Maui Madness

At his annual physical yesterday the neighborhood vet who is almost as ancient as I, by the way, announced that Kodi is not only fit (except for his balding tail) but that his heart and weight are perfect, and that in people years he is now 80. “That makes us the same”, I chortled. “He’s still doing one hour walks twice a week with the dog walker” I reported, “he’s wild with joy at the prospect of each hike and usually he’s not gimpy afterwards”.

Driving the two miles home in Lee’s ’89 pickup (which must be nearing 80 in Toyota years) I smiled at the irony. Both dog and truck are in such fine fettle, full of pep, and here am I struggling to pull my pants over my hips, keep up with therapy exercises for my hurting shoulder, and fretting about my atrial fib. Must be my attitude needs adjustment!

On with the story. I started the painting above in Maui on Thanksgiving day, 2009, my ninth trip, I believe, to paradise, but my first trip there alone. This week I ‘m motivated to get both the painting and the memory out of my psyche. I tried to finish it last Tuesday, without success, by smearing matte medium over parts of it and collaging tissue paper over some of the leaves, for any painter can see I left no whites! There is no center of interest. It’s a jumble of ununified color which mimics my mood when first composed. I call the painting Maui Madness, but other names could be Botanical Bombardment or Makawao Hysteria. Instead of plein aire, I composed it in my tiny apartment gazing out at an unhospitable and unkempt tropical garden. As my head filled with pollen and chemicals (it turned out the building had been tented to kill the vermin just before I arrived) I grew more sick and angry and added more and more layers of granulating paint.

Sight unseen (except for the internet) I had rented a little apartment for ten days, upcountry. In earlier decades I always wanted to live in the islands in retirement, a fantasy I abandoned in my sixties, finally realizing that the beauty of nature there would always call me but that the culture was not a fit for me for steady living. Still, I looked forward to painting and soaking up sun as well as delighting in spending time with loved ones who now call Maui home.

Things went downhill almost immediately, The rental was a disaster. My allergies ended me in the ER after a few days. The trip was a bust. Thus started a year of one health challenge after another, none critical but most draining and annoying.

In 2011 I’m trying to make happier choices. For instance, I’m not going to see the film Black Swan, even though I’m drawn to the acting. Who needs more dark in their life? Certainly not Bonnie or Kodi, who finds nirvana in the simplicity of a heaping tablespoon of peanut butter. Surely its time for a different viewpoint and a happier outlook, leaving lots of empty spaces for the sun to shine through.

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Whimsy Or Not

Yesterday afternoon, by plan, I experimented with collage painting under the generous tutorage of my friend and neighbor Nancy Overton. We’ve become friends since Nancy and Chuck, both artists, live nearby and work out at the gym with me. As you, the reader, can intuit, I’m working at being more playful in art and in life. Did I say work out and working at? Now there’s an oxymoron. But of late “working at” is the only path I’ve been able to figure out. Playing just gets lost in the daily pattern of boring responsibilities which seem to consume all my energies. I’m recalling now that I got all A’s when I was a Recreation Minor in undergrad school and enthused at making PLAYING my life’s work. That was only sixty years ago, I mutter to myself. Where oh where has my enthusiasm gone?

Nancy exudes playfulness. She has many talents both as a writer and an artist. In addition she’s a dedicated garage sale shopper, an activity that leaves me blank but gives her joy as well as treasures. She walks Lake Merritt with enthusiasm three times a week. I marvel how she stays so upbeat.

What’s most delightful to me about being with Nancy is her laughter. It’s not a feminine giggle nor is it stifled by clipping short her breath, as many women are programmed to do. In volume it’s neither boisterous nor gentle, but with or without my new hearing aids, just right. It’s musical and vigorous and seems to come from her toes, gaining momentum as it travels upwards, and then really filling all the empty spaces in the room. I’ve noticed when she is in a group that it is contagious. I’m not sure how she achieves it, or even if it is partly genetic, but I treasure being around it.

As we experimented with collage we shared ideas and techniques. It was messy and fun. Truth be told I felt slightly cautious. Without inhibitions Nancy puts almost anything in her collages including reconstituted seaweed which she gathers at Stinson Beach. I came home with blue and orange fingers. I’m hoping Nancy’s confidence and non-judgemental attitude will be catching. Maybe so, maybe not. As in most things, more will be revealed.

Shall We Play?

Previously I shared that one of my goals in art (and life) was to be more playful in 2011. Easier said than…, as the expression goes. I find its not exactly something I can will myself to do, for if will were the source I would have accomplished it a while ago. It seems I am not short on will, which is synonymous for stubbornness in my book. On the other hand, I am short on patience. Spontaneity seems like the open door to the process. Kittens, puppies and little kids have no trouble being playful. But me? I think I was never that way even at two. Somehow I got shorted on the playful gene. It was somewhat easier when Lee was alive. Without a loved one to grin and celebrate one’s uninhibited behavior the effort seems to lack motivation.

