Hip To Heal

An adventure in healing

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“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people” – Leo Burnett

I recently read an intriguing article in The Atlantic by leading neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/06/secrets-of-the-creative-brain/372299/ who has spent decades doing magnetic resonance brain imaging of highly creative individuals. Some of her research reveals that creative people show higher than normal activity in their association cortices. In other words, creatives are constantly drawing from multiple disciplines to connect dots, cross-reference and draw maps that help them navigate and animate their art as well as their lives. 

To some, dealing with the blows of life might look like a straight-arrow path of following doctors' orders and then tuning out with their PlayStation 4 until some sense of normal returns. For whatever reason, this is not my way. I am pretty much curious about anything and everything that lands on my doorstep, be it demon or angel. And I find that looking into the eye of the storm from a multitude of angles is not only an interesting way to live but also an essential part of seeding ideas for future creations. 

So it stung when a friend recently challenged my "approach to life's traumas," as my present (and cherished!) library of anatomy books, poetry, Grimm's fairy tales, Classical Chinese medicine and Jungian symbolism texts sat between us. This little university of healing has become a lifeline of inspiration, education and art as I learn to cope with this unexpected removal from daily work and routine. It helps me see this otherwise disheartening experience as an opportunity to learn. To turn a constructive and curious eye toward something that, egoic frustrations aside, is a mysterious and awe inspiring journey of cellular, psychological and mythical healing. 

I adore the overlapping and tangled tendrils of science, psychology, myth, art and history. Just as the brain cannot compartmentalize creative thought, the journey of healing is a vast, multilayered experience that affects and informs every aspect of life. And whether my present occupation is making a film or healing a broken pelvis, part of the joy of living is jumping head first (with a helmet, of course) into the full catastrophe and letting my curiosity be my one true and faithful guide...

...toward what? I don't know. And that's the game of it all, isn't it? We can hope it all leads to some mountaintop of perfect healing and resolution in the end but that's a bit out of my control. What I do know is this. Diving in, grabbing, licking, investigating and devouring all of life's blows flowers understanding and compassion for the human experience. Turning a brave eye toward that which is painful doesn't make the physical suffering go away but it opens us to the possibility of seeing differently, more inclusively, more intelligently. And hell, maybe it will even make for a good screenplay someday. 

[hiptoheal]

Mend

wounded and pierced

even the animal called night

will heal

although not straight-away

not without leaving

indelible marks

our eyes wander

the velvet pelt

of darkness above

stars are a sky's

proud flesh

its hard sidereal scars

- Paulann Peterson

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Certainly, I'm mastering the art of "unimpatience." The trickster red ink on my vacant calendar, circling today's date as if it were my birthday. My cake - a new X-ray - with wishing candles for weight-bearing permissions for July. But what's two more days when I've already waited forty-three? Alas, the surgeon is stuck in an airport somewhere and I'm stuck under this fierce blue sky. I'd say Ursula and I are the lucky ones today. I learn the arts of old age day by day: the expertise of being lame; the sense of unimpatient impotence; the irony of all accomplishments; the silent, furtive welcome of delay. - Ursula LeGuin

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"…while laughing your guts out you feel your inner heart breaking." 

This wonderful quote by Henry Miller just about says everything we will ever need to know about this exquisitely messy life. And with my recent and welcomed rediscovery of a good hearty laugh (or sneeze) without feeling like my pelvis would combust, I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Miller. 

Below is an excerpt from his book On Turning a Eighty. 

My motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your inner heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself seriously is doomed…There is nothing wrong with life itself. It is the ocean in which we swim and we either adapt to it or sink to the bottom. But it is in our power as human beings not to pollute the waters of life, not to destroy the spirit which animates us. Perhaps it is curiosity — about anything and everything — that made me the writer I am. It has never left me… With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder. In a sense I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it.

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Our lives are defined by calendars so it's no surprise that even the mysteries of healing are aligned to timelines. According to Western Medicine, bone fracture healing occurs in three distinct but overlapping stages: 1) the early inflammatory stage (first 2 weeks); 2) the repair stage (6 weeks); and 3) the late remodeling stage in which the healing bone is restored to its original shape, structure, and mechanical strength. Remodeling of the bone occurs slowly over months to years and is facilitated by mechanical stress placed on the bone. Adequate strength is typically achieved in 3 to 6 months.

