Posts Tagged ‘Neuropathy’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 87: The Doctor Who makes house calls…

December 29, 2015

There aren’t a lot of doctors who still make house calls. My dentist, Dr. Kenneth Chung [http://www.comfortcare.net/], makes house calls for patients in need…such as my sister who needed dental work during her time of chemo. But such doctors are rare in today’s urban world. Maybe it’s different in rural America…

I don’t often participate in ‘pop cultural events,’ but I’m doing so twice this week. In a few days we’ll use 8 of the $1 Billion worth of tickets that have been purchased for the new Star Wars movie. J.J. Abrams gets the credit, but the reality is that George Lucas expanded our minds back in the 70s and 80s, and the expansion continues.

Last night, we were part of BBC Worldwide’s first showing of a Doctor Who Christmas Special in American theaters. Big crowd. Not as many costumes as I expected, but it’s bleak and rainy here in Portland this winter. Some Tardis-light hats, some sonic screwdrivers; but no costumes that I could see, and no bow ties…

matt_smith_doctorSketch for an upcoming Doctor Who image

I’m not a Whovian; I’m merely an enthusiast. Tom Baker was my first Doctor; and I’m not even sure where I found him. Long before BBC America. Probably in one of the video stores I haunted during my Christmas vacations. I just discovered in the last week or so that I never watched any of the episodes in the rebooted First Series, with the 9th Doctor. I watched the 9th Doctor over the last weeks, and it was all new.

I’m asking myself why am I working on a Doctor Who image at this time [I have other projects to work on]; and why I watch the Doctor nearly every night, these days. The only conclusion I can come up with is my need for Hope. The Doctor is ever hopeful. The heart of the Gospel is Hope, although if one checks the media very often, it’s hard to see this. We are in a time of religious war, as well as our path of endless war. In the real world, Hope seems far away. Hope is closer in the Doctor’s worlds…

This is one of the more difficult Christmas seasons I’ve had. Christmas in America is never something I enjoy, now that my kids are grown and on their own. The fact that my Mom died on Christmas Eve probably has something to do with it; although her death was a relief from her circumstances brought on by strokes. Since I tend to think about her death on Christmas Eve each time we attend a Christmas Eve service, there’s probably a grieving that I don’t really experience consciously. People at the church we attended then were surprised that we would come to church hours after she died. Our perspective was, where else would we come, but to be with our church family at such a time?

There is so much anger in the media; many of my friends ignore it. I have trouble doing that. Something in our country is broken, and I want to fix it. Christmas in America seems to have largely become a shopping time; and I suppose a throwback to its original roots—a Solstice Celebration. Which is probably why people who have no interest in Jesus have Christmas trees in their houses. Christmas trees have nothing to do with the Jesus story. In a Doctor/Christmas episode of a few years back, there is a comment that this winter celebration is one of ‘having made it half-way through the dark…’ Religious people complain that Solstice-type celebration has overtaken the birth of the Messiah; my preference would that they be two separate events.

Writers and Illustrators, by nature tend to be asocial; not anti-social, in wanting to avoid contact with others, but asocial—not needing contact with others. In order to lock oneself in a room by oneself for days, weeks, months at a time, we don’t have much of a need for human interaction. I’ve had an ideal Illustrator’s Life for almost 18 years. My wife works and lives on day shift; I live on night shift. We interact in the evenings for a few hours, and she snuggles up next to me when I come to bed. Most of my days are my own time, even when clients ‘interrupt’.

This year has been different in that I’ve made a conscious effort to become involved in other people’s lives—part of my semi-retirement. I don’t need to work as much, now that I get ‘paid for breathing’… Being involved in other people’s lives reminds me that I can’t fix people. I am by nature a Rescuer; my deteriorating body makes rescuing people more difficult, from a physical standpoint. But I can listen. I can send email. For the most part, I’m fairly ‘normal’ sitting down at the keyboard; until it’s time to move, and then life becomes very uncomfortable for a relatively short period of time.

There are people in my life who need fixing; and I keep wanting to find the words of faith that will create some ‘spiritual magic’ in their lives. A hope that something in my life will spark curiosity and questions; and will lead them along the path that I followed in college. A cynical skeptic who encountered Grace. When people have spent decades running from the Creator, for all sorts of reasons, many of which are totally valid from their point of view, it’s hard to see a need for change. People with physical problems that have brought them up against the fact that their physical problems really aren’t the problems that bother them the most. A couple of guys who have made a mess of their family lives for decades; now when they need the comfort of family love, there’s none there; only anger. It is so easy to mess up a life; it really takes very little effort to do. That’s the problem: making very little effort is an easy thing to accomplish. Undoing the years of inattention is hard to overcome. It takes courage to change; for me, that courage could only be supplied by my Creator.