Once, about forty years ago, at a fund-raiser for JFK University, I bought a ticket to have face painting. What possessed me! First the artist covered my whole face with white paint. Then she drew exotic designs on both eyes and cheeks. Then she added symbols and cerulean color around the eyes, The result was gorgeous and transforming. I felt silly, delighted, and tickled. It was me but not me. Yearning to share my delight, I was annoyed to discover all my friends had gone home. Rats! This transformation had to be shared. So as I drove home in my little VW bug I slowed down passing every house of friends. To my dismay everyone’s lights were out already.

Even when I got home I found Lee asleep. But this was too good not to share. So with a gleeful shout and much posturing I switched on the overhead bedroom lights all the while dancing around the footboard. Lee screamed then laughed and laughed.

It was hard to finally go to bed, and I ended up not removing any of the face painting and tried to sleep on my back without disturbing the facial art. Such a fun memory.

I adore playful people. Who doesn’t? Being with them is such fun.

So this week with my water-color buddies I took a three day painting class, determined to be uninhibited. Despite my intentionality it wasn’t until the third day I began to feel playful. Perhaps playfulness is a left-brained thing and it takes that long for my factually stuffed brain to make the transition or to bypass performance expectations?

I surely invite your ideas on how to accomplish this. The year is still young so I have plenty of time to experiment.

We Can Do It

Last week Geraldine Doyle the slender, muscled inspiration for the WW2 recruitment poster We Can Do It died. I remember the poster of course but being an eighth grader it didn’t seem to apply to me. In Seattle where I lived there was a cry for kids to volunteer in the summer to pick vegetables. No doubt the Japanese farmers were all in internment camps. At my friend Sue’s urging I accompanied her reluctantly on a big bus to the fields near Renton to pick beans. I remember being kind of scared and totally inept. After one day of weighing in my yield they directed that I not return. How embarrassing, but what a relief! I tried to help the war effort in other ways like collecting cans and old nylons, planting a vegetable garden and trying to sell war bonds. At things athletic and manual dexterity I was a motor moron. Still am. Meanwhile, down in California, Lee’s life was taking a very different turn.

What was unique about being a senior at Albany High, class of 43, was that if you were a boy approaching 18 almost any branch of the service would scramble for you. Not only blackout curtains and ration stamps appeared, but boys and girls alike steered in new directions. At the end of their junior year many boys quit to join the ranks and sadly never returned to graduate. If you were a girl you were recruited to work at the booming Richmond Ship Yards in jobs never before considered fit for women. Of course Lee was one of those girls who volunteered, her brother already serving overseas in the Navy. It seems a school bus would take them after half a day of classes to the shipyards to learn riveting and other skills, and they would work an 8 hour shift before returning to Albany High.

Since Lee was 31 when I met her, I never witnessed such activity. She rarely spoke of her jobs in the war effort (and she had many) thinking it was such a little thing. Like Geraldine Doyle she was slender and strong and such a natural athlete so I’m sure she loved it. Except for being addicted to baseball, she had shadowed her Dad in his workshop all her life and she could do almost anything manually with her hands. That is, except cook and sew, which her mother had given up trying to teach her. I don’t know for sure, but I imagine it was for Lee her first experience of being valued as a woman of worth. Recently I passed on to a friend Lee’s tee shirt which sported the logo Women In The Trades. Like her work at the shipyards, it was a source of quiet pride.

Almost every morning as I pass Skyline High on my way to shopping or the gym I reflect on the kids unloading from the cars and buses. Much of the time they look bored, distracted and insecure. Not all, but many. Small groups form on the corners and if I have the car windows open I can usually smell pot even though a police car is parked at the gate. It saddens me. How will they ever find a sense of self worth?

Several years ago when the memorial to Rosie the Riveter opened in Richmond our friend Marianne arranged to have us visit. Lee was already quite frail but politely expressed interest. I was fascinated but Lee somehow thought it was still no big deal. The exhibit is wonderful. It is said that the women there turned out one battleship a week. Now in my book that’s a very big deal!

Here's To Life

Holding fast to tradition Ray Taliaferro ended his talk show at 5am this morning, New Year’s Eve, with jazz singer Shirley Horn’s Here’s To Life. It always lifts me up.

I linger at some of the words: No complaints… And no regrets…To dreamers and their dreams…Give it all you’ve got. Some day I must buy the album, because just listening to her words stirs me from whatever cares and doldrums drag me down. Oblivious to the date, Kodi stands impatiently nearby, red bone bouncing on the hardwood floor, demanding his morning spoon of peanut butter. It takes so little to make him smile.

I listen with strained interest to the current news. Oprah is starting a new network; Governor Richardson of New Mexico failed to pardon Billie the Kid. I titter because on the annual list of words to banish I don’t even know what most of them mean, and the banned phrase “I’m just saying…” is not in my normal platter.

All day yesterday in self-talk I predicted that 2011 would be a more joyful year. Sure hope so. Dear friend Jan Hagan came up at dusk with her camera and tripod to capture a sunset, but the chilly atmosphere made it less than spectacular. This morning it was 35 on the patio with light frost, but Cheari writes of snow and chill in Granite Falls, and Nancy writes that in Denver today with the wind chill it is -9.

