art as livelihood

what if.....

eureka

They make gold encaustic wax. Just sayin'

requiem for a priest

Sometimes I think I know how things should go -- who, for instance, should get an easy death. I think my priest should have gotten a pass.

I don't know if I have explained in my not always succinct manner what hard work it is to die. Or how earnestly we hang on, for that matter, as our attachments, each one a thread, unravel in unpredictable succession.

We tend to focus on how hard it is for the family to watch someone pass (floating, skipping, slipping, wandering, marching, tromping by) -- when in fact -- because here at bluesky we deal in facts-- it is hard physical labor coming in and going out of this world.

Don't let me sugarcoat this for you.

I don't know much about priests. I don't know much about Catholicism except that they have nice windows and some good cathedrals. So it is difficult to know how to comfort a priest who is in unmanaged discomfort, spewing black vomit around the room. I thought I was on the set of the Exorcist only I was the girl and the priest's head was going to spin around. Do you say, "Its going to be okay, honey." ? Do you call the priest honey? Is that wrong?

And I thought about praying with him, for him, then remembered that Catholics don't believe mere mortals have access to God, big G, without an intermediary. But in this case, the middle man was dying so I had to improvise. I chose the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He leadeth me beside the still waters
He maketh me lie down in green pastures
He restoreth my soul

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me

And that's when it got me. He was sitting in that valley. And he struggled and struggled

And then came the social worker, one of those well-meaning sorts who wants so badly to assign spiritual meaning to physical events. She didn't know my priest. She didn't know that he would thank you graciously if you stuck a needle in his eye. She watched as my priest was touching his mouth and reaching out his hand repeatedly, smiling and nodding, and she was certain he was giving everyone a final blessing, but as the outcome showed, he was just looking for a place to puke.

encaustic images

Encaustic painting (painting with melted, pigmented beeswax) gets to that place in me that always wrecked the candles, dripping layer after layer, color after color, until the candle was no longer a candle, wax spent, morning arriving too early, again.

So this is what my busy little hands have been doing. Please buy one. The wax is expensive.

They are titled, top to bottom: Solitary Crow, A bird in the hand, Four Little Blackbirds, Old Paper, Red Ball, Crow on Barbed Wire.

pneumonia

I should get healthy. But to do this, I need to get well enough to leave the house. So I stay home and paint wax pictures and write books. This is my epitaph: I tried.

Seriously.

The encaustic work is going well. It is the perfect combination of image and language that has always appealed to me. Layers of color and words, graphic images, a beautiful mess. the real draw for me is that I don't have to clean the brushes, just buy new ones. It speaks to the degree of sloth I am capable of.

Gosh. This sounds so negative.

gold star

I like to think work doesnt' really matter, that my job is just a means to buy books and new colors of encaustic wax and nice pens for writing and valentine presents for my own true love. But this week the great state of Oregon showed up and graded my performance. I was so happy when I got an A+ for working.

My husband just finished watching Men Who Stare at Goats. He thinks we should drop acid and get back to our roots. I reminded him just where our roots come from, what they look like, gnarled and rotting, even in the considerable distance of retrospection.

Then, after I got my gold star, I started feeling really shitty again, went back to the doctor and learned it is not a virus or sinus infection that is torturing me. I have pneumonia. I am such an invalid.

zealots

I'm not crazy about zealousness. Not about anything. My mother was a Christian zealot. I was completely surrounded by zealots at one time in my life and my soul was nearly consumed by them. They meant well. Really, they did. They had my salvation in mind when they sought to control my behavior. I'm not mad at them. I get it. What pisses me off is when zealots, who do not believe my eternal life is at stake, who only have an opinion or an axe to grind, take my weekend in their busy little hands and grind it to dust. I can never get it back.

homesick

I am home and I am sick. I have something like a cold, but not really. My head is pounding like a baby chick is trying to get out my right temple, or sometimes like it is full of mud, or some other metaphor I can't quite grasp. I can't think, and I will spend the next few minutes proving it.

I am trying to work at home without a brain. I got up this morning, took two Extra-Strength Excedrin and a baby aspirin kicker, pretended to feel fine and left for work. I dropped Duffy at daycare and went to work for two hours. I couldn't trick myself into feeling better, so I gathered up some work and took it home with me. Portable work. I'd rather be asleep.

