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A personal investigation by Linda Lay.  Entrance of David Hockney’s Yosemite (Ken Lesiak) Monterey County is where I grew up, left, and recently returned to. If you don’t live in the area, you may have been seeing a lot of it on the popular HBO show, Big Little Lies. You may have come here on vacation at one point or another. We have art here, just like other places. A lot of it has to do with the natural landscape because it’s beautiful here. When I was growing up, it all seemed very “safe” and it bored me to death. Now that I’m older and have learned to force myself to look closer; now that I know to dig deeper because something beautiful and simple can contain complexities and even difficult questions, I see there have been and are some extraordinary artists living and working here. It’s like anywhere else- there are limiting ideas that should be challenged, innovations to bring to the table, and some things to fight against. There are social concerns to address. There’s also money to be made, if one is so lucky. I used to only notice the latter, but now I feel some changes to the place. We have a college instead of a military base and we all know that the nearby Silicon Valley has formed into some kind of offshoot-rooting of global civilization’s sense of value and worth and maybe even into our perception of time itself. In addition to that, the techies all head out to Burning Man every summer (lol) and I’m sure a lot of them have second homes on the Monterey Peninsula. In my mind, it adds up to affecting a new kind of environment, or at least the potential for it. (Emphasis on the “in my mind” part of that sentence.) One of the first things I noticed upon my return in 2018 was that the Monterey Museum of Art seemed different. For a while I was unsure if it had actually changed or it was just my own perspective via my hope to come home to a place that better suited my desire for community. It’s not like I had invested too much time in the art scene, before I left in the nineties, so who knows what I knew? Through recent conversations and time spent with some thoughtful and hard-working artists in the area, it seems the (relatively) new executive director, Stuart Chase, has indeed been making some changes to the space and our community. For instance, he helped bring us our first Hockney show!  Here I am with one of Hockney’s earlier “Joiners” featuring the Yosemite Valley, also on view. (Ken Lesiak) Now, let’s talk about digital imagery. It surrounds us in marketing, journalism, movies, politics, art… the list is endless. It’s a part of our daily lives. So much so that I feel silly even mentioning it. Most of us, just with our phones, know a lot more about making images using digital technology than we did ten years ago. Most of us are very comfortable manipulating our online identities, enhancing our “best qualities” and removing blemishes and wrinkles in photographs that we share with anyone willing to look. We add words and repetitive animations to our social media posts. All that being said, I’m not sure you should spend time with David Hockney’s nearly ten-year-old digital depictions of Yosemite, made on an iPad with the app called Brushes, that are currently on display at the Monterey Museum of Art, without context. You could, but it’s less interesting and not as fun. As someone who started using digital drawing programs in the early 90’s, it was at first kind of a funny thing to me, this body of work. It’s what made me want to write about it. When I first viewed the art, during a crowded museum members-only preview, I was struck by the line-quality I often try and disguise, using the many digital “tools” on my chosen software programs and applications. When I teach my art and digital photo students, who are teenagers, how to use Photoshop, we spend a lot of time on the many different ways to create a smooth line, or to “correct” this or that texture, in order to reach a desired effect. That is, unless they are going for something intentionally pixelated or unrefined. The kids nowadays know that the difference in line-quality speaks to the sort of visual message they are sending. In researching Hockney after seeing the Yosemite drawings, I found out that the folks at Adobe asked to meet with the artist in the Silicon Valley, way back in 1989, in regard to the use and (I’m imagining the) development of Photoshop. He knows a thing or two about art and technology, to say the least. When many of us upload images to our social media stories, timelines, and profiles today, we hastily make marks, right and left. Sometimes it’s necessary to send a message quickly, in earnest, and sometimes we do so because the added imagery informs our story, our aesthetic, or our joke. Just think about how many memes are created and based around the various stages of social media technology. That’s what I mean when I talk about what “the kids” are doing. When I use digital drawing elements in my own artwork, I often intentionally integrate the “shitty” lines as a part of my aesthetic dialog. I think it’s funny to create something that is attempting to bring in the feeling of something hand-made into the world where we can create a sense of visual perfection. The early days of MS Paint and Kid Pix almost seems to be hard-wired (pun intended) into my very being, not because I was a child back then, but because it was then when “everyday folks” first started to have access to computer programs that allowed a new kind of creative freedom as a form of play and distraction. I can’t create digital art without that past informing my work. I like the “person-ness” to show through, which I now know is something Hockney also cares about. When I was in my early twenties and goofing around with those new programs (and others), David Hockney was a well-established artist who had been asked to use new platforms and software in order to inform companies about potential artistic mediums that would affect consumers like me. In Hockney’s Yosemite drawings we see the quickness of the sketches in the perfectly replicated “paint” spots made by the lingering touch of a finger or stylus, within his line-work. We see the little details we could hide, with little effort, when working with digital products. His lines aren’t made that way because he was just handed an iPad and left to play. He’s in fact, very familiar with this kind of technology. For example, in 1986 Hockney was given the chance to use something called the Quantel Paintbox Graphics System. In watching the episode of a BBC 2 documentary Series called, Painting with Light, featuring David Hockney, I learned that his line-quality is 100% intentional. He was curious and innovative, but most importantly, investigating his interests. A year before the Yosemite drawings he had already been sketching in that manner, on his iPhone, and sending the images (of flowers) to friends via email. In 2010 the iPad was new. It was announced as Star Trek technology entering our lives. We were in the future! I now perceive the Yosemite series as a reminder that drawing is still looking at something and making marks, no matter how evolved we think we are.  Here I am standing next to one of the show’s largest prints, David Hockney, Yosemite I, 2011 (Ken Lesiak) When I visited the show at MMA for a second time, I stopped thinking as much about the technology and found the work to be beautiful. I have to confess though, that I’m a fan. I love his colors and shapes and even how he always seems to be smiling a bit when he speaks. I like the joy I feel. Over the past few years I’ve also grown an interest in Hockney, as a fellow L.A. transplant, which I was for a few years, so I’ve invested time in learning some things, but have only scratched the surface. In 2015 I made a point to trek through hour-and-a-half traffic from the San Fernando Valley to Venice Beach in order to see a body of work by Hockney at L.A. Louvre. This show combined installation and digital imagery as well as collage and portraiture using a brush and paint. I’d go so far as to say that spectacle was a part of it, as well. I hadn’t been to one of his solo shows before, but I discovered more about him through his work in his book titled, Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. I’d been talking to students about Hockney’s theory that painters have been taking advantage of technology like the Camera Obscura, in order to more accurately depict their subject matter. I also loved how Sister Wendy spoke about his 1980 painting, Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio, in an episode she did, focusing on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was on my mind. When I finally made it to the show in Venice that summer evening, I was beyond frustrated but excited when I saw how many people were there. After grabbing a glass of white wine after a long day of teaching, driving and then winding around car traffic and people crowds until I found parking- I made my way through the galleries where his show hung. I very quickly noticed that some subjects within his paintings were present and being photographed in front of their portraits by people with iPhones. I was in the middle of something special. Super meta. What struck me was the inclusion of elements in the galleries that were also depicted in the artwork. People were standing and sitting in the images, sometimes painted, sometimes photographed, with and in the same position as they were in other artworks that were also part of the show. People, at least one chair, and I think a plant were in my reality as well as in the paintings and photographs that contained paintings and photographs of the same subject matter. Perspectives were intentionally skewed. A kid who may or may not have been one of his subjects sat in the corner of the gallery looking at an album filled with Pokemon cards. Hockney was investigating something and we were all included. To be there meant we ought to do some work. How cool!  Photo of unknown child at Hockney exhibit. Venice Beach, California 2015 (Linda Lay) Technology, celebrity, our own vanity, the space of a room, the gallery itself and color. Perspective. Chairs, plants, everyday people. Photographs of subjects looking at art books and looking at us. The colors of Hockney and California. It was a lot.
But let’s get back to Yosemite. That’s what the work in the Monterey show is presenting and I’d like to mention as well- how the exhibit also features photo collages that Hockney calls, Joiners, where he arranged photographs developed on paper (like one would get at a Fotomat) to create a more “painterly” sense of space and subject. But why Yosemite? Has he had important personal experiences there? Has he been using the space because we might simply be familiar with the imagery? Is it too pretty? Is it that he’s known for making “California” art? Is it something to try and do something “new” with something we might have been oversaturated with, in regard to photography? Did I just use the word “something” too many times in that last sentence? Yesterday I went on a walk through the eucalyptus grove near Del Monte Beach in Monterey. In all my years I’d never done that. My partner, Kenny, and I walked through it. It smelled great. There was a wooden path built between the grove and the beach and we took it. There were tangled Monterey Cypress trees displaying otherworldly angular bends. The deep-pine green of their needles contrasted the textured bark-browns and the redness of the ground. Beach sage in its “sagey” color tufted here and there with a softness that welcomed some other plants with bright orange and yellow flowers, hearty enough to survive the sand, fog and salty ocean winds. As the sun began to set I was struck-still by the beauty and it confirmed, without words, the reason an artist would choose to depict Yosemite’s cliffs, waterfalls, tourists and lodges or Monterey’s trees, water, ice plants, boats, tourists and rocks. It’s all there. “In the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.” -David Hockney David Hockney’s Yosemite -on view at the Monterey Museum of Art April 25 – August 4, 2019
