once ...

survive and thrive-ability ...

today has been nothing like a friday the 13th for me.

it has just been a red letter exceptionally humbling and yet fabulous day.

this morning was my first session with my trainer/exercise specialist at the gym.

i'm not new to the gym setting, but i have not exercised in a gym regularly since my stroke.

i did not stop going to the gym back then because of my stroke, because i am not a cripple! imagine me as richard nixon, shaking my fist and saying, "i am not a crook!"

i stopped going to the gym because around that time i became very anemic and very, very thin ... wispy thin, the kind of thin that can disappear.

while i remained active, still like to bike and "stuff," that too kind of fell to the wayside, most especially when i went back to college and there just wasn't time for it.

i have thought and half thought not to get back into it.

prior to bekah's wedding this summer, i worked a little harder at it and began eating better. when a "kid" is getting married, you realize a. you would like to look at least okay in your MomOfTheBride dress, and b. when it comes to anything with your kids, you want to live forever.

you just can't imagine abandoning them, not even by death, which is inevitable.

in the recent past, i've been more and more into things with regard to preventative medicine and much more "into my head," much more willing to understand that my head will never be the same, much less "bitchy" about the situation, much less stubborn, and much less "noncompliant" when it comes to neuropsych meds.

paired with that i've been at the gym a lot with mark's dad, as his transportation, as his companion, and really all around lucky to have him in my life.

since i was there anyway, i realized, "duh, now is the time to go back to the gym," but with a trainer this time, and really assessing everything, bringing in my old workout sheets from my "old gym" and really talking about myself, inside and out, and how to keep myself fit ... and not having fits.

all that being said, this is the right time. it's amazingly the right time. and my trainer/exercise specialist, kim, is the right person. i bonded with her immediately, just talking to her on days i was there with daddyRoger, and so the sign-up was easy.

and we started this morning.

the two hours were spent mostly talking and going over records, including medical ones, since it's all connected to the hospital through this gym. and yes, we had to talk about the "stupid stroke." and i was feeling proactive and empowered and all that, really not affected by it, which i have sworn to over the last seven years.

this swear is a lie.

i have my "residuals" from the "incident," and i never will be the same again. we talked about that too, and how i have gotten used to it, feel okay about it, i mean, come on that was seven years ago.

so then kim leaves her office and goes out to get the monitor thingy for my stress test portion of the assessment.

not at her desk now, and her chair pushed in, i can see beyond the bookshelf and all the self-help health books that i was gawking at while we chatted. rolled up on the floor wedged between the two bookshelves of really empowering books is a rolled up poster. all i can see on the poster in ALL CAPS is the word "STROKE."

i realize it's "just another one of those" stroke prevention/educational posters, no big deal right?!?!?

guess again.

BIG DEAL. IN ALL CAPS.

i realize, you see, at that moment (seven years after the fact of the thing that didn't "really affect me" all that much) that i'm terribly ANGRY about my stroke.

i'm writing about it now for the first time ever, though i'm sure i've alluded to it a lot. but i'm actually writing about it now, brutally honestly and for real, in a long nonfiction piece i'm calling "following May Sarton around after her stroke," which is based on her memoir "after the stroke."

even so the angry words have not come out yet. i figured they were not there, and/or why bother mentioning it since i'm so far past it, you know?!?!?

except this morning in that room i realized i'm not.

when kim came back in with the montior hookups and stuff, i pointed to the poster and i said out loud, but not in all caps, because no way am i yelling at kim, but i said, "i might have fudged a bit when we talked about the stroke and 'stuff.' i'm very angry. very, very angry."

... and then that moment, FINALLY (YES, IN ALL CAPS) just having finally said it, it started already to fade away ...

"into the woods"

yesterday was a horrifically long day, and yet i met all my goals and did everything on my "to do" list even though extra crap got shot in around all my carefully planned edges. i even managed to get to bed by ten and slept 8 solid hours. i woke up a 12:35 a.m. this morning in fact, and did the wonder-how-many-hours-of-sleep-i-have-left look at the clock, which you realize i have to first flounder around for my glasses in order to do this.

when i realized i had still 6 hours left to sleep, yes, i wet the bed, AND threw my glasses across the room and out into the forest!

on the late average these last many days, i've been getting six hours of sleep and/or less, and there has not been time to wet the bed.

this morning, i woke very refreshed, though a little humbled by the fact that Mark was going to hang our bed sheets out the window to em-bare-ass me in front of all our neighbors.

still, I HAD 8 HOURS OF SLEEP, so i really didn't give a shat!

