writing

Spring is in the air

/ RCRuiz

It’s been quite a busy period as not only is it exam week for the youngest one, it’s also been a week of appointments and events. I visited the municipal hall last week and handed in my application for a new passport along with a new id picture. It’s probably the first time since I’ve had a passport made that my passport picture doesn’t look like I’m running from the law.

A few days before I went to the municipal hall, I had new pictures taken. On my walk to the shop, I found myself ruminating on my previous passport picture and I decided to ask the photographer if it was possible to have one that was somewhat friendlier. As tends to happen, I walked into the shop and blurted out my thoughts to all and sundry including two surprised customers who burst out laughing when I announced that my last passport picture had me looking like I was a fugitive from the law.

It made for a lighthearted moment and I can happily say that for the first time, I have a passport picture that is somewhat friendlier.

At the municipal hall, there was some difficulty registering my fingerprints. I learned that intense treatments like chemotherapy has this effect of where fingerprints become a bit more hazy. It made me wonder if we ever lose our fingerprints.

“It happens with old people too,” the lady behind the counter says to me. “Not that fingerprints are ever erased, it’s just they don’t register anymore. But we also see this in people like you who have undergone chemo.”

And it somehow strikes me that she hasn’t tagged me as an old person but as someone who has undergone intense treatment.

On Saturday, I travel to Rotterdam. I’m headed there to support the project called Project Take Away. Take Away started as a neighbourhood initiative led by friends Marielle and her partner at ook_huis. It’s a lovely initiative which started with refugees and neighbours coming together to share coffee and talk about coffee and different ways of making coffee and as time progressed it evolved into something more. To celebrate their third year, Take Away released a book documenting three years of work. It’s an impressive volume with beautiful images but most importantly it reflects the vibrant life of this group of people who have been working together, caring for this community and for the neighbourhood and growing into this rich and beautiful art collective.

I think of how we forget the power of small movements like these. How practicing care in the community setting is a radical act in a society that’s grown more and more disjointed and disconnected. It’s not the size of the movement that matters, that we are doing a movement with intention is what matters. The intention drives the movement, drives momentum and leads to change.

I think of how these small movements are so vital when it comes to changing perceptions. When it comes to changing how we see each other and when it comes to making space and holding space for one another. I understand the antipathy that exists on one side of society towards asylumseekers, but I also want society to understand that if it were possible to live humanly where they are, people would not be seeking asylum. Living means more than surviving, living means being able to grow and thrive and fulfil your potential as a human being. This is why we can’t turn our backs or close our eyes to the circumstances that cause people to flee the countries of their birth.

It’s callous to say: ‘go back to where you came from’, when we don’t know the full story.

After the meeting at the Take Away space, we traveled to where Marielle was holding a reading/talk around a book she’d collaborated on together with the artist Chen Yun. This book, titled 51 Personae:Tarwewijk was five years in the making. It’s a unique and beautiful work documenting walks around the Rotterdam neighbourhood of Tarwewijk. What I love most about this work is how in the final publication, it contains the text from these walks in Dutch, English and Chinese. Not on separate pages, but these texts exist side by side on the same page or as extensions of each other.

It made me think of how it’s beautifully representative of the multicultural nature of society and how the world is made up of many different people speaking many different languages and there is room for all of us to live side by side.

Copies of this book are available at Available & The Rat.

I feel like I should write a little bit more about Available & The Rat, but I will do so another time. It’s a space that’s definitely worth visiting.

Spring is in the air. Out in the garden, things are growing. Our prunus tree has grown a bit more sturdy and is spreading out its arms. From the small seat by the water, I have a lovely view of back gardens with tulips coming up, a magnolia tree in bloom and a cherry blossom tree.

I have resolved to go and sit out beside the water as much as I can. For now, I’m ending this lengthy post.

Take some time out of your busy schedule to just sit and reflect on how you want to greet this new season. Life brings with it unexpected things, but when you take time to connect to what’s strong in you, you won’t be easily shaken.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and thank you for dropping by.

It’s only Tuesday and yet . . .

