Random Notes on a Writer's Life

Productivity: as usual, I am sporadic. As always those critics who think all composers, writers, and songwriters are (or should be!) daily-disciplined craftsmen who write every day, and who dismiss inspiration and the Muses as beyond the pale, are wrong. I've had that argument too many times for it to be interesting anymore: the "you're not a disciplined writer!" accusation against me, because I'm not a daily-disciplined writer, but one who waits and listens for those inner voices to bring something forward—and yet the critics and writers who would chastise me for being "undisciplined" by their standards still can find nothing wrong with what I write, it's not inferior to their own work, I produce enough work to satisfy demand, and despite grumbling they often accept it for publication. My discipline is to always be ready to write it down, whenever it comes forward to be written down. I find nothing kills freshness like stale rote "discipline." It's true that daily writing practice can help you polish your art, and improve your craft—but if you have nothing to say, so what? It's just hollow words.

•

So, as usual, I'm sporadic. Yet, in the past week or so, I've gotten down three poems, two of which are probably more in the song lyric column, all of which will be worked on more, later. I've also had some musical ideas floating around. In the next few months, I need to write another larger choral commissioned work, and I'm putting out tendrils to gather in ideas, inspirations, and texts.

•

Last night I rolled into the computer a cassette of a Barbaric Yawps live show, recorded in July 1996 at the Madison Art Fair on the Square. I was listening in particular to my own solos on Chapman Stick for those world-music-inspired progressive/free jazz band pieces that we worlked hard to perfect; the Yawps always played on the fractal edge where form and chaos touch, always intentional but near the edge of flying off in any direction. There was a power and life-force aspect to playing with the Yawps that was one of my favorite things about the band. We opened this Art Fair set with one of my own pieces written for the Yawps, "Nomads," which is written in a post-Ellington complex (world music inspired) scale, with polychords; I can readily admit that "Nomads" was my response to "Caravan," just pushed further and a bit more off-kilter and polytonal. (I wrote a few tunes for the Yawps, but most of the music was created by reeds player Tom Lachmund.)

Last weekend I was at Interlochen, in Michigan, for the biannual Interlochen Stick Workshop, my second time attending. I want to do more Stick workshops. I need to reconnect with the music and musicians, and begin doing regular gigs again. This is way of both improving my own playing skills, and networking; both are beneficial. The social aspect of the Stick seminar was actually as powerful for me as the actual classroom work.

Hearing the Yawps recording from 1996, I hear myself playing chordally-complex jazz solos that I can still hear in my head, but haven't played lately. I can hear my conceptual zone in play there, and I had finger dexterity I lack, now. I know I lost ground when I was really sick, a few years ago, and didn't have the strength to do much playing. Now, I want to turn that around. I'm getting my strength back, slowly, and want to get my playing skills back. I like what I heard during this 19 year old performance: recorded before I was really sick, and before I moved out West, and things got chaotic and my (as yet undiagnosed) illness worsened, and robbed me of life-force. I no longer had the strength to practice regularly, and even though I was gigging when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, it wasn't regular, and it was more on the avant-garde and free-jazz range of music-making, which doesn't require me to deepen my performance technique, in some ways. Being at a seminar that forced me at times to back up and re-learn some basic techniques and ideas was refreshing, stimulating, inspiring, and enlivening. Give me more!

•

Downside of being a lifelong science fiction, mystery, and fiction reader: I often spot the plot twists well in advance. It's partly because linear narrative has s logic to it, and it's partly because, as a storyteller oneself you know how stories are constructed. Even more than that, as a student of myth and folklore, and of the archetypes, you look for and find patterns in how stories are constructed. It's no secret that Joseph Campbell, the mythologist and anthropologist, was a student of Carl Jung, the depth psychologist who proposed the idea of archetypes of the collective unconscious; and it's no secret that I am a student of both these teachers.

Still, when I encounter a storyteller who can really surprise me, or whose work is a fresh take on the oldest myths, I treasure being surprised. That itself is one big reason I still read SF.

(And for the record, nobody uses "sci fi" to describe the genre except outsiders and popular media junkies.)

•

Meanwhile, I had a real, genuine, short story published this year, in JONATHAN magazine. An actual short story! An actual, for that matter, science fiction short story! It was titled "Shimmer," and is in the May 2015 issue. So I guess I can legitimately call myself a fiction writer now, a storyteller.

And I have had a scattering of short-short stories accepted for next year, as well.

I have also had a number of poems accepted for publication later this year.

I don't submit a lot, and I admit I'm sporadic about writing. Sometimes I do my best work under deadline pressure, and when I am asked to write something. It gives me a kick in the pants to get it done.

And my art installation at Silverwood County Park, The Temple of Deep Time, has been extended for a year. And I am being asked to submit proposals for new installations, for other settings and occasions. So I am being asked, and I am working to meet those deadlines.

This also reflects my increasing ability to actually Do The Work. The return of life-force and strength makes me able to meet these requests and goals. For now, it's very helpful for me to have an external push; at some point, the external push will be less necessary, but always welcome. I am still getting used to the idea that, for most of my adult life, I was not actually lazy and unmotivated, I was sick. I was sick! Sick with an illness that robbed me of strength, of life-force, of motivation, of mental health, and much more. I am too old now to probably ever fully recover; and yet here I am, able to do more now than I could imagine a few short years ago, and with the desire to do it all. I will never have "normal health" for someone my age—but I can do more than I have been able to in a decade. I am aware, today, that when I am not feeling PTSD or crushed down by life, I feel so energized I can barely keep myself in my body. And I am aware of how much I want to get done in whatever remaining years I have left.

•

It needs to be said, again, though: I don't make art for purposes of "self-expression," that hoary Romantic myth. Sometimes I do, but mostly when I make art I feel egoless rather than ego-empowered. There are things I have to say, and want to say, but a significant percentage of what I Make just has to be made, and I don't feel like I'm in charge, or "controlling" that, or the master of it. It just happens. Often I don't know what's going on anymore than you do—until afterwards. Craft is great for analysis, and theory is great for figuring out what you just did. It's not a very good prescriptive master, though, but more of a tyrant when applied beforehand rather than afterwards.

To all medical personnel

Dragon to all medical personnel:

Yes, it's true, I am a difficult patient.

There are reasons for that, however. Let's begin with the truth that my medical situation is unusual, even exceptional, with a lot of very atypical factors involved, making me an exceptional patient. Therefore my treatment requires customized knowledge of my situation, rather than the answers you keep suggesting that work for ninety percent of patients, but not for me.

Yes, I'm a difficult patient. But that's because I never feel like you actually listen to what I tell you, so we spend all of our visits together with me reminding you why what you've just ordered has already been tried and didn't work. If I seem frustrated at my lack of progress, that's largely why.

Yes, I'm a difficult patient. That's because my father was a doctor and I've been around medicine my entire life. I'm a lot more informed than your average patient, I know how to go do my own medical research, I speak the jargon pretty well for a layman, and I know enough Greek and Latin to be able to translate the jargon back into English when I encounter an unfamiliar phrase. Also, I was trained in science, and I'm probably just as smart as you are, intellectually. So when you talk down to me, you're wasting time for both of us. If I get frustrated at my lack of progress, it's partly because you waste most of our visits together going over what I already know, rather than helping me figure out how to move forward.

So, here's a little bit of advice when dealing with an atypical, difficult patient, like me: Listen to your patient. He knows what is going on, and he can report his symptoms to you very clinically and accurately, if you let him. Fucking take the time necessary to educate yourself about your client's unusual constellation of problems, so that together you can figure out what to do next, instead of constantly going over the same ground. Your patient is under a tremendous burden of stress surrounding his situation, and if you're not actually going to be helpful you are in fact making things worse. And finally, don't blame the patient. He really has tried everything that's been suggested to him, and really, truly, most of it really did do more harm than good.

Your difficult patient does want to work with you to move forward. He has in fact explained all of this to you before, has in truth been asking for your help all along. You just haven't been listening.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that your patient appears to be acting like a difficult patient? Is it any wonder that he is frustrated and impatient and annoyed with you? If you will just kindly fucking catch up to him, all is forgiven, and can we please get on with it.

That is all.

You Must Honor Illness

(a Spiral Dance essay)

I've felt pulled off-balance for so long, off-center and not-grounded, and for good reason. I had been ill for twenty years, although it hadn't been diagnosed as what it was till near the end of that time. Then the cure had its own pulls off center, a genuine cure but it comes with its own set of problems, changes and re-creations of what was and what can never be again. I still don't know what the new normal is. If there is one. If there will ever be again a sense of stability and direction.

I spend all this long day waiting, a day where nothing bad happened but I just couldn't get rid of that sense of darkness and void lurking just behind everything you see. Out of the corner of the eye the fabric is ripped away and the play is revealed for what it is, a painted backdrop over nothing. If you turn your head too quickly, the paper rips and you see through the world into that emptiness behind all manifest things.

And that's why I often feel off-balance and fogged out and ungrounded lately. It's just that I don't have any maps any more. All the old maps are useless or incomplete. When you've drifted this far out to sea, there's no sense of which direction to go to find land again. It's water heaving all around, and no smell of shore.

