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Here are images that were drawn subsequent to those on the preceding page.
I did this drawing with my brother-in-law Randy (who died in March of this year of complications from a sudden onset of leukemia) in mind. I’d been thinking about him, and my brother Marty missing him so much. I did the bridge, the forested background, and the light on the bridge fairly quickly, but then the rest of the paper remained blank for several days. I knew that the light on the bridge was a soul, a spirit, crossing over, leaving this world but, for now, still able to experience it to a degree. (Randy… Mom…me?) The light has a sort of “head” in the middle of it, but the face is nearly featureless (so it could be anyone). After leaving the rest of the drawing unfinished for a while, finally, during a sleepless night, I thought about it and remembered that one of my dearly loved places is Brandy Creek by Whiskeytown Lake. There is a footpath along the edge of the creek, and a dark red bridge that crosses over a large, shallow (sometimes fish-filled) pond. My favorite memory of that place – besides its natural beauty and the calming sound of the creek burbling through rocks – is that of my friend Bryan Merton jumping into the pond to swim around only to find that it frigid cold from the spring snow-melt. I then “saw” the rest of the drawing in my head… a rock and sand-covered shoreline embracing a slow-moving river of clear, cold water. In the distance, there is a break in the dense trees, and you can see the blue sky. Some of the rocks, and part of the sandy shore, are covered with moss and grass (life clinging to the “unfertile”, able to make use of it over time). I also “saw” the image of cattails in the foreground, and drew them in last. As I drew in these items, I didn’t understand what they had to do, exactly, with the image as a whole, or how they related to Randy, Mom or me, but I drew them in anyway because they seemed somehow “right” for the drawing. I note that the rocks that were so “in ruin” in the previous drawing are seen here as more spread apart, more part of the scenery, a part of the living again. And the water here is similar to the “pale blue” energy flow in my left arm and throat in drawing #14… After the drawing was done and I looked at it for a while, I felt that it seemed to be partially an image of transition: letting go, crossing over. But at the same time, it is an image that speaks to the continuation of life (in various forms) and the tenacity of the spirit. The cattails, which seem the most unusual part of this drawing to me because I’m not quite certain what they signify just yet, are on the same side as the departing spirit (as is the mossy part of the ground)… As the spirit passes to a different plain, new life emerges in this one? I asked myself, “What does ‘cattails’ mean to you, and the word “peace” came instantly to mind. I don’t know why…
This drawing was in response to a dream I had. I’m recording it only because the dream occurred during this time period. I don’t know if the drawing has any direct correlation to my cancer/ treatment or not. In the dream (in which I was an observer, not a participant), I saw a red-haired girl ambling through a room where art classes took place. It was during a sort of parent-teacher conference period; there were many other people in the room. I always saw the girl from behind (never from in front), so I never saw her face. Following the girl through the classroom was a hooded figure which I believed to be Death. At one point, the girl lifted a shallow, white, empty bowl – that looked as though it was made of white quartz or alabaster – up as if in offering… I’m still not certain what the dream meant. It ended without concluding anything. But I got the feeling that the red-haired girl was related somehow to a more mystical/ magical side of myself. And though Death was stalking her, she was continuing to move through life and participate in what was around her… Rather foreboding, now that I think of it…But I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it.
This drawing was done after I suffered a sort of “fainting spell” at work, and then went to the doctor’s office to find that my immune system had been completely disabled by the chemotherapy. On the blood test report all readings relating to white blood cells came back “….” Because there was nothing for the scanning machine to count. My doctor put me on an antibiotic and a week-long series of “Neupogen” shots. The Neupogen is a drug that excites the marrow of the long bones in the body (legs, arms, sternum) to produce more white blood cells. Although I was feeling horribly fatigued, and although the shots caused me a dull aching pain in the sternum and long bones of my legs, I was determined to visualize the drug as being of great assistance to me in my treatment. In the drawing, one can see the central image is the sternum (without the long ribs) and clavicle bones. Around the base of the sternum are bright golden feathers, which I equate with the feathers of my Guardian Angel (or the spiritual assistance of the Universe). They support the sternum in it production of white blood cells, which are seen as billowing out from the top of the sternum in a mass of bluish-white “bubbles”. I was not aware when I did the drawing that the yellow of the feathers and the blue of the white blood cells correspond directly to the yellow of the Solar Plexus chakra and the blue of the Throat chakra. (The sternum, of course, covers the Heart chakra, whose associated color is “green”… green being a mix of blue and yellow.) I felt, after I realized the chakra significance of the colors, that this drawing was affirming to me that the Neupogen treatment was the proper one, and that all my body energies (in the chakra structure) were aligning to assist in the recovery of my immune system. It made me feel good just to look at it, even when I was feeling drained and exhausted. I also became aware that the structure of the sternum and clavicle in this drawing looks something like a white-robed figure with its arms outstretched; and the feathers are like its wings… Another “angelic” reference? I can tell you that after a week of the shots, my immune system was nearly back to normal…
