An Aria for my brother       Traversing the Inner Labyrinth        July 20, 2017

      As we circle the block again looking for a parking space the opera singers aria on the radio is full  rich and deep. I am singing my aria for my brother as we ease into the space and I bring him home.The singer who sings the aria doesn't get bogged down or tired. She just sings and so do I.


     We are just returned home from HCMC where my brother was almost admitted into the psychiactric  unit. But notthis time. I sing the aria of all the times I have been with him before and accompanied him on the long labryrinthian journey through his psyche back to feeling good again.


      As I look into his face I look past the generations and see our gran pa shuffling and obsessed, speaking of Jacob in the bible... I see my father with his brilliant wit, determined to be right.. I see our mother laying on the couch in one of her disabled depressive modes.


      My aria becomes tender, passionate and compassionate in turns as I hold onto my brother. Knowing I am here at this moment to bear witness to his suffering and to try to comfort him and guide him through.


    There are no easy answers, but singing this internal aria and drawing help me feel that I am not falling apart too.


     We keep moving through time. The ghosts of our familys troubled past lead the way.
I keep singing. I keep holding onto my brother. I keep drawing... He leads the way and I hold onto him...wishing him safe passage back to a better place.

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

Healing Heart Hamsa for Josh

    This morning it rained and I awoke Late. I painted two healing images for Josh. He has been in the hospital since Friday when I rode in the ambulance back to HCMC again.....this time shortness of breath and fluid build up from his atrial fibulation.....time..heart beat...thumpety thump thump....time and so many heart beats ago

that  the last time I posted was in November...back when the election was bad enough and it is so much worse now...back when we were just consulting with the surgeon about Josh's upcoming knee replacement...back when it was before the long winter and the bad election was about all the bad weather I thought we would be contending with...but the winter was long and fraught and there have been so many set backs for Josh...hospitalizations..and ER and one thing after another after another...

     drawing remains..and now I look back on all those moments recorded...and now there is just the next piece of paper and this healing moment of drawing and the next..and holding onto Josh in his moments of pain and suffering...wishing there was more space and healing in between these moments.

     So I drew him today...the fluid build up on his heart leaving and the oxygen of Divine breath in and out and in and out and in and out...holding and healing him...I drew that and then drew this healing image of his heart...

    The phone rang and he was in pain again...so I rushed to his side..The allergic reaction to the cleaning chemicals in his room caused him once again..pain and an unneccesary set back...

I held him. He sneezed and sneezed again. eyes watering and stressed.

        I put up the healing heart hamsa on his wall and then painted in the other painting of him with fluid leaving and the Divine breath in and out and in out. They are now on his wall holding him....giving out the healing energy that art can give....

      Then we watched TV which was a nice sedative, especially the Home building shows where all the pieces fit and look really good. No swear words or mishaps. Its how you'd like a life to be. The pieces fitting just so......and our pieces fit just so..in their own way..despite the challenges and difficulties along the way.

    As I left I held him and he said "Just love me the way I am.".

I held him close.

    A Viennese waltz played as I drove home in the rain..and I knew my mother was bending in close to me from her heavenly realm..giving me courage and strength to deal with Josh's Oh So Many Health Challenges and Crisis....I sat and listened to every note of the music when I pulled into the driveway..... feeling my mother leaning in and holding me.... as I hold onto Josh and

Love him just the way he is.....

   

The Moon, Shabbat and Pot Musings.

The Moon, Shabbat musings, Romantic Pots fall in love and The Pot of Bewilderment
Since the November 8th 2016 election I find myself wandering through
a labyrinth of many emotions with many companions by my side....
I turn to drawing and allow my feelings to emerges 
in the form of the dark shapes of
Lurking Uncertainties
that now populate our daily life.
I am grateful to find humor,
grateful for Shabbat
and grateful to gaze upon Goya's drawings ( more about that in another post)
I am grateful to gaze upon the eternal comforting feminine moon
that was just full.
Here are my musings on this time.
*********

For the last two nights the Full Moon has come in so close to earth. Two nights ago I gazed up into its wonder as feathery clouds lined up like so many angels coming in to sing to earth a comforting song...a comforting ethereal song....

