On Pain

Hold on.  I'm working on a posting about pain.



This may take a while.

Untitled

I am married to a painter...that's its own book, as yet untitled. One of his hallmark grousings is a resistance to titling his works. He'd really rather not be bothered, thank you.  He is an abstract painter (and a graphic narrative artist and a pen and ink artist) so really  he's not painting (or drawing) something in particular; he is painting something emergent.  I think he might be wary that titles allow the viewer to sum it up and say "yep okay, he nailed it" or "yep okay, stupid rendition" or "yep, okay, I don't get it,"  I think he might suspect this is why they want a title in the first place; viewers of abstract art think there must be a statement in there somewhere, a representation. [Separate essayette someday on our game of  Find the Genitalia in That Painting for all completed canvasses.]

Mark Beebe Original Painting

Some art is representational....or a commentary or a turning point, we know that.  But much art, like Mark's, pours through the artist and he only knows it is...what it is.  Maybe there's a hint of something in there--a dream or mood he's had. There is always the evolution and exploration of what he's doing. Sometimes Mark will title something spontaneously.  But he usually doesn't title until he's in a gallery show. Then with much grumbling and gnashing of teeth he'll invent titles.  At the one of his last gallery shows, he strewed slips of paper and pens below all the paintings, inviting folks to invent their own names.

And people looked a lot longer--a lot. They found their own meanings, came up with whimsy, enjoyment, critique and craziness.  We went through them afterwards and he read one to me  and said "This is a GREAT one."  It was one of mine.  Just sayin'.

When I start a web log, I do it to track some vein of thought that is emergent.  I don't know  what it is about as much as I feel provoked to explore something.  In this case mortality as front and center.  I used to keep journals but found that my most private musings are. Boring. Somehow this genre keeps me more honest...less whiny and self-absorbed.

So my url addresses are wildly different than what I come up with for the page when I "publish" finally.  In this case I realized I was going to write about dying, the possibility of my dying. As if it was, you know, for realz.

But that drama is so very.... dramatic.  One of the modern critiques of art from the critical and curatorial world is that it shouldn't emote.  Emoting, feeling is so 19th century.  Or something like that. Oh and it shouldn't be too pretty.

Mark Beebe--Original Painting

 Frankly, I find that attitude kind of full of shit. And yet, calling a Pollack "a bunch of splatters my 9 year old can do" is also full of shit as is the "painter of light"...at least as something that takes me somewhere with some mystery. There needs to be some "hmmmm?" about art for me to really get captivated.

There is something in restraint, in gesturing to rather than loudly shouting at, in the sidelong glance vs. the soliloquy  That may be why Mark does not like titles--they shout a truncated summary.  Cliff notes are not the book.  Yet, a title can become a part of the poem.  I have played with this across the years and found it maddening and delightful.  A good title opens a door, finds a passageway, creates a mirror reflecting a mirror.  Or simply allows for the "ah!" when the poem/story/song is finally taken in. 

The URL for this set of essayettes is "ofadyingwoman" which at first seemed delightfully soap-opera-ish.  But then it seemed simply cheesy and whiny.  And a bit thick.  And what came to mind when I thought of such melodrama and sappiness?  Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park, with the cake out in the rain.

Jimmy, who is an emotive yet masterful song writer, had a romance with Linda Ronstadt's sister and they would meet in MacArthur Park where families sometimes left behind birthday cakes from park parties.  So when the romance ended but his heart ached on, Jimmy employed in his lament a central rather odd and now simply "too, too" metaphor for loss. The song was sung in a series of orchestrated movements and thus one of the  best drunken Karaoke songs of the west was born: "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark/ All the sweet, green icing flowing down/ Someone left the cake out in the rain/
I don't think that I can take it/ 'Cause it took so long to bake it /And I'll never have that recipe again, /oh nooooo." And cue soaring string section segue-way. He really does sing "oh noooooo"

When I really considered my position, our position, dears ones, I thought maybe "Bird on a Wire" penned by Leonard Cohen is truer to our situation:

"Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you..."

The balance between the  lament and the excoriating self-aware apologia is a pretty one, I think.  Not a bad metaphoric perch.  This position is sitting exhausted on the train track--too weak to move--hearing the whistle, feeling the vibration, and not yet knowing if there's a switchyard up the line.And not knowing if one cares if there is or isn't.

