Author Archives: A Painterly Life

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About A Painterly Life

living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
May24

Peace and thank you

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My Mother never ever complained. About anything. She would famously say, “there’s nothing wrong with me” when we kids would corner her. We could see the pain on her face. Then she’d say, “there’s a hitch in my giddalong…” or, “the only thing wrong with me is that my children are trying to find something wrong with me.” Every so often she’d finally admit to a headache. I don’t know how she did it. She had five very spoiled children, 6 if you count my Dad, and most certainly many mornings had a hangover. As she aged her hands began to cramp up and become crippled with arthritis like her fathers had.

I am not my Mother. Try as I might to emulate her talent and tenacity, I whine. Regularly. I’m not proud. But today I have a hitch in my giddalong, both physically and mentally. Nothing is really wrong, but somethin’ ain’t right. Let’s just say it’s been a week. I began this week of writing most enthusiastically, setting out to explore the common denominator between fashion, storytelling, and sleep.

I think I do know the connection – it’s creativity, of course. But when I don’t get enough sleep I am anything but creative. Surly comes to mind. Coffee and Morning Pages certainly help. As I’ve talked about since I began this blog over 12 years ago now, Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages practice has saved my life, and certainly my sanity. When I don’t feel like writing – or think I have anything interesting going on, I may write stupid trivia, but I write. Some days I can barely think, and I might start by “reporting” to myself, the weather, the night’s holdings, any plans for the day, all of my frustrations, what I’m most surly about, and eventually listing things I am grateful for – even if I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I can write myself free; sometimes I can’t. By free, I mean through a change of mental state, from anxiety or perfectionism to optimism and more creativity. It’s an invisible door that I have to find by feel.

But the real goal is always peace. Creativity is the how. It’s how I get to peace. It’s how I shift out of fear and toward expansion, possibility, and hope. It’s how I re-member myself. And that, quite simply is what fashion, storytelling and sleep have in common. Fashion, design, architecture, color – the ideas of others that excite and inspire me. Storytelling, mine or others, that incite curiosity and invoke my sense of human-ness, of belonging. And sleep, even if it wasn’t enough…dreams or nightmares, rife with the potential for more. These simple elements get me up, curious about what the day might hold, moving forward.

Ever forward, toward peace and thank you.

May22

before the world got in the way

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If I’m honest, I am needy much more often than I let on…it’s ugly. Like most of us, I grew up in a household that equated personal need as weakness. The culture, the times, reinforced this belief. But make no mistake – it’s a belief system. Learned. Un-learnable.

Now in my 71st year I am finally getting around to looking at what I want from life. What do I really – really – want? How much time and energy have I spent pursuing things that I thought I wanted, but that didn’t work? Why? Along the way too many compromises were made because of co-dependency, in an effort to make relationships and houses and jobs and situations work that were not an organic fit for me. Know thyself takes on a whole new meaning when life isn’t working. It turns out self awareness is key to being happy and healthy…duh.

Living in the Detroit suburbs in my 20’s, divorced far too young after marrying far too young, I sought counseling. The counselor, Jo, lived around the corner from me. She taught the first nationally accredited hypnotherapy program for Wayne State University, and she taught private courses in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming.) She was a huge influence. Shortly after we met through a mutual friend, she told me that the quality of my life experience would be directly reflective of my communication skills. I told her she’d lived in California too long. My usual objection to her platitudes was “I want tangible evidence.” It was my own feeble 1980’s rendition of “show me the money.”

She encouraged me to enroll in a weekend workshop on psychic development using NLP techniques that was being given at nearby Marygrove College. The facilitators were sisters who lived and practiced in a cloistered community a few hours away. I don’t remember if it was Canada or upstate New York. I do remember the experience vividly. I do remember that I was stressed. The cost of the workshop was a stretch, and it required I negotiate with my former husband to make certain I had my son’s care covered, and plan for backup with my family. And I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing for fear of ridicule and reprisal.

Besides, I didn’t believe in psychics. Jo had tried to convince me that I had some psychic gift. I had no idea what the heck she was on about. The weekend would prove to me that I was psychic, although that didn’t really mean anything at the time. Isn’t everyone? Obviously anyone can learn these techniques; I just did. I can follow instructions – they told me what to do, I did it, it produced said results. So what? I actually still feel exactly this way, although I do see more value in the practice than before. The 2 people leading the workshop would pull me aside for private sessions and we would end up laughing and crying together. I wish I had paid more attention then, but I did not know how to get free of survival mode and be present, for myself or anyone. I’m learning to pay attention now. Better late than never.