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 My depiction of my uterus, in watercolor and pencil. June 2019 ,June 16, 2019 My doctor told me to name my uterus. Tomorrow morning she’s going to remove it from me. I came up with a name but I don’t want to state it here it because maybe people I like, or will like, already have this name and I don’t want most people to think they are something I want surgically removed, and those that I might want “scalpeled” and yanked away don’t deserve to believe that I think about them at all- But this name is one that makes me think of parts of my past self that I definitely want “scalpeled” and yanked away. Even if it’s behaviors I’ve long-since changed, some things sit and hide, waiting for the unexpected moment. I’m covering my bases and using this physical removal to try and take care of that, even if it’s a moot effort. This has to be something like a transformation. Another new me! I’m noticing some people my age are coming to a perceptual shifting point as their kids are grown up or near that time in their lives. For me, it’s time for the actual vessel that could have grown a human life in it, if I wanted to do that (spoiler- I didn’t), to move on without me. I’m working toward fifty and not unlike what I’m noticing about my fellow mid-lifers, I intend for that decade to be great, if I’m so lucky to make my way through all of it and in a healthy way. Considering that- I recently shed a few pounds in order to help the surgery and healing go smoothly and now my fibroid-ridden belly appears to truly be pregnant. I’ve been living with these growths within this organ for over ten years. I’m fortunate that I’m feeling relatively well. I’m also glad that my surgery takes place during a full moon and so close to the Summer Solstice. All that I believe in is on my side and I didn’t expect this to happen. I totally live for serendipity and the Wiccan stuff never lets me down. This weekend will hopefully include me writing down and burning regrets and intentions like a motherfucker. I’m super witching it up. Once I’m well enough to move around I’m going to go to the beach, the woods and I’m buying food from ALL kinds of farmers markets. Even if I can’t afford a lot (I have to take time off work to heal), I can get at least one or two things, here and there. The point is to be like Sandra Bullock in the film Practical Magic, but with no kids and an interesting fashion sense. Just kidding. I’d rather be like her aunts in the film. Childless-by-choice Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as spellcasting witch-sisters who wake up in the middle of the night to make margaritas, are much more my speed.  Ceremony. Last year I attended a yoga-Summer Solstice ceremony in a city called Pacific Grove that might as well be the actual inspiration for the set of TV’s The Gilmore Girls. The woman who led the event asked if anyone had any medical issues and I mentioned my fibroids. It turns out another celebrant had recently had a hysterectomy due to them. When the host began to discuss the symbolism of our uterus' (it was a group of cis females); how these organs in our bodies were meant for all kinds of creative growth, I thought about my fibroids and what they represented. I thought about why my body was “choosing” to fill its creative growth organ with these things that may have been blocking countless amazing projects. I also thought about the woman in the group who no longer had a uterus, and just when I thought that, the host corrected herself and changed her statement to say something about the space where the organ sits or once sat, as the source of creative growth. I was glad for her comment as it helped route my inner dialog to one that was vibing a bit more toward the energy of the circle. (Not that I needed the directive of a Yoga teacher to define my personal body-belief system. I have aliens, mermaids and the unspoken language of the trees to help me with that.) I then followed her directions and swirled my hips around like I did when I took up belly dancing and silently asked my fibroids to please shrink and dissolve without medical intervention. June 25, 2019 The future. Despite my request during the Solstice ceremony a year ago, medical intervention ended up being necessary. The surgery is now complete and I feel great. So good. I had a c-section, so I have a cut in my lower belly that is healing but I’m not feeling too much of that. I have stitches on the inside that need to heal, and my organs have been through a trauma and are beginning to swell. (Health blogs on the internet call this "swelly belly.") I’m not taking pain meds anymore, aside from some over the counter medicine and only at night. I’m resting a lot. It’s been just over a week. Before my procedure I asked my doctor if I could have a photo of the uterus once it was removed and she took one and gave it to me. It’s nuts! She said it weighed about ten pounds! Ten pounds of uterus and fibroids. My entire uterine lining was gone, and replaced by fibroids. Many, many fibroids. I felt the release of it instantly, once I woke up from the anesthesia, and once the nurse removed my catheter. I felt my bladder have room, like it was experiencing a nice stretch after a long nap with too many bedfellows. My poor bladder must have been squished or blocked or something. All of these years before the surgery, I could tell I wasn’t fully relieving myself. I used to covet my fellow teachers' healthy pee-stream sounds in the bathroom stalls at work as I struggled between classes to push out my morning coffee. I now truly appreciate the feeling of emptying my bladder. Funny the things we take for granted. May we all have organs that work as they should. The Lesson? One of my very nice nurses aids at the hospital said she had the same procedure a few years back and she believes fibroids hold stress. (There is no official medical explanation for fibroids growing in the uterus.) I guess that could be some of it but I’m more of a “there is something I had to go through in order to learn something” kind of person and so of course I see something of that in my experience. Ever since these things made themselves something I could not ignore, I've been trying to listen. The fibroids, themselves, weren’t the only culprit, in regard to the body changes I experienced, once they started to grow. I began to eat more than I should, at night, after a long day of working and commuting, as a source of comfort. I looked for comfort from a busy schedule, from the process of my dad dying, from the energy-suck that life in Los Angeles had become. The streets. The traffic. The level of addiction and mental illness surrounding me in Hollywood and through public transit. Living paycheck to paycheck without energy or time to engage enough in my art practice, and visit with my beautiful and creative friends in L.A.- all while living with the discomfort of my womb full of non-cancerous tumors. Maybe there is something to the “stress” theory. The good of it. My parents, as well as society (obviously), planted the seeds of how I “should” look and be, so I’m very pleased that I was physically larger than I had ever been and my hair was graying and shaved short when my father was dying. He and my mother were able to understand my value through all of their shattered (ridiculous) expectations. “Proving it” to them was really only about proving it to myself and I did. My body change put me into a position of getting that over with and I'm thankful for it. Now I’m working toward better health so that I age with energy and vitality. There’s more that I’d like to do and make. I have a life partner and friends I want to spend a whole lot more time with. There are people I miss. There are some places I want to travel to. Art I've only seen in books and on the internet. There are causes to contribute to and changes to help make in the world, in whatever way I can. I look at myself in the mirror and in digital images posted online and I'm taking in the things that happen with age. Aging is inevitable. It’s the best thing if one wants to live, right? That’s totally the goal. Right now I’m sore and puffy while I heal but I’m feeling lighter and that reminds me of the physical feeling of youth. I’m just starting to recognize how I’ll be able to move better, like I used to, before the fibroids. I've been thinking a lot these past few months and I truly think, based on who I have been my whole life, if I didn't have the gradual shift that effected my level of physical comfort as well as my appearance, my aging might have been something that disturbed me more on a superficial level. We see this in people every day. As I age, it takes more intention and effort to stay healthy and that’s okay. (Can't eat everything I want at all times and must schedule exercise.) That is now going to be a part of my “thing.” Part of my crone thing. I love that word, in the form of the aforementioned Practical Magic sisters-aunt-type crone. I don’t want to appear young again but there is a definite fight within me for this. It must be a natural struggle, or else we wouldn't have developed the agreed-upon term, midlife crisis. Truly though, deep down where the good stuff is, I don’t want to recreate it. I don’t want to fill my face up with fat injections but I do plan on wearing clothes that young people wear, if I want to. I’m no model or daughter of wealthy, creative legends but I want to age like I’m mother-fucking Isabella Rossellini in her Instagram account. But who knows what's "correct," right? Maybe people who fuck with the way their faces and bodies look are simply doing what feels right to them.  Crone. Embracing this word (the way I see it in my head) feels, to me, like a meditation on wisdom. I'm not super-crazy about blindly accepting common definitions of it, and the whole "triple goddess" (maiden, mother, crone) thing. I feel like that can perpetuate the idea that women have roles to play/fill throughout their lives, as opposed to defining their own. I suppose I very much like the idea of an elder matriarch. I just finished watching the revival of the classic mini-series, Stories of the City and something the trans matriarch character, Anna Madrigal said in a flashback of her youth (one of my favorite episodes of the series), when asking someone what their "true" age is, she stated that she always felt like someone in her seventies. I can't say that's exactly how I feel but I do feel like I've been waiting a long time for these gray hairs and wrinkles. I've been waiting for menopause. I'm feeling more and more like I’ve earned the right to trust my opinions and ideas because I’ve lived through shit. That being said, I’ve felt that before and also I'm not even fifty yet. I have time. I just like to make plans. In the meantime, it feels good to be in my healing space, both literally and figuratively. Getting some rest. My friends and family realize all that I was living through before, because I seem different now, and their awareness is some kind of reflection I needed in order to confirm of a lot of things I thought I had been feeling, but was too distracted to know for sure. So I’m sitting calmly and enjoying the breeze moving through my apartment and being with Kenny while he works and takes care of things for me. I'm watching French movies and a game show called, The Match Game (from the 70's, which is currently on Amazon Prime), and birds from my balcony and I'm making lists. I'm worrying less and thinking about fashion and art. I'm painting and writing and reading and sitting and staring and trying to distinguish between the sound of waves and the sound of cars, both a similar distance away from here. I'm writing about this big thing that happened to me because I like to live. I adore life. fi·broid ˈfīˌbroid/ noun MEDICINE plural noun: fibroids