So, here I am in the first week of Christmas, according to the Roman Catholic tradition that I often admire, but don’t participate with; and I find joy and hope in a blue box called the TARDIS; and the man who has lived for a thousand years in 13 different bodies [mustn’t forget the War Doctor]. As far as I can tell the writers aren’t necessarily people of faith; and yet they write so much about Faith. I captured a recent clip with the 12th Doctor—one of the best examples of Grace that I’ve seen in secular media:

http://mjarts.com/samples/Dr%20Who.m4v

Last Thursday evening during the Christmas Eve service, watching images of stables and shepherds and mangers projected on the wall, I found myself imagining a blue box in a corner of the stable; unobtrusive because of its Perception Filter… or out in the fields with the shepherds and the Doctor keeping watch at night. In my world of faith, the Doctor would of course visit the incident upon which the Western world bases its calendar. Perhaps in walking with Jesus, the War Doctor would find healing and forgiveness…

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 87: The Doctor Who makes house calls…

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 86: Gifts

December 7, 2015

coverThe Gift of the Magi Kindle Edition
by O. Henry (Author), Marty Jones (Illustrator)
www.amazon.com/dp/B0167QVMH0
UK Edition
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0167QVMH0

“The Gift of the Magi” is an illustrated short story originally written by O. Henry; it tells the story of a young married couple named Jim and Della and how they deal with the challenge of buying secret Christmas gifts for each other when they have more love than money.
Featuring hand-drawn graphite images that have been digitally-manipulated, “The Gift of the Magi” has been 20 years in the making. The original project used acrylic paintings; and then the computer came along.

The story of an illustrator with more work to do for other people than time for himself to pursue a personal project…

 

This is always an awkward time of year for me, and is best represented by this image from A Charlie Brown Christmas:

tree

I have a real problem with Christmas in the 21st Century. I felt the same about it in the latter part of the previous century, when dinosaurs ruled the earth…

I’m not one of those people who start decorating for Christmas on the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t participate in Black Friday, nor Cyber Monday. I consider the commercialization of Christmas to be an affront to the Creator of us all.

And I am aware of the hypocrisy of advertising my new book at the beginning of this particular post. It’s a Christmas story that may provide some enjoyment in someone’s life. I don’t expect it to be a ‘best-seller’—it’s simply the completion of one of my dreams. The Kindle version is about the cost of a cup of designer coffee from that coffee place that has gotten so much airplay on Facebook for their holiday practice.

 

Christmas is supposed to be about the Creator of the Universe deciding to enter time and space in the form of a human baby… Sort of sounds like science fiction. Earth is a flyspeck in the volume of the Universe—how arrogant it seems of us to believe that the Creator would spend time thinking about this world that prefers war to peace. A people who are destroying Creation simply because we can; where people whose heads are in a place where the sun doesn’t shine, people who say that the destruction of our planet has nothing to do with us.

Why would the Creator care?

Love. Compassion. Grace. Concepts that are hard to grasp.

For me the idea that makes sense is an image that came to me twenty or so years ago. If you pick up a rock from the garden, on the underside you will see a small world of wriggling, squiggly, crawly things.

When thinking about the nature of the Creator, the entire Universe is in some respects small—in the same way that my 2000sf house is small in my mind—I realize there is simply a difference of scale. The property below is much larger than I am; I’m half the size of the red dot. I designed our house for my parents, while I was in college.

I_Live_in_ForestI live in a forest.

To some of my neighbors’ regret, my forest is located in a suburban neighborhood of Portland, near houses where people mow their lawns and plant gardens and pull weeds…Things I refuse to do. I decided a long time ago that I did not want to invest the time that is my life in the domestication of foliage that grows without my aid. I’d rather use the time to make stories.

However, my parents had a totally different idea, and most of the trees and shrubs that surround our house were selected and planted by me. Because I hadn’t set aside the topsoil when the foundation was excavated, all of the soil around the house is clay. I had to dig individual ‘pots’ with filled with potting soil for each tree and bush.

I designed the house, drew the plans, secured the Building Permits, and built-by-hand most of the house. Most of the drywall was installed by subcontractors; and a plumber and an electrician installed most of the plumbing and wiring. The rest was done by me, and some friends who worked for me.

Every part of the house was at one time in my brain. In that sense, my house is ‘small’ to me.

The same concept occurs with the Creator of the Universe; the Universe is, in some sense small. To the Creator, what would ‘small’ look like? Small may include the blue marble rotating around our sun.

Back to the rock in the yard…

If I imagine that I cared about the squiggly things crawling around, and wanted to help them to understand the purpose of their lives, the only way I could do it would be to become one of those squiggly, crawly things. It seems to me that the best way to be accepted by those crawly things is to enter their lives as a ‘child’; my guess is that even a centipede has some hardwired knowledge that the next generation needs care, in order for the race to survive.

As difficult to believe as it is for me to think that I might become a bug, in order to relate to bugs, it would be several orders of magnitude more for the Creator of the Universe to become a human.

The Creator of the Universe became a squiggly, crawly thing that was given the name Jesus. He was born in a barn because his parents were refugees. Magi—wise men from the East—went to King Herod the Great and Nasty and asked directions to where the new King had been born. They had learned from their study of the Universe that a new King had been born, One who would save mankind from itself. After they’d left, King Herod the Great and Nasty ordered the death of all male children in Israel, aged two years or younger, in hopes of killing the new King. The Slaughter of the Innocents.

Joseph, Mary and Jesus, by this time, had sought asylum in Egypt; refugees in fear for the life of their child.

While traditions vary, “the East” is generally thought to be Persia; more commonly known today as the Islamic Republic of Iran…Isn’t it interesting how history keeps repeating in strange ways…Perhaps because we fail to learn.

nativity

I’m a fan of Doctor Who—I find my admiration for the show growing all the time. A Hero who does not rely on weapons to fight his battles; he instead uses a sonic screwdriver which works on nearly everything except wood…

A Christmas Special with Matt Smith’s “Doctor” tells of a tradition that the Winter Solstice is a time of congratulations for our having made it ‘half-way through the dark’. There is so much darkness in the world today. I would like to think we are half-way through. I fear that we aren’t.

