Searching for a feeling

As I was shuffling along the bike path by the dry Rillito River riverbed, I came to a realization that has helped me put another piece of the puzzle of my life into place. Let me set the scene. The riverbed is an energetic entity in this desert town. Its dry sand, green trees, scrubby bushes, and plastic garbage are home to all kinds of wildlife. For instance, last night at 1:25 a.m. I heard a coyote howling close by. It was probably in the wash out back of the trailer but it sounded like it was outside my window. Four husky cough-like barks followed by a perfect-pitch howl, five times in a row. I almost got up to go outside. Then I thought, are you nuts? I did that last time a dog barked in the wash. Do you know how cold it is in the desert in the middle of the night? I don't either, but it's not warm.  

Anyway, the riverbed is an amazing landscape. I enjoy walking on the bike path, dodging bike riders, skateboarders, and runners. During the day, the sun is warm for about two hours. The air feels great, especially if the wind is calm. Toward sundown the temperature starts dropping back toward the upper-30s, so I'm learning to walk while the sun is still high in the sky. The downside is, UV rays. The upside is, warm. I will always seek warmth. I'm somewhat like a lizard in that respect.

So, what did I figure out? Thanks for asking. 

First, let me insert this funny drawing that sums up the week. I drew this in 1998, as if I knew that today would be the day I would need it. 

There you go. Yeah, that seems about right.  

So, okay, thanks for waiting. I am going to tell you my little epiphany. 

But first, a little back story.

When I left home in 1977, I knew my destination. My friend Jenny had preceded me to Los Angeles, and there was no place else I wanted to be. So off I went to L.A. I stayed there for twenty years. 

In 1997, I moved back to Portland. Again, I knew my destination. Where else would I have gone? My family was there. It made sense to return home to clean up the mess of my young adulthood. After some time, I was recruited to be my mother's caregiver. You know the story. 

When I was set free in 2021, once again, I had a destination in mind: Tucson. I'd visited this city once thirty-some-odd years ago. I had a friend here. Actually more than one friend, it turned out, which was a good thing for me, because the first friend died. The second friend gave me a place to land, and now as luck would have it, we are housemates. Pure miraculous divine chance. (Is that a thing?)

Unfortunately for me, my inner ears aren't happy with the desert climate. The relentless fluctuations in air pressure keep me constantly unbalanced. I'm very careful, but I recognize that out here in the desert, I'm a perpetual fall risk. I don't care where I die, but this is not where I want to break a hip. There are other reasons Tucson is not the ideal home for me, but the air pressure variations are the main culprit. I've been researching almost since the day I arrived, trying to figure out where I should go next.

So, here I am, walking along the path, wondering where my next destination will be, and it occurs to me that what I seek is not a destination. What I seek is a feeling. Two feelings in one, really: A physical feeling (inner ear equilibrium) and an emotional feeling (call it . . . serenity). I can't choose a city on a map and move there, hoping that the city will give me the feelings I desire. I need to go out into the world in search of the feelings and then look around and see where I landed.

I'm not starting from total scratch, in case you are wondering. I mean, I could just hang a map on the wall, close my eyes, and throw some darts. I've heard of people doing that. It sounds like fun, but what if, once again, I end up in a place that upsets my inner ears and doesn't make me happy? I'm too old to waste time moving the possessions I still possess from place to place, as if affordable housing were hanging on trees. 

Darts on a map won't work but I do have some data, as I've shared in this blog before. Sea level is least likely to have huge changes in air pressure (except for Florida hurricanes, East coast nor'easters, and Pacific Northwest wind storms). My best bet is Florida (sans hurricanes) and southern California. I bet you can tell which way I will let the wind blow me. 

There's no predicting where exactly I will end up. It's very tempting to look at a map, study the housing opportunities in a city, and say, there, that place, that is where I will go. It worked out when I moved to L.A., but it didn't work when I moved to Tucson. I can't know how my inner ears will react until I go to a place, so choosing a place without visiting first would be . . .  I was going to say nuts, but let's just say, it would be inadvisable. 

I can hear you saying, Carol, nobody in their right mind would choose a city and move there without checking it out first. You are no doubt correct. I never claimed to be in my right mind. I'm getting nuttier by the minute. As a person who up till now has planned long, pondered hard, and taken action much much much later with great caution, I can barely fathom the idea of packing up and leaving without a destination. Who does that? Me, apparently. 