Mark Beebe Pen and Ink

This is the perfect place to perch--wobbling on thin wire, a drunk in a midnight choir, y'all. You know you're in that choir, too. We've set sail with our map and on all edges--all--there be monsters.  So we're down in the galley belting out the hymns.  Tipsy on whatever.  We are precarious and precious and heedless--bluffing our way through verse two and wondering if we'll be standing by verse five. This is emotive, sure, but it's not pretty, it's...well...beautiful in a terrible, aching way.

The song ends with "saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much."
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

In facing the absurdity of living--of being aware that this is finite existence--I certainly veer between pathos and mythos, Jimmy and Leonard, melting cakes and tilting birds.  Tracing that veer makes me laugh a little and cry a little and then I settle down a bit and decide not to decide....a mood, a story, a title.

Latch Fatigue

There's a particular intersection on Highway 2 near Nebraska City where a nice, older man missed the red light thus not missing the front of our car pulling out on its green light.  One minute--leaving the truckstop full of plains kitsch, next moment--  life's compass lost magnetic north, tumbling our storylines (and bodies) like so many monkeys from the barrel.

As I mentioned previously, I find the Jack-in-the-Box a disappointing toy:  First, because it becomes rather too predictable.  The fun factor--the surprise part--so quickly isn't...both fun or a surprise.  After the first-- I dunno--three go-arounds of the crank'n pop cycle, it is not surprising.   Crank, sing, sing, pop!  Crank, sing, sing, pop.  Right? As for the fun? The song--perhaps one of the more promising bits--is totally interrupted: Musicalus interruptus.  No matter how much I channel my inner John Cage, it's bound to pop and the song hangs up.  Lastly,  and not at all least, the latch always does seem to wear out and the whole point of the thing--a peekaboo with a bizarrre peeker and a musical score--ends up without a peek or a boo.  Just a rather irritating, unseemly party-guy overstaying his lines in the play.  "Fooled you" in a box--much like the specter of mortality. 

I think we may have a bit of the same kind of fascination and impatience with mortality's refusal to be sensible.  There seems to be a notion of story we cling to--birth, kindergarten, arts & crafts, sex, naptime, death--but, really?  Most lives have all kinds of surprises and the damned latch always. always. always
wears out.

We just don't know when.

After Highway 2 and its broken glass, insurance and C-T scans, I felt a bit like something small with a rapid heartbeat, crouching in dimmed air beneath the hawk shadow.

The predator features rather more heavily in the story than we like to think.  It lurks. It is not timely or sensible on our terms.  It waits and pounces. 

 Blake wrote of the the "Tyger:"
 Tyger Tyger. burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye.
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

And in 5 more stanzas he makes it clear how fearsome and mystifying the Tyger is--fearsome enough to cause Blake to wonder on our behalf if the creator of the Lamb could possibly " dare seize the fire" of the very creature bound to stalk the lamb. The storyteller's narrative is far more opaque than we hoped.

So while the ominous MRI made me feel a bit Love-Story-ish about the arc of my life-novella, Highway 2 reminded me that I don't get to know when or how my Jack-in-the-Box gets sprung.  Is this a comfort?  A threat?

It doesn't much matter.  I'm turning my little organ-grinder handle, toying around with music and anticipation, maybe even paying verrrrry close and paced attention....but there's a tyger out there, too.  The latch may give out, sure.  But really, the tyger might catch my scent, as well.  Innocence/experience. Experience and innocence. Tyger or Jack-in-the-box. Both have "finis" written all over them.



I suspect that old-fashioned toy is a bit of ruse we cling to, the idea we have some say in the matter.  There is perhaps a bit of the toddler in us when confronted with unwanted suspense--sometimes we break it--we go for the clown and insist he stay visible--we break the latch. There--no surprise now!

In hide and seek, I never liked hiding.  I sometimes made noise in order to ensure being found on my terms. Like breaking the latch, this is pretty silly.....and pretty human. Long ago, even before the proliferation of speeding bullets, we went looking for the Tyger, with fairly fragile weapons.  There is something in us--marvelous or horrible, I don't know--that doesn't want to wait it out, doesn't want to see the same old punch line, feels better hunting the hunter, even if it risks an early "finis." Freud framed this as a "death wish."  This has been widely misinterpreted as a desire for death. 