I have had fibroids for a long time. I am so tired of them.  Here are some facts about fibroids:  Three years ago, my doctor told me that my uterus is the size of that of a woman who is seven months pregnant. I was given the option to have a hysterectomy, which I had every intention of having, but then my dad got really sick, my husband busted his Achilles tendon and I eventually chose to switch work locations and move back to my hometown. A lot was going on so I put the procedure on hold. Currently, I'm experiencing perimenopause and I never wanted to have children so I'm good with the idea of medical intervention. The only concern I've ever had is that the organ is so large it needs to be removed through my abdomen and therefore I will have to take time off to heal. I also don't want anything to go wrong- obviously. It's weird to think about an entire organ leaving my body. My friend, who is like my sister, noted how ironic it is that I've been living, physically, as a *sort of* pregnant woman for longer than pregnant women have to live as one. She's known me her whole life and knows it has never been my chosen journey to experience pregnancy in order to give birth. It is ironic. Bonus fact: Years ago, I became an online-ordained minister after the aforementioned sister/friend did because she read an interview where Alanis Morissette stated that she became one in the same way. Anyhoodle, for better or worse, I'm totally the kind of person who has to believe there is a reason for everything. I can't let go of that. I choose not to. When the whole ordeal began I didn't realize my weight gain had anything to do with the fibroids. Once I hit the age of like thirty-seven, I stopped wanting to dance a lot and I ate more. These things add up. I was okay with it. I feel it was a great journey for me, as a teacher of teens, to live through one of the lessons I share with my students. To be at home with oneself. To love oneself. As-is. I say this all the time but I really do feel a lot like an alien living as a human, in order to experience what it's like to go through my specific existence. A student once informed me that this is called dissociation, but it gets me through the day- This way I've chosen to perceive my time on this planet leads me to think about the reasons for going through everything I go through. The part of this fibroid thing that has forced me to accept my body changes has been valuable. Up until recently, I never had to consider my weight, exercise or diet. In addition to that, I've been able to be unabashedly "fat" in front of people who, long ago, helped me create neural connections that helped develop an inner dialog stating that my self worth is intrinsically linked to my weight and appearance. Obviously, looks are nothing when you're sick and dying. The beauty on the skin of youth, big or small, leaves us all. There are more important things to think about, anyway. How do we love ourselves. After waiting many months for the new doctor in the new city to see me, for the new tests and the new schedules- it seems the procedure will be done this fall. Finally. A lot of things have to line up. Fantasy, symbolism and transition. The mystical part of me wanders off into thoughts of things that might be "born" during my hysterectomy. What life changes will occur? Will I get my body back? I don't know. I know I won't feel this terrible pressure in my abdomen anymore. I'll hopefully have more energy. I will move better. Good god, I'll be able to empty my bladder when I pee! And now back to dissociation. Are there other dimensions where something might be born? Am I processing something here in this reality that affects another, unknown? Am I a vessel for the fetal development of an interdimensional demon baby?  Maybe I'm storing alien eggs that will be shipped off on an interplanetary craft.  Maybe this is how dragons are born and sent into realms within fantasy novels and video games.  Perhaps the doctor will be surprised to find that my uterus has become a geode.  What if I've got one of those evil "Bob orbs" that bad Agent Cooper had in his belly in that one episode of Twin Peaks The Return?  No matter what this all means. What these things inside of me that have affected my life in the ways they have, could represent- I'm thankful for all I've been through with this organ. I'm thankful it gave me the opportunity to be a birth-parent, even though I chose not to be one. It gave me hormones that caused utter confusion and also a sense of harmony and connectivity. I'm so very thankful to have the opportunity and ability to safely leave it behind and I look forward to celebrating the rest of my time without my uterus and all that muscular and fibrous tissue that seemed to make such a cozy home within it. So mote it be.  California. Cockatiel. There’s a feeling I get when I hear the kind of birds I hear in Hollywood and smell the air there, during spring. Not on the west side. Not in Echo Park or downtown. I had a cockatiel around the time I left the Monterey Bay and drove alone to Los Angeles. That was fifteen years ago. She flew away the day before I left my life on the Monterey Peninsula and drove alone, to make a new life in Los Angeles, in what turned out to be Hollywood. I called her Little Dave, after my dad. Maybe that’s what the birds and the smell in the air remind me of. Missouri. Parakeet. I had another bird, a parakeet called Ham that I brought with me to Los Angeles when I graduated college and left a small apartment in Kansas City, ten years ago. She also flew away. Both birds were unexpected adoptions, on my part. I took over where friends left off. I haven’t had a pet since. Right now, in Hollywood, my (featherless) partner is asleep. The windows are open, it’s sunny and I smell the dirty inland air I’ve recently been away from. There’s a little chill, but it’s nothing like up north on the Monterey Bay, where I’ve been, and where I'm from. For the most part, I’ve returned “home.” It’ll be permanent in the fall. The birds and the breathing and the memories are nice for now, though. They tie me up in the feeling that life is very short and my time with it is a special thing. Our skin gets old, our muscles bunch up, our bones get weak and we feel tired, so I’m resting. It’s been a long time since I felt I had nothing to do, and it’s important to have time and space to feel my art life, which I guess is what happens when I have “nothing to do.” To feel my art and sharpen my language outside of the task of teaching art, which is what it says I do when I file my taxes. Art life. I’m suspicious of how I’ve embodied those two words as things together, in the past. What the words, art and life, spoken together, seem to signify. In the economic reality I live in, that sentiment is so often right in front of me and boiled, reduced and reformed into stuff written with a curly font and printed on cheap stretched canvases sold at Ross Dress For Less. And then I see my artwork sitting in a space with other objects and if it’s not presented or photographed in the context of some kind of reach toward change or if it’s lit by incorrect lighting or spoken of without the correct amount of confidence, it is all pretty ignorable. Everything can be something in a thrift shop. Something reproduced in a factory. In the best scenario, it comes from the viewer, the participant, the listener; the one who stumbles across something they have in them. The decision of what was or is worthwhile. Bits and pieces. The illusion of controlled value. It’s so stupid and so important. I guess it’s so important. Let’s get back to birds. Crows. Outside my apartment complex in L.A. there are huge, very tall, old trees and they line the street. Unusual for the area. Crows have nests in them and for years I’ve fed them almonds or bits of energy bar in the morning while walking to the underground train, on my way to work. I call them all Catherine. Pigeons. I’ve been seeing them everywhere lately, on the Monterey Bay and so of course I went on the internet and looked up what it means to have one as a spirit animal. (I’m supposed to find peace now and I’m supposed to open my wings and let the wind take me to new heights.) I once saw them as a symbol of things I needed to ignore; annoying things that try and disguise themselves as important. In that nutty capacity, they once served as a personal reminder to stay focused and to not be afraid. What should I believe now? An invented symbolic belief system that I once pulled out of my ass or the results of a New Age internet search? Turkey Buzzards. In Hollywood again. Summer break. Hotter time of year, so the birds chirp alongside the hum of a couple of air conditioners in the apartment complex. It’s eight in the morning and cool enough to open windows but most of the tenants are still asleep. It’s Saturday. This is the summer of moving our lives from here to there. My partner has work to wrap up and I have a job up north and a mom who is newly alone after my dad, her constant companion of forty-six years, died. I have friends who are like family in both places and I’m trying to sort out my life so that I can have time and space for people, my job and my art-life. Up north I’m inspired. I love the beach air. The salt, the views, the fog, the trees. The new community I’m finding and growing within. Redwoods on my commute. Pine trees and space to view a sunset. In my hometown there are like fifty turkey buzzards that live in some old eucalyptus trees, over by the McDonald’s. Made In L.A. That’s the name of an annual art show at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. I saw this show recently and it was good. It felt like a lot of what I wanted to become since I made the choice to identify with this part of Southern California. More than that show, I appreciated Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’s exhibition, HOME—So Different, So Appealing that featured U.S. Latino and Latin American artists last year at LACMA. I felt more of myself with that work. Growing up poor. Working hard as an adult and barely being able to make ends meet. Struggling and taking comfort in simple things. Wanting more. Deserving more. Consideration of what home is or can be or should be. Is it where the heart is or is that just another mean trick? Made in L.A. makes me think of the few friends I have who actually are from Los Angeles. I think of what it means to “set up shop” as an artist and a writer in a space with so many others from other places, doing similar things, which is how L.A. is. What was it to me? How did I grow here? Do I have a reason or a right to claim ownership? Why do I need to? Like my time in Kansas City, I’m thankful for the friends I’ve made in Los Angeles, that I will hopefully have for the rest of my life. But as we all plugged along, as I graduated from college, worked a full time job, took public transportation, sat in a car in traffic, paid my bills... I found myself so tired and without time to maintain the flame underneath the sense of wonder I arrived with. Without the salve of awe and the comfort of money, I found myself drained. Drained by local travel, by the collective dream, constant celebrations, collective exhaustion and collective shattered-dream-shards that I couldn’t help but feel hovering above the streets as energetic flotsam stating defiantly, aggressively and repeatedly, “I love it here. This is home.” Dear L.A., it’s not you, it’s me (it’s kind of you). Dear friends who stick up for and defend this town that I once used as a tool to wedge myself out of a limited life, I so admire your stamina, devotion to your vision and authentic love for this city of angels. Seagulls. I’ve been spending more time than a forty-something-year-old woman should spend with her mother, lately. My mom doesn’t like seagulls at all. Says they’re dirty and ugly. I like them a lot. I like the sound of them and I like the way they look. If I go to the beach with a bunch of old bread they hover above me and catch the bits I throw at them while airborne. That’s goddamn cool. In the morning they sit together on the roof of the Jack in the Box, enjoying the sun. Also cool. Seagulls don’t give a shit about the concept of home, quality of life or how they fit into the world of art. Or do they? Maybe that’s why they live at the beach. Mother-effing egrets. I used to see a few at Elkhorn Slough, Moss Landing. A “census-designated place” with boats and a power plant and a graveyard that I’ve passed in one capacity or another my entire life on a stretch of State Route 1 that goes from Monterey to Santa Cruz. These days I drive through it twice daily. Once in the morning, and once at night. In the morning there are so many of these elegant birds where there used to be one or two. The sky is pink as the sun rises, and although I leave for work earlier than I’d like, it’s true magic to witness them waking up in a landscape like that. It shimmers. Their long necks reach out like brush strokes, moving. Often times there is traffic because people who work very hard picking and sorting vegetables arrive on the farm fields along the way, and I’m not unhappy because it gives me time to drive slowly through the slough and it’s familiar. It’s wondrous and when I’m there I’m reminded in another way that I am home. Humming birds. This, like everything else, is from the internet: "It is not commonly known that the fluttering wings of the hummingbird move in the pattern of an infinity