Freezing, frozen, thawing

Here's a photo of me with my short hair, taken with my artist friend Dan. I was wincing a bit from putting my arm around him!

It’s Tuesday morning and things are back to “normal.” Thanksgiving “week” with its days off and school closures and feasting is over. Angie, who’s in school Tuesday through Saturday is off for her day, Henry for his. I’m beginning mine without having to go out into the cold – a big deal because it pretty much rained all day yesterday before we got a little slow and I’m being really careful about slipping these days.

My shoulder, they say, is freezing.

I hate to claim it and say “I have frozen shoulder” but frozen shoulder is the name of the condition that’s making me extremely cautious about slipping these days. I slipped a week ago Sunday and the pain, as I tried to catch myself, was unbelievable and the spasms went on and on.

I’ve had one physical therapy appointment and will have another today. I was thrilled with the first one, basically because I was told, in a descriptive way, what’s going on.

I’d been to an ortho guy for a consult and an x-ray, and then, two months later for an MRI. I’d seen my internist twice, ounce to have him pronounce me as having fibromyalgia after looking at me for five minutes and touching a few tender spots, and the second time for a physical because I didn’t want to accept that “I have” fibromyalgia” either, and in none of those appointments did I ever hear a single description of frozen shoulder.

Now, what I liked about the description that I got from my physical therapist was this sort of relief I felt right away. I’d already cut my hair because I was finding it too hard to braid and, if you’ve ever had long hair, you know you can’t have it flying loose all the time. I’d already gone out and bought a few button up and a few zip up tops because I couldn’t get things on and off my head without causing myself anticipatory anxiety even before the actual pain came.

I was a little proud of myself for these proactive steps. I’ve had long hair for nearly 30 years and to cut it so that I’d be more comfortable was the kind of taking care of myself action I haven’t always done. I bought the tops after standing in front of a display of gloves and hats I was thinking of buying for Henry and deciding his mom could buy them and I’d get myself something that didn’t make dressing torture.

But it wasn’t until I saw the physical therapist that I quit thinking of myself as a “big baby.” That’s when I found that this freezing business (the first of three stages that also include frozen and thawing) really is extremely painful and that it can hurt to cut your own meat. You can see where the “big baby” thing came from when you start feeling like you can’t dress yourself or eat your dinner without assistance.

I’d had a friend tell me a little about his own experience with this shoulder problem but he didn’t tell me in advance of my being diagnosed how painful it was going to be. Afterwards he said it was one of the most painful things he’d ever experienced, and that too was a relief.

It’s the relief, I suppose, that people get from support groups.

It’s one way of looking at what I attempted to offer in The Given Self, a type of support group for spiritual people who haven’t had too many confide in them about the confusion that enormous inner changes can bring.

I find myself looking for the description everywhere lately. I don’t want the step-by-step or the instruction or the “after you’ve moved through it” knowledge. I want the inside scoop of what it’s like to be “in it.”

I don’t often write up to that challenge but it’s the writing I like to do when my shoulder isn’t causing even typing to be difficult.

I always look at physical stuff in broader ways and the physical therapist helped there too. As usual, the condition comes from the body trying to protect itself. My upper back muscles apparently weren’t strong enough so my body started creating scar tissue to bind things together (or some such thing). In a less physical sense I imagine things like “shouldering” too much worry, and I imagine it as a call to quit – to quit with the worrying and with the tendency to overdo. It becomes an example of the kindness of the universe, everything working together to take you where you need to be, even if you’d rather it didn’t while you’re in it.

In thanks for art

A news story motivated me last week.

It was another story from that world my family and I entered twelve years ago as we worked our coffee shop on University Avenue. The avenue is aptly named the “central corridor” between St. Paul and Minneapolis and in lieu of the “central corridor light rail” that is about to begin construction, a building that housed some of our favorite artists from that five-year sojourn, has been sold. The new owners, with an eye toward the future, plan to develop market-rate apartments. The artists, who considered themselves part of a casual co-op, and part of a community that has dotted the former industrial warehouses with studios, particularly near the area of University and Raymond, are being displaced.

Dan Mackerman, who has been housed there twenty years and who was one of our most popular regulars, told the reporter that he remembered when there used to be two coffee shops (among other businesses). I felt sure that memory referred in part to us, and took it personally. It made me want to say, “Thanks, Dan, for remembering us,” and to feel this catch in my chest, the kind you feel when a casual acquaintance like him is about to disappear after years of enjoying that feeling that you knew where he was – no matter that you never stopped by to visit or planned to.

My cousin Nina visited from Louisiana one year while we were still in business. Mia and I were working the shop. Angie had moved into an apartment over an art gallery a half block up on Raymond and worked there as a part-time receptionist while going to school. My cousin thought we were all “living the life,” that we were sort of bohemian I suppose. We took her to visit the building now condemned to this new fate – the building all the locals call the C and E building, and to see Dan. I was afraid we might be a bother but he was as gracious a host as someone who might have invited us into his living room. He was in his element, just being himself.

Dan did sculpting too and he’d come into the coffee shop a real mess – as dirty as a construction worker at times. Finally I asked him why and he pulled out the Harry Potter head he was carrying from under his arm. He was sculpting a show for a Dayton’s (or Macy’s…or Marshall Field’s) Christmas display – the kind that attract crowds who walk through this enchantment on their way to visiting Santa Claus.

I used to pine over the idea of being like those “small artists” I came to know from the C and E building. They were simply doing what they loved to do and making a small living from it (the reason I called them “small artists”).

