No Hands on Deck

"Mellow Yellows"  (c) 2010

"dinghy jam" copyright 2013     

                                            

I am mystified by my attraction to dinghies and sailboats.  I don't want to sail or to dingh, if that's a verb.  When I was a child we had a small sailboat and Boston Whaler.  My father taught me to sail much as he taught me to swim (as one might a dog, with a mighty heave ho.  I don't even dog paddle well.)  My memories of sailing are sketchy, involving mishaps  of one sort or another, becalmed, stranded on a sandbar, blown out to sea etc.  Once I was out with my brother, Randy, when the day dissolved into a windless fog bank.  We had no idea where shore was but Randy figured that wasn't catastrophic as there was no place deep enough in the bay to drown.  He was taller but I was the one forced out of the boat into the bay to pull us to land.  Or in circles, as it happened.  He still sails to this day (it wasn't his feet stepping on squishy marine life).
    The Boston Whaler was supposed to be invincible.  The ads said you could saw it in half and still float.  But like all things nautical, it wouldn't stop on a dime, leaving me forever leary of brakeless transportation.  The only way to stop it was to bump into something solid.  This was frowned upon by both my father and the owner of whatever solid object I butted .(My older brother, Vance, would occasionally run the whaler onto the beach to stop it.  Vance was the only one who knew how to fix the boat, so I guess that gave him certain privileges.)  My worst solo trip involved a problematic gear box.  I couldn't get it to go forward. I had to navigate through the harbor full of  yachts backwards.
   That may explain why I don't paint motor boats, but none of it explains why I  paint so many wooden boats.  Nor, why I am so very fond of my brothers.

Oyster Strewed

                            "Oyster Strew" copyright 2007
    In England, after a long day in museums and maneuvering up and down the seemingly endless stairs of the Underground, we boarded a crowded train.  I held on to a pole.  Suddenly, a young woman stood up and offered me her seat.  I used to do the very same thing in New York City in the 70s.  I did it for old people.  Rather than being grateful, I gasped, "Do I look that old?".  She smiled.  I took the seat under protest.
   This week I bought annuals for the garden.   Later  I noticed the clerk had given me a "seniors" discount.  She hadn't asked if I was over 60, she just assumed.  Isn't that a presumptuous social gaffe?  Shouldn't she ask and then look stunned or at the very least surprised that I am so old?
  I feel like I'm forty-five.  Perhaps I should look in the mirror.

Museum Death March: London Edition

My husband doesn't believe vacations are for lolling about.  If we were stranded on a beach he would tunnel all the way to China or build a bulwark out of clam shells.  To his credit, he has great curiosity about the world.  We are just back from 8 days in London.   We saw two palaces, the Cotswolds, the Tate, the Tate Modern, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert, the National Gallery, Tower of London, Museum of London and the British Library.  And those are just the places I remember.  I have so many images ricocheting through my head I am dizzy.  I may have stopped paying attention.  At one point in the National Gallery my husband pointed out the room was full of Titians.  I am the artist of the family.  I should have noticed that but I was busy sidestepping munchkins.
  I am all for introducing young people to art, but not in bulk.  Platoons of youngsters, with identifying fluorescent caps or vests clotted the galleries in every museum we visited.  Invariably, they were parked in front of an image that I would have liked to study.  Some sat, others splayed out on their stomachs writing on their worksheets,  forming a ten foot barricade.
  London has an efficient  underground system.  Trains were astonishingly clean considering that so many people eat entire meals while rocketing about underground. I was struck by the number of beautiful women eating pastries.   What London doesn't have, and I'm amazed they can get away with it in this day and age, is handicapped access.  So many stairs between platforms and exits. My knee threatened to buckle.  My husband pointed to a woman pulling herself up the stairs by the railing while her son followed with her crutches. That pretty much ended my whining.
   London was on my husband's bucket list.  I had been twice before.  It's odd being somewhere and knowing you'll never see it again.  There are too many places still on his bucket list to consider revisiting those crossed off.  He asked what was on my list.  Some place flat, I answered.

Tempting the Fates

                   "Wretched Excess" ©, oil and gold leaf on linen

No sooner had I announced my triumph over lymphocytic colitis then the gods took offense and whacked me with another bout.  I am gluten intolerant and still have lymphocitic colitis.  I hope the gods are happy.

It was actually two days before I got the attack.   I have been known to embellish.  No really. 

Perhaps exaggeration comes from being a novelist.  But it has begun to haunt me.  There are parts of my first, partially autobiographical novel (Hell's Bells, available on ebay for a penny) that I no longer know if happened in the real world or in my head.  We did have a shark scare on the Vineyard one year.  My mother didn't particularly like to swim, but was stalwart about daily exercise.  Katama Bay was mostly murky with an abundance of squishy vegetation.  You wouldn't have caught me in there before the shark scare.  Time Magazine had published an article that (I believe) said sharks avoid  yellow and should be deterred with a blunt instrument.  I wrote that the mother character swam in a screaming yellow tank suit and carried a hammer.   I assume that was fabrication, although I know she often swam in a leopard skin patterned tank suit.  My parents were great characters and had no need of embellishment.

