33 Collages....about my divorce

 

I've been over the break-up of my marriage so many times I've lost count. Over means over--until that feeling is over. And then there you are again. In it.

When I found out that the Someone intended to terminate (in fact had terminated) my alimony at the end of 2020, I dropped into feeling it all again. Add in a pandemic, a quarantine, and a recent interest in all things book arts--and here you have it. One collage for every year spent with someone I never really knew. 

These individual collages are not meant to each sum up a particular year, but simply reflect my thoughts and feelings in the moment of making them. 

And  of course, “These are works made of paper. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.”  I might add that life often feels as fragile as paper and seems quite dependent on coincidence.

In a day or two I hope to sign the official paper that says I expect no more alimony. It turns out that the Someone is not only completely retired, he's in ill-health. 

As this final collage of the series reflects, I'm ready to move on.

Light a Candle and Move On

Who's Zoomin' Who?

Visiting Dan in 2014

I feel stunned most of the time. Loved ones on the front lines. Me here, sometimes feeling I'm barely earning my right to breathe our virus tinged air.

I am, without a doubt, an introvert. I was never so exhausted as when I was teaching English. I was in my 30s then, and the constant talking, explaining, teaching destroyed every ounce of energy every single day. This is my way of saying that, in some ways, my life is unchanged, that I'm fine with lock-down. I could tell you too, that my life has been turned upside down. Both are true.

I have made a schedule for my self, a routine, a checklist. It's a lifeboat. An anchor.

Here's a photo of my old neighborhood in California with a cloud shaped like an exclamation point

I read the news, do a t'ai chi chih practice, yoga (unless it's a day off to rest my wrists.) I write, read, practice drawing with the lessons in "Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain." There are bookbinding projects. I do Duolingo French lessons. Yesterday I found the juggling balls and added juggling. I could juggle well enough in the summer of 1975 that I did it day after day in a commedia dell'arte. 

I sit in my big chair by the window in my bedroom and let memories roll by like clouds.
Memories of hospital rooms, being masked and gowned, visiting Dan whose white count and platelet numbers were all wrong time after time in the months before he died.
Visiting my mother from the hallway when I was 18, and she was in the hospital recovering/not recovering from surgery with pneumonia and a staph infection.
I remember my own bleary hospital time, her at my bedside every day during a long Minnesota January. I remember the sirens the day the poet John Berryman jumped off the Washington Avenue Bridge. Something's going on out there she said, standing by the window in her high heels, me flat on my back. lashed to the bed, in traction.
The thing is, everything is worse than all that now.

But my god, there are ridiculously funny things on the internet. I was laughing almost unable to stop at midnight last night. There's amazing writing and art. I'm talking to friends almost every day. Zooming them. Remember that Aretha Franklin song from the 80's? Who's Zoomin' Who? I just might zoom everyone I know.

Art in Coronaville/ day # whatever

Looking through the window into my favorite coffee shop

I went out just to look in the windows at Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Loft Literary Center. The coffee shop that's part of the complex, patronized by artists and writers, was my home away from home before the virus. Washington Avenue this evening was devoid of pedestrians (unlike the park or the Stone Arch Bridge which was probably again thronged with pedestrians, joggers, runners in groups of two, three, and four--WTF Minneapolis?) 

Anyway, there's alway a window devoted to a large piece of art at MCBA. You remember art exhibits, right?

It was very satisfying to stand at the window and read the artist's statement. "Histories are written by people," she says, and "histories are not set in stone--they can always be re-written." 

We are writing and re writing the history of the coronavirus every day. It's a tragic story, and I'm feeling grumpy about it today. How are you feeling?

The window of the gift store at MCBA

Minneapolis--as beautiful as ever.

xo

Here in the Land of Lakes, not quakes

waiting for the fireworks

The barometer of my body says it's in a new and different place. My hair wants to part on the other side, and I'm still lost in this curvy city by the big river. But last night I connected the place where I went out for a glass of wine with the neighborhood I live in and the neighborhood where my St. Paul condo was. Three dots on a map of a zillion dots.

I'm afraid to drive here. Don't get into the bike lane when you turn, and watch out for the orange cones, orange cones, orange cones. There are giant potholes and trenches in the interstates (don't say freeway) from all the construction. And don't say the 94 or the 35W. Here you just take plain 94 or 35 W to wherever. And let's not talk about the W. Anxiety ramps up in the car like it did after the divorce when I marooned myself in my condo in South Pasadena, going to almost nothing. But I can walk or take the train. My new (to me) red Subaru has been christened Freiya, and I will drive her...eventually.