/ RCRuiz

Not that I post with any kind of regularity or schedule, but here I am on a Tuesday. I’ve enrolled in a five session course on portraits with acrylics and the first session went pretty well. The advantage of acrylics is the drying time and how it’s much easier to take it home to continue work on it. Compared to pastels where the work has to be carefully transported, acrylics are easy. I’m enjoying these courses which are in series of five sessions each time focusing on a particular medium as I feel like I want to understand how different mediums work.

I do enjoy portraits a lot and I want to try and see what different things I can do with it once I get the basics down.

When I was a young girl, my mother once showed my notebook of writings to the daughter of a friend of hers. I think my Mom was proud that I was writing, but I was quite embarassed because her friend’s daughter was (at that time) already playing the violin for a big orchestra. I was like: Eh…Mom. Why?

But instead of dismissing my work, this young woman looked at it carefully, then she said something to me which I’ve carried around much like a puzzle that I keep trying to unfold.

“An artist,” she said. “Can see beyond the leaf.”

I never got around to asking her what she meant because soon after that this violinist went abroad to play with other orchestras and our paths never crossed again.

I think of her words every now and then, though.

Today, those words came bubbling up again and I thought of the following reply:

“Beyond the leaf is a world (maybe more than one)

Lives are lived. Not all are told or written down in story.

Not one is insignificant.“

To you who read these words, may you be surprised by small moments of daily joy. Thank you for stopping by.

Here’s one of my favorite exercises from this week. On a background of sennelier soft pastel, an impression of branch and leaf.

how it’s going

/ RCRuiz

I’ve been going to physical therapy with a group of oncology patients for a couple of weeks now and have noticed that while mornings are often much better in terms of energy, afternoons are now improving. I’m not as tired as I was during the first afternoon training. I take this to be a good sign.

Upon my return home from Gladstones, the eldest son told me that I could transform his former bedroom into a writing space. Something I hadn’t even thought of doing because it was always his room, a lot of his things are still in it, and perhaps it’s that mother thought in my head that held the space for him just in case. But, as I was reminded, it’s been a year since he moved out. Birds spread their wings, they leave the nest, and go discover the sky.

So finally, after more than twenty years of writing at the dining table and having to move my mess when it’s time to eat, I have this space where the books I am reading can be left as they are. Where my pens and pencils don’t have to be tidied up and where when I am done for the day, I can close the door and let the projects I’m working on percolate.

I can’t help but think again about Virginia Woolf talking about a room of our own and how women who write need this kind of space.

Before I went to Wales, I downloaded a book by Joanna Penn. In the past, I’ve read books on writing that made me go: Oh, that’s nice. But it doesn’t work for me. Joanna Penn’s “How to Write A Novel” is perhaps the first book on novel writing that’s made me stop and say: I recognize that. For one, Joanna Penn calls herself a discovery writer. She talks about how overwhelming the process of writing a novel can be when you’re like her(like me). It was like a letter from a friend saying: look, I get it. Now tell me why you’re not finishing that novel. For me the greatest thing was a sense of overwhelm. I’d get bogged down in the details and before I knew it, I was lost. (I have a bunch of novels with great beginnings where the middles and ends are all squashed together because I got caught in a tide of overwhelm and couldn’t see where things were going anymore.)

But here I am. It is the beginning of the week. I have returned from my therapy class feeling energized and thinking: you know, you’ve come this far. Look at the horizon. Can you see where this story is going? Can you see how it’s going to end? Can you see what the story is about? Coming on close to 50,000 words, it’s really getting there. (Alarming thought.)

I think of how my sister would tell me to write whatever I wanted to write and to never give up. If my sister were still here, this is the novel I would give her. I would tell her, this is the novel I wrote because of all the conversations we’ve had and which we continue to have in my head. There are moments I just wish I could turn to her and say: what do you think about this?

What’s kept me from finishing novels in the past? At the heart of it has always been fear. Fear I wouldn’t have the right words. Fear I wasn’t up to the task. Fear I would screw up.

It’s funny how my sister’s legacy continues in the words she used to speak to me. My youngest son has had some difficult moments at school (understandable in the light of everything) but I’ve said these words my sister used to say to me: “It’s your dream, do something about it.”

