Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Chantepleure Reincarnated
Saturday, November 14, 2020
Created for Those Who Suffer
Stacy was 28. Stacy was going to die. Soon.
When Stacy was diagnosed I worked at the American Cancer Society.
I was going through my 7th surgery about the cancer I was fighting. I had a whole bunch of useless fucking statistics to hoist.
What I knew once more: I was going to live. Stacy was going to die.
I had no idea how to be there for her. Or my sister. How to be real. How to cope with the bizarreness of who lives and who dies.
My sister was suffering. Stacy was not. There is a difference between pain and suffering that the Buddhists can teach us and I am still learning. But Stacy already knew that and my sister soon would.
My sister asked her what can I do? Stacy told her.
Help me tell my family I will die. Help me arrange my funeral the way I want it. The family were in shock and denial. Stacy and my sister melded their love with pragmatism.
My sister spoke to her parents. This is what I know. This is what Stacy wants. I will do her make-up for her casket. This is the outfit she wants to wear.
Stacy. 28 years old. Dying. The strongest person I had met until then. Until I knew my sister.
I wanted to honor Stacy's journey.
I'm an artist. I wanted to send her a card that expressed her strength. I looked and shopped.
And found nothing.
Get well. God will save you. Crosses, which are crap art. No. No.
I rescued Barbie dolls and used them to reimagine a world in which women mattered, but antithetically, fell in love with some high end fashion dolls.
I repurposed those dolls.
I spent one entire day photographing the dolls I had, those I knew enough about to resell at a profit, and those I would keep and make outfits for. Out of clothes I'd owned and loved. To express empathy for the journey.
This is the card I sent to Stacy. AND I WILL REMEMBER YOUR STRENGTH.
I will.
Another card was inspired by Barbara* a woman I knew and, who in presentation I attended told her story about the doctor telling her she had 3 months to live. When she asked why would you tell me that, he said because I won't offer false hope.
She found another doctor in Texas who gave her enough hope to live to see her last Christmas with her children.
There is an intense focus in specificity, a terminal diagnosis that cannot be understood and won't be felt until you or someone you love has that in their kit. It's a sense of your place in the universe. Small yet mighty.
The card art has Barbies. Collectible fashion dolls. Irrevalent in this context. But I love them, certainly the ones I kept. I didn't have dolls as a child, so I see the yearning in collecting as an adult.
The day I did the photography in the local park, I was frightened by a guy who popped out of the bushes. We stared at each other. He held up a cardboard image of Flat Stanley, the current GPS around the world photography image. Share an image.
Flat Stanley, I said.
Thank God you know that, he said. My niece made me do this.
That day I also crashed a mountain biker barrreling through my shoot. He was laughing too hard to stay astride.
I have these beautiful words I have honored all these years.
I made these images. Dressed this shoot. But it's iffy now. Doll collectors. Pffft.
Here I am. The writer. The artist. I want this out in the world. I think it matters.
I also photographed my great-gramdnother's and grandmother's teacups. And my grandmothers's and mother's gloves. And their pearls. And their handkerchiefs. Three generations.
Which art matches the words?
I'm going to offer both. The art is subjective.
The words are what matters most.
Addendum: Stacy was buried in the pink suit she told my sister she wanted to be buried in and the suit my sister told her parents to dress her in.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Keys to Nothing
I signed up for an editing workshop. We are to bring an excerpt for something we're working on. We are to state two techniques that we're good at. We are to submit questions for the person conducting the workshop.
I can't figure out where to upload that stuff either. I hate my homework being late still.
I'm contemplating the word irrelevant, in a social media realm of OK, boomer.
And contemplating the word control. I know in my brainpan somewhere that control is an illusion, that we control nothing, including what our brain decides to save into long term memory. My friend and I talk about this a lot. If we have no control, even of how our brain functions, then who or what does?
Irrelevant. We also discuss the difference between mind and brain. There's an analogy we came up with that both of us wrote down, but I don't remember it, and I'm not sure we are equipped to handle unanswerable questions. Examine how much life is left to you. Contemplate infinity. See how that works for you.
But the workshop signup started a chain of events that feels exciting.
