Surgery as a Meditation

June 30, 2018

Today I’m working through a number of thoughts for after I recover from surgery. “I’m using the operation as a bell of mindfulness and a jumping-off place for new things – several new things. This is a huge turning point.

I’ve not kept house well for a long time. It’s holding me back from being creative and from thinking positively about myself. I will be changing when I get home. I won’t be able to lift over 5 pounds but will get help to make the apartment more organized. I’m glad to have someone I feel good about helping me.

I am both a writer and an artist. I see no chance of dropping either one of these endeavors from my life. In fact, they’re intertwined. I’ll be making a much more consistent effort to do daily work when I get home. Even before I return to my place, I have a travel watercolor set, good pencils, and Sakura Microns in a bag to go with me to the hospital. If I must sit in a chair, which they should have me doing almost immediately, I can use the small sketchpad I am taking (4” x 4”) to work on small pieces as I feel like it. I can also plan out some calligraphy pieces in a 5" by 8" notebook. Artwork is a meditation. It should help me get well sooner and lift my frame of mind.

Many years ago, my college art teacher gave me a copy of Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook. I’d forgotten about it until I ran across Klee’s quote today: “A line is a dot that went for a walk.” Even a line has humble beginnings. I am going to seek out this book among my collection and flip through it. I also got a copy of Paul Antonio’s new workbook today, Copperplate Script, a Yin and Yang Approach published by Speedball. I’m going to do some roaming through it too when I get home.

The writer in me is going through a metamorphosis as well. I’m beginning to learn more about the type of writing that I want to do from now on, not what others think I should do. More on this later as I run these idea through my mind.

I'm spite of the fact that I will be in the hospital for several days, I intend to use meditation and creativity to get me through the pain.

May you be well.

ADAPTING AND MODIFICATION

ADAPTING AND MODIFICATION:

Ever since I was five years old, I've had to learn to adapt everything. A childhood accident left me with limited use of my left hand and arm, and that arm much shorter that the right one. I had to modify riding a bicycle in order to hold the handlebars because my left arm and right arm weren't the same length. Because the doctor told my parents when I broke my arm that it would be amputated if I broke it again, out of fear my parents would not allow me to skate or do anything else that might cause another accident. When I pulled the training wheels off my bike in the first grade, there was a lot of angst. I grew up having to fight to do anything other kids did, including getting to stay over at a friend's house. My mother was convinced that I couldn't take care of myself without her.

I took some hits when I was a kid from people who saw me as "damaged." Even my mother made me wear long sleeves (I have a scar) because she said boys wouldn't like me if they knew something was "wrong" with me. All these actions made me feel insecure. I always thought I couldn't measure up to people who were without faults.

Now I'm 65 years old and I'm done with that rot. I've learned to adapt and modify everything that I can't do the usual way. It's made me stronger. It's made me resilient.

Because I grew up this way, I will stand up for ANYONE who is being bullied by anyone else. No one deserves to be treated with such a lack of dignity.

Thoughts Like Clouds
Mindy Phillips Lawrence

A Word on Elie Wiesel

“Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.”

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1986

It is fitting to begin this blog on the date that writer and humanitarian Elie Wiesel died at 87. He spent most of his life bearing witness to the hell of the Holocaust.

Night, the first book written by Wiesel, is a mere 120 pages, a slim volume filled with pain, terror and inhumanity. Its length is part of its impact. It bears witness to unthinkable actions occurring in the Nazi concentration camps in 1944 against Jews and others deemed unworthy of life by Hitler’s forces. It gives us a serving of what the unthinkable was like in hopes that it will never happen again.

Although NIGHT was written about events taking place in 1944, it eerily reflects modern day questions about torture and intolerance. Here we are at a time when far-rightism is again rising. We see Neo-Nazi groups marching in Europe and the United States and echoes of hatred and indifference in politics around the world. 

Although we've lost Wiesel, it was his purpose to direct all of us to use our lives to make sure another Holocaust never occurs. Are we up to the task? Oh, humanity, are we up to the task?