Hurdles
“MESA”, 60″ x 40″, 1999, m/m
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For a short time in grade school I was a hurdler.
In Phys. Ed. the coach would set up a short run of them and we’d have ourselves a meet.
I was a struggling hurdler.
Gymnastics was my game and truth be told: I was slow on my feet.
My body has an interestingly vivid memory of what it took to clear one of these things.
Set your heart on overdrive.
RUN!
LEAN into the hurdle at perfect time to allow a
JUMP UP!
STRETCH one leg out in front farther than you know possible.
COMPACT your body into a tight thing that takes up little space.
At the same time exert big energy to PULL other leg up into a bent knee and LIFT knee as high as possible.
Maybe clear the hurdle.
Feel free.
When one does hurdles it is a good idea to pull every ounce of energy in toward yourself as close as you can get it.
That container of life that you make yourself is what you feed off of as you sprint into the netherlands.
Nothing messy. Nothing out of place. No cells being used for anything other than making it over the hurdle as a streamlined and elegant machine intent on getting to the other side.
I am writing this today to remind Cathy of what it takes to heal herself.
The Look
detail of hand-painted silk robe, 1987
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I watched a guy sitting alone, yesterday.
He was in his early 30’s. Young.
At the table next to him sat another man with his daughter of about 4 years old dressed in a pink dress and barrettes holding her hair.
The first man had a book on his lap but he only pretended to read.
His real interest lay watching the table next door as the father gently negotiated breakfast with his daughter.
They were so connected and I could sense an easy and loving exchange between the two like they were of the same skin.
And of course, they were.
The other guy kept his surreptitious gaze on them for a long time.
He was enchanted, it seemed.
Curious, mystified and longing.
Awed by the simple theater unfolding of father and daughter.
It was the look of a person who was not too familiar with kids and had none of his own but wanted the heart-splitting love and utter trust that seems to come with parenting if you’re lucky.
I know this look of which I speak.
One can only concoct it if you’ve never had children. And I chose not to.
My art career always came first and in all honesty, I was never drawn in that direction.
Until now. Now, at a spry 55 years of age.
Now and only now do I know in my bones I would have been a great mom.
And so.. if you watch me carefully, you can catch me with THE LOOK sometimes.
Secretly watching others in that most precious of love-zones.. healthy family.
What does one do with all that love in there that went unused and unrecognized for the good part of a lifetime?
I often watch as I turn it on teenagers.
Kids hangin’ on the corner so wrapped up in whether they look right get a gentle and direct smile from me.
Money, sometimes.
Behind their “I’m so cool that I can’t say thank you” demeanor, I know they soften in my presence.
And so… I move through life spreading little tid-bits of love like that to the younger generation.
I know it makes a difference because I remember those that smiled at me.
Creation / Destruction
“FINE LINE”, 1998, 11″ x 11″ x 4″, m/m
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Two years ago I burned a large collection of past paintings.
They had been shipped back to me from a long time gallery I had worked with which was closing it’s doors.
When I saw the work unwrapped in my studio, none of it felt like me.
It wasn’t bad work at all, in my eyes.
Just past tense.
Sometimes, the life from which a work of art is born is instilled in the piece itself and that life can carry a work for eons.
It will have a substance all it’s own and a stand-alone quality.
This past work I was now confronting was created from a less-than-authentic place in me.
And it showed.
Perhaps not to others but surely I could tell.
And so..what does one do faced with this situation?
Put the work back into the marketplace hoping for a check here and there?
I have reached a point in my life where I DO feel true and real.
My conscience would not let me return the work to be sold.
So I burned it.
I made a ceremony out of the event and invited friends and had someone take a chainsaw to my paintings before they met their demise.
The point of all this drama was to let the universe know that I was seriously ready for change.
It was the beginning of my MS symptomology rearing it’s head in ways could not avoid.
My right hand was not working well and I was tired.
Intuitively, I knew that healing could only come from me taking a stand in my life for a shift away from anything I was giving energy to which did not serve me in some way.
And so.. how does one do that?
By burning my work I was consciously making room for something new to arrive.
And arrive it did.
And continues to do so.
And I marvel at the courage it actually takes to radically invite and welcome change.
If I had done it in a ‘tidy’ way, I might still be steeped in a ‘Cathy’ I wasn’t all that fond of.
Here is a photograph of the Hindu goddess KALI, the creator / destroyer.
She is not pretty.
Fierce? Yes.
But probably not your first choice as a dinner partner.
The thing is that change is messy and exhausting and it can rip your heart out from the horror of it all.
But KALI never leaves us empty if we feed her with our courage like that.
Her rewards can be beyond anything we know.
But we never know until we strike the match.
Dad
hand-painted silk neckties, 1985
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My father died when he was 51.
He had this whole secret life at General Motors where he bossed a good number of people around.