The earth keeps spinning, the moon waxes and wanes and in the full light of the femininc moon we wonder. Last weeks election results have us spinning and wondering, but the cycles of the moon remain. The woman many of us hoped would be elected was not, yet feminine wisdom remains. We wander into a labyrinth of wonder and dismay, hoping not to get lost in our fears and anxieties.

the moon came in so close as if to bring us some comfort, some healing hope, some subtle feminine energy reminding that this strong inner light is not as bright as the sun, but holds its own wisdom..... I felt held by its beauty gazing upwards as the luminous clouds lined up...
as if angels came in close as well, to comfort and console.

**********

 I went to a lovely pottery opening a few nights ago...the simple pots on shelves sang their song and I drew them, as well as the anxious conversations all around...

My sense of whimsy emerged as I drew the pots. Nope, they did not vote, they just remain our objects of beauty to be used and adored.

I drew two pots falling in love amid the conversations as well as the ever present dark lurking shapes of uncertainty that populate my sketchbook now.

 

Shabbat remains

I hold onto the peace and rhythms of Shabbat in my own hand hewn ways.

The need for spiritual rest and insight remains. In facing challenging times, I feel more than ever the need to curl up within the sacred shell of Shabbat..I just want to curl up inside the shell of comfort, rest and forgetfulness... to let go of the world for a day and come back to it invigorated with insight.

 I took a lovely Cat Nap with my kitties!!

 

********

The next day I

Wandered the halls of Mia,

 my brother and I paused before our favorite paintings as always.

 After sitting and musing by the Fountain of Goodness

I turned and went briefly into the African Art Gallery

There before me was this ancient African pot

a very round figure pulling at its mouth

 with the other hand

in a questioning pose.

The expression on the face is one of

 bewilderment, fear and anxiety.

I named it:

The Pot of Bewilderment: What have we Done?

All for now.

Singing my father home

So the years pass after all and hot summer is here again...not as hot as the Texas summer my father James C. White was born, his mother sighing and pushing this intellectual, poet, railroad worker and teacher out into the world. An irascible birth of course, and there he was fully formed in the arms of his mother...later on picking cotton as his sister spun tales for him from the movies she had seen..
and then onto Baylor to be the handsome president of his class...Japan summoned him for his military non active duty.. time to have a girlfriend and sip sake...oh how the boxes in the back room sing of those time...and thus time tumbled by...a brief first unhappy marriage and then meeting that beautiful Viennese woman. My mother Emily.. oh the complexity and the passion..the shared feeling for poetry, the clash of culture and clash..all to be worked out here on the tundra of Minnesota..and me their first born..smiling into the world in the fall of 1952..and how he showed me Greek Poetry..and oh how a life tumbles by..and more children...my brother Wallace, Raymond and Margaret..His work
teaching at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design and then working for the railroad...handsome and erudite, always opinionated and passionate about politics and movies and poetry...the years did pass after all..and there I was calling him on his birthday to tell him that I had indeed rented a cottage on the island of Inisheer off the west coast of Ireland and wasn't it now a gift to him..but that he would have to support me...and 3 years later he and my mother walked the stony roads and we ate the weird and wonderful ray fish..and he charming the islanders with his stories and talk..the years just kept tumbling by and he kept writing poems, but never quite published and kept sending friends his patched together letters he Xeroxed....aging ever so slightly and then yes right into old age.... and finally finally after Emily was gone a year and a half we sat out there in my vine hut in early 'August and he said to me :"It's a Big Old World and I am getting tired of it." I drew him with a sigh and had a feeling he would not be long for this world.... less than a week later he was hospitalized... as I ran between hospitals as Josh lay in another one with a leg infection...I was filled with premature grief and ran to see him yet again with a poetry book under my arm...I read to him The Mower and The Glow Worm by Andrew Marvell...and he paused looking revived as if he'd had a blood transfusion...and later that night he did and he was gone...but ah, before I left that afternoon he smiled and said to me...You Sure Are Pretty...his last sweet oh so sweet words to me...


and he was gone.


