The OTG Daily #41 Persistence

 Persistence - that is what it has taken for me to keep up this daily practice 41 days!

We all need persistence these days as the courts are battling daily for what are the basic civil rights of many Americans.

Right in my back yard the Battle of Bloody Run Brook was fought showing the persistence of early American spirit against overwhelming force.  

The British has overrun this island and drove the French and Continental troops away, but the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, the only predominantly Black regiment in the Continental army persisted and the battle was essentially a draw. Blood flowed in the creel that is now near our house.

Bloody Run Brook

I am grateful for the persistence of Americans who fight for our personal freedom.

What's made you grateful today?

The OTG Daily #40 Coming Home

 Although Thomas Wolfe's novel from the 1940s says "You Can't Go Home Again" perhaps because the protagonist Webber writes about his town in away that the locals find unflattering, I think in part you can if you are able. 

Art by Victoria Minozzi

I remember when I was a young adult, in my early twenties and living on my own, working in the city. When I went to Rhode Island to the home my parents retired to, I just collapsed into the couch. There could be all sorts of noise around me yet nothing could tear me from that snooze. Even when I had my own kids - and maybe especially because of that - I sought the comfort of resting into this soft holding space in a home where I had no responsibility to assert my adult self and could in fact collapse into dependence if just briefly.  

That was a delicious sort of sleep and today my oldest child was here (now in their mid 30s).  They too sought the comfort of the couch for a snooze. It was lovely to be able to afford that and to remember how restorative and important it is to feel that kind of unconditional support.

Yet there are many reasons we can't go home, as Thomas Wolfe's autobiographical character finds. His writing choices put him at odds with his origins. Who we become may not be what our our family or parents approve or support. Or those parents were never there to offer that kind of support in the first place.  Finding the haven of safety secure enough for restorative sleep may well be a rare privilege. It's quite true that there are many people at threat of losing their sense of safe haven right now - or have lost it over the recent years of war, famine, and global disaster.

I am grateful to come home to RI each week and for the rest of napping on a couch.

What are you grateful for today?

The OTG Daily #38 Fantasy

 Fantasy, even to say it sounds satisfying like word that feeds the mouth and tongue and then keeps you chewing. Why are so many wrapped up it tales of dragons, and power rings and planets beyond our own?

Michael Whelan The Way of Kings

As an art therapist, one might think that I know but I have no real answers. I am as swept up in it as the next person.  The Marvel Movies and Umbrella Academy swept me into tales of magic, power, and evil-doers, but so did Gossip Girl and Younger about the stratified culture of privileged New Yorkers.  I have always been a sucker for a well-told tale from Charlotte's Web to the Empyrean Series of Rebecca Yarros.  I've even tried my hand at writing a bit of fiction here and there, but makers of fantasy are true wizards to me.

Yet, we are all wizards at one time and another. If the path of pain or fear stretches out long before us, isn't our own biology that makes it so we may imagine something else and lower our own heart rate and still our pulsing breath?  

I am in such admiration of my clients, children and adults alike, who invent magical brilliant unicorns or the possibility that the dear person who has passed continues to speak their name. In the face of great hardship and cruelty or just reality, fantasy is a gift and kindness at times. And I am grateful for it.

What is it that gives you an urge for gratitude today?

The OTG Daily #37 Wandering

 "Not all that wander are lost" is the famous bumper sticker line from Tolkien's The Hobbit.  But it's true. I have begun wandering again daily after literally months on my butt writing. And there, in a tree I'll see a bird's nest in red branches against blue sky just waiting for the spring once again. 

When I was young, I read a Welch fantasy tale called Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander, about a pig-minder who sets to wandering, meets many a dangerous and foul creature in his journey, and eventually becomes the High King of the land.  

That book enchanted me and what with the wrack and ruin that is the supposed real news of the day I've decided to hide my head ostrich-style in fantasy fiction. Because of a young client I have been reading the adrenaline-rush dragon-filled, sex and violence filled Fourth Wing series by Rebecca Yarros.

 But when I was put 750th in line for the newest one Onyx Storm by the local library, I looked elsewhere and chanced upon Ursula LeGuin's The Wizard of Earthsea. 

Now there is a wanderer's tale at its very best.  A book so beautifully written, I would gladly listen to it all over again.  Today is my 66th birthday and I spent the morning of it driving south on Interstate 95 to NY; listening and weeping at the beauty of this tale of magic, discovery and balance. There could not have been a better gift.

What are you grateful for today? 

