Summer Fruit

The purple figs in the alley were ripe last week, dropping all over the street and and I wondered why I hadn't noticed them sooner.

Why, when something is almost right in front of our eyes, don't we take notice? There are all kinds of answers, but I've been thinking about this one: What if we're just suffering from "habitual landscape," stuck in a fixed framework, unaware of the bigger picture?

I've been pondering a similar situation in my life: Summer. After moving to Davis, CA some years ago, I began to long for a way out of summer. The sun is hot and and the air is dry--the temperature can sit on us over 100 for days on end. Like today: forecast:101 degrees.

For one reason and another, our family rarely leaves the valley during these extreme months. Frustrated, I imagined vacations in Maine or British Columbia.

I realized I have a perennial problem: without a surplus of money and bonus time, how do I find acceptance for where I am? Like the preschoolers on a recent NPR report, I decided to opt for flexible, fluid thinking. I was struck by Michelle Trudeau, the author of the report's words:

Children try a variety of novel ideas and unusual strategies to get the gadget to go. For example, UC Berkeley psychologist, Alison Gopnik says, "If the child sees that a square block and a round block independently turn the music on, then they'll take a square and take a circle and put them both on the machine together to make it go, even though they never actually saw the experimenters do that."

This is flexible, fluid thinking — children exploring an unlikely hypothesis. Exploratory learning comes naturally to young children, says Gopnik.  Adults, on the other hand, jump on the first, most obvious solution and doggedly stick to it, even if it's not working. That's inflexible, narrow thinking. "We think the moral of the study is that maybe children are better at solving problems when the solution is an unexpected one," says Gopnik. --Preschoolers Outsmart College Kids in Figuring out Gadgets

I decided to try and solve my problem by diving deeper into the very environment that frustrates me. Thus began my "Shift" series; a monoprint series using plants gathered within my immediate surroundings; first in my own back yard and then, broadening out to my neighborhood and beyond.

Initially, the process felt abstract and remote, but soon enough, I became an avid collector of the most common plant species in my neighborhood; what one gardener described as "top 40" plants. Top 40 or no, it didn't seem to matter. Their shapes made elegant tracings in the acrylic paint and their signatures on the paper made me want to stay in the studio and do more and more.

Soon, I had a collection of prints; postcards of my explorations, but I also noticed that my attitude had changed. I was no longer trapped in the heat of the Central Valley. Instead, I was released into my own ongoing exploration/vacation.

These days, I'm taking those prints and cutting them up, piecing together collage prints. It's still hot and I still spend only the early morning hours outdoors, but instead of Maine, the studio is now my refuge.

In Praise of Journaling

Not long ago, I rediscovered my journal. I can't say that I ever really left it, but I was definitely peripatetic. What a great word! Peripatetic means traveling from place to place, especially working in various places for relatively short periods of time. Well, I travel all right, but for a number of years, my journal stayed home.

In a recent art class, the teacher emphasized the value of writing in order to process ideas about artwork. "I know, I know," I thought to myself. I say the same thing to the art therapy groups I facilitate; "journaling is an excellent way to process grief."

Upon hearing this truth again, I felt resistance. "I process what I'm working on in the studio as I walk back and forth along the corridors of the hospital. It's a great place to sort out ideas," I thought.

The thing is, whenever I feel resistance, I know there might be something good and juicy hiding behind my resistance.

I began journaling at age 16 in a poetry class, and I took to it as a tool of comfort during the storms of late adolescence--then the trials of graduate school--then the late nights of early motherhood. Later, as the kids got older, the kind of non-stop thinking it took to keep them on track and still do my artwork didn't leave a lot of time for writing.

But the yearning to journal never left. I needed to find my way past, through, around my resistance. Recently, on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, I saw my opportunity.

In her excellent blog, Rabbi Yael Levi says of Shavuot: "The journey began with Passover and the acknowledgment of our narrow places—the habits of mind, body and spirit that kept us bound and unable to move forward into our lives.  Passover implored us to imagine a leap into the unknown, to find the willingness to leave behind what had enslaved us.

This journey continued into the Counting of the Omer. For 49 days we counted each day calling forth the healing and discovery that comes through awareness...How do we live from the experiences of this time?

As Shavuot ends... we are urged to take on practices that will keep the fire burning. So we listen and wonder: What is a commitment to practice I can make?"

I leapt and decided to write in my journal each day. And I noticed when I did that, things began to fall into place in unexpected ways. For me, thinking by itself cannot produce the multiplicity of solutions needed when I try to solve a problem of imagination, creativity or technique. It is the physical act of writing that enables my brain to connect from one thought to another and from there, to a whole cluster of ideas.

I haven't kept my resolution perfectly--but I've kept it enough. Enough that I now recognize my worn black Moleskine as a friend and confidant. Enough that I now invite my worn, black Moleskine over a cup of tea and a talk.

Of Figs and Gelli Plates*

I've been on a tear the last couple months, collecting all kinds of plant specimens that grow around my house, sorting them and then printing them using a gelli plate.

I'd taken some professional leave during that time which  allowed me to dig deep. I had a blast and a taste of what it might be like to dedicate myself to my art work full time.

