Finally, Some Peace Within!!!

Happy HNT!!!! This is an old picture, but what the hell? I didn't feel like posting anymore face shots of myself; I think I've indulged in that ego filled endeavor enough over the past few weeks and need to step back from it. I feel great today, despite having a million things to do of the obligatory nature. I have managed to paint for two days in a row and receieved a wonderful compliment from my husband last night with regard to the portion of the painting I worked on yesterday and the day before, as well as with regard to the painting as a whole. If I can keep plugging like this I should have the whole peice done before long, having preserved my sanity in the process. When I paint, I feel whole. When I don't, I feel very out of sorts. It does something to my spirit that nothing else can do; it gives me something that nothing else can. I'm not sure how that works-maybe it's just a matter of doing what it is I'm supposed to be doing, in some spiritual sense. I don't question it; I just try to go with it. Creative inspiration rocks!!!! My dream is to one day have a house with a barn of some sort out back so I can have a studio on site. Right now, I have an office/studio, which is much better than what I had before, which was a corner of the living room. Some day I would love to have a studio area set apart from our house, with walls that my daughter can write on and where people can leave comments like in the subway station-a place totally devoted to creative impulse. That would be a real slice of heaven!!!

A Fine Harumph

Okay, I know I've posted about this before, but it's a recurring subject for me, and one that came up again last night. About eight years ago, I got into a very intense relationship with a guy I'd met through the world of tattooing. I was apprenticing (sort of) at a tattoo shop here in South Florida and he walked in with another girl (who he later split from-nothing serious) and I was smitten almost immediately. He was completely clean and sober but still kind of crazy and I was attracted to him wholeheartedly, in a way I hadn't been attracted to another person in a very long time. (For some reason, the lyrics for Foreigner's "Dirty White Boy" are going through my head right now, but I'll push them aside for now...) I was so screwed up back then, mentally, emotionally, even physically (I wasn't taking the best care of myself back in those days and was in the middle of a self destructive streak) but he saw something good in me and soon after our first meeting we got together. We were inseparable for almost five years. This man really helped to put me on the right path. No, he PUT me on the right path, although I was willing to go there, being tired of feeling miserable and drowning my life away in a sea of Tequila and Samuel Adams. We had good times and bad times but, through it all, I remained madly in love. It was as though we'd been together in another life; I just couldn't get him out of my system, even when the relationship took a downward turn and things started to go very bad. He was a biker, heavily involved in a motorcycle club and I grew up around bikers and loved them, but with him it happened almost overnight. He bought a Harley and then suddenly he was hanging out with bikers, and then, BOOM, he was involved in a club, and then he started getting this macho edge (even worse than the one he'd already possessed) and I was okay with that to a point, except for the fact that my life was beginning to be swallowed up in his. It was choking the life out of me; he didn't want to make any compromises toward the things I wanted but expected me to give up everything for him. I've just never been the kind of person who can be stifled like that indefinitely. I was and am a free spirited soul; I don't do well with too many restrictions. I need to feel like my own person because, well, I am! Anyway, in the end game, he got involved with a chick like half my age. This girl is in recovery but I don't think she was even of drinking age when she came into the rooms. Word had it that he was running around with her for about a year before we split up. Big ouch. I'd been weighing the pros and cons of the relationship myself, and had developed a crush on a guy friend (who is now living in Denver and knows who he is), but I never stepped over the line of faithfulness, regardless of how unhappy I was becoming in my existing relationship and how attracted I was to this other person. I was devastated when J made the decision to end our relationship and devastated even further when I found out about the cute, young chickie he decided to move into our apartment about two weeks after I moved out. Adding to my dismay was the fact that he'd threatened every guy with whom we had mutual contact, so that everyone was afraid to ask me out for fear of receiving a head pounding or worse. Oy. Anyway, my whole point to this diatribe was that since he and I still travel in some of the same circles, I have occasion to see J and chickie together now and then. They have a beautiful son and seem to be happy and I'm happy for them. I'm very happy in my own life and glad for the way life turned out. I love my husband truly, madly, deeply. Still, when I see them together, or even when I see just her alone, I get this feeling of discomfort in my belly. I don't know what it is or why it comes, but it was there when I saw her at a birthday party I took Bebe to for the son of a mutual friend of ours, and it was there last night when they both attended a talk that I also went to. It's not a wretched, violent feeling (that wouldn't really be in my nature anyway), but just a feeling of not wanting to be around to watch them. Maybe it's the feeling of having been wronged in a very intense way. Maybe it's just mistrust (when people do things to you that are slightly underhanded, sometimes the reaction is to avoid having further contact for fear of being hurt again). I can't pinpoint the exact reason for my distaste, I only know that I wish it to leave me. I suppose, over time, the feeling will fade. Anyway, there's no law that says I have to want to hang out with either of these two people. Maybe, eventually, I'll get my lifelong dream of being an artist in California and N and Bebe and I can get out of here and start someplace with no old memories of exes and past lives. Until then, it's one day at a time, conquering my inner demons and pressing on with love.