This drawing was done in answer to the mental question, “Why did this (the cancer and stressful year) happen FOR me?” (rather than asking, “Why did this happen TO me?”) I was surprised by the visual response to the question, but drew it out onto paper anyway, even though I didn’t comprehend, at first, what it might mean. In the foreground is a “scorched earth” landscape of blackened and smoldering earth, and a single tree burned leafless and cinder-like. In the background is a large eye, looming up over the burnt horizon like a rising sun. The “white” of the eye looks like blue sky filled with clouds, and the iris of the eye is made up of a ring of green seedlings and layers of brown and tan “earth”. The seedlings’ roots reach toward the center of the eye where they connect with and draw nourishment from the pupil area. The pupil is a deep purple-blue circle filled with stars, and surrounded by corona of streaming white light-energy. Balls of energy emerge from the star-center and extend out toward the roots. After I drew the image, I seemed to understand that the foreground is a representation of my present: everything I knew, everything I had depended on and was familiar to me is now gone, scorched away from the cancer, the death of my mother, the dramatic change in my income… everything that’s happened this year. It is reflective of my grief and loss, my sometimes feelings of desolation and ruination… And I believe it’s also representative of my ego (the loan tree). But the devastated part of the drawing is countered by the eye, that is full of promise and connectedness, and “blue skies”, and new ways of being and seeing things. I can also see this as the “Eye of God”, the Universe, keeping watch over me even when I’m feeling distraught and besieged and reduced to ashes. It’s here, on the eye, I have to place my focus: not on what IS but on what WILL BE… even if I don’t know exactly what “WILL BE” will be. I have to look deeper inward for my true “environment”, and not be focused on what’s happening outside of me.
This drawing was done in response to the death of my newborn nephew Garrett. He died shortly after birth in his mother’s arms. The family had gone through so much trauma already this year (the death of my mother, the death of my brother-in-law Randy, the death of my uncle Cedric, my cancer, my brother-in-law Hal’s pancreatitis…) I was having a lot of trouble coping with the death of someone so new, so innocent. The only way I could deal with it was to think of Garrett as a tiny angel who had been sent to his mother, Rhonda, to protect her during her pregnancy. Every decision she made during her pregnancy was based on the pregnancy itself: what would she eat, who would she associate with, where would she go, should she travel any long distances? If Garrett hadn’t been inside of her, her decisions would have been markedly different, and who knows what might have happened to her? She could have eaten something she wasn’t supposed to and gotten deathly ill, or gone on a trip that would have been life-threatening… Because Garrett was there, Rhonda made specific decisions, and in this way he protected her from misfortune. When his work was done, and she was safe, he was then free to “leave”. I tell myself that he was unable to live outside the womb because he was an angel, not a human being, and his spirit-body simply couldn’t exist in our dimension. In the drawing Garrett is seen inside the womb, and generating a “shield” of angelic energy around his mother’s body. This is an extension of his own spiritual nature (and is seen as a yellow circlet with small wings on it.) His mother’s body appears purple in the drawing, with pinkish plumes coursing through it; these represent the spiritual and emotional connections between mother and baby. Their physical connection is seen as white lines coursing through the mother’s body toward the baby. Outside the womb are other angelic spirits (which could be Mom, Randy, Ced…) hovering nearby, waiting for Garrett to join them again in his “true” form, so they can progress forward toward their next incarnation.
This piece was done on a day when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and depressed. I felt like I just couldn’t take one more tiny bit of bad news or stress. In it, I am seen as a figure lying prone on sandy ground. The sand represents my feeling as though I’m on unsteady and infertile ground; like I don’t have a good footing in my own life and future anymore. Coming out of the figure’s body is an empty IV tube and bag. This symbolizes my feeling that I’m running out of “aid”, or “running on empty” physically and emotionally. The figure is buried under a pile of hideous stuff: Crushing rocks: symbolizing a feeling of being immobile, stuck, unable to move forward. A brown, bulbous mass wriggling with red worms and dotted with blisters, which symbolizes many different things. It’s my cancer (and a nagging fear that regardless of the treatment I’m currently going through, the cancer will never be fully gone and will always “dominate” whatever life I have left.) It’s also all the “shit” associated with cancer treatments and the loss of employment caused by the disease. Four snakes protrude from the mass. They are: sickness and nausea (the green one), sadness (the blue one), anxiety (the pink one), and severe depression (the purple one). The purple one holds its head up to “see” (although none of the snakes have eyes) black feathers falling from the sky. The black feathers represent the Angel of Death and the fleeting thoughts of suicide brought on by depression. Obviously, this was a very “negative” drawing. To counter-act all the negative feelings associated with this image, and to help put myself in a better frame of mind, I did another drawing about 2 days later.
