A little cave goes a long way

Hi, it’s me, howling from the back of the cave. I’ve made the cave rather cosy over the years. I have spent a lot of time here in my eras, some eras requiring more cave-dwelling than others, but none ever completely free of it.

I try to keep my precious things handy, in the cave. My implements of life within reach. This laptop charges on the floor by the bed. There are candles and pretty stones and tea in the cave. There is no comfortable seating in the cave, unfortunately for me and anyone else. However, visitors do not get invited into the cave. I have wondered if I would like visitors, but because I cannot decide, they do not come.

Milwaukee is good cave company

It’s getting dark in the cave now, with winter coming. In my genes, in the record of my foremothers, I have come to understand that caves are a recurring theme, and that sometimes one has to retreat into her cave, for many reasons. My cave paintings are pieces of art by beloved artists, women all, and they are windows into the imaginings of others, into the caves of others at times.

In the summer, I went to an art retreat for people who have had cancer. It happened to be all women, the eight clients, with two teachers. I have a block with art and I know where it was born. It was born alongside me, to my artist mother. She birthed us both, me and the block. And it never mattered because all my life I was a writer, and I wrote, and that did not agitate the block, safely in its own wheelhouse.

But being in a cave can be boring, can be lonely. And writing is different than art, and here’s how it is different for me. With writing, you type your little idea on the page (or use a pen if it’s journal, or your thumbs if it’s poetry). My process is very linear. I start at the beginning, panic at the middle, and die at the end. I am a fan of the drama, you know. I do write that way though, I always have. Some writers start with their favourite parts and then piece it together with connective tissue like a quilt. I like writing the boring parts, so writing a book is just a really long way of reading a book, with all the ebb and flow and denouement and crescendo exactly where I like it, because I am my audience.

Here’s the thing: with writing, you erase the mistakes. They are simply gone. You take a page that’s been written, and you read it once and fix it, read it again out loud and fix it again. Let friends see it, if you can get the word out from your cave. Fix it further. When you feel it’s finished, you have the written creation, all errors not just invisible, but disappeared. Therefore the process of creation is one of removal, excision. The words look and feel good because the words that didn’t were taken away, and soon I forget what I even began with. All that’s left is what I liked to leave.

And art is a different experience. Instead of beginning to end, art is bottom to top, from the canvas out. There are layers in a piece of art that you may never even see when the piece is finished, but it adds texture, or builds the piece up, or simply helps the artist decide what the piece will be. I’m thinking of acrylic painting now, because that is mostly what my mom used and mostly what I like to use. When I’ve finished a painting, I know where my mistakes are. And I know whether my intended effect has been achieved based on how I dealt with the mistakes. Do they drag the piece down, causing a jangling medley of not-quite-connected concepts? Are they invisible to the eye but present, a cracked foundation upholding a masterful house? Do they add to the piece, a happy accident that brought vivre to a desert?

When I write, I erase my mistakes. When I paint, I build on them.

There is something psychologically challenging about this. For me, I am not too precious about my words. I can tell pretty easily if it’s good or necessary or valuable or unique. I might like something I wrote and know it’s not working for the piece. It it’s lucky, it gets to become something else. Usually, I just assume I am capable of bringing enough combinations of pleasantly formed morsels into to the world that I don’t stress over a ‘Select-All, Delete’. When painting, however, I’ve hard to learn to live with the mistakes, knowing they are always there beneath the layers: that one a problem of perspective, the foreground is too fore. That one required a phone call to my mom, a simple fix, reassurance. That one remains on the top-most layer, the curve of the hill not in balance with the rest of the image, too dark against the background to be noticeable, but the edging too bright for the where the light source is.

Glowing from without

I’ve been working on a new writing project, from the cave. It’s called Local Girl Liveblogs the Apocalypse, and it’s coming out as a weekly-ish newsletter through Substack. It’s about we do when the world falls apart – it’s about how we come together, where we go, and how we grow gardens with ashes. It’s a few chapters in and I have lovely, scary ideas about where it will go.

Sometimes, though, I wish I were painting. I have a lot of paint supplies, I have the space (ish – it is a cave, after all), and I have the creative impulse, the urge. I have an artist mother who lives in an adjoining cave. But I have a block. I know how to make good writing (doesn’t mean I always do, but I do know how) but I don’t know how to make good art. I do know what makes art good. That’s almost harder.