Winter Solstice celebrations were preempted in the Middle Ages and turned to a celebration of the birth of Jesus, even though He was likely born in the Spring. And so ‘pagan’ Christmas Trees somehow enter the story of the miraculous birth. Tradition teaches that the practice of Christmas gift-giving is a tribute to Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, who was known for secretly giving gifts to the poor he served. When the subject of gift-giving came up when my children were young, I talked about Saint Nicholas rather than the guy with the red suit and the white beard. I don’t like the notion that Christmas in America is about gifts—the only thing that seems important to the American economy.

St.Nicholas

And then there are the gifts given by those Magi.

We give gifts as a sign of love. Sadly, we seem to think that love can be bought.

The Babe came to show us that Love cannot be bought.

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 86: Gifts

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 85: Rest

November 21, 2015

Magi_p7

“…if we see rest as something that we deserve, then we just get trapped into trying to become worthy of deserving it. But if what Jesus and the Psalmist are talking about is sacred rest that comes, not from our deservingness but from God, then I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work like employee benefits do where you earn a certain number of Sabbath days for every hour you work.
“See, if there is true rest in the presence of our loving God, (and there is) then we’re not on the clock. Because there is no clock. That’s why it’s called Grace and not reward.
“The rest of the Shepherd who makes you lay down in green pastures is not about time off from work, it’s about time off from all forms of worthiness. Resting in the sacred is a blessed break from the “You deserve a break today” deep-fried culture of the self-obsessed. Sacred rest is a break from the am-I-productive-enough, lovable enough, safe enough, thin enough, rich enough, strong enough-worthiness system we live under. The sacred rest that is yours never comes from being worthy. It never comes through adopting the right kind and the right amount and the right quality of spiritual practices (although if those bring you a sense of well-being then by all means don’t set them aside) the rest that is yours and mine comes from the promise of the Gospel: that Jesus came to save sinners, that Jesus came to heal and love and save the sin-sick and the over-functioning, that Jesus came to give rest to the weary, and the restless, to give rest to harried housewives and overworked social workers and mildly depressed executives.”

Nadia Bolz-Weber

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2015/07/a-sermon-on-no-time-to-rest-and-also-no-jetpacks/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nadiabolzweber_072015UTC040719_daily&utm_content=&spMailingID=49138571&spUserID=Nzg4MDU4MDc2MzkS1&spJobID=722569057&spReportId=NzIyNTY5MDU3S0

 

“Child, lift up your eyes ’cause mercy remembers your name
And those tears you’ve been holding back, let ’em fall down like rain
‘Cause today is the day, yeah today is the day
Oh, the healing has begun
“There’s a world full of people dying from broken hearts
Holding on to the guilt, thinking they fell too far
So don’t be afraid to show ’em your beautiful scars
‘Cause they’re the proof, yeah you’re the proof
Oh, the healing has begun”

Matthew West, The Healing Has Begun

There are so many people in my life right now that are plagued by brokenness that I cannot fix. I am by nature a ‘rescuer;’ a ‘fix it’ kind of guy. And I am powerless to fix other people’s problems. I can’t really even fix my own problems on my own.

When I get stuck I turn to a group of friends for prayer. I don’t specify what kind of prayer I want. I usually explain what my concerns are. In my own prayers, I don’t tell the Creator what I think needs to be done; I simply ‘lift up’ the person by name, as if I was holding them up the way it happens in the Lion King… The Creator knows all of our needs; and is never surprised by the events that surprise us.

People tell us that there is a ‘plan’ for everything; I think the ‘plan’ is the foreknowledge of the Creator plus the Creator’s constant love for us; and the reality that 90 years of pain here will be an eyeblink in the span of Eternity. Nothing happens in our life that the Creator doesn’t mend. It may not be mended in the time frame we want; it may not be mended in our lifetime on this planet; but this lifetime is such a small portion of our Eternal lives…

When I get overwhelmed I watch Hero movies. In Chinese Hero movies, the Hero usually dies; this is how we know that his journey had an element of sacredness in it. I watched 4 episodes of Matt Smith’s “The Doctor” last night and another 3 episodes tonight. Hero stories remind me that there are possibilities that I can’t imagine happening; they remind me that my vision is too limited, and that I focus on the problems too much.

The answer is rest. Resting in the knowledge that in the end it will all work out well. If it’s not working out well, it means that this isn’t the end yet.

I wish I could download faith into people’s hearts and minds, like I can download software and data into my computer. Download the right software, and a file that couldn’t be opened can now be opened.

The faith I’m talking about isn’t some sort of Pollyanna-ish notion that things will work out if I think happy-thoughts. It’s a faith based on the fact that I am loved by my Creator; and that nothing happens in my life outside of [His] knowledge. It’s a faith that comes from 40 years of experience and a lot of reading. If the world were fair, I could make this faith available as a download from my website. The world isn’t fair.

It begins by acknowledging that you can’t do it on your own; and that you need help from however you see your Creator. Or the hope that maybe there is a Creator who loves you.

I know a guy who can’t believe in a God that would allow him to endure cancer. What he doesn’t see is that cancer is the least of his problems. He thinks the world is supposed to revolve around him, and the way he thinks. His life is filled with broken relationships.

Faith isn’t religion, although sometimes religion can help.

Faith is believing that nothing can separate you from the love of your Creator; even if you’ve made a mess of your life.

Faith is trusting that we aren’t alone when we feel like we’re alone.

Faith is realizing that you are a miracle.

Some scientist may be able to explain everything about you by biology, or genetics, or neurology, or psychology. Science can come up with brilliant explanations for nearly everything except the one, tiny, inescapable piece of the puzzle: Life. And the next inescapable piece of the puzzle: our imagination.

