Pico de Orizaba

Pico de Orizaba
Taken from Huatusco, Veracruz, the closest town to Margarita's family's ranch.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Rise from the rubble, like a Phoenix from ashes... 1st draft

The idea entered my head last night, in Español, after responding to Michael's having sent me the article "Childhood trauma leads to lifelong chronic illness — so why isn’t the medical community helping patients?" https://acestoohigh.com/2016/08/10/childhood-trauma-leads-to-lifelong-chronic-illness-so-why-isnt-the-medical-community-helping-patients/

I was relaxing, after watching the Matthew McConoughey movie "Lincoln Lawyer" with Margarita... I had just peeled the charred skins off red bell peppers and poblano chile peppers...  I had charred and bagged for steaming in their vapors after returning from the park, from Costco, from the market... before not painting as I hadn't planned... In fact, a minute before deciding upon watching a movie with Margarita instead of painting, I had prepared the "studio" for renewed painting of "The Mother of the Earth"...  But, for some reason I was feeling fatigued...  No energy for inspiration... Better leave that responsibility to the entertainers... Tonight we're taking a break from the routine...


The movie was wonderful... The unplanned hour of peeling charred chiles wasn't bad either... relaxing... I thought about my charring technique and the possibility of buying eggplants and charring them for Babaganouj... this time hopefully it would turn out as I remembered in Israeli or middle-eastern restaurants...


And then I heard a chime from my cellphone when a message through Messenger arrives...  and was surprised...  somewhere between 12am and 1am, Michael finds himself communicating with me in the moments when I should be falling asleep...  he lives in Australia, 18 hours ahead of our sun and moon...  9pm Sydney time...  the following day...  


I opened his message, which was the article, the same theme of medical research I sent my mother exactly 2 years ago a few days after my so-called heart attack...  and I mentioned the article to Michael, last night, imagining that I hadn't shared it with him 2 years earlier... Childhood Trauma and Acute Miocardial Infarction


I spent at least half an hour touch-typing my response to Michael through my cellphone, since I didn't want to turn on the computer... Plus, Margarita was asleep.  The light of the computer and the sound of my typing is greatly annoying...


I wrote Michael:  


My blog was for explaining who I truly am and why or how I ended up here in México... 


In the end we live the life we live... And that's that. Yes, you have your sons and they're part of your legacy... Actually, it's the other way around; you are part of their legacy so for you it isn't that's that; just as my father is part of mine. However with my end, it really was just the life I lived and no one else's. So it doesn't really matter if someone understands or if someone bought a painting or reads my blog or remembers what I cooked. It was just something I did for myself. And if I loved you, that was for me too. And if I worried about others, about justice, about truth, about spirits and magical connections, that also was for me. No one loses.

And with that comment, I wasn't able to sleep...  I began analyzing exactly what I meant with the comment "In the end we live the life we live... And that's that..."  That it really isn't about acceptance by others... as a writer, as a thinker, as an artist, as a cook... 

No, it wasn't THAT comment that created the tension... It was the understanding of what I REALLY was doing when I wrote poetry, painted, cooked, etc...  

I had found myself within the resurrection of myself... In my mind I heard the words repeated, "pulling myself up from the mess of my life... like a phoenix rising from the ashes..."  I could see my life as rubble... or worse... rubbish, garbage...  What did this mean for me?

The paintings: creating beauty in an ugly, sloppy, choatic world... And the only world I knew was the world within which I was born... And if anyone had the slightest capacity towards being compassionate and considerate, they would realize that the world I describe begins with what they would consider a horrible tragedy... And that tragedy isn't only that of a 29-year-old mother of 3 young children who just had her "American Dream" shatttered with the death of her husband...  That tragedy was of a 4-year-old male child and what occurred when his father was dying and what would occur from 1973 onward...

And this is why the article Michael sent me is so important... why the article I sent my mother 2 years ago after the acute miocardial infarction is so important... and what does all of this truly mean...

You can't blame a 4-year-old child for the physical abuse of his uncle... Nor can you blame him for the death of his father... nor for how his mother becomes within the event... You can't blame him for inhereting the disease that killed his father and sent him to the hospital for 2 major surgeries at the age of 13... Nor, can you blame him for the children surrounding him and bullying him so many years in elementary, middle and high school... 

So what occurred?

And all of the unhealthy forms the 4.5 to 19-year-old responded to the incredibly complex and diverse situation of trauma become the fault of that child... And he must live with the repercussions of his actions the rest of his life... although no one else is held accountable for their actions...

And that's not what I planned upon writing... a repetition of a repetition of a repetition... 