So in the past few days, after a summer's long pull down towards the smiling void, I find myself turning, or returning, to those sources that have given me a sense of center before, a center from which to extend. And so this morning I read, out of nothing that could remotely be called a coincidence, words that linger with me all this long day. Words that come back to me as I fail to find my center and extent once again this late night:

You must honor illness. It gives us time for reflection. As hard as it is, it helps us sort out our priorities. I know there's nothing worse then someone telling you, 'This illness of yours is a gift.' No, it's painful and discouraging. It's not a gift, but it is a time to pull back and take a closer look at one's life.

—Father Sergei, quoted in Mary Swander's luminous book The Desert Pilgrim: En route to mysticism and miracles.

I have tried hard, many times, to honor my illness, and my recovery. Illness has not been a gift. It's been a passage that more or less removed any chance of meeting whatever ambition I had felt years ago for purpose in this life. This doesn't mean there was no direction, but such maps as there were were never more than puzzle codexes in a lost language leading you away from treasure island. Illness sent me adrift and astray. The beneficial knowledge that comes from hindsight about this illness is knowing that in fact my failures in life, so labeled when they occurred, were not a failure of will, not a personality defect, nor a lack of focus. The life-force truly had been sucked out of my blood, blood which tastes like a lost ancestral ocean. I was neither too lazy nor unambitious, I was in truth waylaid by gravitational tides fully veiled until this recent complicated cure.

Still the recovery has been a time of reflection. My priorities, after almost dying, were reshuffled into a new configuration. I know what my purpose here is now, and I know upon reflection what I'm for, what I do best: I am a maker, a bard, an artist, who's really not very good at much else. Self-knowledge is not all roses and lilies, though, as I have discovered I lack any patience for idiocy that would further leech my essence. I know my mortality from the inside out, having almost lost my ability to live. I have a lot to do, and don't want to waste any more time doing it.

So that's the necessary distinction: My illness was no gift, yet it did provide me other gifts. Of self-awareness, of self-confidence in knowing what I'm good at and what I'm supposed to do with it. I'm still recovering. Not what was lost, but what I never had but dreamed. A dream wherein a map guides me no land that ever was, but an island come into being as one discovers it. There's nothing on the other side of those mountains till you cross their range and see what's there, the act of vision itself what solidifies void into form, light into mass. That effortless conversion of energy into matter.

Darshan: video

Darshan, 2012

Music, Images & Words by Arthur Durkee.

AD: shakuhachi, synthesizers, meditation bells

This is basically a music video for my recent CD, Darshan, which was written to be used for yoga, meditation, Reiki, and other similar purposes. The setting is the same meditation hall in the Japanese garden that I go to when I can to get back to center, meditate, etc.

I am now thinking about doing more music videos for Darshan, as I think this turned out rather well. Stay tuned.

Songwriting: The Power of Love

This afternoon I went over to a coffee house I go to sometimes to write. It overlooks the Rock River, and has a nice vibe to the space. Sitting there I started to notate the final draft of a new song. I had finished the words (lyrics) over the weekend, after having struggled with them for several weeks. I had a pretty good idea how I wanted the song to sound, and earlier on had sketched out, as usual, a few musical phrases and chord patterns. This afternoon I sat down and got to work in earnest. I finished the song later, at home. I would have finished it at the coffee shop but I ran out of score paper and had to come home to print out one more score page.

Since I completed the large commissioned work for a concert of new music for Perfect Harmony Men's Chorus in Madison, WI, I have learned that to avoid depression I had better always be working on an artistic project. I can afford no gaps in between projects. I need to always be working on something, and always have something new to get busy on, the very minute some project is completed. I've learned since the surgery last summer that not only can I use art-making as a way of coping with daily and moving forward with life, that also works to well to keep me from falling into the realm of Bad Thoughts. Writing this song was all about keeping myself working, artistically, which does help keep away the Bad Thoughts. It's too easy to fall down that gravity well of dark and brooding worries, otherwise.

Right after I finished the large commission in October, I started to feel depressed. Started to feel worries about the future begin to creep back over me again. I had a few weeks of things getting worse. Then I was commissioned to create a new CD of music for meditation and healing, and produced Darshan. That project was finished just before Xmas 2011, and sent off to the client in time for the holidays. Then I had this new song to work on. The point here is to always have something to work on. Don't let gaps between projects get very big; better yet, don't let them develop at all.

And my attitude about life has mostly been better, as a result. The holidays this season were rough, as bad as I can ever remember them being. A lot of factors contributed to that, not least some plans that feel through, and not least because of some of my other friends also having a really bad time lately. But now the holidays are in the past. Even if it's hard to believe, some days, you have to keep on going as if everything was okay, and that life will go on. You have to make plans, even in the face of desperate worry about your future. You have to act as if life will go on, and everything will be alright, and that life is worth continuing. You have to have that kind of attitude. Otherwise the forces of entropy win.

So, today I finished a song. And that feels really good.

This song was written with the intention to perform it as a fundraiser Cabaret next March. Every spring Perfect Harmony puts on a variety show, a Cabaret, as a fundraiser. This annual event brings in an audience of fans and new friends every spring for dinner and a show. There is usually also a silent auction as another fundraiser, to which I have donated artwork in the past.

I wanted to get this song written now, so that I had time to learn how to perform well. I will off on another roadtrip for awhile this winter—dietary issues, ostomy, and other matters notwithstanding—and I will need to have song memorized and up to performance level by the time I get back.

It's an odd moment that I'm sure many more experienced songwriters feel: that moment when the song isn't yours anymore, but another song you need to learn to be able to play it well. It has its own objective existence, now, and even though you wrote it, it's not "yours" anymore. So you step back, obtain a level of objectivity, and commit to rehearsals as if you learning any other song, rehearsing as though it was a song someone else wrote that you're learning to sing, now. That's just part of the process.

The song's topic is one that has synchronistically been on my mind for several weeks now. Because of some of the problems and situations, and questions about life and its meanings, that have been happening to some of my friends, and to other people I care about. The topic of the song is reflected in its refrain:

The love of power
or the power of love—
which way will you move?
Which one will you choose?

That's a question that keeps coming up. I doubt it's limited to just my circle. It's a question that the whole globe is asking itself right now. It's the question that lies behind many political ambitions and social justice crises happening right now in the world at large. It's the question that drives us towards finding spiritual answers to every problem.

The love of power, or the power of love?

Here's the first page, just to give a taste of this song and its format:


(Click on image to see larger version.)

And here are the first two verses and the refrain, as seen on this score page, to give you a taste of what the song's about:

I can see in the dark
it’s where I used to live
that place in the shadows
where everything burns
as the sun falls down
rats chew at the sieve
dark blood on the moon
means the world is done.

The laws of nature
are not the laws of man
and the laws of spirit
means you help who you can
what you send out
is what comes back again
better make love a promise
better stick to the plan.

The love of power
or the power of love—
which way will you move?
which one will you choose?

•

I've become a songwriter without ever intending it. This is the first score of this type that I've written in probably a decade. I've written some jazz charts before, and pieces for bands that I've been part of, in the past. It's interesting to me, to reflect upon the past, and realize that the last time I wrote anything like this was when I used to live in Madison, a decade ago. Obviously, there's some connection between writing music and being involved in the music scene of Madison, WI. I've played the occasional jazz gig since moving back to this area, since I was free to resume my own life after my parents died. A couple of weekends from now, I will be playing live improvised music for an art gallery opening in Madison. And then in March, I'll perform "The Power of Love" for Cabaret. Then in June perfect Harmony will premiere Heartlands, the major commission for chorus and piano that I spent most of 2011 writing. That will be a full concert of my new music.

So obviously Wisconsin has been fertile ground for me, for writing music. I intend to keep up with that. I intend to continue on this path. I intend to make a career of writing music. I intend to keep writing songs, as well as contemporary classical music. I intend to just keep writing, no matter what. It feels both good and intriguing that I am writing in new directions and styles, that I continue to develop diverse musical tools and ideas, that even now I can't predict what I'll write next, only that I intend to keep writing, no matter what.

So Mote It Be.

Darshan

Soon after I completed Heartlands, the large choral commission I've been working on of throughout most of 2011, I was commissioned to make a CD of music for meditation, yoga practice, Reiki sessions, and other healing work. A friend's mother had been using my CD Trance for some time, and had given it some praise, so I was commissioned to make a new CD as a gift. I worked on this project in my recording studio for about a month, and completed the CD just before Xmas 2011. It's entirely instrumental music, prominently featuring shakuhachi, and Tibetan and Japanese meditation bells.

This year I plan to finally figure out how to market more of my music online, including this new CD as well as some older CDs. Here's the title track as a taste of things to come:

Darshan    

—AD, shakuhachi, computer music instruments



The musical soundscape was created in part by using some music apps on my new iPad. I got the iPad after completing Heartlands. I can see that for me the iPad is going to be a fantastic creative tool, both for music and photography, and likely in ways I haven't even thought of yet. The other cool thing about the iPad is that finally computer design and technology is approaching what I've wanted for years, after becoming a Star Trek fan. Design follows art in the best way possible.

"Darshan" is a Sanskrit word that means "see" or "seeing." In Hindu usage it refers to beholding the gods, or God, directly, and can also refer to those annual festivals when images of the gods are taken out of the temples and paraded through the streets for all to see. There is an implication that what we see also sees us: a mystical truth not limited to Hinduism, but found in most mystical traditions. As the great Medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, "The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me."

"Darshan" in Indian philosophy also is used to describe worldviews and mindsets, the distinctive in which a systematized philosophy looks at things, including its exegesis of sacred texts. Yoga itself is considered a darshan. Yoga is a form of kinesthetic meditation, after all, like walking meditation or the highest levels of some martial arts.

