Around the foot of the bed a gaggle of white coats has congregated. The situation is urgent, critical. They’ve decided to operate tomorrow, Father’s Day.
The evening before yesterday, we were in the hot-tub, afterwork unwinding. He looked in my eyes and saw yellow.
All day, I was in bed, my body expanding… the swelling, which started on one foot a year ago has spread. I’m putting on several pounds a day in water weight. If you saw me, you’d think I was just another overweight person, but no. I’m dying.
Decisive and wise, informed and on point, my husband took me immediately to the Emergency Room. I saw the sunset from inside the car. We arrived and were admitted into the hospital.
My roommate is in pain. She screams, yells, hollers for morphine. “Junkie,” I snap judge her. She is pretty, like me. Plump and sexy. She has a Puerto-Rican accent, but I bet she doesn’t speak Spanish. She is from New York. She is visiting family… she ate something, she was on a hike… whatever. “Ghetto bitch.” I think, listening in on her telephone conversation(s).
The room is divided in two with curtains suspended from the ceiling. Her bed controls the door and the flow of traffic and noise.
My bed is wheeled to the other side of the room, by the window. Here, I will sleep.
Sleep is impossible with people streaming in and out of the room, all night. They take your “vitals,” they give you pills. The two IV “trees,” machines which monitor the flow of drugs and saline into the blood, beep, if our intravenous drips are tangled. All night, the two trees took turns beeping. Nurses, rush in the room to stop the beeping.
After a few hours, I feel that the hospital is making me sick. I want to go home and sleep, recover, from this ordeal. Morning arrives and I’m ready to die. The room is still, for a second, before…
They come in, one by one, and then a team, I’m overwhelmed, too tired to lift my head, they tell me what will happen, what might happen, and what happened—according to them. I don’t listen. I don’t care. I’m busy. Dying.
So… this is what it looks like, THE END. Soon, I will be back in my father’s arms, we will go for strolls, and wait, in bliss, until my husband and children join us! Finally, I will get to know my grand parents and ancestors… all the Africans, they wait for me to join them. Clearly, they won’t be waiting long.
Father, Daddy, the black and beautiful man that trained me to be me, to thrive, has visited me, us my husband and I, yesterday and today. He assures us. Yet… I’m not ready. I’ve got a plan. I’ve got a lot of living to do. I’m not going, don’t make me! I want to raise my own kids. Forty years is not enough.
En masse, the Doctors leave and Eileen, Irish and fierce, open and alarmed, Best friend, arrives. Just seeing her cheers me up! We start to talk and I forget where I am, a nurse (on her rounds) joins us, and it feels like a party. NO WAY AM I DYING! No way.
This is just the beginning. I’m at the start of my adult life. Maturity is around the corner! I’m going to be fifty, sixty, and so on. I’m going to be a grandmother. That is the plan, the vision, The Dream.
Husband arrives as best friend leaves, says “Goodnight,” and I’m left with my roommate. She has decided to vomit, all night. “Why don’t you call a nurse?” I ask her. “I’m waiting till the morning,” She tells me. I put on my Bose speakers, the noise cancellation ones, another death bed gift from Hartmuth and I shut out my roommate’s hacking and spewing until morning.
Morning comes and the day speeds by. I don’t remember much, but they say, “The Operation was successful.”
A different room,a different roommate, each an experience, a window into another world. I drift. I float. High atop the crest of a Tsunami. I’m on a mattress in a narrow hospital bed on wheels. It folds up and down and it has a magic wand, upon which, you can call a surly nurse.
Surely.
“Hello! I’m dying.” No. I won’t admit it. Death is not part of my plan. I’m ok with a slow easy death from old age, not now. Now, I am busy. Writing. Painting pictures. Reading. Right now, the bulk of my dwindling energy is yoked to the privilege of taking care of my offspring and willing myself to live another day.
Roommate Number Two is young, perhaps a bit lighter shade of medium honey brown skin, a shade lighter than Cappuccino Me. I see her as they roll me in. I take her picture with my mind. Snap! Her story becomes mine for as long as we share this room. The curtain does nothing to separate us. This instance of forced intimacy, being a shared room while receiving visits from one’s doctors and nurses, friends and family is a radical change from the sheltered reality I know.
My dreams are torture. I go to hell and visit with an evil Southern Minister and his all white choir and congregation. I end up drowning in a flood cause by washing the plastic Negro soup dispenser.
Roommate Number Two is married to a young dark skinned man with a dollar sign tattooed on his neck. Her mother, a round quiet woman with blond hair, shaped around her head in a sleek bonnet, and her intense, and palpably, devoted husband, visit her. He spends the night, sitting in the chair by her beside. They barely talk. Thankfully. You can feel the quiet passion between them. When they whisper it is of their children. She wants to go home.
Daylight. Her t.v. wakes up. Desperate Housewives of The O.C. is on. I listen, curious. I want to learn. Those women are… well, whatever. I don’t understand. I sink back into “Inheritance,” a novel set in China, which I am slowly… until the doctors come.