A Goodbye to a Friend

Yesterday was a little bit of a sad day for me, but also a little bit of a happy day. I really saw just how much our memory lives on through the good deeds we've done, and through those things which we've left behind that can continue to help inspire and heal other people. I've met many people through my journey of recovery; some have been deeply caring, sensitive, real people and some, well, no so much. Amy "Turner" Tunick falls into the first category. She was one of those people whose very presence made you feel happy. She wrote a weekly peice called "The Feel Good" column for the Sun Times here in South Florida; I used to grab the paper just to read her column; often that's all I would read in the paper, since I rarely have time these days to read a paper from cover to cover! Her column focused on positivity and hope, even throughout her fight with pancreatic cancer.

Yesterday my family and I attended a book signing for Feeling Good-Even Through Cancer which Amy was working on and which was released postumously. Her Mom and best friend were there to sign the book, and the event was attended by her friends and family, and anyone else whose lives were touched by this wonderful woman who wished to come by, buy her book and socialize a bit. I was only able to read a few passages while I was at the event. When I first picked it up and saw her picture and began reading I couldn't hold back the tears. I knew Amy before she got sick; I'd talked with her a little bit about her hopes and dreams for the future, and I felt heartbroken that some of those dreams (ones that came true for me) could not be realized for her. She was such a sweet, talented, kind person that it's still difficult for me to believe that she is no longer on this side of the veil between the worlds. After I got home, however, I thought about all of the amazing things she had accomplished in her life. She moved to LA as a young woman to pursue a career in acting and was involved in the show biz industry for many years. She loved animals and supported at least two causes for dogs that I know about. She wrote her column every week, a writing that touched so many people. She was a vegetarian. She championed for pancreatic cancer research when she got sick; she didn't just lay down and accept the prognosis that was given to her (many pancreatic cancer patients don't live past three to five months), instead facing her illness head on and doing everything within her power to beat it. She tried to remain optomistic and retained her sense of humor, even when the going got rough. Even when the outcome seemed to be turning bleak. I believe it was this inner strength and determination, and her attitude of positivity and hopefulness and action, as well as having a good spiritual base, having some phenomenal doctors and the prayers offered by many friends and family members, which enabled her to live for 32 months, much longer than her doctors probably originally thought she would.

Amy inspires me. I awoke this morning with a sense of gratitude such that I have not had for quite some time. I feel able to go forward and follow my own dreams, I feel that they are possible because I see what she accomplished in her life; I see how she never gave up hope, never stopped trying. I see how little time we all really have in this world and how precious that time is.

Sometimes, though, it's still hard to believe that she is gone from us. I guess, in some sense, she isn't gone from us, at least not one hundred percent. She is still here, cheering us on, leaving us her legacy of kindness, optimism, humor, and hope. Thanks, Amy.