So, Darshan is about the seeing the divine, the encounter with the divine. One realizes in the encounter that one is not separate from the divine, but all are part of the One. And one realizes that one's actions are not other than the will of the divine, which after all is made of all beings and what they will.



The blessing of doing this smaller commissioned piece of music is that it filled the gap between the completion of the writing of Heartlands, and the beginning of the rehearsal process. I have learned, as never before, that I need to always have something to work on. And the past few weeks have been very stressful, even dire and desperate at times. Multiple stressors all came home to roost at the same time. (Including having to change my dietary regimen (again!) just before the winter holiday season. The good news is that the new, even more restrictive dietary regimen is in fact effective, and I have made real progress losing weight this past week or so, for the first time ever since the surgery last summer.)

The wisdom of artistic perseverance is to make sure you are always working on multiple projects, and that as soon as you finish one, you start another. Don't wait. Dive right in. Never leave a gap in between projects, because a gap between projects is the door by which depression and despair can enter. It's not about doing make-work to keep yourself preoccupied or distracted: this is real work, not make-work. It's about knowing that I stay more grounded and focused when I have a big creative project of some kind to occupy my attention. It's a way of channelling one's energy in the best way, and preventing those inner voices of panic and depression form gaining a toe-hold. It helps with being able to cope with the day-to-day.

Therefore, as I completed the Darshan CD, I began writing a new song, maybe to become a new set of songs, for myself to sing and play. One of these will probably get premiered at a fundraiser in March. The style is more loose and jazz-pop-rock than formal. I'm still working on the lyrics, but after several false starts, the pattern fell into place, and progress has been made. All I anticipate needing to notate finally is melody-and-words, with chord symbols for the chord changes. I'll write lead sheets, in other words, instead of fully realized charts.

Then I'll do my best to learn to sing the song and play Stick at the same time.

I feel like my Stick playing is revitalized, as I wrote about after seeing Tony Levin in concert a couple of months ago, which I felt gave me permission to go my own way as a player; even to play simply and cleanly, and not need to become another solo Stick artist who can play anything. I have my limits, and I'm okay with them. Practice is what it takes to stretch them, that's all.

What's New

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something,—because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

The old saying goes "A fish doesn't know he's breathing water." One part of that is that self-awareness, the root of conscious awareness, requires threshold wetware: the memory span of a goldfish is about five seconds.

But the real point is what Wittgenstein is getting at: Things are so familiar to us that we do not notice them.

I constantly discover that most people I know don't think about many of the things that I do. I wonder if it's part of being an artist that makes you notice more things than most people do. Or at least other things. It's common wisdom that artists see things in ways most people ignore. One definition of art is that art makes you, the viewer, perceive things in new ways you never experienced before. Open doors and windows into ways of seeing that you never thought of before.

The flip side of this is that, as Jean Cocteau famously said, We tend to judge the new by what is familiar. There is always a period of education in new art. There is some art that remains so new and out-of-the-box that it can take a long time for its impact to become absorbed and normalized. Some new art never achieves any kind of popular recognition because it remains uneducated about.

Sometimes the dreaded superhero Captain Obvious arrives on the scene, stating the obvious as always. It's surprising how often I think I'm stating the obvious and folks around me hadn't noticed what I was talking about. My superhero secret identity remains secure because no one can believe it. They don't even notice it.

These days, since the surgery last summer, I often feel fog-brained and fuzzy around the edges. A measure of how clear my mind is, is how many things I can multitask. I've usually been able to do about four things at once. Since the surgery, and still getting over the cognitive impairment caused by anaesthesia, I can still manage to multitask two things most days. But sometimes it takes all my energy to just stay focused on one task alone. Lots of folks tell me that one thing at a time is all they can handle—which is hyperbole to an extent, and most people can multitask two things reasonably well. Driving and talking on the cellphone at the same time is not, or should not be, one of those occasions. Most folks drive worse when splitting their attention in that way. Still, for me, only being able to do things at once is a sign not of ability but of relative impairment. I am diminished still by the lingering cognitive impairment caused by anaesthesia, and still not fully back to myself. Surgery takes a lot out of you, not all of it physical. It can be extremely frustrating.

But cognitive clarity is something most people take for granted. They just assume it will always be there. When it's gone, it can be a tragedy, as memory is one of the roots of personality and identity. You only notice it when it's gone. Since the surgery, and the way that death-and-rebirth has rearranged my life, I am clear that I will never take anything for granted ever again. It's all new, still, like doing everything again for the first time. My mind cannot go back to complacency. I am unable, at least for now, since the surgery, to take anything for granted even in the simplest way. I assume nothing. It could change any moment. You realize how ephemeral and precarious is the balance that we take for granted as the way of life. It goes down to the basics: Will the truck start today? Just because it did yesterday is no guarantee. Post-surgery life is a constant awareness that there are no guarantees. No guarantees about anything. It could still all fall apart tomorrow. I made it through this surgery, but I am not done yet with either healing nor with reconstructive surgery.

I have a long road still to go. I still need solace and support from friends. I realize now as never before how what holds your sanity together is the web of friendship. Nothing keeps you grounded in your own identity better than the mirror given to you by the people who know you best. Even when those mirrors are funhouse distorted, they remain panels that cast light back at you.

At the end of this road is the certainty of my own death. My own sense of mortality is present to me as never before. I've now been through a few almost-death experiences in the past couple of years—not the first of my life, as I've had the opportunity to die at least four times previously, although I'm still here—and am more aware than ever that there is an end-point, an omega-point. I don't know when it will be, and I'm in no hurry to meet it. I have a lot that I still want to do. I have finally figured out that my truest purpose in life is to make art, to be an artist: and I feel like I am just starting out, starting all over again. If I live another 20 or 30 years, that's long enough to be an entire career.

This self-awareness is new. Rather, it's not new on the intellectual level, or a philosophical level, but it's very new on the somatic level, the if you will gut level. Ouch. Gut level is a little too visceral an analogy for me, now, having had some of my guts literally taken out. This knowing goes deep down into my tissue in ways that I've not previously known about. I always knew about mortality, I've seen a lot more death than most people do in the normal course of life, but that was other people who were dying, not my own flesh. When it's your own flesh, it becomes very personal. Hard sometimes not to take it personally.

Yet I've always noticed things more than the people around me. I learned some years ago, around the time I was training extensively in the martial arts of Ki Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan, that I perceived and observed and could catalogue somewhere between two and four times more than my friends. It's not that my ears are sharper, or my eyes—my eyes are legendarily near-sighted—rather it's the processing of data. I don't filter out things so much. I wonder again if that's common to many artists, this extra sensitivity that is really a lack of filters, a lack of taking things for granted.

Wittgenstein was an artist of philosophy: his philosophy is so well-written and readable, it serves as a model for thinking out loud. He certainly noticed and thought about things many others have simply ignored because they were too common to be bothered over.

I am constantly reminded on each visit to a thrift store that even the most incredibly tacky objects on display were nonetheless designed and made by someone. Done in poor taste, perhaps, but designed. Everything you take for granted, even the fork and spoon you eat your meals with, were designed by someone, and manufactured by someone. Great contemporary designers of everyday objects that no-one thinks about until they see them redesigned in fresh ways—tea kettles, napkin rings, automobiles—are great designers in part because they make us notice things. I'm thinking of type designers and graphic artists who created revolutions in their fields by creating entirely new looks: David Carson, for example. Or architects who also designed everyday household items in a fresh and unified style: Michael Graves, for example. I also think of artist who designed their environs, their houses, the objects on display, that created not only a personal space, but an eternal, spiritual space: Georgia O'Keeffe, for example. The object with which you are reading this text was designed. Everything you never notice but use everyday was designed by someone.

These are the things we ignore. It's stunning, really, how much we are able to ignore.

Since I died and was reborn I'm not able to do that anymore. It's interesting. Some days overwhelm me with new experiences, new objects, new things. Even things that were familiar to me before the death-and-rebirth are new again, as if I'd never seen them before. I am constantly tripping over the familiar as if it were new and unknown. The experiences I've been through have made it impossible for me to ignore this. I wonder if this awareness will ever fade. Perhaps it will fade a bit without ever really going away. Perhaps it will fade back just a little, become less foreground, will still being in my mind. Perhaps it will fade away in several years, and I'm still too close to those life-changing events that caused this change in perspective. Perhaps this perceptual shift is to become permanent. Time will tell, as will emotional distance.

Regardless, I can't imagine now how I could ever go back to things as they were before. I am changed, my art is therefore changed, and I my perception may as well permanently changed. It wouldn't be a surprise if in the long run this was all permanent. It's all still rather new, as I said, but I find myself getting used to it. I keep running into life as if I was about to trip over it, but that's all to the good: more signs I'm still alive. For now, that's enough.

Meanwhile, I'd encourage anyone to notice everything. Don't take anything for granted anymore. Don't assume that things will go on as they always have. Nothing is guaranteed. Sooner or later it all falls apart. What you can do is be prepared for that disintegration and reintegration, by not clinging to what you think will never change. Of course it will change: change is a given. How we respond to change is what matters.