A Gaggel of Doctors flock at the foot of my bed. They plan out my treatment. I listen. Scared. Doctors are really intimidating, lab coats akimbo. En masse they march into the room and nest. I am but a little bird, waiting to be told what is right, what is happening to my body!
I’m expanding. Each day I put on weight, no from food, but fluid… trapped under my skin. I am a prisoner in a huge body, now. I can not see my feet. Every step I take, is the Odyssey. Effort. Pain forms new shapes on the edges of my mind. I’m dying.
That night, I dream of a vast grave site. Deep tones of gray and unending shades of eerie blackness… There are tombstones. On has an open grave, lit bright, like a disco, with stairs going down. I fear this gaudy hole is calling me. The light pulsates bight, a green tinge to it. It whispers, “Come!” Death, oily and seductive, has come to lay claim on me.
“Pain!” she screeched. Her voice the chalk on the board. I glued myself to the bed and hoped to disappear. Not happening.
I caught a glimpse of her between the curtain that they strung up to divide the room and protect our privacy. She was pretty, a very similar shade of brown to mine, medium warm sassy brown skin, a little plump, juicy looking. Her phone blurted, “Hey Gorgeous, you got a message!” Every few minutes… she had the t.v. on to a surgery show, close-up of the insides of people, being operated upon. She returned calls, explaining how she’d landed in the hospital, again.
“The Pain!” Her wail deepened. I felt pain with her. I felt my own pain and I felt embarrassed for her feeling such acute pain. Pain is private. Isn’t it? Her Doctor offered her more morphine. “No.” She said. “If I do too much I get diarrhea for three days, that happened to me last time I was in the hospital.”
Just then, I fixed my gaze out on the bleak industrial moonscape. A squat box of concrete with shutter windows and turbines, the lobby of a hotel on the moon, an interplanetary loading station… a boy on a skate board pierces my moon fantasy, just as he is overtaken by a sudden jogging blond, with dark sunglasses. Surely, a spy. Exactly then, the sun flowers arrive. Sunflowers. Blazing yellow. Zinging bright. How appropriate! How Van Gogh! Inspired and SO KIND! FLOWERS! And the smile the pretty girl who delivered the flowers gave me, as she zipped into the room and put them down on the windowsill blocking the view of the moon, is something special, too… this moment sparkles.
Here I am in the hospital, again. How did it happen that a part of my story became about being really ill? The idea seems foreign odd to me. I’m so healthy! I’m upbeat. I’m optimistic. I’m not the cancer type. Yet, I’m deep in treatment. Sometimes, I feel like I’m facing a tsunami with nothing but a rubber ducky for protection. This is scary and yeah, it hurts. Ouch! I’m tired of being here. This stupid machine. Beeping. I have to take it with me to the bathroom, where they measure my urine.
Miraculously, I managed to pop into Manhattan twice in one month! My first visit, the city had burst into color. Cherry blossoms, tender pinks dominated the street trees. Yes! It was a beautiful visit, spent mostly on the Upper West Side. That trip was gratifying. Yet, on my more recent journey to Manhattan in May, I spent time in intimate discussion, closeness with two of my favorite people in the world.
The Mysterious Madame L., a beauty with a superior mind, and Mr. Constantine Finehouse, concert pianist. In town to participate in a clinical trail at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Hospital. Seeing my little Columbia University fellows, my comrades on extensive romps all over Manhattan, now grown up and immersed in their respective professions, one in the Law and the other in Music, is heartwarming. I came back to The West Coast ready to cope with the reality of my cancer complications, medications, and DRAMA. I returned ready to take action to stop the cancer progression which would soon threatened my life.
On The Go!
The trip to New York City was altogether healing and I managed to cram a good amount of art viewing, with a visit to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and into the embrace of my dearest friends. Madame L, graciously, invested days into lounging in my grateful company at one-hotel-or-another on Lexington Ave. Champagne in no short supply… We had a great time, as usual. Reading, agreeing, and finding beautiful details to savor. We ate and walked, talked and listened. We reveled in the BLISS that is pure friendship, understanding. Yet, I was tired. Fatigued. Anxious and ill, very ill. She made everything better by being with me. We barely noticed that I vomited, after every lavish meal. Together, my inability to move, became lounging rather than aching. Thank goodness, Madame L was there, keeping me company, sharing secrets, and showing me how flowers grow between cracks in city streets, the poetry of small gestures, and the beauty of sacred pennies (rusted with time and invested with meaning), AH! I love you, Madame L.
However, It was the Male Muse’s, Constantine Finehouse, who made my day with Cuban Lunch from a quick, bright, restaurant across the street from Memorial Sloan Kettering, Hospital. He had the right idea bringing his car and making sure I had food that speaks to my heart before retiring back into the hotel room’s spacious king sized bed. We slept. Exhausted.