Destined for greatness

Howdy Blogbots. I'm happy to announce, my glitchy heart keeps chugging along, dragging the rest of me with it. I guess I follow where the heart leads me—haven't I always done that, isn't that what making art is all about, following our bliss? Who knew I was supposed to take it literally. Like, my heart is pounding out the beat of my life. When it stops, I stop.

The good news (according to my cardiologist) is my heart is misfiring but not so often or so badly that there's anything to be done about it yet. The other good news is that my upcoming CT scan was postponed until after Christmas because the machine was broken. I'm over it, this whole IV needle in the arm thing, this let's shoot you full of iodine dye thing. Probably I'll be fine.

Now that I'm probably going to live a while longer, I have had the luxury of thinking about other things.

I was thinking the other day that I have paid a high premium for the privilege of eschewing a "normal" working life for a life of creativity. At each major crossroads I encountered, I said no to money and yes to creativity. I never found a road that led to both at the same time. For me, it was always one or the other. 

Oh, sure, I had jobs, as do we all. I've had many. Among my many jobs, I've been a waitress, an administrative assistant, a gardener, a bus driver, a graphic designer, a seamstress, a warehouse worker, an activities assistant in a nursing home, and a teacher. Any one of those jobs could have been a career. But nope, not for me, I was born retired, which is to say, when a career opportunity crossed my path, I ran in the opposite direction. I said no, not to be stubborn, but because I knew I was destined for something else. I could have gone into marketing or marketing research. I could have pursued a teaching career. I could have worked my way into nursing home administration. I could have been an executive secretary for some dude in a suit. Crossroads that would have most likely led to a much different life: nicer cars, maybe a house, some money in the bank, and a healthy retirement fund.

Back at those crossroads, I would have said I was destined for a life of fulfilling creativity, as a painter, most likely, or as a famous fashion illustrator or clothing designer. Now, years later, with not much road left in front of me, I can say all those refusals have produced a life of poverty and struggle. I admit, I am a little sad. I can't say I regret my choices. I would probably do it again, if I had a do-over. I chose it, it chose me, who knows? They aren't kidding when they say do what you love and you'll probably starve. 

I can't tell if I'm simply addicted to poverty or if this is just what happens to some creative people in a society that doesn't value or support creative low-income earners. I've never made the kind of art that sells, and I wasn't willing to adapt my art to suit someone else's esthetic. I guess you can say I chose this life because my brain made me do it. That makes as much sense as anything else people have diagnosed me with. I always wondered if my brain was trying to kill me, but maybe it's just life with a thousand tiny knives making a thousand tiny cuts.

I'm too old and tired to whine about it (except here, sorry). There's nothing to be done. When I find myself wading into a pity puddle, I stop and get busy writing. It beats all the alternatives.  

Stop making sense

If I could sum up my primary problem in one sentence, it would be this: I can't stop trying to make sense. Sense of my life, sense of others, sense of life in general. In other words, I keep trying to figure it all out. If I would just stop trying to make sense of everything, if I could stop trying to manage and control everything, maybe I could relax, maybe I could take things as they come. 

Do I want to relax? Thanks for asking. Apparently not, otherwise I would stop trying to make sense of everything.

The gentle yet brutal vacuum known as Swedish death cleaning appears to be sucking up the last dregs of my past. In my ongoing quest to make sense of my current so-called life, I spent part of the day purging a few more of my possessions. I persevered, even though I felt a little short of breath today. Either my heart is not pumping right or the air here in Minimal Town is growing more rarified. Am I rising in elevation as I jettison unneeded ballast, like a human hot air balloon? No wonder my inner ears are going crazy.

Today the item on the death-cleaning chopping block was my old mailbox. You might think, Carol, really? You dragged a mailbox with you all the way from Oregon? What kind of nut are you? 

Thanks for asking. I'm the kind of nut who paints mailboxes and then enjoys receiving mail in them for eighteen years and then decides when it is time to move away, that maybe there will be a place in my future life for my hand-painted mailbox. 

That kind of nut.