Let me begin by giving an example of the tangible evidence I have stumbled clumsily upon: you cannot begin to understand self awareness if you don’t feel safe. Survival mode is just that – it focuses all your attention on being elsewhere and otherwise. If you are in survival mode you are stuck. Frozen in time. Unavailable. A walking zombie. Remotely controllable. I’ve lived much of life this way, and I do not recommend it.

So, yes, everyone is psychic. The important thing to know is that it is not some unique and weird complex trait. Let’s stop glorifying it as if it is magical and mysterious. It’s just a sense. It’s normal. It’s boring.

Where it’s value lies is in bringing us closer to knowing our selves. Now that we know self awareness is valuable – and not just selfish as we were taught to believe – why not utilize our natural capacities? Let’s salvage some tangible evidence about who we really are, authentically. And what it is we really need and want. It isn’t a shortcut to happiness, but it does short circuit our neurosis, our insecurities. Any time you feel needy or insecure, I invite you to ask yourself where you might have inadvertently picked up someone else’s expectation of you and are trying to fulfill it. I would ask you to pause and conduct a personal inquiry: what is it that I want here? Let’s be archeologists of our own personal culture and unearth those dreams…

May20

Coco Chanel’s Tarot Cards

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What does fashion, storytelling, and sleep all have in common? This week I’m hoping you will join me on a little curiosity journey. I wish to explore some of the homes of artists, beginning today with the New Orleans home of Debra Shriver. I am also going to explore our personal development using our intuition, or psychic abilities. AND THEN, because I cannot separate these things in my own mind – I think we will discover the common denominator here. I believe there is an integral link that creative thinking has with intuition, or psychic awareness. Furthermore, I not only believe they are all part of the same function, but entirely dependent on one another. And, I am also convinced that our very survival depends upon us recognizing this. As it happens, this awareness is also intricately connected to our sense of safety, physically and psychically, and to our ability to rest and relax. They are all components of freedom, and I want more of that.

If you will indulge this exploration with me this week, I believe we will all feel better about ourselves a few days from now. Ready?

May19

we all know this…and yet

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The military has used visualization techniques since WW2. Olympic athletes practice them daily. Grief counselors know this works as well in reverse; they will tell you that having faced a life-threatening situation you must grieve as if everyone involved did, in fact, die. Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between the threat and the reality.

Einstein knew it. I posit that it was the truly valuable discovery he made – far more valuable than splitting atoms. He said, “imagination is the language of the divine.” In more recent scientific studies, since the ability to map the brain while neurons are firing, we now know that intuition and imagination are the same brain function. So, psychic ability can be taught, and it turns out daydreaming is one of the ways to learn it. (Hence the value of the tarot, of storytelling.) Being busy and “productive” all the time is the way to lose it. This brings us full circle around to “Rest As Resistance” – the only way to have freedom from oppression is to mentally remove yourself from the culture; to learn how to think freely again.

I’ve had it all my life. I suspect that being the eldest of five children in a chaotic, abusive household required my “Spidey senses” be hyper-vigilant. And so the natural sixth sense was not un-developed, but allowed to function. Maybe I’m not dysfunctional so much as I’m super-functional.

I remember watching the movie Brainstorm in the theater in 1983 and getting it. This was no longer science fiction. It made for a good screenplay; I knew better intuitively. It was what my son calls “soft disclosure,” meaning it is preemptive propaganda being presented to the masses as fiction so we will readily accept the reality in the near future. And we did. We’re living in someone else’s reality (or dystopia) now. Let’s take back our own.

So, why are each of us not experiencing absolute joy and prosperity? And the answer, as far as I can surmise, is that we don’t practice. We are scared out of our wits of our own power. The only truly meaningful question becomes: WHAT IF? What if time is NOT of the essence and money IS no object?!

What do YOU want? Have I got some stories for you…

May18

Preservation Resource Center…

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WHO isn’t up for some preservation resources?!

I have often felt like my Dad was born in the wrong place and time – for which I’m grateful, of course (because…well…me.) He was gay, for one thing. He confided that to us after my parents 27 year marriage ended in their forties. But that was not something he was safe to disclose as a younger man, born in 1933, working in the factories of Detroit. He and my Mother both were talented beyond measure, both visually and musically. They never had much opportunity to be artists; they nurtured and encouraged it in us children. The expression that could not be contained, or even managed, was their rebellious spirits. You’ve heard me say that my parents were beatniks in the 50’s and became hippies in the 60’s…he did like to sport a colorful bandana around his forehead.