In the evening, the gallant Finehouse, concert pianist out of Boston, very cool dude, went out and returned with chicken soup and the nastiest but most welcome “New York,” Cheesecake. What a thoughtful human! What a friend! He drove all the way down from Boston to take care of me on a vulnerable day of medical treatment. (I had no idea at the time that soon, I’d consider myself sprightly in comparison to my current shape.)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_Finehouse
Best Friends
The city, ever vibrant and packed with much to do was a backdrop to the intense days of conversation and camaraderie. One’s school chums, those met while picking up polish at Columbia University may be the very best remedy for whatever deficiencies in brisk, ardent, and inspiring connection which have afflicted my sensitive soul, lately. Mutual understanding is so precious a gift, exchanging it makes us rich. My New Yorker and Bostonian buddies, The Mysterious Madame L & the favored Mr. Constantine Finehouse, revered concert pianist, and long-term Talkinggrid supporter, made copious amounts of time to connect and cocoon with a very willing me. Ah!
Good times were had, dinner at Amelie on 8th street in the West Village, where that atmosphere was very French, followed by desert at one of my favorite places, since my teenage years, the utterly charming Cafe Reggio in the West Village!
At the Forager with lovely young woman, a new friend… more news later.
Saturday Brunch at The Forager, recommended by Blossom V, artist based in New York. There I met up with a young writer, a woman of talent and enormous appeal. We ate and then Madame L. returned to fetch me, and we returned to the gentle sweetness that is our very comfortable and sincere friendship.
I took time on Sunday morning to PoP into The Bliss Spa on Lexington, so close to my hotel for some Spa Time at The Bliss Spa, where I enjoyed the eucalyptus scrub, with viccii shower, and lemon sage mini-massage. Patricia, a former Cruise-Ship Entertainer, had a light touch and a warm heart, making me feel much better, for a moment. (Running out for a quick scrub is a must if you want to remain feeling, open and receptive to the beauty that is living, especially, on a whirlwind weekend spiked with medical drama, trip to New York City.
The Shield she wields looks like it has a big crack down the middle.
Astoundingly, Madame L. and I managed to hit The Pompeii Room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my absolute favorite places on Earth, before tripping into, “China: Through the Looking Glass,” a smashing, throbbing homage to the cult of cut, fabric, and history in the superb Fashion Exhibit that will knocked my porcelain socks OFF! In a few steps,we crashed into another world, each room was inspired and dark, lights focused on the embroidery, so tight as to bogle the mind, far away from the mundane, and into the temple of commerce where The Image of Fashion Design as a route is loudly tooted as a glorious path to personal salvation.
On Saturday Evening, I poured myself into a fine new knit dress and rolled west to Broadway, on my little black mule sling-backs, balancing, because I had tickets to see, Wolf Hall Part Two, “Bringing Up The Bodies,” the play is by author Hillary Mantel, a gem. The acting was stand out and the lead, an English stage actor, Ben Miles, carried the character of Thomas Moore rise to the height of power in the possibly unfair beheading of our eternal beloved bad good girl, the controversial, Anne Boylen.
The Mysterious Madame L.
When I wasn’t out buzzing around, I was resting in my hotel room. I’m sorry to say that I missed a meeting with a great artist and best on-line buddy. We had dinner party plans and I was supposed to be her date for the evening. She is one of my favorite people and it was a disappointment not to find the strength to make it to our planed meeting. I failed to find the strength to make it, instead having a bit of quality time hugging the toilet bowl… but, that happens when you are in advanced cancer treatment.
Every trip away is an adventure, yet going to one’s home town has a special warm and fuzziness to it unlike any other trot around the park… especially, when the park in question is Central Park. The timing was perfect. The Park was in majestic bloom.
The Tulips are Talking
Ah! The early mornings, before the tourists hit the streets in smartphone click click clicking mass, on those sacred terse weekdays, when you can glide across the park and take in all the little birds, big robins and very blue twittering songsters, before the surreal street performers have claimed the park benches and the under passes… New York has its pristine beauty.
Spring in His Step!
I spent a comfortable night at the Renaissance Hotel. The bed was firm, tub deep, and wall panelling elegant. If you must POP into the city for a moment this a a place you might flop, thereby not falling too far away from the comfort you are accustomed to. The brick wall view from my hotel window was a heartwarming reminder that not everyone gets to see, everything all the time. We must enjoy each brick’s presence, stately endurance.
A Comfortable Bed
The familiar walls of black trash bags, ever so smelly, have an unmistakeable punch. They strike you with an unavoidable whiff of truth. A reminder that posh and poor alike we all have refuse, release, and unthinkable exchanges with toilets and plumbing, dentists and beauticians. We are all potential concubines and conquistadors, no matter what or present costume or apparent rank.
In New York, as a necessity, every type of human rubs shoulders with every other, yet gulfs between the Haves and the Have Nots are so vitally expressed, a pulsing truth, transitory and undeniable illusion. Everyone has equal footing, the same chance of making onto the subway and off, again. There is a thrill of danger, even when it is not there. Not a single person tried to mug me. I walked, not late at night, but by myself… I look like a person a mugger might target, I image. But, no… no attempts were made.