Process of Writing 18: Fits and Starts

Last week I was experiencing what I came to realize was post-surgery depression. I had a bad week, my emotions on a hair trigger, my fears and anxieties about the future very much with me. I was feeling a lot of physical pain inside, as well, discomfort, and unhappy tissues. I wasn't sleeping well, or comfortably, or restfully. I finally talked it over with the surgical nurse, and was reassured. Post-surgery depression is common. So are the physical sensations I've been feeling, with this kind of surgery. I still have an extended recovery to go through, but at the same time, six weeks out from surgery my outside scars are basically healed and I'm cleared for more strenuous physical activity, including bending, walking, lifting, more exertion. I'm cleared for more normal levels of physical activity, even though I still have limitations and some tender spots. Yet things are better, even if sometimes I still hurt for no apparent reason. The past couple of days, I've indeed felt some pains that were annoying and unpleasant, but i strove on anyway.

Meanwhile, I was so tied up in knots that I got almost nothing done, creatively. It was a very stale, stagnant week. I found it very unpleasant. That's an understatement.

Then, the weather improved, cooling off and drying out, so that I could open the windows at night for fresh air, and sleep more deeply in the cool night air. A couple of days ago, I started pounding away at the piano again. Patterns and changes, little lines of melody, some few words. Little fragmentary ideas towards a small piece.

When things are coming only in small fragments, what you have to do is write down the fragments, and have faith that they will all stitch themselves together later.

At some point, it's like crossing a threshold, and suddenly a pattern emerges, or comes clear, or reveals itself, or is discovered, and you know what goes where. Then it's just a matter of sorting your fragments into their proper, final places. The pattern self-organizes, or you become aware finally of the pattern that was there all along, but only on a subconscious level.

I wonder now if my way of writing music is permanently or only temporarily changed by this surgery.

There is a definite before and after. There is the way I wrote most of the music before surgery, which was sitting at my worktable, away from the piano, and hearing the sounds inside my head. Since the surgery, I'm finding that way of working very difficult. I've only been able to write a few times since the surgery, and mostly at the piano.

The first piece I completed since the surgery, some two weeks ago now, I had to completely write at the piano, and then go back and check by playing through it again. In fact, a day or so after I thought I'd finished the piece, I was playing through it one more time, and found a couple of errors that I then fixed.

I'm told there can be cognitive effects that linger on for a long time after surgery, caused in part by the trauma of the experience itself, and the exhaustion that results from the trauma, but also caused by the lingering effects of the anaesthesia drugs and pain medications. Most of those meds flush out of your system fairly soon, but tiny amounts can still linger in your system for months after. I've heard plenty of stories of people feeling mentally fogged for months after their surgery, then suddenly their minds clear. It's perhaps simply a matter of time.

Right now, I feel at times like writing the words and music for the new commission is an uphill struggle. It can be quite hard on some days, adding to the overall frustration of the new life, post-surgery. Everything is new, now, again: diet, physical limits, self-image, creative process.

I'm working on a short song today. One thing noticeably different about the creative process is that the music is coming before the words, and the lyrics are revealing themselves only as I write out the vocal parts. I'm not writing the words in advance, this time, as I have usually done up till now. The lyrics now seem to emerge from the music, Or, it's a gestalt, all happening at once. That's different. I'm also having to write all the piano parts for this piece at the piano. Also, I'm writing the piano parts first, then the choral parts and lyrics come after I have the piano part down. It's emerging, so to speak, backwards, in terms of writing process, compared to previous pieces. It's a short, angry, rhythmic piece for full chorus. It's part of the group of gathered Stories, although where it will fall in the Stories sequences of collages is as yet unclear.

Maybe my own frustration and anger, since the surgery, is leaking into this piece, but I find myself fairly passionately intent on the writing. The words come out when the melody's already down, and so far they're questions. I think it might become a song about the bad things people say and do to each other when they're in a relationship. The most memorable sentiment, so far, and the opening line, is, Can you love me enough to let me go? Some of the words I've gotten are the kinds of questions people ask each other when they're trying to work out how to love each other. I suppose this isn't just a gay problem, but a problem every person has, sooner or later.

•

Later:

Late at night, now, I shall not complain. I'm five or six pages into this piece, which isn't all that much music, to be honest, as this is a fast tempo piece. It's fast-moving, with a driving, insistent rhythmic pattern cycling between 6/8 divided duple and 6/8 divided triple (3 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 2). (You can also think of this as 6/8 + 3/4.) So five or six or so pages in, I'm only approaching the midpoint.

But suddenly it's getting easier to write. I knocked out those modular fragments over the past few days, mostly at the piano, and just now, the parts have started to fall into place. Like most of the individual songs within the Stories collections, it's not a long piece—but it's an intense one, driven rather than soaring. Now that I know the overall form, I can at least sketch out the scaffolding, and fill in the details as I go forward. I'll perhaps finish it sometime tomorrow.

The words are still coming after the music comes. I now have the words for the first two sections—the overall form is starting to look like A, B, A-modified, C—and the rest will follow. At least I know how many syllables per line now.

That's another interesting thing about writing these lyrics for this commission: Many of these song lyrics have uneven, variable line lengths within each stanza, although each stanza has the same overall form, with a varying number of syllables per line. I am letting the words be through-composed, even though once I have a poetic structure for a given lyric, I tend to stick to it. (A good example of this lyric style is a song completed just before the surgery, "Silences Here.")

The flexible line length makes the lyrics seem more natural. More like speech, or the sort of high-end Broadway song which seems half-recited and which propels narrative, rather than being a strictly-metered ballad-form that becomes too metric, too predictable, too sing-songy. I also prefer slant-rhymes and off-rhymes to pure end-rhymes. The rhymes sometimes fall within the line, too, rather than at the end.

And so we go on. Progress is being made, even if I still feel stuck from time to time.

Clouds from Many Angles

I take fast walks around the block now to gradually increase my exercise, adding more time or speed or distance gradually. The goal being to start burning more calories then I take in. This is all part of the recovery after surgery, and the work to restore and improve health. I took a fast walk at noon, with storm clouds building to the west, and rumbles of rolling thunder off in the distance. It began to lightly rain just as I returned to my own front walk and unlocked my door.

Yesterday the sky was filled with dramatic cloudscapes. I grabbed the camera and went for a drive out into the farmfields. I got several good photographs of dramatic forms hovering over the tall green tassled corn, sometimes gaps of blue sky appearing through a tunnel of grey and white and steel blue grey. There were drops of rain on the windshield as I drove, from time to time, but it wasn't a heavy rain. Other moments the sky was layered greys and steels, darkly ominous anvils above and darker featureless clouds below, pregnant with rain. I wandered through the afternoon with the camera, stopping at times to frame an image. I drove back into town by back farm roads that no one but locals ever drive on, and stopped at the giant hardware and farm supply store. I stood in the parking lot making more photographs, then walked around the store for more exercise.

funnel of sky
past rolling pins and flights:
flash of heaven

Walking around the block one more time a half-hour before midnight, to walk off some energy. Feeling restless all evening, legs twitching with the desire to move, but feeling tired mostly. The sky half-filled with scudding clouds, thin peels covering the full moon then vaporizing. The moon blazing with silver radiance, light flooding the clouds that scud past it. On the eastern horizon, above the houses and trees, stacked thunderstorm clouds move off further east, their tops illuminated pale silver-blue by the full moon’s light. As I walk, they strobe and flicker with silent lightning from within. Layers and shapes revealed in flash what the moon's light made seem featureless.

midnight thunderheads
to the east lit by full moon:
lightning flash within

Guts

At first there's nothing you can do but endure.
It takes all your energy to like it, what's been done to you.
Nothing happens quickly. It's all slow, immersed in distance,
a blur of waiting, half-bored, for anything to happen.
A lot of full stops. Nothing flows except those fluids
you'd rather not think about. That damn nasal tube
with its transparent flex full of your inner flux being sucked away.
Disgusting. A charming portrait of soul reduced to nothingness.
And the button to cancel pain by that catheter stuck into your spine.
Makes it all numb. Mind unable to reboot, just floating along.
But the allergies to some of the pain meds means you don't
even get to have fun. Just the floating world, suffering alongside.

It's just as well we can't remember pain, after awhile. It's good it fades.
Otherwise we'd be in dread of it always floating back. We'd lock ourselves
into repetitious nightmares of avoidance, inflexible fears. Memory has
beneficent safety, an anodyne, ways of forgetting what it's not best
to retain. Rehearse what I want to recall, let go of the rest.
The garden's half-wild this summer, since I can't stoop to weed.
No kneeling. No bending over. No lifting things heavier than a water glass.
Getting stronger, but those staples in my gut made a zipper stitch
in my side if I bend over too soon, too far, too often. A long
afternoon's summer dog-day nap will suffice. I may miss all summer,
either napping or restlessly pacing the cage walls. The dog analogy's
a good one, a mutt in pain will pace in patterns I catch myself
emulating. It's the animal self that's in control now. Given so much attention
to the mortal flesh, its echoes of complaint, I've been forgetting
to sit and meditate. The zafu's gotten lonely for my sore ass.

I can't drink much wine yet, so the Chinese poets will have to
get high and chant poems on the moon-viewing porch
without my febrile contributions. The pain pills get in the way.
An ascetic's puritanical paradox: pills to prevent pain
as well prevent some pleasures. Things I'm told I cannot do.
I'm being good, and following all the rules, for once. No pain,
no brain, no rain. It's been so long, so long without unraveling,
I can't remember what it feels like to have a pain-free day.

