Week 20: Twelfth Once again, we gather around the table to celebrate the end of Christmas.
Yes, yes, this card should be named 'Twelfth Night' But I am limiting my card titles to one word. Not quite satisfactory, but I couldn't find a one word that would substitute (unlike finding "Hogmanay" as a substitution for "New Year's Eve.") Again, this card was an experiment with different media. The table cloth and napkins are tissue paper, the forks are cut from aluminum foil. And the plates are from the foil wrapped around the Hershey's Kisses we had inside the miniature stockings. We did indeed manage to gather around the table this year, although it was a Twelfth Night dinner this time rather than breakfast. That's just the way the schedules worked out.
Week 21: Severus He was the bravest man I ever knew.
This was the week that Alan Rickman died, and I made this card in honor of him and in honor of one of my favorite of his performances. Once I started thinking about Severus, I started making connections between his situation and mine (and not all of them are flattering, to say the least). This gets into personal stuff, so Elinor Dashwood will leave it there for now. It was the last day of the previous week, January 9, that was Severus Snape's birthday. Rowling deliberately chose that day because it was the feast for the Roman God Janus, the two-headed god who guarded doorways, looking both into the past and into the future. An extremely appropriate choice for the ambiguous Severus Snape's birthday, and an appropriate thing for me to ponder, as I think about my career--where it has been as well as where it is going.
Week 22: iPod I lost my iPod in the snow and felt helpless without it.
At least by process of elimination, that's where I figured it wound up. I never got it back. I held out a week, gritting my teeth, and then I bought a replacement. Screw the fact that I am unemployed. I need one to organize my life.
Annoyingly, I found out when I upgraded to the next model, that I can't synch it on my iMac. The software on my desktop Apple is too old. Planned obsolescence is pretty damned annoying.
Week 23: Three There are three things I do to help myself.
This was a tough week. Again, Elinor Dashwood will not provide many details. The three stones represent three stepping stones, the sort to keep you above the water you would drown in otherwise (I tried and tried to find an image of three stepping stones, but for a variety of reasons, what I found just didn't work. So I used an image of stacked stones). The stones represent three things I do throughout the week for self-care. The stones are carried by a manatee, and if you haven't found the site Calming Manatee, really, what are you waiting for?
I know what the next card is (Card 24) and I worked on it today, but I had tremendous trouble with figuring out the right fixative to use. I had an image with words superimposed over it. I printed the words on waxed paper, but every fixative I used just smeared or blurred the words. I have an idea for how to fix the problem, but it involves a trip to the store. So I started working on the next card (Card 25), and finished it, too. I worked on the cards OUT OF ORDER! I felt SO GUILTY! And I will not scan and show this past week's card until I finish the card for the week before.
This means we are almost halfway through the year! (It also means it's been half a year since I've had a job--groan). minnehaha K. impishly suggested that we could swap decks and I would do the rest of hers and she would do the rest of mine. I firmly vetoed this idea. But then she made the clever suggestion that we would each do the jokers of the other person's deck, one at Week 26 and one at the end. Which I think is a really cool idea.
Week 17: Biopsy After the second of two biopsies, Rob hovers at the brink of awakening.
I took a picture of Rob right right before he awoke from the anesthesia, after a double bone marrow biopsy. Something about his posture, the angle of his face, the lighting (and the suffering of which he never complains)...something made me think of religious iconography. (Which would certainly bemuse Rob, as he is an agnostic.) A saint in a religious trance or something. Religious ecstacy.
That impression and that word, 'ecstacy' triggered a memory of an image I'd had stashed in my soulcollaging cache of images, "The Ecstasy of St. Teresa," a central sculptural group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome (google it to see). I flipped that image and scaled Rob's down to fit in with it. Note the angel holds an arrow, indicative of the sharp point just used to do the biopsy. It pleases me that the arrow is pointed at the site of the cancer.
Week 18: Yule Light a candle, sing a song.
There is a Peter Mayer song about the winter solstice called "The Longest Night." ( Here are the lyricsCollapse )
I've always loved that song, especially given that I'm vulnerable to Seasonal Affective Disorder. This card is trying to juxtapose the thoughts of this song with Christmas (the wreath) and Solstice (the diamond candle), which fell during the same week. "Yule" is a concept that would encompass both of them.
Although I like the concept, the card just didn't turn out to have as much impact as I'd hoped. Just not vivid enough or something.
Week 19: Hogmanay The year comes to an end.
THIS card, on the other hand, turned out SPLENDIDLY. I had a great deal of difficulty, however, managing a decent scan of the card, because it is difficult for scans to capture the way it glitters. It's much more scintillatingly impressive when you hold it in your hand than I can convey here. "Hogmanay" is an old Scottish word referring to New Year's Eve (and I resorted to it because I'm limiting the titles of these cards to one word, and "Newyear' just didn't look right to me). The monks are a reference to the poem I wrote and posted earlier about our trip to Mayo Clinic the day before New Year's Eve, and the silver light and the glittering spindrift was made from nail polish. The very same nail polish, as a matter of fact, that I used in my New Year's Eve manicure. I think they captured the sense of the 'icy spindrift' (and the cones of silver light) extremely well!
And the Chinese fortune was from the fortune cookie I opened on New Year's Eve. My family has been gathering together and eating Chinese every single New Year's Eve for years. Perhaps this fortune was a wry commentary on the job hunting process.
