Tossed the die to see what I would do after yoga.  Choices were Balthazar (ride), vacuum, paint the office, paint the painting, blog or write to my aunt.  It's amazing how tossing the die (or dice if you use two) always seems to make the best possible choice.  I read The Dice Man when I was in my early twenties and have used the dice ever since.  It ties in with Jung's synchronicity, with metaphysics, quantum mechanics and the Powers That Be (for want of a better description of the indescribable).  Writing something, anything, pulls me into myself, in a way that is somehow related to meditation and the creative act.  I've discovered something else about myself too.  When I load my brain with 'stuff', it acts as insulation so that I can't get close to or hear or sense the intrinsic truth of my being.  That sounds like a high falutin' esoteric fuzzy wuzzy sentence but it's true.  Feeding my brain junk gives out junk in return.  For instance, the Olympics finished last weekend.  We watched every day, caught up on the highlights in the morning and saw some of the live action before going to bed at night.  Naturally advertisers regarded the Olympics as a golden opportunity.  The same commercials were repeated ad  nauseum, along with the same jingles, phrases and visuals.  My brain was saturated with it.  How is it possible to think an original thought when the thoughts have been put there for me?  It isn't.

Being 56 I am on the tail end of the digitial revolution.  I tried to Facebook again and could not (thankfully.  I listened to my inner agitation and got off).  I don't use a mobile phone, I don't Twitter, I'm not sure what a MP3 is and have no idea what FLAC means.  Even so, in so many ways I have given my thoughts, given my brain away to those who will gladly fill it up with their thoughts, opinions and ideas (none of which are original).  There is much good which comes from our digitial interconnectedness but I think we also need to be aware of the dangers.  Heard on the news that our swimmers would have done better at the Olympics if they hadn't been using their social media so much.  Where the Chinese were spending X amount of hours in the pool we were spending only Y because we were too busy chatting or tweeting. 

I've written before that I have become more sensitive rather than less with age.  I donated money to Animals Australia and yesterday, to my surprise, I got my member pack.  I couldn't read the documentation inside because I knew once I had those images in my head I would never be rid of them.  Watched Cops a few weeks ago and lay awake feeling dreadfully sorry for these people on crystal meth and heroin.  Entire families caught up in tragedies of alcohol, drugs and violence.   Last night watched Explore where Simon Reeve explores the Philippines, especially Manila where 60% of the population live below the poverty line.  So much so that people have lived for years in cemetary mausoleums.  20 million people in Manila and more coming in every day.  Breeding like rabbits because it's a poor third world CATHOLIC country.  So I lay awake, again.  I understand why people go and live on mountaintops.  The life of a recluse, sans all electronic media becomes more and more attractive. 

I understand now why when I start doing yoga there is this feeling of relief.  It's become a refuge.  While I do yoga I can only do yoga.  My mind is still busy but  if I really concentrate on my breath, I am so much more there.  And being there means I am closer to the Truth of the Eternal Now and less burdened with Stuff. 

Dreams:  Driving through a central Michigan countryside.  Pass a two story white farmhouse with teenage boys milling around outside.  See the head of a blue cattle dog lying on the dirt.  Just the head.  Its eyes watch me as I pass.  There is also a green and yellow budgie the size of a pigeon rolling drunkenly in a ditch and an equally inebriated rabbit.  A small boy picks up the rabbit and flings it in the grass.  I don't like the look of the boys but I like less the look of everything else.  I stop the car and engage a black haired boy about fifteen in conversation.  Tell him I am worried about the appearance of the bird and the rabbit but say nothing about the dog.  In the meantime the others have built a small mound out of dirt and placed the dog's head on that.  It still watches the proceedings with a calm and interested air.  Does the farmer use pesticides, I ask.   If he does and it has had such a serious effect on these animals it may be affecting you too.  I urge him to call his local vet.  The dog bothers me.  Why is it still alive.  Why has it been beheaded.  The boy is polite and articulate but beneath the surface something unsavoury watches.