My sliced open gut still complains, when I sit or lie on my side.
Things inside me still bitch about being jostled around,
cut loose, reattached, stapled up and told to wait, wait, wait.
Legitimate complaints, when I bend or flex the wrong way,
too fast. Some nights' sleep lost over being unable
to find the right configuration of limbs and guts along the futon.
Like some vigilant watchtower, a visceral reminder of limits.

Pain is a postal address along a long road towards new life.
You stop in to visit, never lingering. What burns you stirs you.
Guts and glory distant cousins who don't talk anymore.
Somewhere there's a fence line across an open desert,
a pointless boundary marker, nothing visible from the air.
The hardening zipper under where the staples came out,
firm to the probing finger, even though the skin looks new,
somewhat shiny, not very red anymore, just a pale ember.

And there are dismembered nights. Lying in the chair, restless, unable
to sleep, between the sore guts and the sore ass. No meditation
pillow can conquer a sore ass. At least not so soon after.
Can't toss and turn without hurting, can't lie still without pain,
can't find a comfortable place to lie, no place between.
Play that music loud, Mr. Composer, loud enough to drown out
the inner voices bitching about this and that. Drown in sound,
lose mind to music. Something like a switch that music can trip
when nothing else can. It pisses me off.

Last nights with family and friends in the house, then long nights
alone. I don't get tired as fast as I did, weeks ago, still don't
feel ready to be on my own. It's all too much. I could barely stand
to gather and take out the trash. Too much. Overwhelm is a
country where big things can't be made smaller by simply doing.
Maybe I should get a dog. I'm more comfortable with cats, though.
A simple presence in the house, even an aloof one. Not all purring
is a comfort. Some sound bellwether a breaking.

Nothing to be done but spill your guts. All over the page.
Nothing left but the recordings. Switch them off. They repeat
too often. And often. Boredom is the inability to escape the city
of hell. Dis is the place. You thrash, as much as you safely are able.
And turn over in your sleep. Maybe there will be dreams.
It's so hard to remember, lately.



•

Some Notes:

This poem, unlike most, has taken a long time to write. Most poems happen quickly, for me, then there might be a resting period, before I look it over again, polish it up, makes necessary changes. But the initial writing is usually one extended moment, one connected period of time, the time it takes to write it down. With this poem, though, I started it almost two weeks ago, and kept abandoning it, then coming back to it. I could not let go of it.

The subject wanted to be written about. I don't care if this poem is just a diary-poem; most things I'm writing at the moment, post-surgery, fall into what I am loosely calling The Surgery Diaries: reflections, responses, notes, journal thoughts, all about the process of surgery, and recovery, and the good and bad days that pile up together like so many stacks of rustling leaves.

I don't feel that it's very coherent, for a poem—on the other hand, between the surgery, the pain meds, the lingering traces of anaesthesia, and general post-surgery tiredness, I haven't been very coherent myself. Some days I feel very blurry indeed. Maybe this poem is a truer representation of my current state of scattered mind then something more polished and precise would be. Maybe it's therefore more true.

It's always a challenge to depict state-of-consciousness in a poem, rather than merely describe it, or just talk about it. Depiction is harder, because you have to convey the experience being depicted, so that the reader feels like they're inside the experience, not divorced or distanced from it. Not all readers are comfortable with that. Some poets seem to write cerebrally precisely as a way of distancing themselves from their emotions. To the contrary, I prefer immersion. I prefer to depict. I prefer to recreate an experience, a state of mind, a vision, in the reader's mind. "Show, don't tell." I'm almost always on the side of "showing." Like Julian of Norwich, whose Showings are her account of what was shown to her in her many mystical experiences.

Just as I prefer passionate Dionysian immersion to cool intellectual distancing. William Wordsworth, the great Romantic poet, once defined poetry as "Emotion recollected in tranquility." Wordsworth was all for the primacy of craft over the passion of the moment, at least in theory; in practice, his finely-crafted poems are in fact very moving. Nevertheless, I find again and again that I disagree with his famous pronouncement. Not that I object to craft—but the proper place of craft is in service of the emotion. The cerebral poets err on the side of tranquility rather than viscerality. They prefer the cool laying-out of description over the heated immersion of evocation.

But poetry, like prayer, like hymns, like worship, began as evocation, as sounds and words spoken and sung to evoke the gods, to evoke an experience. I listen to certain pieces of music to evoke a mood. A shamanic journey can be triggered by music, and you ride the drumming there and back again. Jan Garbarek's music has always had that power, for me: something i can ride, there and back again. It can be cathartic.

Poetry is nowadays given too little credit for being cathartic. It is given too much credit for being a cerebral game, and not enough use for healing. Catharsis. Ekstasis. Eros. The Hmong peoples say, in their pantheistic shamanic religious tradition, "The spirit enters you, and you fall down." The ancient Greeks talked about "a god entered him, and he began to prophesy;" poetry for them was literally a divine art. Music has that power, for me. So does a poem, at least some poems, including some that I have written; albeit some of these same poems I feel I only took dictation on, or I was merely the receiver tuned into the akashic broadcast.

This poem, written in fits and stutters, may not in fact do what I want it to do. Time will tell, as always. It may not make it all the way to ekstasis, albeit the writing of it has been at least somewhat cathartic, else I shouldn't have kept returning to it. Time will tell if can stand up to other poems in its series, or genre, or subject matter. Writing a "perfect" poem wasn't my concern, here, and out of my blurred consciousness perfection was not likely anyway, unless the daimon entered me, and I fell down. (Which has happened with other poems in this series.)

Lest I damn the poem further with faint praise, lest I depict my own incoherence here as well as in the poem, I will finish by saying, this is what I have to do, some nights, in order to find the peace it takes be able to fall asleep. For the past month, since my surgery, family and friends have stayed with me, helping me, caring for me, assisting me during the post-surgery recovery, making food, cleaning, helping me with all those necessary and delightfully ordinary tasks one cannot do while one is still recovering. I will never take any of this for granted again: Being able to bend over, to pick up something that weighs more than ten pounds, to walk around the block, to have the stamina to cook all day then clean up the kitchen. My gratitude to my family and friends is deep and sincere.

And tonight begins the first night when I am truly on my own again. Do I fell ready to handle things on my own? Not hardly. Just having to take out the trash tonight was so overwhelming that I needed to sit in my chair, listening to evocative shamanic music, before I could get up and complete the task. I am deliberately, in this writing, in the poem, in the dark shamanic music I've been editing in my music software concurrently, trying to tire myself out enough that my tired yet anxious mind will shut down, drown itself out, and let me fall asleep. Which is one more reason I was able to finish this poem tonight: just to be able to feel like I got one godsbedamned creative thing done tonight, on a day that otherwise felt blurred, anxious, and harsh. Just one bloody little piece of creative work done, tonight, even if in the long run it's not my best work. Perfection is not the accomplishment here; completion is.

Affirming Previous Changes

(from The Surgery Diaries)

In talking about changes going on with my body, with my self, through this extended surgery and recovery cyclic process, I find myself impatient at times. I'm on that threshold where I feel better, sometimes very well, but it's at least partly an illusion. I'm not really ready to do the things I almost feel ready to do. There is a common wisdom in athletic injuries (in sports medicine) that when your previously ankle feels like it's fully healed, you still have several weeks to go. Because something newly-healed is still brittle, still weaker than it was. It might feel all right, but it still needs more time.

And that's exactly where I am right now. I need more time. I still need to take it easy. Impatience can be a whip.

My surgical incision is healing well, but it was a deep cut, a deep interior wound, and so I am still restricted in how I can strain the incision. I am not allowed to bend over too much, or to lift too much weight. I can feel the inner wound when I lie on my side in bed, in just a slightly bad position: shooting lines of sensation, not quite pain but not quite neutral, travel from my belly through to the root of my groin. One side is easier to lie on than the other. After awhile, the discomfort becomes too much, and I have to shift. I'm trying to not take any more pain pills, except at absolute worst need, but I've been glad one or two recent nights that I still had some left. Sometimes falling asleep is really difficult, because of the body's discomfort.

People tell me they're impressed with my positive attitude, but I don't feel very positive very often on the inside: I feel necessity, perhaps desire, most definitely determination. Some days this is mostly grim determination; and not at all some clichéd sports-biography inspirational-movie overcoming-obstacles-and-setbacks sort of guff. My attitude only seems positive sometimes. I can and do make grim jokes, gross jokes, at times, to help stay sane: the well-known black humor or gallows humor that existential hospital humor. I can make jokes about things that I find too disgusting to contemplate, those mornings when I'm tired from not sleeping well.

Some days it's really challenging to find any sense of humor at all. Even grim hospital humor.

Some mornings I would give almost anything for all this to be over and done with already. It's really hard to endure.

And I must give the negative feelings their due; it's important to get them out of your system, so they don't fester or linger or become toxic. But when you do get them out of your system, indeed they don't get stuck and toxic, they don't fester, and that's all to the good.

What I find myself increasingly impatient with, perhaps to the point of offending some folks, is those milestones I've already reached, when I bump into someone who has not.

First let me say that I do know that I'm not the most patient person in the world. Impatience has always been a vice, for me. I use the word "vice" deliberately, because it can become like an addiction, a psychology-altering habit: skewing your perception of reality in ways not dissimilar from those addicted to gambling or similar "vices."

