was given more gifts than my share, I think. I called my friends who had been long awaiting good news. It took three hours of laughing and crying and just being happy.

I have virtual friends in here, many of whom have reached out to me beyond the blog. I have thanked you all before, but I simply must again. The progress on the book is slow, but it has to be. I have made peace with many things in these months of chaos and pain.

Long ago, in the early days of biofeedback pain therapy, I named the pain Louise. My  middle name and my paternal grandma's name. I may have mentioned this elsewhere. I did this because my grandma taught me many things as a small child, and I adored cooking next to her, eating lunches she made for Jude and me at the Lake on rainy days--we sat at a lace-edged tableclothed card table, on the screened in porch, eating egg salad sandwiches cut on the diagonals with the crusts off, off of special plates with a spot on them for the chocolate milk-filled glasses. And we had M&M's for dessert. Grandma would serve her two little wild girls as if we were grand ladies. It made us giggle, as we sat in overalls and t-shirts, barefoot. Huck Finn girls with Lady Louise. Grandma mourned the demise of whale-bone corsets. She showed me how to dip candles for fun and we churned butter.

But when I hit puberty I learned that Louise was mean to my mother. She spied on us. She was bitter. A vicious gossip sometimes. Louise was not likable, barely lovable, in fact--but she was my grandma, part of my being, part of who I was, part of my life.

The Louise of my body, born of spinal disease, has tamed my tendency to self-destruct. Pain is not something we want. I don't want it.  But it's here. It is part of my life. Louise is here and saved my life and made it hell and I cannot discard it. I must live with it and use my heart and soul to find the ways to use it to FORCE me into going after the dream.

I never gave myself permission to paint, to sing, to write simply what I WANTED. To create from my own music for the sake of creation. Well, I can't do it on deadlines any more. There is no path left for me but to do what I want!

So, tell me. What sort of irony is in that? I mean, talk about a dope learning things the hard way!

I will be getting the first step of financial respite. I have accepted what IS in relation to my spine. I KEEP ON STANDING UP. But I know enough to sit down or lie down when I have to.

It IS a happy new year. Thank you to any of you who keep no looking for me to write. There will be more.
Woo HOO.

Painting for My Life

I never thought that painting could take the place of singing in my life — at least in part. Before the shingles aftermath, I sang in choirs and choruses. It was the way I got my jolt of art beyond myself and connected with people in the strictly social way. By that I mean having casual relationships with people built around a mutual interest, where we laugh together and produce together, but were not necessarily wrapped around one another's lives. That door is closed to me now, as is even the enjoyment of listening. That was a tortuous adjustment for me.

I forget how much I miss those sorts of relationships in my life, but I do. I work at home. I pursue largely solitary joys, and since my neighborhood successfully blocked my attempt to create this sort of community in my home, I find my sense of isolation has grown. The degeneration of my spine precludes the trips to the gym now as well. So I search for the thing that will bring me casual company.

I have found, however, something beyond writing, to give me the jolt of creation.

Yet I feel something else happening as I get back into some routines of painting. The act of teaching a friend is waking me up. We hand a painting back and forth, each adding a piece of herself to the work started by the other. It is an electric process because whatever we envision in each step must necessarily change the next time the painting returns. She and I wrote together as adolescents, building on one another's riffs. Now Paige and I do the same with our art. She has not let herself paint or draw. And I have not let myself fly. Her imagination frees my own. We paint, draw, tear, paste. We laugh.

And it spills over into my solitary art.

I love the rhythm of collage and painting. I built a peony from scratch. One layer of tissue at a time, I built my flower, lightly tinting each petal. Fifteen minutes here and there, and from a blank paper rose something I've never done, captured my impression of the blossom from a tree peony. It excited me and made me cry. I thought of my mother and her joy at the slow art of flower gardening, how it made her seem to be more alive. I have felt barren for so long, and there it was before me--this birthing of something from my own mind. Once more I felt the thrill of the process and result, both. I had not felt that for three years, when I began the huge painting I just finished two weeks ago--my vision of a treasured memory with my dad.

The best of my life seems to be surfacing when I pick up my pencil, my brush, my papers. I have begun a diptych of New England, with the unifying thread being a stone wall--my impression of a wall. Winter will melt into spring, burst to the right into summer and drop down into the second part, summer still. Then blazen into fall and fade into winter again. I do not know whether there will be anything beyond texture and color that will be those seasons, but the wall? The wall will be absolutely recognizable as that. To me it is the quintessential New England item, wherever you go. Into the middle of a forest and there it will be, the reminder that so much of our land was once tilled, then allowed to grow wild again. I loved Central Pennsylvania, but I missed my walls. Walls that did nothing so much as invite you to cross them. they marked properties, but did not keep neighbors out. Just cows...

