What I Know That I Didn't Know Before

Is it really August? Six months out from my brain surgery and I sometimes have no idea how to look at my life. I have to say the overarching theme is acceptance, and the undertow is over-doing, but maybe those are just on the surface, maybe underneath those obvious things something else is happening. Am I really different than I was before I was diagnosed with a benign meningioma last October? Yes, I am. No, I am not.

If you’ve been reading this blog or following me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been very prolific in expressing myself through working with oil pastels since March. My interest in doing that goes back before the brain surgery, but then something blocked my ability to accept that my drawing was acceptable. Much of my pre-surgery work is muddied with a question mark about whether or not I’m good at it or whether I should spend so much time playing with it when there are other more important things to accomplish. I would say that after the brain surgery I misplaced the filter that didn’t allow experiment or even a development of concepts and practice time. That filter disappeared nearly completely, though now I am conscious that I must choose to ignore it when it returns, and it does, until hopefully someday it will just be an archived file of used-to-be.

Falling in love with visual art again has opened new doors for me about how I view my future, how my family sees my time and efforts and how I connect with my friends and acquaintances. This is something I’ve been seeking for years! The enjoyment I get from simply sharing my work and seeing how it strikes people’s fancy is immeasurable. Just fills my heart with joy.

Dare I be honest? Of course, honesty, as undoing as it is, is the mission of Kosmic Egg Projects, myself by a company name. Nearly a decade ago I had already reached the end of my love affair with being a “hack” as my father might define me -- a copywriter, a content provider, a writer-for-hire, a copy editor and yet I continued to pursue the work for the pure reason of supporting my family and having some “freedom” to raise my children. More recently, after 20 years as a word-based communicator, I was already having trouble keeping even an ember of interest lit for a business focused on selling things and ideas with words. Before I was diagnosed, I was deeply depressed about losing my way off the creative path that I *really wanted* to be upon even though I enjoyed teaching creative screenwriting more than just about anything else I made myself do for a living. Still, I felt it was fraudulent, since I could no longer make myself write three scenes myself. I could not appreciate that I had anything valuable to share except what I had failed to stick to myself and achieve even though I knew what needed to be done. This obsession leaked into every part of my life before I was diagnosed. Who knows? It may have fed the tumor to begin with, or, perhaps, the tumor was the crime.

Diagnosis of having a brain tumor just exactly on the part of my brain that should be getting things done, that should be writing well was a huge relief. It was like a “get-out-of-jail” card. It opened the possibility that I didn’t have to write anymore. Can you believe someone who has spent thirty years now studying, practicing, working, and teaching writing was so elated to even think, “I may never do it again,” as a good thing? It is true, as much as I wrung my hands over it here. It is true. There was a little elation.

So I have watched this part of my life and wondered, “Am I really allowed to stop?” I mean we have discovered, together, that I can still write. It has nothing to do with the brain or lack thereof, if I choose not to write anymore. Accepting this possibility into my thoughts throws me into a fit, an internal argument about who I am down to my core. I have been a writer. I may not have achieved what I expected to achieve, but that is what I have been for so long that I cannot think of myself without that definition attached like a talking bubble that follows me everywhere. To claim it as my own without disrespecting my effort was the argument before diagnosis, but the idea of stopping and cutting it free, is unbelievably shocking. Almost like the thought of losing a parent or child, it is that close to the heart. Do these things happen? I feel like I must go to the edge of this abyss and decide finally whether I’m going to walk back away from it, or finally jump in with all my heart.

What does that mean? Wait. I am an artist. I draw pictures. There is a future there that makes sense to begin. What is this writing thing? It’s just an old, beat up stone that’s hanging off a cliff now, and I could cut the chain.

Six months out from surgery, I’m recovering. The left side of my face is feeling heat now for the first time in that long. I am taking tango lessons again and re-learning how to walk in my body, to be flexible, to glide, to feel sexy again. I am drawing better and better, and learning about how a picture can be a thousand words. Still, those words...they keep on pulling me until I decide.

The great thing I know now, that I did not know before this brain adventure, is that there is no way to predict the outcome of my decision. I could do everything right and be exactly where I stand today. I could "catch the thread of luminescence" as Oriah Mountain Dreamer calls "The Call" and have a glorious adventure. I only have to decide whether I am curious about what might happen if...