I am at a bbq or outdoor party.  Again it is central Michigan.  Birds fly squawking overhead.  I lean back and watch.  The mixed flock of birds circle and wheel overhead.  I don't know why they don't fly elsewhere.  Then I see a large white bird like a gannet catch a small sparrow in its beak.  The sparrow's head pokes out of the beak.  I can see the moist blackness of its eye.  I am sick with sorrow.  Always death.

Walking along a dirt road with Nicki.  Yesterday (in real life) I heard a male neighbour screaming, using an obscenity.  Don't know whether he screamed at his wife, children or the animals.  It bothered me as it was a sentence, unintelligible as most of it was, of pure rage.  His children and his wife and the animals were all a witness.  Nicki walks and lays her hand on my shoulder as she talks.  It lays there very heavy.  I wish she would remove it.  The screaming man's wife comes to me.  She is upset with her husband.  She is emotionally fragile after giving birth.  The husband is contrite.  We are all in the back seat of a car.  A very pale, almost ghostly young woman gets in with us.  The wife has hysterics.  She is frightened of the woman's whiter than white skin.  There is something uncanny about it but the woman is very much alive, very much flesh and blood.  The wife insists on leaving.  She is inconsolable.  I do my best to calm her down.  She leaves the phone off the hook.  I hear a tinny voice later and realise it's her husband.  It's all too messy.  Something about diving underwater too, unfortunately in the time it has taken me to type the above the memory of it has gone. 

Parkinson's Disease.  There.  I've hardly dared think the words, much less write them.  Writing them makes it real somehow and I don't want it to be real. 

I suspect Richard has PD.  Haven't spoken to anyone about it, not even him.  But I have to talk to someone and the journal has always been my confidante of choice.  Worried about putting such a private matter in the public domain but as no one reads my blog it is as private as the many written journals lying about the house. 

Talking to Richard about it is, at this point, not happening.  The closest I've come is to say we'll buy more fish oil and eat more legumes as that is good for the dopamine in his brain and that is good to help allay the tremors.  Interestingly Richard didn't question.  He changed the subject.  He knows something is wrong and is as reluctant as I to bring it out in the open.  But we must I'm afraid.  The symptoms which seem to have come on suddenly are classic PD.  There is no clear cut test for PD, perhaps the closest being if the symptoms are alleviated by medication, but the symptoms do tell a clear story.  I noticed the tremors last year.  At rest his head, hand and leg shake.  Once they are put into use, once the muscle is actively engaged, the tremor disappears.  When he is completely relaxed, as in asleep, I don't notice them either.  Richard often dozes off on the couch.  His head drops to his chest and perhaps the heaviness of the weight negates the possibility of a tremor.  There are other signs however.  Shuffling.  He shuffles his feet.  This is a fairly new occurrence, becoming apparent in the past 6 to 8 months.  One thing he hasn't done for a very long time is swing his arms when he walks.  I remember chiding him about it a couple of years ago.  Has he always walked like that or is it too another symptom?   I have also noticed his increasing difficulty with small things; buttoning a shirt, doing up a zipper, putting the collar on Jamaica.  He is also getting forgetful, leaving the water on in the trough, leaving gates open, forgetting peoples names or the names of objects.  Of course we all forget things but it is more common with Richard than it used to be.  He also has more difficulyt getting out of a chair.  That could just be attributed to age but it is, unfortunately, yet another symptom of PD. 

I'm not sure what to do.  He is my best friend as well as my husband.  Anything he finds uncomfortable he avoids, as we all do I suppose.  Subjects that are difficult are not spoken of.  Or if I insist that we talk, he gets angry.  If I push he'll cave and it can be discussed and usually solved.  But this is different.  This is his health. And it can't be solved.  He has been proud of reaching 65 without being on medication for high blood pressure or cholesterol or any of the other things people of his age normally take.  He's put on 20 pounds since we quit smoking three months ago.  I know he has pain in his hip joints but after I said something about the almost nightly huge bowls of ice cream, the handfuls of salted peanuts and the weight gain he is starting to walk more again.  He was averaging two times a week (the 6km walk) which was just enough to keep him sore without making him fit.  Now he is going (at least this past week) every other day which is brilliant.  Continuous exercise is another arrow in our sling of things to do to keep PD under control. 