Since I got this room, I’ve been coming up everyday to write words because when we see each other again, my sister will probably ask me what I did about my dreams and I don’t want to say that I was too scared or too overwhelmed to do something about it.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

At work in Gladstones

/ RCRuiz

Here I am in Gladstones Library in Wales for a week of writing at the Milford Writer’s Writing Retreat. It has been a while since I’ve done something like this and I had quite forgotten just how enervating taking time out to write can be. It’s more than carving out time during the regular day, but just being here among so many books with other writers and just focusing on the work of writing has proven to be quite helpful in my process.

Before the diagnosis in 2022, I had been working on a couple of projects which I quite forgot all throughout treatment, so finding them again early in 2024 made me realise that I actually still liked these projects and they were stories that deserved to be finished. But coming to the Milford week, I was still torn on which project to work on.

In the end, I found myself drawn quite strongly to what I call the En story. I had been avoiding finishing it because the scale felt just so large. I realised that I have to acknowledge that it really is a novel. Not a novella, not a long short story, but a novel. It also means that writing in Gladstones works perfectly. I am in the process of putting together all the bits and pieces which I feel belong in this work and there it was staring me in the face…climate change. And what joy to be able to look through the library catalogue, head to the stacks, take all the books you think will be helpful and find exactly what you need for the huge thing you have been terrified about. It also helps a lot that one of my writer friends is a geophysicist and so I could send her a message saying: “uh…I have a question, help”.

It’s interesting to me too that the desk I’m seated at right now is located between two stacks of philosophers.

There is something about the moment and place of creation and how tapping into the source will bring you to the places/people/sources that you need in order to keep moving.

Working on the En story, I understand what it is about this work that terrified me. Now that I have the proper focus, I see how the world has always been comprised of opposing forces. Forces at a constant push and pull and forces that threaten to overwhelm each other. There is the nature that uses up worlds without thought or without care. It’s the kind of nature that discards without thought because when something is used up, there will always be another to take its place. It is the assumption born of privilege. There is another nature at place here too. It’s the nature of lifegiving and restoration and nurturing. Because the second nature is not brutal in nature, it’s often trampled on or made little of. But without the second nature, what would happen to our earth? What would happen to humankind? There is another nature somewhere in there and this is one wherein I hope balance takes place. I am working on it and my head is constantly busy with it.

A little while ago, I had a conversation with one of my Dutch friends. We talked about the balance between the realm of the spirit and the real world and how it’s easy to get caught up and lost in the spiritual, but we need to remember that we are also here in the real. It is the same with writing. My first drafts tend to be vague and starry eyed and not too grounded…more floaty and slippery than solid.

I started writing again in 2024 and it feels to me like I am learning all these things all over again. But what a joy to be able to do so. To be able to write and tell the stories I want to tell. Isn’t that a blessing?

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Agyamanac Unay for stopping by.

Challenges

/ RCRuiz

So, I decided to take the challenge and keep on writing in Dutch. When Liang de Beer asked me if I would like to take a shot at writing something for Modelverhalen, I thought–let’s say yes. How hard can it be?

Well. I am here to tell you that writing in Dutch is hard and challenging. Dutch isn’t an easy language and I actually caught myself turning English words into Dutch by changing the spelling. I know. Thank goodness for the native Dutch speakers who live in my house and who are pretty tough when it comes to my use of the Dutch language.

Even if my story doesn’t make it into the anthology, I have learned so much from the process of being edited by Liang. From fuzzy first draft, through tangled experimental versions, to the draft that I ended up submitting today, I can see the process the story has gone through and how the draft I ended up submitting tells a more cohesive story than the draft I submitted first. (Plus, I also feel like I learned to use the language better than before.)

Writing in Dutch also made me realise that while I may still have a journey ahead of me, I actually do enjoy writing in Dutch. I like the rhythm and the sound of the language and I want do discover how to use it to tell the stories I want to tell.

I think about life and how life is a journey and a process and learning to write in Dutch is for me part of my journey and part of my process of becoming a better inhabitant of the Earth. I am learning too to be more patient with myself because process cannot be rushed and neither can you rush the journey. Perhaps this is why it takes about 100,000 words.

