This is how the final version of the unfinished sketch that I posted below finally turned out. I managed to print out the photo of the sketch using a photosmart inkjet printer and watercolor paper, spray that with fixative so the ink wouldn’t smudge under erasures, then draw on top of it as if it were indeed my original sketch. In such a fashion, I was able to re-complete it “better” as it were than the original “wrecked” version. And indeed, I believe it is a great deal better than the version as shown below, for all that it is a complicated combination of photographic print-out of the original sketch, combined with an overlaid color pencil drawing. The strange thing is that in the end, because of the rather poor quality of the original sketch-photograph, the background came out this dull, slightly green color (due to the lighting, not the paper it was on, which was actually white. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a perfect background for the finished drawing, and so I did nothing in the end but finish the portrait against that greenish background.
A technique I am learning/teaching myself is one I thought I would never understand, let alone be able to do and that is how to do a kind of underpainting of whites or light colors, the highlights, before adding the darker tones. I do not know, of course, if one is actually supposed to do that with colored pencils, but I did so anyway, figuring it might be time to try it. So given the original sketch to work with, I then heavily applied light peach and white tones where you can now see the lighter areas on the face, and only much later softened them with the darker chestnut browns and darker umbers, though clearly much peach shows through where the light is meant to strike the face on the left.
A “real artist” would know how to do this beforehand, I expect, but I had to learn as I went, so it was all a process of delightful discovery, which is why I hope you will forgive me the foregoing description. It always amazes me to find out how many colors there really are in what seems to be a solid colored expanse, when you really look at it. I used blues and greens in Sophronsie’s skin tones as well as the peach-tones and whites. There are also some yellows and reds. And in some places I even used a silver pencil. It took me a while before I could even understand that the whites of the eyes are not white at all, not even slightly blue all over, but all sorts of colors, and that only if you painted them in a kind of pale multi-color would they begin to seem realistic. What is also interesting is that comparing the “white” skin on the child that I did in the earlier picture, or any of the other “white” portraits compared to the African American portraits, there is really not a great deal of difference in the colors I used. In fact, I start out with the very same peach and white for both skin colors, and only towards the end does this change, when I add darker tones for the darker skin, but it really only takes a little, and then not a great deal. This is so striking because it seems to say, in some profound way, that when you really look at all of us, “under the skin” (which skin people take for being so different) we really are all the same. Of course in every real sense we are the same, despite our differences as individual human beings: genetically this is true, and philosophically, and morally and spiritually and in every other sense that matters, at least to me. We are all human and of the same “stuff” and nothing else matters. Nothing.
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(There are not supposed to be any gaps in the following poem but for some reason it doesn’t cut and paste as it should and so it appears with the spaces…ignore them..)
HOW CAN YOU EVEN THINK SUCH A THING?
There’s no excuse for it, I know, there’s none at all, but reading
about the death of the famous poet’s poet wife from cancer,
so cachectic and etiolated her limbs are thinner than a Giacometti
I find myself disgustingly hungry and envious, both.
It is not that I want to die, not even slowly, not even
an after-the-fact-romantic death recalled for years
by other poets. No, I like life, I even like living.
But I want this house, yes, I want this small empty apartment
filled with food rich and fattening as truffles, dark, creamy truffles
made of French chocolate and wrapped in tissue-thin edible gold
so expensive it’s a mortal sin to eat even one as long
as Africa starves and cholera saps the strength of flood victims
in Pakistan. Except that leaving them to melt and flow molten
on the August windowsill feeds no one while I, longing,
linger over my dish of celery and one small onion, lusting
to taste a life I can never enjoy, to taste a lust not for chocolate
exactly, but for the life that rich chocolate represents,
appetite throwing wide its arms and crying, Yes, yes, yes!
I hope I am not encroaching on Sr Jo-Ann Iannotti’s copyright, by sharing this photo, but if I am I trust she will let me know. In any event, this is one of hers and it is everywhere at Wisdom House. I believe it is a beautiful example (if that is the proper word for it) of the spirit of Wisdom House. Of course, the physical labyrinth, is stunning by itself, but somehow this photo captures the experience of walking it and the process of meditating and “being there” in a way that mere words describing likely could not. Surely, if nothing else, this photo alone is a wonderful way to “advertise” Wisdom House, if it ever needed such a thing. If you can, visit http://www.wisdomhouse.org and look at the virtual tour photo gallery. That way, you will get a good idea of what the place looks like, and perhaps get something of the flavor of people’s first impression. I know that even the first time I came here, despite my misery concerning all that silence, I knew it was a special place…
Jo-Ann says she has no idea who the woman in the labyrinth center is, that it was a fortuitous shot and nothing more. Frankly, though, I suspect getting the photo took more than mere luck, even just to have been there to capture it! It exquisitely represents both the spirituality of this place as well as peace and peacefulness.
Clearly, you can tell where I am: at Wisdom House again, having a good time this time. I only wish I did not have to depart tomorrow.Even though I spend most of my time alone, the mere presence of other people, laughing and talking and obviously having a great time, buoys my own spirits and makes me laugh aloud myself. I think it is great that they are laughing so uproariously, and it is great to see everyone with their doors wide open, people, women my age, sitting on each other’s beds, gabbing like college girls. The lovely thing too, about Wisdom House in general is the absolute faith in people’s basic trustworthiness: NO one has a key to their rooms, and no one seems to feel worried about anyone entering or stealing a thing. I frequently leave my computer and writing equipment right out in the open on the sun porch, without the least qualm, feeling secure in the knowledge that everything will be just as I left it when I return. Indeed, the sense of trust that I know Jo-Ann has in people is infectious, and I somehow know that everyone who comes here is trustworthy at least for as long as they are here, even if they might not be all the time when they are not.
Now, I may be naive, but I too have been known to be overly trusting, and I think that is a better option than not trusting people. At the same time, though, I can be extremely paranoid as you know, and I do mean “at the same time…” I suppose that is difficult to comprehend: I will simultaneously give away whatever I can, if I feel I own too much and yet also feel as if people are secretly stealing from me, taking things I need out from under me, without even asking or telling me, which makes me angry, because I am already generous, and never ask for a single thing in return, but I’m sorry and feel bad to admit it, but somethings I am not ready to simply have things taken from me without my say so! I feel guilty about this, though, as if I am so attached to material things that I cannot part with something that someone else needs more than I do (for why else would someone resort to stealing it???). Why do I need to be so attached to anything, that is, to any mere object? It will never save your life or your soul!
I am drifting though…forgive me.
