Memory problems are probably one of the least well managed problems in MS. Often physicians, nurses and patients alike assume that it is a non-modifiable entity. But it is good to see, in this review, that this isn’t necessarily the case.
I feel a need to check in with whoever’s there. Coming across this sketch I did from exactly two years ago, and a thorny late poem by William Carlos Williams really drives home for me this sudden urge to connect with … something.
I tried to have only two things in mind back while I was nervously sketching this while listening to news about protests against common sense Covid-19 protection, namely:
to think about anything other than myself and everything else that was worrying me even sicker than I was at that time. Which time? Well … chronic illnesses — especially ones causing cognitive damage — make that one kinda tricky to pin down. These were some of the unravelings happening within my “edge of one of many circles.” Past the palm at the edge of that mind the “de facto” stabilities of most things I had held my exterior to hold were collapsed or collapsing.
to see how my new Canson Mix Media 9*12’ sketchbook behaved with different charcoals and inks.
GA on my mind
Many of these worries were universal, like Covid-19 (and the ways it was then being dealt with) or Climate Change (and the ways it was then being dealt with) or, say, systemic racism or the continued growth of a Trumpist fascist state (and the ways …)
“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.”
James Baldwin
Other worries were more individualized. For me, the growing disability and ferocious pain that Multiple Sclerosis was doling out had eclipsed itself on every frayed fiber. There were a few times that I looked deep down into myself and swore to remember that “yes, it really was this indescribably agonizing!” so a future me would not forget when/if things ever moved past the present state.
Continued Georgia insanity
That was two years ago
That was before George Floyd.
It was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the new (hot) Cold War arrived.
It was before attitudes about vaccination against covid insanely became ferocious ideological and political tenets.
It was before almost two million (and counting) people had died of covid.
There hadn’t yet been a coup attempt on the Capitol and the illusion that America was not in an existential crisis was still generally held. Now democracy itself seems impossible to sustain going forward.
I hadn’t realized that even while having long been deeply impressed by the first part of that quote of James Baldwin about a society needing to assume that it is stable, I had no clue how blind I was in failing to appreciate the crucial remainder of that sentence All this while being an “artist” no less.
…
Oh yeah … my then lousy condition has continued to worsen.
The ways so many things have fallen apart since April 2020 — when I made those sketches — make the worried existence of two years ago seem charmingly naive.
William Carlos Williams wrote a poem in 1961 titled “Poem” where emotionally and spiritually he was also confronting the clash of madnesses of the then not too distant past with the even more terrifying madness that followed through his present; he might as well have written it today.
The plastic surgeon who has concerned himself with the repair of the mole
on my ear could not be more pointedly employed
let all men confess it Gaugin or Van Gogh were intimates
who fell out finally and parted going to the ends of the earth
to be apart, wild men one of them cut his ear off with a pair of shears
which made him none the less a surpassing genius this happened
yesterday forgive him he was mad and who among us has retained
his sanity or balance in the course the events have taken since these days
Here’s to looking forward to a day when this poem is not applicable to that day’s then present.
In the meantime, given that the instability of everything is making itself achingly clear, I don’t know that an artist is needed to fill that role right now. Rather, I’ll just keep being aware that my search for something stable under our violent sun is futile and keep on creating images anyway.
2022 looks like it might be off to a good start. Aside from being sick and quarantined, I actually got to enjoy several hours of feeling pretty good last night. It’s been months since the pain had subsided enough for me to uncurl from fetal position in bed and stand long enough to do a small watercolor sketch. And there she was ❤️
Elektra is an alarmingly intelligent cat who gets bored easily —kind of like a feline border collie. Usually we can sate her fantastical mind by opening up the balcony or hallway for her to spring out into and upon all of the world’s chase-able mysteries out there. Instead of sheep, she prefers to herd butterflies and hornets and flocks of birds up in the sky.
For now, she’s had to settle for chasing inanimate things throughout the apartment and pissing Pytlique off. With our flat under temporary lock down, both of our cats, too have had to deal with not being allowed outside for a while. The first thing I saw when I walked into the kitchen to see what Elektra was yawling about was her lying on the kitchen table with a palpable glower of defiance and disappointment on her face. Of course she wasn’t going to hold that pose for long and I was lucky enough to snap a quick photo before she marched back to the closed doors to the outside world and resumed yawling there.
I got the point but went ahead and painted this instead. It was hard work because the moving paintbrush immediately became her de facto indoor prey of choice. I’m going back to bed to scribble some more in my dry sketchbook.
Elektra on a Table watercolor 22×18 cm
Happy New Year, little Elektra. Tomorrow you get to see the outside again 🤩