And something happened--something to do with the gelli plate. For some time I've wanted to work larger, but couldn't find the vehicle. The gelli plate in all of its simplicity turned out to be just the ticket.

Its innocuous presence (so not intimidating), the squish of the brayer as it rolls out ink, the sucking sound as the paper is pulled away from the print, and the surprise of lines and curves and color; all are a sensual pleasure that I can wade in for hours.

The biggest discovery was learning how to curate the prints once they were completed, i.e., discovering a way to put them together. I like to lay them all out on the table and play with them, moving the contenders in and out of place until I feel that internal tug that says: "this is it."

Although I'll be working full time at the hospital this summer, I'm looking forward to the weekends, filled with buzzing insects, sleeping cats, and gelli prints of summer flora. Perhaps a frozen yogurt at the end of a studio day.

Oh, and did I mention, the ripening figs? Nothing like them when inspiration is needed!

*My apologies for sending out 2 versions; I accidentally hit the publishing button while editing:-)

The Yoga of the Hospital

"What's new?" One of our pediatric doctors asked me recently. "What is new?" I asked myself, flipping through my mental rolodex for an answer. What came out surprised me. "I've decided to see the hospital as an ashram," I replied. I told her about going to see the "Yoga*" exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

Her reply: "We should turn the whole hospital into an ashram." Although this particular doctor comes from India, her answer took me by surprise, but not for long.

Ashram is a Sanskrit word and it describes a place where people go to study the many practices of yoga, particularly meditation and selfless service. It is a place people go who seek inner peace.

Both of us are interested in and passionate about palliative care, and I knew of her recent work using hypnotic techniques for pain control. She has a deep and healing presence--but ashram?

As I spoke, I remembered a moment from my museum visit. We were touring the exhibit with a docent who was explaining a particular yoga posture when spontaneously, another woman with long gray braids bent down on the floor and demonstrated the pose.

When the docent moved on to the next image, an image of the 7 chakras, or energy centers, the same woman offered to describe the various centers to us. When she reached the top chakra, the Sahasrara, (said to connect us to a higher source of awareness), she teared up, a kind of spontaneous expression of her love for yoga.

Watching her brought up memories of my own years of practicing yoga and the benefits which I've experienced.

I remembered this as I explained my view of the hospital as ashram to the doctor: seeing our environment as a learning place--and not just medical learning, but one in which I take on the personal challenges that arise during the day, looking at them not as a thorns in my side, but as opportunities to gain understanding, learn something that I may have been stumbling over for years.

I joked that sometimes it didn't seem as if I were there to help the patients...and the doctor finished my sentence: "you're here to learn about your self."

I don't expect that many people share this view, but I was touched in that moment, surrounded by beeping IV poles, flashing lights and overheard pages, that someone would stop to share a moment of peace. Peace. Patients. Patience.

*Entitled "Yoga," the artworks featured in the exhibition date from the 2nd to the 20th centuries. Images ranging from benevolent deities and gurus to Tantric goddesses and sinister yogis reveal how yoga practices—and perceptions of them—have transformed over time and across cultures.

In the Midst of Spring

I look out the door of my studio: the redbud is in bloom and small oak saplings are popping up everywhere after our recent rains. I welcome these drops from the heavens.

My challenge is to bring the energy of spring into the hospital.

After admiring the redbud, it's off to work where I'm met with a referral that seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from my earlier musings: Help a family with enough children to fill a school classroom to mourn the imminent passing of a beloved family member.

I have just half an hour to come up with an intervention and enough materials to carry it out. I try to remain calm inside and talk out ideas with the palliative care social worker. Each plan has it's drawbacks but finally, we come up with one that might work. She leaves to go back to the family. I assemble the art materials.

When I arrive at the waiting room, the television is on, a laptop game is in session, a baby is crying. Where do I find an entry point?

Go straight to the heart I tell myself. I ask the children to tell me their names, their ages. They're a bit defensive, trying to keep up the barrier--I'm a stranger on their turf.

I tell them why I'm there and that we're going to make something together, something that they can keep for the rest of their lives to remember their family member.

Just to make sure they have an understanding of what is happening in that room across the hall, I ask: "do you know why your relative is here?" Hands shoot up and slowly we zero in on the answers. Like water that swirls slowly around the drain and suddenly forms a vortex, their understanding takes hold.

Both the children and their parents tear up. We talk about the tears; like rain they clean us out.

I pass paper and ink pads and markers and stickers and ribbons--even a hole punch. All of the kids make a print of their hand and draw on the paper; flowers bloom on the page, purple stick people hold hands and hearts. Some of them write messages. Then one by one, they visit their relative to add that person's print to the paper.

Its a sacred and scary thing, this printing. The children hold back at first, but once I help them put their hand on top of the hand that reaches out, they relax into it. The atmosphere builds until the last children are hugging and kissing and giving messages and the grownups want to make their own hand prints.

I'm always surprised that it's the simplest of actions which mean the most at the end of life: one hand on top of another, words whispered into an ear or scribbled across the top of the page.