One great thing about this weekend here is that despite my having slept till noon today (after spending several days before last night with very little sleep, and even last night beginning to fear for my brain and my sanity due to sleeplessness as I was up till 4am involuntarily) I have pretty much gotten the book organized and put together. Now, that means only that I have made the organizational decisions, which is the major part of the problem. But I needs must (!) still go through the actual computer manuscript and change it, to make it conform to these editorial decisions. Not extremely difficult, just time consuming. At the same time, certain poems need editing and some rewriting/fixing. This I enjoy, the perfecting of the lines I don’t feel are quite right yet, but it takes time and energy. (I even have a two relatively new poems to add!) Alas, I will not be able to come up here to take the time for myself to do nothing else. Too bad, as it has been very convenient and much more than that. It has been, well, useful in the sense that I have been productive “to the max,” able to say NO to email and phone calls, not even walking with Diane L or doing laundry or cleaning or shopping, just writing all day. I suppose taking my usual 2 miles walk would be a good thing, but for just a weekend here, I would rather not…And although I brought art supplies just in case, I haven’t even taken out my sketch book, that is how good the writing, and the editing, have been going!
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Speaking of the labyrinth at Wisdom House as I did at the top of the post, let me segue into a few words about paranoia: I have not walked the labyrinth, nor even approached it. The closest I have come is to sit at the top of the stairs looking down at it relatively from afar. The very idea of “doing it” makes me feel both rather shy and then scared to do so. I am in fact scare that God might strike me down, should I have such temerity as to try it. I am also squeamish, not sure I could relax and not feel paranoid, not feel so much on display that I could not concentrate or let myself be “unaware of being observed” — whether I am in fact under observation or not.
That of course is the essence of paranoia: it matters not a fig whether something is really happening, it matters not another fig if someone’s really after you or really against you: if you feel it, if your amygdala is working overtime to generate that feeling, the intense feeling of fear that it is meant to generate, well, that’s it. That is how you are going to feel. And “the feeling is primary.” That’s what Dr O told me time and time again. You feel the fear first, and primarily, and then the story or reason for feeling it attaches to it. But if the fear gets entrenched or doesn’t go away, the story,, that is, the brain’s explanation for the feelings of fear only gets more entrenched, because how else can you deal with fear? It is extremely difficult to feel fear unmitigated without somehow understanding it as coming from somewhere, or being stimulated by something, having a cause or reason. The brain always wants to make sense of things, and it does this whether one “wants to” or not.
So even though I am aware of what paranoia is, I have never been able to control my thoughts when it is happening. It is only after the fact that I can, now, sometimes, look back on a difficult situation and with a clearer head understand how I might in fact have been paranoid in my behavior due to my fear- induced understanding of what was going on. It is very very difficult to override such feelings, esp on such a fundamental level.
I wish I could write more now, but I’d better to get back to my writing before I have to get back to sleep. As it is, it is 1:50 A.M. and we — Ann W drove here with me — the other fellowship person — have to drive home tomorrow around noon. I wish dearly it were not so, but there you have it. For now, I will leave you with a poem that will go into the manuscript of my second book of poems, which I call at least for now (several people have been enthusiastic about the title, except my father), LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS. I share it with you now, because while still unpublished, I do not think I will seek publication for it elsewhere, separately…The first one, for my old (and former, but possibly dead now) friend Roland, was previously published, but in a much different version. I apologize if the lines come out with large spaces between them, but the cut and pasting function never seems to allow single spaces… OR stanzas for that matter, as this poem was originally broken up inot five different stanzas but now appears to be in only one long one… The second poem is about Joe, and describes my own encounter with fear of botulism, which has similar symptoms to ALS — so I feared — and my nostalgia for his voice, which I will never hear again, except on his answering machine, and on one or two micro-cassette tapes we made some years ago…
FOR A FRIEND SUCCUMBING TO AIDS, 1980s
For Roland
This could be your whole life,
thumbing a ride to wherever the cars are going,
the casual, tossed out hellos and good-byes
that turn around the axle of your quick life —
that far, just that far, and then you will stay,
forcing a stranger’s town into the shape of home.
Yet you’ve lived a dozen lives — in the Keys
with the one you finally loved, in western Portugal,
Nova Scotia. Last year, already marked, you spent
the winter in your bed,which just fit in a backyard shed
in Vernon, Connecticut. And there was a life
to accommodate each place, its sweetness and pain.
When we met, you taught me the local architecture,
the difference between Georgian and Greek Revival,
and you thanked me for the poems you gave me.
Then you called late one night, drunk enough to over-
dose. Thoughtlessly, I rescued you, a dying man…
You never forgave nor spoke to me again.
Now once in a while a car slows, pondering
your beard, your emaciation, the known and unknown
risks, sees you finally, and explodes away from the shoulder
where you stand, all its doors locked simultaneously
against those Kaposi’s inflorescences that stain
your dying…Roland, Roland, don’t you know
we all die in shame and alone? We die, perhaps,
not far from home, or perhaps, like you, wandering,
These are admittedly older poems once-published, but they are the best I can offer at the moment for the reasons I explained, that contests and publications insist that any poem one sends to them never have appeared anywhere else before, including on the internet. Needless to say this is a major bummer, since my blog can hardly count as publication nor pose as wide distribution, seeing as how I get maybe 100 hits max a day (mark you, all, including you, my loyal lurkers, are oh so valuable to me, and if you remain my site’s only visitors, so be it. At least you are there and if so, that will be enough for me.)
The first poem describes a real, which is to say, factual incident that happened to me some years ago, while the second concerns, as may be obvious, a complete fantasy, but one embedded in the real exercise of learning CPR. I describe it literally, as it was taught back in the 80s without so much as a dummy to practice on. I will continue to add others, either at the end or later, if I can find others that have already been published, or that I am certain I will not try for. For now, I hope these have some merit, despite their age.
POEM FOR REGINALD
It is winter, four o’clock in the afternoon.
A drunk, not yet dead on his feet,
accosts me, says,
“Hey, are you a college girl?”
I am not a student anymore—
It has been years since I went by bells
from room to room,
scribbled frantic exams
in booklets bound in blue.
I look young, I know that. My hair is not
yet gray, and perhaps that is why
he asks the question.
“I read books, too,” he tells me,
falling into step beside me
though he had met me coming the opposite way
and I am hurrying to be out of Dutch Point by nightfall.
He walks me all the way up to Main Street.
accompanying me through the backyards of tenements
past lounging men who might have wished me
less than well.
Though he insists on staying on my right side
like a gentleman, some primitive fear
urges me to shift my purse
to my left shoulder.
He is a genius he tells me, and I believe him
But he is an alcoholic and his breath smells
as if he has been drinking.
Still, I am not afraid of him
and when he asks, I tell him my name.
There is something sad about him.
He says he thinks I can cure him,
could marry him.
His name is Reginald.
He speaks like an old friend
and suddenly I am lonely too.
That is all. There is no moral to this tale.