He played the piano, daily. We had a baby grand tucked in the corner of the living room where you would often find him tinkering. He played all the classics, but honky-tonk was his passion, and I suspect his sanity. I’m not exaggerating that his voice sounded like Frank Sinatra, and he was extraordinarily handsome throughout his lifetime. Circumstances being different, he’d certainly have given Sinatra some competition.

My father was not a particularly kind man. In fact, I’ve identified him in my older years of therapy as a narcissist, a sociopath. A man of extremely high intelligence and very low empathy. But I can’t help wondering who he might have been if born in a more tolerant time and culture, were he given even a bit more freedom of expression. Repression forces our personality out sideways in unhealthy choices, into addictions and immature abuses. I’m but one child of that fact. Please, God, may we finally learn that now, if we are to have any chance at all of a healthier future. Preferably before another world war. Preferably before the complete collapse of this empire. We have all suffered the consequences of oppression. Our society, our country, is bereft because of it. Our collective spirit is bound by grief, but we shall each know it personally. It’s our wake-up call.

Yesterday I discovered a fabulous new (to me) YouTube channel. Sorry (not sorry) to report – but I am a YT junkie. And home tours are my guilty pleasure, but I’m ever so picky. I want a lot of visual grist. This channel features restored historical homes of New Orleans, post Katrina. Let’s explore a few of these treats this coming week, beginning with this story, which brought me to tears for obvious reasons. THIS was so much like my childhood. Freeze this video on any frame at all and I will point out at least three things that spark memories. I am an endless fount of story, and I’m done apologizing for that. What awareness does this treasure spark for you?

May12

chop wood, wash dishes…

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My Mother used to say, “Mother’s are a sorry lot.” That’s a multi-layered tru-ism. She was an extraordinary person, one of the big loves of my life. And my son, too, of course. He asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day. “You, healthy,” as is my usual reply. When he was fighting for his life with lymphoma 20 years ago I couldn’t even think about not being a mom.

But the truth is that I am not really interested in Mother’s Day. I celebrate every day as if it were a holiday. Isn’t it? I guess you could say I just don’t get the holiday thing. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It all seems a bit contrived to me, thank you, hustle culture.

I have an almost gleeful sense of accomplishment when I can manage to spend any culturally-assigned holiday in an ordinary way. The more hours of ordinary-ness I can accrue, the better. Hence, people accuse me of being a party-pooper, a sad sack. I’m not. I just love ordinary life; it’s enough for me. Big dramatic gestures and contrived efforts make me nervous. Let’s lose this habit of making our days something more than they need to be. No more big deals, unless they organically happen that way. Peace doesn’t require peaks and valleys. Calm down people.

My son, a fabulous cook, asked me what I want to eat for Mother’s Day. A big salad, same as every day. Do? Take a nap. I may be boring, but I’m surprisingly okay with that. Let’s celebrate being human, quietly – and a Happy Mother’s Day, whatever that means to you.

May10

Let’s Get Medieval

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I’m kind. Until I’m not. And lately, I’m not a lot. Something happened to me. I’m not sure when. I know it began about a decade ago, living in Manville. Only those closest to me know what that means, but here’s the short version: I was in an unhappy marriage – again. And feeling like an enormous failure for being there. Would I just never catch on? We had moved my elderly father in with us as he could no longer live alone. He came with Hospice care, which is only available with a terminal diagnosis. He would be taken off Hospice before the six months expired. Fortunately, he did not. In fact, he would live another several years.

Then my brother came to “stay” while getting his feet back on the ground. He stayed for three and a half years. He, my father, and my husband (17 years my senior) all hung out together quite happily while I went off to work. Their idea of fun was going to the casino and playing the slots, which they did regularly.

They did not clean the house. I did that. They did not grocery shop. I did that. They did do most of the cooking. Because all 3 of them were “meat and potatoes” men. They ridiculed me while I chopped greens for my salads, laughing accusatorily that I was part rabbit…that never got old. They would ignore any pleas for help, or even kindness. At one point in time I’d gotten myself a camp counselors whistle, which I would blow at the kitchen table and announce, “Ass-hole retraining bootcamp begins now!” They rolled their eyes and each went back to their televisions…I’d have been invisible were I not so irritating.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Suffice it to say I was in my own special hell. Then I became ill. Deathly ill. I didn’t realize how sick I was until I finally got myself to the doctor once I was recovered enough to drive (they were busy) and was told that I was lucky to be alive. Apparently I had a blocked duct from passing a gall stone. Helllllloooooo….