The OGT Daily #36 Emotional Freedom Therapy

Speaking of techniques which some consider to be gimmicks (myself included) there is EFT or Emotional Freedom Therapy. Some people know this as the Tapping Method. This method was developed by psychologist Dr, Sue Johnson and her colleague Les Greenberg for reducing stress in couples therapy.

They developed the first manual in 1988 and it has since become widely available to therapists and laymen alike. I found this website which offers free training: https://gettingthru.org/learn-eft/articles/eft-tapping-points-how-to/ - from Drs. Phillip and Jane Montrose who are Life Coaches.

Essentially this involves using your hands to tap places on your body while breathing openly to release stress. This can be done in conjunction with a positive affirmation like "I am worthy of being loved or taking care of myself" etc... 

I am skeptical because tapping is also a component of Eye-Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (or EMDR) which is a complex trauma treatment that requires a good deal of training and a license.  One should not be doing this with themselves or a friend to treat severe emotional issues.

However, I do believe in empowering people in their everyday lives to lower anxiety and distress. 

This simple tapping method can do that along with just the simple act of self touch. Like a self hug or a hand on the forehead to calm busy thoughts.

The Drs. Montrose provided this diagram of some basic body points to tap.

 I have done tapping from Shiatsu massage which goes down the arm and clears the lung meridian and its so refreshing to wake yourself up from the veil of sleep with this method.  Super helpful during winter flu season and also during COVID.  Very grateful for things we can do to help ourselves in these stressful times. What are you grateful for today?

https://yinyanghouse.com/theory/acupuncturepoints/lung_meridian_graphic/

The OGT Daily #35 Neurographic Art

I learned something new today. I had heard of Neurographic Art. Had students describe it to me and read papers they have written about it. Seems vaguely related to embodied techniques and claims relationship to neuroscience.  But also smacked of gimmickry to me. I'm always suspicious of cooky cutter art making directives.

I looked it up for a lecture I'm preparing about touch in art therapy and actually it seemed pretty cool.

Started by Pavel Piskarev, a Russian psychologist, in 2014. He described a hierarchy of consciousness and maintained that mindful, meditative doodling could break one out of the "default mode" or habituated ways of seeing and thinking and be open to new thoughts and perceptions. It's become quite popular online and on social media.

Just Google it and you'll see. The person I watched do a demo, Anton Antokhin, described using a mindfulness meditation to get himself into contact with his inner self, quiet all the outside noise, and then allow the energy in his body to guide his pen to make a beginning mark on the page. Then without censoring he continued to make intersecting lines where ever he was drawn to. 

The next step was to go in and round and thicken some of the connections, emphasize certain lines and then add color. As far as I can see this takes you into a flow state (Csikzentmihalyi, 1990) which is a hallmark of positive psychology as well as of divergent thinking or daydreaming which is necessary for creative process. 

It seems like a fun process and I look forward to trying.

I'm grateful this old cat can learn a new trick. What are you grateful for today?

https://neurographic.art/

The OTG Daily #34 Walking, Cooking, Writing

 Despite the flu, which I have managed to escape (knock on wood) it has been a near perfect weekend.

I have so much work to do, preparing for a series of lectures, that a long weekend holed up with nothing else to do felt blissful. I have been walking...

Cooking many simple meals for the sick one - tea, toast, chicken broth, grilled vegetables, leek soup, creamed cauliflower, so many meals..

And writing endlessly.  The balance has been lovely, shifting from computer to kitchen to the long walks in the nearby golf course. If I had my way, I'd live the rest of my life this way.

I am grateful for this routine. What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #33 Guts and Courage

 Hat's off to Governor Janet Mills of Maine who had the guts to stand up to "he who would be king" and who only needs the crown and to walk around naked to be "the emperor who has no clothes."

As the parent of an adult who is transgender, I crown Janet Mills my new hero and that's what I am grateful for today.  Where is congress by the way? 

Governor Janet Mills of Maine - "See you in court."

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #32 Chicken Soup

 The flu has hit our household! It's official. Though we are both fully vaccinated with every possible kind of vaccine (clearly not following the mythology of RFK Jr) it has still arrived.

I have had a drippy nose for several days now, out side of the nearly constant post-nasal drip of a 65 year old woman. Now I very clearly understand why me grandma always kept a tissue up her sleeve. I have become her. 

I arrived home early from NY anticipating a drive up to snow country in Vermont to see our friends.  Yet I found D looking out of sorts, not his usual self. He said, "I'm just tired," but I suggested vitamin C and rest. 

Not an hour later a find him sound asleep in bed. Good, he's following advice.  