A quick jaunt up to Harlem for dinner with a Yellow Belt, artist friend was easy and delicious. Harlem is now an international hot spot, packed with trendy restaurants, and well healed humans looking for fine French or other International cuisine. I love it! Must explore, more, on my next visit.
The lovely and inspiring, artist, Dee Shapiro!
The allure of lunch with artist Dee Shapiro got me down to Gramercy Park, to The National Arts Club, a venerated establishment which hosts regular exhibitions of artists work, and boasts a very elegant private member’s dining room. I ordered a visually stunning yellow and red beat salad, capped by baked goat cheese. Delicious! Over lunch we discussed art and family life.
Tiffany Glass skylight of National Arts Club Bar.
Astoundingly, I managed to sneak in lunch at Fred’s with the one and only James Katson. You know, the artist, antique’s dealer, man-about-town… Yes, Mr. Katson! He positively oozes talent. He transported me with stories of his wayward youth to far away corners in a London best forgotten, scary and tender. He performed the voices of men that lived as ghosts in their own lives. Haunted. Katson’s edge is very sharp and one feels a thrill being in his electric company.
Mr. James Katson is captivating.
We had the most fun drenched sober lunch two song birds could ever tweet of! What a hoot!
Together, At Last!
Another stunning meal: lunch, at Cherche Midi with artist friends was an unmitigated pleasure. My people! All so smart and politically engaged. They enjoyed the fare and tasteful decor. I love how New York has so much French color and flavor to offer. We are Francophiles. Just as we appreciate our English pubs and Anglo heritage, immensely. Yet, everything is passed through an American filter and that works for me!
The Perfect Place to Brunch in New York CityA Gift for Me!ILE FLOTTANTE
A quick visit to The Whitney Museum of American was not enough but well worth the effort. My plan is to return as soon as possible to gather more art experience. I saw the two top floors. The jazzy elevator alone is worth the visit. The floors, soundless, marvels… no tap tap tap of crowds gawking at the splendors of American art on display. The curators have done an excellent job of picking work we know and love but not neglecting the work of traditionally underrepresented artists.
As I do with every visit into Manhattan, I traveled outside the city, for a night. Guest bedrooms are fascinating. I have made an informal study of them. They come in various sizes and the worst ones have entirely too much of the owner’s possessions in them so that you can not for an instant sustain the illusion that you actually own the place. On the other hand, rooms with ancient wicker chairs, and bodhi savat lamps, and handmade patchwork quilts are a rare pleasure. I slept so well. I shall not forget that the hospitality of a Best, a Dear One, an Old Love is a treasure.
Reflecting on Peace, at the private residence of great artist and dear friend.
Capping all these pleasures was a solitary evening of theater for one. Broadway! I treated myself to seeing a play. (I’ve never before attended a Broadway play alone. I’ve been a date, many times. Yet, buying my own ticket and seeing a play I wanted to see because I have read the book upon which it is based was a unique pleasure. I recommend it.) I saw Wolf Hall at the Winter Garden Theater. The book, the play, the mini-series: Hilary Mantel’s work translates to all these mediums with faultless grace. The story of Thomas Cromwell, common man that rises to the the pinnacle of power, is undeniably compelling. The production is just right, highbrow and educational enough, but with a little vulgar streak of something else… a little undertow, which is what makes New York City, Broadway, The Whitney… America’s glory.
Recently, I had the misfortune of subjecting myself to cruel examination, from a harsh unenlightened perspective, in the office of a sub-par therapist, psychologist, PHD. I was looking for help, feeling a little overwhelmed… nothing major, just the mechanics of life with cancer, being a mother, artist, person… finding my way. It can be a challenge, since each person’s path is a mystery, to be discovered, defined in the process of unfolding.
Her job is to council individuals facing cancer. Mine is to keep my spirits up and stay focused on living and loving life. At least, that is how I see it. I know that I’ve undergone a multitude of surgeries, treatments, procedures. Yet, as a matter of policy, I don’t anticipate the pain, not in the treatments, or the many hospital visits. I simply go where I must, do what is required, guided by my husband’s scientific understanding and the doctors he selects to manage my care. I don’t complain. I don’t explain my condition to others. I don’t make a big deal about my health status. I don’t invite others to savor misery. I don’t worry about it. I don’t give into the thought that this surgery or the next might kill me.
Sure, I have symptoms. My life has changed. I’m a different person than I was six years ago when treatment started and I was not in the advanced treatment that I am in now. Yet, I’m still me… a person with optimism enough for a village, for myself, and the future of my children. I believe I will live a long life. Yet, looking at my medical records, current treatment, and the general prognosis for those in similar situation the Shrink suddenly asked me, toward the end of the “session,” no less; “So… being that your medical records and condition are what they are, indicating that you don’t have long to live, what do you plan your legacy to be?”
I blinked. “Everyday, I take care of my children, share my values with them, feed them my knowings and cherish that they are. That is my legacy.” Besides, I went on, gaining steam, “I am planning on being a grandmother. I have never seriously considered that I would die, soon. I’m always engaged in what I am doing and sure it isn’t always easy but, what life is?”