also, i thought my collage yesterday, because i had to wait until late in the day to do it, would just say "fuck this shit" and then be all black ... so black that you wouldn't even be able to make out the words "fuck this shit" but you would know they were there, and *you* would probably wet your pants!

instead, it became yet another 8x10 collage in a very cryptic and yet not so cryptic series i'm doing. i made that sound as if i knew i'd suddenly be doing a cryptic/yet not so cryptic series of collages, but again, i never really know what i'm doing until it's done and i'm standing up to my knees in torn paper going, "yeah, i can probably scan and keep this one."

then i shoot it into the pile of how many collages in a row is that already?!?!?!?

well, today i realized that waiting till the end of the day was not really that stressful. i had been doing the collages right away in the morning when i started, but they've become more and more complex. they take me longer to finish now, and i realize i'm thinking about them all day until i get to them, which is not a bad thing. it's like this little "tease" going on in my brain that says, "live through this shitty, long stressful day and you *will* get there!"

so i'm not so sad to report that i did not get to today's piece till nearly 2pm and i've been working on it for one hour and 17 minutes already.

today's piece is part of the series, i did not know was series-ifying right before my torn paper eyes.

below are several poems i wrote, and have included in this note because they appare in this piece so to speak, and also i’ve been writing a lot, and also going back through old work, which is a good thing. ultra-word productive, in out, under and through my “real” day job.

so some words, then:

*Heart-Shaped Box*

I feel like
the proverbial
Wicked Queen
because I would take
a head off the chopping block,
or a heart, proof-positive,
in a gilded box.
Everyone should suffer,
no one should suffer,
but I suffered,
and suffer still.

Truth be told,
I'm not surprised
to find it’s my own heart,
bruised and lying,
in this Pandora's box,
the lid flung to the treetops
and knives flying about.

(the above circa 2002 or so, but never saw the printed light of day until 2007 in any such form, a hidden work, now hidden in this collage as well)

this one below has no title, and no i was not suicidal (hey that kind of rhymed), and i don't really know what i was thinking and/or going to do with this, but it really sounds a lot like ripping paper (probably i wrote it back in the day when i did not set aside time to rip things up ... hmmm)

*untitled*

I’m crying from
the inside out,
my tears
as sharp
as nails
yet I’m
wholly unable
completely unstable
and wonder at best
how to put things
back together again.

this next one circa 2007, i believe on a writing dare with someone i regularly collaborate with and he probably said something like "write something would ya" and so i did ...

*coming clean*

cold
sky spray
pelting skin
stinging insides
found without
treading lightly
walking in the dark.

moonlight
scatters thoughts
shadows melting
one with the soil
footfalls land solid
a stronghold at dawn.

sunshine
replaces the ache
heart pounds in rhythm
hands cold as stones
stretch and claw in need
reaching for the future

(it reminded me of being deep in the woods and clawing the way out and so i guess it's in this piece too)

this next one ... circa maybe even before the year 2000, i've lost track, you know, the words, the paper, the words, the paper ... but i felt it fit this piece too:

*Sentence Lifted*

You go girl.
Chin up.
Face the mirror,
your womanhood,
your worth.
Run like a girl.
Ties that bind you now
are of your own making.
Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who's the fairest one of all?
The wicked witch is dead.
No more poison apples.
Live out loud.
Unleash your words
on the screen.
Make them scream
for all the times
you kept quiet.

and this one ...

*Easier Said Than Done*

Continue on,
at leveled or disheveled best,
but is it over the next hill,
or do I bypass the obvious
taking to the wood --
taxed lungs and chapped cheeks,
ascending meaning everything,
backing down not an option?
Or, is it better to trip and fall the bogs,
leading to the depths of a black forest,
my hands and face torn by nettles,
teeth clenched in firm resolve
even though I’d like to spit and quit.
I’m not sure which is best, or who decides.
There are no forks in the road,
Mr. Frost, and I can’t see beyond
the end of my nose, the hurt in my heart,
the silence killing my ears,
and all my good sense is lost.

(i mean seriously, "fall the bogs," it's totally in the collage even though i wrote this when!??!?!)

so, all of this is to say, no matter how long the days are getting, and no matter that i'm filling them in on both sides and also managing all the shit around the edges, this *is* the most artistically productive i have ever been in a long time ... and so all i can say about the next day and the next is, "BRING IT ON!"

peace, and art, poetry and some hippy love ... out!

~a

"exercising my demons" because exorcising them is not as much fun

She Dreams in Color, She Dreams in Red

Every Woman Enjoys a Little Nakedness ...

Holy F’ing Batman … this is collage number 24, coming from me, the person who said on October 17th, that they were going to *try* and do a collaged and/or altered something every day of every freaking week to get back to her art.