And they let him I think because he was good at it, they probably liked and respected him and they needed their job.
That was his very private and unknown-to-us life.
Nice suits, 5′ tall nude woman sculpture in his giant, glassy office and the run of basement to top floor of the many- acred tech center spread.
The one day we kids were privy to this part of our father was on children’s day when we visited him there and sat terrified in the executive dining room for lunch as he awkwardly introduced his offspring to friends.
It pains me to think about it.
He sure looked the part in the glossy hallways there.
But I didn’t recognize the guy.
For me, I knew him catching minnows with us at the lake.
And making a real wooden red sailboat from scratch on which I spent many hours afloat.
Carving a too fast saucer run for us in the frigid air after a snowstorm,
And drunkenly waiting until he could go to work the next day.
I loved him.
And I knew he loved me.
But it was very quiet parenting he did.
More show-and-tell.
And because I was enchanted with power tools and turpentine and sawdust, he tolerated my tentative shadowing of him.
I would follow him to the workshop and he’d make stuff like enameled copper boxes or cast a fish in plaster from the creek below our house.
But something was eating him from the inside out and he kept it so quiet but I knew.
I didn’t know the thing’s name as I was so young but I was smart enough to see his unhappiness.
And so I was glad he had the secret world of General Motors to shine in.
And shiny he was.
I think he died of a broken heart because he spent a lifetime managing artists when what he really wanted to do was be one.
Living inauthentically takes it’s toll.
The legacy he left me is fearlessness around power.
Tools, people, big and scary corporate dealings, too- nice suit jackets and men in huddles.
He also left me the simple love of working with my hands.
He helped me become confident in my approach to life as a sensitive and creative being.
He inadvertently showed me the edge of madness.
That thing that happens when no one sees the real you.
And so… my life has been one of a collector; I find those in whose eyes I can see myself clearly, honestly and truly.
And I keep them close.
And closer still.
And I walk on with the solace of their gait beside me; barely but very surely there.
Vulnerability
detail of textile painting on wool flannel
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Yesterday I said: “I feel vulnerable” to a friend.
It was weird because that word usually has a ‘less-than-great’ connotation.
And it did when I used it.
I wanted to be seen in a particular way and was afraid that wasn’t going to happen.
So… I felt exposed and vulnerable.
Except there was a hidden sweetness there too.
A part of me that didn’t care all that much being exposed.
My hide was permeable.
I wasn’t an armored truck immune to incoming ‘whatever.’
I looked up the definition of vulnerable and at the bottom of a list of less-than-desirable states of being was the word: TENDER.
That’s what I felt yesterday… tender.
In my past life, feeling tender was just too damn scary.
I was out for full on protection of self no matter what and absolutely unwilling to let the fortress gate down to bridge the moat.
No.. the walls were impenetrable and have pretty much stayed that way for years.
If you met me back then (not so long ago) you’d likely never know the grip I had on myself.
But I had made it through some tough stuff and had a tenuous foundation goin’ for me that no one got to mess with.
So really, that left me INvulnerable at least in my own mind.
Sweet for one’s ego but my heart dried up to some extent.
One of the surprises I’ve received in companionship with MS is making friends with the kind of vulnerability I’m speaking of here.
I certainly don’t go around in the world leaving myself exposed to harm.
But I am letting the old guard down more in certain instances in order to be seen as I am; a woman steeped in her humanity trying to get comfortable with it, love it even, with no apologies.
I am changed. Changing. Very alive.
Imperfect, sure.. in the best sense I think.
I’ve still got the old vestiges of me that want to be seen a certain way.
But that girl would be less-than-authentic.
And I now love truth more than pretense.
I am tender to the touch of life now..
Jump Back
hand-painted silk jersey, 1987
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In my youth (elementary school) I had a friend named Mike Hershman.
One night we took 2 big cans of Nestle’s Quick and poured them into the pool of someone in our subdivision we didn’t like.
I remember feeling dastardly because I actually thought the whole pool would turn dark brown like chocolate.
Needless to say, that is not exactly what happened.
NOTHING happened. Except we laughed till we cried all the way home wrapped in the secret world of childhood shared.
I lived in the basement of our home which had a window well for ventilation purposes, I guess.
I loved living down there as I was far away from the bitter tailings of my family’s dysfunction.
One night, my boyfriend of 4th, 5th and 6th grade, Mark, took his chance and crawled into the window well trying to get into my room (invited guest).
Pretty bold, eh? On both our parts.
The stuff of legend.
The thing is that my dad came into my room just at the moment Mark was halfway in.
We were horrified.. all of us.
My father had no idea how to father, actually, and let my shame be the neon scarlet letter I wore for a long time.
That was a pivotal experience for me as I look back beyond all this adulthood.