I try to be polite, when the impatience is up, but I admit a few times I've snapped. And needed to apologize. Being my mother's son, I also sometimes have a bad habit of apologizing too often, even for things I don't need to apologize for; so I have to watch out for that, too. I know that both of these tendencies—impatience, and the compulsion to over-apologize—are rooted in my birth tribe's expectations of perfect behavior. I know that both of these tendencies are part of being a recovering perfectionist. I know I mostly slip into them when I'm vulnerable, tired out emotionally and/or physically, and my resistance is down. Mostly they're manageable, and sometimes they're not.

I think you can say "Sorry" too often. But I don't think you can ever say "Thank you" often enough.

Saying "Thank you" serves us well, on so many levels, from the social to the medical to the spiritual. I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful to have the energy, this otherwise blah morning, to be able to write down my whining complaints. I'm grateful to have come through this first surgery alive and relatively intact. I'm grateful to still be here. Period.

On a fundamental, daily, ordinary as well as extraordinary level, I feel that saying "Thank you" is the core of anything I might call spiritual. One of my favorite sayings (on the level of a slogan for contemplation or meditation) is a saying from the great Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart: If the only prayer you ever said was "Thank You," that would suffice. I believe that on every level, and I have done my best to practice that. (Which is why every year I write Gratitudes instead of New Year's Resolutions.)

As I write, my surgery was happening exactly three weeks ago this hour. The doctors and nurses, and everyone else, keep saying to me that I doing very well, that I'm ahead of the curve. For example, the surgical staples came out a week ago, which is considered a week early, for most cases. I've been healing more rapidly then expected. I have to take their word for all this, because it's all new to me. This is my body, not some theoretical story, and there are times when I listen and absorb what they're saying to me about how well I'm doing, but I don't feel it. I still feel like crap. This is my body, and it's a new experience, and I have nothing in my past experience to compare it to. I do listen to the tales of other patients that I am told, and some of those are comforting, even affirming. They remind me that there is still healing to be done, and miles to go before I sleep. They also validate that the goal of being able to go back to a regular life is possible, and going to happen, sooner or later. This period I'm in right now, which breeds impatience, is turbulent in part because I want to be there already, and I'm not.

•

To return to the point, finally, I find myself impatient with those same things I have already let go of, that others have not, when I encounter them. Some milestones are ones you need to learn more than once, till they sink in. Others are not.

What I want to do is affirm that some of the changes I had already made, before surgery, before the current changes in my life, I would do all over again. They were the right choices.

The choice to strike off on my own artistically, and not give much time to workshop situations anymore, where many of the same beginner-level lessons continuously cycle and recycle, and where the personal drama can often sink any interest in the arts.

The realization, which became a conscious choice, that making art is the best way to cope with whatever it is that is bothering me. Whether that is medical, personal, or psychological, making art is the best way I know to stay with it, and stay sane,

The decision to cease second-guessing the creative process. I can't direct it or guide it, and I choose not to. I follow the intuition and imagination wherever they want to go. I make art by listening to those inner intuitive voices, not by pre-planning an engineering scaffold.

The dietary changes I made some time ago, including the decision to go gluten free, that have affected my health positively, and supported my health through the worst of recent times. Some of these dietary needs might no longer be necessary, now that I no longer have an ailing colon; but some will be permanent changes.

The list could go on, but that's enough to make the point. I'm still searching, still exploring, still figuring what my body is like, now, still looking for the "new normal," whatever it turns out to be.

My impatient may indeed be a vice. I try not to let it dominate my discourse, but I do confess that when I am suffering, sometimes the impatience leaks into my discourse as a sharp-edged tone that suffers fools poorly. I suppose I've offended some folks lately. I make no apologies, though, whenever it becomes clear that their choice to take offense had nothing really to do with me, and everything to do with their own neuroses.

And that's another change: To not spend any of my energy accommodating the neuroses of others. It's not my problem if your life sucks. It's also not my fault. I have more than enough to deal with, just managing my own life, for now. I have no time for personal drama generated by people who have the luxury of wasting their time and energy on such things. I have enough real drama, of late, in my own life, that I have neither need nor desire to take on any more, be it yours or mine. It's nice that you have the spare life-force to burn, it's great that you have the luxury of burning your life-force in personal drama; I don't. And even if I did have the energy to burn, what I have learned from chronic illness, major surgery, and recovery, is that I would never choose to waste my life-force, ever again, on that kind of meaningless waste of time and energy. Life is too short to spend it on such inconsequential matters.

I make no judgments when I say that. I am speaking purely tactically and logistically, with no blaming or shaming involved. This is the big lesson from when you are forced to confront your own mortality: Life is precious. Life is short. Life is limited. Don't waste a moment of your life on anything that doesn't really matter.

I've given up blaming, and I've given up victimology; I've given up both of these in favor of a radical acceptance. First and always, to move forward, you have to simply accept things as being the way they are. You can't do anything to change them if you live in denial that anything might need changing. Acceptance precedes action. Just as self-esteem is the fundamental power of selfhood, far more important any other; because self-esteem is what makes all the rest possible. including genuine love. Toxic love, you will observe, always goes hand in hand with poor self-esteem; genuine love always is comfortable in its own skin, and need not possess the other, nor control.

Peace. Be still. Thank you.

Changes

I look at my body and realize: Everything is new. Major changes have been made. This gives me a chance to continue to make major changes.

Like losing weight. They need me to do that before the next surgery can happen, regardless. But I want to do it. And post-surgery my appetite is greatly reduced. I'm being physically active, a little more every day or so. Last night we walked around the block in the evening, the first time for me in a month, and stood in the street and watched the usual Saturday fireworks over the minor league baseball stadium a mile away.

I've been through some bad days this past week, with a lot of problems with the ostomy bags not working. But last night I got some good sleep, and had vivd dreams. I was in Chicago, trying to get across the river to meet someone downtown; but it was sort of a steampunk setting, a mix of older and newer technology, and the buses and the bridge over the river were old and new. I was taken across the bridge in a high, swinging gondola, frightened at the speed and the height of the passage. But the previous two nights I hadn't had any dreams at all. I didn't get to REM sleep, because of all the ostomy drama, and the stress of it. Today I feel tired but better. I need to mostly rest again all morning, then we'll see if I have the strength to take a walk this afternoon. It's going to be dangerously hot out all day, according to the weather forecast, so we might go over to the air-conditioned mall and I'll walk around there.

Given a forced major change—major, high-risk surgery, in which my entire colon was removed—why not use it as an opportunity to make other changes. The truth is: My body is different now. I'm still recovering from the surgery, not knowing fully just how different it is. There are probably going to be other changes that I haven't figured out yet. I emerged from surgery on a very restricted diet. Now I've been given permission to gradually return to a more normal diet. I am adding in one new thing a day, to see how my body (and ostomy output) respond to it now. Some things will be as before, some probably will not. You have to slowly explore, slowly determine.

Who is this new self, this new body, this new you? It's still too soon to say.

Changes there have been, and changes there will be. "This too shall pass." The only constant in life is in ephemeral, always-changing nature. So that song remains the same, even if we add new harmonies to it.

Zen Calligraphy and Healing

The last several days have been very difficult. The at-home nurses tell me, out of their extensive experience, that there is a trial-and-error period for new ileostomy patients like myself, while the stoma is still healing, changing size and shape, that involves finding the right appliances to use for the long term. Well, it has indeed been a trial full of many errors. In the past several days, the ostomy bags have come loose many times, leaked many times, needed to be replaced often, and I've lost sleep over it. This morning I really hit the exhaustion wall. I was so exhausted I couldn't even cry out my frustration anymore. Now, tonight, having rested all day long, I do feel better, and I'm hoping that I can get better sleep tonight, better than the past three days.



A few days into this trial, I pulled out the brushes and ink and brush pens, and sat down at my table on the porch to make some enso, to try and center and settle my mind. You can always tell how grounded and centered you are by drawing enso. Enso are circle cosmograms, that represent the circle of all things.



If you are grounded and centered, you will be able to draw a nearly perfect circle with a single stroke of the ink-filled brush. If your mind is not at ease, not empty, not in the state of no-mind, your enso circles will be imperfect, not circles, maybe not even round. I pulled out a stack of my good calligraphy cardstock paper, and made several enso. I started out poorly, and then gradually slowed down, took some breaths, and did some better enso. A kind of brush meditation.



Then it occurred to me that I also needed to do slogan practice. Slogan practice, used in both Japanese Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, is meditation on wisdom sayings. Slogans can be almost stereotypical, but contemplation of them can take you very deep, past the words, past the thought, into the being. So I took some of the enso that I had just made, changed brushes, and began filling them in with slogans and other sayings, and even a few drawings.







I realized that I needed to make art. But not just art to make art. When this healing process has setbacks like the drama I've been having around the ostomy bags failing for so many days and nights—setbacks that really frustrate, and more than once brought me to helpless tears—I thought I might take some of these enso and slogans and make them into a poster for myself.



I will put one or two of them up on the walls, where I can see them often, to remind me to find my center and return to my ground of being, when I fall off. Zen sayings as art posters to remind myself to return to center. To calm the mind. To let go of the suffering and just be in the moment.



Sometimes the frustration edges over into despair, and you feel like these trials will never be over. The nurses and doctors tell me they will, but not all of me believes that yet. I'm in the middle of this mess, it's my body, no one else's, and this has been really hard. My artist friend Alex, who has his own experience with bodily trials, reminds me that me feelings in this difficult time are legitimate and well-earned. He helped me today by validating what I was feeling, rather than trying to "fix" it.