symbol – further solidifying their symbolism of eternity, continuity, and infinity. The prime message of the hummingbird animal totem is: 'The sweetest nectar is within!'" Home. The first time I stayed in Los Angeles I was eighteen. It was at my friend who is like family's childhood home and there were crystal humming birds that her mom, who was alive then, hung from the window, creating rainbow reflections on the wall in front of the sofa I slept on. There was a wind-up clock that chimed on the hour. There was a hummingbird feeder in the yard. I'm sure it's still there. That home, that family and the city itself gave me a good feeling. Excitement. Ambition. My desire to someday make a life in L.A. was confirmed during that visit. Little did I know I would live in that very home for about four years and that I'd turn forty while living there. My friend's daughter, who is also my friend and family, lives there. It's her home now. She loves L.A. and has roots there. She thrives there and that makes me happy. I'm sure her grandma, the one with the crystals and the clock, who also loved the city, is pleased by how things worked out and to this day, when I see hummingbirds, I think of her and that house. This weekend I'm attending my 28th high school reunion and yesterday I found out that a childhood friend recently passed away. She was someone I wasn't in touch with, at all, and now I can't stop thinking about our days on the Monterey Bay, as teenagers. What was is gone. What was is new. I drive past our old middle school when I make my way to my new art studio. I've been painting every day in the same city where I attended high school. I'm engaging with my community as an artist, a teacher, a worker, and a local citizen at CSUMB Salinas Center for Arts & Culture in the city where I saw my first non-animated feature film (Grease). I attended the Peninsula Pride celebration. I recently made a cat zine that people looked at while enjoying wine and kombucha in the sculpture garden of the Monterey Museum of Art where it is now The Year of the Woman and I'm specifically choosing NOT to attend an opening this weekend at the Thomas Kinkade studio on Cannery Row. My artwork is going to be showcased alongside my studio mates at a local art event called the West End Festival. I have no idea what to expect. I'm also teaching art to teens in the Silicon Valley, where I was born. The sweetest nectar is within! Home is within. Home is where the heart is / Art is / Infinite. Or am I "... like a bird, [and] I'll only fly away." Anyway, I'm glad to be back. Home. I wrote most of the essay below, about a year ago, right before Season Three of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt had begun, and before #metoo and #timesup- before people were coming out about Weinstein, Spacey, Louis C.K., Jeffrey Tambor, etc… I chose not to share my thoughts last year, only to be inspired and emboldened by the conversations and protests had in public forums over these issues that have so deeply impacted my own life.  When Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt arrived on the Netflix menu I had little desire to click on the image of what appeared to be a cheery-looking, pretty, young woman setting out to “make it” in the world. It wasn’t until my coworker, a quick-witted humanities teacher suggested I watch it, that I decided to check it out. For those who don’t know, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's protagonist is a woman, played by Ellie Kemper, who recently escaped from a doomsday cult in Indiana, where she and three other women were held underground for fifteen years by the character, Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, played by Jon Hamm. “Mole Women” is what society calls the women, upon their release. The intro and theme song tells us everything we need to know in order to relate the event to events in our own, “real” world. On the surface, Kimmy is presented to us a Disney Princess out-of-water. She loves life, candy, stickers, puns involving the word, "grape," and living free after all those years of being trapped underground. She’s excited about getting a job and living in the city of New York, where she found herself after an appearance with her co-captives on The Today Show. Wearing brightly colored clothes for tweens, she smiles all the time, despite having been locked underground for fifteen years and admitting in season one that “Yes, there was weird sex stuff in the bunker.” Fifteen years ago, when I came out of my own ten-year abusive relationship with someone I now understand to be a sociopath, a rapist and a sexual deviant/predator, I too had an incredible zest for life. One of my breaking points; a moment I began to understand how fucked up things were, came one day when I looked around the room in the house I shared with the aforementioned rapist, and was able to zoom-in on the fact that I had spent ten years painting disturbing portraits of brightly colored, happy, childlike creatures. A room full of (alien) Kimmy Schmidts; all wide-eyed and grinning suddenly reflected back at me as a chorus. Most of them I referred to as, self portraits. I made and surrounded myself with these creatures until that day when suddenly I understood exactly why people are creeped out by clowns; it’s not natural to smile all the time. It was a cover up. It was my cover up. This moment wasn’t what led me to have the strength, or whatever it was, to leave, but it was a pivotal moment in the process of my “eyes opening,” that led to my eventual escape and change of life. In the second season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, they address the way a sense of denial, while often necessary for survival, does a poor job of hiding the fact that something is wrong. Despite her smile and cheery disposition, Kimmy burps, for instance, and the smell of them is wretched. It’s explained as something that happens to people who repress their emotions. We learn more as Kimmy begins to see an alcoholic shrink, played by show co-creator and writer, Tina Fey. I love that they made her an alcoholic, thereby presenting the one with knowledge of what is going on with Kimmy as also, imperfect. I, personally, began to truly understand how I had been a victim of abuse once I left my abuser. I can speak from my own experience that taking one step outside of your own “bunker” and acknowledging that a person you chose to trust is actually someone who believes 100% in the validity of their cruelties, is a very hard pill to swallow. I finally accepted that it isn’t in his heart or mind to care about anything beyond his desires. It never was. I learned that he simply refused to accept any possible explanation of why it’s not okay to control someone by insulting them (me) constantly, by shaming them (me) whenever possible, by preying on their (my) weaknesses and manipulating them (me) and behaving with anger and cruelty mixed with some fucked up version of praise/promise of reward until they (I) succumb and do things they (I) don’t want to do. And yes, just like in Kimmy’s situation, there was weird sex stuff involved. From the start. And just like Kimmy, once I made my way out, I was overjoyed and filled with enthusiasm for life and for hope of the most magical love. I became a love monster. I was a gratitude monster. I gave everyone advice to “trust” and “believe.” Psychotic cartoon hearts and stars seemed to pour out of every orifice I had and if they didn’t, well then I Photoshopped it happening and posted it on my website. I shared and shared and shared acceptance, kindness, love, gratitude, forgiveness, both in person and online. I needed to become my creepy, smiling artwork that disturbed me so. (Disassociation.) The depiction of Kimmy as an insane optimist is what immediately drew me into her character. I got it. This way of existing contrasted the art I made during this time; my first years of “freedom.” My work back then was messy, graphic and disturbing- but, like the smiling portraits that creeped me out, it was also colorful. Some of it was beautiful. It mostly acted as therapy. Making art out of my experience was what saved my life and allowed me to develop a belief system and my own spiritual language. A few people cried back then, when I presented them with my visual “story.” They didn’t cry because it was sublime, they cried because it was that sad. I didn’t understand it then. I thought it was my first real art, and maybe it was. The circumstances that led me to leave my abusive partner was a trauma that led to what I now understand as a psychotic break (PTSD with psychosis), but it was a powerful spiritual experience. The time after, on my own, was the most important time of my life. The veil was lifted. Words fail to describe what happened to me and I swear it was not unlike what Jodie Foster’s character in the movie Contact went through and I’m fully aware of how incredibly silly it is to make that connection but I was awakened -no other word for it, and it's an awakening that I can't prove as being real, but I need it to be and I believe it is. Without the trauma, I might still be “asleep,” so I’m grateful I was able to translate someone's horrible actions toward me in the ways that I did. I’ll be making art and writing about this experience, in one way or another, for the rest of my life, as an attempt to capture the wonder of it. I found Diana Raab’s article, Is it Psychosis or a Spiritual Emergency an interesting look into my perception and while I am fully able to admit that I had a psychological occurrence due to behavioral patterns and trauma, I choose to hold and honor my experience as a “spiritual emergency,” or a “kundalini experience.” When I talk to people who were there for me then, they recall my demeanor as being insane. Literally insane. Some say they weren’t sure if they would get “the old Linda” back. The thing is, I don’t want “the old Linda” back. Not ever. But I get what they meant. I was scary after my big catalyst (my traumatic event), and for better or worse, I am pretty sure I have made my way back to the part of my personality that makes people feel (relatively) safe. No, I don’t want the old Linda back. Speaking of being a crazy person, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt also shows us the lives and characteristics of the other women who were held captive along with Kimmy and I like that because it speaks to “the whys” of those of us who find ourselves in abusive relationships. It’s presented in a silly way, but that fact helps me investigate something so difficult that baffled me. It’s not always cut and dry. It’s never cut and dry. I think this is especially relevant now, considering #metoo and the arrest of Harvey Weinstein. Just yesterday I listened to my seventy-seven-year-old mother, who is well aware of what I went through, say to the TV, “Idiot women who do those things in the first place. Why would women put up with that unless they want something?” while watching Weinstein get arrested. Obviously, one of the hardest parts of being a “survivor of abuse” (I hate this term) is noticing the moments when you should have simply stopped or those times when you could have simply run away. It’s also very difficult to listen to the many people looking in from the outside, who openly express disgust and disbelief that I took the abuse, engaged in bad behavior with my abuser, acted as his life-partner, his teammate, his best friend... There are those who are personally offended by the fact that I didn’t leave earlier and that I believed in our life together. There were times in my life, since leaving, that I too didn’t get it. I have been ashamed and felt guilty, but I’m done with that. This is why I love the flashback scenes in the show when we see moments where the women could have escaped, but they didn’t because they believed the lie their captor fed them; that there was an apocalypse. For whatever reason, they don’t have it in them to question their reality and see for themselves. They believed the ridiculous stories and they took the horrendous abuse, instead. Something about this being presented within the realm of a comedy makes perfect sense. It’s a terribly sad situation, and it’s frustrating and confusing when you see it happening from the outside. During the second season we begin to learn about Kimmy’s life; what led her to being that person, when we learn about her life/relationship with her mother. We start to learn about the roots that live deep underneath