I’m thinking about process and journey as I also recently took another step in the journey towards becoming stronger. I recently signed up for a physiotherapy class which is focused primarily on cancer patients and the needs of cancer patients.

Back before my diagnosis and all the treatments that followed, I pushed my body to the limit and I could lift and carry and do a lot of things which my body can’t do as well as it used to. What’s often frustrated me is how I seem to just run out of energy even when my brain tells me: we have lots of things to do.

During the intake my physiotherapist gave me the word “doseren”. In translation, the goal is to learn how to budget and make use of my energy so I don’t end up constantly with a deficit. Not giving your body time to recover energy results in a constant deficit until you are no longer capable of doing anything. The objective of physiotherapy is to make sure that your energy level eventually gets back to the point it was before all the traumatic stuff happened to your body.

I learned this lesson during my second class. I had had a broken rest and wasn’t feeling in tiptop shape, but I still came to class. My physiotherapist observed that my energy was low and told me not to make use of the weighted vests. When I insisted that I could, she said: remember what I told you about doseren?

It was a humbling moment. I had to admit to myself that in that moment, if I took the weighted vest, I might be able to finish the class, but at the end of the class, I would not be able to do anything else. Acknowledging the limits of my energy, allowed me to recover well and the day after class, instead of taking my usual quickstep one hour walk, I decided to take a gentle half hour stroll.

I think of how we’re often focused on the goal–on getting there–on achieving something–on becoming whatever it is that we want to become. But I am learning that process is important. Maybe even more important than the goal.

I have this tendency to be so focused on getting somewhere, that I forget to pay attention to the things that matter most. Being rooted in now. Focusing on what my body is telling me. These are things that are easy to forget when life is going at its usual pace. In a manner of speaking, it’s a blessing to be taught to slow down.

I am in the process and I am learning and what I am learning is all helpful. Nothing in life is ever wasted.

Blessings and peace to you who read this and don’t forget to take time to be in the moment.

What does it mean to flow without borders?

/ RCRuiz

I have had in my mind this thought which I came back to me and seems to become more concrete as I try to put it into practice: what do we mean when we talk about a world without borders? Or what do we want to see? Or how might that experience be like if there were only superficial restrictions in place and if we could — as Glissant expressed it, move through to taste the atmosphere of a place. I have to go back to reading Glissant because a lot of things are mixed up in my memory (chemobrain) but this definitely stuck and remained with me and I was reminded of it again when in one of our latest LIMBO meetings, some of the participants asked why is it that we have to put borders in place? Why all these restrictions? Doesn’t the world belong to all of us?

I went home thinking about borders. How do we see borders? Are they protection? Who is protected by these borders? And who are we protecting ourselves from? And why do we need to keep others out in order to feel protected or safe? What do we mean by safety? What do we mean by security?

I asked these questions of myself because I live in a country to which people from other countries migrate to or flee towards to ask for asylum. I live in a country in which the discussion around migrants and asylumseekers is so fraught that one actually risks losing friendships in the process.

I don’t have the power to make change happen on a big scale and I don’t have the power to go out into the large arena and make discussions happen but I thought on how to bring that practice of flowing through borders into a very small space.

For this month’s LIMBO, I thought of asking participants to work together to fill up white space with writing or drawings, with lines or curves or symbols, with whatever they can think about to express their presence in the world. The invitation being this: if someone puts down a mark, how will you interact with it? How will you cross the borders? How do you enter space where you didn’t put a mark first?

It’s an exercise that I find myself wanting to repeat with others. Without our realising it, we have our own concept of borders, even on something as small and simple as a piece of paper. Creating on a space reserved and marked yours feels different from creating in a space that says–this is for all of us. Leave your marks, interact with other marks, there is no one artist, no one author, no one creator, it belongs to all of us.

There are questions that arise from this exercise that I also want to think about and which I find myself curious about: how does it feel to cross over into another space? What changes once you make that decision to leave a mark there? To interact with something that’s there? How does it change the way you perceive the work?