When I got to Tucson, it was pretty clear there was no place here in the desert for my hand-painted mailbox. Most apartments already have mailboxes. Even if I had needed a new mailbox, the colors definitely reflect a Northwest vibe—no Southwest desert colors on this thing. It's mostly orange blobs on a green-blue background, with some purple in there to make it pop, somewhat faded after eighteen years weathering Portland weather. I don't actually remember painting the mailbox, although they are definitely my colors, but I remember building the hand-painted wooden base with which I installed it on the metal railing outside my door at the Love Shack. It was a cantilevered contraption built of wood and bolts (also painted purple, orange, and greenish blue). The base kept my mailbox in an upright position until the day I dismantled it. I threw away the base and packed up the mailbox. Yes, I dragged it with me all the way from Oregon to Arizona. 

Today was the day I decided to let it go. I took a photo of the mailbox and put it into the give-away pile. 

As it turns out, there might be a place here for that mailbox after all. My housemate rescued the mailbox from the give-away box. With a stencil and a little green or blue spray paint, the number on the front can be revised to reflect the address of the Art Trailer. The Love Shack mailbox will live on.

I can't really express how happy and relieved I feel about the repurposing (I call it the resurrection) of my old mailbox. I have berated myself multiple times for bringing so many ridiculous and useless possessions with me from Oregon. Looking back, I realize I was out of my mind with panic, grief, and fear. It's no wonder I made some foolish choices. Some of the possessions have been easy to let go. The mailbox was one of the last pieces that had no purpose here, other than to remind me of what I've lost. 

I think the mailbox represents a time in my life when I had things more or less figured out. I wasn't exactly thrilled with my life in Portland, but I knew my place in it, and things made sense to me. I knew whose daughter I was. I knew whose employee I was. I had plans, and I was getting things done. 

I always knew that time of my life would eventually end. Employers go bankrupt, cats go to heaven, mold infects apartments, and old people get dementia and then die of an aneurysm. Life (and death) happen. I guess that is the only sort of sense I can derive from my experience. Life and death happen. I experience things, but I do not control them. For reasons I can't explain, it gives me hope that my old mailbox will live on after I'm gone.

Life's little losses still linger

I don't have much to say tonight. I don't have time, either. It's crunch time for my Spanish dissertator. In any case, when work falls into my inbox, I usually jump right on it, unless I'm already booked with other work, which was the case this week. I can only work on one project at a time. First come, first served. 

Truthfully, I would rather be left alone. 

There remain many unresolved threads in my mind. Are my neurons getting mired in sticky threads? I fear so. I sense time is closing in on me. How do they put it? I think I may be running out of road. I need to get out there and see some of it before they take away my car keys.

To that end (escape), I feel compelled to minimize, downsize, death clean. Despite my intentions, I still slip up from time to time. For example, I bought two things this week: a heating pad to keep my feet warm while I work and sleep and a new seat for my bicycle. (Can I say "my" bicycle now? I still think of it as Linda's, even though she is dead now and she hardly ever rode it anyway.) 

These two things are immediately and measurably improving the quality of my life. I guess most people would say that is money well spent.

The heart monitor results are in. I'm not trained to read an EKG but even I can see that some of those squiggly lines look like an earthquake on a Richter scale. Is that normal? I suspect not but I'll find out for sure when I have a sitdown with my cardiologist. 

I'm not used to thinking of myself as a person with a heart problem. That is someone else's problem, not mine. Dad's problem. My cousin Dave's problem (he's still on the roof). 

Most of my friends have had Covid-19. My New Mexico friend just tested positive today. I feel some anxiety for her. It's hard to predict how sick someone will get. One friend was down for two weeks or more. One friend bounced back pretty fast. I worry all the time.

So far I have managed to dodge the Covid bug by staying away from crowds of people, which is not hard for me, given that I don't like crowds of people. I don't travel except alone by car. I don't go to family gatherings because I have no family here. I don't socialize with more than one friend at a time, and that almost always occurs out of doors. I wear an N95 mask to shop. I shop fast, like a guerilla in the jungle. I don't lollygag, I get in and get out. 

Besides not getting Covid (yet), I also have the superpower of invisibility. Nobody notices an older poorly dressed woman wearing a face mask. 

It's great to be old and invisible. However, even though humans don't see me, Covid can. I guess people are over it. I'm stuck in an endless loop. I go through the litany of losses to explain why my brain and body are failing: cat, Covid, Mom, moving. My little life losses still linger. So tired.