So that's a nice and tidy timeline for the fingers of my grasping mind. We can circle the dates in red on our calendars, make an infinite amount of projections in our conversations about the how's and when's of our fate. And it feels good to know, to fill ourselves with a sturdy sense of understanding.

But when days roll into each other without much else defining them, when there is a gaping distance between red ink marks in my Moleskin calendar, when the branches of trees become the crooked hands on a broken clock, and when the self loses all of its striving definitions, healing feels more like an emptying than a filling. A surrendering more than an understanding. Dates begin to feel arbitrary and the crystal ball of medicine just a shiny panacea for our mind's wrath against the unknown. Have you ever watched a wounded or sick cat? They remove themselves from all stimulation, hibernate, crawl into the blackest corner and bury themselves in the night. What goes on in the darkness under the bed? What is occurring inside the mysterious and unseeable cave of their flesh?

Lately I've had days when I feel like my mind has gone pitch black. And unlike my previously driven "I must write a new script, make a new film, begin a new project!" self, I'm surprised to find that I have become a curious student of this lack of direction and darkness.  Like a mother nursing her child back to health, it's not yet time to fill the feverish head with the heat of ideas and dreams. My bones will know when they are ready to slay dragons and discover new shores. But now, the mother draws the blinds and turns out the light. It is time to sweat everything out, unravel the thick and scratchy fabric of identity from my animal body so she can simply and miraculously do what she does. 

***

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought;

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing

-T.S. Eliot (form the Four Quartets)

[hiptoheal]

Frost covered this decades ago, and frost will cover it again tonight, the leafy disarray of this woodland now thinned down to half its trees, but this morning I stand here sweating in a thin shirt as I split a stack of ash logs into firewood with two wedges, an ax, and a blue-headed maul. The pleasures here are well known: the feet planted wide, the silent unstoppable flow of the downswing, the coordination that is called hand-eye, because the hand achieves whatever the concupiscent eye desires when it longs for a certain spot, which, in this case, is the slightest fissure visible at one end of the log where the thin, insinuating edge of the blade can gain entry, where the shape of its will can be done. I want to say there is nothing like the sudden opening of wood, but it is like so many other things - the stroke of the ax like lightning, the bisection so perfect the halves fall away from each other as in a mirror, and hit the soft ground like twins shot through the heart. And rarely, if the wood accepts the blade without conditions, the two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow, remain stunned on the block as if they cannot believe their division, their sudden separateness. Still upright, still together, they wobble slightly as two lovers, once secretly bound, might stand revealed, more naked than ever, the darkness inside the tree they shared now instantly exposed to the blunt light of this clear November day, all the inner twisting of the grain that held them blindly in their augmentation and contortion now rushed into this brightness as if by a shutter that, once opened, can never be closed. - Billy Collins

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It's hard to forget the smell of formaldehyde. Or the moaning whir of overhead fans - a sound that eerily gave voice to the preserved, lifeless bodies that surrendered themselves to my graduate studies cadaver lab. I was both instinctively repulsed and mystified by these strange fleshy homes we rent for 80+ years, their complex channels, vessels and curves all harmoniously and humbly weaving together to animate and organize a life force. We rarely give our innards a second thought, much less bow in awe at the magnificence of it all. But I would argue that pausing before our architecture, as we would with any great work of art, and allowing ourselves to fall into the wonder and perfection of the symphony within us, is enough to turn anyone into a modern mystic. So with time on my side during these bone healing days, I have devoted hours to this inward, anatomical gaze. And more specifically, the pelvis. What an elegant and expressive mass of bone! The reaching span of the iliac wings. The bowl shaped acetabulum that allows the head of the femur to rotate with the delicacy of less than one tenth the friction of ice on ice. The sacral bone that whimsically joins both wings into the caricature of a butterfly. It is no wonder that the pelvic bone has inspired artists and seekers throughout history. Georgia O'Keefe discovered this muse in 1943 when she began painting her 'pelvic series' - a socket against sky celebration that has been read as her paean for peace during and after WWII. Frida Kahlo suffered multiple fractures in her spine and pelvis during a trolley accident and her art ruthlessly animates the symbolism and psychology of her brokenness and her maternal longing to bring life back into these parts of her body. In Mesoamerica, the pelvis was thought to be our second "skull." A cosmic and sacred portal for the creation and resurrection of mankind, his ancestors and the spirit world. Could it be that after all other muses have run away or faded in their glossiness, we need only turn inward and take a curious and contemplative look at our one true home? So if you haven't dusted off your Anatomy 101 text lately, then it's time to open a bottle of wine, turn on your favorite shoe gazer tunes (Hammock is mine lately) and spend an afternoon walking through the corridors of the exquisite architecture of your own anatomy. My most cherished guide is the Atlas of Human Anatomy by the great medical artist Frank H. Netter, whose first edition in 1989 has been deemed his 'personal Sistine Chapel.' Every page is a dynamic and colorful tribute to the human form. There are 542 pages in total in the volume sitting next to me. But each illustration begs for more than just an academic pause. Whether it's a swirling and symmetrical mass of spinal nerves or a delicate and complex web of ligaments and muscles animating your every breath - there is a drawing or two or three for everyone - something that will catch your breath and leave you astonished as you realize these candy colored illustrations are you. YOU ARE THE (un)STILL LIFE. So with the eye and patience of a great painter, go. Turn your gaze inward. Meet your muse.

