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.

This large sculpture stands in the center of an outdoor courtyard on the main floor of our local Santa Fe Community Center.

Upstairs on the roof terrace there are 15 more smaller versions of this peeking out amidst gorgeous landscaping of feather grasses.

These were the last works-in-form I completed.

These upcoming weeks are high season in our town.

Many, many people from all over the world will be here for INDIAN MARKET and various other events.

I am proud to be represented so publicly.

And I miss the hands-on work that goes into creating large sculpture.

My body has just moved into different territory.

I try not to hanker after what was but really, IT WAS GREAT WHILE IT LASTED!

And an important piece of me I am proud of.

Onward ..onward we go into territory unseen and calling us to the mystery whether we like it or not.

God, please make it just as interesting and satisfying as it used to be.

If I were forced to choose a time in my life that I hold most dear it would be my high school years at Cranbrook.

In truth, my name was called each morning in classes across the lake at KINGSWOOD, the girl’s school part of the educational community.

But I likely was not there to answer.

I was given the gift of an education at Cranbrook by my grandmother.

A number of my ancestors names were carved (legally) in the halls of both schools upon graduation.

The Cranbrook Community is a rarified piece of real estate; both of the mind and the earthen kind.

I will write more about my time there another day but I woke this morning thinking about Jonah’s Pool.

The pack I ran with were boys, mostly.

Smart and sassy, irreverent and intense.

I loved them. Love them still.

They saved me but they likely don’t know that.

We laughed and cut class and smoked pot and walked around the grounds at Cranbrook in the process of becoming the men and women we are today.

We just looked around at things.. life.. and took note. We were too high to put the pieces together back then but later on in life we did.

It was the finest backstory you could ever imagine.

Jonah’s Pool was dark. And surrounded on all sides by green. And BIG! And in off hours, private.

It served as a swimming pool for the boarding students, teachers and all those associated with Cranbrook.

It felt like a secret place as you walked through the glade and the big, black water opened up in front of you.

I was too depressed most of the time in high school.

That pool gave me freedom as I crept through the green gates of hedge in the half light of Michigan evenings.

I scanned the still water and if I found no one there, I left my clothes on the bank and dove into the dark.

I never quite knew what was under that water.

Could have been anything.

But the mystery and surrender of the dive called me and I kept listening over the years.

It was medicine, that water.

A private reverie.

A grand erasure.

And I was new.

And I was new.

Today, so many years past, here in the desert, I remember.

When I was living in Boston in the 80’s, I worked as a textile designer for my company called BETES de COULEUR (Beast of Color).

We sold very expensive hand-painted mens and women’s wear.

We didn’t sell too many actually, so the life of the business was short.

But we did do great stuff.

And got oodles of good press.

We made things like this robe from a vast and filthy loft in a bad part of town.

It was a very alive place, that loft.

My partner loved heavy metal music and I learned to tune it out and hunker down in my area focused on color and pattern and dye and brushes and color…

I have always known how to create my own world.

Initially out of necessity and then as I got older, out of necessity again.

This robe is the last remaining piece from our collections.

It hangs in my closet.

I love how it just looks like a fairly plain blue robe until you open it up.

In my own life these days I watch how I am very judicious about when and with whom I show my own colors.

I used to splash them around all over the place.

SEE ME! SEE ME!!

Invisibility? NO! … SEE ME!

How funny that these days invisibility is not an option as I wobble around town with my walker and wheelchair.

Not really funny but how weird that life has given me what I wanted.

The thing is that I now choose very consciously where and with whom I show my colors.

They are hard won and precious.

There is nothing about me that even resembles splashy these days.

But I am not without the spontaneity of a water balloon toss..

It’s just that it isn’t an everyday event.

You never can tell when the wind might catch the hem of my robe and turn it such that you think you see color but aren’t at all sure that you saw anything at all.

This is likely the most pivotal piece of art I ever created.

I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to create that day and this arrived unbidden.

I was a little afraid..

The process of bringing her to form was tumultuous and other-worldly as I lost touch with time and place and just stepped out of the way.

My intention that day was to create a wedding gift for my husband to be I was to marry in the next few months.

Having set that purpose it was up to me to set all ego based wanting to the side and watch to see what wanted to come forward.

She was so insistent and fierce and vulnerable at the same time.

The piece took my breath away as it was nothing like anything I had ever created before.

My husband loved it and we both enjoyed her company for the years we remained married.

When we divorced he generously asked if I’d like her back.

I look at this photo of her and see the giant red schism running down her middle and the fact she has no discernable legs.

She was so much wiser than I at the time.. the bride- to-be enchanted by endless wooing with fine wine and status gleaned from the attentions of the company president.

I slipped so terrifyingly easily into the ’serve-your-man’ job description.

I entertained with sparkly dinner tables and took second seat as he attempted to sell his business.

I lost my legs.

Forgive me if it sounds as if I am blaming him.

That, certainly is a seductive road.

But the truth be told, the schism was ‘Cathy created” pure and anything but simple.

How weird is it that now, as I have MS as my companion, I get my legs back?

In reality, each day I seem to lose a bit more muscle strength.

They are untrustable, my legs.

