i just read an article in the week magazine, a digest of news reports.  it was an article by barbara ehrenreich, who did such a good job telling about the horrible minimum wage lives many people have to suffer (i’m an artist, i don’t even make minimum wage.  but i’m doing what i want, so i’m okay).

she got breast cancer, and so she wrote about that.  but what she wrote about was her experience of anger.  i know that anger.

anger at having cancer, anger at the unfeeling, profit-based medical industry, anger at the stone-age treatment options which are worse than the disease, anger at the way we’re all supposed to be so light hearted and positive about having cancer.

i tried to explain this to my friend renee once.  renee has breast cancer, and writes about it on her blog.  she read something i once said about how cancer is the best thing that happened to me, and took me to task for it.

how could breast cancer be positive?  how can i derive comfort from having cancer?  how can i act like it’s my best friend?

what i mean by ‘best thing that ever happened,’ is the same as when i say that having my baby girl was the best thing i ever did.  what i really mean is that it’s the hardest and most rewarding job WHEN IT TURNS OUT RIGHT.  at the moment, my baby girl is being 21 with a vengeance, and i regret thinking i did a good job.  when i get my cancer back and have to really concentrate on dying now, i’m going to regret welcoming it as a friend.

but at the moment, having cancer is living with a death sentence, and it sure motivates me.  it’s a huge challenge, and because i have to be on my toes to cope with it, it makes everything sharper and eliminates the timewasting i used to look forward to (tv?  when i could be working or reading or even sleeping?  watching someone else’s fictitious tiny commercial-driven life?  fuck that)

it’s a motivator the same way being dropped into a war zone with only the armor on your back to aid you.  nothing motivates like death.

but barbara is right.  all the slick commercialism about breast cancer only reveals what a huge market someone, many someones, are manipulating cold-bloodedly.  pink this and that.  simpering be happy messages.  infantalising grown women so that they submit to questionable medical practices that are the bread and butter of hospitals and clinics.  we’re just a bunch of sheep, painted pink.

anger is appropriate.  but they sure don’t want to hear it.  when barbara wrote her article, she got a bunch of comments lambasting her for being so negative.  comments portraying the commenter as superior and barbara as an ungrateful child.

when i got cancer i imagined a whole series of art.  paintings screaming about the unfairness, the cattle-at-slaughter chemo pens, the bare naked woman at the mercy of white-coated aliens.  but i never made these paintings because i was told right away that i needed to have a good attitude.  and they seemed too angry.

but years later i’m still fuming about it, so first i wrote about cancer (my novel splat), and finally i painted the paintings i’d been thinking about.  and i’ve got more to paint.

of course, there are very few (meaning none) places to show angry breast cancer paintings, so they sit in my studio.

but i’m still angry about it.  and now that i’ve read her article, i think there should be an increasing outcry against breast cancer treatment.

a mother and daughter discuss breast cancer.  this is a two sided painting.  on the front is my daughter, life size, wearing my mastectomy bra and a fabric skirt.  on the back is a self portrait of me in the same pose, with a mirror for my face, and wrist restraints instead of bracelets.  the bra is open from this side, and you can see the prosthesis on the left, tied in with pink ribbons.  i have a cesarean scar, and my remaining breast is saggy.  this was all done so that the viewer (you) could walk up to the back of the painting, look at herself in the mirror, fit her breast into the bra and her hands in the restraints, and experience having breast cancer (as much as you can looking at paintings).

the arrogance of doctors.  this painting is another self portrait.  you can see my mastectomy scar on the right.  i’m crouching in an empty white room, and the stupid self serving platitudes that are all doctors have to give are raining down on my naked body.

i’m writing a novel.  i’ts about a dysfunctional family gone bad.  i’ve got a lot of personal stuff involved in family dynamics. this post is a repeat of one i just posted on my novel blog.

i had a conversation with my brother this week.  i told him how anxious i have become with writing this novel.  even tho the characters are less like my family every day (and more like me), i’m still dealing with family issues.

universal family issues.  issues of self-worth, issues of abuse, long buried wounds and painful adhesions.

his advice to me was simple – don’t write painful.  write happy.