When Duffy was a puppy, he needed daycare on days I couldn't keep a close eye on him. Now, he is a big boy, fairly well-mannered, and still I take him once a week. I don't take myself to a spa once a week, do I? I don't pay somebody to make my day fun once a week, do I? But this little white dog.... he gets all the breaks. There is a new inside dog park now, Fido-Land or something. They have a pool and lifeguards. Lifeguards for dogs. So Portland. Do they teach them how to human-paddle? Really? If the dog can't swim, well, I just won't say. My PETA friends would be horrified.

So, I'm killing time for a 1:30 conference call, which I will take on my home phone and I hope it is able to do that sort of thing. Not so sure.

monkliness

I keep thinking, what with my general lack of people skills, that I would do well in the monastic life. I would, I think. Of course there are a couple of caveats: first, I'd have to be allowed to decorate. And it would have to be a nice monastery with, like, Pottery Barn candlesticks and dripping wax and great calligraphers to take notes. And nice monks. Nice, quiet monks. Second, they'd have to leave me alone. I wouldn't want to be bothered all the time. I'd make bread or garden or whatever their gig was, but beyond that, I'd want to be left alone.

Peace and quiet. They are not the same thing, but they do go nicely together.

opine

NEWSFLASH!!!!!!!!!!!
There is some groundbreaking news from the world of alzheimer's research: if you are nice to people with dementia, their behavior improves. If you let them have their way, they act better.

Stunning.

This new buzz is being touted as "emotional memory." I have it. You have it. They have it--only a little bit differently. While you and I can refer to the specific insults of any given shitty day and report, ad nauseum, who did us wrong (often leaving out any fault of our own), people with Alzhiemer's no longer have the ability to recall specifics, or to cope with the residual negative feelings that bounce untended in the growing white space of shrinking brains. This inablity to process and compartmentalize negative emotion results in "sundowning" or late-day agitation.

So they act out: Busy. Destructive. They wander. They pillage. They prowl.

But here's the thing: I shoulda written this book twenty years ago, this book about being nice. But like so many afterthoughts, I didn't. I was busy. Yet another story for yet another day.

But don't you think its apropos, on this day after another mass shooting, that being nice is a lesson lost on most Americans?

We have thrown billions of dollars at Alzheimer's research to find a medication that will cure what I think is pretty much just brain failure -- like heart failure. I am over simplifying, I know. (Alzheimer's disease is its own monkey, unlike some of the vascular dementias, etc. and could possibly benefit from these curative efforts.) But most, if not all of those resources, are being scooped up by and for the pharmacological arena, lobbied for by the health insurance monster, which, in my lengthy experience does not operate on such diffuse concepts as niceness. We have never paid more than peanuts for the front line work of caring for people who can no longer care for themselves. Old people. The future us.

Personally, I'm all for letting the inmates run the asylum. Its so much easier. So much. If they think its breakfast time, cook eggs for heaven's sake. Who cares? If they think its Christmas, sing Silent Night. If the diabetics want chocolate, let them have it. Christ. We want them to live forever but don't want to take care of them. What? The trick is to find the right people to do the simple work of caring. And, oh yeah, pay them peanuts. Simple. David Troxel coined the concept of "knack: the art of doing difficult things with ease," referring to caregiving for dementia patients. I thought of it first, but like I said, I was busy. Even Patrick Swayze said it in Road House: "If somebody calls you a son of a bitch, be nice."

So, now that Gabby what's-her-name is head-shot and the boy, who pulled the trigger on the gun that Palin aimed directly at her, is in custody-- if we don't take this time to review simple manners at the congressional level, I think we are missing an educational opportunity.

Be nice.

vaca

We are off to the coast for a much needed vacation. For New Year's Eve. For fun. Half the challenge will be getting there, as the crack Portland weather crew fortells of winter snow storms to rival the east coast. In the coast range there might be an inch or more. An INCH of snow. In Oregon. Can you imagine it? In December? Christ almighty.

Anyway, we are staying in Netarts at this funky little oceanfront motel called Happy Camp Hideaway. How could we resist? We've crabbed here before, and my husband intends to crab in the ice and snow. We'll snowshoe to the beach and rent a snowmobile to get back to the cabin.

Naw. Just kiddin'. Its beautiful over here. Sunny and windy, cold and gorgeous.

