Post therapy w/H.R. hand plus wire cube + flu 29 December 2009 Pen nearly out
"Make a fist" ..."I am"... 29 December 2009 + flu, pen out
Timing in so many things can make the difference between fortune and failure, opportunities grasped or missed, being ill or well, life and death. The hand therapist did not hesitate. She held the hand and fingers, massaged the scars and manipulated the joints. Her confident actions were matched by words. The aim was to return my hand and fingers to as close to fully functioning as possible, starting now. She provided a beacon of hope and clarity in a swirling sea of uncertainty.
The chaos started earlier in the year. That summer on the cultural island in Northern Michigan the ripples of change began. Swine flu in various forms took hold of the campus. The sculpture assistant working on a large metal tribute to her many sisters and their lives together received a phone call saying one of those sisters had been killed in a car crash. At an intersection on the way to TC the painter was hit by a turning car, totaling her own sister’s car and leaving her bruised and in hospital. She said she tried but could not reach anyone in the real world.
That summer I was reading Greek plays and tragedies. “I hope the gods leave us alone for awhile”, I said, “Enough of being their playthings or the objects of their anger or whimsy.” This summer I am reading Dante’s Divine Comedy but I seem to be stuck in the bottom circle of hell. “Keep reading”, said the other printmaker, “You’ll get out”.
Last October there was the accident to my hand. That and another bout of flu put my piano lessons on hold and cancelled our anniversary and Christmas. The beautifully reconditioned Beckstein was called back to its original home. Although I was a beginner and only had use of one hand, it felt a loss. The newly installed Playell seemed resistant to her new surroundings, dropping notes and sticking keys, her touch uneven and hesitant. Even the French music the Cross St musician brought wasn’t quite enough to persuade her to play. “Give her time”, the musician said, “to settle in”.
At the house in Berkley last week, we were planning Mom’s day visit home. The weather was hot. We were tired. The car had broken down the night before when we were meant to leave the cultural island. The summer magic was over, the island about to disappear for another year. We needed to head down state but the gods had other plans. The photographer and his daughter diagnosed the problem. The entire contents of the container were not actually meant to pour straight onto the tarmac in Ric’s parking lot where the car had died, but they did because the clutch leaked like a sieve. While the gods looked away for a moment, a local mechanic agreed to do the work, even on a Sunday. He drove up from Bay City, made the repair and we drove down to Berkley.
Although we were tired and weary, we celebrated the end of summer with a glass of sparkling from a winery we had visited on the peninsula on the big lake. We had not expected the escalating disagreement about arrangements for Mom’s visit home to cause any problems. But while in the kitchen we heard an explosion and the shattering of glass coming from the family room. We ran to see what had happened. My glass, formerly stable and empty on the table, was now in hundreds of shards on the floor. The argument stopped. “Point taken”, I said to the void. There was no further mention of the incident.
In a family email later that week sister was waxing philosophical about the changes happening in our family: death, illness, frailty, dieing, living. She had been reading Buddhist philosophy. It seems that expecting loss and change to be inevitable might bring more peace of mind. “The glass is not half full or half empty”, she wrote, “at some point the glass will break”.
On the news we hear that Mars is moving closer and will soon appear large in the night sky and as bright as the moon. I wonder if this celestial movement has been part of the gods having another go, and about Mars of all the gods making his presence felt.
Although artists expect to work hard at their practice, they also expect uncertainty and chance to be integral parts of the work. This week I am considering hanging a copy of a painting I made on a wall in my study. I have been enchanted by the subject and form of ‘The Little Juggler’ by Philip C. Curtis, for many years. I painted a copy of it to try to understand it better for myself yet it still asks for more. In the painting the female figure with the tiny waist, full moon face and cascading hair stands in front of the opened curtain as she juggles fourteen coloured planet like spheres. One tiny raised hand is open, releasing, too passive and too small to actually affect the juggled balls of colour or the swirling sea of paint. The other hand is a mere strip of white that is fast becoming part of the maelstrom swirling around the calm of the large, full moon face. It is Curtis’ compelling vision of a moving universe of calm and chaos set on a surreal stage.
In the clinic, the hand therapist repeated her request with clarity and calm confidence, “Make a fist”, she said. Again I willed the fingers to move, looked at my static, passive fingers and said, “I am”.