behavioral patterns. So much of my artwork and my writing from that time was my way of trying to figure out why I followed someone else’s insane rules for living, so completely, so against my own sense of value and why I could not seem to make my way out for so long. I have had to sort through my attachment issues, learning differences and behavioral patterns, as well as my default adherence to patriarchal rules. -What I believed it took for me to have a good life; what the trade off was and who owned that currency. I am not making the suggestion that one must have attachment issues, learning differences or a toxic upbringing to have these perceptions and I’m certainly not saying this is the reason everyone gets into an abusive situation, but I’m pretty sure it’s part of the case with me. The show does a great job of exemplifying behavior I can relate to in the episode called Kimmy Kidnaps Gretchen! when her ex-bunker-mate is about to join another cult, after living for a short time without one. In this episode Kimmy forces Gretchen to make her own decisions and they are WAY out of control (and hilarious!) and this is pretty much what I was like that first year out, on my own, in Hollywood. As I touched on before, I count this as the most magical year of my life and I’m so glad my experience led me to to the Midwest to an esteemed art school where there were healthy, stimulating and valuable rules for me to follow. There were also sexist professors who behaved dreadfully and thankfully I fought against them or advocated for myself to those who were in charge. I was in a space (both mentally and physically) where I felt supported enough to do that. (Kimmy also makes her way to college, in season three.) What I love most, so far, about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, is that it’s looking at all of these aspects surrounding victim-hood and womanhood (I am aware that the two are not exclusive to each other) and behaviors formed socially and those that are embedded in our behavioral patterns, with humor. I needed that. As an artist and a writer, I can't help but sift through and mine my experiences for material and I have made terrible, just awful artwork out of some terrible things that happened to me and that’s funny and I want to laugh at it. I have every right to laugh at it and ask others to do the same. THE RIGHT THING TO DO I chose not to fight my abusive partner. I left. I figured out how to get what I needed without a legal battle because I knew I would not have been supported. I first learned this the day I asked a police officer to be present when I gathered my things to leave, and he took me aside and shared with me how unneeded his presence was, and how badly my ex’s heart was breaking. He tried to reason with me and get me to see how harmless my ex was and how he felt bad for him, that I should "go easy" on his delicate, broken heart. This actually happened. On TV, Kimmy battles her captor in court and wins. Living a life after abuse is hard, and everyone’s life is hard for one reason or another or twenty reasons or another. This has been my own personal path and it's one that many others have been on. For the sake of the show, Kimmy Schmidt was trapped in a bunker, underground. I wasn’t locked up anywhere, but I felt like I was. I lived like I was. I made choices like I was– so I relate. As “lightly” as it’s presented, I’m thankful for this portrayal. I grew up with issues of rape and abuse of women in pop culture in the 80’s and 90’s being presented within movies like The Burning Bed, The Accused and Thelma and Louise... and the countless television drama series’ involving the abuse of women that have been broadcasted over the years- In regard to this, I find that Jill Soloway’s words capture and reflect my feelings in a more eloquent manner: “So The Female Gaze can be a cultural critic. We can use it to call out all of those fucking storylines on those procedurals -- that are meant to work as public service – meant to educate us about rape but they actually are just more rape. THANKS SO MUCH GUYS. WE GET IT. As Bell Hooks said the other night at the New School, ‘I would like to go my entire life without ever having to see another rape scene in a movie as long as I live.’” And this sentiment seems to encapsulate the reasons why I value this show. I appreciate the adventures of Kimmy, Titus, Lillian, and Jacqueline, even though I have cringed a bit when it comes to the way they depict Kimmy’s rapist and kidnapper, and I can understand some of the show's critics for other issues. To me, the best part of it is how the show tries to tackle complicated issues in a silly but human way and seems to say, this shit happens in this shitty way and being "broken" is kind of what we all are. In a couple days, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Season Four is going to be released. It’s apparently the last season, ever. It’s supposed to address #metoo and white privilege. I love TV. Thank you for reading. References: Kelsey Miller http://www.refinery29.com/2016/04/109264/sexual-abuse-trauma-unbreakable-kimmy-schmidt-season-2 Mika Doyle https://bitchmedia.org/article/sexual-assault-survivor-its-powerful-see-kimmy-schmidt-grapple-ptsd-feminist Diana Raab Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-empowerment-diary/201507/is-it-psychosis-or-spiritual-emergency JIll Soloway http://www.toppleproductions.com/the-female-gaze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnBvppooD9I Trigger Warning: If reading about death is a trigger, you may not want to read this. I had to dress my dad's dead body. Is that something people do? Is it strange for me to even mention it? Considering the way my head works; the way my internal dialog is usually met with societal expectations- it's either something everyone does or my doing it is weird. It can't be that weird because I didn't do it by choice. The Hospice nurse called me into my dad's room to help her do so. First she asked me to grab a diaper- something he refused to wear. Other than that disposable garment, my mom chose the outfit that would be his last; A soft, from years of wearing and washing, button-up shirt and a pair of jeans that had a zipper sewn into the side-bottom of the left leg (I think it was the left leg). Also, his belt. He hadn't worn his prosthetic leg in at least a week, after things went really bad. Not that things weren't "really bad" for a long, long time. Things went really, really, really bad at the end, I guess. My mom left the room while the nurse and I pulled his jeans up over his feet, past his knees and over the diaper. She called me to the living room and asked me to ask the nurse to check again if he was actually dead, so I did. She asked the nurse if it was normal for a dead body to be warm in certain parts. The nurse said that it was. He was so heavy. So hard to move around. I learned about how heavy he was in October, when he was first "admitted" into Hospice care at home, after a spell where he forgot his circumstance. Early in the morning, before the sun rose, he somehow hopped on one leg to the bathroom next to his room and nearly fell. He hollered something awful, which woke me up. I tried to hold him and ease him into his wheelchair, but the best I could do was to help him to the floor, where he ended up sitting. He had peed himself in the process. (That's the reason he made his way to the bathroom.) We had to call the fire department. Something called "lift assist" where firemen come and carefully lift people who need lifting. He was nearly a skeleton but he was wasn't capable, at that point, to help out at all and therefore far too heavy for me to do anything but carefully ease him onto the floor. I didn't mind dressing him, or rather, "his body." After all that my mom had to witness and endure toward the end and after so many years as his caregiver, I was glad to be able to do this for her and for the wishes I knew he had- regarding her emotional well being. That day, the day he was dying, was so strange. (How could it not be?) I had arrived the evening before, on Saturday. I was not planning on driving up that soon. It was a week earlier than I had planned but the "planets" that were orbiting my work and financial life, as well as my dad's quickly failing health, all suddenly aligned. I knew without a doubt that it was time to go. When I arrived I found my dad suffering through what I later learned is called "terminal agitation." He was refusing all food and fighting my mom's attempts at giving him his medicine. What was most upsetting, however, were his constant efforts to get up and out of bed. he could only "half-way" do this- and if he did manage to get up, he'd inevitably fall and hurt himself or get stuck on the floor, in some uncomfortable position. This led my mom to call the nurses to help on several occasions. They told her he was tensing up (part of the terminal agitation), and this tension made it difficult for anyone to scoot him back into bed. His stubborn nature, however, was something my mom and I were very familiar with. It made sense that his instinctive bahavior would lead him to react to impending death in this way When I arrived, I did what I could to help my mom with him and he saw me. Just his eyes. She administered the Morphine and Lorazepam, but not as high of a dose the nurses were instructing her to give him because he didn't want any of it, and my mom wanted to honor his wishes, at least to a certain extent. This, however, was allowing him to experience more agitation and during the night, he made some terrible sounds. Finally my mom listened to the nurses (and me) and increased his dosages. That Sunday morning was when we began his hourly regimen of comfort meds, including a newer, stronger one. I can't remember its name. Earlier though, on that Saturday evening after I had arrived, my mom suggested I take myself out to eat, as she knew it would be a rough night, so I went to a nearby Chinese restaurant and a woman with her adult son made a scene. She was trying to get a refund for some soup she had the night before, that she claimed was drugged. The staff refused to give her anything back. The waitress apologized to each of the patrons individually, after the demanding woman had left, and assured us that her food was not poisoned. The radio in the restaurant was set on a Christian station that played a sermon and static, intermittently. The lighting was fluorescent and it allowed me to notice things like stains on their silk flower decorations. There was a party of local drunk people in an area to my right, separated by a half-wall. They didn't notice the lady making the scene. After I drank my half-sake and ate my rice and bowl of hot and sour soup (indeed not poisoned) I opened my fortune cookie. It read, "Always a valley before a hill." What the hell does that mean? Is that good? Is the valley the hard part? Wouldn't it be exhausting to climb out of a valley only to find a hill lying ahead? Wisdom. The fortune and the "ambiance" that night felt like a clear cosmic joke -perfectly aligned to the entirety of life at that moment. If I wasn't scared, I'd have laughed out loud. Saturday night was when I finally realized my mom was having a hard time facing the inevitability and very real occasion of my dad's death. She suddenly wanted to put him somewhere, in some kind of home where he could receive the help she believed she could no longer give him. She said she was too old and frail to deal with his worsened state. On Sunday the nurses came and helped my mom accept the reality as it was, by telling her in a clear manner, that the transport to another location would be moot, if not harmful- in regard to my dad's wishes to be at home. I say "be" at home as opposed to "die" at home because the conversation, once he returned from his last hospital visit (exactly two months from his death-date) was about his continued life- how we could help him get around and do the things he liked to do. I mean, there were some moments of clarity where he spoke to me about the finality of financial matters and what he wished for our future without him and my mother's sense of comfort. He also spoke to my mom at the hospital about his fear of dying. He made it clear that he was afraid, that he didn't want to die. Other than that, he wanted to keep plugging along with ways to continue his life, regardless of his condition. After all, the doctors told him he'd have ten years to live back in 1995. My dad beat a