Most everything on this planet, as far as we are able to determine, does not have life—the oceans, the mountains, the dirt and concrete under our feet. Life may exist within those elements of our world; but their presence doesn’t make the water alive. Most of that which makes up the Earth does not have an imagination; the ability to see things that don’t yet exist as if they already do. As far as we know, only humans have that ability; and the systems of this world do their very best to make sure we forget the miracles we are. Here in America, the world system tells us that we can buy a new thing that will make us happy. And it never does.

There may be billions of us on this planet; but we still are a very small portion of all that exists here. And then, there’s the universe. The possibilities are endless.

n6914mcquillan

 

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 85: Rest

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 84: The Nothing

November 15, 2015

angel.grief_mj 2This isn’t an original creation

Being a dinosaur, it’s still amazing to me—how powerful the Internet has become. Both for good and evil intent. We can watch the bullets and explosions as they happen. Thanks to social media we can see what others think, translated into words and images. Sometimes I’d rather not know…

There are images of Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves and calling for all-out war with ISIL; in the heat of battle, it’s easy to forget that for every drone that bombs a village from half-a-world away another terrorist is born, as the non-combatant children and mothers are killed as collateral damage.
Am I suggesting that nothing should be done in retaliation, that ISIL should not be stopped? No. I don’t have an answer. More bloodshed isn’t the answer.

There’s an 80’s movie called “The Neverending Story;” in the story, the Villain is the Nothing—it disappears parts of the world of Fantasia. G’mork is a wolf that has been sent to kill Atreyu, the hero who can save Fantasia…

G’mork: Foolish boy. Don’t you know anything about Fantasia? It’s the world of human fantasy. Every part, every creature of it, is a piece of the dreams and hopes of mankind. Therefore, it has no boundaries.
Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?
G’mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.
Atreyu: What is the Nothing?
G’mork: It’s the emptiness that’s left. It’s like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.
Atreyu: But why?
G’mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control; and whoever has the control… has the power!
Atreyu: Who are you, really?
G’mork: I am the servant of the power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing…

We suffer the attacks of The Nothing—the killer of hopes and dreams. The Nothing is nearly everywhere one looks; and one has to make a special effort to see that The Nothing hasn’t killed off all of the hopes and dreams.

One has to look for the hope.

The high school girl who invented a flashlight powered by the heat of one’s hand…towers in the desert that will one day be filled with water, sucked out of the air…the earth is also teeming with dreams that can come true, if they are allowed to flourish.

The 17 year old who created a simple test to detect pancreatic cancer when he was only 15.

The teenaged girl who set out to create, in her words, “a portable device that purifies wastewater while generating electricity sustainably and affordably.” Her final product, the H2prO, skirts the need for a power source and instead uses titanium dioxide and light to spur a photocatalytic reaction that both sterilizes wastewater and generates electricity from hydrogen.

Dreamers surround us…

 

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 84: The Nothing

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 83: The Search for Meaning, Part Two

October 25, 2015

I meant to send this out later in the week; I just watched a movie that changed my mind.

Della's Brain“Della’s Brain”

We can change the way we think.

The flashes of light in the above image represent the electro-chemical signals that cross between connections in our neurons. The flashes of light represent thoughts in Della’s mind. What those thoughts are, are known only to Della…

Our brains contain thousands of neurons, and tens of thousands of connections between those neurons. Dr. Eagleman, quoted in Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82, comments that about twice as many connections are created in our brains in the first two years of life than we normally use as adults. I don’t think these connections disintegrate, they simply stop being used. The fading of memory isn’t due to degradation of the nerve cells that make the connections; it’s simply due to the fact that we aren’t using those connections very often. The pattern, the map, between those connections and our conscious mind is still there; it just takes a while for the connections to be made.

We have the ability to make new connections between the neurons that register ideas, and we have the ability to think in new ways. During the teenage years we start questioning our parents’ beliefs; we can choose to follow them, or not. We can make new connections between our ‘stockpile’ of past experiences and sensations, and come to new conclusions. These new conclusions can change our lives.

We can change the way we think.

Prejudice starts in the mind.

Hatred starts in the mind.

Healing starts in the mind.

My appendix ruptured in 1988, and I came close to dying from peritonitis—an infection of the membranes that hold our internal organs in place. The docs pumped me full with antibiotics, and killed my immune system while killing off the bacteria. A ‘napalm process’—while killing off the bacteria that was damaging my body, the bacteria that aids my body was killed off as well. For the first few months, I caught every germ that entered the Portland Building.

I did a lot of research during the 6 months it took me to fully recover; I discovered that adult-onset appendicitis was frequently a result of stress that had occurred in the patient’s life. For most of the year before the appendicitis attack, I was heavily involved in the fund-raising for, and the care of my sister, who needed a liver transplant. I firmly believe that the circumstances around her transplant were miraculous—I perceived the working of the Creator in the events that took place, and soon the events began running ahead of us.

I realized that if Donna’s new liver was connected to the Miraculous, then my appendicitis was in some way an extension of that miracle process. I don’t believe in coincidence. I don’t believe in accidents. I gave my life to my Creator 40 years ago, and asked [Him] to direct the events of my life. Therefore, the appendicitis wasn’t a surprise to the Creator; it was only a surprise to me.

In the early weeks of recovery from the peritonitis, it became clear to me that there was a ‘connection’ between my experience of a diseased appendix and past anger that I had toward my Dad; the anger wasn’t so much about the man he was, or what he did, but the reality of the father he wasn’t; the father I had wanted. He wasn’t very good with Grace; I doubt that he’d ever experienced it. I could be wrong—we never talked.