This was not good enough for her, “I thought that is what you would say.” She said, dismissing my words, clearly dissatisfied with my determination to stay focused on living, loving, and enjoying my life as it is. “But, I mean, don’t you think about death and what you want your life to stand for?” I thought I had made it clear, or that I make it clear with my actions that my life is a statement of appreciation. I’m grateful for every moment, everyday. Sure, there is pain. Suffering? Not so much. The pain comes and goes. Accupuncture helps. My husband’s love goes a long way to making everyday bliss. I’m aware that without him, it really wouldn’t be so easy. I’ve got these great kids, a home, and time. Yes, time, that mysterious good which others never have enough of… I’m rich in it because I’m focused on love. Loving my books. Loving my home, children, marriage, and life. When you are thus focused, days slow down and you make the most of this precious resource, doing more in a day than others dream of.
Moreover, “I’m an artist.” I told her, “I’ve made hundreds of paintings, hundreds more drawings, books full of them.” I went on. ” I write everyday. Even if I don’t publish everyday. I’m active.” What more legacy could one wish for? I capped it with my personal truth. “I rarely entertain fear. I don’t sit done with fear and caress it, milk it. I don’t look for comfort in lingering on what is inevitable. I accept death, but I’m not planning on kicking the bucket just yet. I see myself living well into my eighties.” I reminded her, what I told her before, that when the doctor originally told me that I had cancer, I saw myself, “an old woman, wrinkled and wearing huge sunglass, bangles to my elbows, and a loud knit dress, at an art opening, immersed in the world of creatives, culture.”
In recent years, I’ve come to value my relationships, friendships, and art world connections with more gusto. I’ve experienced that maxim, “live everyday as though it were your last.” I’m doing that in that each day I’m invested in those the individuals which enrich my day-to-day, those friends that care to contribute to my actual well being by sharing of themselves, their discoveries, passions, and secrets. I’m content in the present, even if my life doesn’t impress the inexperienced, young, and insensitive therapist. (I suspect that after a few months of seeing me regularly, she was simply bored, and not finding me to be the typical patient, oozing sadness over what can not be controlled, she wanted to prompt me to emote to the tune she prefers to hear over and over again, one in which she gets the pleasure of comforting a distraught person, not one simply in the middle of living a good life.)
The session was over, time to talk done. I wanted to go on and tell her about my books. I’ve actively collected many a book in the last year, bringing together, and unpacking my library from college years and ensuring that the children don’t have to go far for a good read. Our bookshelves are packed with literature (from Achebe/Allende to Zola) and history. Asian studies. Anthropology. British literature. German language. Spanish. Learn Guitar. Piano. Relationship and self-help books. Etiquette. Crafts and Fine Art manuals. Poetry. Theater. I’ve bought books on all the subjects that interest me and that represent who I am, for them, thereby creating a portrait of ideas, inviting them to converse with me, perhaps, when I am no more. Today, I’m a person that reads and writes and lives. Now. I’ll worry about death, when it happens, until then I’m ultra-busy learning, loving, and getting on with the business of life.
With these boots I may kick the bucket, but first I’ve got a list a mile on long!
Usually, I manage to skip over obstacles. Cancer, advanced cancer, intensive treatment: NO Problem! Just POP on a cute wig and keep going, show up, flirt with the doctors, look at all the pretty machines. Be NICE to the nurses. Enjoy all the attention!
You want my blood? Ok, here you go.
May, I have a Champagne, oysters after my treatment? Great! All is well.
Yet today I feel down. I feel the weight of all the treatments, the waiting, the constant pricks and memories of nurses freaking out because I’ve no veins left for them to fill with poison. Some might say, that I’ve no right to feel down. I have a husband that loves me, great kids. I’m not hard on the eyes. I’ve got a home. I’m not pan-handling on the Bowery. Could I please just shut up and let others shine?
Prick Me!
This morning, I was remembered how I fell for Hennessy Youngman. Remember him? The artist, Jayson Musson, created an alternate persona, an hip-hop urban art historian. HY was so perfect. So refreshing, finally someone like me, informed on art, yet with ghetto flair. He wore funny hats, baseball caps, with Elmo or Spiderman Eyes. That alone should have tipped me off to the fact that the Penn University MFA was spoofing his audience, playing with expectations, making a cunning statement about racial stereo typing.
Yet, at the end-of-the day I’m a girl from Washington Heights, a child of immigrants, who came to the United States convinced that they’d find a better life and they did. I managed to attend and graduate from an Ivy league school with a degree in art history and just as incredibly I married and am married to Dr. Hartmuth Kolb, from Germany. Yes, I’m lucky. I’m lucky that six years after the initial diagnosis, losing my breasts, undergoing so many surgeries, metastasis to the brain, grand mal seizure, brain surgeries, heart surgery (to correct the birth defect that would have done me in, at birth, if I hadn’t been born 2.2 pounds, three months
premature.) the whole enchilada, and I’m still here.