I didn’t get to ask this of the group, but I find myself wondering: How do exercises of collaborative creation change the way we see the world and the way we interact with one another?

In talking about this with a dear friend who is a fellow artist, activist and also a writer in the field, I expressed a vision of a room that becomes filled with doodles and maps and words and drawings. And how, it would be interesting to discover how willing we are to layer on top of what is already there and how that space would not be a work attributed to any one person but it would be attributed to all who collaborated whether the person is invited or comes upon it by happenstance, where those making marks can also be living creatures that we take care of.

Writing this, I realise that I am writing about the world we live in. We are all in the process of creating or re-creating, making or re-making, building or re-building–perhaps we layer over what is already there–we bear witness. We see how systems put in place have shaky foundations and how those who benefit from these systems try to prop them up. We bear witness, we offer criticque. But is offering criticque enough?

Marking the empty page to make something together can involve some risk. Stepping out into the world, making a decision to make or leave a mark involves much deeper and more thoughtful movement. What kind of mark do I want to leave? How will the mark that I leave affect those whose spaces or whose lives I live a mark on?

In any case, for me, the question strikes closer to home and makes me think that if I have marked my children with love and care and the ability to be thoughtful and considerate of others, then some of what I am meant to do has been done.

I wish I could share the picture of our collaboration, but it belongs to the group. But perhaps it’s an exercise some of you who read this blog might want to try on your own. Just take the step. Make the invitation and see where it takes you.

Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. Blessings and peace to you who read this.

thinking about language again

/ RCRuiz / 1 Comment

I’ve been writing in Dutch and this has me thinking about language again and how it relates to taking up space in the world (or making space) and how gatekeeping in language and use of language relates to the question around permissions. Why do we need borders when the world belongs to all of us? Why do we need permissions to cross from one place to another? And why do we as societies feel this need to create perimeters and conditions keeping people from traveling or moving into spaces we have labeled as “ours”?

I have a complex relationship with language. Perhaps this explains my fascination with it. I am also something of a geek and language and the conversations around language have also fascinated me.

Small as the Dutch publishing landscape may be (compared to the US or the UK), it’s still predominantly comprised of white native Dutch speakers. I made a decision to at least attempt to write and publish in Dutch because I believe it’s important to make space not just for my work, but for the work of those who like me were not born or raised in The Netherlands, but have come here from non-western countries.

In 2021, when Martijn Lindeboom and Vamba Sharif asked me to participate in De Komeet, a specfic anthology from diverse writers in NL released by a De Geus, I said an immediate yes. When the anthology was published, some people I know who read my story said that they were at first a bit hesitant because of the use of nb pronouns, but were quite surprised to find it wasn’t preachy as they feared (yay). It was also favourably reviewed in De Telegraaf which is a major Dutch newspaper (so Yay again). The comment I do get from people I know (who’ve read it) is how the reader can tell that I’m not a native Dutch speaker because of my use of language. Here’s where I admit that I did have an editor and first readers who tried to tell me to rewrite some sentences but the rhythm and the off-center use of language made me happy, so I kept them.

I can’t pass for a native Dutch speaker and to be honest, I don’t even want to. It’s the same as I don’t pass as a UK or US raised English speaker, and I don’t want to. The way I use language reflects how I have acquired the language, it reflects the rhythms by which I have learned to speak it or write it. It may seem like a minor thing, but there is a deliberate reasoning behind this. I understand the importance of the rules of language–grammar and such. But as one reader said to me: the use of language in an alien setting by alien characters, reminded me that my characters are aliens and the emotion came across because of the way “the language was used in a way I am not used to”. (That kind of made me go: yep. That was the intention.) (Of course, I have no doubt there were readers who were just irritated and went “another outsider who wants to write in Dutch”. Lol.)

There are different ways of using language and by opening ourselves to these differences, we expand our borders and our perimeters.