The sky is bigger and bluer here. Sky is distinctly separate from clouds. No grey linty what-is-what sky. Storm clouds barrel in every other night or so, and  lightning unzips the darkness. The 5th floor is a very satisfactory height from which to view the drama.

There is free yoga in the park before the farmer's market. Two seconds lying on the grass and I'm five years old because it smells like childhood. (That's me bottom right.)

The produce in the farmers' market cascades into more variety every week. First it was only asparagus and rhubarb and peonies. Then morels and bok choy. Now squash and lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, green beans, new kinds of spinach, gooseberries and red currants, and so much more.

A huge crowd came to fireworks along the river. Standing room only by the moment of showtime,and then bound in by rows and rows of people. It  sounds terrible, but it wasn't. The next morning it was all cleaned up even though they said 75,000 people came.

My living room still has its wall of boxes of books, and file boxes strewn with things I'm too lazy to file because it means bending down or lifting the box. And the TV is on a card table, but my bedroom is perfect with my favorite art hanging above the bed. And there's my desk where maybe the muse can find me if I ever sit down there.

Sometimes the morning light makes the view look like a painting. I see beauty everywhere, but I miss my friends. I wish they were here in the land of lakes instead of the land of quakes.

Art in Oaxaca, Mexico

I'm not a visual artist. I'm a writer. But at a friend's suggestion, I joined her for this: http://www.artworkshopsinoaxaca.com

With the focus on Day of the Dead, I decided my project would be an altar box dedicated to my mother. The instructors were fantastic, and the box, I think, honors my mother's life, her beauty, and her spirit. I also included her twin sister. That 's my aunt on the left and my mom on the right. These are the doors on the outside of the box

Below is the complete view of the inside of the box.

Here's a close up of the inside side panels which reflect her life in California and her last birthday party.

This last picture is a close-up of the center inside panel.

I'm going to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts!

Greetings from the Taubman Museum of Art in downtown Roanoke

I'll be heading for the VCCA in a couple of days. Meanwhile I'm visiting fabulous old friends and getting shown the sites in Salem and Roanoke. 

The Taubman Museum is a gorgeous place, designed by Randall Stout, who worked for Frank Gehry.

The VCCA is its own kind of gorgeous. I think at least half of my published stories were drafted there during prior residencies.  http://deniseemanuelclemen.com 
I'm thrilled to be going back.

"Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive." Hafiz

 One of my yoga teachers ended a recent class with the quote above. My list is long, and by no means fully described by the photos below. A decade ago things did not feel so joyful in my personal life.

Pure white doves in flight

A beach full of birds and treasures

The roses in my own front yard

Trying to grow a lemon tree

Looking at art
This is from the exhibit, Rotari's Muses, at the Norton Simon

A visit from faraway friends

A sweet dessert from a beloved friend

The Art of Irma Blanco

We've driven through the countryside to various artists' studios outside Oaxaca. Cornfields line the road and it looks like a poorer version of Iowa. We arrive in a village that looks nothing at all like an small Iowa town. The church is topped with domes instead of a towering spire. The streets are cobblestones or dust. The walls of the houses are brightly painted and often graffitied. Curb appeal is an unknown concept. Lawns do not exist. But when you are invited in through the formidable gate and enter the home studio of an artist, it's like that moment when the Wizard of Oz changes from black and white to color.

Irma Blanco, 2nd generation ceramic artist.

This piece was created before our eyes, hand built in 15 minutes or so. The raw black clay transforms to the color below after firing.

Irma specializes in these elaborate creations as well as whimsical smaller pieces.

Tuesday Beach Report

Found art on Hollywood Beach: The Dancers

This Rocky Place: They Have Fire Pits Here

I've driven up the coast  a bit from my piece of paradise to this rocky place--a paradise all its own. Colder. Wilder. The motel I'm staying at with my friend Linda has fire pits. It sounds fabulous, but it's cold. For this morning's trip to Hearst Castle I wore two pairs of pants, a tank top, a long sleeve t-shirt, a turtleneck, a down vest, a wool coat, and two scarves.