I am thirty-five, single, childless, and lonely as a drunk
Most recent drawing: a portrait (from photo) of Josephine’s niece, done as a thank you to her brother, Megan’s father, who helped me out removing and moving in a recliner chair this spring. Nothing particularly “artistic” about it, just a simple likeness…
Unfortunately, while I loved this stage of the drawing, as I progressed I fear I ruined it…Or at any rate, it changed so drastically that I don’t know what to do with it, or where to go with it now. So I am putting what I have aside, since I no longer have this, to work on some other time. I wish I had taken a better photo of it at this stage, though. Anyhow, for what it is worth. Here she is, as she was…
Elder with Flaming City in Mouth
Then this is the more updated drawing as it got “over-processed.” Actually, what happened was that the watercolor paper did in fact start to wear out under my many erasures, or at any rate the color, the pigment grew so thick that when I erased it piled up under the eraser so that I had to keep erasing more and more of the drawing each time in order simply to erase one spot, because I’d otherwise leave behind chunks of unsightly “solid waste” of clumpy pigment. Eventually I couldn’t even draw on the paper any longer, it had become so mushy under that burden of erasure and redrawings, and so I decided to finally be done with it and decided quickly to do what the erasing suddenly brought to mind: an upside down city-scape, somewhat surreal, floating in the person’s mouth, and on fire…Do not ask me why! It is simply because that is what I “saw” in the patterns left behind by the unerased and uneraseable lines and colors on the paper…
TO tell the truth, I am trying to figure out how to either redo or “fix it” into something that I can work with further, can figure out what to do with as is, or how to cover up without making it look “collaged together, since that was not the effect I started out looking for. I’m eager for suggestions if anyone has any!
And yes, I came back from Wisdom House yesterday, after 2 and a half days instead of 7…I was rather upset there, though the place was lovely and I thought that if the circumstances had been a little bit different I could have loved it…but I will write more tomorrow or today in the P.M. For now, I just wanted to let you know…
I have decided, with Sr Jo-Ann’s help, to arrive at the Writer’s Fellowship on Sunday morning, rather than Saturday evening, so that she can meet me, rather than have me face a crowd of fifty (silent) people alone. It was in fact her idea, but she offered to take me individually on a tour, and show me where to go and so forth, introduce me, which she thought she would have more time for on Sunday morning than on Saturday when everyone else was arriving. This also was a relief for the simple fact that I am so frantic with things I have to get done that it helps to know I have all of Saturday simply to relax and if I haven’t done so before, to pack. It isn’t as if I am bringing a great deal, not many clothes or “stuff”– after all, I am mainly going there to write. But that in itself entails bringing such things as my computer, a printer and a ream of paper at a minimum, and I want to bring a small hot pot and cup and coffee as well, since I cannot rely simply on sheer excitement to keep me awake, no more than I ever can. Not even Ritalin, which as you may know I have taken for decades to combat the nearly constant and excessive daytime sleepiness of narcolepsy, really keeps me alert. In fact, often coffee does a better job…On the other hand, I intend to take Zyprexa every day I am there too, which is sedating. This is just so that I know I will be able to read and stay as unafraid of things as possible. Once I get home, I’ll stop taking it, but why not keep on top of things as long as I am there?
I have written several poems in just the last week, but alas, I am unable to share them here. I have learned that many contests and publications do not allow the appearance on the web of poems you want to submit to them or enter there, or else they will be disqualified. Thus I can only post ones that I am certain I will not try to publish or else that have already appeared in my book or previously in another journal, review or magazine. I wish that were not so, as I am thrilled with some of these poems. I also wish that I had not been so quick to enter a few of them into a certain contest, as with a little more rewriting, say, the 110th version rather than the 100th, I might have felt even better about them. Ah well, too late for recriminations. If a given poem is not accepted where I sent it, there are a thousand other venues that might take it when I submit it again.
Enough for now, it is already late and I needs must (how’s that for an archaic expression?) get to work finishing up the dishes and printing out poems. I will need at least 60 for my second book and I have to have copies I can work on at Wisdom House. There are a dozen other things to do before I go to bed tonight…zo I will bid you adieu, au revoir…
I hope I can post something from Wisdom House next week, but if not, I will do so when I get back. Hasta la vista!
I don’t want to tell you why i drew this or what I meant or intended by it (beyond whatever the title evokes in you). All I want to say is that it was largely drawn in colored pencil on watercolor paper, with a tiny bit of acrylic paints, the black background for instance, and the ecru skin of the blue-haired figure, but not the skin on the other other woman, where all the details as well as the skin itself was done with pencils. It is amazing how forgiving watercolor paper is – usually it is imposssible to erase plain old colored pencils, if they are not watercolor pencils. But on the watercolor paper, you can erase as long and as hard as you like, and the paper will remain intact. So it is not so difficult to get the marks off.
Welp, If you feel like commenting, I would love to hear any interpretations you would like to share. If you give me permission, I will also put them up here with the picture.
Finally I have finished the collage here with the background completed and the candy foil earring (I saved foil from innumerable chocolates…and they have no come in handy as I know eventually they would. What do they say? Everything can be an art supply, looked at with a creative spirit. Who says that? Well, I dunno, I guess I do! 8D
I call her Christabel, who was one of the occupational therapists in the hospital this past April and May (all of the OTs were great.) She was a wonderful woman who was the one person who consistently treated me like a human being at a place where I was often not treated much better than an animal or a bad child. Consequently, I never once, as I recall, had occasion nor impulse to scream at her in rage or frustration. Lkewise she never felt it incumbent upon her to withhold from me such ridiculous items as gluesticks or magazines, the sort of carrots with which the nurses attempted to “tame” me. That is, negatively, by taking them away from me until I ‘behaved’ according to their rigid standards. Never once did they acknowledge what I had begged them to understand from the moment I walked in there, which was that I suffered from Lyme disease-induced schizophrenia, and that both the rage episodes and my impulsivity were uncontrollable, (i.e. literally OUT of my control, and “not me” — as the weekend doc herself, Faye H., who knew me well from treating me for years in the past, noted several times in dismay).
Be that as it may, when the nurses, or one of them, the one who really hated me, refused to grant me permission to use a gluestick one afternoon in order to work on this collage, it was Christabel who came to my rescue, by bringing some from the OT office, without so much as a word or caveat to “not tell the nurses.” She simply handed them to me, along with a handful of new magazines to tear colored scraps from, so I could continue work on my face, which I had only just begun.
Everyone asked me, as it was coming together, if I was modeling it on anyone. But the truth is, though I call it Christabel, it is more in honor of her, than intended to be a true likeness. True, she is African American, and has very close cropped hair, but that is as far as the similarities go. In fact, the face is pretty much imaginary and generic. I took the features from, well, my mind, mostly, though I used various faces from magzines to give me an idea of how the light would fall and create shadows, and how the various contours of the features would look. Also to give me a better idea of proportions. The nice thing about these kinds of collages is that paper is very forgiving, so if I made a huge mistake, and made the nose too big or put the lips too close to the nostrils or, as I did, make the eyes too small and close together, all I needed to do was paper them over and start again. In fact, the more layers I used, the stiffer the underlying “post-it note” kind of thin paper foundation became, which proved a good thing when it came to finishing off the edges and finding a way to hang it. I cannot f rame it, as it is 46 inches by 32inches, approximately, and formally framing it would cost a mint. but I polyurethaned it, one, so it would not distintegrate, and bound the edges neatly, and think I will attach a dowel or piece of thin wood at the top to which I can affix a wire and hang it by that. The person, the woman who runs the solo shows every month at DHMAS in Hartford, said that though everything was supposed to be framed, basically as long as it can be hung by a wire, my plans sound fine.