the next few days a blur of activity and grief and now four years has passed and his box of ashes is not scattered yet....it is on a shelf with his shoes and glasses and a hodge podge of beloved books...I made sure not to organize the books..just have them the way he would want them...full of thoughts and ideas and papers ....pounded and beaten by his deep reading...


today I took that heavy box down from the shelf and of course a sheaf of carbon paper came down with it...


oh the weight of the years and yet now it is time to sing him home...and place the ashes in several special places..
out in front amid sunflowers he loved to grow..
         in a bright red pot with the hibiscus flowers big as dinner plates ready to bloom.
               down to the falls and scattered to the stream that will bring them to the mighty Mississippi and thus the sea eventually....
                    and surreptitiously to Emily's grave with a stick poked into the ground and the ashes shoved in.....
      and a small amount kept and saved for that inevitable journey south to Texas to plant in the vicinity of a place in east texas...


    yes.. I will sing my father home soon...and the sheaf of carbon papers will accompany the journey.

Musings from the Vine Hut this morning

Musings from the Vine Hut

.....and so you'd wonder...how do I steer the ship...?? through action, direct action and efficient To-Do lists????...or through philosophical contemplation of nature....allowing its twistings and twinings to give insight to our fragmented world.....

Meandering through memory loss

It snowed today. A lovely sticky snow that stuck to branches.
a person could say winter is still here, but it is Spring.
The calendar says so. Here in Minnesota the usual two step waltz forward and back between the seasons....warmth and cold.


Somehow refreshing to have a simple blanket of white. as if its purity could blot out the terrible world news of terrorist attacks in Brussels....as if...as if...once again trying to understand news that is too hard to understand..but feel...and wishing all the lit candles in memory cleared a way...and as fragile as those hopes are, they flicker and are strong.


It is Purim and the celebration of good over evil  in the ancient story is all the more poignant at this time of extreme brokenness with the rise of irrational and dark forces...


I visit my dear friend as always on a Wednesday afternoon..the news of the day is spread across her red bedspread...we reach as always for art and music as we begin our meandering conversation amid the synchronicity of a Vienna waltz that signifies and symbolizes my mother's presence, her best friend for decades..every day marked by a long philosophical conversation in which they shared troubles, rose up above them to discuss world events and then shared troubles again...somehow resolving so much along the way...and the bond of friendship so deep..and our families so woven together.


Even though my friend suffers from memory loss, we navigate our beloved territory of art with ease..I take her on a journey and read to her the NYT  descriptions of museum shows around the country..we soar off to these places in our imaginations and imagine all the beautiful art there is to behold. We make it to the Houston Museum, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach and then with certainty back to the beloved Metropolitan Museum of Art....from moment to moment we meander through memory loss, but art anchors us and we find sure footing as we journey..landing at a show at the Met about Unfinished works of art by many artists..
My little phone takes us there and back...and we look at each piece carefully and find what is mysterious and unfinished in the works of art with blank faces and unpainted bodies...all of it complete somehow..and despite the empty space of memory loss and the meandering corridors it leads us down..we find our way home as art holds our hand.


darkening twilight descend..and I share the details and inspirations of my walk around the lake yesterday...my friend receives my inner life and holds it in her heart with clarity and enthusiasm...I feel like a ship who has sailed into a good port as we talk into the oncoming darkness of the evening.


the pure white snow holds each foot step of mine as I make it out to the car... renewed by our time together.....I feel the sadness of the world..distanced  a bit .....I feel healed by the circle of light created in our conversation


I drive home into the mystery of night...allowing my deeper questions to float down river where they find a home in larger answers out of sight where river meets the vast sea..