If that is what he has.  The thing to do is sit him down I guess, put forward everything I've noticed and ask him what he wants to do.  Does he want to see a neurologist or motor specialist to have my suspicions confirmed or just go on as we are?  If there comes a point where his life is being impacted by the symptoms we can act then.  Perhaps that's the best option.  For today and next week and next month he can still do all that he has done before, just a bit slower.

Another reason, and a very good one, for not discussing my suspicions with Richard is his propensity to become overly anxious and depressed about things he cannot control.  This, I've read, can be a side effect of the disease, but it can also arise when being diagnosed.  Richard fixates on things and goes into an emotional tailspin with little provocation.   Being told you could have Parkinson's Disease would be an enormous blow.  Do I really want to take that risk?  No, now that I've written all this out (thanks again, Journal, for being such a good sounding board) I think the best plan at this time is to get him on the good food and supplements, most of which he is already on as we eat extremely well already, to keep him exercising if I can without alienating him, get him to yoga (he says he'll go but he hasn't made a move yet), to keep out of his way while he struggles with the buttoning and zippering and other vexing tasks and be there in any other way.

If and when we reach a point where he is unable to do the things he normally does or he complains about the symptoms then we'll talk about it and decide what to do.  

I was looking forward to taking a yoga retreat (as a reward of quitting the smokes) in September.  I still might go but if I do I think it will be the last time I will leave him to cope on his own.  Perhaps that's why I should take that little break away. 

The Wisdom of the Gut

You wouldn't think a meditation cd could have the opposite effect to which it was intended but that's exactly what happened with a cd which was given to me by a friend.  I tried listening to it a week or so ago and found, despite good instructions and good intentions, that I could not sit still.  Why was I so agitated?  Put it down to just one of those things, one of those days and thought no more about it.  Except that every time I thought about the cd there was this tinge of agitation, this reluctance.   Not the usual response to meditation cds.  I've got a couple and have listened to them without anything other than a calm receptivity to what they have to say.  But I was being silly, wasn't I?  This friend was so impressed with this cd that she made sure I had a copy.  She glowed with enthusiasm.  It had to be good.  I respect this friend and her intelligence.  So yesterday I put it on and clicked through to where I'd left off.  And there it was again.  Agitation.   A visceral antipathy.

Why did this man's voice affect me so?  If you must know, it's Barry Long.  He's long dead so anything I write won't hurt his feelings.  And I am in the minority.  Googled him and found he had/has quite a following, that he'd studied in India, was influenced by Krishanmurti and Gurdjieff but maintained that his teachings were his own.  The rest of his life, he died in 2003 from prostrate cancer, was devoted to disemination of his teachings. 

But I have known men like him.  Autocratic.  A magnet for women (and he had 5 long term monogamous relationships during his life).  How can I say I know him when I've listened to one cd and never met the man?  I don't know except that the sound of his voice and the things he said set up a roiling in my gut and, in my book, the gut knows. 

I was hauling myself over the coals for being such a ninny until I looked up his life story.  Five women.  Uh huh.  Prostate cancer (this may be unfair but I do suspect that illnesses manifest in the body where we are conflicted or where negative feelings and memories are stored).  Plus a large part of his teachings, according to Wikipedia, had to do with sex and love in relationships.  Clanging bells and sirens!  So going out on a limb here and judging where I have no right to, I suspect this guy had a magnetic personality, that women were drawn to him, that he was wise yet he couldn't help but use his wisdom for self-aggrandizement, not in money or even, in an overt way, power, but in his need for women, their admiration and sex.

Or maybe I'm just not evolved enough. 

Artistic Temperament Temperamental

I'm starting to feel like an artist.  Isn't that odd?   And wonderful?  I've been making art in some form for most of my life yet it is only recently that colours and forms and visions are starting to permeate my imagination and my dreams.  And my meditations.  Colours like sky blue and tan which doesn't sound exciting now but made such a rich tapestry in my imagination.  Another time it was a storm coloured sea of black greens and livid sulphurous yellow streaked with aqua that filled that infinite space between my ears.  Paintings are everywhere.  Driving home from yoga and there was another one; the pale ghostly fingers of gum trees diminishing in the gathering darkness of an infinite road dotted with amber reflectors.  It was such a lonely sight.  Could I paint it?  No.  I have never matched the work to the imagination. 