Well enough of this. I think the new photo shows how I finished the face better. Though I could not get the bound edges into the photo alas.
Sorry for my long silence. Things have been busy at best, sometimes just plain hectic.
On the good side, though, this: the Writing Fellowship. A place called Wisdom House in the northwest hills of Connecticut offered free fellowships of 2-10 days for low-income writers from this area to come and stay to work on a writing project. I applied immediately, wanting time to organize, come up with a title, and send out my second book of poems to the Barnard women’s second book contest. Well, after speaking to my references and to my new psychiatrist, they accepted me, the sister in charge calling me last night at 9pm to give me the news. (As my friend, Leila, put it when I told her how late the director called, “nuns do not keep bankers’ hours!”)
Now the only reservation I have vis a vis the fellowship is that it is going to be held while the rest of the center is on a “silent retreat”. This means that everyone else, aside from the two other writers and me, will voluntarily not be talking the entire time. According to Leila, they will not be looking at others or even raising their eyes. While I wanted time to write, I have to admit I anticipated a more convivial atmosphere, or at least a less daunting one. This does not sound exactly friendly. Spiritual, yes, but not friendly. Sr Jo-Ann does, on the other hand, and she has offered her help in any way she can (since I have been more than open about my illness) but I don’t know that she understands quite how difficult I may find this. Even the problem of getting to the dining hall, the speaking one or the silent one, or eating with other people, should I manage to get into the building wherever it is, may pose a huge obstacle, if my experience at the art and crafts center two years ago is any predictor.
Well, I am determined to go, so I will not let my reservations, nor even the tears I shed last night in sheer terror stop me. I must confess however that I am not without mixed emotions in face of this overwhelming silence — and the resulting loneliness or something much worse — I fear I may confront.
On a somewhat brighter note, for six week, I took an art class in New Haven, at the Creative Arts Workshop. I wanted to learn the rock bottom basics, which I figured I needed to start with. Even though I have successfully painted some portraits, I know I need to learn fundamental techniques, both in drawing and painting so I’m not just floundering around, painting more in hope than with real confidence and skill. But getting to the class meant that I had to drive to New Haven — on the interstate — for the first time in more than 20 years. Unable to drive home that same night, I spent two days a week there, staying at my parents’ condo, usually with my father there (my mother was usually at the shore, at the other house). I enjoyed that part of it almost as much as the class. We were so long estranged that I love just seeing him and getting to talk with him, no matter what we talk about.
The class might easily have been too much for me. Three hours of drawing could have sapped all my energy and taken the enjoyment out of it. Instead, somehow the time just winged away, and after the first class, which was the most tiring because I had not yet adjusted to how long a span of time 3 hours was, I got into the rhythm, and never once left early. In fact, I often left with the teacher, just so I talk with her about art.
Now, I say all that as if it were easy and not problematic at all. Certainly no one in the class would have any idea that I feel as I do, but in truth I became quite certain, and remain so, that the teacher soon grew– how do I put it? — sick of me. Overwhelmed by me. Found me overbearing and overly enthusiastic and therefore unpleasant. I know my presence was too much for her to take and so I tried to tone it down, tried not to ask too many questions or talk too much so I stopped staying after class, or showing her what I had done during the week…And frankly, I am a little scared that if I sign up for her next class, which will be a continuation of the last one, it will upset her and she won’t want me there.
In point of fact, I felt the entire class was laughing at me most of the time, that they agreed with her and that they mocked me whenever I left to use the bathroom or to wash my hands of the charcoal that we used so often.
It was only just before the final class, when I brought my sketch pad and showed two people what I had been practicing, that they seemed to realize that I was serious about drawing and art, and not just a foolish older woman taking a class for entertainment. One young woman, Jennie, actually talked to me then, and said I was “very talented.” When she asked for my Facebook page, I gave her the name Pam Wagner, which of course she will never be able to locate me with, alas, as I would be happy to communicate with her.
Nevertheless, I remain wary of the teacher, and of taking her next class, lest I be more than unwelcome. Lest I be bothersome and actively hated. I feel it incumbent upon me to spread myself around, spread the burden around, spread the miasma I cause as wide and therefore as thinly as possible so as not to sicken anyone seriously. The only real solution I can think of though is to completely shut up and be as minimal a presence there as I can. To not be visible in any way, to make no sound or impression…To do the work, and learn what I can, without, so to speak, making a mark. That way I won’t bother anyone or disturb the peace, or anyone’s peace of mind.
Then there are less positive aspect of being “busy” — Well, no, I cannot dig into this at the moment, except to say that I need to take a break from seeing Joe. Joe, if you recall, is my long-time friend (24+ years), who has Lou Gehrig’s Disease and has been in hospital for 3 years, mostly paralyzed and on a ventilator. I have visited him almost every week, sometimes twice a week, all of that time, but now I need to take some time for myself, take some time to think about what to do.. It is true that I have sometimes been away for as many as 6 weeks, but that was when I was hospitalized, and while to Joe it may feel only as if I am absent — who cares why!– to me it is not voluntary time off and certainly no vacation!
I love Joe, but only as a friend, not as a girlfriend despite what people think. And if the people in the hospital believe otherwise, it is only because I told Joe when he first became ill, that I would “be his girlfriend” — the one dream he always cherished and held out for and hoped would come to pass for some 24 years! And mostly because it was the one gift I could give him, knowing that it was a dying man’s wish-come-true.
The problem is that when he was in fact dying, when he had terrible aspiration pneumonia and could not breathe without assistance (at which point, most people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s, opt to die, knowing what the future holds) he asked to be put on a ventilator. Hence, for the past 3 years, I have had to act the part of devoted “girlfriend” (completely non-sexual, though, just as our relationship has always been). And it has long been assumed that my love for Joe is the sole driver behind my visits. Not pure loyalty, mind you, but in some sense my own selfish need to be with him. It seems not to have occurred to anyone that maybe I do it mostly for him, to help him and keep him company…rather than because I myself want anything from it at all.
This is not to say that I don’t enjoy seeing Joe, or that I resent spending time with him. Most of the time I do not, or when I do, it is only because I feel I cannot say, No, I cannot come today, or worse, No, I do not want to come today, not even when I haven’t slept and am utterly exhausted. Usually when or after I visit, I feel better in some sense — at least about us. I feel less guilty and more needed (a double-edged sword!)
But I admit that it is extremely tiring to have to stand up the entire visit — an hour or two — and pay exquisitely close attention in order to understand what his computer (which takes eons to do it) translates from his spelling into speech. When I finally get home after the 30 minute ride back with Josephine, I am wiped out for hours. Even on a good day, the rest of the afternoon is shot just because of visiting him, and that is true even when I only stay an hour.