Fact: it isn’t easy. I’m a mother, taking care of children, making sure that they stay on-track with their studies and HAPPY. I can’t afford to be morose. I have to focus my energy on happiness, on love, on continuing to learn and laugh. Hennessy Youngman, came to me at a time when I was very active on the edges of a fast moving and apparently amorphous art world. I was going to Art Fairs, documenting the journeys, and participating in a quest to understand contemporary art, and get out of my art historical comfort zone. I was painting, pushing to sell pieces, and participating in group exhibitions to whatever degree was possible. In short, I became an emerging artist just as the cancer was threatening to call a lights out for me.
I’m convinced that most people seeing me, including my doctors, have a hard time reconciling the fact of how I look (young for my age) and my medical history. I was pumped up by fuzzy ambition and desire to participate in this Art game. I extended myself via on-line channels and come into communication with art critic, Jerry Saltz, on-line along with countless others. I felt as though I’d found my tribe and was finally “Home,” among others passionately invested in the art field.
Low and behold, I felt entirely too comfortable and really had no guard up. I was making a spectacle of myself and it was fun. I met a number of very cool and some absolutely insane artists, because as you know, the two seem to be inextricably mixed, madness and creativity, I mean. Moving quickly, I started to see behind the curtains of the art world, at one fair I attended a talk with the head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the head of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At the same fair I briefly met, Jeffrey Deitch, and impertinently asked him if it was true he was, “leaving MoCa.” He denied the rumor and then, “resigned,” about a month later.
I had a number of interactions with less than friendly art worlders that I’d have welcome as friends, but my bubbly brand of mushy ART LOVE is just too messy for some, too authentic, unschooled, unpolished and in other words, hopelessly: naive.
After medical drama, lunch at Shutters, with the Muse
Picture of Student art at Solana Pacific School, 2014
Dear Starving Artist,
Yes, we know you are talented, creative, and you work obsessively on your craft. If you had a trust fund all-of-the-above would be more than enough. Yet, you do not. Thus, you are “starving.” Or perhaps, thanks to the charity of your friends and the occasional meger sale you are merely, “hungry.”
Hungry for what? Food? Recognition? A generous grant? A deep pocket Patron? Public adoration?
Before I serve up some viable solutions to your situation allow me to tell you something urgent. It is unlikely that anyone is going to buy art from (yet another) starving artist. Most people feel they have no extra money. “The cost of living,” is at an “all-time-high,” they say. Humans are plagued by egoistic and actual needs which make it so that most people don’t have feel worthy of owning “Original ART,” by a real living artist. In other words, they rather buy a poster. They might, “love,” your work but when it comes down to forking over the actual cash for a painting… few have the means or will to do so. I speak from experience, from watching the art world and from having studied who buys art, when, and how.
That said, the majority of Art Collectors, are driven by established brand names of known dealers and very few (predominantly white male) artists who are more business and public relations minded than your average painter/sculptors. These slick individuals, and we ALL know who they are, wear suits, eat caviar, and pay for whatever they want with the big money they make selling their brands, their image, which is of wealth, effortless living, and causal opulence (the giant art lofts, private jets, and sexy public scandals with peppered matching lawsuits) not of poverty and “starvation,” neediness and eternal WANT.
That said, we (your fellow talented and creative beings) are sympathetic to your needs because we all have needs. Yet, how you go about addressing those needs will either make your situation more dire, less comic, and even deadly or you could change your course and arrive at a place beyond urgent NEED, odious WANT, and potential “starvation.” Are you interested?
Can you image a life in which you had ALL the materials to make whatever kind of art you crave to make? Can you see yourself RICH? If not… can you imagine yourself (even better) satisfied, healthily fed, and professionally fulfilled?
Well, allow yourself to visualize what it would be like to have your needs met. What would it take for you to feel satisfied?
Some people fail to realize that as soon as they have one need met another (larger) one is sure to crop up.
How do you deal with the fact that you will be hungry again tomorrow, after you digest the food you secure and scarf down today? Will you just let tomorrow be a replay of today and thus go through your life eating and defecating and forgetting about tomorrow because you are too busy worrying today away to think about what will be of you in advance?
Yes… that is the key. You must somehow step out of worry about today and allow yourself to picture and plan a life that is not based on worry and fear.
Who would you be IF you had no needs?
Would you even be an artist? Or are you an artist because you think it is “cool.”
If you had all the money in the world how/where/why would you live?
Allow yourself to make a plan based on who you really are beyond need/want/fear. Plan your life and if money is an issue, face it. Deal with it!
If you have, “money problems,” you must make peace with money. You must. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your future self to be financially secure. Yet, if you do not make peace with money there is no way you will arrive at the harbor of financial freedom.
Most people claim that they need money. They feel that IF only they made ten percent more than what they do now they could relax. Yet the target is always slightly out of reach because humans tend to not be satisfied with what they have. The moment they have this, then they want that, and that! So they continue striving, wishing, pushing, crushing, fighting, forcing, and so on — until they die.