Paint the D&*(#$ Corner!

            I have been having an argument with myself about writing for the past few weeks. Maybe you noticed. I’ve been thinking about what I’m willing to sacrifice for the right to write. I have hit my bottom line, I am happy to report. I thought my bottom line was self-imposed poverty, but it turns out that was a bounce point. I went there mentally, emotionally and physically and tried it out, but found that I need to be up a little higher or I simply flat-line. This all has to do with my beliefs about writers that are somewhat messed up: I have cultured and curried the belief in a little jar called “Writer,” that writers need to be reclusive and be willing to sacrifice abundance, if, perhaps, only for a while until their hunger and suffering drive them to write, finally, that insanely commercial story of a lifetime. There was always supposed to be that eventual exit from isolation. I pursued this belief as far as I could pursue it by painting myself into a veritable corner. I walked away from almost everything to try to be this writer, so starving on so many levels that I would finally write. I forced myself to believe that my only ticket out could be writing that perfect story.

            All that rye grass in my field on the right hill, with the somewhat compromised Western light, and drainage problems, has been sitting frozen, un-harvested because it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a peach orchard, fully developed and producing succulent heirloom peaches grown from peach pits. It was rye grass. Pfft. I forgot what I put it there for so consumed with digging holes in frozen soil was I, and living my frustrated pit-iful dream of writing something important someday. To mix metaphors, I thought that the only way out of this corner I’ve painted myself into was to produce those peaches.

            Something happened last weekend to change my point of view. A concerned friend read my last post about sacrifice, and stepped out on a limb by suggesting that “until grocery stores accept prayers” I might want to accept my own need, and the needs of my family, to make a living even as I’m writing and transitioning out of the corner. Oriah, thank you! It was a meaningful exchange that helped me to receive support from various sources that I’ve been rejecting out of pride for quite some time. Just that little bit of accepted flow last Saturday, turned into a sustainable trickle by week’s end. That trickle has helped me to feel not so pinched, not so trapped into the corner I painted myself.

            Low-and-behold somehow the paint I used to trap myself in this corner has dried, and I cannot actually pretend anymore that I’m not allowed to cross the floor now.  Right now.  Upon the realization that I can’t live in the corner and write the story I dreamt of, everything shifted.

It is funny how things change in a quick moment. The Universe immediately takes notice and begins to shift the whole world around us – just like The Fool who in a moment of ecstasy doesn’t notice he’s about to walk off a cliff and so God moves the mountain to meet his feet – unexpected paths appear right underneath our feet that we missed seeing with our eyes.  I’ve been reminded of lessons I learned so long ago, and tucked in the shed by the future orchard, like rusty old tools. Can you imagine realizing that I don’t have to dig the holes with my hands? You may laugh at the concept of that silliness, but really, that’s what I was trying to do metaphorically. I remembered just last week that I own a shovel, and a plow and even a funky looking screw thing to get the holes started. What’s more, the ground is thawing.

Let me put this is plain language: I reached out to the world last week, and it reached back.  My shed of tools is quite extensive. I have lots of experience to share with some lucky people…if only I’ll let them know that I’ve taken the pad-lock off.  I decided this absolute isolation thing is for the … not the birds …it’s for some other creature. Therefore, I’m volunteering for a full day in a co-working space in the town next door. I’m hoping I’ll meet some like-minded, forward thinkers who have a twinkle in their eye about whatever they’re passionate. I re-did my resume again and started to send it out into the void just to see if the economy really has turned a corner. People started calling me again, as if they knew I’d actually pick up the phone fearlessly. The birds have returned even, red-winged black birds twirling their songs so casually in spite of the chill air, as if they know it will pass soon.

My plan is to return to writing as I always have written before, squeezing it into a full life, because I found out, after a year in the corner, that my misery doesn’t produce the whole truth I look for in my work. Partial truths of anxiety, alienation and sad stories may work for some writers, but not me. In order to plant this orchard, I have to be able to afford the peaches, and yes, it may take even longer, and I’m late already, but the vision isn’t gone, just shifted a little towards my heart. So I’m walking out on my freshly painted floor, and I’m turning around, and painting over that corner so I can live my life.