22nd DRAWING: “A Safe
and Sacred Place” This drawing was done the morning before my brother Marty came over to my house to visit me for the day. I knew, as I started the drawing, that it needed to be in a mandala format, and that it had to be more “positive” than the last drawing, but otherwise I had no image or agenda in mind when I started it. I drew a circle in the center of the paper, them surrounded the circle with lush, almost jungle-like, plant growth. Dense greenery has always been a symbol of growth and life for me. Amid the greenery, I added little dots of pale yellow and white, thinking to myself that they represented berries (“fruitfulness”) and lightning bugs, tiny sparkling beings representing “bits of illumination”. That done, the center circle was still blank. I didn’t know what to put in there. The image of a lakeshore came to mind, but was immediately rejected as “not quite right” for this particular drawing. Although lakeshores are calming, peaceful places to me, such an image didn’t seem to belong in this drawing. Still, water of some sort DID seem to belong, so I drew in a ring of clear water around the outer edge of the circle. It’s a sort of skrying pool; one can look into it to see the future. But that still left the very center of the drawing incomplete and empty. I sat in front of the drawing for almost 30 minutes before continuing with it. The inner circle had to be filled with light, I seemed to understand, so I drew in an image that at first looked like a sun. As I continued adding color to the “sun”, in an outward spiraling fashion, I someone came to realize it was actually a “portal” through which energy could come from other planes and dimensions. And inside the center of the “sun” were pale white ghostly figures – angels, helpmates, ghosts (whatever you want to call them) – offering their energy and supplying me with a visible connection to the Collective Consciousness. There seem to five or six figures.
I looked up some information on this kind of mandala in the book “Creating Mandalas” by Susanne F. Fincher in the hopes of getting some extra insight into it. Fincher suggests that a mandala with a spiraling center is reflective of “Stage Three: Labyrinth or Spiral” in a Great Round. She writes: “In stage three one experiences the activation or reactivation of life force within the psyche… Initiation ceremonies bestow upon the young shaman a new umbilical cord linking [her] directly to the universe at some constant point such as a star…” I drew a Stage Three mandala without even realizing it while I was drawing it…
23rd DRAWING: “Taxol” This drawing was probably the most “literal” one I’ve done thusfar during my cancer treatments. It is in response to the symptoms I experienced when the cancer treating agent “Taxol” was added to my chemo-cocktail. Prior to receiving the Taxol, I had to take 10 steroid pills (5 at midnight the night before treatment, and 5 at 6 AM the day of treatment), then on the day of treatment, before the Taxol was administered, I received a bag of Saline Solution through an IV, then a bag of liquid Anzement (for nausea), then a bag of Bendryl (to counteract allergic reactions associated with histamine), the a bag of Tagament (to suppress stomach acid). Finally I received a bag of Taxol, another bag of Saline Solution, and another bag of Taxol. The whole chemotherapy process took over 8 hours. It left me feeling horribly bloated – like a “queen termite” --and with an urgency to urinate several times during the therapy. After the treatment, I spent almost a week in physical agony. Every joint and muscle in my body hurt like a toothache; I had severe stomach cramps, nausea and vomiting, and diarrhea, and I woke up each morning with a nose full of blood. It was the most pain I’d experienced during chemotherapy, and the most physically uncomfortable I’d ever been in my entire life. The drawing is an expression of the bloatedness and overwhelming pain I experienced in reaction to this drug. The figure had a “queen termite” body that is bloated beyond recognition, with spurts of fluid squirting out of it (yet no pressure seems to be released by the expulsion). The upper torso and head are green (symbolizing the nausea I felt); the hands are contorted with agony. Pain is represented by orange lightning bolts that explode from the body and joints. The figure’s nose bleeds. As I said, this was the most “literal” expressive drawing I’d done. It’s very negative, and I knew immediately I should do a more positive drawing to counteract it, but I could think of nothing positive to associate with the experience of being administered the agent.