i snapped back at him.  i’m not interested in writing happy, i said.  i want to write catastrophe, disaster, the basic nature of people in crisis.

it’s true.  i’ve always been interested in disaster (dis-aster loosely translated is bad star) i’ve always had a plutoniandesire for insight into the mystical working of things.  the occult, the hidden, the magic, the real working of the universe.  the god level.

mind you, i was never interested enough to become a practitioner in any discipline except astrology.  my mom rightly kept us away from ouija boards.  don’t touch that – you never know where a spirit has been.  we weren’t allowed to watch dark shadows either, come to think of it (thanks be to god i’m not addicted to soap operas).

spiritual laws are very valuable to learn.  they enable you to make healthy, advantageous, worthy choices.  but they’re not something you should practice.

and why, you ask, would you learn something if you didn’t intend to practice it?

because these energies are very dangerous.  mastery is a long slow road full of mistakes and damage.  ego comes into it, and your soul is damned to hell because you thought it was you and forgot to be humble in front of all that power.

i have been around thru enough lifetimes to see that for the trap it is.  nosir, no fame and fortune for me, no lightning rod, no straight tree that gets cut down first.  i have always striven to work behind the scenes rather than draw fire.  i know i’m not strong enough to fight the forces that are arrayed against you when you decide to be a player.

so i’ve spent a good part of my last 40 years studying one system of knowledge after another without being very proficient in any of them.  astrology, tarot, palms and feet, herbal medicine, bodywork, dreams, tantra, various magic traditions, cabala, divination.  all of these things teach you about the reality behind the reality you see.  the god level.  the level that lays beyond the mystery we call life, and the mystery that we call death.

i don’t have much trouble accepting my own death.  i can remember about a dozen past lives i’ve already been thru, and they were nothing much compared to the wonder of life beyond death.  of which we can’t speak because we don’t have the words or the memory to say it.  i’ve learned that death is a metaphor.  it’s the perfect ending to whatever kind of life you have lived.  it’s poetic justice, it sums up your life, it comments on your mission, your reason for being alive at all.  it’s your very own graduate thesis summed up in a few breaths.

whenever i think of a character i think of their death.  for myself, when i’m up against hard decisions, i generally take myself to my deathbed and look backward at the situation.  it clears up complexities wonderfully.  each of my characters dies the death appropriate to their personality.  mom dies of old age, judy is executed, frank dies of sex, rick dies by some violent means, his wife (name) by poisoned candy, cindy dies of an overdose, her husband (name) dies of overwork, gordon dies conning people, and laurie spins so hard her head comes off.  these are all metaphorical deaths.  ”laurie spins so hard her head comes off” means she goes faster and faster until she looses control and self destructs.  that can mean any of a million kinds of deaths, and i’m sure the appropriate one will occur to me as i’m getting closer to it.

since all the characters are in fact – me – then i’m dealing with a whole lot of personality fragments all dying their own tellingly obvious deaths.  all deserving their just desserts.  i get to hand out punishment for being a hateful daughter, a selfish mother, a vengeful victim.  i have the golden opportunity to tear my personality apart, clean it off, carve new bits or carve off bits, and reassemble it when i’m done.  field stripping my soul.

the option of writing happy pales before this kind of intense therapy.  it’s the chance to learn so much more about me than i knew before the words flew out of my fingers (automatic writing).  and that’s probably why i’m so anxious.  i’m anxious because anxiety is the wellspring of creativity.  you create out of your issues.  you take the rawness of your life and you make art of it.  or you go crazy.  you laugh at it.  or you go crazy.  you turn the things that wounded you around until they are not your enemies but your best teachers.

okay, maybe i’m not done.

the day before yesterday i felt pretty rotten, so i took a long nap.  but nothing more.  so i wrote an entry saying i was done.  fine.

my daughter is getting worse.  like i said, she let me dose her with some medicine, and that means she had to be sick.  she was worse the next day, a rough but nonproductive cough, loads of sinus drainage, fatigue, and she was shaking with the effort to move around.  she’d had vomiting and diarrhea yesterday morning, and she never went to work last night.  today she’s much better, but right now she’s having a nap before going in to her job.