lot of the odds. He did so while heavily medicated and limited on activity and movement, but he defied a lot of odds. That Sunday morning though, his body was done defying, denying and working. Early that morning, one of the nurses came and sat with my mom and I. He had come a few times before, during the Hospice experience, and chatted with my dad about their mutual interest in radio controlled airplanes. Just before he arrived, my mom had administered enough of the comfort medicines to my dad so that he fell into a sound sleep. She didn't like the new, stronger medicine she had to add to the mix, because he threw up a bit while asleep, at one point, which we soon found out was most likely a symptom of his dying, not the medicine. She couldn't accept that though. Later in the day I called the nurses in frustration and they told me I had to force my mother to give him all of his meds or else the agitation would worsen. Or else he would die within his feeling of agitation and panic. I did not want him to die that way. That morning we vented a lot and asked the nurse who liked radio controlled planes if he could help situate my dad in his hospital-style bed. He was very kind and he listened well. Upon walking into the bedroom, he paused. He mumbled something. I was behind him. When I asked him to repeat what he said, he responded, "His way of breathing tells me that he's..." he leaned in closer to me "he's transitioning now." My reaction was to go to the living room and tell my mom the news; that it was now occurring. She didn't believe me. She said she had heard the same thing many times before, over the years and recently. The nurse moved my dad into the position he would die in, later that night. He placed pillows at his sides and raised the bed frame by his head. He raised his legs. He looked comfortable. My dad stayed asleep through the position shift. That was when I first noticed his breathing was a timed pull and click, over and over again. This was the sign of transition. I thought about a dying chihuahua I once sat with. Many years ago. The only living thing whose death I'd ever been present for. He did the same thing as I held him on my lap. His breath became a pull and a click. His consciousness seemed to leave a while before that. We don't know if my dad lost consciousness because of the condition, or the drugs caused him to get to that point. The nurses told us it was the condition, that he'd have gotten there with or without the drugs, just with less "comfort." Refusal. I don't think my dad made peace with death, not while he was conscious, anyway. My hope is that there was some kind of magic that occurred on that Sunday, where perhaps, the parts of him that exist in some kind of "hovering" and wiser and omnipresent or liminal realm, above fear and above worrying human consciousness took over. There was one point, after I found out that he was going, when I was helping my mom administer his comfort beds (given in the mouth, using syringes) that I swear I saw the movement of something like particles, above him. There was natural light in the room, but not the kind of light beams that hold dust particles. It was different. This may have happened before or after he let out a pained moan. His last. He moaned in the late afternoon but he died closer to 8:30pm. That's what I decided on, as his death time, but it happened some time between 8:15 and 8:30, as we had just administered one of his doses and another needed to be given at 8:30. I was having a glass of red wine and reading Joan Didion's The White Album: Essays, on my phone. The one about the L.A. freeways, when I heard my mom's snore. She fell asleep on the couch. It was then I noticed my dad's loud clicking sound seemed to have stopped, but I wasn't sure if it actually did or if her snoring was covering it up. I figured as well, that maybe his breath simply became more relaxed- that he had evolved into a new stage of transition. Part of me hoped too, that all of this suffering was over. Finally over. There was a feeling of peace in the mobile home that I hadn't felt before, or ever, so I decided to let things be. I was ready for a long night, for staying awake, so eventually I decided to walk carefully and quietly to my dad's bedroom and check up on him. I was considering administering his medicine myself, although I was afraid he would wake up and be terribly disturbed. He only trusted my mom. I found my dad in the same position he had been in all day, but his head was lowered to the right. His chest was still. No click, no pull, no heaving. He was gone. I thought about the fact that my mom had fallen asleep, of all times, while he died. In-between a span of only fifteen minutes, even though the nurse confirmed that he was "transitioning" since early in the morning. I thought about how I decided to not rush to check on him when I felt the air of calm and peace. I thought that their spirits may have connected during that time. That somehow her unconscious self may have reached his or vice-versa, and he left that way, in peace. I tip-toed back to the couch and squatted down beside my mom. I touched her arm gently and I said, "I don't want you to get freaked out but..." of course this freaked her out and she lept up in a panic. I said, "I could be wrong, but I think he's not here anymore." She put her shoes on (she always wears shoes inside) and together we walked to his room. She touched his head and, just like every other time she checked in on him that day, her tears fell onto him. She looked over at me and asked, "Is he dead?" I said, "I think so." She kissed him and put her hands on his. I sat at the end of the bed and put my hand on his foot, the one he still had left, and we cried for a little while. Eventually I realized that we needed to call a Hospice nurse, and that's what I did. Before she arrived my mom asked me if we should dress him and I didn't know whether we were supposed to. When the nurse arrived, after I helped her dress my dad, after she had called the morturary on our behalf and notified her office and observed me disposing of his medicines, it was just my mom and I with my dad lying flat on his bed and dressed, and covered in his favorite blanket, in his room where he died. My mom and I took turns walking back up to see him, his body now just a body. She continued to mention his warm body parts, so I reminded her what the nurse said, that it was normal for that to occur. The morturary took a while to get to us, but we didn't mind having him stay with us. I didn't mind. I thought it was important. I wanted him to stay for a while in this "space" that was without suffering. Finally. My mom was worried about his skin changing color, of him changing. She didn't want to see him like that, so I eventually called the mortuary to make sure they were on their way and they came within minutes after I hung up. His physical body left quietly. They used the back door, right next to his room. It was just a woman and a young man. The young man was wearing a formal burgundy and black suit. He looked like he might have left a school dance, or maybe this was something he wore as a uniform for this task. His way of showing respect. In any case, they put him in the back of a Suburban. No police, no ambulance, no firetrucks, no lights. No one in the mobile home park even noticed. I was very glad for that. Change of energy. This is the hard stuff. Not as hard as dying or suffering but hard for me to admit to, in the face of grief. The energy has changed a bit (just a bit), in this place. His space, and I have a need to be with this. I said my goodbye to him in a way I believe to be honorable. I learned to accept the best love he could give. I forgave and I had compassion and I developed boundaries. I tried to be a vessel for good energy throughout the year of his transition. When we found out his time was limited a little over a year ago, back when I was in L.A., I was terrified. I hadn't a clue as to what the right thing to do, was. I listened to everyone who told me that I was going to "lose it" when he died. But the transition was slow. I suppose I'm thankful I had time to digest what what happening and perhaps that time gave me emotional fortitude to handle other unexpected life-hurtles I ended up needing to make my way through and over. That weekend, a little over a year ago, when my dad had his strokes and we learned there were no more surgeries or procedures that could be done in order to save him, I meditated in nature and tried to transfer pain and suffering in myself, in my mother and in him. The equivalent of prayer, or actual prayer, for everything to transpire with as much beauty and spiritual purpose as possible. Less fear, less anger. For all involved. To keep myself who I am, through it all. Remembering that I left a toxic environment that I believed to be the root of my making choices and relationships that put me in bad positions of power. So, when my dad's body left, I entered his room and waved my arms and hands around. I tried to move the air. I stayed in the room alone and shook my hands. I turned, slowly, in circles and felt a bit weird about it but it's what my intuition told me to do. His suffering was done. His energy was in the process of leaving. I had the opportunity, in my mind, to act as a kind of "midwife" to this. To try and ease it to a better place. Not with anger, but with a sense of relief and release. It's been three weeks of ritual for me. Reclaiming, with tenderness, this place that was so toxic for so long. Cleaning the walls, the floors. Picking up wild beach sage and bringing it into the space. I asked my mom if she would put one of her plants in his room as a symbol of life and she agreed. Now I'm in the same room, typing this. In respect to the energy shift- I've been waiting my whole life to do this. I'm not wrong when I say he was so angry for so long. He held such grudges. My parents couldn't bring themselves to be the parents they needed to be. They weren't socialized. Self-centered. They didn't communicate with each other or my brother and I in a way that created a wholeness; to actualize a space of forgiveness and love. They loved in their own ways. I was often the in-between fiber to something I absolutely had to get away from. But now, for this, I'm back. I'm here for the landscape. The trees, the beach, the ocean, my memories. The great deal of compassion I feel for my mom's sense of loss and guilt- her age and physical condition (she's several years older than my dad). I'm here for the salt air that makes me feel peace the way I never have in L.A.. The birds, the space around people, vehicles and buildings. The dampness, the cold. The old people, the walks, the fucking sea otters and jellyfish. I'm here to be empowered through a process of letting go with as much love as I can muster up. I may not be grieving or fighting through old, messed up attachment issues I've developed the way I might be expected to, but I'm not out of control, and I'm not losing myself (yet). I'm coming to terms with change and creating another new life. I'm excited about new work and new views that come with something this big, while rendering myself as being tangled, carefully, into old roots that have been waiting. Blessed be.  Today I completed an online review of my recent vehicle lease-exchange transaction. Since it took a bit of time for me to compose, I felt it deserved to reach a wider audience. Feel free to use the text below as a template for any of your own service/transaction survey forms.  