Well, I said I wasn’t going to go into it, esp not with details, so I will leave that alone, except to say that recently we had a big — what was it? Altercation? Spat? Misunderstanding? Who knows what to call it, but it left me me feeling unappreciated, taken for granted, and most of all, just plain angry. Worse, it induced this exhausted feeling in me that left me hopeless and desperate. That is why I wrote Joe and told him I needed some time off, needed time to reflect and think about things. I did not ask him for it, nor tell him what I needed it for, nor how long it would take. I did reassure him I would be back. But otherwise I simply stated my needs and informed him what I was going to do about it.
I haven’t heard from him since, but unless he is still upset or angry with me, which would be unlike him, he is simply giving me the space I need.
That is all I have the energy and time for tonight. I hope to go out for another of the 2 mile walks that a friend and I have set for ourselves to do as often as we can. We are trying to get in 10 miles a week, but so far I think the best we have done is maybe 8 miles. Still, that is MUCH better than doing nothing at all, which was my usual, until we got together to spur each other on. Usually it is she who gets me up and over to the park to meet her, and I who keeps her going at a great clip. So we help one another and get our gabbing done into the bargain.
Thanks for your patience. I have another entry planned, and hope to work on it tonight for posting tomorrow or the next day — about delusions of grandeur and other symptoms.
Sorry for not writing for so long. I will get back here soon, but for now I wanted to post my most recent art work, at least as it stands now.
Using Klimt
This collage was made by tearing apart several posters and calendar reproductions of Gustav Klimt’s works then making a collage of my own out of them. If you know Klimt’s works you may recognize some of them in this work, though of course the picture itself is my own…That is why I call it “Using Klimt.” It is 20 inches by 30 inches though I was not able to get all of it into the photo. The head was cut off a bit as were part of the legs…
Oh yeah, I meant to add that the position the couple assumes is based on the famous Alfred Eisenstaedt photo taken on the occasion of VJ Day (Aug 15, 1945) when he wrote that his camera happened to catch a sailor spontaneously grabbing an unknown nurse (Edith Shain just died, 6 days ago, at 91) and smooching her, a glorious photo that is possibly the most famous one ever taken. Certainly, not one person I have mentioned it to has not immediately known what I was talking about. In fact, several people even commented that this collage brought it to mind…How perspicacious! Mine, if you notice, has the couple reversed, though, with the man to the right instead of the left…You would have to remember the original photo to understand this.
Okay, all you poetry fans of mine, and anyone out there who reads this in general! This is a rather late announcement, but this Sunday at 5pm Eastern time (you will have to make the proper adjustments if you live in other time zones) Jane Crown, at http://www.janecrown.com will be doing a 90 minute interview with me http://www.janecrown.com/archive_radio/Pamela_Sprio_Wagner.mp3 that will be part personal interview and part poetry reading both from WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS as well as new poems, and she may possibly include some reading and/or discussion about my memoir DIVIDED MINDS: Twin Sisters and their Journey Through Schizophrenia. I hope as many of you as possible will listen, and if you are not interested in poetry will listen out of interest in schizophrenia, as we certainly will speak of that.
By the way, Jane tells me that the show will be archived and “available forever” so if you cannot sit and listen for 90 minutes this Sunday, do not worry as you can do so at any time and for any length of time. Just follow the link or do a search for Jane Crown and radio or poetry and you should find it without trouble.
Now for an update: Well, first of all, let me say that I want to write an update but first I need to start my review of the poems I am going to read on Sunday, and read a little of DIVIDED MINDS, so I can recall what got into the book out of my 400pp original manuscript and what was cut. So forgive me if I put the update and rest of this post off for a few hours and get back to it maybe after 11 pm tonight. Or if not then, as I must get up early tomorrow, then I will write a new post tomorrow. For now, suffice it to say that I feel extraordinarily HAPPY!
Wowee zowee, who’da thunk it could go so well? I was more worried than usual and I had this profound dread that — I dunno — somehow disapproval and dislike and even hatred of me would reign overall. Worse, that all those shrinks would find my poetry either cold and incredible (but who are they to say?) or somehow incomprehensible at least in part….This is not just self-loathing baring its usual fangs, but my deep fear that a repeat of my encounter with Dr Z in the Hospital in October would occur, writ large, or with so many others over these past 35 years. Truth is, I am terribly frightened of most doctors, of all sorts, and this despite the fact that I am all too aware, intimately so, of how human, how terribly flawed they can be and how despicably they can sometimes behave. Even so I am aware that I “give” them — give most people — way too much power over me (I have never understood that “give” but it must be true, though it feels like they take it, forcibly), power to dominate and judge and make me feel like shit. Moreover, I am so afraid of them and their power, that I become completely paranoid about — well, any doctor, really any health care professional, from technician to nurse to doctor, I need to see these days! and my mind conjures up scenarios about how they intend to harm me, complete with delusions and hallucinations that corroborate every such feeling.
Just this past week, for instance, when my migraine, along with vomiting up what looked like coffee grounds, put me at the emergency room again, paranoia completely took over. I still believe that they knew everything I felt and perceived, indeed were doing precisely what I “knew” they were doing …. Why I even call it paranoia I do not know, when I believe it was real. Why? Because, because, because…I have to hope and pray it was paranoia. Otherwise life would be unbearable…unbearable! I would at this point much rather be told, reassured, that nothing happened there, at the ER, and that it was “only” my paranoia, than to find out that indeed I was right all along! No, I hope to god I was wrong! And if I need to be labeled paranoid in order to be wrong, then fine, so be it. Better than to be right and find out that what I was so terrified by really was happening there all along…
But where was I? I was speaking of Wednesday night’s reading. I started out — well, the problem began — I was fine up until that point mind you! — when we entered the building because unlike the hotel, it was vast and echoing which produced an immediate physical disorientation on my part, I felt off balance and dizzied, as if under attack and anxious…I wanted to get out from under those echoes and that vastness…So I was scared simply upon entering the building and wanted to get away from it…This did not abate, and being scared almost to muteness beforehand, it only got worse, esp when Mary left me alone in a big room just off the hall where the reception was taking place. I felt then as if I were going to disappear, to implode, to die, to be killed, if she didn’t come back quickly…I didn’t know how to escape and I knew that I would have to, that I would not survive otherwise and immediately. I slunk to the wall near the door, carrying all my things, my coat and bag and my poetry. Adrenalin shot into my chest and poured down my arms and legs, preparing me for flight, when suddenly Mary returned.
I think she realized what a state I was in then, and felt bad. Which only made me feel worse, and I couldn’t talk for a few minutes. But I made myself pull myself together and I did calm down, and made it clear that to enter the room where the reading would take plaee once full would be much harder than to do so when it was still in the process of filling. So we went in, Mary going first and fending people off (so I felt) and when I finally had a chair beneath me, I could breathe again. Just knowing I could keep my head down and stop anyone from talking to me, even if they recognized me allowed me to relax, which was what I needed.