I will find other ways to connect in a group; I feel more confident again. The painting has opened doors I had not recognized were closed. I have walked into a different stage of biological life, but realize that I do not have to allow barrenness to be anything more than that. I am alive again, if not blooming. But, then, Fall foliage is not about flowering, so much as the last dance before sleep. And it can be a long, brilliant, lush season indeed.

The miraculous thing about facing our demons that they do not describe, is how it feels to be free of them at last. If I cannot dance with my legs or sing with my voice, then I will dance with paint, with paper, and with pens. I may just hit sixty in a few years, more alive than I have ever been. We'll see. For now? For now I will simply walk outside and weed the garden and take it from there.

Paint, Paper, and Pens--why bother?

When I was married I read A Room of One's Own until it fell apart. Then I got another copy and had this idea that if we all were in a house with an extra room, I'd have a place other than the dining room table in which to paint a write.

Wrong.

My husband took over the spare room as his study and dressing room, and he cleared a small corner of the room for my "Stuff." I had a rolling table with the then cutting-edge word processor and its paper, and for my meager drawing and painting supplies. To keep it in there meant my rolling it down the hall into the -- you guessed it -- dining room to use. So I put it in the corner of the dining room and thus had, once again, no space that was mine. The kids had their own rooms and took over the family room. Everything else was shared.

I was picking up and taking down and gave up eventually.

Now, in desperation, I return to a dream of my youth and to my late daughter's voice. We don't really lose ourselves, we just don't always locate the right voice for the right audience or the right time in our lives to let that "self" be expressed. Her name was Jessie and the business model in my head was "Jessie's Voice." For now I say "Reinvented Voices" to broaden what was HER idea, that we reinvent the voice we use to let ourselves out.

My first venture into helping people do this for themselves is Paint, Paper, & Pens. Running art workshops in the morning, afternoon and/or evening to help people be a kid. No. Not explore their inner child. Just be a kid. Make a mess without having to clean up. Paint a purple tree or a kitty that looks like a cow. A place where you are charged a quarter when you put your own work down and kicked out for criticizing others. Eight part workshops to start, with right-brain activities to warn up, some group painting exercises, and the last three sessions to create anything people want, together, separately, or some combination of the two.

I'm not an artist, but I can paint well. It's an exploration for me, though I've attended painting classes and creativity and writing workshops. I'm a writer who paints. I would like to see whether I am also a painter. In the meantime, I can work with others to help them explore and remember--remember what it was to paint or draw without worrying about the rules or other people's opinions. To be in the company of other people who want to do the same, and to laugh.

I think this economy needs laughter. I think many of us need some affordable activities that offer us the opportunity to DO, not be done to or to watch others doing. And for many of us, our uncensored creativity was squashed out of us the first time someone said, "That kitty looks like a PIG" or "You went outside the lines!" or "Trees are NOT purple."

Creativity from art spills over into other areas of our lives. I hope to post links to sites on creativity in the future. I hope that people who inquire about my workshops in Connecticut, start checking creativity sites themselves, or take a painting class at college, or move on to many things. Mostly I hope that I can make a modest living while connecting a creative, silly community in the land of Malls and sameness.

From the ground up

I am starting over for about the fifteenth time in my life. I could say this is a bad thing, but that would be a lie. The truth is that I'm excited--perhaps more than I have ever been. Being nearly penniless and having a physical condition that precludes "normal" employment are forcing me to do what I've always wanted.

Bummer.

I'm a boomer and I'm feeling new again, and I'm wondering whether there is a world of boomers outther who are reinventing our rusty revolutionary voices. I hope so. For now, I simply hope to use this blog to draw a few people to my business, sure, but to draw more to a virtual community of people who are tired of feeling that our culture has sapped us of our creative joy.

No, I'm NOT talking about touching base with our inner child. I'm talking about being a kid. An all out kid. About playing with paint. Dragging out the building toys. Just getting out a sketch pad. Gardening without a plan. Playing ping pong. My niece and I play Monopoly that never ends. We give each other more money when someone's about to lose, so that the game won't end. It drives her dad NUTS.

I am reinventing myself at fifty-seven. I am making peace with the lumps and bumps and wrinkles and surprises in the mirror. I am decidedly annoyed at the attitudes I run into that tell me I am all through and unhirable. Well, then, I'll hire myself... again.

I have been a writer for twenty years, writing for universities, for nonprofits. So perhaps I'll try writing for myself. I have been to dozens of creativity workshops and memoir workshops, and writing seminars, and computer refresher courses.

Its' time I put to use what I've learned and began running some of my own workshops, dared to create the sort of community I long for, along the lines of an old-fashioned salon. Creative people who want a place to play and to explore. We'll see.

This blog can be a place to start without having to be too specific, but where I can develop the plan and launch it. Perhaps it can draw other people who are reinventing themselves as well.