I would like to make it clear that any disappointment revealed on this survey questionnaire, relative to my experience of leasing a vehicle at your dealership, has to do with the system of negotiating the cost of doing such things, as it is, not the people, who are workers doing their job (as it is described to them) and trying to earn a good living. In that regard they did well. ______ ___________ has been, specifically, most helpful to me with my questions, following the lease transaction. In regard to my life and personal feelings (which I know, really doesn't matter to this survey-system), I am spending more money per month than I could and should, because everyone did their job of making sure it was a drawn-out and confusing (but very, very friendly) experience, and like most relatively decent human beings who try and look critically upon their own sense of greed; I detest the process of financial negotiations. Of course, this is what services like yours bank on. Despite my salesman, ____'_ sincere concern for my level of hydration (being revealed by way of offering me access to as much bottled water as I wished to consume) and being served a very delicious cookie that I'm told was brought in by your friendly receptionist, I am left feeling manipulated and I am most definitely caught further up in the current of financial obligation while continuing to live paycheck-to-paycheck. Please don't think my feeling like a pawn in a corrupt system where a corporation grows richer and more powerful by charging working people a lot of money for a new vehicle that they need in order to safely transport themselves to and from work everyday equates to a bad review. I expected this experience and my expectations were met. I’ve been trying to get this latest newsletter out of my system. It’s been difficult. It's really not a newsletter, until you get to the very end. I'm trying to make sense of life stuff and I'm also feeling like being a bit private while also wanting to share, so here is the best I can do right now. I appreciate your interest. I remember once, when I was twenty years old. I was reading and writing a lot. Diaries, novels, philosophers... I was deep in thought about life and experience and how "hard times" can be perceived as something more than “hard times.” They are fuel for creation. Data. Reasons to write and make art. -The kind of things twenty-year-olds think of. One night, around that time, I had just watched the remake of 1984 and boy did it made me cry. As the credits rolled I wrote in my journal, alone in my bedroom, alone in the trailer my family lived in. That night I wrote and even said out loud in-between sobs, “Bring it on!” I was referring to all of life I seemed to have been holding off, or holding back, out of fear. I felt this request of mine, that night, like a religious experience. -I truly did and that’s when everything changed. I was offering myself up. In that moment I became aware of the illusion of comfort and safety and I knew that I needed to dive into new experiences. I was terrified, but I gave in. Too much was at stake if I didn’t. I’m talking about my usefulness as an artist and my time as a thinking, feeling and caring human being. Like that beautiful scene in Rocky Horror Picture Show where Frank-N-Furter sings, “Be it, don’t dream it…” It was time. What followed were the beginnings of my independent life, and a lot of it was weird. So weird, and not truly independent but it was fuel. It was data. I got a lot wrong and I got a lot right. I was still very afraid and I didn't know how to share as an artist and as a person. Eventually things got even weirder and eventually, wondrous. I "took the red pill," as they say. That’s when I stopped being afraid. In time I learned how to organize that wonder. I realized that I could be quite useful; that I could and should use my abilities and interests in order to help others. I learned there are many different ways to do so. I also learned how to settle myself and I sorted out my own belief system/spiritual life that I now rely deeply upon. Eventually, I dipped my toes back into the world I was born into, when I lived in that trailer; before that fateful night in front of my VCR. After all that I had been through, it was an adventure to do what people and memes now call “adulting." I've only really been doing it for like, five years now. So for the past five years I've been tangling myself up in the web that makes people believe they are living well if they work on their credit score and keep up with advancements in technology and decorate their house like a Pottery Barn showroom (well, I’ve not gone that far, thank god, but I’m trying to make a point). What I'm trying to say is that I've been back in The Matrix. I now make my payments on time. I commute to work with all the others like me. I've made peace with my being a drone; useful to a greater system. I value my work life but the good news is that I'm most certainly still a weirdo. I’ve done things to keep myself uncomfortable, in order to keep myself from settling in, so that I can feel as much like a tourist within it. I'm not suffering, to say the least. I'm talking about things like living in the middle of Hollywood when I no longer care for the Hollywood lifestyle and using public transportation when I have a car– The irony is that my way of keeping myself uncomfortable has led me to being deep within the world of service to our system and deep within the world of my ego. I am choosing to perceive my existence in this way. I have lost my wonder and the knowledge that there is a system of order out there that feeds off of this occurring makes me very sad. (My recent feelings are pretty much all laid out in David Foster Wallace's well-known speech, This is Water.) It became very clear recently that I had fallen into the illusion of comfort, rest and safety so I did it again. I said, “Too much is at stake, again. I’m ready. Bring it on.” And it worked. Life brought it on. Like a switch. It’s so odd. I’m a quarter of a century older, this time around, so I surrendered with a bit of terror because I have experienced life and I know more about suffering. I'm aware now that "bring it on" affects and involves others. That being said, my life experience is something I can rely on. I can handle it.
Two examples of photos from my life, posted online. One of my students ran up to me the other day. He had found/been looking at photos I’ve posted over the years on social media; art events I’ve been a part of, trips I’ve been on, projects I've worked on, readings I've given, etc... and he said, “Wow, you've lived an adventurous life. I had no idea!” I responded defensively, “Yes, and I’m still living one!” The fact that he viewed my past as adventurous (as opposed to my present) may have to do with his preconceived notion of what it means to be a teacher, however it is also likely that he saw me as the person I have been lately, while I've been "comfortable." As a teacher I may be delusional but I want my students to be as free as possible from that comfortable web; that system that has the capacity to force us into submission and keep us there, so I'm glad he was exposed to my "adventurous" life because I'm an example of adulthood. (That last part just made me laugh out loud.) I want them to be free and I also want them to not fear the construct we can’t help but dip our toes into as we make our way around this giant floating ball in space. Speaking of planetary revolutions, it's a new year for me. It's also a new moon. I believe it's a time for asking for what we want to bring into our lives and so I wrote all of this as a way to do so. With Samhain it's a time to ask for help from our ancestors, from nature. The end of summer. Winter begins.  PS Here’s an actual update. I have a painting (a portrait) in a show opening on November 10th in downtown Los Angeles (see image to the left for details). Also, I’ve lowered the price of my e-book, The Boogie Book. It now costs only $1.99 and I read the book live and it's now on YouTube. Other than that I’ve been very busy teaching art and writing to teenagers. Thanks very much for reading.  Oh beautiful August, you are nearly done. School is about to start and the beautiful children will soon latch themselves onto my brain (whether they want to or not) and I will once again become something not unlike a pod-person living in the Matrix -with access to wine. It's been a good summer so far. The best one I've had in a long time. After five years of working through the summer, I finally took the entire month of August off, and like Peter Gibbons said in the film, Office Space, "It was everything I thought it could be." And it's not over yet! It's not over yet, it's not over yet, it's not over yet... To start it off, Kenny and I took a little road trip where we sat on a balcony and stared at boats in a dock. He DeeJayed, we ate ice cream on cones, shopped at outlet malls and frolicked in a park and on the streets of San Diego. Since then I've been painting, doing yoga on a regular basis (for the first time in forever) and editing some writing. I cut my hair, ordered bifocals and bought some new shoes. I realize though, that I'm not going to have enough time to pull off all of what I planned for this month, but that's okay. (I'm still hoping to draw and post a "summer-summary" style WHAT I DID LAST MONTH before September.) The most important thing is that my brain has been my own for the past few weeks and I've been thinking a lot about art, consumerism, currency, Los Angeles, power, crafting, histories, etc... things I'd love to write about, but it's too much. It's all swirling, boring stuff I always think about that is better explored by way of my new visual art project (that has to do with shoes, of course). As a human being, the social/internet-addicted animal that I am, I feel the need to share something, while at the same time being a blissful hermit, so I'm choosing to post one of my graduation speeches today. It addresses the thing that will soon consume my life (being a teacher). In it I write about coming to terms with that part of myself, but make no mistake, without my own independent work and practice, I am not able to teach. One of my favorite things about my day job is the fact that the kids choose teachers to speak on their behalf at their graduation ceremonies. I wrote/read three speeches this past May, and was thankful and honored to be asked by those students, whom I worked so closely with over the years. I'm always grateful to be selected. It's the one time of the year I not only have an important reason to spend time on creative writing, but I also get to read my writing to an audience, which is something I love doing. I'm posting one here that was written for a student who graduated from middle school and is about to enter high school. I chose to post this one because it received some laughs from the audience. The other two were for graduating seniors and therefore a bit "heavier." I want to make it clear that I value all three of them (speeches and students). P.S. I make references to RuPaul because the kid is obsessed with the show, Dragrace. *Names have been replaced by underscores to protect the "innocent."  This is the only photo I have from this year's graduation. (Teachers went bowling after the ceremony.) THE SPEECH:[directed to audience] Hello Everyone, I’m Linda and I’ve been one of ______’s art teachers here at ______ _______ ______ ______. [directed to student] Dear ______, I have one thing to say... Just kidding I have a lot of things to say, now get ready for me to start talking about you like you're not sitting right here. [directed once again to audience] ______ makes me crazy. ______ has that thing that artists need in order to be a true artist, and that is to have, within oneself, not only a big heart, but the heart of a troublemaker and I use that term with love. As an art teacher, it is my job to try and help kids learn how to harness and use what I call, "the inner beast" (side note, my spell-checker changed that to "inner beans"). It's from this place where creative risks are taken and where innovation is born. And ______ is filled with inner beans. That being said, I relate to ______ and though you will not catch me admitting this outside of this ceremony; I adore him. He's good kid with a big energy who likes to have fun. And he works hard! I've seen it! In the homework cafe with _____ working patiently with him while other kids are creating irresistible distractions like plotting to add clothing dye from our tie dye kit to the plug-in air freshener liquid (that actually happened). Whether he becomes one or not, ______ is an artist. I know this because everyone marvels at his work and he comes into my class with his sleeves rolled and at the same time he figuratively and literally bangs his head against my table, stating that his artwork deserves to be burned and that he would never, ever want to be an artist. Of course only an artist says these things. [directed to student] Whatever it is that you end up doing in life, ______, just know that after receiving my masters degree in fine art, I traveled to a woodland mountaintop and fell to my knees and said, "please Goddess, let me never become a middle school art teacher, if anything, let me teach college students and get paid sabbaticals on floating islands where I write books about the relationship between my love of Godzilla and fine art," and Goddess responded. She said, "Linda Lay, anyone who says 'goddess' and chooses her clothes based on whether or not it reminds her of wallpaper from the seventies is a middle school art teacher whether she likes it or not." And here I am. You can't deny who you are. A long time ago ______ tagged me on Instagram and I saw on his bio that he considered himself as interesting as a baked potato and as much as I appreciate his statement as someone who values a good joke, you are most certainly not a baked potato. You are my favorite vegetable, an artichoke, which is actually a giant flower with a big delicious heart. [directed to student] ______. I have one thing to say– Sashay away... from the middle school and into the high school. Have a great summer enjoying your inner beans and I'll see you in September. NEWSLETTER June 20, 2016 Hello everyone. Happy summer solstice and welcome to my very first newsletter! So far I only have a few people who signed up for an email version of my newsletter, so for now I’m posting this on my website as well. So what’s news for LINDALAY that's worthy enough to be put in a letter? Well, I’m going to be a part of another crafty art show/event in Glendale soon at a place called, Cure and the Cause, with a bunch of cool and creative L.A. people. I don’t have the info for that just yet but I will soon. I am also, currently, having a CRAZY sale at my online shop, where you can buy original fine art that looks like this monster below. Check it out here!  