I did not think I could do it.

As usual, I proved my own damn [distorted sense of] self wrong!

That case in point, I was going to ramble on about what that means for me creatively speaking, but I think I’ll wait till day 30 for that … in keeping with the old adage “30 days it’s a habit.”

Once this is habit again, believe me, I’m going to spout off about it. Once it is habit, it just is … it just is, me, something I will continue to do every day, or die trying. (tiny “woot” here)

Today’s collage is full of art, in and of itself. Off to the right-hand corner you will find something lovely, torn mag article section which features Jasper Johns. It was very Rorschach-ian, and I saw a naked woman in his piece, which became then the mood and the madness for my entire piece.

I HEART Jasper Johns! I loofa his back in a bubble bath, any day. All he has to do is ask, or just look at me, or just keep doing his art!

Ali and I were lucky to see a HUGE, and I mean H-U-G-E Jasper Johns exhibit at the Chicago Institute of Art two years ago. We both fell in love with him on the same day. I know, sounds weird, but totally is not! That was one of the times that Ali said her famous line, “I’m such a Lolita!” and I was jumping all up and down because I was all like, “Yeah, Ali, I guess it would be bad if you lusted after him at 15, so I will just have to keep him for myself.” The fact that I’d share him, because we both love him so … well, that’s a whole other scandalous ballpark, but the point is WE LOVE HIS WORK … TO. DEATH!

So, Ali is in this collage too, lower left-hand corner, though the image may be tweaked beyond recognizing her, but I like to tweak and gel and whatever the collages. She is standing behind one of her favorite pieces from our trip, a see-through piece, and I can see her through my camera. (Fabulous!)

While am all about fostering self-esteem and love of the body no matter its image, maybe Ali is tweaked to the point of being the essence of future womanhood in this picture, and then if you look you will see my big fat left eye bucking up right against John’s torn section in the piece, because while I “tweaked” Ali to protect her innocence, I then tore and put myself right next to JJ, so there! (all of this is utter bullshit, because I never really know how these pieces will turn out!)

Anyways, and ironically, after scanning and finishing this piece, I clicked over to the Chicago of Institute Art page just to be curious about what might be there now, special exibit-wise and this is what I read:

October 10-January 2, 2010 – Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Collage.

Yes, I pissed myself.

And I know what I want for Christmas now, and it’s not one or two new front teeth!

I just want to be sure that I get to this exhibit. I want to take all my daughters (surrogate and otherwise), the little girls and 17,000 of my closest friends. I want to make a day of it! I want to run naked through the halls of the art institute and … okay, um, maybe that’s taking it too far. I just want to go there, with the above-mentioned people and have a really good time all over the place!
Here is the exhibit description, the exibit I TOTALLY KNOW I’M going to if I have to crawl there! The write-up:

Collage is commonly thought of as a modern art form, but the act of “playing with pictures” has a long, rich, and surprising history. Sixty years ahead of the avant-garde—and more than a century before Photoshop—aristocratic Victorian women were already experimenting with photocollage. This world-premiere exhibition is the first to comprehensively examine this little-known phenomenon, presenting many eye-opening works that have rarely—and in many cases never—before been displayed or reproduced. See Playing with Pictures at the Art Institute before it travels to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. It might change the way you look at the Victorian age.

Love it, love it love it!


I’ve long known it’s not a modern form, and there’s a painter they used to say “painted with torn paper” but his name escapes me right now, but that guy (when I read about him in my college art course) I wanted him to be brought back to life so I could make babies with him! So I will get you his name later, because I know he’s in a big fat hard-cover art text and his name is totally highlighted in purple! He totally on my “People I would like to dig up and have babies with” list!

Collage art has been around forever, and is here to stay.

I never knew till I started it myself years ago, that I had been doing it for a lot of years in journals and stuff. And while I did start to do it pretty specifically 5+ years ago, I never completed 24 projects in 24 days, I will tell you that!!! I had a handful of project per year, and a headful that I never started. I knew I loved doing it, but I wasn’t doing it enough! Until now.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this note, and why as I completed collage number 24 today, I was all “Woot?!?!?! What. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! 24 days already! What do you think about that, Self?

And my “self” well she didn’t say a word. She was just beaming and dreaming and scheming about what she might be able to rip up and/or alter next in the name of finding clarity!

Peace and art out!

~a

p.s. I kind of want to dig up Rorschach too, because this one time at band camp when I had a psych test, there was this inkblot that really did look like a buffalo eating an ice-cream cone, and I want to ask him about that one because I don’t think my interpretation merited my getting kicked out of band camp!

critical eye ... have i