So I will put up a couple of the most resonant of this Zen calligraphy enso drawings on my walls, where they will remind me to slow down, be patient, and go with the flow. Get through the process, don't fight it. Wisdom I very much need to hear right now.





I also remind myself that life will go on, even if right now it's not of very good quality. I will endure. I will not fade away. I will somehow make it through. How, and when, at this moment I cannot envision. All I really want right now is to catch up on the rest and recuperation that has eluded me these past few days.

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 11: Paper, Pencils, Fractals, Talismans

After drying the latest batch in the sun, and looking it over, I think this group is of mixed success. One or two experimental ideas produced lovely results, and one or two were acceptable if not first-rate. Not every experiment succeeds, after all: but the definition of an experiment, in both science and art, is that you learn as much from the failures as from the successes.



This particular experiment was of mixed quality. The idea was simple: I had recently purchased some beautiful hand-made marbled art paper at Wet Paint in St. Paul, a terrific art supply store that I visit every time I'm in the Twin Cities. When I lived in St. Paul, this was my primary source for all my art supplies. I purchased several sheets of beautiful hand-made papers, with the intention of using them for papier-maché projects, but perhaps also for hand-made books. Some of the sheets are sewable with thread, which sparks some interesting ideas combining multi-media, paper, and fiber art.

I made extensive photos of each of the sheets of art paper before filing them away, to be used for art projects.



I took a few of these art-paper photos and layered them in Photoshop, to make a more complex paper. I then printed that out as laser prints, and used the prints to make this bowl.



It's very pretty, visually, as it reflects the source material. The only thing lacking, I feel, is the texture of the hand-made papers. This is laser-printed photographs, which in many cases is terrific material for a papier-maché piece with a specific theme. I feel that some of my art bowls made from my prints have been like illustrations, in three-dimensional form rather than in book form. But this is pictures of paper, used as paper. So it's a bit "virtual," a bit removed from the original. As I said, visually it looks great; but tactilely it is a bit disappointing. Still, it might be a nice bowl to keep some other art supplies in, on my art desk.

So, an interesting experiment that almost works. What might work with this kind of collaged print paper in future is to use it as a background behind other papier-maché layered projects. For example, a tableau or vignette background framing photographs or illustrations; like a framed matte.

•



This is my favorite piece from this session of making papier-maché. I really enjoy its whimsy and color. It looks good from any angle, and is bright and colorful in the sunlight.

The process of making this bowl began with an experiment with colored pencils. I made random areas of color on a fibrous, dense paper that I knew would tear easily, and be good for papier-maché. I filled the sheet with colored pencil shapes, mostly rough triangles, then tore the sheet into other random shapes with no regard for where the colors were placed. In other words, the patches of color were themselves broken up by being torn up without regard to their forms. Then I assembled the bowl in another random order with no regard for color placements. What results is a pleasing riot of randomized color shapes, all hand-sketched using pencils. So for me this bowl feels more organic, more like an actual drawing, more "purely artistic."

This art bowl a bit of an homage to Henri Matisse, whose late-in-life works made with colored paper and scissors I admire greatly. Matisse is one of my artistic heroes precisely because he never stopped exploring and experimenting; he rarely repeated something once he had mastered it, and continually looked to new materials for inspiration. Towards the end of his life, when illness confined him to a wheelchair, and he was unable to paint, he had an assistant cover sheets of paper with solid washes of gouache, then cut out shapes with scissors and assembled them to make art. His illustrated book Jazz is a masterpiece made in this manner. Both whimsical and grand, humorous and serious, Jazz set a high standard for hand-made art books to follow. (The complete book is available in scale reproduction as a book, from publisher George Braziller.)



The colored pencils used here are mostly water-proof, although some colors did run a little when they were still wet. I daubed up the excess with a paper towel, as I usually do, and when the bowl dried everything looked smooth and solid again. It's a denser paper, absorbent like water-color paper, thicker and rougher of texture. This bowl actually dried faster than any of the others, in the sunlight. I am very pleased with how the color shapes came out; I'll probably try this technique again later. I might also try it with water-soluble colored pencils, which when wetted in the papier-maché matrix might run and blur into interesting solid colors.

•



This is a relatively large bowl made using paper prints of Photoshop pieces I had made a few years ago.

I have in the past designed gift-wrapping and other papers, patterns that could also be used for fabrics or wallpapers, based on fractal art generated from the Mandelbrot Set. I designed and collaged these forms in Photoshop, and printed sheets of paper via laser and inkjet printers. I have actually used these papers myself to wrap presents for family and friends.

This bowl was envisioned to use a colorful fractal pattern on the exterior, and a related fractal pattern on the interior, but in grayscale and B&W. The contrast between the almost painfully colorful exterior, and the serene, staid interior is intentional.



Fractals fascinate me, both for their elegant mathematical simplicity, and the beautiful, complex visual graphics that can be generated from those elegant mathematical formulae. I am certainly not the first artist to be fascinated by fractals—I have a special section on my bookshelves just for books on fractals and chaos theory, many of which are gorgeously illustrated—yet the infinite possibilities inherent in fractal-generated visual art make it possible for every artist to do something very different with the same materials.

My intent here was to make an illustrated art bowl using some of my fractal wrapping paper. I made a fairly large bowl, thinking it would interesting to use it as a container for other fractal-based art I might make later on. For now, it's just loud and fun to look at.

•


Marigold Shamanic Healing Bowl

This bowl I made purely for myself, and was the reason I began this current session of making papier-maché. Prior to going in for surgery, I had made a piece of visual art for myself, to use an invocation for healing. I combined a photo I had made of a field of marigolds with the image of my most recent EKG. I made a print of this piece and took it with me during surgery, to place in my hospital room where I could look at it every day and remind myself to heal, to get better, and to overcome.



The day I made this current group of papier-maché pieces was the first day since I had returned home from the hospital that I had felt run down, tired, and upset, out-of-sorts, and just plain icky. I was feeling a lot of emotions from the surgery and the hospital stay, and my body was likewise complaining of the traumas it had been put through.

As I have said many times before, sometimes the best thing to do, on such dismal days, is make art. When I make art, as I've also said before, I forget about everything else, and think only about what I'm doing. So even though I felt fairly lousy that morning, I made these papier-maché pieces. This Healing Bowl, made entirely for myself, was the only art I intentionally set out to make that morning. I am pleased with the results on several levels. The bowl was made to be another reminder to continue my healing journey, evoking once again the many healing properties of marigolds, and it sits now on the table in my bedroom.

Marigolds were also a favorite flower from my childhood in India. They grow prolifically there, and are used in many rituals, from weddings to temple offerings, from funerals to bouquets offered to the person you love. Their fragrance is wonderful, they are edible, and they are used in many healing potions and as a cooking herb. I love marigolds in every shape and variety, and I grow them now in my own garden.



This bowl uses my marigold/EKG image on its exterior, for color and to evoke a restoration of perfect health. The interior of the bowl uses several repeated copies of a drawing I made of the Horned God last autumn, which I scanned into the computer, then manipulated in Photoshop.

For my recovery from this traumatic, high-risk major surgery, for my journey through to new health, for the next surgery and recovery that I must still endure—for all that and more, I will invoke every Power that I can think of, summon all the help I can get, and rely on my family and friends for their support, both practically and in terms of prayers, good thoughts, wishes for well-being, or anything else that is offered. I am going through a major life-changing experience here, and I'll take all the help I can get, in whatever form it's offered! And I am and will remain eternally grateful for all of it. Beyond the gratitude, also, is a new life, which remains still a Mystery to me for now, but which I do know will be worth going through all the pain and suffering I have been going through now, including the surgery and recovery. It's all worth it in the end.

I put all of these thoughts into this Healing Bowl as I made it, channelling my intentions and hopes and prayers into my art-making. A ritual of art-making, an intention for the art that is made. Therefore, I don't really care if someone thinks this bowl is not as aesthetically beautiful as some other art I've made before. That's not the point. The purpose here is to focus my thoughts on my own healing, to remind myself that this process is going to take some time, and to be patient with that—and I can be patient, knowing that everyone I love is thinking of me, and wishing me well.

And art is one way to help me stay focused on that, and one way to make it manifest.

So Mote It Be!

Papier-Mache Art Bowls 10: Solar Drying

The day I had been home from the hospital for exactly one week was the first day I felt really down and out since coming home. I was emotional, felt fragile, felt under the weather and icky. It only lasted a day, and I've felt better since. The nurses and doctors all keep saying I'm doing really well, actually amazingly well this soon after surgery. I have nothing to compare my experience to, so in one way I just take their word for it and am grateful for the good progress, and in another way I feel reborn, brand new, like everything is being done for the first time, all over again. I'm learning about my body's new equilibrium, which is not settled into yet—the "new normal" if you will, that I have not arrived at yet. So everything is still al earning curve, still experimental.



Feeling down and out, though, that day, I made some new experimental papier-maché art bowls. I tried out some ideas that I had been thinking about for awhile, but hadn't had time to do, what with preparing for surgery and everything else that had been stressing me out. Once again, while making art I thought about nothing else. Every other concern went away—which is one good reason to keep making art throughout this recovery and healing process. The other, more fundamental reason to keep making art, of course, is that it is my best response to life, be it good or bad or neutral or just blah.