So I set to work. Frozen chicken stock in freezer along with last summer's Italian parsley.  Celery, carrots, and some fresh chicken in the fridge as well as some left over pilaf. Perfect!

One time my brother Joe came to stay with use and decided to clean out the fridge. God bless him!  I had not idea he had it in him and the next thing you know he has started a pot on the stove with all the leftovers. He made "Refrigerator Soup"!  It was the best damn thing I have ever had.

So that's what this is - a bit of vegetables - some leftover pilaf.  I baked two chicken breast for the fresh meat and then dripped the chicken schmaltz and crispy bits from the pan into the chicken stock.  

By the time I bring it up to D, he's running a fever of 102F.  

They say chicken soup is a naturally healing because of the bone broth which heals the gut, the gelatine and glucosamine in the bones and an anti-inflammatory called carnosine which actually reduces sneezing and runny nose.

The soup is delicious and I have it for dinner as well, with potato chips and blood oranges - so sweet.  Maybe it will stave off the worst effects of the flu!  I made enough for the weekend.

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #31 The Hand

 In praise of the hand!  I do so much with mine and have very much take them for granted especially now that I realize they may not always be as pliable a elastic as they once were. 

Would I be an artist without my hands - maybe but in very different ways. Would I have developed differently without hands, that is for sure.  How I don't know. Would it have effected my ability to think and perceive and survive?  Likely but, perhaps I would have adapted other ways of knowing. 

What I am leaning as I read Frank R. Wilson's book The Hand (1998, Vintage) is that the development of the early hominid brains (think Lucy the first known human) and the human brain were and are dependent upon hand brain interaction and tool usage.  

Lucy - Australopithicus anamemsis 3.9 to 4.2 million years ago

Without hand manipulation there would have been no brain growth. Without brain growth there would have been no experimentation and invention through manipulation.  The hand and the brain are inseparable.  

As the phenomenologists, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty said we come into being through our sense of touch of the body (Paterson, 2007). We sense ourselves by means of our hands touching each other - touching and being touched in dual awareness.

So much more to say and think about, but for now I am going to rest these weary hands for which I am so grateful.

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #30 Star

 Thirty days! I've made it a whole month with gratitude practice. Can I make it 30 more?  That's the challenge and mission.

Today my walk took me south along the Hudson River despite the 20 degree weather. I'm back in NY. This walk is very familiar as I did it for twenty years when our home was on the Hudson. Now it brings me by the colony of stray cats who populated that neighborhood.  They are the kin of my cat 'Star' aka Babycat.  

Our dog of 18 years had just died in Fall 2020, right smack in the middle of COVID when little Star appeared no less than a month later. We were not looking for another animal, still grieving our beloved puppy, but there she was a tiny grey bundle mewling under the board in the window well to our basement.

She couldn't have weighed more than a few ounces and her eyes were still milky from opening. There were no sibling kittens. She was all alone.  

I did see her mother and figured she was transferring this baby to another nest. We were used to kittens each year. These animals are like raccoons and the people who feed them do not spay or fix them. So they run wild and are feral. I've called animal control to no avail.  But this little baby was so small.  Her mother looked barely older than a year - thin and scrawny. I left her a bit of food which she ate. She was a tuxedo, like most of the cats in the neighborhood - all black with a white belly, but little Star's father must have been the gigantic grizzled gray tabby tom cat who went after all the tuxedo kittens.  After a few days her mother disappeared and Star tried to climb out of the window well. I was worried about hawks and coyotes. She was that tiny. I had to feed her with a bottle.

D says I kidnapped her, but I say I saved her from a life in the tuxedo cat shtetl along the river.

D won't admit it, but we adore out Babycat, even if she is a bit feral. I keep having to explain, "But, she's not a dog - she won't come when you call!"  I am ever so grateful for her fierce furry presence and the many face cleanings she's given me.

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #29 Wind

 

March Wind by Robert Henri

A Gust of Wind by John Singer Sargeant

Today was so windy that a was blown sideways when I went for my walk, but walk I did with cleats and walking stick in case of the ice. It was 26F but felt more like 4F because of the wind. It was at such velocity, probably about 40 mph. A plane flipped over on landing in Toronto later in the day with similar winds. I am grateful that there were no deaths and I pray for the injured to recover.

I love a good wind though, it clears the cobwebs and challenges me to keep going.  It's certainly good for the wind turbines - abundant in Rhode Island - this one is thanks to the good monks of the Benedictine monastery where I take my walks.

They also rent acres of land to a very high end golf course with well tended seashell covered pathways that were particularly icy today. 