I realized that the anger I had felt toward him was gone—the burst appendix was like a boil that had been lanced. New connections had been made while I slept for days. I believe I was Healed. The healing of my anger did not remove the patterns of behavior I had learned while protecting myself from my Dad’s loud behavior. Changing many of
those patterns became part of the work of bringing my own children into this world.

I realized that my Dad was probably very much like his father, and that family of wheat ranchers—he didn’t know how to do things differently, because he hadn’t had a different role model. I decided, with the help of a lot of books and tapes, that I could cause myself to become more like the father I had wanted. I could change my life. It required the making of a lot of new connections in my brain.

I grew up without a concept of faith. The Creator wasn’t a part of my thinking until my college years; and the change of thinking mostly came from religious people who got in my face… And then the Creator ‘hit me upside the head’ in my third year; and I started making a serious change in the direction I traveled. It was at least a 45-degree turn, maybe as much as a 90-degree turn. I began looking at the circumstances and emotions of my life, and started seeing them in a new light. This is the actual definition of the word that is translated from the Hebrew and Latin as “repent.”

“God loves you and has a plan for your life”—a phrase that usually gets heard when bad stuff happens in one’s life. Often the people who say such things don’t really think about the concept that in effect says, ‘oh, God gave you cancer so that you can learn something.’ I’ve struggled with such concepts for the last 40 years. One of the guys in my life at present is angry at the god he doesn’t believe in because that god
allows people to be tortured by pain and death. He sees his cancer-related pain as torture that keeps him from being able to do the things he wants to do with what’s left of his life.

I experience a large amount of pain each day; several neurologists have no idea why it has occurred. “Idiopathic sensory nerve disorder.” A description, rather than a diagnosis. I have pain all over, even in places that have no external sense of touch. The most likely candidate [meaning, the one that hasn’t yet been ruled out] for a cause appears to be the large amounts of analgesics and muscle relaxants I consumed while working for the City of Portland for 14 years. I got through each
day on pain meds and I possibly poisoned myself in the process. Now I work at living without pain meds, in hopes that some of the damaged neurons will heal. Instead of viewing my pain as torture, I use it to help me learn compassion for a whole lot of people who deal with much larger health challenges. It’s a matter of perspective. The pain doesn’t disappear, but the fear of pain can diminish. I learn not to react to pain.

Does God have a plan for my life? I think ‘the plan’ is that I was created with a brain that is capable of changing the way I perceive the world. I learn to make new connections in my brain when I encounter new situations. I don’t believe that anything will happen in my life that is larger than the Creator can use for [His] own purposes. Occasionally it seems as though the Creator dips a hand into the ‘river of my life,’ and alters the flow; usually this happens in a manner that I cannot prove, and it usually only has a direct effect on me. Broken cars that mysteriously come back to life without the aid of a mechanic or tools; events that come strangely together in a manner I could not predict. However, the Creator is not a genie; I can’t rub a lamp and get my wishes fulfilled.

Shit happens in my life; and good stuff happens in my life. I can change my attitude toward the rotten stuff by making a conscious decision to view life differently. I know each day that I am surrounded by the prayers of people who pray for me. Some of you who are reading these words are lifted up in prayer by me, each day. Some of you are supported in prayer by people you don’t know, because I’ve told others of your needs. I think the prayer makes it easier to make new connections in your brains; and these changes can strengthen the soul we cannot see.

I can’t download faith into anyone. I wish I could. There IS Light in the darkness; and that Light is on a wavelength that is easy to miss unless you are looking for it. Sort of like Luminol fluorescing when in the presence of ‘alternate light sources’. Or wearing 3D glasses to watch the movie—there’s a depth to life we can’t normally see, because it isn’t hardwired into our brains. We have to choose to look for it, and keep working at seeing the Light in the midst of ever-growing darkness.

Stars [1926]““Stars” Maxfield Parrish [1926]

 

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 83: The Search for Meaning, Part Two

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82: The Search for Meaning, Part One

October 23, 2015

watson's brain2“Watson’s Brain”

I’ve long been fascinated by the human brain and perception…

If Myers-Briggs is accurate, my personality type is INTJ, and is only shared by 2% of the population. 98% of any group perceives the world with a different type of thinking. Consequently, I see things differently than most people; and most people see things differently than I do.

The “mechanics” of vision is such that no two people see a scene in exactly the same way. Light passes through the lenses in our eyes, gets flipped upside down and then is bounced off of light-sensitive cells at the back of our eyeballs to send electro-chemical messages through the optic nerve to our brains. Somehow these electro-chemical signals cause us to see the world as if we were looking through a picture screen at the front of our heads… People with color blindness and disorders like Irlen Syndrome have cells in the retina that don’t work properly; floor the color-blind person colors look differently than the colors I see. For people with Irlen Syndrome, the letters on this screen might look scrambled. I know a guy who has a ‘hole’ in his brain—parts of the brain tissue are missing, for no known reason, and as a result he has no depth perception. Looking through his eyes is the same as you looking at this monitor—my drawings have the illusion of depth, because of the way they are shaded; but they have no real depth. You really aren’t looking at a piece of paper attached to your screen…

I watched “THE BRAIN WITH DAVID EAGLEMAN” on PBS the other night…

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365587672/

Some quotations from the show:

“What makes you You? For a long time the answer was an immortal soul, or spirit; something that goes beyond mere matter and gives you your life and your identity. But the modern story of the brain tells a different story: who we are can only be understood in terms of the 3-pound organ in our heads…what makes humans unique “is the way
that the human brain can mold to fit the world around it.” Our brains come with some basic programming that allows us to learn language and facial expression; “but the remarkable thing is the degree to which our brains are
unfinished. Which leads to a period of prolonged helplessness. But the plan is that instead of hardwiring everything the way most of the animal kingdom
does, our brains are designed to let life experience wire up the rest of the brain…

“The number of brain cells in a child is the same as the number of brain cells in an adult. The secret lies in the how those cells are connected. Over the first two years of
life, the neurons begin connecting extremely rapidly; forming as many as two million new connections every second. By age two, the typical neuron has more
than 15,000 connections. That is almost twice as many as found in an adult. After the age of two, the growth is halted. The process of becoming someone is about pruning back the possibilities that are already present. You become who you are not because of what grows in your brain, but what is removed.

As we grow and learn new skills, we reduce the number of connections in our brain–in favor of focusing on a smaller number of stronger connections…the connections go from being universal to being specific. Those links you don’t’ use, you lose. Over the course of childhood, brain circuitry is wired up according to experience and interaction with the environment. But this dependence on the outside world is a gamble. The outside world won’t always provide what a brain needs…”

Eagleman doesn’t address the italicized text above—the language that speaks of design, as opposed to randomness. Most of the Animal Kingdom enters this world with built-in programming. Who does the programming? If our brains are different in that they are grown in our mother’s womb, with minimal hardwired programming, but with the ability to make connections between sounds, feelings, smells and abstract words, how does that ability come into being?

At the end of the episode, Eagleman points out that no one has figured out what the mechanism is that gives certain connections greater meaning than other connections. What defines Meaning?

I believe that Meaning is connected to that “immortal soul” that Eagleman discounts at the beginning of the episode. An integral part of the human psyche that can’t be measured. I believe that the ‘connections’ we make to the world around us as we grow, can be made in a similar manner to a ‘world’ we cannot see, feel or touch—the world of the Spirit. The association of the world of spiritual belief and the world of physical experience are similar to the concepts of ‘parallel universes’—universes that we cannot perceive, that exist next to our own universe. I believe that some of the connections that are made between the neurons of your brain can be influenced by your Creator…

We can change the way we think.

We can decide that the way we have thought in the past is not getting us to the future we desire, and that today we will begin following a different path.

We have the ability to make new connections between the neurons that register ideas, and that we don’t have to maintain the thought processes from our parents’ belief systems as we move into our teenage years of growing independence. We can make new connections between our ‘stockpile’ of past experiences and sensations, and come to new conclusions. These new conclusions can change our lives.

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Tags:, , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82: The Search for Meaning, Part One

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 81: Not one week has gone by…

October 3, 2015

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/oregon-shootings-the-map-that-show-all-264-mass-shootings-in-america-this-year-a6677411.html

A British mapping software company has illustrated the scale of America’s gun problem – with a map that displays all 264 mass shootings that have occurred in America this year. [right hand map]

Mapping company Esri UK, using data from the Gun Violence Archive, plotted every incident where four or more people were shot in the USA this year.

The finished product shows the sheer scale of gun violence in America, a country where there has not been one week this year without a mass shooting taking place.

Each dot on the map signifies a shooting where four or more people were injured or killed. Clicking on the dots brings up information about the number of people involved, and where it took place, with the dots getting larger the more severe the incident was.

mass shootings in the USLeft hand map: https://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america

I wonder at our society, which encourages, mostly by marketing, ‘first-person shooter’ video games. Making video death a form of entertainment. My understanding from cop-shows is that there are people in this world who play FPS games 5 hours each day…and we wonder why there are school shootings.

Am I saying that FPS video games create gun violence? No.

I am saying that if the only tool you have is a hammer, it’s probable that most of the problems you encounter will tend to look like a nail.

I watch a lot of DVDs; typically 2-3 per night, often while I’m working on an illustration project. Half a day in my office with my playlist, the other half in the living room with my feet up to aid my neurological condition. I don’t play video games, I’m one of those dinosaurs whose last video game was Minesweeper…

Most of the DVDs I watch involve gun violence; I watch other people shooting each other. My form of entertainment isn’t much better than FPS video games. The advantage is that I don’t practice killing other people.

When we train pilots how to fly, we put them in simulators. My brother-in-law creates the audio background for these simulators. The goal is to make the experience as close to flying as possible, while in the safety of a room attached to the ground.

I’m not sure that I see that much difference between a simulator and an FPS video game.

One of the images I saw on Facebook following the most recent shooting in Roseburg, was a guy wearing a gun belt; and words that suggested that the best way to prevent school shootings is to arm people. School staff members all carrying will prevent school shooters—“no one in their right mind would enter a school with the intention of killing, if they knew that all of the adults were armed.” The problem being that mass murderers aren’t often in their right minds. It becomes ‘suicide by school janitor’ rather than ‘suicide by self’. And the janitor has to live with the consequences.

The ‘answer’ probably isn’t one of having better gun laws; although I can’t see any rational explanation for having an automatic weapon in your house. The fact that ‘it’s a Constitutional Freedom’ doesn’t really make much sense—there were no automatic weapons when the Constitution was written. The only reason to have an automatic weapon is to shoot humans en masse. Shooting humans is not one of our Constitutional Freedoms.

I think the answer is more along the lines of teaching every human in America that violence is not the way to solve our problems; it isn’t the way to defend our freedoms. Violence is another hammer.

