Looking back I see myself lying flat on my back, unable to move. It was early February, 2009. I was literally lying on the floor of Burlington Coat Factory, my sciatica pinched. That’s how last year began for me. Immobilized.
My best friend from graduate school, Ana Lucia, had come with her family all the way from Brazil. It had been over a decade since I’d seen her and her husband, and I’d only seen her three children in photos. They were on their way to Santa Fe for a week’s ski vacation, stopping off to visit us en route. My sciatica had been giving me trouble for weeks, and then the morning before Ana Lucia’s arrival, I woke up and could hardly get out of bed. I managed to get a chiropractic treatment that morning, acupuncture the next, plus a handful of painkillers from my mom, who suffers from lower back problems.
When Ana Lucia and her family got here, the pain was masked enough to join them for lunch and then to Burlington Coat Factory to buy jackets for their ski trip. For a while, I thought I was going to be fine. Little did I know, it was Codeine that had me walking around the store searching for good deals on down coats. As the drug wore off, the pain became so unbearable I thought I was going to pass out. Panicked, I got the keys to Ana Lucia’s rental and told her that I had to get something from the car.
My plan was to get to the car, drive the less than three miles to my house, pop another painkiller, and come right back. But when I got to the foyer of the store, that space not inside nor outside, I was close to passing out. I plopped myself down in a spot of sun, moaning and sweating. The automatic double doors opened and closed, opened and closed. Shoppers passed through the space, glancing my way. Not a soul asked if I was OK. I’d sit, try to get up, fall back again.
Finally I mustered the strength to hobble to the car. I turned on the engine, put the gear into reverse, and started to back out. When I almost passed out again, I turned off the engine and reclined as far back as the seat would go. I was stuck. I couldn’t drive home and I couldn’t walk back into the store to let Ana Lucia know what had happened.
And that was how my year started. Stuck.
The pinched nerve, I am convinced, had everything to do with a commitment I had made months before. I had been invited to submit five paintings to a show in Manhattan. Thrilled, I signed up to do so. But as the show’s Spring 2009 deadline approached, I let fear get the better of me. I had it in my mind that the pieces were due in New York City in April, but I didn’t go back to verify any dates. By early February, when I finally checked on the due date, I saw that the paintings were due in the gallery by February 28. I had less than a month to go and hardly an inkling of what I was going to paint.
To make matters worse, I had committed to taking on an exchange student from Mexico for two of the four weeks that I might have used to complete the paintings. In hindsight I believe I was subconsciously sabotaging any chance to actually fulfill my creative commitment. (Our experience with the exchange student was so enriching in other ways that I don’t regret having done that. But this is how the mind can work; this is how we create the obstacles to our own creative fulfillment.)
Back in the parking lot of Burlington Coat Factory, I called Jim on my cell phone and told him my predicament. He was there within ten minutes, went inside the store and found Ana Lucia. Then he got me home. I was able to see my friend and her family again on their return leg of the trip. We had a wonderful dinner and have kept in touch since.
Looking back I see that good things come of bad. Aside from my two weeks laid up on the ground, literally, I moved forward in 2009. I completed four paintings and showed them during the Corrales Art Studio Tour in early May. Went to Vietnam in mid-May and again in August. I met Pham Luc, learned how to make jewelry from my doodles, did two art shows in the Fall, and set up a small Etsy shop this past November.
Looking back, I woke myself up. I committed even further to the life I have—giving to my children and husband, to my job. I connected with old friends and new ones, gained from the generosity of other artists, and spent time with family.
Looking back, I see I found clarity. It’s as if Saint Lucy, that courageous woman who gouged out her own eyes so she could dedicate her life to what she loved most, was by my side, carrying her eyes on a plate so that I could see. I began painting her image probably a decade ago and never finished. She’s a constant reminder that if I look inside myself, I can see where I need to go.
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This piece is based on a 15-minute Writing Practice I did on WRITING TOPIC — REFLECTION & INTENTION. Tomorrow I will post my Intentions for 2010.
-Related to post The Making of a Painting Painter
ybonesy, I remember when you were flat on your back last year. It seems like such a long time ago, yet only yesterday. Time is so strange.
It’s weird about stuckness. It seems to come and go during a lifetime. A few years ago, I felt like I was flying. In 2009, I felt pretty stuck on some of my goals and aspirations. But I know I’ll walk out of it again. I’m trying to follow through on my goals for 2010. And not set so many of them that I get frozen.
Your write sounds confident. And reminds me that the process is slow and steady. Kind of like we realize when we have our red Ravine meetings. We are opting for slow and steady rather than the one-hit wonder. I guess in the end, art and writing are spread out over years. And, at least for me, completion cycles are, too. Looking forward to your Intentions.