No, that's not the problem.  The problem is that regardless of my reaction expressed within communication, my investigations etc.. if I had been silent and never lifted my hand to anyone or to myself, had never lifted my voice and kept it all to myself as my family would have preferred "until death do we part", the acute miocardial infarction would have occurred... the thousands of studies on childhood trauma and chronic illness would have been published... and if Michael was as close a friend to me as he believes, and if Michael knew me profoundly, then even with my silence, he would have stumbled across the article, made the connections and shared it with me...  It's to say that there are certain things that regardless of my unhealthy reactions, responses, would have occurred, regardless of what you wish to believe... And as Donna Jackson Nakazawa explains, with more conscientious adult responsiveness to the traumatic experience of the child we could have prevented much of the chronic illness that would develop decades later...  

It's over... Everything that occurred, occurred... As my mother and siblings and cousins would say, "we gotta move onward... stop harbouring in the past... Finger-pointing does not help the present or the future..." Yes, that would be nice, if it was realistic.  Convenient... Yes.  Realistic... No...  

What must occur within the life of the child, didn't occur...  And those years passed... Along with those years passing, passed a certain opportunity for healthy growth... learning...  The child becomes what he or she becomes depending greatly upon the uniqueness of their environment, combined with the uniqueness of their experience (which is NEVER duplicated and truly shared with any other child on this planet), combined with the uniqueness of their genetic structure...  

Donna Jackson Nakazawa's article explains epigenetics and prolonged childhood trauma; how the genetic response to stress becomes altered for a lifetime...  like plugging the tail of a cat into a light socket...  

And what if the children (peers, siblings, cousins) and the adults hadn't decided upon turning up the volume of the electricity feeding the light socket where the cat's tail was plugged...?  What if they had noticed the incredible stress level inflicted upon the young boy within the event and decided to cut the power to the socket in order to prevent further damage?

But that didn't occur... Wasn't my experience... I only have one experience... and that's the one I lived... like it or not...  

So, I spent the night... replaying the most important truth about how I live today and why... and why I do what I do, since graduating college...  why I do the most wonderful things I do... regardless of if I could become published or if I could sell my food or sell my artwork...  as I said to Michael:

"However with my end, it really was just the life I lived and no one else's. So it doesn't really matter if someone understands or if someone bought a painting or reads my blog or remembers what I cooked. It was just something I did for myself. And if I loved you, that was for me too. And if I worried about others, about justice, about truth, about spirits and magical connections, that also was for me. No one loses."

And it doesn't really matter if I finish the painting or the drawing, or if I publish or if someone believes I should have an editor, or if I sell my recipes or have a restaurant...  

What matters is the true reason, the motivation behind what it is I do... what I do best... although, for you, maybe not good enough... But, this isn't about you... anymore... It's about me... It's about pulling myself out of the reckage, out of the mess I know as my life... And, although my mother raged at the mess I created or left in my bedroom (and wasn't able to see the symbolism or the metaphor), calling me one of her 3 piggies, a slob... my room a perpetual pigsty, she would never realize that the mess was actually figurative... it was a representation of the life she created for me... that she maintained... It was the only true life imagined for me with the death of my father...  So, it was the mess, the reckage, the destruction, the firestorm, the ashes from which I would attempt towards rising from... And truthfully, being realistic, the only function that my creativity has for myself is for creating momentary illusions of beauty from chaos, from horror, from failure, from abandonment... I can't change the truth.  I can't change the reality.  I can't change the history.  I can't rewrite the events and give me the opportunities when they must occur... But, for moments, I can enjoy what I do, and remove myself from that other aspect of my life, the aspect of my life that was too big to avoid, to change, to deny. 

To tell you the truth, I would have prefered sleeping well last night... I would have prefered not feeling the pressure in my chest and the heaviness in my head that I feel now... I would have preferred painting in the kitchen than writing in the blog...  

I read the article...  And no matter what Donna says, since she's a survivor too, no matter how many thousands of scientific articles have been published on the subject since the 90s, it doesn't change ANYTHING... 

Maybe it gives me a momentary "peace of mind"... and a momentary feeling of gratitude towards Michael...  And, yes, my personal work (investigations) have helped me be one step ahead of the doctors within my "cardiovascular" and digestive situation... and maybe it enables me momentary relief from the concerns and the physical experience of risk... and for moments, I experience hopefulness... when the echocardiologist said that he doesn't see ANY signs of my having had a heart attack (no footprints) in the EKG...  meaning that maybe I've done some good work over the past 2 years... and who knows?  That maybe there will be a positive twist in my future... and maybe I WILL sell paintings and maybe I will publish...  

But, truthfully, that's NEVER been the reason for my painting or my writing...  so maybe we should just leave it be...

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