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| working on an oil painting of Jerusalem, 18x24"? |
I haven't posted on this blog in a while. I think I've enjoyed a more receptive than expressive winter. Okay and also, as any self-promoting artist, I've accommodated to the medium of the day: Instagram. I have read a few good books. Among them: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman), which explores the intersection between Western medicine and traditional Hmong culture in the story of family whose daughter has epilepsy. I recommend this book to anyone. Take this:
"Most Hmong women did go to the hospital to give birth, erroneously believing that babies born at home would not become U.S. citizens. Doctors were more likely to encounter them on the Labor and Delivery floor than in any other medical context because they had so many children. In the mid-eighties, the fertility rate of Hmong women in America was 9.5 children, which, according to one study, was “at the upper limits of human reproductive capacity,” second only to the Hutterites. (The fertility rate of white Americans is 1.9 children, and of black Americans, 2.2.) This rate has undoubtedly decreased—though it has not been recently quantified—as young Hmong have become more Americanized, but it is still extraordinarily high. The large size of Hmong families is the inevitable result of two circumstances: Hmong women usually marry during their teens, sometimes as early as thirteen or fourteen, thus allowing their reproductive years to extend nearly from menarche to menopause; and, as a rule, they are highly suspicious of contraception. In 1987, when Donald Ranard, a researcher on refugee issues at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C., visited Ban Vinai, he learned that in an effort to curb the exploding birthrate of the camp’s inhabitants, the administrators had promised free cassette recorders to women who volunteered to take contraceptive pills. Many women accepted both the tape recorders and the pills, but they soon discovered a marvelous paradox: the contraceptives, which they had probably never intended to swallow in the first place, were a superior fertilizer. So the pills ended up being ground up and sprinkled on Hmong vegetable plots, while the gardeners continued to get pregnant."
Another interesting book I recently finished: A Man Without Words by Susan Schaller, the story of a woman's experience with a twenty-seven year old man who has never encountered language. Nouns come first, but through gestures and expressions and the use of ASL, she labors to explain abstract concepts (time? God?) to him. Ildefonso (her student) had been exposed to the Catholic mass as a child in Mexico. After many years, Susan revisits Ildefonso and gains increased insight:
"This languageless deaf boy noticed the priest and his robes, the incense, candles, altar, and the rituals of a Catholic mass. He noticed people with clasped hands, on their knees. ...Ildefonso would have seen much more emotion manifested on the faces of women, children, and men. He would have followed their eyes. He told me he had looked up at the ceiling. He knew the tears and pleas were not directed to the building or anything visible. Without thinking with a word or a sign, Ildefonso had the idea of divinity or spirituality or unseen mystery. After his description, he looked at me and explained, 'God isn't up there. God is inside for me to find without all the priests, robes, rituals, and vaulted ceilings.'"
This book illuminates language as a fundamental to humanity, and Ildefonso's rapt attention and eagerness for communication are evidence of his extreme isolation. It got me thinking about the Word of Life, Jesus, as a fundamental source of interconnection between people. A word is something we use, a tool that allows communication with others and takes us beyond ourselves. The space between people is no longer a space, but a place where ideas can travel and understanding can be achieved. God uses Jesus as a word, a tool, to communicate with his people. Jesus is the very medium putting flesh to divinity, spirituality or unseen mystery.
I am preparing for a pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. Something - laziness? fear of disappointment? some combination? has prevented me from anticipating the experience too much. Plus, it's a guided tour, so it's very nice that there's minimal planning needed on my part. But, I do look forward to being "in it" while I'm there. I look forward to gaining a better grasp of geography and culture. As a visual person, I look forward to the ways it will provide a visual medium for future prayer.
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This painting is done is water-soluble oils! It is my first oil painting in about 11 years. (Aroundabouts the same span since I was last abroad!) Traditional oils requires cleaning mediums with substances with strong odors not conducive to shared living situations (frankly, probably not healthy for solitary living situations either!). But the invention of water-soluble paints and their use with natural mixing mediums is quite the thing. Also, this painting is being completed over the course of multiple sittings, so there's that. ALSO, I overheard a fellow therapist describing something to a patient this week that set off a lightbulb in my brain. I get tension migraine headaches, which I first remember developing long Wednesdays at Notre Dame in which I had morning class, a 3-hour painting class in the afternoons, and choir in the evenings. I think the headaches are multi-causal (stress being one trigger) but sometimes I link those initial headaches to the oil odors. The therapist described how certain postures such as lifting the arm overhead cause tightening of the trapezius muscle (extends from base of head down neck and out towards shoulders), which constricts blood vessels running to the brain. Picturing my painting posture (canvas on easel, arm outstretched upward), I thought about the tension caused by holding my arm in such a way, and the way the return of blood flow to the brain after relaxing could trigger the tension headaches. Even treating shoulder impingement for 2 years, I needed to hear another person explain something in a particular way for it to trigger that thought. Space. Word. Life.