Here is something that I’m currently working on: Portraits.  Not too long ago I was asked to paint a portrait of Bernie Sanders at an event. I painted it within a day and was surprised to find out how much I enjoyed representational painting. I’ve been helping teenagers paint portraits for the past five years, at my day job, and through this act I am pretty sure I’ve improved. I have a hard time with committing to subjects though (I overthink things) and I want to paint more portraits so I am asking Kenny (husband) to tell me who to paint. I’m going to keep them all the same size, 24x24 inches, and eventually I’ll have a show with them. I’m calling the project, Whoever Kenny Wants Me To Paint. I’ve started my next one, which is Biggie Smalls.  Speaking of portraits, I’ve still got my original Wrestler series to complete. I have a total of fifteen that are in progress. Last summer I managed to create the “canvases” for these guys, made out of masonite and wood, and I’m pleased with the results. Here and there I’ve worked on them, mostly adding a texture medium, because for some reason I have the desire to create texture. They need a lot more work though. The closest thing I have to an art studio is my classroom, and I’ve been putting the kids first, which is you know, what I’m supposed to do, so these guys have not had as much attention as they need but I keep plugging along. I really like pro-wrestlers as a subject because they’re so flamboyant and tacky. Many adult men seem to almost turn into children when they recognize their favorites (This is my second series of wrestlers. I had a show with them a few years ago.) that I’ve depicted. I also see these wrestlers as a symbol of America. They remind me of terrible snack food packaging. Most of the time it seems people in this field of entertainment are so unhealthy and imbalanced and I feel like that’s a metaphor for life all around us, but then it might just be a metaphor for my life lived in Hollywood.  In addition to all of that I’ve also been working on a series of crocheted and felted Octopus Mother sculptures/art dolls. This one you see above is in progress, and it’s my third. The other two are in loving homes. I’m allowing this process to evolve, and I love the addition of wool-felting techniques that I learned because of a student I had who introduced me to the art form. I just love crochet and fabric in art, and I think I’ve been finding my way toward understanding my attraction to the medium, as an artist. I love the time and effort given to make something cozy, and to me octopus mothers seem like the coziest mothers, which makes no real sense, aside from my learning that they care for their eggs for many, many months and then they die from all of the work. That’s not really coziness, I guess, but it’s an instinctive devotion so… maybe it’s all the “limbs” that I like, or the lack of human-ness. Perhaps I'm subconsciously exploring some sort of existential/maternal thing within myself.   Above Octopus Mama 1 (Blue) Octopus Mama 2 (Grey) Another project I’ve recently completed and is available for sale at lindalay.com is my Goblin Witch. This is one of three little posable beasts I call "art dolls," that I made after being inspired by a method one of my students used in her sculptures. It’s just one example of how much my experience as a teacher has helped me evolve as an artist. Click here to purchase!  I also have this personal project that I’ve been working on where I take clothes that no longer fit, or are worn out enough to throw out, and I create “yarn” to crochet this rug (see below). It’s an exploration in material, but I’m also interested in becoming less wasteful. I’m much happier when I have a personal connection to my belongings. It means more to me when something useful is also something connected to my effort. I love creative things and fashion and as a maker of “things” and as a teacher of young people who often have access to a lot of things, I think a lot about value and waste. So far this is ongoing, as I can only continue when I discard some fabric. I used to work on this while on the bus, on my way to work, but it’s grown too big and cumbersome. I'll continue to post photos as it progresses. I want it to be pretty large.  And then there’s Mister Nibbles...  Mr. Nibbles is a puppet I made about a year or so ago. It’s from a story I wrote and I was inspired by my writing group to turn this character into a web series about a woman who owns a Wiccan shop and her mystical cat that’s turning into a “caticorn.” At this point the narrative is told from his perspective. I have a blog for him on my blog section where I've posted a Youtube video where Mr. Nibbles “comes out” to his online friends and I have a poem that I had him read during a poetry reading at my school, and people laughed. I want to record that one soon and post it as another entry.  Speaking of magic shops, my most successful “seller” at my lindalay.com shop, so far, has been my chakra balancing Blib Blob necklaces. I’m almost entirely sold out so I found some beautiful new glass beads and I’ve started a brand new batch. The photo above is showing them in progress, sitting on my beloved moss garden. As silly as it might sound, I truly do believe in adding a lot of love and good juju to my handmade art and crafts and the process, for me, is meditative. Each piece is cared for so that energy transfers to the wearer/owner. Click here to purchase one from the “first batch.”  Another personal project (like the rug) I’m proud of is this really great tablet holder I made. There are a ton of Youtube tutorials on how to make them, and I didn’t follow the directions perfectly (because you don’t need to). I used cardboard, a hot glue gun, elastic, velcro and some old cat pajamas for the fabric. It was so easy and it has improved the way I use my tablet drawing app. In addition to that, I can feel safe when I carry the tablet around. I really hated the options for holder/protectors/carriers at the stores, and they were all overpriced, so I made my own and I’m pleased. The only thing I need to do is create a loop or pocket to hold my nifty new drawing stylus. I have this Craft Vlog/Blog and I’m thinking of adding this to the list, but I might not since there are SO MANY examples of how to make these things online. I have to prioritize. Still, if you are interested in making one out of recycled materials, simply google or check Youtube for "DIY tablet cover."  By the way I cannot believe how cool my Autodesk drawing app on my tablet is. For like, four dollars I’m able to do things I used to do with my very first drawing program, Fractal Design, that cost about three hundred dollars in the nineties and now I can draw directly onto the screen. And don’t even get me started on how much more the computer and the drawing tablet cost back then. I just got my stylus for under ten bucks! Technology is nuts! In any case, I’m using it for my WHAT I DID LAST MONTH drawing series.  So, I suppose I’m in the middle of a lot of things. If you don’t know this about me yet, most of my time during the week is spent as an educator at a for-profit school. Putting together this newsletter is helping me see how teaching is making it hard to focus on one thing at a time. I mean, I have a hard enough time focusing as it is, just being who I am- As frustrating at it is to not be able to devote all of my time to bringing to life all of my own ideas, this year I've been able to understand how much I’ve been learning through the act of teaching. Not only through the daily lessons and experiences of working with teens in a one-to-one setting, but through the drudgery of everyday work. Things like paperwork and prioritizing, although I have been thinking lately that I should be a bit more whimsical with my priorities. In any case, I’ve been practicing certain “life skills” in a way that I hadn’t ever before. Most certainly, this experience has been a test for me, to be able to live authentically and "under the radar" in the mundane world. This June is my fifth year working as an art/creative writing teacher. As distracting and exhausting as it is, it’s also rewarding, on a personal level, in regard to my human need to feel as though I’m contributing to people and the world in my own little way. For instance, here is a letter written to me by one of my students as a Valentine's Day project that another teacher organized:  I mean, come on! How rewarding is that? Now if only this kind of appreciation would translate to guaranteed health care at work and no longer having to live paycheck to paycheck in a one-bedroom apartment without a personal studio space and having the time to devote to my art and writing without being so distracted... I know that I’m going to need to have a break from teaching at some point, or find a way to teach in a way where I’m part of an organization that perceives me as more than a semi-valuable but surely replaceable cog in the profit system when I’m financially able to take that break (if that day ever comes), but I’ve been figuring a lot out, and it's been super-important. My students and my fellow teachers/work peers have given me so very much, in regard to helping me feel as though I’m part of a community and doing important work with my art and creative writing degrees.  Speaking of taking a break, I’m going to be cat-sitting for my friend who lives right on the beach, in a couple of days. During that time I’m planning on making my novel, The Unmet Man, a thing that lives on my website. I took years to work on it. It was my graduate writing project. For a long, long time it was my most important project. I started it in 2003. It’s fictionalized biographical stuff and in my head it just isn’t supposed to live as a traditional book. I was so personally linked to it that it's taken years and years for me to sort out the formal aspects of art and writing from the therapeutic aspect of the process. I've hated and loved it, over and over again and I think I’m at a place where I can finally trust my gut and make it the project I’ve always envisioned it to be, and it will be available for free, on lindalay.com and theunmetman.com. We’ll see what happens. It might just end up being that first novel that needed to get done but wasn't really good enough to become anything. Either way, I’m really looking forward to spending time with the ocean and the lovely old cat you see sitting on one of my crocheted blankets, in the photo above. The last thing that is news is that you can still purchase my rhyming e-book called THE BOOGIE BOOK at Amazon.com for only 2.99! It’s beautifully written and illustrated and helps kids, young and old, to not fear the unknown. You can even purchase your own hand-crocheted fingerpuppet to create an exciting story time experience by clicking HERE! Thank you very much for reading my newsletter! -LINDALAY  |
AuthorMy name is Linda Lay and I'm an artist, a writer and a teacher. Archives
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