In this room, which had some sort of insulation that baffled the echo in the halls and open space downstairs, the disorientation passed almost at once, and the adrenalin seeped away, until it was only at the level of keeping me alert, not so much alarmed and ready to flee. I no longer felt dizzied or on the verge of hyperventilation or even, as I had, such imbalance as to the possiblity of falling. It was weird to the max but as soon as I left that room after the event was over, I had trouble immediately, having to negotiate the space with great care, using the banister to take the stairs and even so, feeling my feet and legs uncertainly take the steps downward and feeling the alarmed feeling build up and up the longer we remained. I felt even so that I could not hear properly, though all had left and there were scarcely more than 5 or 6 of us left in the building. I was so glad when we finally got outside I barely registered that noisiness by comparison!
But I am ahead of myself! First the “event” took place.
Barbara from the Foundation that sponsors and indeed is the originator of these humanism and medicine events did a brief introduction about the Foundation itself, then my publisher got up in her striking bright red coat, and spoke, wildly enthusiastic, about my book. In bombastic terms she praised me endlessly, until I cringed and felt no one, least of J herself could possibly believe such drivel….. I can only hope she tones it down tonight as it was way over the top…upsetting me because I felt certain she was lying to herself and making everyone laugh at me as well. Finally, she was through and gave me the signal to do my thing. Luckily I had more than cut my teeth on public speaking with our book tour for Divided Minds, so I was fine, once I got started. Of course beginning with, How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s Manual, and a few words of explanation, put most people at ease. So you better believe I start with that almost without fail. What else? And after that my spiel and that poem, I had them…as they say — in my hand. But really, they had me! You see, I was no longer terrified, nor intimidated. Instead I was having fun and wanted only to please.
The rest of the reading went swimmingly, with Mary providing a short intro to each chronological section of the book, and me reading about 3 poems from each, That way, I could let her do some of the organizing of the reading and taking some of the pressure off me, and it eased my tension a bit, even though I guess I could have done it myself, seeing as I had done so at Mystic (though I admit, there I had also started weeping near the end, thinking about Joe as I read a poem about him. In fact, it was probably my crying during that poem there that led Marjorie to suggest I stop at the so-called forgiveness poem, rather than continue through till four o’clock as I was scheduled to.)
In fact, I do not mind crying, it is mostly others who seek to save me from my own tears who mind…They are the ones who cannot take it, who think they have to save me from embarrassing myself, them, and the world. when in fact I don’t mind crying in public, any more than I could care less where I sleep! (I have slept in some pretty weird places, including right in the middle of a labyrinth in a public garden….Could simply not walk a foot farther but collapsed into a heap and slept for a couple of hours, oblivious to the fact of people staring or otherwise wondering what I was doing there, and my family having in disgust moved on…) But at the Academy, I was prevented from crying or at least it never became an issue which at moment, is a source of relief though I do not believe it would ever truly have proved a problem to me.
The following night, I was less articulate, possibly more tired, though I hadn’t felt so, just more tongue-tied, and less quick to think or respond…Nevertheless , the audience was very kind and laughed right on cue, which is more than I can say for the shrinks, kind though they were. and which this audience was not made of particularly. They even responded better, in terms of audible laughter to In Memoriam Memoriae. Laughing at the ending, and esp at the pauses where laughter was most welcome.
Oh, I am such a ham…But in truth this is only on stage, and nowhere else. And only in terms of the truth, not as a true actor, which I cannot be for beans…I dunno how to “act act” and wouldn’t want to. What I think I like to do is be myself, but be a goofy me, or a funny me, which others call, Play acting, but is really just being goofy, and me too. Can I not be goofy sometimes, or might i not achieve that state of innocence where one can play and be irresponsible occasionally? Why must one be staid and unimaginative and awkward and nothing always…
Well, I fear I must stop here, finished or no, as my face is coming off and I simply cannot stay awake longer. I have to go to bed because I am fading and losing touch with whatever i am writing.. When the fingers threaten to fall asleep on the keyboard and the keyboard becomes invisible because you are closing your eyes against your will, you know it’s time to sleep…And so I will, myself, take this body off to bed. Sleep well and good night.
This is how Newsweek begins its article about the Icarus Project and Mad Pride:
“We don’t want to be normal,” Will Hall tells me. The 43-year-old has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and doctors have prescribed antipsychotic medication for him. But Hall would rather value his mentally extreme states than try to suppress them, so he doesn’t take his meds. Instead, he practices yoga and avoids coffee and sugar. He is delicate and thin, with dark plum polish on his fingernails and black fashion sneakers on his feet, his half Native American ancestry evident in his dark hair and dark eyes. Cultivated and charismatic, he is also unusually energetic, so much so that he seems to be vibrating even when sitting still.“ http://www.newsweek.com/id/195694
Readers will note two things immediately: It is not common for someone diagnosed with schizophrenia these days to be “delicate and thin” — despite articles claiming to prove a supposed link between schizophrenia the illness and obesity, most of us would say that weight gain went right along with taking meds from the get go. And that most of us were originally either of normal weight or even thin compared to “normals.” the other striking thing, I think, is Will Hall’s level of energy. Most of those with schizophrenia, at least those on meds that I know, have a much lower level than normal of energy and motivation, which again is attributed to the illness itself. Now of course negative symptoms might be an effect of the illness, yes. But I also know that at least when I took the older drugs, like thorazine and mellaril, they added tremendously to any inner listlessness I might have felt. Indeed, what else is the infamous Thorazine shuffle but a drug side effect that practically screams medication-induced psychomotor retardation?
In any event, it may be that some of my readers with schizophrenia, and many of the mothers (and in my experience when caregivers visit this site it is often mothers who do though sometimes fathers do as well) of those with schizophrenia, may well disapprove of my posting this link. But I feel it deserves a viewing. Too many of us suffer the effects of medication without benefiting from its advantages not to offer another form of hope. As long as someone is not a danger to him or herself or others, why should they not be offered the experience of Mad Pride, should they prefer it? In these later stages of my own “condition” I too long to be off meds and to experience my experience, to do art unencumbered by the effect of meds that fatigue me if nothing else. But if I feel enabled now, and emboldened by some inner force to do art, I just might be liberated to unknown heights once off the meds, and if I can control the dangers I used to put myself in vis a vis cigarettes and such, why should i not be permitted such an experiment. Alas, no one here would ever allow it. I would have to endure such remonstrations and scolding and worse from relatives and others it is simply not worth it, or else I simply could not bear the bitterness of fighting with them…SO I am stuck, stuck on these deadening and dangerous medications until such a time as I feel free enough to move away, leave town and move elsewhere. Until such a time as universal health care enables me the freedom to leave the benefits Connecticut so generously provides me as a Medicaid/Medicare patient, and live elsewhere, I am simply forced to live in my same old tiny apartment and change nothing.
But some of you might be wanting to make that change and be more capable of it, be more able to maintain 1) stability and 2) a family support network, rather than a state of constant resentful watchfulness and remonstrations of such bitterness that make it not worth the effort. I know my friends would definitely support me, but I need my family to as well, or feel I do…I am not yet ready to say I can do without it at any rate…And so I remain in thrall to their demands on me, despite the fact that for many years I had no ties to them at all, and neither help nor obligations bound us. If it is good now between us, and I love that part of it, it also means that I feel that I must live up to expectations I could disregard before…and that is so hard, and often such a burden.
