It’s just a story…
I heard a story told that rings true: a friend who also works with seniors told me someone who was a resident in the senior living community where she works. This woman had been an artist, an amateur, a Sunday painter, in her earlier years. She no longer painted. But the woman’s daughter entered her mother’s paintings in a show at their church. The satisfaction, the happiness, the pride of this 80+ woman was heartening to hear and see, I understand. She had to hang her show. She had to attend the opening. She was still an artist. She was still someone.
Why can’t that be for all?
We should make it so!
Poetry as…
The American Academy of Poets tries to do us all a favor in the month of April. It brings poetry to the front and center through National Poetry Month and its many (clever) facets (did you miss Poem Flow?). I subscribed to the poem-a-day e-mail and while some did nothing for me, some did. And I met a lot of poets, as I prefer to, through their carefully crafted words. It’s almost the end of the month but I can say…this is my favorite:
Dark Matter
by Jack Myers
I’ve lived my life as if I were my wife
packing for a trip—I’ll need this and that
and I can’t possibly do without that!
But now I’m about
what can be done without.
I just need a thin valise.
There’s no place on earth
where I can’t unpack in a flash
down to a final spark of consciousness.
No place where I can’t enter
the joyless rapture
of almost remembering
I’ll need this and I’ll need that,
hoping to weigh less than silence,
lighter than light.
Everyday life has a different feel if it is to be packed in a “thin valise”. Even for those of us who think we’re not “what can be done without”.
Thank you Jack!
Confessions of the episodic
It’s been awhile. But maybe that’s my character: sometime inspirations crowd in from everywhere. Other times they seem to disappear into the hurly-burly of the everyday. It isn’t that I care less about creativity and aging and dementia. I do. But the inspiring events, readings, thought come back and therefore so am I.
Another voice
I can’t quite imagine the thoughts and feelings of Charles Darwin when he learned of a rival’s simultaneous articulation of the origin of species by natural selection. Reasonable scholars have identified it as ‘dawning horror’. For me, discoering that others write the same things I think is the opposite. I see something more akin to burgeoning satisfaction. I felt that when I tripped over Jan Greenberg’s post Writing, Creativity and Aging on the blog I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids).
Jan writes of her own challenges to write for young adults as she is aging and how considering how others have aged creatively (great artists are always great company) has solidified her resolve to do the same. What worked? She mentions a new subject, a new discipline, and a new view (in this case of the world). Interesting, yes; inspiring, absolutely!
Another insight into the brain
Traumatic brain injury rightfully captures much media attention at the moment, courtesy, in part, of the struggles of service personnel and military veterans. The New York Times today (August 9, 2009) covers this interesting and important topic on the front page in an article, Brain Power: After Injury, Fighting to Regain a Sense of Self. The insights gained as people, often young, strive to force the brain to learn anew offers an amazing story but also a lesson in the dynamic possibilities of the brain. And while it is important to emphasize that these possibilities are life-long, this quotation resonates with me:
“The brain is ‘plastic,’ recent research suggests; intact areas can recruit nearby, healthy brain tissue to bypass damage and compensate for lost function.
It does not seem to happen, however, without effort; to reroute signal traffic down back channels, the brain needs traffic, scientists say. It needs to be active, solving problems, meeting social expectations.”
This is brain fitness in another guise! This is one of the main points to active, successful, healthy, and creative aging! The author goes on:
“In studies of dementia, researchers have found that some people who are lucid until a very old age have brains that appear riddled with Alzheimer’s disease. Many of them remain social to the end, engaged in regular card games or debates with friends who make mental demands of them.”
This is it! This is the power of “enriched environments”, to borrow a phrase from the Living Well with Memory Loss conference I attended last week.
An obvious point
The columnist Thomas Sowell writes today “the point is that health care is largely in your hands. Medical care is the hands of doctors.”
Good point and now the obvious question: how does that relate to aging? How can we talk about caring about our own aging?
Can We Create an Earthquake?
Last week I enjoyed a telephone conversation so much I felt I gained a phone friend. And it’s with the very special Lauren Volkmer of ARTZ (Artists for Alzheimer’s). In this rambling introduction to ourselves we used and then repeated various images to agree that there is something very special happening around creativity and aging and creativity and dementia; it has to be a phenomenom of earthshaking proportions. So many wonderful people are working in so many wonderful ways that have deep connections – and Lauren and I agreed we were part of this. But is it a tidal wave or an earthquake? But does it matter as long as it keeps happening?
But the tidal wave seemed to flow through this week’s newspapers here in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first was Monday in that voicebox of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. There was an article on pyscho-oncology which piqued my interest: “A New View, After Diagnosis“. It is about making life meaningful in the face of fear, in the face of mortality. And from what I read, being creative is, for many people, part of what helps. In my book, creative living in the face of cancer is creative aging at its best.
Another whisper of making meaning is the ad for a set of lectures by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst and Author. He’ll be here at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant Friday July 17th and Saturday July 18th for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and What Matters Most. I haven’t found a description of these programs but I’ve already fallen in love with their titles.
The next piece that reverberates for me is in Meet the Artist in GoTriad section of The News & Record. It’s on Robert ‘Bob’ Postma and he is a living and breathing tidal wave of…creativity, creative aging, community creation, and everything of great meaning. I’ve got to meet this man!
Summer Reading
I can’t pretend to read only books about aging but I do confess that my reading tastes include fiction that provides insight into the experience of people who are aging. A recent find is Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. It came highly recommended; I borrowed from the library of a reader whose taste were eclectic and refined. I found it engrossing. And not just the story of a young man in the Depression-era travelling circus; the old man yearning to be freed from his family and circumstances (the nursing home). If one purpose of reading is being taken places you’ve never been (but recognize when you arrive) then Gruen is a good guide both to the drama of the circus and the backwater of boredom that all too often must be the province of our seniors. Try it yourself!
Poetry tells us the Truth
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver wrote this and no truer truth could resonate more strongly with me after this last week. I like the poetry of landscapes but never realized quite how much the ‘Bard of Provincetown” might know about the work of those in the trenches with our aging elders!
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