I think it is more a fatigue with fear--the real latch fatigue--when the dread of turning the crank one more time seems unbearable, when the walk in the wilds seems just too frightening; we are fatigued with our own latching to life.  This is not a desire for death but rather more a desire for agency--for some say in the matter.  Tired of being stalked, tired of the small disappointments or surprises--the small losses along the way--we long to run full tilt into the shadows, break the latch, reveal the architecture of the story and wrest it into our own hands.

I used to wonder about those sailors who put to sea, even with maps limned in monsters.  I think I get it, now.  It's not so much an ark as an arc. 

How to Build an Ark

Stop counting.

Empty all vessels. 

Do not sharpen what cuts.

Breathe in

what is unbelievable—

that which seems most obvious:

Heartbeat and bread,

firelight, 

the beading of night upon leaf.

Like the past—it is only in the face of perishing

we find a way to float.  Unlike the past,

lumber is not needed and the timing

uncertain.  Meanwhile, whenever possible, practice

practice floating.

 Scupture photo and poetry by Julia Dadds
 Sculpture: Falling Man by Ernest Trova 1969 at the Laumier Sculpture Park

Boy Hiding from stock photos.

Researching the monsters

It was not light reading.

There are about seven different possible etiologies for these MRI results I got the other month.   One of the seven kills people--100%.  "You should see a neurologist...." is what the doctor said. But  after several years of interacting with brain injury patients, I have a deep regard for just how little neurologists can actually do.  The brain is still a vastly uncharted territory. Neurologists are like those sailors who sailed off with maps that had edges marked "Here be monsters." Neurology maps say "here be neurons."

So, because I was about to be between health care providers while I moved domiciles and work, I researched. The neurons and ganglia and all that good stuff in the cerebellar region regulate autonomic functions.   Autonomic functions are the ones that are, well, automatic, so to speak.  That is, they are bodily functions that cruise on autopilot...a really crucial, the plane will crash if they don't cruise autopilot. The autonomic functions are the signalling systems that ping and manage balance, blood pressure, elimination of wastes, swallowing, breathing and heartbeat. Nothing much.

And when MRI's show things amiss in this cerebellar region you know what can be known for sure?  Not much.  How often does one find that actually written in black and while about modern medicine?  The only way to diagnose what might produce this kind of MRI image is an expensive and largely inconclusive process of elimination.  They'll only finally and conclusively diagnose the causes of those shadow and light gradations at death. Really.  And you know what good a firm diagnosis does?  You guessed it --nada, zip, zero.  No current treatments other than "palliative."  No brain repair available.

Initially, I found this a bit freeing:  Well, okay, I'm not going to piss off an MD for going alternative on her or him because the traditionals have nothing to give me but bad news.  I mean really--no treatments, period.

So until I can coordinate all the contacts with health care that will launch my little craft upon this map limned with new mysteries, I  decided I would meander around in the shallows eyeballing the horizon and think deeply on monsters.  Or rather I would write as if I understood that we are all sailing on maps with the edges labeled  "monsters." Say how does that compass feel in hand, given all the sepia-toned scaly splashing on the periphery?

Maybe it was just a bad MRI.

But I thought I might well know the worst case scenario.  And you know what?  This is not something written up much.  Apparently no one wants to talk about the dying process much.  Not in any disease, it turns out, does one find an unflinching portrait of what is likely to happen when one abuts a monster.  The discussion I found was appallingly couched in how to prolong life...honestly. For example, I found a rather lengthy scholarly treatise on how to prevent patients from dying in their sleep. 

The biggest monster on my map takes out people in several ways.  They stop breathing in their sleep. Their hearts stop. They get such chronic urinary tract infections that the infections take them out. They stop eating to the point where they have to be tube fed and things go amiss with that.  I'm in favor of the stopping breathing in the sleep. And the paper I found discussed how to interrupt that peaceful process. But no one asked me. 

So I had a moody day after this research.  I sailed on a plane traveling halfway across the country. When it was time to land, the attendant came over the PA and what I heard was this:  "Your time suspended in the air is over, watch for falling baggage, don't stand too soon and thanks for this little jaunt.  It's over."  All of a sudden, I felt like the plane was life and it was time to disembark.  Me and my fellow shipmates.  Despite the monsters ravening at the edges of our maps, we were to gather our water bottles, power up our cell phones and leave in an orderly fashion. I felt tremendous tenderness for those around me. We tried to smile and be kind while moving through mundane and tedious logistics:  Wait, wait, jostle, be polite even while feeling urgent, remember stuff, move on, move out, face what I don't know, face what is next....which is what none of us really knows.  

