THE CHALLENGE OF THE MEMOIR

I’ve been playing with the idea of writing a memoir for at least a year. I so much want to explore what I perceived as my grandmother’s dislike of her second child (my father), and subsequently of my mother and us kids. But I can’t seem to get past that infernal internal editor who keeps staring over my shoulder, whispering deterrents about disapprovals of — or even hurt from — descendants of the people I would write about. In fact, it’s a challenge for me to write that prior sentence about my grandmother. My push me/pull you dilemma has much to do with being raised never to air one’s dirty laundry etc.

So I’m doing what I usually do when that internal critic immobilizes me; for years it was books on how to paint. This time, I’m heading for the bookstore and stocking up on books on how to write memoirs. Whether I’ll actually put pen to paper (or in my case, fingertips to keyboard) remains to be seen. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

(A stage whispered aside to Mary McD.: Thank you for your encouragement; I needed it!)

I NEED SPRING!

It’s been a prolonged winter where I live, and ennui is setting in. It’s also been six months since we returned from our trip along the Norwegian fjords. These seemingly unrelated thoughts bumped into each other this morning while I was rereading the journal I’d kept during that trip.

There was so much that grabbed my imagination as we slowly cruised past snow covered mountains enshrouded in clouds. It was easy to see how the Norsk myths evolved. Stories of Thor, the tales of the Tomten, other beings who may be friends, lovers, foes or family members of the gods — there’s no doubt in my mind that these stories, like those of other cultures, served a purposel beyond explaining nature's mysteries. They also entertained on long, lonely nights in isolated communities. 

My own imagination was fueled by the many small villages we passed. What must it be like to be a young wife here? So much of what I take for granted — easy access to coffee shops, theaters, parks, bookstores — are hundreds of miles away for families who live along Norway’s  fjords. Before the advent of the internet, email and Skype, how did these folks get flour? toilet paper? meds? I know supplies were brought in by packet boat on a regular basis, but what did the housewife do when she discovered she needed (fill in the blank here)? They didn’t (and still don’t) have the luxury of a grocery store 10 minutes away.

So what has this to do with my ennui which, I’m certain, is directly related to our currently unforeseeable spring? Why can’t I be like those stalwart Norwegians? I can’t imagine them sitting in front of a gas fireplace reading for four hours at a time or, even worse, staring into space while chores pile up. But then, my chores are hardly anything that have to be accomplished before the end of the day…or even the week. Prep a canvas? Clean my studio? Not likely; not right now. Even dinner can be put off; after all, I live within a 15-minute drive of some darned good restaurants, and area grocery stores have remarkable deli's.

I’m certain that not all of those hardy fjord-inhabiting folks soldier on with no complaints, but obviously enough of them do in order to keep the fish farms, etc. going. Perhaps their secret lies in the fact that what they do is essential; I’m not so sure that what I do fits that category.

There’s an answer here somewhere; with any luck I’ll find it when I’m no longer living in Narnia. (By the way, I’ve been looking up the temperature in Kirkenes, Norway, which is within the Arctic Circle. It’s been warmer there than in Minneapolis. Go figure.)

WHAT'S ON MY EASEL

work in progress

I took my first botanical watercolor class about two years ago. Marilyn Garber, founder of the Minnesota School of Botanical Art, is an exceptional instructor who pushes me beyond my comfort level, but not so far that I panic. The image to the right is what I'm working on right now as a part of her "Tulip Mania" class. It's about 3/4 finished. There are parts of the work that I like, but a whole lot more that I'm dissatisfied with. But then I'm never happy with my work. 

Marilyn and I were talking about this recently. "I know many artists who are never satisfied with their work," she said. "As long as we compare ourselves to others, it's likely we'll find ourselves wanting."

This reminded me of a post-workout conversation in the sauna at the gym the other day. "This keeps on getting harder," one of the women said. "Maybe," I replied, "it's because we keep raising our own bars. I'm able to do more than I could a year ago, and certainly much, much more than I when I first joined the 'Y'. What was hard then is easy now."