Mind you, I’m not advocating for using wrong grammar. I am advocating for knowing and having a grasp of language and at the same time remaining faithful to the rhythm that echoes in your inner ear. (I did adapt a lot of suggested edits because I am aware that while I may be proficient in Dutch, I tend to be more English in my grammar use. But there were definitely one or two sentences where I just said to the editors–this just feels right to me. It conveys an emotion that I want to convey.) So, I am perfectly okay when faced with the criticism that the language use isn’t perfectly Dutch or Dutch as it’s meant to be. It is not meant to perfect, it’s not meant to conform. (Sorry not sorry for being a rebel.)

When we engage in writing in LIMBO, I like to encourage participants to write in the language they are most comfortable in. Perhaps a majority will opt to write in English, but I have discovered that when someone chooses to write in the language closest to them, while we may not understand the words, we are often able to hear the movement of the writer’s heart in the movement of the language they use.

It’s this kind of rhythm and this kind of movement that we want to capture when we decide to write in an acquired language. Maybe it’s not perfect. Maybe the grammer is not 100%. But all these things are cosmetic. They can be fixed in edits, they can be discussed.

We are a multicultural society and when traveling through the city, I hear a rich tapestry of sounds and voices–different languages, different accents, different ways of using language. Dutch interspersed with Middle Eastern languages, Filipino mingled with Dutch and interestingly too–Dutchies who bend Dutch words to make them sound somewhat like English. Language, like society, like culture, doesn’t remain static. It’s never standing still and every year new words are added to our ever-changing vocabulary–not all these words are rooted in the Dutch language.

Yep. I can keep going about language. But I’ll stop here as I have a bunch of things on my to-do list. I am interested in comparing notes though. How do you write in an acquired language and how does the language you’re most skilled at using influence the way you write in another language? And if you’re writing in an acquired language, what made you decide to write in it?

Blessings and peace to you who read this and Agyamanac Unay for dropping by.

Hello 2024

/ RCRuiz

I am learning how to do freehand protraits–relying less on a grid and training my eyes and my pencil. I still need to work on proportions, but the results have been surprising. Did you know that turning a picture upside down will actually help you focus more on shapes and lines and will give you a more satisfying rendition than if you are looking directly at a thing? For most of 2023, I had to practice at home by myself as my energy would often run out and I would end up having to skip art classes.

Towards the end of 2023 though, I was able to attend five art classes (what luxury). It became important to me to go to class with a goal. What is it that I’m struggling with, right now? What questions can I ask and how can I put the answers to practice when I am unable to attend class?

There are so many similarities between making art and writing and life and the parallels fascinate me. Because we often start out with a draft–with an idea of where we would like to go–or in my case, I sometimes find myself caught up in an emotion and I let that emotion move my body and take me to what comes out on the canvas. I suppose I am very much a pantser on canvas as I am a pantser with words. Portraiture though is teaching me the discipline of looking and seeing and translating what I see in lines and shadows and angles on the page. We don’t know what we’re making until we see the finished project and even then, it can be tempting to keep tweaking. For the artist, the art is learning when it’s time to stop. There is no such thing as perfection in art, simply the question of: have I managed to convey what I wanted to convey? And does the meaning the viewer attaches to the image make me say: Oh…that interpretation works just as well.

It is satisfying though when you get your meaning across and it’s the same with working with words. Stories work when they mean something to the maker and to the person reading or receiving the story. And in this way, stories become an act of co-creation. The writer creates the world, the characters and the story, but the reader attaches meaning to it and the art becomes the ability to draw the reader in and invite them to create together with the writer.

I’m not a very good fanfiction writer but I find myself in awe of writers of fanfiction who expand the universe and the worlds of stories that have captured their imagination. To have a fanfiction made of your work is, I think, the best possible compliment an artist can hope for. Why? Because it means you’ve made something that has become full of meaning for another person to the extent they wish to co-create with what exists.

Life itself is an act of co-creation. We co-create together with God and with our fellow inhabitants of the earth and together we weave this massive story that is the story of humanity. And it sucks a lot at times. It makes us cry and feel frustrated at times. It makes us angry. It moves us. It makes us want to hit out and hurt someone sometimes. It makes us decide to take action. Co-creating means, we don’t just let life happen. We decide to take part in life becoming.