I have been waiting to post these until we told the girls the latest medical results.
Week 15: Pain Everything hurts.
Since Rob's heart was damaged by chemo, I have been doing all the shoveling. At the first snowfall, doing the job, I hurt my back. Badly. Ice and painkillers and pillows and baths and ow and tears. It really, really hurt. At the same time, I have been fighting off depression (in the Victorian language of flowers, marigolds are associated by some with grief or despair). It has been very difficult to deal with physical pain, combined with the anxiety of job hunting, combined with the bad cancer news. This card is tied, symbolically, with the marigolds, to a card in my Soulcollage deck, The Woman Who Listens to Ravens.
Week 16: PET Rob undergoes testing at Mayo Clinic.
I cut the words and the picture of a patient undergoing a PET scan from the various educational brochures we've received from Mayo (really, they will give you a brochure about anything under the sun). The blobby shapes draped over the words are photographs of some glassblown art hanging from the ceiling in the large atrium at Mayo Clinic (printed out on tracing paper, which is the first time I've used that technique). Here is a picture of the installation, in situ. Very pretty, if you look at it one way.
But every time I look at those shapes, I think they look like cellular structures. Even like tumors.
An interesting article, a review of a book about literary fame here.
The always wise Jim Hines (jimhines) has a pithy list outlining the nature of depression, here. Much of it looks extremely familiar.
I have been busting a gut laughing at the Twitter hashtag TedCruzCampaignSlogans. Especially now that on the first full day of his campaign, CNN has pinned him into admitting that he, the tireless hater of Obamacare ('We must repeal it!') is going on Obamacare himself now that his wife has left her employer, Goldman Sachs to join him on the campaign trail, and so his family has no healthcare coverage. The delicious, delicious irony.
Fiona and I went to see Next to Normal tonight. This song was the one that made me bawl. In it, the husband, Dan, is trying to convince the wife to sign a form giving consent to undergo a scary medical procedure. She is at the hospital and he has been living at home.
I am in exactly this position. We signed the papers a couple of weeks ago. Now I sit at home alone, waiting and hoping while Rob is in the hospital.
I listened to the soundtrack after I dropped off Fiona and drove home. A single light was shining on the porch when I reached it, just as this song was playing.
There is a bunny living in or very near our yard. I see it almost every day, either in the morning when I leave or at night when I come home, just hanging out, freezing in the hopes it won't be observed.
For years, 'bunny' has been the favored endearment in our family. Now, in this time of stress and grief, it feels oddly like a sign. Of hope, or a guardian spirit, or a patronus or something. It doesn't make any sense to think so, but it still lifts my heart a little, every time I see it.
The Midlife Journey - Council Card I am the One who responds to the Call or inner restlessness or new freedom by sailing away from the familiar and secure, in hopes of new energy and purpose. I can only leave with the support of those who love me.
The Hidden Passage (I really like the fact that it even looks like the same woman.)
The First and Seventh Chakra cards (the Tortoise and the Swan), as well as the swan patronus cards. (Well, okay, those are turtles in this new card whereas the chakra card is a Tortoise, but, um, close enough). The idea is that first chakra, The Tortoise (security needs) up to the Seventh Chakra, the Swan (connection with between myself and the rest of the universe) bless this journey.
I see links to Trustworthiness, too, with the linkage of hands (which is meant to show that this journey is very much supported. I am not intending to cut myself off from the people I love by taking this journey. Instead, it is (perhaps wishful thinking) very much supported by them.
Of course, what the woman wants to escape from is this and this.
I like this card very much, aesthetically, and it is getting at the heart of what I've been struggling with the past two weeks. I want to leave my job, my career. But how? How can I reconcile that with my security needs? How can I care for my family?
Another title for it, I suppose, is Midlife Crisis.
Upon a little extra reading, in which I was trying to remember which tarot card this reminded me of, I was tempted to stick six swords through the composition. It does resemble the Six of Swords card, in that it resembles that boat, beginning a journey. The Six of Swords card is sometimes called the Slough of Despond card....except the boat pushing away from shore suggests hopefulness, a movement toward something new.
Making the card was a better way to spend the afternoon than diving into the abyss that threatened to swallow me. I got out of bed, managed to choke down a little bit of food, and made something artistic rather than brooding.
I've really been in a funk, which is one of the reasons why I've been quiet here.
Rob is done with chemo (yes, I know I need to write something on the CaringBridge account) but he is still mighty tired, and I haven't noticed much in the way of improvement yet. He is starting physical therapy to regain his strength. They told him at his first appointment that it may take months to recover from the fatigue.
Fiona has successfully transferred, to the University of Minnesota, and is taking classes there now. She is living at home, and commuting in with me in the mornings, which is nice. It just takes me about an extra five minutes or so to drop her off. I know she'd rather not live at home, but she has no job (she lost hers, since it was an Augsburg work-study job), and she didn't have time to arrange housing on top of arranging for the transfer. So she's at home for now.
Delia is still mulling college options. She was five for five on acceptances--and then got turned down today by the place she wanted to go to the most, the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. It was also the most reasonably priced, which is going to be a significant factor. The letter said it was because she didn't have credits which we KNOW she had. We are going to try to reverse their decision but, yeah, we don't know if there'll be much hope.
As for me, well, I'm still studying French every day. The last couple of days I've been feeling really lousy, emotionally, but I don't particularly need to go into details. Just a lot of things seem awfully hard right now.