Duffy almost got swept away in a multi-directional surf on a high, outgoing tide. Boy was he ever surprised! Once he'd saved himself, he hopped around until he was dry. He may be smart enough to remember what happened. Not Sid. If the frisbee was out there, he'd be after it, til' death do they part.

Today we drove to Cape Mears Lighthouse which is no longer operational, but beautiful nevertheless. (I didn't know that lighthouses are typically made of iron. Sturdy.) Then we went into Tillamook for crab cracking implements. I can't just chew through the claws like my mate. He's captured four dungeoness and two rock crab with huge claws. He didn't bring crab pots, but those small, flat traps you fling out with a fishing pole. So, for New Year's Dinner we will have rib-eye steak, crab with garlic butter, sourdough rolls and steamed broccoli and cauliflower. Will we wander down the beach and dance with the Netarts locals? Will we stay up past nine o'clock? Will we blow something up in honor of the simple passage of time? I can't say. Anything is possible.

So there's the little guest book in cabin #5 where other happy campers have recorded something profound about their travels. As the resident writer, I feel compelled to do my bit, to elevate the discourse, blah blah blah. But I'm not feeling all that wise or profound. Just relaxed and lazy and happy to be away, watching the water go in and out and in and out as though something or someone other than me is in charge.

christmas day

Started the day with Sunrise and eggs benedict, homemade hollandaise. It took us all five hands to get breakfast happening what with answering the phone and promising to call back. Julie sent us these fantastic english muffins from Harry and David, where I worked when I was seventeen, where I sat in a large carboard box and blew dirt off the crocus pots with an air hose; where I sorted through embryonic amaryllis bulbs until I vomitted and the line boss slapped me for sitting down on the job. I know I've complained about this before. -- anyhow, the benedict was great, a bit lemony for me, but tasty. Then came the presents. Lots of presents. I got a lap desk to rest this laptop upon. Its an old school style, a wooden student desk with lift-top for my papers and pencils. Makes me think of LeeAnn, this girl in second grade who peed her pants, sopped it up with that little packet of tissues they make your parents buy, and hid it in her desk. ew.

I got a beautiful framed photo of Duffy, some body butter, some original art by Haley, some Barnes and Nobel money, a little monkey, a tiny swallow, a book I've already read and a gift certificate to stay at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. Whee.

Dinner was great, stuffed pork roast with baked apples, all the usuals, with pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. mmmmm.

Bing

I have spent the past few weeks imbedded in Christmas past, spending time with so many levels of family, family that has changed with the passage of time, marriage and death, separations and reunions, and really, not much changes at all and is still changing.

Clearly, I am having a difficult time expressing my thoughts.

Here's the thing: Taditions are gravity. They remind me who I am, who I have been.

I married into a family with different traditions. In the beginning I said they have no traditions. Then, I think I downgraded the description to crappy traditions. Now, I just like mine better, and have spent the past seven years trying to teach these people how to have Christmas. Not because I think they need to learn, but becasue I want to have Christmas my way. Slowly but slowly my enthusiasm is wearing them down. My husband asked me if he ever gets a voice in decorating the tree. I told him when he stops trying to put bats and devil horns on it. This is some serious shit. I have little patience for athiests, agnostics and pagans this time of year. I am willing to share the holiday, but not to accomodate religious differences. So. To quote Anne Lamott, I'm not exactly Christian, I'm Christian-ish. I love the baby Jesus. Bad Santa is not a Christmas movie.

We just walked up and down Peacock Lane and watched White Christmas, my holiday favorite. (And Elf. I love Elf.) My husband used to leave for a couple of hours -- but this year he watched it with me. I love the whole commercial mess -- well, not the whole mess, but I love giving trinkets to my friends and family, love shopping the shiny aisles, thinking of someone else for a change.

At work, it is the busiest time of year, as long absent relatives show up and ask, "Why is the lady across the hall wearing the sweater I got grandma last year?" And I try to explain, in the nicest possible way, that Alzheimer's disease improves a person's ability to share; that personal property has little meaning. Finally. That I, personally, look forward to forgetting what is mine. They don't always embrace my philosophy.

We always have a Christmas Cookie Party. Family members bring in a plate of cookies and the recipe and we sing Christmas carols. It is a sweet time. It has become a pretty big deal. I am not nearly good enough at singing to be in charge of entertainment. Next year I'm hiring a singer.