The Ups and Downs of Parenting

I think that anyone who is a parent will be able to identify with how difficult it is some days to feel like you're doing the best job you can. Not a good job, or an okay job, but the very best job. Most days I feel pretty good with regard to my parenting abilities. My daughter is the center of my world, and I stay at home to care for her. We go to the park, cook, do craft projects here and there, go the museums for kids and adults both, as well as do the daily errands of life, which can be turned into fun excursions, occasionally. Still, some days, like yesterday, I'm tired, don't feel completely well, and feel like a colossal failure. And, I don't feel like a colossal failure because of how our whole day went. Our day was alright. We read stories, went out for awhile to run errands, played with her toys for a bit. I had work to do for N, so we didn't get to run around outside as much as I'd like for her to do, but we went to the park every other day this week, so a day off isn't something I feel too badly about. No, I felt like a failure because when I came home last night at almost 10:00 p.m., after going to a badly needed meeting, the house was a mess and Bebe was still up and was very cranky because she was, by then, overtired. Daddy didn't put her to bed, for some reason, and by 10 she was beside herself. I was way too tired by last night to have the kind of patience I usually have and I found myself feeling resentful that the house was a mess, there were dishes in the sink, and the garbage was filled to the brim, almost overflowing the banks of the trash can. As as result of being tired and of suffering from major anxiety as a result of some fears I have with regard to our economy and the slowdown of the construction industry, I was cranky last night as well. I didn't say anything nasty, or do anything evil, but I didn't behave in the way I feel like I should as a parent, who is supposed to be one hundred percent supportive and loving and patient all the time. It's amazing how having a child and feeling a love for that child which we never previously knew could even exist can make us want to stretch ourselves to inhuman lengths, to be more than we think we can be and to reach even further still past that point. Each time I fell in love I thought, with progressive intensity, "Yes, this is what love is. Now I get it." After I gave birth to my daughter I understood what love was on a whole new level. It's so hard to live up to what I want to be for her sake. And so worth every minute spent on the effort.

All of this said, I feel that not enough attention is being paid to the subject of Madeleine McCann, who has been missing since May 3rd. I see all sorts of headlines on Yahoo's front page, and not one of them mentions this little girl. Because I have a daughter close to her age, the subject really rips at my heart. Please check out this website: http://www.bringmadeleinehome.com/.
I pray for her and her family that she is brought home safely. This is such a scary and horrible thing; I pray they find her safe and sound and catch whoever took her.

The Crazed Artist Within

As of late, I've been trying to use only my own photographs for this blog, but since I can't go to Jackson Pollock's studio and ask him if he minds me taking a quick snap of him at work, I had to settle for a picture I found online. When I first saw Jackon Pollock's work, I have to admit that I didn't understand it. I liked some of it from an aesthetic point of view, but I didn't understand the meaning behind it. Almost all of my artwork has some sort of symbolism to it, even my portraiture. Because I didn't understand his artwork, I delved into some biography of the man himself. In doing this, I began to at least understand the place from where his art came and I could relate on some level. Pollock was a man who suffered from depression, who, like many of us, tried to find some way to combat his inner demons through the use of alcohol. From what I've I read, he began painting as a means to force back those demons, as a way to become healthier within. Van Gogh also used to say that painting was something he had to do. It was what allowed him to breathe, to exist in this world with some small measure of peace and sanity. Considering the outcomes of both of these artists' lives (Van Gogh committed suicide and Pollock was killed in a drunken car wreck), one might not think that either acheived peace or sanity through their art, but I think that in some small way they succeeded, at least for awhile. I relate to them; I try to achieve peace within in much the same way. For an artist, there is only so much life to be drawn out of recovery programs and spiritual pursuits. If that sounds sacriligious to some, I apologise. It's my sincere belief that G-d gives all of us a purpose in this world, and if we're not pursuing that purpose we won't be capable of finding that deep contentment and inner peace that following the purest parts of our hearts and souls can lead us to. I've been feeling so out of sorts. I've written about this many times in the past, but I continue to write about it because I've yet to be able to find the time for my own creative pursuits and my sanity suffers for that. I live my life with a fair amount of normalcy, because I have a strong spiritual base and follow a program of recovery, but my soul feels bruised. When people tell me that there isn't time for my artwork right now I can't accept their opinion. When they tell me to wait and be patient I know that they don't understand the mind of the artist-the ever running machine that is our brain, the flood of ideas constantly rushing at us, wanting to be thrown onto a canvas, the photos that beg to be taken, the words that plead to burst forth onto paper. There has to be time for that, because in doing those things we find our deepest peace, and through that we can relate to everything else more easily and lovingly. That's what I want-that deepest peace and contentment-so that I can be my best when I'm out in the world and so that I can give as much as possible outwardly, whether it's through my art or just through a kind word or a gentle touch.