Because even though I wore that shame around the house, secretly I LOVED THAT WE DID THAT!
Nothing neutral about those actions.
Devilish, desirous (as much as 10 year olds can muster) and just damn FUN!
I have had a postcard tucked into my bathroom mirror for years.
It’s a tattered black and white shot of a man and woman barefoot as they run with glee down a winding dirt road.
The feel of it is the same as the window well story; abandoned and free.
Where in the world did I lose that girl?
Intent on making her own rules needing agreement from no one.
I catch a glimpse of her behind the set of my jaw or twinkling shyly in the corner of my crows- footed eyes.
She is in the involuntary salivation driving past an ad for chocolate milkshakes.
And the disregard for the speedometer on a 2 lane lonely highway in the desert.
I absolutely love that girl.
Her voice comes from low in the belly.
And her lines are never straight.
She is prone to laugh at sick humor all the while wearing Chanel No. 5.
Serious, schmereous… yuk.
Louise Hay, who wrote a book, HEAL YOUR BODY on her ideas of the emotional causes of various diseases says under the MS heading: “Iron will, fear, mental hardness.”
I see myself in there.. too much deciding instead of allowing.
Eons of ‘armoring up.’
The affirmation she gives as an antidote is: “I am safe and free.”
I’m really up for abandon these days but what if I’ve forgotten how?
All I need is a little help to begin the sly turn of the corners of my mouth into the start of untamed laughter.
The rest will take care of itself.
Home
detail of painting, m/m
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I’ve been thinking about adobe.
Brown blocks hand formed the way they’ve always done it.
Dirt and straw.
If you’ve ever had the chance to spend time inside an adobe home you likely have never forgotten the feeling you get of being held.
It reminds me of my youth in Michigan when we got blasted with a snowstorm and the following morning the scene was too bright for mortal eyes so I dug my way into huge white drifts of snow.
Secret caves tinted with butter-colored light seeping in through the packed snow.
It was so easy to carve away the insides and I lovingly patted the walls and made shelves and a smooth floor.
It felt more like home than home.
Secret. Mine.
Some guys in the neighborhood I now live in are constructing an adobe addition.
There is a preciousness to the site as they have piled the bricks lovingly around the poured foundation and they watch the weather closely for hint of rain.
Each day these beautiful brown earthen blocks inch higher as the men sing in Spanish and wave at me as I go by.
The whole thing gets covered up in the evening by a garish blue tarp.
Making a home…
I’ve made a few.
Each time I make one they get livelier and more beautiful.
Like more oxygen gets in and anything unnatural or pretentious is discarded at the door.
Here are my essentials:
light
space
quiet
safety
comfort
simplicity
sensuality
nature
That snow cave way back when was a fine, fine template.
Except I never figured out the heat issue.
Probably because I never invited anyone in.
I was too intent on making myself an island.
I just totally forgot the bridge.
For a long, long time I’ve forgotten the bridge.
But lately, I’ve got my drafting table out and a drawing is taking shape that intrigues me.
Still shadowy and indistinct but surely coming of it’s own accord.
It looks bridge-like but one can never be sure.
I think the most respectful thing to do is get out of my own way and let it have it’s own voice; undirected by me.
Because I have little knowledge of this ‘bridgeness’ but I know the island too, too well.
Essence of a Thing
detail ceramic sculpture
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In my first couple years living in Santa Fe I belonged to what I now call a cult.
Back then it just felt like a group of dedicated and inquisitive people learning about what ESSENCE is.
Our discussions were lofty and lively.
Being a favored student took care of a lot of the insecurities I felt at first in my new home town.
But I was dedicated to the study.
Still am, in fact (but from my own living room).
Here is an example of the kind of inquiry we did:
One Christmas, we had all been asked to bring an ornament for the tree.
Each of us arrived and carefully found the right spot on the small pine for our offering and hung it there.
We sat in a circle around the tree and just enjoyed it for awhile.
Then our teacher asked us if there were any ornaments that seemed like they did not belong on the tree; didn’t feel quite right for some reason; something ‘off’ about it.
Slowly, it came clear that a plastic reindeer seemed too kitschy for the occasion.
Off he came.
Then there was a garish and glittery star..
Off.
We went on like this for a couple hours as we sat in silence and felt into each object and it’s relation to the tree, the event, the time of year.
He was asking us to open our field of experience beyond the little tree and the habitual dressing of it with haphazard gleam and glitter.
When we were done there was ONE ornament left on the tree.
A beautiful blown glass ball in a shade of blue with no name and a mysterious surface; not too shiny, not too dull.
It stood alone alone but not lonely.
There was nothing about it that was ‘in your face’.
It was not trying too hard to shine brightly.
And yet, it had enough presence to carry the whole tree.
This seemingly small investigation taught me so much about the essence of a thing/person.