This year, a new man and his wife moved up from LA , and as always, their children are torn over the decision to move them. The upheaval has been difficult, but the wife, (we'll call her Marigold, he can be Harold) has Alzheimer's, so she pretty much goes with the flow. So, they come to the Cookie Party and I'm leading the singing, and Harold says, "Do you think we could sing "White Christmas?" I said, "Well, none of us is Bing Crosby, but sure, let's give it a try." So he starts singing, and Harold IS Bing Crosby. He has this deep, resonant voice, obviously well-trained pipes, and Marigold leans into him adoringly, the absent glaze of dementia or pure love, and I'm thinking pure love. And just as he gets going, his daughter comes around the corner and sees all of this, and I think it made leaving them a little easier for her.

Then, we all tell stories of our favorite holiday memories, which doesn't sound fair, I know, to ask in an Alzheimer's unit, but there you are. And they do have those long ago memories. Anyway, the chef comes over and shares his favorite memory of going over the river and through the woods to "Old uncle so-and-so's house." And how he was very rich uncle so-and-so and getting old and wanted all the family together and they drove across California and all that to BelAir or something and when they get there, Old uncle so-and-so is Bing Crosby. And he sang White Christmas.

I wish I could tell you all of the amazing things families do for their folks this time of year. I think there is a common misconception that nobody comes, nobody visits. This is not true. Wednesday night, one of my patients who is on hospice, who is 95, her seven children came in and sang carols for her. Seven grown children, older than me, who have, like so many families, scattered to the four winds, gathered together for a party in her room.

And for Ella, who no longer understands leaving and coming back, her huge family will visit her where she is, two by two, and she has a new Christmas every couple of hours, and she can handle that. ...and apple Stollen for Inga, and chopsticks for Miso; and rolled flat cookies from Norway for Betty who can't stop eating them and won't save any for her great-grandchildren; and for Laverne, Fred will come and eat lunch with her every day and every day and every day and she will never know why they arent' at home.

This year I bought two boxes of ziplock bags for people to take cookies home so we wouldn't be stuck with all of the chocolate in the world. The pharmacy rep, a delivery guy and the mailman all took bags home with them.

white christmas

We spent the weekend in Southern Oregon -- actually, Northern California. (Is it necessary to capitalize directions?) at the outlaws. We found time for everyone. We stayed in the cabin and woke this morning to a dusting of snow, a winter wonderland. That is what it looks like, for a minute. We were the first ones on the road -- it is now a gated community -- JoBar, three miles north of the Blue Ledge Mine, which is superfunded for cleanup. Arsenic and no lace. As another car passed us on the road, the pristine wonderland was sullied and nasty, spoiled.

The lock on the gate, cold and finicky in the snow, clanked open and released us. Being out of contact for the weekend was wonderful, but heading for I-5, it was unclear exactly what we were in for, weather-wise. As we left Grants Pass, it was snowing on Sexton, really coming down and beginning to stick, fat flakes of wet snow, warm snow, that had no intention of staying the night. We (he) took our (his) time, and made it home in one piece.

It is so good to be home and to have the driving portion of Christmas done with for this year. Now, we turn on the heat and begin to wrap our gifts, one by one, and wait for Christmas morning.

I spent a portion of the trip home explaining the meaning of the phrase "round yon virgin," which my husband thought was "round young virgin," which is wrong, and, well, wrong.

The tree is up, cards are written and almost ready to post. I didn't make them by my own little hands this year. I took a year off. Sue me. I'm writing a book. I did like my cards last year, and will do them again, no doubt, but I can't seem to find enough time to pursue all of the creative endeavors I want to in the time alotted after the job and the house have taken their respective pounds of flesh.



We will head south at some point during the holidays and visit the various fams, make time for everyone, not enough for anyone, and return home glad to have done it, and glad to be home.

thanksgiving day after

After dinner, most of the food went home with the kids, packed in little plastic boxes that were also nice to be rid of. Food was great, company pleasant and it was good to be home, nowhere to go, nothing to pack and unpack except the bird, which was small. The kids did the dishes. Yay kids.

I don't like turkey. Stuffing? 'nother story. Gravy? Worth fighting over. But as for retaining the carcass, boiling it to bits and making turkey soup? Pass. Turkey soup smells like dirt, like poverty. I think it was all those pots of turkey and rice that we ate for months, from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve when we cooked another one and ate it until New Year's Eve. Then, it was onion dip and potato chips on a good night.

Oh, I'm not bemoaning poverty so much as I am tired of cooking traditional food. Any food. I think I'll become a raw food person just so I don't have to do dishes anymore. A fruitarian. I will not murder any food, but wait until it falls dead from the source.

This will limit my consumption, of course. Will bring this unruly body under some control.

I wish. But I have about as much control over what I put in my body as a tourette's patient has control over language. I have dietary tourette syndrome.

This year I made a mince pie. It was so good. And my motherinlaw took home the carcass. She won the prize for frugality. I waste. I want.

coming apart

I am a listener. All day I listen to people who are coming apart, who don't know where they are or why, or who knows them or doesn't, and they are surprised when I do.

"Its a miracle!" she said. "I have so much less to worry about now."

She was right, but didn't know why.

So when I come home, I don't want to listen, for instance, to other people's health problems, or problems of any kind. I don't want anyone to have problems around me. I don't want to have problems myself, will deny having any if you ask me. I have no problems. Just luxury problems. Like having to listen to people.

I just want to type. It calms me down. It is much better than, for example, watching National Geographic Channel about an exploding whale in downtown Taiwan.

I was watching Oprah earlier and she had this thing on about nuns and their ceremony of becoming brides of Christ. One of them, when renouncing posessions, referred to her laptop as a ball and chain. I've seen it that way, but not today. Today it is my link to sanity.

If you read the last post, the last line. I was right. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

as he lay dying

Sometimes I get too involved. Sometimes I care about the living as well as the dying. I am always interested in the deathbed experience, and it is difficult to talk about it here, here in cyberpublic. But I love this old woman and her husband was dying and she wanted to be alone with him and she, like most, has some kids. And some of them are, shall we say, a little Ozarkian? A daughter with under-developed social antennae and two grown sons, both of them meth cooks if I do say so myself and I do. So the good daugher asks me, as the ruler of the Alzheimer's Universe, to make the cast of Deliverance go home, or at least back under their rock. What a pure waste of subtlety. I couldn't really just tell them to get the fuck out of there. And the old woman couldn't do it herself. So, I guess I did it. You can tell when somebody is there for support, and when they are doing deathbed time to earn something. You can smell it.

The first time I met her she was wheeling down the hall with an irridescent blue hydrangea in her hand. I commented on it and she told me, with tears in her eyes, that it was hers. She had grown it, and they had moved from that home into Assisted Living and she couldn't stand it and she had driven her car back to their house to pick a flower. "I don't know how you women do it," I said. "I really don't. I couldn't." Leave my house? My garden? My stuff? Are you kidding?

So, I helped her husband on his way to heaven. She'll be right behind him, I got a feelin'.

new monkeys

There are two new monkeys in the monkey clan. Nicole took a photo and will hopefully upload it for me.

We are in the Indian part of the summertime. It is too warm for fall, mornings not yet crisp, still leaving the bedside window open at night -- which I would do if I lived in Antarctica -- but anyway, no need for the bed warmer just yet. I sleep with the window open and one foot out from under the covers as though trying to escape, and given my history, it wouldn't be entirely senseless.

My husband fears the dark days of our long northwestern winters, sees them coming mid-July and begins to fret. Not me. Bring it on. I do regret the absence of light, but not the heat (yes, even the wimpy heat of Portland as compared to Southern Oregon's blast furnace), and wish that the laws of physics did not apply to me and I could banish one without losing the other. I wish no laws applied to me, but as ever, another story for another time.

appointments

I've already missed one appointment. I have this burgundy leatherish appointment book at work. I keep most of my schedule in there. I forgot a hair appointment for today, but when I made the hair appointment, I'm certain I forgot that it was the day of the Memory Walk. Memory Walk indeed. I have no memory.


So, this morning I wandered down to Pioneer Square in the pouring rain -- actually, my husband dropped me off -- and stood around until our whole team of walkers arrived, then I begged off due to cortisone flushing like fire under my skin, and found a bus home, plunked two dollars and five cents in the slot, and hung on.

This gives me cause (and pause) to purchase an iphone. If I had an iphone, I could sync all of my appointments into one place. Into one thing.

But would I?