Creating Art
This is an archived post that was originally published at beyond-terminal.com
For a change of pace, I thought I would share an excerpt from the chapter I’m editing right now. If you read some of my earlier posts, you might recall the entry titled “The Gift of Movement” (October 11, 2011). In this, I describe a scene with my occupational therapist Julie in which she is having me flatten putty and roll it up into a ball.
As I have been working on rewriting my manuscript from an adult’s perspective and having the childhood memories show up as flashbacks, I’ve realized that this particular scene, as accurate as it is, doesn’t quite work with the way in which I’ve written the adult narrative. Thus, depicted below you’ll see another O.T. scene that I wrote this past week that works more seamlessly.
Many O.T. memories from different sessions would pierce my consciousness throughout the day, and I can guarantee I thought about both the original scene I wrote and this more recent one, all the time. But what I’m discovering is that I need to have anchors in place (e.g., buttons in the excerpt below) to help orient the reader when I’m switching back and forth between my adult and child’s voice.
The memoir I’m writing is in the creative nonfiction genre. The more editing I do of these nonfiction scenes, the more I need to rely on crafting a work of art. While challenging at times, I hope to create something that will ultimately sing.
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Because my manuscript is in such a state of flux, I don’t know where this chapter will fall precisely!
One afternoon my junior year of college, I was taking off my favorite flannel shirt so I could change into my running clothes when I just froze in place. It was December and there was no doubt that I was cold after walking home from class. However, this was different from being cold. This type of freezing was similar to what happened when I had metal on my brain and I could think a thought but not get my body to move in tandem with those thoughts.
At this moment, I stared at the makeshift closet in front of me. My room didn’t have a “real” closet, so at the beginning of the school year I had purchased a moveable clothes rack. Thinking that it would be nice to have this somehow cordoned off from the rest of the room, I swung by Urban Outfitters in the hope of finding some sort of curtain. I saw an iridescent aqua shower curtain that looked like a good possibility. When I picked it up and saw that the curtain had a name and that its name was Serenity, I knew. This was it. I would have a curtain with a name, and this curtain would make me smile every time I looked at it. Besides, I loved what the word serenity conjured up in my mind. It seemed to embody everything I wasn’t.
But right now, with Serenity right in front of me, I wasn’t smiling. I was trembling and sweating. Could what happened to me as a kid be happening all over again? As I stood there stuck in this terrifying moment, jagged little pieces of memories begged to be seen. I shook my head, like this was enough to get rid of the unbeckoned image. When this didn’t work, I started singing the lyrics to U2’s “One” in my head.
The more I tried not to see what wanted to be seen, the more I shook and the sweatier my hands became. To the point where I couldn’t unbutton the last button on my shirt, not because I had lost the agility to do so, but because that’s how sweaty my hands were. And it was when my fear reached atmospherically high levels that all my defense mechanisms disappeared and my brain forced me to see what I didn’t want to see.
Today is my first session with Julie, my occupational therapist. She’s in her 20s and has a cute perm and a friendly voice.
After introducing herself, Julie leads me back to the O.T. room that is the first colorful room I’ve seen since I started coming to this hospital several months ago. The walls are painted a light blue and there is a bookcase with cubbies in the back of the room. Each of these cubbies contains a bin that’s blue, red, or yellow. There is one bin missing and it doesn’t take me long to spot it. A bald grandpa and his therapist have a red bin at their table. The therapist has taken one of the bottles of bubbles out of this bin and is blowing bubbles using the wand while the grandpa tries to pop them with his finger.
I wonder if Julie will have me do the same thing or something different. It’s depressing to think, but I would need to concentrate a lot to do this stupid bubble activity.
“Megan, why don’t you sit here?” Julie says, pointing to a table that’s to the left of the grandpa and therapist. “I’m going to grab an activity for us to do.”
Julie returns with a blue bin full of pieces of felt. “I thought we could start with this flower and button activity.” Julie then grabs a yellow felt circle that has six buttons along the edge of it and a bunch of what I now realize are “petals” that have a little slit on one end of them. “I’d like you to attach the petals like this.” Julie attaches a green petal onto one of the buttons of the yellow circle while looking up at me to get my reaction.
I’ve gotten very good at not showing any emotion so my expression doesn’t change. But what I’m thinking is, How can she do this without even looking down?
“Okay, your turn,” Julie says as she moves the materials in front of me.
Before I attempt this task, I take a deep breath in. As I do so, I smell something sweet, like cotton candy. I had a blood draw right before coming here, and, between feeling lightheaded from this and now the sweet smell of what I think must be Julie’s perfume, I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Oh God. I’ve got to distract myself. Just focus on something else.
I stare down at the green petals on the table and say to myself, Pick it up, pick it up. Today it takes a ridiculous 15 seconds from the time I start saying the command until my fingers start to move. And then I work on this task for the next five minutes.
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Creating art that ultimately will resonate with others takes patience and fortitude.
What exactly is “art”?
I recently had an opportunity to listen to Michelle Zauner talk about her book, “Crying in H Mart.” Zauner wrote this after her mom died of cancer, and the book reminded me of a eulogy at times.
Zauner and her mom, just like many mom/daughter relationships, definitely had moments of discord, and Zauner had times when she struggled to understand her mom, who was content being a homemaker and mom. Why not go out into the world and make an indelible mark?
It was through the book-writing process that Zauner began to understand that her mom had indeed left her mark and created her own art. Zauner writes, “[My mom’s] art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book (159).”
I believe we all have the ability to create art, and I love Zauner’s expansive definition of art, which includes her mother’s way of mothering. This art, a certain way of being, is what Zauner’s mom leaves behind after her death.