But the ground I’ve covered since way back when!

Now, THAT takes my breath away!

And she was all the wiser, that girl who appeared as the unbidden wedding gift..

All raw and halved and yet-to-be-formed.

Such a gorgeous gift she was. IS.

Her voice still, to this day, sings to me. A whispered reminder.

This piece was done years before I ever came to Santa Fe.

And yet, it has all the elements of my life today in the high desert.

Living here as I do with a good number of Native Americans, I wonder at the presence of what have become recurrent symbols in my art over the years.

Since I can remember, circles and spirals and snakes and the grid as well as obvious layering and ladders have populated my art.

These same symbols are key in the Native world as well.

Earth-worshiping people.

Those for whom intelligence gleaned from the swamp and molecular make up of minerals or the elegant sidewinding of reptiles through barely disturbed grass are their hymns.

The circle keeps calling me.

It has been my most reliable companion over the years.

Do you think that pathetic?

The gift of no beginning, no end…. does that not level the pesky grasping of a thousand Christmases?

Yes indeed… there is some finely orchestrated plan I’m in the middle of.

Something somewhere with a monocle gripped over an eye looking over my list and nicking off trials and tests and bundles of grace and ‘”AHA!’s” as I meander down my road, broken and rebuilt so many times.

I’m so damn glad I heard the directions whispered one day way back when to leave everything I knew for sure behind and get my butt out here to New Mexico.

I plopped myself down smack in the middle of the most interesting of spirals.

It never matters if the direction I move is inward or out along it’s path.. the meal I’m served is always fine tuned to my palate.

And still I am hungry.

My nephews rock.

I traveled to Chicago to see part of my family this past weekend and saw these two young men all grown up straight and tall.

But besides that, they are extraordinary human beings.

It is interesting theater to see family after a long absence and witness myself worrying how they will ‘take’ the new disabilities in me I can’t hide and seeing that people who love me can and do RISE to the occasion, whatever the hell it may be.

They got GAME… my family.

A wheelchair was rented, wrested out of the trunk on our arrival and the boys stepped up and pushed their aunt in such a gentlemanly way that I could do nothing but relax into the ride.

I asked my sister: “Is it weird pushing me in a chair?”

“Well… Yes. But we can get used to anything.”

I liked that she told me the truth.

The boys are handsome and extremely engaging creatures in the off moments from techno-plug-in.

In most kids, I have real concern about the addiction to cyber stimulus but not these two.

They talk to you. They look at you for long periods of time in interested ways as we talk. They ask questions. They answer questions with long and interesting sentences. They take a stand on things they believe in and hold to it. They have impeccable manners.

I found myself inspired by them both. Proud to be in their tribe. Eager to give them all I could to help ease their road should they need that.

What DO I have to give them, actually?

The best thing I can think of comes from the movie AVATAR but they borrowed it from revered texts of long ago: “I SEE YOU”

“I SEE YOU.”

I really think that may be the greatest gift we have to offer one another.

I see you beyond your youth and position in the family and expectations of others and insecurities and things you think you know for sure right now.

It’s really more of a feeling thing.

“I feel your heart and it is very, very good.”

I don’t know how it happened that their parents knew how to build a foundation that allowed for these two young men to flourish into the walking goodness they are.

But I’ll let them push me around any old day.

The deadliest mode of being I am aware of is that of NEUTRALITY.

For me that means you haven’t even picked up the sword let alone walk the razor’s edge.

In the case of illness as well as anything else in life, the Gods need SOME kind of direction.

Because I lived for so long attempting to smooth out wrinkles and load up the room service trays of various hungry people, I could not distinguish a sword from a 2 x 4.

This does not a warrioress make…

One marker for health, in my book, is the ability to walk on that finely hewn metal edge as a fully electric being as you keep your wits about you enough to bob and weave according to the shifting balance point.

It pays to have some training in yoga and breathe deeply into your belly.

And also take a few liberties like having a good friend below with the mattress unfurled should you need a soft place to fall.

But Albert Camus said: “LIVE TO THE POINT OF TEARS.”

And I have begun to appreciate the salt content in the recipes I use for living.

My body feels bad when I move through my life defending myself from stuff like the bad man staying with my landlady who kicked my dog yesterday (because she bit him on his shoe),

Or when I look at all the stuff I have to do and make excuses,

And then there’s the whole ‘MS thing’ that I defend myself against constantly.

Food is another issue for me as I am sensitive to so much that I now live in a borderline malnourished state because I am pretty much afraid to eat.

And I take pills to fend off symptoms that put a crimp in a life of freedom.

Then there’s the people that want to ‘fix’ me and know someone who has MS who was cured by traveling to Bolivia.

I’ve defended myself against the reality I needed a wheelchair for a long time.

And the amount of support I DO need is a constant source of alarm until I actually relax into it and receive the gift.

Does all this sound bitter?

Perhaps..

My heart feels so broad and able to recognize benevolent energy coming toward me when I put all the armor in the closet.

One benefit of dealing with a chronic illness is the fact that I haven’t the energy to keep my armor all shiny and ‘at-the-ready’ anymore..

And so.. I am rendered undefended.

And so have a better chance at love…