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Pelvis rests its wings. -photo from digimprov.tumblr.com

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This is more a comment than an asking :: Beautiful writing Kimberely! It is most unfortunate news to hear of your accident but your mind & will seem {still} strong. Heal well my friend, I think of you often! xoxo

How dear... So nice to hear that others are out there possibly drawing some sap from my journey.

[hiptoheal]

The Idler

The essay below is too irresistible and too appropriate to not copy word for word. Why wait for a broken bone or illness to surrender to the simple art of doing nothing? Find a patch of earth, lay on your back and suck in some nothingness. Written by Nikaela Marie Peters and published in Kinfolk, volume 9. As people get older, they realize that time is more valuable than money. And finding more time to do absolutely nothing is perhaps exactly what we all need. It's the stuff of gods and infants - the birthplace of great works of art, philosophy and science. The habit of doing nothing at all is super-important to our individual and cultural well-being, yet it seems to be dying in our digitized age. Far from laziness, proper idleness is the soul's home base. Before we plan or love or decide or act or storytell, we are idle. Before we learn, we watch. Before we do, we dream. Before we play, we imagine. The idle mind is awake but unconstrained, free to slip untethered from idea to idea or meander from potential theory to potential truth. Thomas Aquinas argued that "it is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation." Is true idleness a lost skill? How often do we sit, serenely unoccupied? How often do we walk, as Henry David Thoreau advised, with no agenda or destination, present and free? What an uncommon sight: a solitary individual, his head not buried in a newspaper or laptop or phone, simply sitting - his mind long wandered off. Seven years ago, I lived in an apartment without an Internet connection. I had a flip cell phone that only worked to make calls and send 40-character texts. Without the distraction of the Internet or the option of watching a movie, I was certainly more productive, according to certain measures. A mind adrift in sea of its own making is far more interesting than a mind following a trail of hyperlinks. But what strikes me as a greater loss - when I compare those years to now - is all the time I spent doing "nothing." My bedroom had a third-story view of a busy downtown street. It was small, and the bed was pushed up against the window. I'm sure the hours I spent staring out that window would add up to weeks of time. I watched nothing and anything. I (occasionally) smoked cigarettes and drank coffee...two habits that, while unhealthy for the body, do - in certain circumstances - have health benefits for the soul. Productivity is not the only measure of time well spent. Some of the most important scientific innovations and inventions were "happened upon," unplanned, after years of unproductive , leisurely puzzling. My five-month old understands this intuitively. He will learn an entire language and how to sit, stand, crawl and walk all mostly by doing what, to an adult, would look like "nothing." I'm convinced that time spent idle makes for a healthier state of mind. We want less and are more at peace when we get it. We sleep better and work harder. Simpler things bring us joy. When we daily observe our immediate surroundings, we are more grounded in our contest, more attuned to the rhythms of whatever season or place we are in. Plus, the changing shapes of clouds need our attention.

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...and then there are days when this whole healing business is just plain frustrating and the best I can do is contemplate the metaphysics of cheese. Three weeks down, three to go...