There’s something you have, an aura you have about you when you’re doing what you love to do and you even have a little of it when you’ve taken the risk of it and it hasn’t turned out as you’d hoped. (As Cher says, “Mistakes are vastly underrated.”) When you take the risk of expressing yourself, in whatever way moves you, you give yourself a chance to be your own person at the same time that you can find yourself blending into a community of some like folks, so that you are – (even us in our coffee shop) supporting an alternative way of life.

There was, being surrounded by artists, an element of something like surprise. I’ve not been in too many places like it – because it wasn’t just the artists who were unique and surprising but most everyone who came in the door, as if the area bred folks who weren’t so on a schedule that they still had time for the kind of conversation that makes for interesting exchanges and the feeling of a common bond.

Being at the shop was like living in the world in a way I’d never experienced when I was taken care of by a boss and a payroll and was kept, quite literally, sequestered away from the environmental/political/social effects you feel when you’re making your own way.

There are those who say creativity on demand is as much of a grind as anything else, and I suppose they’re right, but it’s a different grind, and that’s what shows. You see it in the eyes. It’s kind of a look that says, “I’d rather be who I am and be poor than live any other way. You can’t do anything to me worse than I’d do to myself by not living my life this way.”

The article included a notice that the artists were having their last open house. I went to see Dan. He’s superbly talented. (www.danmackerman.com) He was so funny. He talked in this ordinary way (when we were conversing) of such profound things, and then ended on the note that the key to being an artist is low overhead.

I talked with Bob Donsker, who is doing a photographic collection of abandoned buildings in the Twin Cities and thinking of a coffee table book. There’s such a story there – full of pathos and history and insight.

I told Dean Lucker, who recognized me (and didn’t…Where do I know you from?) that I thought of him and them as “small artists.” He said, “Then you got it long before I did, but that’s what we are.” He started in his direction, (mechanical art) he said, by taking apart toys as a child – none of them his own. I love hearing that kind of thing.

I guess the main thing certain people, and even areas of town can give you, (until they get sold-out anyway) is a glimpse of another way. I know I shouldn’t romanticize it…like the people did who thought we were “living the life” when we owned the shop, but I still do, and there’s a reason for it. Someone has to keep up the lost art of alternative and artful living.

People who give off that aura of simply being who they are, have figured out a few secrets. Like “low overhead” some of them are practical. But those aren’t the ones that help you keep your dreams and not feel undone by your difficulties. It’s just them; just the people; the individuals. They’re the ones who remind you of what is possible and who keep a certain style of living from ceasing to be.

On this day after Thanksgiving, I’m thankful to all artists everywhere, and especially to these local ones.

A Western Way

John’s gospel is the most Western. John had Greek and Roman influences and the others Middle Eastern. In John’s Gospel – Jesus is always in charge. He doesn’t show weaknesses. In the others, a more human side is shown.

It’s like this reminder – there is a Western way.

There is a lot of evidence that the Western way is passing. What is the way coming? A friend recently quoted a new book (“Frequency”) as saying the information age is passing and the intuition age is here. A Course of Love says it’s time for the way of the heart (which is also an intuitive knowing). I’ve seen time and again that the clarity is never in the details. When I go there, it’s because I think I can manage them, and that if I don’t, they’ll manage me.

Yet the more I get away from managing and being in charge, the more I find myself drifting into the new.

And the more I (and we) drift into the new, the more our human side is revealed.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Snow...and the trees drop their arms

Had a peculiar day yesterday with the nice fall giving way to the first big snow, one so heavy that it downed power lines and we were without electricity for most of the day. It’s amazing how one such day shows you how addicted you are to the usual. I kept turning on lights, putting my coffee in the microwave, even bagels in the toaster. I had Henry all day and he had to have asked at least a dozen times for me to turn on the TV.

So it was a day of full engagement. I knew the day with Henry was coming…just not the shape of it. We played dinosaurs and cleaned out some cabinets – the ones under the china closet. They had enough interesting stuff in them that he enjoyed that for a while. I’d forgotten what was in there and little of it was precious. I let him un-box a Japanese tea set with a bunch of little cups, and play with those little appetizer/butter knives that come in a boxed set with Christmas trees for handles (all the while wondering where these things came from and what to do with them). I did a few reduction things like take the four crystal glasses that were still good out of a big box and throw away the box and the chipped glasses, sniffed sachet that had been in there forever and threw it away, and I found candles for the latter part of the day.

Donny was out shoveling and plowing and helping neighbors who had no heat. I envy him his usefulness sometimes. He’s such a “can do” guy.

We were in the middle of making chicken and dumplings with the cabin’s lantern sitting on the stove when the power came back on.

Around me today – outside the cabin – there are bangs and thumps, thwacks and great whooshes, as the heavy snow drops and branches shift. It comes down on the cabin’s roof like the foot steps of bears, and snow showers pass by the windows. The clumps that hit the ground make plopping noises, and holes in the surrounding snow.

Power lines and tree limbs come down with nothing more than the weight of little crystals of snow all piled on at one time.

I feel solidarity with my trees as they go through this enforced dropping of their arms and the release of weight that is too heavy a burden for them to carry.

Crossword puzzles and the coming of light

I do the crossword puzzle most mornings. This morning I got stumped on the name of the “Star Trek” doctor. All I could think of was “Bones.” An hour later I revisited the question and “McCoy” flashed right into my brain. This happens all the time. It’s why doing the crossword puzzle delights me. So many mornings I start out thinking, ‘Oh this is a hard one.’ I can’t get it started. But almost invariably, if I keep going back to it, the old light bulb comes on over my head, one answer leads to the next, and at some point while doing it this way – basically five minutes at a time, it gets completed.

I’m really fascinated with the creative process and how I see it mirroring spiritual practice. This morning, the crossword strikes me as similar too. If you don’t try to figure it out, if you wait, if you keep going back…the light comes on.