.blue.

There used to be a time, in my distant past, that I actually enjoyed doing things of a more creative nature.  Sketching, painting, making collages...things of this sort.  Now most my of creativity, if you can call it that, comes out in the form of refurbishing old furniture or writing on this here blog.

I think I stopped painting because I just didn't find it inspiring anymore.  Or I wasn't inspired by anything enough to lug out my paints and brushes.  After George died I thought this would change but it didn't.  All I could think of painting was big black and blue circles and so I just didn't even bother.  I'm no Kandinsky, after all.  My drawer full of paints and my crate full of paper/canvas has just been sitting unused and collecting dust, quite literally.

But this last week I have been feeling particularly blue and it has got me searching for things to occupy my time.  I still have no job and nothing is looking very promising at the moment.  I could take a job that I do not like but I am not quite at the point yet where that option is looking to be a good one.  I'm close to that point though.  Very close.

What I have been finding is that being unemployed, childless, and bored is a recipe for also being very sad and for feeling pretty crappy about myself.  Oh self-esteem, where art thou?

Today I dragged out my paints and my brushes and spent most of the daylight hours painting.  I chose one of George's ultrasound pictures.  Actually it was the one we got at his 20 week scan and the one we found out that "the baby" was actually George.  That, along with the day I married Leif, was the happiest moment of my life.

As ultrasounds tend to be, this one was a tad bit confusing and I had to take some artistic liberties with one of the limbs (seriously I can't tell if it is a foot or an arm so I just made it into an arm).  I will probably end up fixing some stuff about it later but for now it is what it is.

I can't say that I am completely happy with the way it turned out but it does look like my boy, especially his face.  I can see his dad in that face.

I'm kind of nervous about putting this up here but...here goes anyway...

George Ellsworth.  Acrylic.  

.stretched and stark.

On days like this it comes so near as to snatch the breath from my lungs.  I reach out and feel the bitterness and anger and sorrow on the tips of my fingers.  Smooth, solid.  An obelisk of obsidian throwing long shadows on my life's landscape.


A seed of wide love coated a thousand times over in mourning.  My very own black pearl. 

My mind wanders to naked branches, limbs stretched and stark against a blue sky.  They herald the coming season but instead of choirs of angels I hear them speak to me in cautionary baritones.  The Winter creeps ever closer still and one morning I awake to find that it is almost upon us.  The nearly imperceptible change of the angle of light throughout the day; soft and simultaneously inexorable.  I feel the weight of it pressing on to my shoulders.

There is no shine or sparkle to these days ahead.

I once read a book* and it pulled loose a small thread in one of my seams.    

“Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given – so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.”

I've since unraveled as time has pulled me away farther from him.

Underneath something different.  Nearly imperceptibly so.  Softer and simultaneously inexorable.  

How I ache to believe that we will be brought together.  That he is more than just a single brush stroke on this canvas.  That he is, no matter how small, intimately and sensibly tied to all others.

My son, where are you?

I miss you.

I am incomplete.  

*Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin

.hooray.

I love to vote.  I don't really know for sure if my vote matters in the grand scheme of things.  But going to the polls makes me feel like it does.  What about you?

.day of the dead.

This past weekend we went to the Day of the Dead celebration at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  I had a difficult time.  It never even occurred to me until after we got there that I would.  But I did.  It started with an ofrenda set up with a photograph of two premature infants -of the NICU sort- with tubes and wires everywhere.  After that it just sort of went down hill.

...............

We stayed just long enough for me to get my face painted and to take this photograph.  Fifteen minutes later I suddenly become so sick again that Leif had to whisk me away back home, where I spent the remainder of the day on the couch.

..............

Our ofrenda for George: 

Yesterday we spent the evening playing Little Big World Planet (edited: Leif kindly corrected me on the title of this highly addictive game) and then watching The Horror of Dracula and eating ice cream.  At least the weekend ended on a positive note and that is something to feel good about.

.sick.

I am feeling under the weather today.   I've been laying in bed all day sleeping and, just now, talking with a recruiter while trying not to sound like I was going to be sick at any minute.  The good thing about being sick is that I get lunch time visits from my husband.  I am eagerly awaiting his arrival and the bottle of Sprite he has with him.

Leif finished the video of our time in Copan a couple of days ago.  As always, he did a wonderful job.
For your viewing pleasure...


Copán Ruinas from leif on Vimeo.

.the devil's breath.

The dry wind is blowing hard here today.  They’re the Santa Ana winds, originally called Santana's Wind.  The Devil's Wind.  A meteorological phenomenon that sweeps through the Los Angeles basin throughout the fall and winter.  It has been inspiring songwriters and arsonists since, well, since forever probably.


Scientists surmise that the winds cause increases in atmospheric cations, which in turn leads to an increase in serotonin levels in the body.  Think Prozac blowing through at sustained speeds of 40 mph (65 kph) with occasional 70 mph (112 kph) gusts.  


Nature's way of saying, chill the fuck out.  Now go eat a sandwich and take a nap.