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"If you think my hands are full, you should see my heart." I don't know who wrote this, but my mom needs the t-shirt. She traveled out here last week with her Baba Yaga nursing cap, relieving Dave of his candy stripes temporarily. She waltzed through the front door glowing with energy - mopped floors, did laundry, weeded the yard, prepared bone-smiling meals, read poetry, massaged my ugly feet, ran errands, laughed and cried with me, pulled tarot cards, brewed up both herbal and psycho-spiritual concoctions for mending the body and soul - and then waltzed out the door glowing even more. Watching her smiling face drive away in the cab yesterday, my heart cracked (seems to be a lot of that these days) and while sharing my innermost adorations for my mom may seem terribly intimate, I am convinced that the mending and flowering of our relationships are an integral part in anyone's healing journey. So much so that I find myself wondering if the physical mending is just an outward manifestation of the more emotional stitching that longs to occur below the surface. So a puddle of wet gratitude and a few stanzas later, I raise a jar full of bone tea to my lioness mother and her overflowing heart. Sometimes it feels like I might love you too much. I feel that way right now As you flash that radiant smile one more time Before walking out the door And my cells burst into a trillion shattered pieces of colored glass. Yes, it's a personal love That can recall every lioness moment of your mothering And how lucky I am to be the cub. But that only shatters half of me. The atomic explosion that turns my heart into a gauzy nothingnessandeverythingness Is when I can, for a moment, Step back from the blood And see simply you. The you whose unwavering dance with truth Quickens every living creature in your presence. The you whose spirited curiosity is a wide-eyed child Licking each moment with gracious innocence and intelligence. The you whose awakened roar blazes a path with an open-ended invitation For anyone to join, as long as they learn to roar too. You walk your red carpet that spans beyond seventy years of flesh A regal goddess whose path completes itself in a timeless ouroboros And we, the lucky ones who have found our way to your gala Will forever decorate your circling celebration with the colored glass That inevitably explodes from our hearts When you flash that radiant smile.

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I've always joked about opening a brothel someday. Except instead of an offering of flesh, my brothel would serve bones. Bone broth, that is. I'm a huge fan of making broth from scratch. The boiling down of our matter to extract the most secretive and inaccessible architecture of life to nourish and build more life. Of course I'm contemplating these chalky white mineral gods a lot these days while my own pelvis returns to one piece. Looking at my own X-rays two days ago, it's both awe-inspiring and unsettling to see a lightning bolt crack run through almost the entire length of my foundation. It's pretty in a abstract sort of way, like the Georgia O'Keefe painting posted earlier that is such an exquisite visualizing of an opening to more light. But just like two dancing lovers temporarily separated, the osteoblasts on either side of the cavern are already reaching out to their partners and grabbing hold. An eternal tango (until time and entropy have their way with me) of cells reuniting and rejoicing in their embrace, letting the light in, and then closing the gap. So while one architecture rebuilds, another's dissolution serves. To read more about this food for the gods, here's a great little summary: http://undergroundwellness.com/top-5-reasons-why-bone-broth-is-the-bomb/ Below is a tried and true bone broth recipe. I use two crock pots at a time because it's always nice to have an extra batch of the golden extract in the freezer. *** INGREDIENTS Several Pounds of Grass-finished Beef Soup Bones (I routinely use 5-8 lbs) A freezer bag full of vegetable scraps (carrot peelings, onion tops, celery leaves etc. Don’t use brassicas or beets as they contribute an off-taste to the beef stock.) Fresh, filtered water. 2 Tbsp Cider Vinegar (essential for mineral extraction) 2-3 Bay Leafs INSTRUCTIONS Rinse and clean the bones under clean water. Pat them dry. (Unless they're already frozen) Roast the bones at 400 ° F for about an hour until the bones are well-browned and fragrant. Roasting the bones ensures a good flavor in the resulting beef stock. Failure to do so may lend a sour or off-taste to the end product. Once the bones are browned, drain off any fat. Add the bones to 2 large crock pots along with any vegetable scraps you might have. Avoid using brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, turnips, brussels sprouts etc.) as these vegetables will lend a bitter flavor to your stock. Instead, garlic, leeks, mushrooms, onions, carrots and celery add great flavor. (But don't overstuff the pot with veggies or you'll only have a cup or two of liquid at the end!) Add filtered water, vinegar and bay leaves and cover for 48 hours, simmering on low. Throughout the cooking process, skim off any foam and add water as needed. When the stock is finished simmering, filter through a fine mesh seive and bottle in mason jars. The stock should set just like gelatin in the fridge and the fat should rise to the top. Pick off the fat and reserve it for cooking, then scoop out the gelled stock and reheat to serve as soup. Note that it’s wise to serve this stock very hot as it may gel again once it cools. (Note that the broth, as is, is NOT tasty!!!!!!) when you're ready to cook with it, add salt, browned onions, roasted cloves, star anise, black pepper, garlic and ginger to make the most divine pho broth this side of Vietnam.)