My Day.Entering the philosophers labyrinth of veiled memory and forgetfulness

My day


    It's a sunny day with crisp cold undertones. Still March in Minnesota, but spring is in the air. By the lake I take delight in hearing the lapping of the waves at the shore..The beautiful stick sculpture I saw a few evenings ago at the sandy edge of the lake is long gone......I muse on it's perfect airy nature and the way it was just held together with almost nothing..and how it held space and beauty. A structure about 6 feet tall, with a perfectly placed nest of grasses at the top..Fragile and yet there for the ages. At least for the philosophical memory of it all.
     The ice is gone...the water is warming. I walk in the cold wind.
******
     I drive quickly to work at the nursing home. My car full of tissue paper, bags and boxes that were made into Purim boxes 2 days ago.
     Mikey is waiting for me as always, sitting proudly in his wheelchair ready to go. I cut out the Easter egg shapes, set out the paints and away he goes..painting beautiful stripes on his oval shape.   My dear Rachel is ailing, but still wheels herself with pride to the table.. there she suddenly rights herself and instead of watching as she said she would starts aligning her dainty rick rack pieces with care on her paper egg.
     Jessica arrives with her southern grace, intelligence and charm. She and Rachel are both from Mississippi and often tell me in great detail how they picked cotton in the hot sun...Jessica is well read and sharp as a tack. She proudly brings the whimsical St. Paddy's day hat we made 2 weeks ago and decides to turn it into an
Easter basket. As luck and art would have it...I happen to have a nice piece of paper all cut and ready for weaving right on the table. She starts and then soon opts for the "shocking green, orange and pink fluorescent paper..that I secretly can't stand..but have learned with humility isthe favorite of All my students!!! She carefully weaves the strands, Mikey adds rick rack to his after I make the glue lines, 98 year old Mary watches and Rachel hums her happy tune.  Carla smiles and keeps up a constant. banter as she decorates her egg. We are all in subtle lovely harmony.
    Now if you the viewer stepped back from this table, your gaze and perception might be stopped by the walkers and wheelchairs and obvious infirmities each one struggles with. All those aides are of little consequence though as each one soars like a bird in their own way. My philosophical silver thoughts hover over each one and my ongoing musings that
musings
that
Each One In Their Own Way Finding Their Way to Beauty remains.
      I take a moment to show my drawings of the morning: my cat at the vet and the lovely pharmacist who helped me with my prescription this morning...Rachel smiles at this drawing and leans back in her chair reciting a poem she wrote about her pills and eventually meeting her maker and will he recognize her with all the new parts she has in her body..she smiles, saying she is just waiting to tune up her autoharp so she can sing it..
I marvel and I marvel as the rick rack pokes up its head again and again until I firmly glue it down..I marvel at the rich treasure trove of creativity I bear witness to again and again....
******
and then our time is over..I wheel Mikey back to his room. He never stops smiling. I turn the corner and see the ministers I know in their room.. a brief conversation turns into an insight..as I allude to the icon on the wall and note my Greek Orthodox and Southern Baptist upbringing as well as my Jewish life now..the lovely  young minister says the icon represents the 3 visitors that Abraham welcomes in and in one brief silvery insightful moment I see with alarcrity that the 3 spiritual visitors I have welcomed in are mirrored in this icon..that somehow it holds it all.
    I stop at Rachels Room. Her lovely St Paddy's day hat and Easter basket are already hanging up. we visit briefly and then I am on my way.....wheeling my cart full of goodies up to the locked ward of memory.
***
There I enter the veiled rooms of time, where the residents are fully present and yet vaguely aware of where, who and what they are doing...I slip through the veil of memory and set up the art project. It will be Easter baskets embellished with all kinds of foam art bunny rabbit and chickadees and carrots for the bunnies. It is so relaxing to peel off the back paper and stick them all over the boxes in some kind of harmony. I sit next to Mary Jane who asks each time again and again. Do I put it here??????Do I put it here? here? and my well of patience is full. I draw from it easily and answer her each time.Yes...yes..its fine wherever you put it..yes. yes yes yes.
   The other residents add foam and I decorate the other boxes. It is so relaxing. I think I will get a Phd in Foam Art and let go of my serious Real Artist Aspirations!!!!
   As we work the sun is setting. It has set on memory a long, long time ago...We sit amid the last rays of this day..I hear memory lapping at the shore..I look out across the lake and see the distant horizon..which is how so many events must seem to each one of these dear people now....Easter that once happened, now seems distan and far away..and yet the waves of the present moment feel good as we put our foam bunnies on a box. Carl says its okay but he would like to go home.
    
    I drive home into the setting sun. The waves are still lapping gently on the shore, even though I cannot hear them..