After George died numerous people approached me with the idea of getting on antidepressants (none of whom were medical professionals, by the way, just concerned citizens).  I politely declined. They thought it was because I was afraid to take them.  I wasn't afraid.  I was just waiting for the fall when the Santa Anas would kick back into high gear and all would be right again.  


Well, that, and I didn't think I needed them.  I still don’t think I need them but I wouldn’t hesitate if I thought that I did.


What I really need, and what I’m wondering if there is some sort of other meteorological phenomenon that can lend a proverbial hand to, is some relief from all this anger and guilt I’ve been carrying around for the last seven or eight months.   Something that will change my brain chemistry, if even for a little while.  That would be nice.


We have a photograph of Leif as a baby on the fridge.  All white blond hair and toothless smile.  I look at it and see George and I am mad.  Mad because I don’t really know that he would have looked like his dad.  It is just a guess.  Mad that I have to guess at such things.


The anger that I have is at the same time broad and directed.  Mad at everything and mad at nothing.  Mad at God and not mad at God, since I tend to not really throw my hat in God’s corner anyway. 


Mad at someone and mad at no one.


I’m looking for somewhere to aim my ire and coming up with only passable targets.  Not worth the effort usually.


Sometimes I'm mad at myself, which is where the guilt creeps in.  Did we do the right thing when we made the decision to not send him to the NICU? They said he would in all likelihood, if he even survived, be severely brain damaged.  We thought we were doing the compassionate thing.  Does that even matter?


I read women’s stories of their children on Faces of Loss and Faces of Hope and occasionally I see things written like the following in regards to making the decision to send a preemie to the NICU,

“I also had to ‘let her go’. How can anyone sleep with that on their conscious? Not me, that’s for sure.”

Ouch. 


We "let our son go."  Even though I know really that he was beyond help, it still stings.  Especially after reading something like that.


The guilt settles in.


I read about women’s stories of the success of extreme preemies surviving thanks to the NICU and I wonder if we had made a different decision if I would be holding a four-month old infant right now instead of sitting in front of this computer. 


The guilt stretches wide the confines of its prison.


Yes, I could do for a meteorological phenomenon of my own.  Maybe a light rainfall would suffice.  No, too cliche.  A hailstorm might be a better fit, metaphorically speaking.  At least a snow flurry.  But the chance of getting snow here is nothing to place bets on.

It is still outside now.  
The wind is all but gone.  

.islas de las bahias, the one about the caye.

These last photographs from our trip to Honduras are mainly of the time we spent across the channel on Pigeon Caye.  There are about five hundred people who live on that mile-long island and almost all of them have one of five very British surnames.  Jackson, Bush, Diamond, Powell, and Cooper.  Those were the five families who originally settled there nearly one hundred and sixty years ago and, for the most part, the people who live there presently are still members of those five families.

.B.

Our first trip to Pigeon Caye was made with the intent to find ourselves some fish for that night's dinner.  What we found was a kindly woman named Esther who had five freezers filled with freshly caught fish and one large tame brown pelican in her "yard."  The pelican, as Esther assured us, was American.  From Miami, in fact, although aside from the fact that he was a lazy pelican she could not come up with a reason as to why she was convinced he was American.  But, really, the fact that he was a lazy pelican was probably reason enough.

That night we had yellowtail for dinner.  I'm guessing so did the Floridian pelican.

In Honduras they celebrate their independence from Spain on September 15th and we happened to be there to witness the festivities.  Aside from seeing the ruins at Copan for the first time this was perhaps the best moment of the entire trip.  

.L.

.L.

.L.

.L.

Almost immediately after their independence performance ended and all the children had finished their cupcakes and sodas, an unseasonably strong storm passed through and rained everyone out.  We ended up taking shelter in a little store and talking for almost two hours to the guy working there because the lightening and rain made it impossible to kayak our way back to our house.  We eventually had to find shelter elsewhere when he had to close shop because his little brother was struck by lightening (he ended up being perfectly ok) while out playing in the rain.

.B.

Eventually made it back across the channel but not before we were both entirely drenched by the rain.

Utila Town had their own festivities the next day and we went for that as well.  But the only highlights of that excursion worth mentioning was that I tripped and fell getting onto the dock and then I got heat stroke by the time we left.  Ha!

.B.

.B.

.B.

(Nothing says "good time" like liquor bottles and plastic doll parts.)

We spent our last night on Utila on the dock because the power had gone out and it was far too hot to stay in the house.  So we laid out watching the distant lightening strikes and attempting to capture them on camera.  This is as close as we got.

.L.

The next morning we left Utila for Roatan and the sand fleas everywhere mourned.  A very sad day to be a sand flea, indeed.

We had a few hours to kill before our plane left Roatan so we spent it in the water, enjoying a last bit of warm Caribbean ocean.  I befriended a bunch of kids who were there with their mother by giving the girls piggy back rides through the water.  They asked me how old I was -as old as their mother- and did I have any kids -no, not yet- and how old was my mother -in her 60s- and so on and so forth.  They thought Leif had the funniest name they had ever heard of.  

.B.

.B.

.B.

They were great.  

It was a fabulous way to end our trip.

.L.