This drawing was done, initially, to help me release some of the anxiety I was feeling over the fact that about a week earlier, while at the doctor’s office, another tumor was found in my previously unaffected left breast, at the “9:30” position. Needless to say, the discovery was disheartening, especially since I’d been through so much chemotherapy… which had, apparently done nothing to stop the resurgence of tumors in my body. This drawing was done BEFORE a biopsy of the tumor was completed, so I had a lot of trepidation about the tumor and what it might mean for my future health. As the drawing progressed, however, other images and “messaged” seemed to be revealed to me, and the process of drawing became very cathartic for me. It was done in the circular mandala form, and started out with the circle being carved out into four distinct areas (in a sort of “X” pattern). The left quadrant of the circle was the first to be filled in. It represents the RIGHT side of my torso, where my mastectomy was done. The mastectomy scar is seen as a bright white bolt of lightning coursing across the top of that quadrant, and the tissue beneath it is a golden-yellow (representing my hope that the treatments it’s been given will leave it “cured and healthy”). The top quadrant was then drawn in: a sort of pearly white with pale green color radiating from the heart chakra and pale blue color radiating from the throat chakra. This seems to speak to an alignment of energies existing in that part of my body, and also speaks to the more spiritual side of my nature taking the “top dog” position at present. The bottom quadrant was then filled in with a sort of woody brown coloration. I think this represents my physical form in the literal sense: meat and blood. My connection to my physical self . Then the right quadrant (representing the LEFT side of my torso) was filled in last. I shows a breast which otherwise looks healthy… and which extend outside the mandala circle… except for a dark brown lumpy tumor at the “9:30” position in the tissue. I think the breast extends partly outside of the circle because I’m feeling some concern that it’s not wholly “protected” by the circle; and that it represents for me, at the moment, the “unknown” future. After looking at the drawing, I was struck by the fact that the golden-colored quadrant looks like a chrysalis; a form I didn’t consciously intend for it to take on, but which it took on anyway. The golden color, I came to realize, speaks toward an “alchemic” process currently under-going in my body, spirit and psyche; a critical and very volatile transformation. There is something forming in this chrysalis that is being fed and energized by the lightning… A great change is in process… even as I live the present and dread the future… Fincher’s book, “Creating Mandalas” suggests that the form this mandala took on the Stage Ten: Gates of Death form of a Great Round. That sounds very foreboding, but actually isn’t. Fincher writes: “ [It} can disclose a shift toward the Self as the real center of psychic life…Feelings of loss, depression and helplessness are not uncommon here…Each quadrant of the mandala may be a different color, symbolizing fragmentation…Designs with an X convey the sense that one is at a crossroads, pulled in both directions… We are conscious of the relentless cycles of nature…”
This drawing was done to help me visually counteract the pain and distress I felt after the Taxol chemo treatments. On one half of the image is a deep dark hole or cave with stalagmites hanging from the ceiling like huge brown teeth. Coursing through the cave is the zigzagging path of pain-energy bouncing all over, stabbing into the rocks, ricocheting all over the place. This all represents the depression, pain and tenseness I feel after the Taxol is administered. Down the center of the image is a blue line, which represents a “lens”, my perception, the way I view things. On the right side of the image is a lush green area filled with purple hydrangeas. When I first did a “find your place of comfort and safety” guided imagery meditation, I saw a garden protected by a high wall and filled with lush grass, climbing roses, and towering hydrangea bushes. So the right side of this drawing represents peace, tranquility, safety and comfort. As the negatively charged pain-energy on the left side of the drawing passes through the lens in the center, it is transformed into a forward-coursing ball of healing and functional energy… How the energy is perceived is entirely up to me. I can see the Taxol and its aftermath as damaging or healing. I can dwell on the pain, or look forward to recovery and functionality.
This drawing was done after I’d encountered several references to “chakras” and several images of white dragons all within a few days period of time. I didn’t know what the two had to do with one another, really, except that the chakras were energy systems in the body and white animals usually represent a “spiritual” connection or guide of some sort. Since the references and images all came together within a short period of time, I felt compelled to combine them in a drawing. I did the drawing in a mandala format, but this time did the circle on white paper, then adhered the white paper circle to black paper. The black, I think, represents a deep part of the Unconscious… What is taking place in the circle, is taking place somewhere deep inside my Unconscious. The chakra colors are swirling inside the circle and I see them as a sort of tunnel or cavern in which the white dragon lives. The dragon itself , I perceive as a powerful, spiritual guardian or guiding figure. It’s emerging from its cave, a deep recession inside of me, and heading toward the surface (my Consciousness). After I did this drawing, I could see that the colors were a sort of reorganization of the colors that were present in my “Mandala #1” drawing of August 15th . The colors in that image were disorganized, overlapping… sort of a cosmic “mush”. In this new drawing, the colors are organized into the bands of the spectrum, and are more intense and vivid (rather than the pastels of the previous drawing). The “flames” surrounding the circle in the August 15th drawing, too, have seemingly diminished in this new drawing, reduced to an aura of white and yellow (which I relate to spiritual and angelic influences; the surrounding corona is more “protective” now than “destructive”. MORE IMAGES WILL FOLLOW ON CONNECTING PAGES AS THEY ARE COMPLETED.
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