Happy HNT

No HNT for me today. I feel too blechy to even contemplate contemplating some part of my body to post online. I have a shot of my belly avec belly ring but it was taken before I lost more baby weight and I will refrain from posting that here. I thought I looked good back when the picture was taken, but since I've lost more weight now I think I looked a bit pudgy podgy in that shot. Not that a little pudge is bad; I just have issues when it's located on my own being. America Ferrera? Sexy as hell (you've gotta see her outside of the "Ugly Betty" show, which I actually have never watched). Me? No. It's funny how sometimes despite our own concepts of beauty we sometimes still bend a knee to what the general public percieves to be beautiful. Hence, we hold ourselves to different standards from those which we expect others to keep. There is something so wrong about that, and yet I still fall into the trap. The most evil traps are those which we can plainly see but still dive into headlong.

Anyway, it's that time of the month and I feel horrible. There should be some cosmic law that states that once a woman endures the trials of pregnancy and childbirth she will get a break when it comes to the monthly visitor. I feel worse now than I ever did before I got pregnant; every month there are two days when I'm rendered barely competant to leave my house. During those days, the crayons come out for my daughter and I move as little as I possibly have to, housework and paperwork be damned. Of course, the only two options to having a "monthly" are being pregnant, in which case I would feel considerably worse and for a much longer period of time, or going through menapause. Since I experienced the famed Hot Flash while I was pregnant and know its evil, I have vowed that when the time comes for me to experience the joys of menapause I will be taking whatever drug is deemed safe to take to combat its unpleasant side effects. In any event, I'm not sure why I felt the need to come online and kvetch about the inner workings of my body today; call it lame performance art. Or something.

The Power of the Written Word

I was struck today with the true, deep down understanding of how fragile life can be; of how each waking day comes with no guarantees and of how important it is to make a difference in the present moment, if making a difference in the present moment is possible. I was also inspired as a writer and as an artist and I hope that inspiration will stay with me and will drive me to make some positive and much needed changes with regard to my creative life.

This morning, over coffee, I read a short story about a woman named Julia Campbell. She was a writer, a teach, a Peace Corps volunteer. She was murdered while hiking in the Phillipines, where she'd been doing volunteerwork helping the Phillipine people, by a man who claims he did not mean to kill her. Apparently, he was angry over an argument he'd recently had with a neighbor when Julia bumped into him and he flew into a rage. No matter the reason for her death, a void will now exist where her life once was, although the work that she accomplished, the caring, courage and committment she displayed in her life will be remembered by those she helped and by those who love her. She will live on through the good she did in this world, and she will remain an inspiration to those of us who, thus far, have only dreamed about having the courage to reach out to others in the way that she did. I stumbled across her blog after typing her name into the computer because I wanted, after reading the magazine article, to know more about who she was. After reading several of her posts, I prayed that the blog I was reading did not belong to the same woman whose life had been so suddenly ended. A peruse through comments left under the last passage she wrote confirmed that it did.

So, I'm left with the feeling that what we do with the time we have is very important. If we want to write, if we have that passion, then probably there is some purpose out there waiting for us. If we feel a fire in our bellies to paint, to create, to love, to help others, there is a reason G-d ignited that fire. To ignore it is to deny the very purpose of our lives. Even if following our dreams is sometimes daunting, even if being a creative person sometimes causes us pain, even if helping another person means suffering through some discomfort on our side, it's extremely important to keep moving in the direction of those dreams, of stoking the fire within. Of making life really matter.