I tell people how my father's office (he was a writer) was next to where my mother painted.  One day he made a comment about a painting. She took it off the easel and hurled it at him.  Subsequently he moved his office to the other end of the house.  I believed this to be one of my fictions, so I was startled to learn it was the truth.  In 1958 or thereabouts, my father was interviewed on Person to Person. I watched a grainy tape of the show recently.  My mother, who went gray in her late thirties, looked like a bombshell blonde on black and white television.  She introduced me as her "chatty" daughter. And then she told nation the story about lobbing the canvas at my father.

Does it matter if a story is true?  I think it should, but I'm pretty sure that as the embellisher, I am ill equipped to judge.

The Unkindest Cut

     
      Too Much Information Alert: bodily functions discussed.

Two years ago I got the runs, the kind where you visit the commode 12 to 18 times a day.  Machines thoroughly ransacked my innards for information.    The doctor ruled out celiac disease.  I remember being so glad as I couldn't imagine a life without wheat.  He told me that celiac patients can not even use the same toaster as normal people because of cross-contamination.

 The bad news was that I had lymphocytic colitis.   The doctor told me I fit the disease's demographic. I guessed he meant old, white, overweight and female.  He chuckled.  Even worse news, there was no proscribed treatment. All he could offer was hand-me-down medicine.  We'd pretend I had Crohn's Disease.  Whooppee!

The treatment involved taking 3 steroids a day for a month, then 2 pills a day for a month and finally 1 pill a day for a month.  The doctor said I could expect 3 to 4 attacks a year.  That is 9 to 12 months of steroids a year.  I've never known anyone to advise long time steroid use, but I had no choice.  I did my first three month cycle, went steroid free for 6 whole days before I had to start another three month cycle.  It was insane.  The steroids made my voice squeaky.  The slightest pressure on my arms would create angry, red, puffy bruises. Seeing my hands, people would look away quickly, embarrassed by my condition.

I tried to outsmart the colitis.  I went to acupuncture. I drank vats of Aloe Juice. I meditated.  I took Vitamin K to stop the bruising.  I took Curcumin to reduce inflamation.  I took dreadfully expensive pro-biotics.   And still I had to take steroids.  I played little games, shortening the cycle of the pills.  I gave up fresh fruit.  I gave up nuts.  I gave up liquor.  I gave up chocolate.

Then one day I gave up wheat.  I almost hoped it wouldn't work.  But it did.  I may not have celiac disease but I am gluten intolerant.  I have been off the steroids for two months but I still erupt in weird bruises.  Is it too much to hope that long gloves come back in style?

Timberrrrr!

                           "Provence in a Bottle"

It has previously been noted ("Oh say, Can I see?" January 3, 2012 blog) that I have trouble seeing that which I am painting.  Several teachers have chided me for "not looking."  A recent critique accused me of greedily rushing ahead when I should be pausing and focusing.  All of this is sadly true.  Another comment, "Cindy mistrusts her eye and inner makings of balance,"  got me thinking.  Well, that and the fact that I have fallen twice in as many weeks.  My physical therapist, who is all that stands between me and back surgery, says I am "a crooked old lady."  Uneven hips, collapsed cartilage, a touch of scoliosis.   I do fall more than the average adult.  And without grace.  My husband remarked, after I went face first into the Palantine Hill in Rome, that I "went down like a tree."  I don't think he was talking saplings, either.

I used to enjoy a walk in the woods.   But Nature is  lost on me as I can't afford to look.  I am  focused on the ground, where tree roots, mud and tangled vegetation try to bring me down.   Ironically, my last two falls were on  sidewalks, where I was silly enough to think I was safe. 

So maybe my physical imbalance has rippled into my creativity, causing me to rush ahead as I paint.  To finish before I fall...

Spring has sprong*#^!

                              "Broken but Unbowed"

   Spring has sprong and so has my back.  After a month of limping and climbing stairs one leg at a time as if I had a priceless tea cup on my head, I saw my doctor.  He sent me for an MRI which was done at 8:30 at night.  (There is something very creepy about medical procedures occurring after normal business hours.)  When the doctor called  with the results he seemed in awe of the collapsing cartilage, advanced degenerative arthritis and scar tissue.  This is a man who had replaced my left knee twice within a matter of weeks so he should have been prepared for havoc.
   I am fervently hoping to avoid further back surgery.  I had two disks removed 20 years ago.  My husband wasn't a 'hands on' attendant'.  I was flat on my back, stranded in the guest room. He would check on me before he went to work and when he returned asked if I might need something.  I learned a valuable lesson, when surgery looms,  keep a jar of peanut butter and a bag of prunes by the bed.
   The big 65 is just around the corner.  I had hoped to be in better shape.  Optimism is for the young.  I feel like an old car swaying down the road with bits and pieces falling by the wayside.  A muffler here, a rusted bumper there, the rest is duct taped.  And there is an 18 wheeler bearing down on me at warp speed.