Great Loss

I was writing a book. Words flew and flowed, ideas, characters, and plots. But then my world came to an end and I suffered a GREAT loss. For a long time I felt like I would mourn forever. That I would never stop crying or hurting, it hurt worse than anything I’ve known. When I got the news that he was in a comma my world came to an end, I knew that he wasn’t going to make it and unfortunately I was right. A week later my brother was taken off life support and his body died along with the brain that had died a week before.

I can only talk to my family and my mother about this. Everyone else say the wrong things. I can’t stand to hear them talk about it, to try to console me. When someone dies everyone should shut the fk up! I need the sympathy and support but in as few of words as possible. Just hug me. Tell me you love me. Say, ‘I’m so sorry.’ then shut up. This sounds so awful but that is how I feel. Each word wounds if it’s the wrong one or from the wrong person. I am so fragile that your breath could collapse me.

Art. I would have thought this a great time to write my pain out or paint. I’ve thought of it but haven’t wanted to. I don’t want to be in life when he is gone. I haven’t been able to think for the last few weeks. Even the simplest things that I never get wrong I couldn’t do. I think all the time, my mind never shuts up but since the first call I would sit for long moments with nothing in my head, just silence. I couldn’t think if I wanted to.

I started reading. I do it slowly and not every day. The book is about a mother who loses her little girl and per her mother’s advice she takes up knitting and joins a knitting circle. The repetitious movements of knitting some how get her out of her sorrow and gives her a break from pain. This book, The Knitting Circle, has inspired me to knit again. It does help, the repetition is soothing like rocking back and forth. I can’t write, I can’t paint, not today but for now I will knit. That will be my art.

Soul Food

I’m not much of an artist to tell the truth, as I’ve been told. But I don’t say this because I’m not good at painting but because it isn’t an abiding passion. It is a passion but one that flees from me while another comes in. But am I still an artist when one artful passion is temporarily replaced by another?

What is art? I think one way it can be described is creative ways we express ourselves outside of logical linear thinking. When I was young it was truly an art to apply my make up. I took time to consider tones and hues, how to make the contours I desired, how to make me more beautiful. It was art when I would make beautiful resumes for my job applications. The effort I put into its form style, font, balance, and spacing. Also the words, how I described myself, what I had done. When I described my years as a house wife with a baby I called myself a ‘domestic engineer’ and used big important words like negotiator, manager, accountant, etc. One woman thought I was employed (as if it were a real job outside of home) another waved it in her husbands face reminding him of all the things she really does. That was creative, thinking outside of my box.

Now what makes me an artist? A creative person? My current medium is the pen. Or more truly my keyboard! I am writing. May not sound impressive. I don’t seem to write very well here. But that isn’t the point. Weather I am a genius or suck doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I feed my soul. The soul’s food is art! This is art, writing. Mine may be bad art and that is ok. But unlike some people out there I am happy, content, Sometimes even blissful when I am doing and being art! I write because I love it, because it feeds my soul. NOT to please the ‘critics‘. NOT to receive the ‘critics’ approval. But only to feed my soul and that is ‘following your bliss’ my friends as Joseph Campbell was fond of saying!

What is your soul food? What feeds your soul, makes you happy, content, blissful? Do it and stop for NO ONE! No mater what they say. What do they know? We all know that ‘critics’ don’t know anything!
Now dig in!!

Art is . . .

art
–noun
1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.
6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story?
7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.
8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods.
9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation.
10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature.
11. arts,
a. (used with a singular verb) the humanities: a college of arts and sciences.
b. (used with a plural verb) liberal arts.
12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature.
13. trickery; cunning: glib and devious art.
14. studied action; artificiality in behavior.
15. an artifice or artful device: the innumerable arts and wiles of politics.
16. Archaic. science, learning, or scholarship.
[Origin: 1175–1225; ME < OF, acc. of ars < L ars (nom.), artem (acc.)]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Double Birthdays!!

Ten years and one day ago I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. the next day was my birthday! Needless to say I got nothing for that birthday save my son. That was fine with me :) he was present enough. So all that means is that today is my birthday and yesterday was my son’s!

Please everyone wish my son a happy birthday, it’s been a rough one this year! Wednesday he started complaining of a soar throat that night at midnight he sat at the foot of my bed throwing up. all night he was up and down with fever and so on. When morning came his temperature climbed to 103.7 and I couldn’t get it down despite the Motrin and Tylenol and the cold bath, all of which usually works. So I rushed him to emergency. By the time they got to him his fever was almost gone. We got the best room in the e.r. and he was treated to a pop after given some medicine to keep him from getting sick. Well after his shot for the strep throat it was clear the medicine didn’t work. After 2pm we finally headed home.

The next day was going to be his birthday. He was so upset to find out that he wasn’t going to get to celebrate! But he came to terms and was thrilled to get many calls from family wishing him a happy birthday and getting to open his present from me, a kick bleep water gun!

So we have been spending our birthdays in isolation with plain bread, ice pops, and cartoons. It hasn’t been that bad though. I’ve really have enjoyed the quite time alone with my son. :)

Btw, he is doing really well. Since he came home he has kept everything down and has felt relatively ok. Nothing like the strep throat I had as a child of utter misery.

Hope you all will have a healthy, happy week!

Love,
dinah