When I married the man I did (now divorced) I never got past the gleam.
In a cultural sense he looked good on all fronts and wooed me well.
He said all the right things and I let myself be enchanted by the story instead of the substance.
Knowing what I know now about essence, I decide everything differently.
Is the energy complete as it is or am I tempted to get in there and complete it so it feels like a better match for me?
I look for the energy of a figure-eight; two people/ things which have their own solid and complete circle going on.
The sparky-ness happens at the meeting place.
I use this formula whether buying a handbag or choosing a friend.
The fact that intermittent fatigue is a life companion has allowed the crash course in the discriminating department.
I don’t have the energy to tolerate ‘almost-but-not-quite’.
I am going after the color of blue with no name and the mysterious sheen I saw on a Christmas tree long ago.
Never Alone
hand painted terry robe, 1987
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Yesterday, I had an appointment with the women of WESST.
These brilliant people are dedicated toward assisting women(mostly) who are in transition and need start-up business counseling, funding or just a brainstorming session or two.
They are sort of the female faction of S.C.O.R.E.
Because I AM in transition from a lifetime of art making into a different sort of life and my brain does NOT lean toward prudent business decision-making,
These brilliant women and I had a round-table discussion.
They are housed in the SANTA FE BUSINESS INCUBATOR which is a shiny, new and modern building that smells like success when you walk in.
I surprised myself as I began our meeting with a force in me that I almost didn’t recognize.
I knew I had to be succinct as I outlined my desires and plans for them; not too fast but knowing I only had one hour with them.
I told them about my book proposal in the works.
I have some extraordinary film footage I shot two years ago as I took a chain saw to all my old art and burned it in a ceremony to make room for my new life and I want to have it professionally edited into a film I can use for my speaking in the future.
They looked at this blog and the video I’ve posted and they all sat back at the end of my presentation and paused..
I waited.
Then there were suggestions popping up here and there regarding funding I could apply for.
They said, “Why not start at the top here?”
“The Oprah Foundation has a lot of grant money for serious people like you.”
“You need bridge money to continue doing your creative work.”
“Call the Library of Congress and ask them for grants available for the disabled. People don’t know this but they HAVE to answer ANY question you call with (within reason, I am guessing).
Anyway, the point of all this is that THEY TOOK ME VERY SERIOUSLY.
It was absolutely thrilling to recognize I have been working toward a new future and some very smart women gave me a big, giant green light and by doing that helped me feel VERY SUPPORTED .
And not alone.
I can tell you that making a new life is a challenging bit of row to hoe.
But SSSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOO much more doable when you do it in partnership.
I am feeling healthy enough to put some serious momentum behind my new career of writer/public speaker.
Break
detail of ceramic sculpture, 14″d x 12″h, 1977
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I have a wise friend.
Yesterday, we spoke and she shared something with me about narcissism.
I happened to have had the queen of narcissists for a mother.
It was always all about her. Always. Always.
But each and every one of us began thinking we were the center of the universe until we were rudely awakened to the fact that THERE ARE OTHERS HERE WITH US WHO HAVE THEIR NEEDS TOO!
Yuk..
My friend was speaking of how each of us chooses a tactic for survival at that pivotal point.
When dealing with the NARCISSISTIC WOUND we either inflate ourselves as a counter-attack or we deflate.
We carry this tactic along with us into adulthood, long after the threat experienced in childhood is gone.
I tend to DEFLATE.
It looks like this:
I beat myself up all the time for perceived mistakes.
If something is ‘off’ in any way I tend to look towards my self for the cause.
I don’t make use of my full vocabulary in order not to put someone off.
I ‘dumb down’ in order not to shine too bright and take attention away from others.
An example of INFLATION might look like how my father used to cover up his wound.
He worked for General Motors and because of his position, could bring home new cars to test out for a few months at a time.
We all knew the script to pull out for these moments: ‘DAD IS GREAT AND GOOD AND THIS IS SO EXCITING AND HOW LUCKY WE ARE!’
He charmed everyone at family gatherings with his shiny good looks and easy sociability to such an extent he had people lined up to get a bit of the heat.
We got the dregs of his drunkenness.
I think this way of looking at myself and others is so interesting.
In the theater-of-it-all I can now begin to distinguish my own and others PRIMARY ESSENCE before we picked the INFLATION or the DEFLATION card.
It is so easy to see now and so much easier to forgive.
I watch myself going: “Oh yeah.. he’s feeling scared so he wants me to know how great he is.”
Or: “I feel really insecure on this date so I’ll try to connect by telling him a fault of mine (mistaking this for intimacy)”
This is a GREAT piece of information my friend shared.
It feels so freeing to me.. uncomplicated and true and practical.
Today, I’m going out there to try and keep my tires road trip-ready.. not too much air nor too little..
So they can take the bumps as they were meant to.