Yet, is that really living? I don’t think so. I’m not alone. I’ve learned what I know from spiritual teachers such as Dr. Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Dale Carnegie, Louise Haye, and they in turn quote others like Carlos Castaneda as masters teachers in the art of making life work for you so that you can enjoy being rather than waste away in never ceasing hunger.
Furthermore, if you have never taken a moment to study money, appreciate it, and thank goodness for all you already have; well it isn’t surprising that you do not have enough. Money has its own rhythm, music, and melody. You can learn to sign along. Yet, if money is not your bag than don’t complain when you don’t have enough. Enjoy your status as free of it and learn to live on the fridge or jungles or wherever it is that money grows on trees and people can just throw dollars at you to provide for your existence, but please don’t expect others who have and do focus on saving, investing, and honoring the spirit of abundance to enable your stance as ONE that need not face the realities of how money works. Please don’t complain when the customary bills rain in and you have no way to pay, accept it that you haven’t made a plan, that you haven’t made the right friends, that you have chosen to isolate yourself from sources of income and that you live in the outcome of those choices. Also don’t think that because others have bank accounts, mortgages, credit cards, and automobiles that they are not without their own financial concerns, remember the more you have the more you are likely to want/need so that those that seem “well off,” to you are often immersed in a cycle of desire very similar and, from their perspective just as urgent, as your own.
The BREAD you crave demands that you bake or make it yourself.
Lastly, we live in an incredibly rich society and there are public libraries in every city. YOU can become an expert on dollars and cents, budgeting, and money management. Please don’t tell me that you don’t have time. I don’t believe you. I am sure that if you take a break from Facebook or from fiddling around with the worthless, wasteful, company which you have cultivated, you would discover that you have plenty of time to improve your personal panorama and tweak the image of yourself you project into the world based on your warped understanding of what matters and how reality works. Also be aware that the BEST way to stay hungry is to make public announcements about how needy you are, even private statements of this kind are toxic to your financial health. IF you are going to live on charity you might conceive of a system by which you benefit others in the process, start a campaign to help “the needy,” manage it well and you might find yourself rolling in dough.
Sideshow Nation III: Circle the Wagons – a short review by Ron Schira
A Diversity of Art, image by Ron Schira, 2015
Sideshow Nation III: Circle the Wagons, now viewing through March 5 at Sideshow Gallery (319 Bedford Avenue) in Williamsburg has nearly tipped the scale for this yearly extravaganza with a whopping 600 plus artworks snugly fit into the space’s two large rooms. Master of ceremonies Rich Timperio refers to this impressive number as “reaching critical mass,” and for a personally run gallery is one of the largest shows of the of its kind to have such a widespread unadvertised appeal and continual growth factor.
Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, more than 100 pieces were added than last year. Of course, not much can be said of the show that the artwork does not say for itself as the sheer amount of diversity and puzzle-like salon installation becomes an incredible act of space organization, and as an exhibit is an artwork all its own.
Walking into the show is near overwhelming as artworks both large and small tower above you on the 20 foot high walls. The reception is highly attended, and even in freezing January temperature had people waiting outside for an hour to enter the packed exhibit of primarily Brooklyn artists with a few exceptions (yours truly, for one) from outside the city.
The Cold Could Not Stop the Crowds, image by Ron Schira, 2015
Every manner of art can be seen here, and with quite a few big name players. The variety is simply staggering, and without unjustly name dropping only a portion of the participants, every work is equal to the next as Timperio and crew endeavor to pack everything into an inevitably limited space, critical mass, as he said.
Mixed Media on Canvas, Painting by Frau Kolb, 2010
For the Romantics, out there, celebrating Valentine’s day comes as naturally as a bodily function. The Romantic simply oozes LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! They have buckets of red paint at the ready. They are intent on hitting the streets, this Saturday, 14th of February, year 2015, their pubes freshly waxed, to PAINT THE TOWN bright crimson, vibrating vermillion, luscious labia incarnadine, throbbing rose, and scintillating sienna.
You know the type: they got up early, last week to ensure that all their Lovers got long well-worded, heart moving, gut wrenching, LOVE letters written on top quality stationary. They own and are not afraid to use a fountain pen. Their hand writing proves they went to art school and the content of their letters shimmers with allusions to the voluptuous works of English poet, John Donne. Nothing is too grand for this type of being. Helicopter rides, no problem. Couple’s massage, with cinnamon oil and brisk strokes, assured. Red velvet cake and capes, required.
For those that LOVE, love the day is infused with a glow of giving and receiving, not so much cheap chocolates and factory made cards, but attention, affection, and erotic thumbs up from other sexy souls that seek any opportunity to connect and express emotions not often celebrated by the general population.
For Others, Valentine’s day is just another day. Perhaps the last time that they sent out a Valentine’s greeting was when they were in Kindergarten and the little kid they especially liked failed to get the message and just threw their little paper card away… Since then, they harbor a distrust for the holiday and don’t hesitate to express their lack of enthusiasm for Valentine’s Day. “It’s a Hallmark Holiday,” said one women, meaning that it was a bit of capitalist fluff, commercial hodgepodge holiday meaning nothing to Nobody.
How sad!