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A patient of time

This art of being a good patient requires nothing less than grand patience. I don't believe this word's double meaning is a coincidence. While the body does her own microscopic versions of bending time, remembering her upright grace, the mind (much more restless and speedy in her imaginings) must be kind to the way of things, learn about molasses, and the sweet taste of surrendering when there is really nothing else to do. Sure, I could easily have become a maniacal case of nerves during these past two weeks of immobility, but resistance only causes more suffering. Isn't that true with everything in life? So, for the 13th morning, I look out at the same piney sentinels across the street, wave hello with a long pause of my eyes. This morning they are bathed in early summer light, limbs listening and responding to the breeze with aquatic gestures. Lazy weekend feet make paths under their gaze. This afternoon, they will still be here. Maybe limbs heavier with fat sun and a frenzy of crows. Tonight, quiet, receptive and dark. To the strides below, nothing really has changed. Except everything. Perhaps it's a simple as this: when we realize there is nothing left to be patient for, we cease being a patient. Time doesn't care how many brushstrokes it takes to never complete her painting, as long as she can keep wielding her brush. We are either an irritable bystander watching her ever-changing, curious and sweeping gestures. Or we choose to become the gesture itself.

[hiptoheal]

Skyscape photography from sofa level. Plaster and paint, fixtures and art, and the occasional flying cat.

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Yesterday I spent some time thinking about the nature of a fracture, a crack in matter that inevitably opens its densities to light. And if I were writing a script about a character who has to overcome a fracture in one of the deepest, densest bones in her body, I would devote myself to my ever resourceful and wondrous Book of Symbols, an archive for historical, artistic, anthropological and natural research in archetypal symbolism. This book is my Bible when I navigate the rich, visual layers of filmmaking, helping me make careful and deliberate choices with objects, movements, colors and diegetic sounds placed in scenes. So without further ado, meet the yawning, beckoning, mysterious and promising nature of CRACK/FRACTURE. (Excerpt from Book of Symbols, by Taschen) 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead.' -W.H. Auden A crack can be an opening into the world of imagination, like in Auden's poem, while the crack in the ordinary teacup makes it a leaky container, no longer safe. The original meaning of the word comes from the sound it makes, as if something is breaking, the conotations often negative. Psychologically, a crack in the façade suggests a false persona. The splitting experience of mental illness is often felt as if one's whole world is breaking apart. Our voice cracks in a moment of insecurity, but we may be restored by 'cracking up' as we burst out laughing. Then there are the cracks of magic, usually unexpected, which lead to other realities, to the 'land of the dead,' beyond earthly boundaries, as through a crack in time. Or the reverse, the light in Georgia O'Keeffe's dark painting suggests spirit entering the dense world of matter as through a crack. Leonard Cohen describes it in a song: 'There is a crack in everything / that is how the light gets in.' The new day arrives at the crack of dawn with all its potentials - a gateway between night and day where mythic heroes descend through the horizon into the underworld or where prayers travel up to heaven. The word 'crack' is also used for decoding an ancient alphabet or a secret language, as if the alchemists' spirit Mercurius opens doors of knowledge. Hermes, or Mercury, his Greek or Roman counterpart, was the only god who could travel freely between the worlds and perhaps it is he who guides us through the narrow passageways that easily get unnoticed. When something falls between the cracks it is forgotten or lost, and it may be our fear of falling into the chaotic abyss that gave rise to the superstition of avoiding walking on cracks in the sidewalk. And like Auden's teacup, the crack in the door, neither inside nor outside, may open up to the liminal place where poetry is born. 'Between what I see and what I say, between what I say and what I keep silent, between what I keep silent and what I dream, between what I dream and what I forget: poetry.' -Octavio Paz -image: Georgia O'Keeffe 'Dark Abstraction'

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7 days in astronaut position 7 days to go. I stare out this double-pane window The birds, my singing stars Thoughts travel at the speed of light While the slower matter of bones and tissue Learn to catch up, and listen Until this spacecraft Returns to her pulsing, singular note Hurling through time and space And ecstatically still All at once.