Nevertheless, I love them, insofar as I am capable of the emotion of love (see posts below for an explanation of that caveat). And if I am not, then I feel for them as mu9ch as I am capable of feeling for anyone…which is all they can ask.
But I have diverged from my initial subject matter which was Mad Pride. Tomorrow I give a talk and a poetry reading at the House where I live of 250 residents, though only a handful are expected to attend. IN the talk I finish by answering the question, do I link mental illness and creativity, and my answer is, Maybe, but even so, in most cases the best work, mine at any rate, is done “best when I am better.” I mean by this that deep in psychosis I cannot write anything decent, if I write at all nor do any decent art, because I am no longer motivated nor able to concentrate well enough to do so. Perhaps in a manic state I have been able to, but those have sadly (yes!) been too few. Otherwise my more extreme moods have been called a mixed state or major depression. In any of those moods, and certainly when extremely or even moderately paranoid, I do little work at all. And when hearing “bad voices” ditto, since that is when I am most likely to be concentrating on acts of self-harm and least on self-nurturing activities such as art. So you see why I say what I do, that only when I am at least getting better do I do my best work?
Moreover, I believe this is true of most people. It seems to me that even in the case of the Mad Pride artwork at the Newsweek site, those artists were not in fact psychotic at the time they did their art, Oh, perhaps they were depressed, but clearly not catatonicly depressed, by definition. And I cannot believe that they were disorganized even if their diagnosis was schizophrenia, because however weird the artwork, there was recognizable order and ordering in each and every one…
Welp, I am getting fatigued just writing this, so I will leave you with that short disquisition and the link to The Icarus Project. I am not endorsing or not- endorsing it, only expressing my interest and indicating my plan to continue to read up and find out more. Somewhat not surprisingly, there is an active ? branch in Northampton, MA, which is the town I have wanted to move to for a number of years, but have not yet had the nerve. Nor has there been the financial or medical feasibility. Now there might be, but it is still not possible. Oh, I wish I could move, but there is Joe to consider, and I would not leave him now.
That said, here is the Icarus Project Link. Enjoy? Comments will all be read and appreciated. I will respond if I can.
No one who has seen this has not recognized me, apparently, however simple this portrayal might seem. It was a mere sketch in comparison to the others, I must say. Done late at night, with a hand mirror, with only one decent light, a standing lamp, near enough to illuminate me but clearly casting rather dramatic shadows.
Since then I have been fighting an on-going migraine and so I have not been able or felt up to doing painting of any kind. Cleaned up my apartment under the duress of some visitors coming, but aside from that have gotten nothing of any substance done. I am supposed to be editing my father’s book (the primary author is someone I’ll call PN but I will refer to it as his book for now, a shorthand for PN and his book) I am supposed to be editing their book but this headache has so laid me low that I have done very little this week. I simply cannot do any difficult mental work when my head is throbbing! At the moment — at the moment I can feel it building back up in the background, though it had been better for a couple of hours (I woke in the middle of the night and stayed up for a while writing this and wandering around trying to shake off my listlessness to do something (I was wide awake otherwise).
Well, no use worrying now. I am yawning so sleep beckons. Must go to bed. TTFN
Yes, I finally hold it in my hands, We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders, published by CavanKerry Press. Below is the cover illustration (minus the Spiro, which is on the final version) and the press release:
We Mad Climb Shaky Ladders: Poems by Pamela Spiro Wagner
NEWS from CavanKerry Press
6 Horizon Road No. 2901 • Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024 • phone/fax 201.670.9065 • cavankerry@optonline.net
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Florenz Eisman — 201.670.9065
WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS
Poems
Pamela Spiro Wagner
With Introduction and Commentary by Mary B. O’Malley, MD, PhD
Foreword by Baron Wormser
For forty years – longer than her entire adult life – Pamela Spiro Wagner has been affected by paranoid schizophrenia, a plight she eloquently explored in her award-winning book, Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey Through Schizophrenia, co-written with her twin sister, psychiatrist Carolyn S. Spiro, MD. Also an accomplished poet, Wagner has long utilized the language and emotion of poetry to express the individuality of her mental illness, capturing with vivid candor her singular inner world. In WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS, the latest volume from LaurelBooks, CavanKerry’s Literature of Illness imprint, Wagner for the first time collects her poems, presented with commentary by her psychiatrist, Mary B. O’Malley, MD, PhD, that elucidates the clinical roots of the poet’s art.
WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS “is much more than a testimony to a diagnosis or pathology or terminology,” writes Baron Wormser in his foreword. “The poems emanate from the place of the poet’s illness but they are resolutely poems—well-written, sensually alert, quick to turn and notice and startlingly honest. They dwell on both sides of the equation of life and art: testifying to the powerful and tenuous links between the two and demonstrating that art is capable of holding its own regardless of circumstances. Some of those circumstances have been shattering. The sheer tenacity that it can take to write poems makes itself felt here in ways that are both uncomfortable and reassuring.”
Wagner’s often harrowing struggle with life, as reflected in these poems, has been marked by psychological turmoil – periods of total debilitation, as well as intervals of recovery and hope. Her battle with paranoia hovers over the work, such as in “Poem in which Paranoia Strikes at the Grocery Store” where the simple act of shopping becomes a waking nightmare: “Who/gave you permission to enter? No one/wants you here. They are all watching….You are being followed./You are on your own.” Wagner captures the voices in her head with terrifying urgency. In “Offering,” Wagner’s very first poem, written in 1984, she writes of her compulsion to burn herself with cigarettes with a haunting remove:
The tip of the cigarette glows and grins
as I lower it to you,
Unlover,
alien body.
At Dr. O’Malley’s urging, Wagner has also included three poems she wrote during the heights of psychosis, and these are filled with scrambled ideas and garish imagery that are shocking in their raw, unguarded unveiling of the poet’s troubled mind.
Divided into five sections, Wagner’s book covers childhood and the earliest indications of illness, the years of illness, recovery, coping, and new beginnings. As with most poetry grounded in autobiography, there are important familial relationships that seep into the poems – father, mother, sister, friends. Here, these relationships are filtered through the poet’s psychosis, colored by hallucinations and delusions, yet grounded in the emotional truths that any complicated relationship engenders. In her most widely known poem, “The Prayers of the Mathematician,” which won First Place in the BBC World Service international poetry competition judged by Wole Soyinke, Wagner moves beyond the personal with an eloquent poem about John Nash, the schizophrenic Nobel Prize winner who was later immortalized in the movie, A Beautiful Mind.
“These poems are the work of a first-rate writer” says surgeon and best-selling writer Richard Selzer of WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS, “one who has sounded the well of her own suffering to retrieve the wherewithal to transform pain into the most powerful and moving literature.”