I’ve watched a number of programs on the “Freedom Riders” and “Freedom Summer”—the efforts to integrate the US in the early 1960s.

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/rides/

Fhff7col.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 81: Not one week has gone by…

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 78: the tracks we leave behind…

August 27, 2015

My desire for the last few weeks has been to write something upbeat…it’s just very hard, looking at the world and the way it is.

Sitting BullWe will be known forever by the tracks we leave behind.

Lakota Proverb

I watch a lot of movies. Now that my time is not as tied to a schedule as it has been in the past, and because I spend about 1/3 of my day in a chair in the living room, I watch even more movies/DVDs…they occupy my mind while my hand and eye are working together.

I’m not sure why I’ve never watched “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” before. I spent several months, back in the 90s, researching our American history and our treatment of the ‘indigenous people’ who occupied our continent until we—white folk—drove them off their land. I’ve heard that there were something like 500 nations in the Americas before the Europeans arrived.

I’ve also spent/invested the last two weeks of my time investigating my family history. As an adult I’ve largely considered myself as an ‘immigrant child’—I’m ‘first generation on my Mom’s side of the family [she was born in Norway]; and ‘third generation’ on my Dad’s maternal side of the family [my maternal great grandparents were Swedish, born in Finland. My paternal great grandfather comes from a family line that seems to have taken the Biblical command VERY seriously: “As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.” From that generation backward, it seems like every mother gave birth to a dozen children—free labor. I found an immigrant side of that family as well—one of my ancestors emigrated from England to America in the mid-1600s. To my surprise, that line of my family goes back to Charlemagne—by marriage—a Plantagenet descendant married a woman who is in my ancestral line…

I’ve been a member of churches for the last 40 years; and I was in a Christianity-based sales organization for much of the 80s and early 90s. For years I have heard from platforms and pulpits, how blessed the [white] American people are—‘the only nation created in the name of God’—and other such nonsense. The prosperity so valued began in the 50s and 60s, increased in the 80s and died in 2008…I’ve heard so many people state that our material prosperity is a ‘gift from God.’ For all of our supposed ‘prosperity’ we have an incredible number of mass murders. Divorce, unemployment, destitution.

A lot of people who ‘proof text’ the Old Testament tend to leave out the places where ‘God’s People’ were cursed because of their wickedness. The Pilgrims who arrived here were seeking religious freedom—from the Anglican Church of England at that time. It’s probably an exaggeration to state that the Pilgrims came to bring religious freedom to a new land. They weren’t seeking religious freedom for everyone—they were seeking the freedom to practice their own religious beliefs.

We tend to rewrite history to make it sound much better than it really is. It appears today that the Founding Fathers, in declaring their independence from England were really saying that “we hold these Truths to be self-evident—that all [white males] are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights…’ However, history has caught up with the Founders and the Supreme Court has ruled that these rights mostly apply to all American citizens, without regard to gender, race or religion. One of the ‘problems’ of a Democratic Republic—the rules can change.

Tonight I’m thinking about the huge number of Native Americans who were slaughtered by European emigrants who believed they could own land [“On 8 September 2000, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) formally apologized for the agency’s participation in the “ethnic cleansing” of Western tribes]; about the Japanese-American citizens who were sent to American concentration camps during World War II; and the hundreds of thousands killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which included the murder of thousands of children. How do we overlook such wickedness…

It is far easier for me to see the world today as being under a “curse”—I’m a 21st Century enlightened American Christian who has trouble thinking of the literalness of “curses and blessings’—than it is to see the results of blessing in our world.

And then there is another quotation from the movie: “There is another road that runs beside warpath, a secret road, only known to the Christ worshippers…” for me, it is important to distinguish between the religion and the followers…they aren’t necessarily the same.

Medicine Bottle

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 78: the tracks we leave behind…

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 76: It’s always too soon to quit…

August 10, 2015

peacock window

A dear friend of mine recently posted some quotations from Marcus Aurelius on Facebook; a mutual friend, a woman we don’t know all that well, in reading his post remembered inspiration she received by reading the writings of this this long-dead Roman Emperor; and baby Aurelia was given her name. In the annals of history, being the instrument of the naming of a child is probably a small thing; however, she is only a few weeks old, and has her entire life ahead of her. Who knows what the inspiration from a Roman Emperor of 1900 years ago might have upon her life? The naming of each of our children was a well-thought-out experience, and I imagine it’s the same for many parents. We can never overlook the possibilities that our smallest acts contain.

This dear friend of mine has a lot of reasons for doubting the value of his life; he battles a chemical imbalance in his brain; probably a result of genes—something he cannot control. One of my ‘fears’ is that one day the chemistry will win out over what he knows in his heart-of-hearts to be true. When such ‘fears’ come upon me, I turn them over to the Author of Life, in whose name my dear friend was raised. Whatever events happen in our earthly lives, I know that we will meet again in the Life to Come. This is a promise from the Author of Life.