Last week I was in Arizona with my son and his family. It was cold and rainy there for the most part and my attire was pretty much the same--minus one pair of pants. I am fixated on the weather. Or perhaps more accurately the climate/climate change and our California drought. The drive north to the central coast is spectacular. The ocean stretching out next to the 101 and then the curve inland where, normally, the hills and their soft curves would bring to mind the tawny coats of giant sleeping lions. This trip there was a pallor beneath the tawny hills. Lions undergoing chemo. What green there is in the shrubbery has a black undertone. The uber-elegant Hearst Castle has no running water; the parking lot is clustered with port-a-potties. How long before all of our southern California indoor plumbing takes a crap and port-a-potties are perched on our patios and porches,while hand sanitizer is preferred instead of soap and running water? Maybe El Nino will save us.

In the meantime, art is alive and well. This ancient Greek torso at Hearst Castle has survived centuries.

The elephant seals are still here.

And the sunset is no less remarkable.

Report from Pillville: The Balance of Opposites

Photo from this morning's walk along the beach in Ventura--a local artist stacks these stones.

My mom is more frail than ever but feels well.

I'm happier and stronger than I've been in a long long time but feel spent.

Those statements balance one another in a way I can't quite explain. And maybe there's balance too in the fact that my mom is sleeping more and more these days while I am sleeping less and less. And even when I do sleep, I awake feeling hung over. There's no gin involved in this, I swear--at least not for me. She is, of course, still having her martini. The balance of opposites right here in Pillville.

I almost had to sit during my T'ai Chi Chih practice yesterday. Today I opted out of yoga and took a walk. I need the sky over my head to feel the vastness of possibility. I need to be quiet.

I'm in the process of transitioning my mom into a nursing home after more than 3 years of caring for her in my house. I'm filling out the forms for Medi-Cal and Iowa Medicaid. I'm gathering documentation. I'm making travel plans and not making travel plans. I'm formulating a Plan A and a Plan B and wondering if they are mutually exclusive while wondering if both of them will fall away.

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room as I write this, wholly aware of the sound of her breathing in her room, while feeling that I'm barely breathing at all.

My heart is in Indiana with the man that I love and my heart is here, heavy as a stone, and so light it is a tower reaching for the sky.

This morning's walk took me past the estuary. Here it is looking inland--and looking out to the sea, just like me.

The path I was on took me under the freeway, framing a perfect view of the hills,
and it took me across the railroad tracks. Travel plans, vistas, hopes, dreams,manifested through a camera lens-- and if you look closely at the photo below you'll see a white cross in the lower left. I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Repair Central

A favorite piece of art by I Made Arya Dwita Dedok

Things are breaking here in Margaritaville. The microwave, the toilet. The sinks are dripping which is a criminal, given the drought. And last night I felt as though I was breaking, a crucial leak sprung, unstoppable.

But the microwave repairman has just left and charged me nothing even though he replaced everything (a re-repair.) And the plumber has made off with a hundred bucks. Not a terrible price for the assuaging of guilt and fixing a toilet and a sink.

I have friends coming to dinner and I'm lying on the couch, flattened by some kind of cellular recognition in my body that last year about this time, it was the beginning of the end for Dan. I feel it in the slant of the sun, the way the wind blows, and in how the fog rolls in. I feel it in the way the world looks as I walk in the surf, knowing that my feet are falling in the same places on the sand.

I keep hunting for ways to feel better and the only idea that sounds good is living outside. I googled it. I like the highlighted suggestions of other things to try. I feel hemmed in. It's hot in my house and stuffy. If the door opens for even a minute, my mother asks if the air-conditioning is on. The ceiling bothers me and I think the sky would feel better. I always think a second glass of wine, or a third will relax me out of sadness and I'm hardly ever right. I might pitch a tent on my patio and give a friend the key to my wine refrigerator for safekeeping.

My mother, thank god, is feeling well. Remember the moaning that has driven me insane for the past three years? She's stopped. And last night we had Chinese food for Mother's day and this was her fortune.

My fortune is more puzzling. 

I'm not sure where to find this merry heart medicine.

But I do think of one of my favorite pieces of art (see above.) My heart is heavy these days, and I thank those of you who are helping to carry it. Especially those bent beneath the unwieldy heavy end. A million thanks. I'm going to get up now and set the table.