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yb, I too remember the time that your back was “out.” Someone once told me that low sciatica could symbolizenot supporting one’s self or not feeling supported. You certainly put yourself out there this year.
2009? What was the year about for me? I still haven’t sat down and reflected on the year. Maybe I will get my notebooks and loop writes together and see what I was dwelling on that year.
Thanks for sharing your story.
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Bob, I know some people get recurring issues in their neck areas or shoulders. For me, it’s always the lower back stretching into my left hip. My chiropractor, who I think of as a healer (he is) has mentioned that sometimes my body issues have to do with role. Interestingly, I have had relatively few kinks in my body since May. I did start to get that old pinched feeling this week, though. Maybe there is something about the pressure of new years that weighs on me.
2009 must have been a pretty important year for you. I say that because when I saw you last year, you seemed content and light and at peace. So I would imagine if you look back, you’ll find that it was a big year. Maybe not one specific event, but maybe just a slow and steady movement forward. It’s rewarding to move forward.
QM, being unstuck begets being unstuck. And the same with being stuck. It’s hard to get out of a stuck place. If I look further back, I see that getting unstuck began for me the summer of my first sabbatical, when I took my first silent retreat with Natalie. So the cycle is long.
I like your idea of not setting so many goals and intentions. I’ll have to look at my list and make sure I didn’t fall into that trap.
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This is a very interesting story – I like the connections you make between your physical body and emotional state…that you come to that awareness is the beauty of the lesson your body taught you. You unstuck you.
I remember your telling me about the Burlington Coat Factory episode – but I had not pictured you in the foyer, where passing shoppers might have thought you were drunk, homeless or both…I have myself lain on the floor between the jacket racks at Burlington Coat Factory, but not in the no-man’s-land between the doors.
Bob is right, the lower back is your support system. lack of financial support, feeling you must do it all – the hip is forward motion – fear of forward progress – sciatica, fear of the future. Your healing is deeply involved with those issues.
Happy New Year, and here’s to forward movement, light and limber…through the doors into the big life you have on your plate.
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Just to clarify something – it sounds like I am saying you are fearful, and I actually don’t think that is the right tone – you’re actually very brave and resourceful, way beyond the bounds most people are willing to go – there are just challenges that need to be integrated. Hope that makes sense! ;>)
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Thanks, ‘lil, for the interpretations. I should ask Dr. L more often about what these particular spots mean, what they might point to in my life. I’m always so interested to find out, yet when I go in for a treatment, I tend to focus on breathing and visualizing healing and just being. So I don’t often talk.
Your comments brought up some questions. First, what were you doing on the floor of Burlington Coat Factory? How funny! Maybe there are more of us who nearly passed out in that place. We could start a Facebook group. 8) No, really, what happened to you there?
Second, I’m not at all surprised about the hip and sciatica both focused on forward/future and fear of that. I had a dream not all that long ago while embarking on my artistic endeavors about losing our home. In my dream there was no getting back the home, and I was so saddened because I kept thinking that, well, it would come up for sale again some day and we could buy it back, but when?, and by then wouldn’t it be unaffordable to us? After I woke up, I thought about what the dream meant, and what I came to was that I was afraid of losing a part of myself as I embarked on a new path.
I told some friends about my dream and my interpretation of it, and some were surprised. It is exciting to be doing new things that I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s also scary. Putting myself out there with my art, it makes me feel vulnerable. Fear isn’t the predominant emotion, but it’s often underlying.
Oh, one other thing–being in the foyer of Burlington, it reminded me of when my mom used to have Meneire’s Disease. She’d be suddenly struck by a debilitating case of vertigo and get dizzy and possibly fall and get sick. She always worried that people might think she was drunk. I thought of her when I was lying on the floor and no one was asking if I was OK. I did feel like perhaps they might have thought I was on drugs or drunk or something. Gosh, makes you wonder why they’d just look at me and keep on walking.
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I’m not a good shopper, I really do drop instead. My back and hips will start to ache if I am standing around in stores under fluorescent lights, in the chemical aura of all those foreign-fabrics…and the whole urgency, making decisions and hating the way everything looks in the mirror…I slipped to the floor one time there at BCF, just gave it up, amid the hundreds of jackets (“Pick a coat, buy a coat, Mrs. Seinfeld, please!), to gird myself for the register lines where they never have the SKU number of the person immediately in front of you and then they don’t have your SKU number either. I do prefer online shopping.
And I am not surprised people just walked on by you. They’re afraid of anything that might involve them emotionally. And most don’t speak English. Interesting that you had the cell phone, our modern-day SOS. They are handy in emergencies. I must say the image of you there is poignant, between the doors, past and future.
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