In one of many fever-induced nightmares I had been driving cross country alone and my beat up old car broke down (someone call Dr. Freud.) The creepy desert town I was stranded in had become intolerable. I’d realized that they had no intention of fixing my vehicle. In fact, they were fattening me for the slaughter. I waited until after dark and snuck out my hotel window unnoticed. But I did look back once over my shoulder and saw the arched sign above the road into that town: MANVILLE. And I woke up.

I’ve never been the same since. It took a couple of years to fully extricate myself from Manville. Thanks for asking, but no, I have never recovered. And as my sister would say, now I’m “meaner n’ a snake-bit coyote…” Now I’m a lot like Mother Nature: you won’t like me when I’m mad.

I thought that if I survived that nervous breakdown, I’d soon get back to my kinder, gentler self. It didn’t happen; I’m not the same person anymore. But I did have another health crisis less than two years ago. Another wake-up call. And something remarkable also happened then. Hooked up to IV’s in a hospital bed, the nurses were so very kind. And it touched me to my core. It was as if a cellophane capsule growing inside me suddenly burst and all the bad drained out. I had never known kindness like this. Let me say that again: I HAD NEVER KNOWN KINDNESS LIKE THIS. I’m sure it’s been offered many times throughout my life. But I hadn’t really understood it until then. Perhaps we can only assimilate kindness proportionately to the hostility we’ve been faced with. And until that day I wasn’t ready to let that in, to relinquish the bubble that held hostage all my human-ness.

May8

RAYHOPE

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On a cheerier note…well, I did not mean to go ahead and publish that previous post! I was working on it… My dyslexic ADD wishes the words Post and Publish didn’t both start with P. But here we are. Let me tell you another experience I had several years later, shortly before my father passed away. I had to travel over an hour to visit him. He was living with my brother by this time, and while my brother worked during the day, my sisters and I were taking turns checking in on him and making sure he had meals and was doing alright.

But he wasn’t doing alright, and neither was I. I was going through one of the worst times of my life. I was grieving heavily. I was going through a divorce, and I was losing my Dad. I felt like everything had been ripped away. I was having a nervous breakdown.

Driving was difficult while crying. I kept having to pull off on the shoulder of the road to compose myself. And then a simple silly thought came to me – how I often pray for others, but why couldn’t I also pray for myself? I guess it had never occurred to me. I guess I thought it was selfish. But this day I went right into it. And as I was turning onto the long dirt road that lead to their ugly rundown house in the middle of nowhere, I asked for something I never had: “If you are listening, God, if this is real – then show me a ray of hope.”

Dad and I visited over lunch. I washed the dishes and put away a few groceries. We watched some inane cooking show on afternoon tv…and when he was ready for a nap that would take him through to evening, I tucked him in and left. When I got to the highway where I would turn off the dirt road I waited for traffic to clear. And pulled out behind a huge black SUV. As I came up behind this vehicle I noticed it had a vanity plate. No numbers, all letters. I couldn’t read it until we were stopped at a traffic light.

It read: R A Y H O P E

And I will never doubt again.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-TbqRaBY9K0%3Fsi%3Du3k1ADJVjwyyuBzb

May7

Snowbird from Hades

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It was after midnight in the ICU when the alarms went off. My father’s nurse rang the alert for the crash cart, jumped up to straddle my Dad and began CPR. They managed to revive him a fifth time since his surgery a few days prior. It would only be a couple of hours, however, before a different nurse knew he was in trouble. The chest compressions had broken a rib and punctured his spleen; he was bleeding internally. Again, alarms and a 3am call to the surgeon as they prepped him for an emergency splenectomy. As the eldest of his five children I received the phone call to verbally authorize surgery. I wouldn’t make the hospital in time to see him before he went in.

We were in the second? third? week of this crisis. My siblings and I were exhausted. But I knew what had to be done. I wasn’t ready to lose my Dad. We had been estranged most of my adult life, and only recently reconnected. My father was a sociopath, the kind you hear about on those investigative shows where the neighbors swear that he was such a remarkable man. He was that, too, but that is a story for a different time. Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to let the S.O.B. go without a fight. I wasn’t done with him yet.

