The dance theme was breath and inspiration. I painted the body and the heart and had a lot of white paper left with 20 minutes to go. I needed to speed it up and picked out a brush I never use. I started painting the background circles, thinking of all the hustle and bustle of daily life that challenges my serenity. I choose mis-matched colors and let myself go wild. During the dance, when I get to see the painting from a distance instead of up close, I saw the white strip the figure is sitting on as the plane where body meets spirit. It's the plane I try and get to during meditation (not that I meditate that often.) It's like the thin creme filling of a chocolate mint, subtle yet rewarding, sandwiched between the darkness.

This week I am feeling stronger, able to taste the sweetness of life.

The radiation fatigue is lightening up and I'm starting to feel better. It's been almost 5 months of living with the knowledge I have cancer. Now I need to start living with the sense that the cancer has been eradicated and I've survived it. I am now a BC survivor. (time to get a pink ribbon for the back of the car ?) I'm in the process of revamping my attitude and making changes to my life to increase zest. Dance and paint. I read a book called "Cancer As A Turning Point." It's premise is that the key to boosting your immune system is to find what in life lights your fire, makes you want to hop out of bed in the morning and gives purpose to your days; to do NOW what you have put off for the future, to take more control of some things and give up control of other things. Finding that balance is the challenge, but posting my paintings to share with all of you is a big thrill for me.
Thanks for tuning in and looking!

Dance Retreat

Last weekend I took a retreat. It was the 3rd year that I went with Core Connexion to the Land of the Medicine Buddah for a weekend of movement and authentic exercise. It is in the Santa Cruz mountains; beautiful land, hot weather, delicious vegetarian food and a peaceful community. Eva creates a space where I feel comfortable to be myself and feel what's true. I hesitated to sign up this year, given how tired I'm feeling from the radiation. But then I remembered what was going on for me last year. I'd just celebrated my 50th birthday with a blow out party in the rug showroom. I had put all my paintings up and had over 90 people come to help dance and celebrate. It was a blast and I felt 50 and fabulous. But a week later at the retreat, I was again feeling the pressure on my chest that I hadn't been able to shake since it started the previous August. During the first or second dance session last year I had had to stop and step out because I felt like a boot was standing on my chest. It was painful and scary. My friend J had recently experienced a heart attack and I wondered if my heart was diseased or compromised. When I got home, I saw my Dr. for a physical exam, an EKG to test my heart and a chest x-ray. Everything was fine and the only explanation for the pressure I felt was stress. Now here it was a year later and I was back at the dance retreat after two surgeries to excise 3 cancer tumors that were right at the spot where the boot pressure had been. Interesting.

So despite my fatigue and increasing burn pain from the radiation, I decided to go. I didn't have the same joi de vive that I usually exhibit, in fact, during each of the 4 dance sessions I had to step out for the high energy songs, but Eva was so understanding and gracious to accommodate whatever I needed and to let me know when to come back in to participate in the exercises. We drew with pastels, witnessed each other dance, wrote words for others and then poetry from those words about our dance. Very powerful and fun to spend time in that deep world of somatic expression.

Saturday afternoon R, a fellow dancer, offered me a healing session. I had no idea what that meant, but I gratefully accepted. I layed down and he sat next to me with his drum. He coached me to imagine going underground to meet my spirit guide. I chose a spot in Joshua Tree that had held me a few weeks ago and I visualized going under ground there. I met a wolf and it seemed so predictable. I asked if he was my spirit guide and the answer was no. I met a fox and it seemed too sneaky, and the answer was no. I saw a cobra snake and really wanted it to be my guide, but I figured I had created that image out of desire and maybe it hadn't presented itself authentically, but as I continued, the snake wrapped itself around my ankle and tripped me. I tried to get up, but instead the snake and I were swimming like dolphins in a cave. So Cobra snake as spirit guide it is.

Wednesday's dance theme: "To hold space for yourself and the dance..."

I tried to hold that theme in mind as I went into the studio, but I really wanted to paint a snake. Now I can see I did paint a space for myself and the dance, in a container with a wide brim and a snake to hold me. To dance and be held, yet open to possibility. That is what i love and that is just what happened. Thank you Eva and the Core Connexion community!

Elaine Young: September 24, 1921-June 9, 2010

I got the call at 9:30 in the morning that E had died. After 9 days of no food or water, her spirit and body parted ways. She has left a void and we will miss her. This painting is dedicated to her.

In the afternoon I emailed Eva for the dance theme for tonight. Eva wasn't sure where she was going with it and called to chat. I felt honored to be included in the conversation and discuss the important matters of life: breathing, grounding and being witnessed. How our body defines inner and outer space. She began with the core. It can be hard like a mountain, flow like the ocean, be wide like the sky and warm like the sun. Or it can be nothing; emptiness, nothing and everything. In the studio, I started with a circle in the center that came out squat like an egg. I painted around it, and as the surrounding colors and images evolved, I came back to the center void. It needed to be bigger and as I painted it become a round shape of nothing, all white. No boundaries. I thought of Elaine, who after 88 and half years, left her body on the surface of the earth and dissolved. As I painted ripples in the water and shadows on the mountains, I thought of Elaine leaving behind the material world that we still enjoy, the vistas, colors and beauty. I really wanted to keep painting and I was running out of time. 7 o'clock was creeping closer and I have to allow travel time to get it to the alter. It was 6:48. What more did the painting call for? A boundary around the white circle? a line to define it? or let it just be?... I went for it. I quickly outlined the circumference using different colors, two thin lines each, and then regretted it.
Looking at it after K and I pinned it to the wall in the space, I saw those outlines representing the what we use to define our being with; our mind, our emotions and our physical body. The line is the definition of our presence here and now Elaine is not. I guess I wasn't ready to accept that she is gone. Maybe I'll go back and paint the outline out when I am ready.

Today was also my last radiation treatment. Sixteen doses. Whew. The Dr. told me the side effects peak a week or two after treatment ends, the gift that keeps on giving, but nonetheless, I felt a milestone had been reached. Beams of radiation have been aimed into a specific area of my body with laser precision. It has left a burn patch on my skin with a clearly defined tan line, distinct boundaries, but it doesn't match any bathing suits I have and the color is more orange than a dark tan. All the fast growing cells in my left breast and surrounding chest have been killed. The healthy cells have been struggling for their lives and have increased my appetite with their demand for nutrition, feed me! The cancer cells are history, hasta la vista, sayonara, kapoot, being dismantled and re-absorbed as I write. Thank you high tech modern medicine.

I celebrated by dancing. I found a scarf in my dance bag that I used after surgery to reign myself in and tie my arm to my side. I used it to blindfold myself and create a boundary between my inner attention and relating to others. I let the music move through my body and breathe into each muscle one by one. I tune in and find where my breath is needed next. In the dance I can feel the delight of my body, moving, beating, shaking, swaying. It is nourishing, the opposite of empty, it is a refueling.

Crossing over

I am very close to my cousins B and K and love them dearly, including K's mother E, who is 88. E had a fall earlier this year and broke her wrist and suffered a concussion. As we know, injuries like that are hard to bounce back from. E was independent, living alone in Rossmoor and driving back and forth to visit her daughters, both in Oakland. She was a designer and made her living from her handicrafts, from making check book covers for Gumps in the 70's and 80's to sewing custom clothes and coats. Elaine was a self-made woman and I always enjoyed visiting her in the quiet and beauty of Rossmoor in the Tice Valley of Walnut Creek. Her small one bedroom apartment is chock full of antique chairs she had reupholstered herself, ornately framed portrait drawings, flowware plates and black metal candellabbras. It is crowded with hand crafted wooden boxes and over sized hand sewn tapestry pillows. Stained glass pieces hang above the windows and everywhere you turn there is a piece of beauty and interest, with a provenance that Elaine would gladly share. She spoke with a voice tinged with New Orleans and although I've never been, her place and her grace gave me a taste of being there. Last Wednesday, over a week ago now, B called to say E was fading fast. Her heart was failing and her energy was diminished. B knows and honors that my Wednesdays are paint dance days, but he suggested it might be time to go visit. My son Aa and I raced out there and saw how frail and weak she was, but she recognized us and was able to say a few words. I was so proud of Aa with his presence and ability to look into her eyes and tell her he loved her. That was over a week ago. I visited over the weekend and again on Tuesday. K is staying with her mom and caring for her in such a loving way. Family gathers and drops by and we are all holding the space for E to receive her family and friends and feel their presence as she prepares to cross over, to learn the secret. Her body is working so hard to house her spirit and that union doesn't seem long for this world, it is straining. She is taking morphine. Today her 85 yr old brother flew in from Louisiana with her nephew and E rallied to receive them and have a brief chat. It's amazing how tenacious her spirit is, but not a surprise given her long life and accomplishments.