Little wallet pictures

There are selfish reasons I am writing this: I have boys.  Three guys who are actually men, now.  And they were born of me and we grew through the world together for some intense years. And we still are entwined at some cellular level that I see as proof of God.  Or what many call God and I prefer to call Mystery. ***

The not-so-selfish reason I am writing this is because knowing we are dying; living with the daily truth of that is the ground we all must walk.  This is not an anti-life statement but rather the very statement that allows life to become the powerful punctuation that shakes us from our reverie and points us to the dance floor.

Remember, I'm just sailing along on a hand-drawn map with "monsters" scribbled in the margins--an MRI and enough information to make a real doctor roll her eyes and groan. But I find this instructive, I'm using this moment of ambiguity to explore the one of life's truths which is its brevity. Really living with that brevity in mind--waking with it, sleeping with it.  Feeling the throb of mortality in a dizzy moment or a bad headache day provokes mindful attention, blazing focus on the mundane. And I find I want to see what happens if I frame that now blazingly precious mundanity on behalf of those beside me on this free fall.

For example: These pictures.

It was a day-after-Thanksgiving moment on the edge of Lake Nakoma in Madison in about Zero degrees wind chill.  We were doing the goofy family drive-through tour of town.  I insisted on a boys & mom lake shot.   I didn't yet have a picture of my guys and me all together on this holiday.  They had made special effort.
They coordinated, scrounged up transport, left girlfriends to their own families  and met me in Madison, Wisconsin at my sister's home that is now the apex of a Midwestern triangle of family. For boys that sometimes take DAYS to respond to my motherly texts, they done good; they showed up.  And they were sweet, smiling, friendly, kind, good sports in a swirl of family interaction They really showed up. The picture was necessary:  The joyful, here-we-are-together, okay and loving and--bonus!--handsome.  I was a driven women seeking this picture, looking for one they could hold in hand and say "That was a nice, time, wasn't it?....We showed up for mom and she was happy. We made mom happy...and we didn't even steal each others socks."  I planned this one.  I wanted to make sure they had this "Little Wallet Picture

Underspent and too young, too
I stumbled onto a, a picture of you
You wild bitter tale, all cherry oak and tears
As the branches looked in

The summer is done and we are too, dear
Pull back the drape
And let the silent light in
Soon, I'll be on that highway

And damn this stretch of 99
That takes so many lives
One of them was mine

Hand me that lil wallet picture
1985, one more time*


We all have those little wallet pictures.  For my sister, this is an art form.  When she sent me these pictures, I wrote her back, telling her that they made me weep in a good way.   She replied:


I also love sharing the moments I see with pics b/c they are all around us, most times an image falls short but sometimes...for me, it's pure content when it connects - connects people, memories.. all my life, I've been fascinated with documenting and capturing moments of life- at least in my minds eye, and while critical of myself, remarkably I've still enjoyed it - almost to obsession when I get to crafting the images, etc.  I really do see SUCH beauty, I think a part of me feels that if I can note it - not really 'capture' but note...it will never leave me, and it will carry me through those moments of loneliness... ...I am so blessed with my girls, and you with your boys, and our healthy family, we are so lucky...really, amazingly lucky.  But you know, I think that's always been it for me, I want each moment to count.  Good, bad, euphoric, devastating - I want to show up.  Sometimes I don't know how to show up, for myself and especially for others it's hard to know how to show up.

I have never been good at capturing the picture.  I even have eschewed doing so, at times--no videos at wedding, no pictures of births.  I decided that messing with the mechanism, for me, with my inclinations, distracted from my ability to inscribe the moment on my heart...to show up.  To be there.  But, this Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to get a little wallet picture for my boys.

Hold It

I want a moment with you

like a picture, or better yet--a

Daguerreotype--something on glass

that develops so slowly that the faces

lose their smiles and peer out 

somberly, as if they know how little

they will matter to other eyes and

how little that matters.**

***(Apparently, mothers' brains contains cells from their children, this just in in.   Talk about some interdependent co-arising of being!)
*(Little Wallet Picture, song by Richard Buckner)
**poetry by Julia Heimer Dadds Beebe all rights reserved