For me 2010 has been a trial of challenges with more low points than high. An auto accident, hearing aids, allergies, a tooth implant and many physical complaints, none life-threatening but irksome all the same. Such negatives defined the months, which for me seemed to drag by. I can’t wait for the new year.

Two days after Christmas, submerged in my beloved Kindle, (82 books read now) toes steered toward the glow of the gas fireplace, my burgundy Laz-y-Boy stuck in the up position so that to extract myself I had to crawl on my knees over the left arm, a task made more challenging by a painful right shoulder which I have been nursing for two months. Now I surely hope that is not an omen for the new year! I’m ready to kick up my heels, aren't you?

My Buddy

With the stroke of his pen today Obama repealed the controversial “Don’t ask, Don’t tell". My thoughts are with so many friends, mostly deceased now, either forced out of service to their country because of discrimination, or destined to serve in a kind of silent exile, hiding their true identity. Many of my personal friends who led such a double life were nurses in the 2nd World War. Such a tragedy.

Propped on my seldom ever-used Hammond organ is the sheet music to My Buddy, published in 1922, with lyrics by Gus Kahn and music by Walter Donaldson. My dear friend Bill gave me the music. I’ve always loved the song and didn’t know until adulthood it had been attributed to the story of a soldier grieving his friend who was killed in the 1^st World War, a war in which three of my family served (my maternal grandfather, in Canada's Princess Pat Regiment), and my father and his sister.

My 95 year old cousin Dollie in Vancouver tells me the whole family sang it---it was a favorite. Even as a child when my mother crooned it I presumed it was a love song. The instructions on my copy say it is to be sung tenderly. Indeed, that is how my mother sang it, as well as others, the likes of Al Jolson and Rosemary Clooney.

Sometimes at night (last night being the longest night of the year) when I am most missing Lee, I croak out the refrain, (thank goodness only Kodi can hear me) and it comforts me.

Of course I have known the words by heart since childhood, and I imagine I can actually hear my mother’s voice: Nights are long since you went away; I think about you all through the day; My Buddy, my Buddy, No Buddy quite so true. Miss your voice, the touch of your hand; Just long to know that you understand; My Buddy, my Buddy. Your Buddy misses you.

So today I pulled off the yellowing plastic sleeve and studied the words of the verse: Life is a book that we study. Some of its leaves bring a sigh; That we must part you and I. The second verse goes on to say: Buddies through all of the gay days; Buddies when something went wrong; I wait along through the gray days; Missing your smile and your song.

Such simple words, and kind of corny, but they pack a lot of emotion. I’m curious if they mean anything to any one else? Did many families sing it, or just mine? And am I the only one who sees the double meaning? Surely not. One of these days I must ask my friend Bonnie (senior) to sing it for me with full feeling, which it deserves.

Speaking of Transparency

Well, Wikileaks and all its implications dictates my sharing this week. My head is spinning with all the exposed secrets. Isn’t yours? Last week I wrote of a way in which government information and how it was withheld sculpted my father’s last years. And how family secrets molded my own confusing and often lonely childhood. Certainly I am not unique in this.

No secret that most psychotherapists, self-included, were drawn to the profession in order to smoke out their own conscious and unconscious threads of what makes them tick. In the process I believe some amount of good is done for others. I hope so.

By preference I have always been drawn to transparency in art and photography. Thick, opaque images do not stir me. That is why in my own painting I identify as a value painter, not a shape painter. In the days of color slides I recall how certain projections would give me shivers of excitement. I always yearn to know what is going on deep inside, and thrill when it is revealed..

A little over two weeks ago Catherine, my surrogate daughter, had a terrible fall. Her right arm dangling like a rag doll’s, the kind EMT’s in the ambulance administered sufficient drugs to contain her pain until a hospital x-ray revealed a seriously dislocated elbow. I gasped when I saw the x-ray. With anesthetic the arm was manipulated back into place. Splints were applied to immobilize the grossly swollen arm. A few days later, by plan, the doctors changed the splints, slightly repositioning the arm for healing. Terrible pain followed which resulted a few days later in another x-ray revealing the elbow once again dislocated. More anesthetic, re-setting, x-rays and splints. At this point she came to stay with me for two days. All went well until dawn’s early light yesterday when she woke with the same searing pain. Another trip to the ER and another x-ray revealed the joint still in place. What a relief. Nerve pain was the diagnosis, a pain feeling like a knitting needle being driven up her arm. A hard cast was applied to immobilize the joint until sufficient healing occurs to hold the bones in place. The transparency of the x-ray is the miracle that allowed the doctors in each case to make an accurate diagnosis.

When she studied in Cuba my former pilates teacher (and now surrogate granddaughter) Allejandra observed that the Cuban doctors had so perfected the science of the human touch that they could diagnose many diseases without the benefit of x-ray and special equipment. I tend to believe her. Though I do not cotton to psychics, I believe that the trained and focused mind of anyone can pick up things we normally miss. Sometimes I call this putting two and two together. Head often in the sand, it makes me shudder to think how much I miss. Can I improve? Of course. I think that being more aware will be one of my goals in 2011.