I've been writing the story I will learn about editing for 15 years. It's memoir, so it's personal. Friends who have read the blog posts over the years love the stories about the wild ride caregiving is. There are about 60 million people in the USA who are caregiving right now, so maybe there's an interested audience, too.
So there's that to finish. Complete. Settle.
I bought a couch. One I picked out for myself. It's too much in the packed living room. What needs to go? My mother's secretary, which is a lovely piece of really large furniture. Her buffet that she bought for her trousseau in 1948? My great- and grandmother's desk that I had brought here when we sold her house? Most furnniture in the house is not mine, not pieces I chose. I don't like antiques. I keep them because? I keep them because of stories. I know the stories of all this furniture. Story provenance.
I told the friend who agreed to take the buffet that there wasn't anything in it. Then I dumped out the drawers. What's in it are all the things I did not want to throw away or hand out over the years.
It's a week later and most of the stuff is on the floor. Because in order to put it in one of the 2 remaining desks, I have to empty those, too.
Each day I choose something to put in the garbage bag sitting next to the pile on the floor. My father kept keys to things he no longer owned, including car keys. There are stories to those keys. But the stories are not mine. I threw them all out, inspired by Stu in The Stand (which I just reread) who–broke legged and dying in the wilderness–goes through his pockets and finds a keyring with keys that will open nothing. He throws them into the gulch. I did likewise.
Editing. The work and the psyche. Can't fill a vessel that's already full. This furniture offload is the equivalent of emptying the Junk Drawer of Life. Time to broom survival techniques that no longer serve, and have only been accumulating more stuff I can't use but don't want to look at too closely.
Stories are wonderful. Stories are how humans explain the universe to themselves. Edited stories are even more wonderful.
Time for my stories.
Thursday, May 28, 2020
Lyydia
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Back to the Drawing Board
I looked up how to clean an eraser today. I know how to clean an eraser. My brain just cannot access that information now.
Getting my brother his breakfast, I changed up the order of prep, and poured milk into his already poured orange juice glass instead of his cereal.
On hold for 40 minutes to handle a banking transaction yesterday, I forgot what I called to do by the time I got to the person who could help me.
We have been semi-isolated in our house for 15 years. A Three Story Life chronicles this journey. Our father died in 2017, and, while we have adjusted best able, it limits how often I leave the house. When I go on my version of abroad - grocery shopping, lunch with a friend, the rare and wonderful whole day outing - I have to have someone here to be with my brother.
For most of those years, I made money illustrating from the Artist Dungeon. I did not meet the people who hired me. I could work 24 hours a day in my pajamas as long as we had toilet paper and coffee.
That is a lot of experience that should hold me in place well.
It don't.
There is a difference between being homebound and being housebound. We are finding how prepared we are, our institutions are, our government is. When we are back to business as usual, I hope it isn't business as usual. Back to the drawing board.
Saturday, March 7, 2020
Happy Birthday to Me
Celebrating my birthday and 10 years of A Three Story Life Writing.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Thank You for Waiting
My process has been to create a cover first, and in some years not write one word. This year I made 4 covers, so I expect to not write 4 times as many words.
The ideas were intriguing. Still are. This year I chose a subject that has been in my brainpan for decades.
Waiting.
30 years ago, the title was Women Who Wait. Waiting is an activity we do well. We wait for the perfect partner, wait for promotions, raises. Wait to see the light, wait for dark. Wait for bruises to heal, wait for new ones. Wait for our loved ones to come home from war. Wait to heal, wait to die. Wait for the other shoe to drop. Wait on hold.
Noticing the messaging while on hold this month. Caregivers spend hours on hold. Doctors, pharmacies, health agencies, state handlers, county wranglers. In my case, when I get mad enough, wait for my legislators.
Doctor's office: 17 minutes on hold. Sales pitches for new mammogram technology, heart screening check (only $75!) and the ubiquitous messaging that you can do whatever you think you need to wait on hold to do on our website.
Pharmacy: 22 minutes on hold. Sales pitch op.
Kitchen cabinet place: "Thank you for continuing to hold. We are assisting other excited home remodelers." Sheesh.
The doctor's office is just down the street. I've checked the we are busy assisting other callers more than once. Drive down to the office - no one is on the phone.
Thank you for continuing to hold. We appreciate your patience.