Oh my dears, I am so terribly overdue to write a blog post here but to give you a little recap of what has been going on here’s a little note I wrote to my Patrons at Patreon a few days ago…

“Oh my dears it has been such a hard, hard time. I couldn’t do anything the last few days without my (broken) glasses because in my first attempts to “at least get some work done” I strained my eyes so badly there was just no writing here or making art or doing a blog post or anything. I can do a quick email check or so if I put the font size up to 125-150 for very short spurts, like writing this post so you all didn’t think I had just disappeared. Thank God for audiobooks and podcasts which are the things that are saving me. And then I got, well, pretty deep in the depths of despair. I tallied it all up laying there in my chair:

Base Level: Serious mental health issues for a lifetime that, given everything that has been happening, have gotten worse. I have a computer Zoom appointment with my med manager on Tuesday and my meds will likely be raised then given all the hoo ha in my life currently.

On top of that: Having officially become seriously disabled a couple of years ago and needing to wear the Fall Pendant 24/7, and then of course falling frequently because. as I learned, I am on the VERY HIGH fall risk side of things, hence having taken a terrible fall on my knee late October which led me to 2 months of in-home Physical Therapy which at first seemed to help but then I started hurting worse and worse and the PT had to be curtailed because of the emergency trip to the hospital where it was discovered I had a serious blood clot, my 2nd in 3 years, which means according to my doctor I will probably be on blood thinners for life.

That brings us up to the fact that having been sent to the orthopedic surgeon where they gave me a cortisone injection several things were discovered but any kind of possible surgical intervention is off the table because of the blood thinners.  Which also means, according to my eye doctor that the cataract surgery is off the table for the same reason which leads me to wonder how I will EVER get cataract surgery if I have to be on blood thinners for life?

And then my glasses broke and that, my dear friends, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There’s more, but I won’t bore you…”

Tomorrow it will be 2 weeks since my glasses broke, and as I wear a strong trifocals prescription the first several days I felt nearly blind and very afraid. After talking to my eye doctor it was decided that the cataract surgery be put off for a year and I come in for an eye exam and get a new prescription, the best they can give me considering, as she said, that without the cataract surgery (I was first scheduled for it 2 years ago and Covid put the kibosh on that!) they couldn’t get me to 20/20 but they would do the best they could. Right now that’s the best we can do, but they didn’t have an opening until January 19 at which point I will have been without glasses for 3 1/2 weeks. I was just devastated because I am a writer and an artist and read constantly, none of which I can do without my glasses. The first week my eyes were so strained it made me feel dizzy (and as fall prone as I am I surely didn’t need that.)

By the 2nd week though something was happening. I still can’t read easily or do closework, and my eyes get very strained very quickly if I try, but I think what is happening is that I am adjusting to the situation so that it still sucks but I am not nearly having so many panic attacks over it. And then my dear friend of 40 years and Patron on my Patreon, Katya, wrote a comment in (I have steadfastly kept up with my Patreon, a little at a time. I have a very strong work ethic and I never want to let my Patrons down even though they are enormously supportive and just wanted me to rest and heal from the last few months debacles.) that really made me think. She wrote:

“…oh honey. be kind to yourself. we love you. i remember that some of the artist monet’s friends, when he was very old, tried to give him a pair of glasses so he could see better, and he tossed them away, saying I LIKE WHAT I SEE….. !!! his wonderful impressionism.’ “

Now, mind, I will surely be enormously relieved to get my new glasses, which is still a way off because it could take a couple of weeks to get the new glasses made after my exam on the 19th, this Wednesday. But something has been happening. I have begun to relax about what and how I see. No, I don’t see very well and there’s a lot I cannot do but if I consciously relax the muscles in my face, and my eyes, I can sort of “see” through what is a bit of a blurry viewfinder, and while at first panicked I began to, like Monet, like what I see, at least for now. My art is typically very precise and detailed. I can’t do that now, but I can play, I can let myself see what I see and draw what I can draw, and mess about with art materials, mainly colored pencils and pastels, and do whatever it is that I can see now. It is far from whatever my “best work” is but I know that I am learning something very important, and I am really liking the little soft, out of focus drawings I am doing just totally relaxing and putting down colors like this tiny sketch…

I was using cheap children’s Tempera paint sticks which I have had for a long time but never used because they felt so out of control for me. Now, they are perfect! It is like drawing with lipstick, a very soft, very buttery material…

The picture I did at the top of this post was with Prismacolor Premium colored pencils and one of my favorite types of pastels which I have had for years, Charvin, which are soft, powdery, very blendable and water soluble. I worked on it for a very long time and it was more than a bit of a mess, so I popped it in my free graphics program to tidy it up a bit but the art itself still looks pretty much the same.

And then some time this week I came across a quote, listening to a wonderful podcast with writer Anne Lamott, she quoted an e.e. cummings poem that is one of my favorites, the last line of which is, “now the eyes of my eyes can see…” and it just really hit me, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. We all have perceived notions about what things are supposed to look like, and be, and we have a very strong need to see clearly. It is a survival skill to see the world around us with clarity. But what if we can’t? Look how utterly amazing it is how well blind people live their lives in the world, and as we get older even with glasses we don’t see as well, and if, like now, you lose your glasses upon which you are completely dependent to do your work, it feels like an existential threat. But then… we see what we can see, we let our eyes go out of focus and we almost enjoy the soft blurry images. We don’t have to see them clearly. We see what we can see (and in many ways it makes the world a gentler, kinder place, more forgiving, less judgy.). Of course I look very forward to getting my glasses back but I am no longer fighting this time. I am doing the best that I can.

It has taken a very long time for me to write this blog post. I have had to stop and start and rest my eyes and take a nap, but over 12 hours I have gotten it finished. It hasn’t been easy and my eyes are very tired now, but I did it. I DID it! I am so happy.

With aging comes many losses, and adjustments, and inconveniences that surely will occur. I couldn’t get out quickly to get my new glasses because I am in a lot of pain and going through a long healing period, the outcome of which is still uncertain, but I will keep on keeping on, and do what I can do. It is important for my mental health, to keep creating in any way that I can, and do whatever I can do. And so today I have done this blog post. It has felt like climbing Mt. Everest but I made it!

And thank you always and always to my dear Patrons whose support on Patreon, both financial and emotional, have kept me going when I was more afraid than I have ever been these last few months, and in terrible pain, but they have shored me up and kept me going. I will be grateful to them forever.

If you would like to know more about Patreon look up in the column on the right side of the page, and thank you, those of you who support me. You are making my life and my work possible.

With so much love to you all, always and always…