I knew where to find him in the spiritual realm, and I knew the angels couldn’t help with that. So I prepared myself to descend into hell and negotiate for his salvation. Don’t ask how I know this practice; I cannot answer. Some would explain it as past life work I guess. But I do know it, and I don’t have any need to understand how. I don’t care how. I put myself into a deep altered state and made the transition. It began with the heat. I suddenly had the thought that perhaps this is what the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion is! I concentrated on pulling my breath in and shallow so as not to jar my body out of the experience, hence failing at the goal.

I was walking down a slope, out of a creepy dark wood, and I began to sense and then see beings approaching my path on either side. I knew not to make eye contact. I had “called ahead” and was expected. This was the welcoming party. These creatures made the movie Alien look like a Disney princess…and they were huge, much larger than I would have expected. They were being restrained by an army of lesser demons I can only describe as resembling Orcs. I knew I had been granted passage and that as long as I kept moving along I would make it through. A grotto seemed to emerge from the smoldering desert floor and I entered, to be greeted again by two dark masses of energy. The stench turned my stomach and I had to concentrate not to wrench. If I had a strong physical reaction I risked waking my body from meditation and losing the opportunity.

These two dark beings escorted me through a tight opening to a waiting area barely large enough to stand. Something was breathing behind a wall? a curtain of heat? A deep gutturall breath. It seemed to be laughing at me. Was I a fool to try this?

I was not allowed to view this authority, nor did I want to. I communicated telepathically: “You know what I’m here for. What are your terms?” A scene appeared ahead of a weird cafe-like setting where many people waited to be served. They were waiting for something to quench their thirst, and I was to be their server today apparently. I had the disgusting sense that they had all come as I had, to petition for their own request, and that somehow who and what I was serving was like a lottery to determine who would be given audience. Not all of them would return home today. I had absolutely no fear. I understood the task and went about my business. And woke in my sweet little guest room, feet soaking in a pan of ice cold water. I will not share here all the details of my experience, but I knew it had worked.

There would be no more resuscitations necessary. My father would go from the hospital to assisted living while receiving outpatient rehab. He would live another seven years, and a great deal of healing would occur, for him, and for us adult children, There would be more astonishing spiritual experiences that would shake my understanding of how the world exists. I will share some of those (much more heartening!) events in the near future – but suffice it to say that I know – as in, KNOW – that the life experience you and I are having is a tiny tip of the iceberg of what is going on here. And we are truly blessed and highly favored.

May6

Now what do I do?

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Today is a dear friend’s birthday. I sure am glad she was born. She has been a constant inspiration to me for decades…how lucky am I? What if the gift of her in my life is just a simple metaphor for God? What if EVERYTHING is conspiring to help me?

Years ago I was driving north with my sister in the car; I don’t remember why. It was just getting dark and we were still about an hour south of home. Suddenly a police cruiser was behind us and put on his flashers. While I slowed and prepared to pull onto the shoulder my sister went off with her own emergency signal. It went something like: “oh what the hell?! You weren’t speeding! Why is he pulling us over?! What did you do wrong?!” I calmly turned to her and said, “Why would you assume something is wrong? How about we wait and see what this is about?” As it turned out, I had a tail light out. I explained to the officer that we had just picked up the vehicle from the dealer the previous day, as my husband had hit a deer last week (unfortunately a common problem here.) He said, “oh! I know exactly what the problem is. Pop the trunk and I’ll fix it.” Soon we were on our way, safer for the help. My sister, btw, made some comment about how lucky I am and how I never seem to panic (don’t believe it) because I always assume I’m in the right place at the right time. I’ve had far too many experiences of divine intervention to possibly believe in coincidence. Sadly, my sister would write in her memoir years later that she feels abandoned by God, that she “even knows a tarot card reader he blesses more than he blesses me.” I’m that tarot card reader, evil as she thinks that is. She can’t begin to comprehend how I seem to skirt the extreme hardships of the rest of the family. I could tell her, but she would never believe me: I HAVE MORE FAITH.

I don’t care who you pray to, or spell with, or your name for the divine within or without. Faith means that you know that you were “made this way,” for just “such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14) – that somewhere along the way, likely early in childhood, you decided that God doesn’t make mistakes. You decided that everything – EVERY SINGLE THING serves a purpose here on this planet we call home. And that you are not given the entire plan on purpose. You don’t need to understand. It’s NOT YOUR JOB to police the human experience, and NEWSFLASH! – you are not the gatekeeper of Heaven. Isn’t that a relief?!

Let’s spend a week asking “what if?” and be one percent more curious than fearful. Let’s be one percenters. And let’s celebrate those wonderful souls whose lives bless ours. Happy Birthday!