In my last post I wrote about the clarity and artistic vision of children, something I would like to emulate and now I only want to become a better techinician.  What I see and what I reproduce are two entirely different critters.  Have fixative sprayed the last work, the Suspended Man.  I'll do some re-highlighting, a little touching up but for the most part it is finished.  And how far from what I saw in my mind's eye it is.  That is because I still don't have the technical skills.   However I don't think that necessarily prevents me from being an artist. 

Saw a painting of a man by Van Gogh done early in his career.  The man had none of that magic evident in Van Gogh's later work.  But he was learning.  He had to be awkward and stiff and clumsy.  It was part of the journey.  He allowed himself to do things badly knowing that with practice and diligence he would improve.  And boy, did he ever!

Was searching for Toowoomba Art Gallery's next show and saw that it was entitled Imagine You Know.  Imagine You Know is to showcase up and coming local and regional artists.  (I've got butterflies just contemplating writing the next sentence).  So I thought I'd download their registration form and see if perhaps I might possibly enter one or two paintings.  (Egad!  Just writing that is making me feel slightly ill.)

Well, that's okay.  I've just read the entry guide and it is far far too complicated for me.  Works having to meet certain size standards, with particular ways of hanging required (no string, thank you), photos put on CD Roms, written explanations of why the works should be accepted within the curatorial guidelines set out by TRAG (Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery) as well as a curriculum vitae.  I'm much too lazy for all that. 

There are hundreds of thousands of artists who can do all that without blinking an eye.  Makes me want to cry just thinking of it.  Makes it all too serious.  I'm much too fragile (oh, can't believe it but I still feel like crying) to subject myself to all that 'stuff'.  Deep breath.  Okay, I'll do art for the reasons I've always done art; because I like making something that wasn't there before.  Because I have an idea and think it would be fun interesting necessary (like breathing) to try and bring it out into the 'real' world. 

That part of me that wanted to cry just then.  I've never looked too closely at that.  It is the same part that howled with frustration when I couldn't learn how to balance a chequebook.  Must be tied in with my idea of myself conflicting wih the reality.  And something to do with work.  I'll work very hard at things I enjoy but just thinking of the frustration to be experienced with organizing everything, especially the computer stuff and paying someone to frame things at the same time of not knowing whether my work is good enough.  I just want someone to walk in one day and say, Wow, your work is fabulous!  Where have you been hiding?  But it doesn't happen like that.  People put a lot of time and effort to get their work out there.  Hell, I'm barely able to put a photo on the blog.  Just tried with The Suspended Man and failed.  Why I find it so hard to download things then find them then do something with them is beyond me.  Anyway, enough for today.  I'm done.  It's killing the happy.

Picasso said it took him a lifetime to learn how to paint like a child.  The daughter of a friend of ours gave me a painting of a toucan.  I adore it.  He's got a huge green and pink beak which strides majestically across the top of the paper, a black body and an orange breast ingeniously shaded on the lower third to indicate three dimensionality.  His eye ring is grey and the background is orange.  He's out of proportion.  Feathers are not indicated.  The body is crammed into 1/4 of the paper while the beak takes up a third and the orange background has streaks and smudges going every which way.  Yet it works.  I would have been so proud to have painted it.  As it is I am proud it was given to me.  The artist is Isabel.  She's seven years old. 

Her work makes my work look contrived and laboured.   The spontaneity and truth of that toucan cannot be equalled by anything of mine.  A few years ago we attended a school exhibition of budding artists at the local shire hall.  I bought a painting for $30.  It's of three different parrots sitting on a brown branch with daisy like flowers floating in the air.  There is a green and gold macaw and a male and female eclectus (I think).  It is 'naive' and crudely done but it colourful and spontaneous and oh so right.  Again, I would have been proud to have painted it.  The artist, when I complimented her on her work, was shy and not inclined to talk.  I think she was about 10 or 11. 