Sixty-three years of life; forty-two of them walking with the Author of Life. I rather wish I’d kept a list of the ‘small things’ that have happened in my life that ended up being extremely significant. Many of the ‘small things’ were barely noticed; like the song that just happened to start playing as I’m writing this paragraph [statistically, a 1/1340 chance]—The Impossible Dream, which caused to realize that there is more to live for in this life than the stuff we find around us. The story of the ‘Man of La Mancha,’ presented in a Senior AP English class in high school by “Captain Bob” Bonniwell opened the door to faith in my life. The older I get, the larger the pile of ‘stuff’ gets, and the more potent-smelling it becomes. And still I contend that it is better to live life as it could be, to live life as it ought to be lived; rather than to live life as it often presents itself in our circumstances. I never made the opportunity to thank Captain Bob. Should have.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to create a life for myself that allows me a lot of time to think, to ponder, to hope and to dream. The dreams are harder now, partially because the Dreambuilders I once surrounded myself with aren’t around. But I still am able to ponder and hope. I too often fail to realize what a gift my lifestyle has become for me. Most people have little time to think about LARGE concepts, such as faith. I wish I had the ability to download faith into all those who need it; I’d post it in a Dropbox and plaster the URL across the internet. Sadly, I can’t do that. By “faith” I’m not talking about religion; it often starts with religion; however, there is a Faith that transcends religion. I’m not there yet, but I can see it in the distance.

One of our shortcomings as human beings is that we tend to think that we are something special; just by being human. In today’s world, “American Exceptionalism” is probably the most insidious version of this curse—at least within the American culture. I believe that when the Creator said, “let us make man in our own image,” the Creator wasn’t talking about form. I believe that the gift we were given, that gift which is in the Creator’s image, is our ability to Create. There are other creatures that use tools; creatures like the spider that can build a web we can’t even begin to replicate—and these abilities are hard-wired into their tiny brains and neurological systems. Birds make nests; I don’t know if there are birds who have realized that all that plastic garbage we leave lying around can become weather-proof roofs over their heads…

We have the ability to create our own realities; and by this gift we are human, slightly lower than the angels. As animals, humans display a lot of behavior that is far from special. We are more than animals.

I’m in an *interesting* place in life. I don’t have ALS—it’s clear that I don’t have ALS—and yet I can’t help but wonder if what I experience is similar to those with ALS: watching my body ‘dissolve’ around me. I end most evenings [early mornings to much of the world] watching ‘hero stories’ on DVD. I find that drawing-time seems to work best after 10p or 11; and lasts for 3-4 hours; after which it simply hurts too much to keep sitting down. So I move to the couch, and watch a couple hours of ‘hero’ stories; and then I try to figure out how I’m going to get off of the couch, and make my way to bed. I was at a friends’ house yesterday, and sat down on a footstool; I immediately realized that this was a bad choice, because the footstool turned out to be much squishier than I expected it to be. When it was time to leave that room, I waited until I was the last one there, so I could figure out what method I’d use to get myself from footstool to standing up… I honestly can’t tell if it’s a strength issue or a function [lack of] issue. Getting up from the footstool was awkward, and I am innately self-conscious.

There are a couple of old guys in my life, guys who cannot [yet] cope with the idea of ‘new normal’—a new set of conditions in their lives that make their former plans extremely difficult to achieve. Neither of them live with the difficulties that one of my heroes lives with; a woman who has lived most of her life in a wheelchair, with a body that mostly does not respond to her control. She’s endured more operations than she has years in her life. Her physical abilities are far less than those of the two old codgers I’m writing about; and yet they have trouble finding a reason to stay alive. My hero-friend has been making that choice for a long time.

We make choices as to how we will live our lives. Some of us have horrible crap to overcome; some of us merely have inconvenience to overcome; and we think that it’s ‘horrible crap’ because our view of life is too small… Each day above ground is a gift, whether or not we want to see it that way. And we are given tremendous flexibility as to how we will use this gift.

How will you use your gift, today?

How will I use mine?

Summer King

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Chronicles in Ordinary Time 75: The Shadow People

July 17, 2015

Human Shadows Imprinted by Nuclear ExplosionHuman Shadows Imprinted by Nuclear Explosion

 I had planned on writing something more upbeat for this installment; I don’t like writing about the physical challenges I deal with—there are so many, with so many more…The hope, in writing the last installment, was that it might prove helpful for someone…

Then I was informed of the date: July 16, 2015, the 70th Anniversary of a horrific event.

On July 16, 1945, scientists in Los Alamos successfully exploded the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site, located in nearby Alamogordo, New Mexico. The atomic age began; and the words were uttered by Robert Oppenheimer: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds”. On August 6 and August 9—next month—the 70th Anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will occur. The above images are from these cities; the shadows left on structures after their owners were vaporized by the atomic blast.

 Atomic_bombing_of_JapanAtomic cloud over Nagasaki from Koyagi-jima

 Wednesday afternoon I opened my email to find that people are suggesting that we go to war with Iran; for fear that Iran will become a nuclear power, and will provide terrorists with nuclear capability. The insanity of nuclear war must stop.

This subject is particularly meaningful for me, in that it reminds me of one of my ‘failures’ as an illustrator. I was hired [not sure I ever got paid] to illustrate a “Hiroshima Diary” but could not finish the illustrations in the time I was given. Most of the illustrations have never been finished, nor published in any form. The diary is the story of a teacher who entered Hiroshima after the bombing, looking for two children who had been sent to Hiroshima for schooling. As she walked the streets of Hiroshima she saw hundreds of children wandering through the rubble, looking for their parents. The only survivors she found were children. Her diary tells of her encounters with wandering, damaged children; all of whom die in her arms…

Ashes of HiroshimaWe did this.

I don’t care how much discussion occurs over the justification of our actions; we obliterated thousands of women and children. Non-combatants. Perhaps they would have become combatants if we invaded Japan. We didn’t, and they weren’t. We slaughtered:

20 U.S., Dutch, British prisoners of war
90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima
39,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki
Total: 129,000–246,000+ killed

 Champions of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

It must never happen again.

 

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

 

 

 

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 75: The Shadow People

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »