There Be Monsters Here

As much as I thought about starting this blog, I didn't think about how to begin it. In my mind, the posts came to me, but without a beginning so you'll have to, hopefully, bumble along with me as I try to welcome you so if you were hoping for a beautifully mapped path with a clear end point, not so much. As they wrote once on old maps, "There be monsters here."

In February I had a very serious health issue. To some degree, that's nothing new for me. I almost died of cancer at 6 months old and since then I've been both disabled and suffered from chronic health problems. Still, the recovery from this one is still ongoing. In fact, even today I'm struggling with it, and last Thursday I had a set back that was severe enough to almost land me in the hospital.

What made February different is that part of my treatment involved iRest to help me cope with my PTSD. (I have PTSD from my previous medical traumas which made being in the hospital particularly difficult.) I found the experience transformative. I began visiting with the practitioner every week and continued to practice once released. From there I began investigating other guided meditations and reading books like Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart."

And so now here I am, meditating every day, reading, learning, growing, but also wanting to write about it to invite other people into my experience and hear what they have to say.

The title of this blog gives you a sense of humor. I was raised a jew and so the title indicates a little bit of the tension I feel with this exploration. It's about my fear that exploring and growing spiritually means giving up my sense of humor, which is something I really enjoy (And I hope that other people enjoy as well.). I catch myself now making a joke and then thinking "I really shouldn't think that. This person is in pain and I'm not helping them by doing this." Of course, there's a tiny a little voice that squeaks out after "But it IS funny" as if that's an excuse or makes it ok. So you see the title represents part of what I am dealing with here as I explore.

So here I am. And here you are. And you probably still don't know what this is all about.

Neither do I .

Years ago when the earth was young and no one had smartphones, I was in college. I had a teacher,
Travis. Dear god, did I hate Travis. The first time I met Travis....well let me set the scene for you: It was the first day of sophomore year at 8:30 in the morning. We were all hunched in our seats communing with our giant cups of coffee (red bull had yet to be invented) and Travis walked in and gave us a welcoming look worthy of Klaus Kinski. He wore, and always wore from that day forward, a black turtleneck and pants with black shoes. His blonde hair was in a buzz cut. Everything was streamlined with only his blue eyes as relief. He looked us over silently and then he spoke with calm precision. "I am going to fuck each and every one of you in the heart."

That was Travis.

And yet, as brutal as Travis was, and he was ruthlessly brutal, he taught me more about being an artist than almost anyone else in college. That line "Be grateful to everyone," I learned that starting with Travis the people who teach you the most aren't always the best people or the most likable people. In Travis's case I consider him barely a person, and yet....there is it.

Travis taught me that in order to succeed as an artist you have to dare to fail, and fail hard. That if you weren't in the place where you could land on your face in a broken bloody mess, you were making the "safe art" the kind that gets hung in hotel rooms or selected because it matches the couch. To be an artist is a terrifying thing.

And so, here I am inviting you to watch me fall.