Admiring these two paintings and their truth I begin to understand what Picasso meant.  Which doesn't mean I'll give up painting.  I won't but it will inspire me to keep searching for that inner truth which children access so well and which adults hide under a lifetime of learning and intellectualizing and bruised and/or well guarded ego. 

Dreamed of a willie wagtail which sat on my hand.  It was thirsty and put its bill in the corner of my mouth to drink my saliva.  I tried to make a self-waterer for it so that it could have clean water and not be dependent upon my spit for moisture.  That's all I remember of the dream but the image has stayed with me.  I tried to sketch it last night but it didn't work.  Think it needs a closeup of the lower half of the face and the bird positioned slightly different on the hand.  Very important that the hand is in view.  That's the only part of the sketch I'm happy with, the sweep and curve of the wrist and forearm.  What small things yet the grace and beauty of the wrist where it joins the hand is majestic. 

Have almost finished the man suspended over the vat of water.  No idea what it means, where it came from or even if it works.  It's very simple and pared down yet I like it.  There's something intrinsically attractive about mirrors, doorways, windows, rooms viewed from without, bubbles, reflections, water and 'dimensions' although trying to replicate three dimensions on a two dimensional surface is hard enough without adding a fourth or fifth. 

Mattise, The Flying Cat and the Fat Buddha

Our little world at sixes and sevens this morning.  The bed has been dismantled and reassembled in the living room which is also crammed with the other bedroom furniture.  The chap was supposed to come sand and polish the wood floor today but is suffering, along with his wife, from vertigo (isn't that interesting?  So it was something 'going around' and not the scary disease I suspected.  How readily am I willing to scare myself nigh to death with very little evidence?).

The cats are distressed.  No one slept wth us last night even though we didn't have the fire going and the house was cold and bleak.  Either we were being punished by their absence or they felt they had to keep watch in case something else changed in the house.  Matisse is kneeling near the keyboard.  He keeps climbing on and off my lap and although I love him it is quite distracting so I have pushed the chair well under the desk so he can't climb on anymore.  Reminds me of Garrison Keilor's song about the cat that wants in, no, he wants out, no, he MUST come back in, no wait!  I HAVE to go out RIGHT NOW!  That's Matisse.  On my lap, off my lap, on, off, on, off and then really off.  I think it hurts his feeling though.  He is the most uncertain cat I've ever met.  Natalia's boldness and self assurance is refreshing.  She looks me straight in the eye and holds my stare.  She is not trying to intimidate nor is she intimidated.  She is comfortable with us and with herself.  Matisse, in comparison, is Woody Allen in fur.   Perhaps that's not quite a fair comparison but his lack of self confidence is staggering.  He is, after nine years with us, still unsure of our committment.  If  I've fed him breakfast but go into the living room to put a log in the woodheater or retrieve a pair of shoes, he follows.  I can't go to the loo on my own.  I used to think it was that Siamese characteristic, which supposedly makes them the dogs of the cat world - as if that was a compliment!, to want to be where you are and do what you're doing.  With my previous two Siamese that was true.  But not Matisse.  I think he suspects that if he doesn't keep us under surveillance we'll disappear.

It is sad because, and I suspect I've written of this before, he rarely looks me in the eye.  What cat doesn't naturally outstare any human unless the cat is feral, sick or frightened?  It's almost as if he's afraid to reveal his true self, his true nature.  What dire secrets fester away behind those clear blue eyes?

When he is paid special attention he blooms, as if he didn't think he was deserving.  When all my focus is upon him, when I am petting him firmly and rhythmically and I croon to him how special, beautiful and loved he is, he still doesn't look me in the eye but his tail is up and 'happy' and he rubs himself against me with considerable force (and he is a big solid cat).   Matisse has a habit of greeting me in passing with his tail.  Often I'm in some one legged standing yoga pose and Matisse will pass by on his way to the window seat.  He'll push his tail against my leg as he walks past and it's all I can do not to fall over. 

Finished that pastel drawing I wrote about.  Of course it's not nearly as good as I'd like it to be, nor is it photographed as well as it could be, very grainy and dull.  My signature shows how bad it is. 

Here's a photo of Fat Buddha with Cat that I did a few months ago.  Guess I'll have to learn how to take better pictures.