Stuffed Cloth Heart A Valentine By Annabella Kolb
It is for these downtrodden Lovers that Frau Kolb writes the following:
Talkinggrid List of 13 Reasons to Celebrate Valentine’s Day
1.) LOVE ROCKS!
Sorry, if you haven’t experienced this for yourself, yet, but if you have ever felt the sting of baby Cupid’s arrow, you know the poison propels paupers to the realms of princes, lifting one UP to new heights. It is wonderful to feel energized, charged, and ready to reach for the moon, fearless of falling into a pit of cliches, trusting.
2.) Celebrating Secures Sweet Memories
By investing time and thought into planning and producing a special sensation in another one creates a lasting impression, a memory of goodness shared. These memories hold couples together through difficult times in hospitals and under duress. Making dinner, setting the table, a single rose… candle light, it all adds up and get stored in that reserve of goodwill from which we draw when work, obligations, and personal difference threaten to erase our bonds with Loved Ones.
3.) Art you my LOVE?
Drawing on your infantile art skills or masterly verve with pen and ink; you can touch another’s heart and create that scrap of sunshine to warm up winter’s coldest days. YOU CAN! Allow yourself to find a good piece of acid-free paper, a scissor, some glue, glitter and BABY you can make your LOVE swoon.
4.) Pump UP the HEART Valve!
We are here now. We may not be here tomorrow. We owe it to ourselves to create a feeling of fulfillment in ourselves by expressing our fuzzy FEELINGS! Nothing will give you more JOLT or excitement than running up the temperature of your heart with warm words and woozy feelings! Expressing LOVE is a workout for the soul. Stay fit! Keep your soul from becoming a floppy blob: find yourself a LOVE worthy of words, wine, and worlds of wonderful exchanges, priceless endearments.
5.) It is good for the economy!
Think of all those chocolate makers, rose farmers, and vendors of paper products (cards, stickers, and trinkets) where would they be without Valentine’s Day to make February, an otherwise dull month, something snazzy. Valentine’s Day is indeed a commercialized holiday and you have a choice if you want to buy into it or not. You can celebrate with homegrown flowers, stinky little buds, preferred. You can make your own cards (see number 3) and write your own sonnets.
Some decide to splurge on jewelry, jets, and fireworks… Over-the-top? Yes and great for the providers of diamonds (always a rip off), charter plane flights to Maui, and explosives. HURRAY!
6.) Distinguish Yourself
You could be one of those cranky, irritable, sad, and sometimes lonely people that resist and resent LOVE in its throbbing pulsating glory. Or you could rent a white stretch limo and ride around town listening to “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” by Richard Wagner. The choice is, again, yours.
7.) BEHOLD THE WHITE ELEPHANT!
Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity for secret loves to throw caution to the wind and FLAUNT their LOVE! Go ahead invite your Other Man/Woman over for dinner with you and your official partner. Who knows you may find that polyamory or pure honesty are not as foreign to you and yours as previously envisioned. YOU can use this day to reveal your real feelings and thus release yourself from artifice and arrive at a more authentic being. (Or, you may become part of an scandalous triple murder suicide and thus earn your fifteen minutes of infamy.)
8.) Quality and Content Matter
This is your chance to state, affirm, and expose your true feelings for the ones that are either in your life or you would like to attract and attach to. The gift(s) you choose (or don’t) say a lot about the type of love you feel and what you have to offer and what you wish for in exchange. For all the women getting boxes of silky nothings… you know what is desired in return. For all the men that discover lovingly deforested females… on this magical day… well, you know you are LOVED.
Valentine’s Day 2015
9.) Keeping UP with The Kolbs
Observing tradition and flowing with the yearly calendar of opportunities to celebrate our bond is of the greatest importance to us. This year we celebrate our sixteenth year together. My husband has never failed to surprise me with roses red and sweets of various types. I’m pleased to say that I think we are just at the start of discovering the texture, color, and many shapes our love can take.
10.) Keeping up with The Kardashians
Just kidding.
11.) Friendship is worthy of Celebrating too.
Do not underestimate how much it will mean to your grandmotherly pal to get a card from you today. The other mothers in your mothers group will also feel appreciated if you send of an electronic or paper missive listing sweet qualities and good times had.
12.) The Jehova’s Witnesses Disapprove!
This may be my absolute favorite and strongest reason for celebrating Valentine’s Day with gusto; the Jehova’s Witnesses (an international door-to-door christian spirituality cult promising eternal life to the select and destruction to the rest) insist that Valentine’s Day is a Pagan holiday and that celebrating it is … blah, blah, blah… whatever. I grew up going to meetings three times per week. Thanks to them, I’ve read the King James Bible (in Spanish, no less) from cover to cover more than twice, yet I don’t understand why they think themselves better, more worthy of salvation, than anybody else. So… please pass the red heart staple gun. Thank you.
13.) Why Not?
Seriously, what are you afraid of? Eternal damnation? Revealing LOVE and being rejected? Spending too much on overpriced roses?
Get over it and get ON with the Party that is LIFE!
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