But not another soul or creature in sight except the birds. Too cold. Too windy.  I hurried out of the woods lest a branch fall down from the swaying trees. 

Winds of change are certainly upon us. I walked out in gust that were coming form the South West today and at my back, but they could suddenly shift Northeasterly at the turn of the path  and strike me head on.  Those who seek to take away our privacy, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and to engage in quid pro quo games with law and elected officials may soon finds the winds of change are no longer at their back either.  That shift in direction cannot come soon enough.

Here's to winds of change and may we have the ability to shape them.

What are you grateful for today?

The OTG Daily #28 Red Doors

This past week the New Yorker published an entire article about the color red, The Eternal Mysteries of Red by Jackson Arn. 

It featured the Vermeer painting The Girl with the Red Hat from the 17th century. I am a sucker for Vermeer so that reeled me in, but I'm also a sucker for red. Who isn't?  It's the first color babies see after black and white and for most of us it holds deep seated memories and emotions. As Arn wrote, "It's often deemed the first color, the strongest color. the color that stands for color itself."  Any discussion of color and I'm there. In some ways it's everything to me. The wavelength, its effect on the eye and brain, how it absorbs light or reflects it. But I'm going off on a tangent.

This little essay is about redness. To some it means authority or danger:

Or authoritarianism:

However we have not one, but four red doors at our home. Two on the house and two on the barn.  Many houses near us do as well and I always wonder about it.

According to Jennifer Kelly Geddes of Realtor.com, red doors hold special significance in American society. First, painting barn and farmhouse doors was cheap because red pigment could be made easily from oxidized iron. They also had further historical significance in that a red door was a symbol to travelers during the Colonial era that they were welcome to stay and rest. This is turn translated to safe havens for enslaved people trying to find their way to freedom in the Underground Railroad. Some churches offered the same sanctuary, like Grace Episcopal in Hastings, NY where we used to attend.  The red door stands as a sign of safety and comfort as well as the sacrifice of blood to protect the church.  I wonder if such symbolism and bravery will be required again soon

In ancient Jewish tradition the red door warded off the evil eye and in Ireland it was a symbol of freedom that your house was your own with no more payments owed to the bank.

https://www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/the-strangely-patriotic-history-behind-homes-with-red-front-doors-and-why-you-might-want-this-hue-too/

And in Chinese culture red symbolizes the fire element and represents luck and prosperity.

So many reasons to be grateful for classic colonial red doors. What are you grateful for today? 

https://www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/the-strangely-patriotic-history-behind-homes-with-red-front-doors-and-why-you-might-want-this-hue-too/

The OGT Daily #27 Muscle

 Muscle is very needed these days.  

By me and by all of us. Listening to Anthony Romero (the head of the ACLU) on the New Yorker Radio Hour was both inspiring and exhausting. He spoke about all the challenges they are putting up against the illegal power grabs of the new administration - immigration, cancellation of allocated government funding, and first and foremost the threat to birthright citizenship.  He said we have to be like "water on stone" a constant steady drip against a wall of granite. 

For me it's also the reality that I literally need to start using my muscles and build more muscles in order to save my bones. So back to walking it is and every day. No more aching back from sitting at the computer all day.

Using muscles, ligaments, and bones together in weight bearing movement is protective and builds strength. As much as I was laser focused on research for the last five years, this will have to be my new laser focus for... let's see, the next...well the rest of my life.  Just like the steady drip of rain breaking down a mountain - I need to build back up.

Grateful for muscles and the need to keep them limber - what a metaphor for life.

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #26 Valentines

Eight years ago on this day I spoke of love and the rituals of this day. Today I am grateful for valentines as brights spot in the gloom of February cold and just the general noise of the world which is very hard to bear right now. I am also grateful for my valentine who gave me roses.💖💗

Valentines Day originates with the legend of St. Valentine a priest of Rome who was executed and martyred for performing marriage ceremonies for Roman soldiers against the emperor's orders.  Hmmnn - any parallels with today?

Valentines are both rounded (at the top) and sharp (at the bottom) and can be considered a symbol of ambivalence or the possible two sides of love - extreme passion which can become rage and hatred if not tempered with compassion and kindness.  They are not neutral symbols.   I wonder when the love affair with 47 will flip for his most blinded devotees.

For Valentine's Day, I gave D a gift certificate for tango dancing, so we can dance away my worries about osteoporosis.  Hot to trot...   What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #25 Souvenirs

In French, the word for memories is souvenir. Tu me souviens? Do you remember me?  Memories are how we recall that which makes us who we are and what has meaning. Souvenirs of past lives can be held in objects, places, even bridges, and especially people. When we moved four years ago, I really needed all of my things around me to remember: This is me and I'm going to be alright.  And then there are the things I still can't find after the move which have either been forgotten (oh well!) or have literally become memories.

