Meniere's Disease

Walking to First

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Overcast, Oil on Canvas, 14″x14″
Click Here if you would like this painting to live on your wall.

It’s the end of day 7.

This time last week I was voluntarily getting hit by the chemical equivalent of a baseball bat to the inner ear and brain to try and get some of my old life back, and, after a day or two of delayed side effects, did what any batter who gets hit would do. I took the walk.

Now, at the end of day 7, I’m slowly crawling to first base. The fog is starting to clear bit by bit.

I’m heading back to work tomorrow, regardless of the wisdom of that idea. I’ll be sitting on first, waiting for the signal to start running again, but, after the cathartic weekend of painting that preceded the bat to the ear, I know exactly how it will feel.

It won’t be a feverish productivity or blur of activity. It will be when the need to pick up the brush cuts through the spinning fog. It won’t feel like guilt for having neglected work or art. It will feel like a lifeline pulling me in.

The Not So Bad

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Scattered, 20″ x 20″, Oil on Canvas
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Most of the time I hate Ménière’s disease. When you’re not being violently rocked as you try to get to sleep at night, you are hugging the floor trying to get the world to stop looking like a ceiling fan that gets stuck on a quarter turn, and then resets itself before Turning again. There are perverse times, however, like right now, When the salts and crystals in my inner ear, create the sensation of being on a an inflatable raft on Lake Michigan on a gentle wave kind of day.

In two weeks. I’m going into the hospital to have a procedure that will probably cost a good amount of hearing in the affected ear in exchange for getting my life back. The trade is going to make it easier to drive and work with some stability. Even though I won’t miss the vertigo and the falls, I’m trying to commit tonight’s gentle wave sensation to memory. It’s a lesson that even the things that make life really hard sometimes, can bring an unexpected smile to your face.

Incubation

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Rhapsody, 14″ x 14″, Oil on Canvas, Click Here if you would like this painting to live on your wall.

I used to think about December as the beginning of hibernation. Creative output always seems to slow down as the days get shorter, and work seems far more intrusive than it does in the crackling light of autumn.

For last last few weeks my output has followed the same trend. It took me a while to recognize the pattern because I initially blamed the slowdown the Ménière’s disease that’s been with me in earnest for a year now. Yesterday, though, as I drove down the mountain and had to stop and catch my breath as fast moving clouds dusted with powdered sugar the top of a mountain across the river, I realized that this time of year is not solely about hibernating.

To catch that moment, you would’ve had to be in the exact spot at the exact time with me. The peak of the mountain is almost hidden by two others that “overlap“ each other in the view that is only seen when coming down the road from our remote town to a “main“ route. The moment sparked attempts to repeats – something that shouldn’t be too difficult in Southwestern vermont in the winter – but it was the only one that day. The moment and the search germinated hours of wonder and reading and discovery.

What do I want to capture when I paint or draw? Moments of breathlessness? Revelations of the grit that lies at the foot of these mountains? Or appreciation of one the few places humans haven’t tamed?

Tonight will be occupied with the work of work, but in the back of my brain, the next painting session is germinating. It occurred to me that every racing thought, every quiet space that arrives with the dark of winter is not about hibernating through depression. Instead that darkness may just be the needed incubation for what will come next.

New Rule

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Burn Ban 14″ x 14″, oil on canvas, Click Here if you would like this painting to live on your wall.

The alarm is set for 8 o’clock. It’s just past midnight, and I am staring at the ceiling, my eyes glued wide open. For once, neither I nor the ceiling are spinning, but nobody has managed to get the gremlins in my head to stand down.

The last few weeks have been defined by bouts of Ménière’s-related vertigo that have forced me to use a wheelchair to keep from falling down at work and to depend on other people to get me from point a to point B. At home this translates into far too much time spent on the couch watching reruns while mindlessly doom scrolling through text and images that I’m far too nauseous to absorb beyond a headline here or there.

When the fog clears, I try to paint – especially when the gremlin are keeping sleep away. Sitting and scrolling are becoming far too habitual, however.

This morning – it’s morning now –– I’m out of thinner for my paint. I’m desperate so I get up and fill the tub, grab the first book I see in my office and sink into the bubbles.

It’s not a novel. It’s a book about the history of English which turns out to be great. I expect to be engaged, entertained, and sooth, when I read fiction, but I’m surprised how relaxing it is to learn something new at two in the morning. I’m having the age old problem of not being able to put the book down, but it’s a different sensation from scrolling through toxic pages of social media posts.

Scrolling is turns my body into a clenched fist.

Each turned page, however, slows my heart rate. Each new factoid relaxes another muscle.

The book may keep me up all night, but I’m not worried about being worn out in the morning. The clarity that comes only from calm has helped me make a new rule. The next time anxiety tempts me to pick up the phone and scroll, I’ll grab a book instead.