I’m off work right now. I had a ureteral stent installed and, just like the last stent, it has made my body an unpleasant place to be. The stakes are higher because obviously the problem, which is scar tissue from surgeries impeding on the ureter and blocking flow from my kidney to my bladder, was not resolved last time. So I’ve been offered a range of unpleasant options (which is what cancer and all its sequelae are in a nutshell). I can have a stent for life, swapped periodically. I can have a balloon installed, frequent visits to the Urologist to blow up the balloon, cause micro-fissures to my ureter which will then heal, eventually leading to a (hopefully) permanently functioning ureter. There was something about a laser, debriding the scar tissue, and lastly the ‘cut-and-paste’ option where they cut the be-scarred section of ureter off entirely and reattach it at a newly created entrance to the bladder.

Cancer has made me an expert at choosing the best of bad choices. A lot of life is like that, isn’t it?

Before I had to take a leave from work, I had applied for a management position at the women’s shelter where I work. I have been there almost a decade and working with abused women is my life’s work. I have always done this and I know I always will. Although I was confident in my chances, the universe was there to lovingly correct me. I did not get an interview, which deeply wounded me. I was afraid that my experience with cancer and having to take time off to deal with its myriad cascading health issues would make me a bad bet – especially as I have been open about having Lynch Syndrome and the high likelihood of additional cancers. Agonizingly, even if this reality managed to not impact their decision, it does not elude me that as soon as the new manager started (a woman I respect and believe can uphold the feminist ideals we espouse), I was off work on a short leave because the stent has so fractured my capabilities.

Finding a use for everything… Collecting seeds

The cave is lonely, my friends. And the stent has stunted so many of the things that bring me joy – so many of the things that keep me alive. There is pain, though there is always pain. We heal when we sleep, and I haven’t been sleeping. My blood pressure randomly skyrocketed and all my health concerns were put aside to deal with that emergency, which seems mostly under control now, but of course came with many lifestyle changes I did not like being forced to change. I have considered myself recovered from disordered eating for many years. But when they told me to monitor my sodium, it was only 3 days before I started tracking and restricting my calories, too. A hard, fast relapse into disordered behaviours that I haven’t seen in ages.

My heart rate has jumped from the 60s to the 90s and no matter what I do – meditative breathing, lying still in bed for hours (recall, insomnia), it isn’t dropping. Because of menopause, I was launched into a new stage of life, one my body did not get to prepare for. I can’t take HRT because of my type of cancer, though I have been waiting for a call from the Menopause Clinic for more than six months (this is my second referral to them, after they apparently discharged me following one phone call without answering the questions I had for them). I feel like I had thirty good years in this body and at least I was grateful, but comfort and ease will never return. I hope I’m wrong.

A second blueberry bloom in the fall

It is sounding pretty sad here, in my cave. And it is. And I am lonely, a lot. People are giving me space because I am running around screaming that I am so tired, so very tired, and hurting. Being given space is like… being placed lovingly in a crystal bubble. I wanted this, right? It’s hard for me to do much and I can’t do anything for longer than half an hour or so before I have to lie down. I can kind of see you all, and sometimes we wave, but no one can come in and I can’t get out. I don’t know what’s good for me. If this is just how it is for me, chronic pain and insomnia and health issues, then I don’t want to live in a crystal bubble, I want to find my way back to you and back to the world. But I am hoping for relief, that this is a blip and there’s a baseline I can return to.

At this point, most of my once-acute pain is considered chronic. If things like nerve pain don’t resolve after a few years, it’s not likely they will. I have osteoarthritis in my lower back, an impinged nerve that makes my left leg feel heavy and tingly and sore all the time. I am an indiscriminate curator of disparate ailments. And whenever I go to the hospital, explaining the interconnectedness of my cancer to every current issue takes a whiteboard with accompanying charts and diagrams, and don’t forget the handout.

I am bored of my story. Tell me yours? If you’re reading this, please share some news with me. I see you walk by the entrance of the cave and I miss you. I’ve never felt like I’m screaming into the void, just screaming from it.

Well, back to my cave. At least I have cookies.