I worry right now that many of the things we have taken for granted in our society like due process, health care, and common decency will also become distant souvenirs of another time.

On Wednesday, when in the East Village in NY, I took this picture on 2nd Avenue between 10th and 11th street.  

It made me think of all the NYU students I was surrounded by and how Freshman college students are often homesick; still adjusting to a more independent life.  I wondered about the artist and what they were homesick for as well as how they got up there. Then I noticed the negative space of a recently demolished building and then another:

Souvenirs or ghosts of a former New York, as NYC is always changing, always evolving and can make one homesick for a slower pace that may have felt like home.  

On a brighter note, I had a real souvenir from the past later that night when I was able to Zoom into a Q & A with Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz from the Talking Heads about their movie Stop Making Sense which was just remastered and released. It was screened at RISD in Providence, where I went to school in the late 80s about ten years after Tina, Chris, and David Byrne were students there (Circa 1973). Though I could not attend the screening :( -because I was teaching at NYU, I was able to watch the Q &A as I said.

They reminisced about being students and talked about all sorts of familiar places on the RISD campus, about how the band got together, and then moved to Soho together at a time when one could get a cheap loft and how they first got started by opening for the Ramones at CBGB's near the Bowery.  Chris mentioned how the band's early rehearsals occurred in his apartment on Benefit Street in Providence and my ears perked up because that's where I had lived. Then he said right above Joe's Sandwich shop - which is exactly where I lived only it was called Jeff's in the 80s. I wondered if it could have been the same apartment because it was beautiful with big windows looking west over downtown Providence and had a huge black linoleum floor that was splatter painted just like a Jackson Pollock. 

Now that's a souvenir.

Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz 2-12-25 in Providence with a moderator (on left)

What are you grateful for today?

The OGT Daily #24 Transitions

So bridges...I can't get enough clearly and in truth I cross one or two almost daily. In art therapy we use an old assessment called Door, Bridge, Volcano. It's hard to trace its origins. A Google search will lead you to obscure sites that have been deleted or this one post by a student at NYU which describes it:

https://www.numerade.com/notes/directory/school/1851/courses/543334/files/4286124

A more academic search will lead you to the Bridge Drawing Assessment (Hays & Lyons, 1981) and so the bridge has been for decades used as a symbol to interpret transitions in life. From my origins (and now current life) in Rhode Island, I moved to another island connected with bridges: Manhattan, its outer boroughs, and northern suburbs along the magnificent Hudson River.  (If I have a second true home it is along the Hudson River in the storied Hudson River valley of the Hudson River painting school, but that is for another day.)

Brooklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan

No less than 21 bridges and tunnels connect the island of Manhattan to the world outside of it: the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, Williamsburg, George Washington, Triborough, and of course the lesser known but all important to north bound travelers the Willis and Third Avenue bridges to the Bronx, and so many more.

Williamsburg Bridge

Once a film editor, who crossed under the East River from Brooklyn on the Westside Inter-borough Rapid Transit (IRT), the first subway in NYC, via the Clark and Joralemon Street Tunnels (completed in 1908), to work in the film studios of Hell's Kitchen and the Upper West Side - 

NYC's first subway line

I eventually hung up my editing gloves and splicing tape, to tend to a little one who needed feeding and walks over the Brooklyn Bridge.  

Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walk where I strolled with my first child.

That little one had a sibling who required their own bedroom and space and not long after I found myself crossing the Henry Hudson bridge to reach Manhattan from the northern country of Westchester County. 

All of these expanses, beautiful markers of my transition from young graduate to adult to mother, and then searching for new ways to exist and have meaning in the world. They expanded before me in the form of roads and trains facilitated by the many bridges of life.

As little ones grew older and I needed a new focus, I became an art therapist, an educator and a writer and eventually a somatic therapist who combines arts based therapies with body based therapies. This work is enormously satisfying because it really works! It has transformed me and my body and done the same for many clients.  What's more it has expanded my journeys via plane and the internet across the country as well as into the wider world.  

The irony is that my home base is back in my original land of bridges - a true privilege I know - and I cross over the Sachuest River bridge almost daily to and from the grocery store on my way to my new home which is an old RI farm house with a few walls and flower garden.  I am truly grateful for these many transitions.

What are you grateful for today?

Sachuest River at night