Reading back, I think this is what 2024 is shaping up to be for me. I spent 2022 trying to stay alive, trying to recover, trying to survive. My 2023, had me learning how to deal with setbacks. It had me on a path of discovering what it was that I really wanted to keep on doing. Here I am in 2024, still alive. I am present. I am doing what I need to do, here and now…bedhead and all.

Agyamanac Unay for stopping by. May peace and love be with you.

Evolution

/ RCRuiz

There’s a Dutch phrase that captures the emotion for what we have gone through–het laat mij niet in de koude kleren zitten. Which means that all we’ve gone through as a family, all I’ve gone through as a person, these things have not left me unchanged or unmoved.

It’s a good thing to be moved and to be changed because it means I am still alive. I am still feeling, I am still living and I am constantly in transition, evolving, changing, not standing still. I think about this as I find myself surprised at how this season, this moment of being in a state of limbo, has feed the creative in me. I write, because I love to write. I make music because I love to make music. I teach because I love seeing how those I teach bloom into their potential. And I make art because a lot of times, when I am making art, I find myself in conversation with my maker.

Before 2022, I never imagined I would be making art as I do today. Or that it would become so important to me or that it would help me talk about what I am going through or that it would be a pathway to growing and knowing myself better. (I used to say that I write because I can’t paint or draw and am basically useless at art.)

When I told my Mom about my diagnosis in 2022, her command was for me to go ask God what his purpose was with me. At that time, I had no words for writing anything. I couldn’t even speak about what I was going through. Imagine being a writer unable to write or say anything about the storm going on inside you?

This was one of the first images I made which expresses what I was going through at the time. It was hope and agony and my soul just crying out. It was: God, if you really see me, then do something.

From that moment, telling the story of that time happened through images. Sometime in 2022, a friend proposed that I should try making use of acrylics. My first approach to painting was to simply splash color on the canvas. To try and put on the canvas or on paper what was in my head or in my heart at the moment.

This stormy canvas was just me saying: here I am in the middle of this storm and the storm is so big, I can’t even begin to describe it.

Making something visual happened because I had no words. But when you are without words for more than a year, and when you are engaging with art making almost everyday for a year, your work changes. One day, early this year, something told me that the way I was working was going to change and so was the art.

I think about the process of art making and how making art led me back to writing and how art that’s on the canvas tells a story just as the words on a page tell a story. We create because we have stories inside us that we want to share and stories will find their way out of the person bearing those stories. If not through words, it will be through other means of telling. (Just consider the plethora of youtube stories, audio stories, film stories..etc., etc.)

The more we engage with telling stories, the better we become at them. The more we engage with a certain medium, the better we become at that medium. Before my diagnosis, I would never have dreamed that I would someday tell stories through painting. After diagnosis, I thought I would never be able to tell stories through words again.

There are a lot of famous saying about life and art, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a proper one at the moment, but I do believe that art and life are intertwined. If anything, being diagnosed has made me more conscious of how important it is to live a life with purpose. To create marks with deliberation and care, to engage fully and be present in the moment, to look–really look, to really see and to also rest and be in the moment and allow moments to flow over me and change me and transform me so I can bring that back to whatever I am working on at the moment whether it is on art, on writing or my relationships.

I keep thinking of that friend who said to me “if only we knew how much time we had”. The truth is, we know. We know our time on this planet is not infinite. We know it, we just don’t want to acknowledge it.

I think about this as I contemplate the story of my life and I find myself wondering about the overall arch and how the completed story will read like or look like if it were in a book or hanging in a gallery. When we are in the process, we only see now. We only see this moment.

This is one of my latest works in progress (yup, I have more than one). I’ve been working on it for almost two months. I do a little work. I put it away. Think about it. Work on it some more. Right now, it’s missing one more element which I am thinking about.

I can honestly say that I don’t know why I am writing this or sharing this at this moment. It just felt good to do so. I don’t know what 2024 holds. I don’t even know what will happen tomorrow or next week or the weeks after that. Today, I am heading to the hospital. I am getting a CT scan. I am doing what I can to keep my body healthy. I am spending time with my kids and with my loved ones. I am writing. I am alive.

Blessings and peace to you who read this. Choose life.