So maybe it's the same with painting...or music...or sculpture...or cooking; we're critical of our own work not so much because we compare ourselves to others but rather that we keep trying for something more challenging. But then, to paraphrase Miles Davis, isn't it better to try something new and do it badly than to keep doing the same ol' thing?

BRAIN TUMOR REDUX

"Day's End"   copyright Judy Westergard

 “How can you be so calm?” asked more than one person after I answered their questions about my recent visit to my ophthalmologist where, along with my annual vision check-up, I casually mentioned that all the symptoms I’d experienced before my Great Brain Zap (aka gamma knife surgery) had returned. 

I’ve been thinking about that. Am I calm? Or am I just in denial? Frankly, I simply don’t get my undies in a bunch until something that makes undie-bunching worthwhile shows up.

ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE by Diane Ackerman

The Reader
by Judy Westergard
oil on canvas

all rights reserved

Among my top 10 favorite books of all time: "One Hundred Names for Love" by Diane Ackerman. This is a funny, poignant, insightful, well researched memoir of her life with her author-husband following his massive stroke that left him aphasic. Despite his doctors' predictions that he'd never be able to speak nor understand again, Diane, along with a charming, funny day-nurse, worked non-stop to immerse Paul with language: puns, memories, questions, tormentingly slow conversations in which they would patiently give Paul all the time he needed to respond...sometimes as long as seven minutes. The result (and I'm not giving anything away here; she lets you know from the get-go that he eventually publishes again) is an almost-fluent post-stroke aphasic. This one's a must-read on so many levels: being a care giver, how we acquire language, strokes, overcoming adversity, and just plain elegant writing.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

"An Act of Contrition"
watercolor & ink on Wallis sanded paper

When I sign an email I include my studio address and contact info. Lately I've been adding a tag line: "Oils, Watercolors, and a Few Artsy Experiments." I'm hoping that "artsy experiments" will explain the variety in the work visitors see in my studio. I've been criticized for that variety: "You'll never get gallery representation, Judy," I've been told. "You need to stick to one voice." But if I ain't happy, the fam damily ain't happy, and what makes me happy is trying new things. So here, for what it's worth, are the two extremes of what I'm working on now. As I say in my brochures, "I paint what I love, and what I love is as varied as the music of the Manhattan Transfer. My mother would have said that I just get bored easily. As the kids say, "Whatever."


Primrose Leaves
Watercolor on Fabriano 300# paper

WORK IN PROGRESS--CONQUERING FEARS

D. in Taos
(work in progress)
Phase 1: block-in
oil on canvas

I’ve always admired and, if I’m honest, been a little jealous of people who can paint and sketch in public. Some are plein air painters, totally focused on a lake or a park or a mountain. You’ll find others in a corner of a coffee shop, capturing gestures with a quick laying-down of pencil or charcoal on paper. What makes me envious is that their available subject material is so much greater than mine. Now it isn’t that I don’t want to paint those lakes and parks and mountains, and goodness knows I love figure work. But I seem to be paralyzed by the notion that someone might watch me and, in my overworked imagination, watching equates with judgment. So I’m trapped in my studio with my photographs, well aware that the only thing that’s trapping me is me! In a hopeful attempt to at least start getting past this debilitating fear, I offer something I’ve never offered before...a work in progress. I’m tempted to make all kinds of excuses for it..explain what I know is wrong with it at this point...but all I’m going to say is that it’s in its pre-school stage of development. I intend to post a few more photos as it grows up. In the meantime, I hope that if you, like me, have some unreasonable fears that are holding you back, you’ll find a way to gently ease yourself out, past, or through them. My theory is that bringing a fear into the open will diminish it. Won’t it be neat if it works for both of us?

ON LIVING A POST-BRAIN TUMOR LIFE

An acquaintance asked me a question a few days ago. "Was your experience with your brain tumor a life changing event?" I've been thinking about that question a lot. Short answer: No. After all, there was never a question of malignancy, and the "surgery" was by gamma knife...no real knives involved, so I can’t say that the past six months have been the cause of in any major changes in my life. However, I am aware of some changes in perspective, one of which involves time. I've spent many hours thinking about how I've had the rare (to me) opportunity to look through the looking glass. What I saw was the reality of how relatively little time I have left on this planet. Don't get me wrong--"relatively" is the key word here. I'm not being maudlin, merely realistic. But I'm in my mid-60's. It’s a good guess that two-thirds of my life are behind me. So...just what did my Great Brain Zap teach me about time? Nothing that all philosophers, novelists, and poets haven't already said: We don't live forever. Use time wisely. But it took the Great Brain Zap to get me beyond a superficial awareness of that philosophy and into living it. Here’s an example: I no longer feel guilty about putting a wanna-do before a gotta-do. Six months ago I never would have read a novel at 10:00 in the morning. Start a painting at 4:00 in the afternoon? Certainly not! That's supper-cookin' time. I learned my mother’s lessons were well...but they no longer fit my life. Supper doesn't always have to be ready by 5:00, nor do I have to be the person in charge of its preparation. Another example: I'm no longer willing to suffer fools gladly. No longer am I willing to spend time with the casual acquaintance whose main topic of conversation is him/herself. You know the kind of person I'm speaking of: "Enough about me; let's talk about you. What do you think of me?" This last one really surprises me: Six months ago I never would have excused myself from tedious conversations with people I hardly know. In fact, I never would have had the gumption to be so honest as to write those lines. No...no earth-shattering changes. But I now know in ways I didn't know before the truth of a favorite quote by Anna Quindlan: "The time we are afforded to find happiness and satisfaction cannot be spared or wasted...whenever possible, dreams must be pursued, not deferred."

ON LIVING WITH A BRAIN TUMOR Day 59: Abandoning Control

"Fortress"
Mixed Media Collage
by Judy Westergard
Giclee reprints available through
FineArtAmerica.com
(click on image)

Surprisingly, I’ve not been second-guessing my decision to go with the “watchful waiting” option that my neurosurgeon had given me. After all, I can change my mind and opt for radiation, should I decide that that’s the better choice. But radiation, which comes with its own set of alarming, potential side effects, can’t be reversed. So yes, I’m content to watch and wait. Nonetheless, this watching and waiting stuff does have its downside which for me is not having closed the door, the result of which is the occasional anxiety attack. Never before have I been so aware of my control freak tendencies. So I’m trying something new: total abandon at my easel. I’ve been playing with the messiest stuff I could think of: mixed media collage. And I have to admit, I finally feel quite relaxed! I can’t control this form of painting any more than I can control my future, and yet I like this form of art as much as I like the total exactitude of replicating a leaf. I think I’ve finally learned something: Life doesn’t have to be predictable in order to find its joys.

ON LIVING WITH A BRAIN TUMOR Day 41: Wishing for Certainty

Waiting Rooms
by Judy Westergard
Oil on canvas
All rights reserved
Giclee prints available (click on picture)

I've always loved kits. I still have fond memories of walking eight blocks to the local craft store with Karen, Mary Lee and Joanie. There was more than enough there forboys: model cars, planes and boats in shiny boxes. Grown-ups looked at brushes and paints. Kids younger than I begged parents for boxes of pristine Crayolas and untouched coloring books. My girlfriends and I spent a good portion of our weekly allowances on embroidery floss, cotton dishtowels, and iron-on designs of chickens. But what I really lusted after were kits, especially the paint-by-number kits. Boxed sets of these promises of artistic perfection sang a siren's song so strong that my birthday money didn't stay long in my pocket. Armed with cash, I purchased a kit. The picture on the box was one I'd been lusting after for several months: a tropical ocean bay surrounded by palm trees, sand, and seabirds. A strange choice for an 11-year-old who'd lived her life in mid-America, nonetheless I knew that I was meant to paint this picture. It held so much more promise than cross-stitched chickens. Finally at home and in my favorite work space (the kitchen of the unused second floor of my parents' duplex), I peeled off the cellophane packaging and opened the box. Rows of tiny plastic containers held oil paints, each assigned a number that corresponded to the canvas' black-and-white outlines. The hairs on the two small brushes reflected the overhead light. All those colors! All that potential! I dipped my brush into the azure blue of Color #3 and went at it. And that, of course, is when reality hit. After 45 minutes of concentration (15 of which were spent trying to thin overly dried oil paints), I was invariably disappointed with my creation. Why, I'd seen better work in the coloring books of my neighbor's first-grader! And yet...and yet...every time I managed to acquire the proper sum of money, I'd buy another kit armed with the conviction that this time my painting would match the one on the box. The allure of those kits is probably no mystery to anyone reading this, but it took me a long, long while to figure it out: I want certainty. Even when I know it's not possible, I want, if not a guarantee of success, at least its likelihood. I feel that way with my art, and I feel that way with this brain tumor. I want certainty. I want guarantees. I want to know that what I start will have a successful ending. But just like with my paintings (which often don't come close to what I'd envisioned when I dip my brush into the colors), my brain tumor isn't predictable, either. And while uncertainty -- both in my painting and with my tumor -- is sometimes uncomfortable, it's taking me down some interesting paths.

ON LIVING WITH A BRAIN TUMOR: Day 14, The Crash

"Namaste"
by Judy Westergard
pastel on paper
all rights reserved
giclee reprints available through
FineArtAmerica.com

I experienced my first major emotional crash yesterday. Even though I expected it, it came as a surprise. A sense of overwhelming sadness. Inertia. I spent most of the day doing nothing other than stare into space and play endless games of Solitaire, all the while thinking that I should/could be painting, gardening, knitting, hiking...any number of things that seven years of retirement have let me do whenever I wanted. But no, there I sat, alternately staring at the cards and into space.
But then yesterday was the first day I’ve experienced symptoms beyond a few minutes. I've alluded in previous entries to my ability to disavow all that this lump in my head might imply. Cheerful denial is easy for me when there's nothing going on to remind one of reality. What was so puzzling about all of this is that I was fully aware that I was acquiescing to this mood (which, by the way, happily broke with my husband’s magic words, "Let's eat out"). So today I went back to one of the three books I'm reading. From Seeking Peace by Mary Pipher: "All of our lives, we must keep appointments we did not make.... (Yet) we can choose the way we deal with our fate." Perhaps I should write those words down on multiple Post-It Notes and place them around the house. I sure could have used them yesterday.

LIVING WITH A BRAIN TUMOR, Day 10: Trying to Get to Reality

On the Rocks
by Judy Westergard
Pastel on paper
All rights reserved

"I think you're very brave," a friend said to me as we panted through this morning's hour of deep water aerobics at the YWCA. "Brave, schmave," I thought to myself. I've got nothing to be brave about because none of this is really happening to me! At least, that's how I've felt for the past day or so. No symptoms equal no problems in my WWABT world (Woman With A Brain Tumor; pronounced "wabbit"). I can't say the same is true on those days when my vision goes wonky and my head hurts, but right now I get to continue in my self-elected position as Governor of the Great State of Denial. It's this disconnect that got me to thinking about the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the seemingly never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and any number of other challenges we face. If you've read this far, you're probably asking yourself what the oil spill could possibly have in common with a brain tumor. Bear with me as I try to make this clearer. As long as I'm symptom free, my tumor doesn't affect me. If it doesn't affect me, I have no emotional reaction to it. And without an emotional reaction it's not real. Oh sure, I know it's there, but that's an intellectual and therefore easy-to-deal-with awareness. That seems much like Afghanistan, Iraq, and even the oil gushing off our southern coast. None of my friends or family is in the service. None of them live anywhere close to the Gulf of Mexico. And consequently, like my tumor, these tragic challenges seem remote. If there's a lesson to be learned here, maybe it has to do with the realization that one needn't be emotionally involved in order to deal with a problem. I can write to my political reps regarding the wars. I can send letters to the editor of my newspaper. I can donate money to the relief organizations that are assisting with the oil spill. As for my tumor, I'm ready to deal with that, too. Soon. Maybe right after my next doctor appointment.