yesterday i dosed her and hung out with her, and fed her soup and home made bread, and was happy that i’d gotten to spend some time with her.  her baby, who i watch alot, was running a 99.5 temperature, and was stroppy, so he spent most of the day in his playpen being quiet or watching movies. he felt cooler this morning, but he was still cranky.

here’s how it hit me yesterday.  i felt okay all day, but i did spend a lot of time sitting in bed reading because i wasn’t up to doing any art in the studio.  i made bread, and ate the freshly baked heel with loads of butter (yummm), and an hour or two later had a bison burger that jim made.  allison had some, jim had some.  an hour after eating, the cramps started.  we were on the evening dog walk with the baby in his stroller, and all of a sudden i couldn’t walk upright, it hurt so bad.  but i went on, and we got back to the house and i put the baby to bed and got ready to eat our dessert in bed – chocolate pudding – but my guts were hurting so bad i put it back in the fridge.  it was obvious to me that i was going to have diarrhea.

but i was not prepared for the pain.  cramps so bad you break out into a sweat and feel cold and hot all at once, and get all lightheaded and tingly sitting on the pot.  and after the first little bit of poop, which was semi compact, it turned to liquid.  and then i was up and down to the bathroom for the next hour, rocking and moaning and sounding either like i was having really great sex, or was in dreadful pain.  at some point i got nauseous, and then i tossed my dinner in several great heaves.  and still i wasn’t done.  the last few trips to the bathroom were succeeded by my running back to bed to huddle next to jim and drift off for a few moments until the churning started up again.  such pain!  and i’m such a wimp for pain.  it no sooner has to start up then i start wondering at which point i’d die to escape it.  and we’re only talking about cramps, here, not the devastations of cancer or anything like that.  how will i deal with that, if i can only moan and wish i were dead and all i’ve got are cramps?

this morning the pains started up with my first sip of coffee, so i put it aside and went back to sleep until about 10.  and then every so often after my yogurt, and every so often thru the day, i would get another rush of pain and then a fart, or a squirt of – fresh blood.

seems i wrenched something in my guts last night.  you’re not supposed to get fresh blood.  it was no more than a couple of teaspoons thru the day, and it seems to be over now, but i’ll be watching.  my guts feel all swollen and tender inside, and i’m going to have soup and a slice of bread tonight for dinner and then wait and see if the pain starts up again.  and really, i feel fine except for the tiredness of having gone thru that ordeal.  i don’t feel sick.  but it wasn’t food poisoning because nobody else had it.

my kid and i sat on the computer the other day and ran her symptoms thru webmd.  over the past two weeks she’s had all the symptoms associated with swine flu, but they’ve been spread out over two weeks.  classic cases of swine flu (can there be something classic about a new virus?) happen very quickly, sometimes only hours before you’re flat on your back wanting to die.  but what i’ve got, and my sister had in august, and my kid has now, is mild, but lasts for a long time, and seems to run the gamut of the symptoms, but not in any order and not very seriously.  it’s as if the virus is checking off the symptoms one by one and moving on to the next one.

i’m over it.  except that i slept much of the day and dragged the rest.  with a headache.  but that was because i was working very hard on my art and probably have a neck bone out of place.

my kid is still sick, sick enough to accept a handful of pills from me – guaifenesin, pepto bismol, nac, a throat lozenge.  usually she won’t let me tend to her.  the baby’s been stroppy lately as well, and spent much of the day in his playpen and in time out.  he’s not sleeping while he’s in there, but he plays quietly and then sleeps heavily for an  hour or two.  but he’s not running a fever and he doesn’t have snot.

to recap:  just like back in the beginning of the swine flu phenomenon, jim had only sniffles.  i had a sore throat.  my kid got sick, and the baby got sick.  but they continued doing whatever they were going to do in the first place, and just walked around sick for a couple of weeks until they got back to normal.

we must be much healthier than they were in 1918, or else this virus is nothing like as strong.  have flu viruses learned that killing the host is a bad idea?  they’re smarter than we are…

on the other hand, my friend renee’s got swine flu in the family at the moment, and it’s hitting them much harder than it’s hit us so far.  how’s it going, renee?  is nathan getting better i hope?

okay, it’s not funny any more.  i’ve got gray sputum (lung jelly) and it’s coming up when i cough.  but my sinuses are clear, my headache’s gone, i don’t notice my sore throat most times, and i’m back to mostly full energy.

on the other hand, my kid is walking around sick, and my 2-year-old grandson fell sick right after spending a little time with his mom.

being old, we don’t have much of a response to this virus.  it’s no more upsetting than a cold.  but then, it leaves its mark in your lungs; mine, at least.  jim shows no signs of it, and he’s in his 70s.

too bad about all those kids, tho…

serves them right for eating junk food and playing nintendo when they should be outside getting vitamin d.

what a wash-out.  my sore throat has deepened, and gone into my ears, which have the same kind of soreness my throat does.  i’m coughing now, and i’ve got green lung-jelly, which is an infection.  it also is getting kind of tight, and i’m getting a little asthmatic.

my 21 year old daughter, on the other hand, has had a sore throat for the past 3 days, and yesterday she could hardly talk.  sinus pressure and nausea as well.  last time she got anything she developed bronchitis, so we’ll see.

jim is over his sniffles, mainly.  the baby only has a little snot and has been sneezing and cranky.

so much for this round of swine flu.  i’ll let you know if there any other developments.

well, isn’t this special…for the flu, i’d say it was a cold.  my throat is still sore, but it’s gone way down the back of my throat, where it just feels raw.  i’ve stopped sneezing as much, and my nose has dried up some.  but i have started coughing sometimes, and it feels kind of heavy in my lungs, so i know i’ve got a secondary infection going, which is what kills people.

it was like this at easter.  i got this little sore throat (and v&d) and headache, and after 2 days i was fine.  but later i developed this nasty lung thing with green and gray lung jelly and hacking coughs, and had to go get antibiotics for it.  i’ll watch this iteration carefully.

and the reason i’m up tonight?  it’s a full moon, of course.  one night of the three nights of full i can’t sleep, and often i also can’t sleep on the new moon.  i try to take advantage of the energy to do something creative, or just read.  and having said my swine flu piece here, i might go over and work on my new novel.

is it just a cold?  my nose is runny, and gets congested at night, making for a sinus headache.  my throat is sore, but that comes and goes, and seems to be getting entrenched (feels more at home in the back of my throat???)  the lung jelly is beginning to thicken, but it’s still clearish, sort of gray but still mainly clear, not too thick, not too much.  i tend to have catarrh alot, you know, the drippy mucus down the back of your throat where you have to keep clearing your throat and sound like some old lady.

last night and today my skin has been real sensitive, and right now my neck and shoulders are starting to hurt – bone pain.  i’m also fatigued, and don’t have much patience or energy.  i don’t feel like getting up in the morning, and don’t sleep well at night, but there’s no sleeping in this house during the day, not with construction going on next door and a two-year old boy cruising around from dawn to dusk (minus obligatory nap which he needs because he’s got snot, and therefore his own bout of swine flu.  wee ha.

but i’m hungry come dinnertime, and i haven’t been overly nauseated.  those are cold symptoms (feed a cold, starve a fever).  there’s certainly no fever.  but up to half the swine flu cases in the world don’t present with fever, something that really screws up their detection methods.

if this is swine flu it’s no worse than the 2-minute version we had at easter, and we’ll function.  jim’s son and his family got it when the kids went back to school, they were sick for a week, but they didn’t miss any school or any work, and made all their extracurricular activities just like any other time, spreading virus as they went.  at this point, so what?

well hello.  after so many months of waiting for swine flu to knock everybody dead, i get it.  how do i know it’s swine flu?  it’s the only thing going around now.  if you’ve got anything, it’s swine flu.  so there.

i’ve had a sore throat for the past two days.  it’s been red in the back of my throat.  my tonsils aren’t swollen, there are no patches, but the redness has increased in area and intensity, and my throat’s gotten slowly more sore.  it comes and goes, as well, the soreness.

i’ve got snot.  it started with clear runny nose water yesterday.  now i’m carrying around a handkerchief (hand dyed silk, this one’s a nebula) and it’s getting stringy, but still clear, meaning no infection.  i do notice if i go without my asthma medicine, also.

i’m sneezing.  alot.  and it hurts my throat when i do.  great, violent sneezes.  that started today.

i had to take to my bed for a nap.  i’ve been more tired than usual the past few days, and today i really had to lie down.  fortunately allison came and got her avery and they went out to breakfast (he was two yesterday and ate most of the cake himself), so i lay down.  the dogs and the phone wouldn’t let me get more than snatches of sleep, but i wrapped up in the blanket and pillows and dogs and cat and went as far to sleep as possible.

i’ve got chicken soup on the stove, i’ve taken a shot of homeopathic flu preparation, i’m going to go dose with some patent anti flu medicine that tasted like elderberries and menthol, add a shot of whiskey, and go sit in the bath with a book.

so i’m sick, i can feel it.  i’m usually the picture of health (except for all the false-alarm cancer twinges).  i’m watching the progression because it’s swine flu.  but i’m functioning as if it were just a cold, dragging myself around moaning and groaning, laying listlessly in bed instead of molesting jim, useless.

we had the swine flu when it came around in april. the week before easter, when the news was just breaking about mexico, atlanta had a lightning flu that hit bunches of people.  it swept thru my entire household, barely touched us old folks, and really walloped the young kids.  the tenant’s baby brought it home.  he had snot.  then his mom got it.  then i got it.  then jim got it.  then allison and her baby got it.  then the baby daddy got it.  and allison and the baby daddy got it bad, it turned to bronchitis, and they actually had to stop smoking cigarettes for a time.

i got a sore throat for two days, with vomiting and diarrhea, and went to bed to cure it.  jim just had the sniffles.  the baby was cranky and had snot.  allison was walking around with pneumonia.

we’ll see how it goes this time.  more later.

the reason i’m up this time?  i had a bout of diarrhea following some really intense bodywork this afternoon, and am up until my guts will let me go back to bed.

and well, i’ve been thinking of writing again and amn’t sure where to put these musings, so you lot are going to get it.  i’m mainly writing it here because my friend renee reads this blog and i don’t want her to miss my deliberations.  i’m not sure i have the energy to write consistently.  but i can always start something i’ll never finish.  it is, by the way, a common trait of adult children of alcoholics, never to finish a project.  they start projects, no problem, never run out of projects to start.  but there’s a lack of will, a lack of follow-thru, the interest just peters out in the middle.  my dad mostly built a model train room, and half built several planes, and on vacation would start the same painting of clouds over and over with each new day.  never finishing.  that’s why i made my choice of art forms the way i did – i chose to paint watercolors because they’re supposedly quicker than, say, painting in oils.

allison’s toybox, painted way back in 1992.

anyway, that was a diversion, let’s get back to the topic.  i’m thinking of starting another novel.

there’s this organization called nanowrimo, which stands for national novel writing month, and the whole idea is to sit down and finally put pen to paper about that whatever it is that you’ve been meaning to write.  take the whole month of november, and do whatever it takes to crank out 50,000 words or more of whatever it is that’s on your mind.  and for those of us with the luxury of being able to devote every day to sitting there and writing, instead of, say, slaving at some horrible paying job, working for the man, being trapped by debt into work that has nothing to do with our private agendas and keeps us from accomplishing our own private goals while we work for somebody else’s bottom line.  that’s another diversion, and don’t get me started.

i have done nanowrimo for the past two years.  last year i got all the way to the climax of the story by the end of november, without actually finishing the story, and the year before i forget.  let me find it now, just a moment.

well, i’m really embarrassed to say this, but i have no idea what i wrote for nanowrimo 2007.  i know i did it, but i just can’t think, and can’t find it on my hard drive, and can’t find it at nanowrimo.  strange.  so what makes me think i can write another novel when i can’t even keep the old ones in mind?  i mean, there’s splat, but i wrote that in 2006, and there’s construction news the novel but i started that in 2006 as well.  i know i’m blocking it out.

anyway.  since not finishing construction news and not finishing cathy eats her words i have come up with the ideas for two new novels to not finish.  one is a sort of happy hooker crime fiction farce, that’s my latest idea.  it would need a whole lot of research into undercover police work and strip clubs, so i may wait for another year or two on that.   but before that i was thinking of writing something about my family.  well, not exactly my family.  my family in a nightmare.  my family in a joke.  of course, my family wouldn’t exactly take it as a joke, but that’s another matter.  i suspect i’ll be explaining this one for years.

i don’t hesitate to use the word fiction when writing about my family.  it’s not, after all, my family, but rather my family on acid, my family on steroids.  it’s what my demented mind can come up with using my family as a starting point.  it’s rather more therapeutic for me than not, and great fun to dream up scenarios, great fun to include all sorts of other people i’ve been studying all these years into my portraits of the evil sides of my siblings and parents, and even my daughter.  evil laugh here.

so okay here’s the title – Train Wreck, The Wrath of Mom.

how’s that sound?  i was sort of riffing on star trek the wrath of khan.  but i think the title is evocative, and is in keeping with what i want to write about.  the working title is Kill Mom, however, which will probably be the title of the blog i’m going to be writing it on.  in.  whatever.

now, when i say kill mom, i don’t think i’m trying to draw an analogy to kill bill, because i’ve never seen those movies.  i’m starting with an agatha christie novel and trying to work toward fawlty towers.  it’s throw momma from the train meets kind hearts and coronets.  it’s like this:

mom is getting old.  her grown up children all find her irritating, and individually decide she’d be better off dead, or rather, they’d be better off with her dead.  each child decides to kill mom and takes steps to accomplish it.  the methods chosen are illustrative of each child’s character, no, each child’s fucked-upness.  they’re so messed up that nobody does it right.  everyone’s plans go astray, they end up fighting with each other, and trying to sabotage each other, and each one ends up dead of their own attempted foul deed.  mom ends up very much alive, and the writer, me, ends up in jail awaiting execution for a family-style murder.  a murder i didn’t commit.  i’m the only innocent one in the family, and as the oldest child, i get blamed for everything.  it’s just not fair.

i’ve been jotting down bits and pieces of what i want to say, and who the characters are, and where the plot twists and thickens for over a year now.  jim’s been helping me with it, for without his evil mind i could never think up some of these things.  however, it’s all very shady at this point.  i don’t exactly know how it starts, or how it proceeds, or where it’s going to go, or what tone to take.

i’m using my family as models only because they’re the only family i know, and there’s plenty of history there to draw from.  it won’t be my family at all, of course, because i’m using several other people as models for each character, and only calling them by my family’s names and relationships.  like my oldest younger sister, she’s got three or four friends of mine all wrapped up into the character, bits from this one and that one.  it’s not really my sister at all.  but i’m sure she’ll think it is.  and my poor mom.  nobody’s plotting to kill her, and they don’t think she needs killing, but she’s not going to believe that.  my only hope is that none of my family reads my blog, which i think it’s safe to say they don’t.

when it’s going to cause so much familial strife, drag open so many old scarred wounds, why can’t i do the codependent thing and keep family secrets?  why would i write such a thing?

because i can.

because an artist’s mission is to piss people off.

because all families are like mine and everyone will find themselves in it.

because it’s a farce.

because human stupidity is funny.

because i’d enjoy writing it.

and that’s the bottom line.  when i was telling jim i think i’ll write another unpublished, unfinished novel this november, and wondering which story to tell, whether to finish cathy eats her words, or whether to choose one or the other of some ideas i’d been kicking about, his response was that i should never mind which one i should choose, but pick the one that will give me the most enjoyment.  and while becoming a house mom at a strip club to research the undercover stripper story is very appealing to me, and i think it would be a lot of fun for a few nights, i think the most fun would be to flesh out the characters, situations and fuckups that result in a parody of murder mysteries.  and since it’ll never sell anyway, none of them will ever sell because that’s not my path, i might as well do the thing that will be the most enjoyable.

so maybe i’ll sit down in november and write another unpublished novel.  and maybe you’ll want to read it as the work goes up on a blog.  follow it at www.killmom.wordpress.com.