Stop Me If You've Heard This Here Before...

          Or Once Again, Learning to Live with the “New Normal”.

          

About 4 ½ years ago, after having an MRI because of lower back pain, my doctor noticed that a few of my lymph nodes were enlarged. I was diagnosed with small lymphocytic lymphoma, a medical determination found after the biopsy of an enlarged lymph node in my neck. My oncologist at the time assured me this was the best possible diagnosis as SLL is considered “indolent” or very slow growing. I hung onto his prognostication that I would probably live a long life and die of something else before this disease got me.

Since then, every 6 months I have my blood tested, making sure this indolent cancer is still snoozing and so far, it has been blessedly quiet. Since then, my life has been filled with travel to exotic lands; exhilarating concerts sung with the Oakland Symphony Chorus; delightful days and evenings spent with dear friends and family; and many, many creative days and weeks working in the studio.

But since January of this year, this has completely changed. The first symptom came in the cold, dank, grey Berlin winter where we went to celebrate my mom-in-law’s 93^rd birthday. It began with finding myself short of breath climbing 3 flights of stairs up to my in law’s flat and sometimes even bending over to fasten my boots. Then just as I was getting ready to fly home, I succumbed to the horrific cold, which felled every single family member in the flat before it got to me. I came home with the hacking cough, fever, and shortness of breath. 

The first diagnosis was pneumonia and I was sent home with a course of antibiotics and told to rest. But after a week of rest, which didn’t help my breathing, my doctor said she saw fluid in the pleura of my lung when she looked at the x-ray and thought I should have it drained. That would certainly help with my inability to breath. And eventually, she felt this would resolve itself.

That was end of February. Since then, I have had 3 x-rays, 3 CT scans, fluid drained from my pleura twice more. The fluids and my blood have been repeatedly tested for every possible disease, including Lupus, TB, Rhumatoid Arthritis, and every test has come back negative. I’ve seen my GP, my oncologist, a pulmonologist and an allergist, none of whom can say for certain, what is causing this continual build up of fluid.

After the last CT scan where they found more enlarged lymph nodes in new areas of my body, they are speculating my “indolent” lymphoma may not be so “indolent” anymore.
So I’m scheduled to have a PET scan tomorrow. This will supposedly allow the doctors to see more definitively what is going on in my body.

Since leaving for Germany in January, I haven’t had enough energy to sing with the chorus and so, missed performing Bernstein’s Candide last Friday. I haven’t had enough energy to go to the studio except to pay the rent, water the Ficus and finish up glazing a few pieces made last year. 

New Nest 1

New Nest 2

I basically find I only have the energy to do one thing daily and sometimes, not even that. Depending on what that one thing is, my energy can be completely gone for several days after. This happened after we went with friends to the Bouquets For the Arts exhibition at the De Young Museum mid April. It was a fabulous event as it is every year and I was SO happy I was able to attend.

But that was it for the next few days. So here I go again, having to deal with a “new normal” almost every day.

But in the end, isn’t that what life is really? Every day - a new normal? We can make all the plans we want, but life, more often than not, has different plans for us. 

All we can do, then, is try to roll with the punches even when they keep on coming. All we can do, really, is realize that today is the day we have. Yesterday is done. Nothing we can do about that. And there is no guarantee there will be a tomorrow.

So today is it. No matter whatever it brings, there is always something to be grateful for. Today, I have so very much to be grateful for:

I’m here. I woke up and put my two feet on the floor without anything hurting. I have the dearest treasure of a man as my husband, a dog who delights me daily, a beautiful home in a wonderful neighborhood, many dear, dear friends and family whose love and support are with me as I travel this new path, and a terrific group of doctors who are taking good care of my health. Today, the sun has come out. Our first hydrangea has bloomed. I’ve picked lemons and artichokes from our garden. 

If this is my “new normal”, I think I’ll be OK.

Seeing My Work Through the Eyes of Others . . .

   Or Who Needs Google Glass When You Have Friends? 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to really look at your work objectively and see it with “new eyes”.  I don’t seem to have that ability all that often. But not to worry. I have friends who are willing not only to look at the work but also share their opinions with no compunction or regards for my feelings. That said, I must admit when I can, I do take in the various unsolicited critiques and try to see the work as they do. Here are just a couple of examples which have been sent to me in the past few months about my newest pieces.

Beka, a woman who found my work by Googling “porcelain pinch pots” and is on her own journey playing in the mud, recently wrote,

“I like things that look like they could have been found outside - that's what makes your 'eggs' so appealing and wonderful to me; they'd make the heart stop spotted amongst leaves and mosses in the woods, or washed up in a tangle of seaweed at the beach, but wouldn't be at all out of place there.”


Now that made me smile. But did I ever think about my work buried in a mound of leaves or mosses out there somewhere in the woods? Or being tangled up in a heap of seaweed along some lonely beach? Actually, no. But Beka’s imagining these settings has moved me to think about them as well. And now, looking my newest pieces, this imagining seems to be manifesting itself more and more in their rough exteriors juxtapositioned with the flowing, organic glazed interiors.

Skyscape Revealed

And then there’s my old friend from my Peace Corps Days, Ed, a published poet who lives in upstate New York. Over the years, he’s graciously sent me books of his poetry so this year, I sent him this small piece for his birthday in August. It took him almost a month to write a response (I’m not sure I should call it a “thank you”). 

Leopard's Lair

It starts,

“I’ve been trying to account for the strange “object” you sent me - a seemingly fragile, broken thing that resists categories. . . “
 
And then, of course, he continues to try and categorize -

“It’s not a bowl or a cup, or anything that lends itself to utilitarian purposes, even though it suggests that it might have been once... if it was, it’s more like a teacup a traveller in the desert might use, something that needs to be placed in the sand, not on a hard table, because it lacks a bottom (is bottomless) & seems more suitable to a nomadic existence, for packing up and carrying away...”
 
OK, I’ll buy that, but here comes the real complaint:

“Because its edges are rough & serrated, I can’t drink from it in its present condition without running the risk of cutting my lips and tongue. It fills me with thirst & quiet contemplation: dread & desire. It’s very much like a “bitter cup” that way.”

So did he really want a nice utilitarian cup or bowl? He goes on to liken it to a “shell of some prehistoric bird” or “ostrich fossil”, or “an ancient abandoned seashell”. And then there’s a serious attempt to describe the color, inside and out -
“an eggplant on the outside, but inside it hints at some pyrotechnic process with sparks flying, bubbling magma exploding & lava-floes flowing. Something like an antique alchemist’s athanor (I had to look this up - a self-feeding digesting furnace) in the search for secret elixirs, or the formula for the transmutation of lead into gold.”

Then he lets me know he hasn’t just dumped it but actually has put it somewhere where he sees it regularly, even though it seems he doesn’t really see anything even remotely close to what I had titled it - Leopard’s Lair.

“It wobbles on my desktop like a shattered world, a melancholy little planet where past struggles are spent . . . emerging through sacrifice & fire & cracked beginnings into an unimaginable tomorrow, perhaps in the triumph of joy & hope.” 


Well, OK, at last a few optimistic words.

But in the end, finally and thankfully, I think he gets it.

“It demands a place of its own; it refuses to be pigeon-holed. In a word, Bobbie, it is YOU!”
 
YAY! Yes! Exactly what I’ve been after with all my work - the mirror of my life as a vessel!

Now I can go back, reread the descriptions and see myself/my work through the eyes of a dear friend who may know me even better than I know myself.

Thank you, dear Ed. As you so aptly PS’d:

Like Leonard Cohen says...: “Everything is cracked - that’s how the light gets in...”

It Feels Like I'm On A Roll . . .

 

Or How Getting Up Off My Duff and Putting My Work Out There Paid Off. 

It certainly pays to have a studio mate who is “heads up” for you. My studio mate for the past 8 years or so, Tyrell Collins, recently emailed me a link to the California Arts Council website where they conveniently have a list, “Opportunities”. Under this, they list the possible exhibitions, grants, residencies for all sorts of artists - visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians – from galleries, museums, performance halls all over the world. What a gold mine! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been aware of this before.

The exhibition she wanted me to look into was one for my work in clay, which I have subsequently entered. I won’t know about that until the end of July so I’m not going to jinx it by mentioning more now. While going down the list of other upcoming exhibitions, I found this sponsored by Art 4 All People and the Commonweal Institute for Art and Healing Gallery in Bolinas, California - MUSE: The Art of Transformation and Healing. They were looking for work that somehow speaks to the healing properties of art. Besides entering the work, they asked for a short statement about how art has healed us.

Art as healer? Hasn’t this been the underlying (if not specific) theme throughout my creative life? And yes, specifically in my series of 2 dimensional mixed media pieces, Protector/Betrayer, created just after I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990. Three pieces of this series were finished just in time to be shown along with 16 other mixed media works at the 1991- 92 German exhibition, Aspekte der Gegenwartskunst in den USA. Since that time, I’ve only shown this work in Open Studios. One sold during Open Studios several years ago. Two hang prominently in our home and the last, I keep in the studio to remind me how far I’ve come since that first diagnosis, and that I am truly a survivor. Here is the series in the order in which they were created.

One Out of Nine - hanging at home

2800 Rads - currently in the studio

Jewel Of Hope - hanging at home

Myth of the Cure - sold

I entered the first three to be juried. And this is the one chosen for the exhibition.

Jewel of Hope

I deliver the piece to the Commonweal Gallery tomorrow. The exhibition opens on Saturday, June 28 through Sunday, September 28. The opening reception is on Saturday, July 12. For more information about the goings on – workshops, music, performances, films – please go to this website:

http://iah.commonweal.org/events/muse

So I really do feel like I’m on a roll here . . .

Or as my dad used to say, as only he would . . .  “A Kaiser roll.”