~~~
About Pamela Spiro Wagner
Photo of the author in May, 2009
A prize-winning writer and poet who suffers from schizophrenia, Pamela Spiro Wagner attended Brown University and went to medical school for one and a half years before being hospitalized for psychiatric care. She won First Place in the international BBC World Service Poetry Competition in 2002, and co-authored, with her twin sister, Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and their Journey Through Schizophrenia, which won the national NAMI Outstanding Literature Award and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. Currently she writes at http://WAGblog.wordpress.com. She has lived in the Hartford, Connecticut area for 33 years.
CavanKerry Press would appreciate two tearsheets
of any review or feature you publish about this book.
WE MAD CLIMB SHAKY LADDERS by Pamela Spiro Wagner
Publication Date: 2009
Price: $16.00; ISBN: 978-1-933880-10-5
Distributed by: University Press of New England (UPNE), 1-800-421-1561 or 603-448-1533, Ext. 255
Author is available for speaking, readings, and workshops.
Contact: pamwagg@cox.net or pamwagg@yahoo.com
Tel: 860-257-9188
I have been madly completing artwork for the show coming up on the 28th. So far have done three bowls and finished the Sitting Child Trudy…Have two more bowls waiting to be painted…And a goose to make for Ruth. Meanwhile, “The Book” is not yet printed, but it looks like it will be soon…The one poem I hate, Solo for Two, cannot be deleted, so I must settle for it staying in but the other corrections were made. I wish I had not been told that the book needed no editing, which is patently silly, ALL books need editing! But that is what they told me, so I did not look at it again, until it was too late to do much. I should have known better! I ought to have known better, as that is precisely what Diane K, our erstwhile editor told us about Divided Minds, and so opted out of helping us. But nothing could have been further from the truth, and luckily we knew it. She was basically trying to sabotage the book, even Lynnie thought so. ARGH, that is water down the sluices…What is important now is that the corrections I really needed made in WE MAD were in fact made, and the one poem I do not like may in fact appeal to someone. So I will put up with that one poem staying in, and hope it does not mar the entire thing…
That said, here are the new art works, first the three bowls, which take about a day to paint each, more or less, and then Trudy, which took several months of intermittent work.
Two Bowls, one 4" and one 7" - papier macheOdd Botany bowl -- these plants are not real anythingAnother shot of Odd Botany bowlDittoFinal side of the Odd Botany bowl
Trudy is about three feet tall but on her hassock is somewhat taller. I’d say she is about the size of a seven year old? But I dunno, since I haven’t seen a seven year old in a while. 8)
I thought I got her eyes down particularly well...
Iguess I don’t have to say too much about these photos since they pretty much say it all. The Child is papier mache painted with metallic acrylic paints. I made her clothes out of poster paper and paper toweling and her hair from tissue paper, the rest of her skin is mostly a layer of heavy duty newsprint or packing paper.
We are having an art show in my building in March so I am trying to finish a few projects in order to be ready for it. Alas, the Child is taking up so much time that I dunno that I will have finished much else besides by March…since I needs must also review the galleys of my book of poems and write several articles and perform any number of other necesary duties. Here are two other small sculptures I have made that I could add to the show:
Art capital A saved my life. More than that. Art gave me a new life, new hope, and something to get up in the morning for. It’s not that I stopped writing. Clearly that is not the case. But I was writing in a vacuum and needed an outlet for my creative urges that involved more than just my brain. Oh sure, writing involves the hands, too. But not in the way I mean. What I needed was, well, what do I mean? I wanted to make things, create objects or works of art that could be seen and touched and even smelled and if scratched or thrown to the ground, heard. And if I were like van Gogh, I might even try to taste them! In short, I wanted to create something physical, not just an imaginary or remembered world.
I have always needed to work with my hands, making something or doing some sort of craft or artwork, though I gavitated towards the crafty side of arts and crafts, fearing that I could not “do real art”, that I was not the stuff of which true artists are made. (And pray tell, what stuff is that, Pamela?) So even when I – on a whim – dove into sculpture during a manic episode, creating that llama-in-a-day I have spoken of, the result was mostly folk art, which is to say, unsophisticated, rustic, and at best a craft-like work. Sure, I was pretty proud that I’d made a lifesize animal that actually stood up firmly on its own four legs. But with a deli container head (underneath the papier mache) and huge mailing tube body, scarcely concealed, big enough to have once held a large amateur telescope, it didn’t look much like a llama. In fact, the result was not much more than that tube covered with a few layers of paper and glue, and all of it painted red. Nevertheless, I was proud of “Dolly the llama,” though it took me a year after the mania was treated to finish her. Her saddle blanket fooled many into tugging at the finge to see if it was real or not. a trompe-l’oeil — eye fooling — success that pleased me no end.
But a year was much too much time to complete a sculpture, even a life-size llama. I was almost dreading the work by the time I got to applying the last few strokes of paint. I needed more drive than that to do art, but I didn’t seem to be able to sustain the energey or enthusiasm for much of anything. I wasn’t sure how I managed to write the book, even. Then, during my last hospitalization it seems this obstacle was overcome: on Abilify and Geodon I suddenly had both energy and stamina galore. Or perhaps it is simply that the medications enabled a well me to come out, someone who could sustain an artistic effort, even if it was for the very first time. Given a different life I would have been doing this sort of thing all along had I known it was possible, had I had that kind of stamina… But I didn’t think about this, no, for me there was no looking back.
Over the year and a half since then I have created several pieces, large and small, from a large tortoise to a “crazy fruit” bowl. From a large seated man, to a child detachable from her hassock (not quite finished). My female sculpture, the Decorated Betsy, has even won a NAMI national contest on creativity and mental illness. But why tell you about them. I want to see if I can upload a few photos instead here, but you’ll have to bear with me as I try out the “program”. First, I want to upload a picture of that llama, just so you can get a look at my very first attempt. She now resides in my parents’ bay window, a placement that I regard as an honor.
Looks mighty co-o-o-ld out there!
Here is the Dream Tortoise, otherwise known as Yurtle the Turtle, which is about 3 feet in diameter.
What you lookin’ at?
There are two other large scale sculptures, each a person, plus a work in progress, but it is nearing my bedtime and there will be hell to pay if I do not get my 8 hours of essential-to-my-mental-health sleep. So I will stop here and get back to this tomorrow, posting at least two if not more photos of my artwork then.
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Aw hell, here are two more, but without comment or caption except to say that the prescription that the man holds in his hand reads: Dr John Jumoke Rx: art, poetry, music. But first the earliest human I have done, the Decorated Betsy (note that half her face is also decorated, and since Jumoke was supposed to be her doc, his face is decorated too. Does this perhaps indicate that perhaps he too is- infected?:
Decorated Betsy: Life-Size papier mache sculpture 2008 January by Pamela Spiro Wagner
And now Dr John Jumoke
Life-size and attached to home-made papier mache chair
Iguess I don’t have to say too much about these photos since they pretty much say it all. The Child is papier mache painted with metallic acrylic paints. I made her clothes out of poster paper and paper toweling and her hair from tissue paper, the rest of her skin is mostly a layer of heavy duty newsprint or packing paper.