Since I made my papier-maché projects in the late morning, and it was another hot sunny summer day, I set the bowls out in the sunlight on the porch to dry them via solar heating. This sped up the drying process rapidly. The bowls took half the usual time to dry, and once they had firmed up enough to come out of their molds, they finished drying very quickly. Often I've made papier-maché at night, and left it out overnight to dry. This was faster and easier, actually, and convenient because the weather was cooperative. Obviously, solar drying is going to go better on sunny rather than cloudy days.



Solar drying this time was a two-stage process. First, set out the bowls in their molds to dry in the sun. Later on, typically only two or three hours later, I was able to remove the bowls from their molds, carefully, and continue drying them on paper bowls set out in the afternoon sunlight.



After taking them out of the molds, they dried quickly enough that I was able to turn them upside down, when firm, to finish drying. Everything was dried and firmed up long before sunset, so I could enjoy looking over the completed project in the late afternoon light, and again the following morning.

So when convenient I can recommend solar drying as a safe, accelerated drying technique for papier-maché. You will need to have a sunny location, preferably on an indoor floor or porch. You need clear sunny weather. And you need to be sure that the pieces are protected from any wind gusts, so that they don't blow over, or become damaged while still drying by being knocked around by wind, or similar environmental factors.

One or two of the bowls did slightly distort during the last stage of drying. I supposed I could have left them in the molds till they were completely dry, and avoided that. But the distortions were very small, and not displeasing. So even if I was a little impatient in experimenting with this drying technique, and perhaps took the bowls out of the molds a little sooner than usual, I think the end results were well justified by the process.

Advantages of Being Stuck at Home Post-Surgery

from the Surgery Diaries

Despite a little cabin fever, my mind is pretty clear. I'm on pain meds, but a very mild dose. The first night home was really bad, I couldn't figure out how to sleep without a lot of discomfort. Since then, though, I've been getting better sleep, and the occasional nap, in my big overstuffed recliner. It's not like I never slept there before, either. It's a good chair for it. Last night, in the cool night, I also slept for an hour on the porch recliner. I find myself waking a few times during the night, but move around a little then can get back to sleep. That first night home I had vivid nightmares; but I know from experience that general anaesthesia can do that to me, till it fades off.

So yesterday I sat down at the computer and a huge amount of file management that I've been putting off for awhile. My desktop is the most organized it's been in months.

That's one advantage of being back at home but mostly resting: lots of free time to do the little tasks one never seems to have time for otherwise.

Later today my sister and I are going to rearrange the kitchen pantry much more efficiently. A family friend has gifted me a Cuisinart food processor. How did I manage to survive this long without a food processor? One wonders. Last night we made scalloped potatoes, and they were fantastic.

My sister and brother-in-law are both foodies who love to cook, and are really good at it. I've learned a lot from them over the years, and become a pretty good cook myself. Last night we made scalloped potatoes from the Julia Child recipe, and used the new (used) Cuisinart to slice everything perfectly and practically instantaneously. This will be a big boon to me from now on: no wasted energy in the kitchen, especially now, when I need most of my daily strength for healing and recovery. I'm still not allowed to use the stairs to the basement, or to lift anything heavier than twenty pounds.

I walked around my garden last night, at dusk, with my sister. My lilies are amazing this year, now that they're all starting to open. They're huge and colorful. I took some fresh photos as I ambled, neither pushing myself too hard for walking, and not trying to bend over at all just yet. Unfortunately I don't know if the morning glories are going to make it. And it needs weeding, which I'm not able to do. So the front garden, the flower garden looks terrific, while the back porch garden could be better. Oh well. If I miss a season, it's for a good reason.

So the main advantage of being stuck at home post-surgery is that I'm getting some organizing done. Things that I wanted to get done earlier, but had neither the time nor the strength to do.

Yesterday the incision itched all day, but it was that kind of itching that means healing, not infection. Everything looks clean and fine. I spent time last night with no dressing on the incision, letting it air out, and this morning it looks really good. I'm going to keep covering it till after the staples come out, though, to avoid any irritation, or catching on clothing.

Yesterday morning I felt a little emotionally and mentally fragile. Today it's a clear, breezy summer day, and my mind feels clear. I'm going to make art today, one way or another. I'm finding myself having more energy than I expected, certainly this early in the recovery process.

I owe my surgeon an apology. When he first told me that some patients immediately feel more energized, after surgery, than they had in years, I found that impossible to believe. But that seems to be what's happening to me. I am surprised and pleased. So my apologies and my gratitude to him. I'll say as much to him next time we meet.

This morning I'm also aware of how much we take for granted in life. We are so fragile, and yet to resilient. Little things are what remind you of what in life really matters. The first real food I ate after surgery was like the first meal eaten in the Garden of Eden: revelatory, delicious, overwhelmingly tasty (even with some taste bud issues caused by the anaesthesia), and sublime. Each new post-surgery First Time has been feeling that way. Each day something new. I might have taken it for granted before, but I never will again. I appreciate every moment of every day like I never have before. What a glorious morning.

Home Again After Surgery

Lilies in my garden. Because of the hot weather, all my flowers have been blooming with gusto.

I've been back home here at my house since Friday afternoon. Everyone is telling me, nurses and doctors and everyone else, that I look and sound good, that I am doing extremely well, faster than average on the recovery, mind and body both ahead of the curve. As this is all very very new to me, I am taking everyone's word for it, and am glad for the positive feedback. In truth, I am surprising myself with all this; but then, I had no real expectations, as it's all a new experience.

They told me going into the hospital that I would be there from four to seven days; in fact, I left on the fourth day after surgery, after having spent only four nights in my hospital room. So that's pretty great. And as I write this, I was in surgery exactly one week ago; so that's pretty good, so far!

I know that I would not be doing this well without all the lovingkindness, support, good wishes, prayers, good thoughts, distance energy work, and so forth, that all of my family and friends have been sending my way. I am grateful beyond what words can contain right now. All I can really say is THANK YOU—and please keep the thoughts and prayers coming for awhile, as I still need them.


Labyrinth Prayers (new art made after returning home from the hospital)

Even though I am ahead of the curve on recovery, I still tire easily and often. So I won't be online all that much, and if takes awhile for me to answer a phone call or email, no worries. Everything is very day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and I must take it slow and careful.

That's the most important news. Now for some short summaries of the past week—amazingly, it's exactly a week ago, as I write this down, that I was being operated on in the surgical theatre. (I am keeping a journal of this experience, but it's ongoing, and not very coherent, so consider these as summaries.)

I'm told the surgery went well, by my sister and my other friend who were with me. I have no memories between when they put the epidural in my back—epidural for pain management during and after this abdominal surgery—and when I woke up in my hospital room; no other memories of pre-op, none from post-op. I just woke in what was to become my room for four more days. And I'm just fine with these lacunae: no things that I might really want to forget later.

So the surgery went well. My next goal is to heal from the current incision and wound, then continue to lose weight, gain strength, recover my energy (now that the malfunctioning colon that has been sapping my energy for decades is gone!), and so on. Meanwhile, I'll keep writing music, keep making art, keep writing.

I have a long incision right through my belly button, running from top of groin to a few inches above belly button. To the right and above that I have a stoma of small intenstine protruding from my belly wall, covered by an ostomy bag into which I will be going to the bathroom for the foreseeable future. (There might ensue a long series of Really Bad and Tasteless Jokes, which I will spare you from.) It will be an interesting scar someday.

So, I've survived thus far. I have another major, high-risk operation to go through, for them to construct an ileal pouch out of the base of my small intestine, then close the stoma, reattach everything inside again, and after that heals, I'll be internally integral again, and can get on with my life. That's the long-term plan.

I do not have an overall time table for the long term, and will not for awhile. The next phase of operations will begin when the doctors decide I'm ready for it, which will depend on my overall recovery and health and strength, and how much weight I can now lose. I am determined to make this all happen sooner rather than later.

Surgery itself causes some weight loss, and my appetite is still pretty small. Between eating smaller portions, and getting more exercise as I begin to recover and feel my strength return, I hope the weight loss segment of the program will be smooth and successful.


I brought in some of my own artwork to put up in my hospital room, for healing, and as a reminder of beauty, and what else really matters.

The nurses and NAs and doctors who visited me in my hospital room and helped me through things were all spectacular. The nurses especially, among whom three in particular are People Of Extraordinary Merit. I'd give them medals if I could. Yesterday was my first home nursing visit, and that also went very well; she too was impressed with how far I'd come in one week. I will be getting home nursing visits two or three times a week for the next few weeks.

I go back up to the surgical clinic in the hospital in Madison in a week or so for a follow-up with my surgeon and his team, during which it is planned that they'll remove the surgical staples, and let the incision heal on its own thereafter. My goal is to the get to the point where the incision is free of pain enough so that I can resume more normal physical movement, including bending over which I can't do yet, and taking walks for exercise. A few days after the staples come out, I believe I'll be much further down that road.

I was on my feet, standing and walking, less than 24 hours after awakening from anaesthesia. I walked three or four times a day while in the hospital, down to a quiet lounge and back, a little more each day. At home, I have only gone out to look at the garden once (which needs weeding!), but I am walking loops around the house several times a day. I'm also doing my breathing exercises, which help stave off my past tendencies towards pneumonia—it's all been great so far, so no worries.

I think that's enough news for now. Once again, THANK YOU for the love and support from friends and family. I couldn't take this ride without my "village" to help take care of me throughout the journey.

Blessings & Light & Love for the Highest Good of All Concerned. So mote it be!