Things I Wish I Didn't Like

Girl Scout Tag-a-longs

Short hair

Pedicures

Praying

Atheism

Us Magazine

Patron shots

Glee

Power naps
Girl singers

Mumford & Sons
3

Happy endings

Train

China animals

Fancy coffee

Base

The Oscars

Revenge

Taylor Swift

Beach

Romance novel

Flip flops

Knee highs

Florence and her machine

My bike

My tattoo

Fearlessness
Youthiness
2 year olds

Maturity

Other people's things
Being alone
Being with people
Finches

Writing

Being published

Getting laughs

Snow

Playgrounds

Picnic

Being different

Sex

Fleece

Ashton Kutcher (I know, right?)

Comfortable shoes

Moisturizer

Competition

1

Being CEO

Pelligrino

Scarves

Cheeseburgers

Road trips

Bobble heads

Downtime

Puppies

Gum

Laughing

Garden gloves

Savings

Words that rhyme with treacherous

Quiet

Security

Pleasing

5

One of a kinds (Ha, Plural!)

Purple

What people think

Lexicons 2 – Writing about Health

Writing a blog post is inherently narcissistic.  It’s from my point of view, about something that matters to me, from my experience, my feelings, my senses. Writing about my health increases the self-centeredness exponentially. So, I am risking that you are still with me as I describe an a-ha moment that resulted from creating a lexicon for a condition I am experiencing – Vertigo.

Generating a list of words came from a growing frustration to understand and name the dizziness I experience, and from a note Mark left after the first blog post about Lexicons. The Vertigo Lexicon started with opening a Word Doc and typing the word, vertigo. Under it, I  listed everything that came to mind from that narcissistic place. I listed symptoms and words that describe the symptoms – whirling, reeling, tilt, off center. I read about it in Wikipedia and WebMD. I looked up the spiritual meaning of the symptoms and found more ways to think of it – "flighty, scattered thinking" (no shit!) and the affirmation: "I am deeply centered and at peace with life. It is safe for me to be alive and joyous."(amen!) You’ll find the whole list below.

Juxtaposed (or connecting the dots) to this… The first time I encountered anyone suffering from vertigo was six weeks ago. A friend and his puppy visited, on one of his few times out of the house, since he was disabled (officially) by vertigo eighteen months earlier. He was my health coach! How could that happen to him? When three weeks later, I awoke with it, I admit, the prospect of this as a chronic concern caused concern... and still does.

Here’s the a-ha! moment. Having worked with medical students, designed health education programs for hospitals, HMOs, public health, and 4-H (the fourth one is health) and designed hundreds (yes) consumer health libraries and thought countless hours about how people interact around health, I learned (again) Words Matter. Precise words, precisely describing the experience make a difference in how I tell my story and how I feel about it. 

After creating the lexicon, I wrote a note to my friend to tell him I was a friend with empathy. The lexicon completely infiltrated my writing. I found my fear rescinded, as I better understood my vertigo in my own words. If I was still in the business of health education rather than health care operations, I could see spending time on this – making lists as a practice in a waiting room, before seeing a practitioner. Some offices do something like this, except; the ones I’ve used have forced me to choose from their words. My words. My precise words matter. Having figured this out… made me feel better. 

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Vertigo Lexicon

Cary Grant Jimmy Stewart

Hitchcock

Dizzy

Reeling

Whirling

Twirling

Tumbling

Revolving

Off center

Vestibular

Listing

Preoccupied

Tilt

Slant

Lean

Incline

Light headed

Unsteady

Unstable

Nausea

Big drunk

Hangover

Jittery

Waiting for things to right themselves

Aligning the ceiling tiles

Spinning

Kaleidoscope

Sitting too much

Exercising too little

Too many pairs of reading glasses

Wax build up in my ear

Q-tips

The ferocious train horn from10 feet away as I came down the stairs from Madison Street

Too much espresso

Ergonomics

Hunching over my monitor

Couch slouch

Arthritis in my vertebrae

Tight neck muscles

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Hello,

You are not going to believe this, but... I've been dealing with vertigo for the past three weeks. Three Sundays ago, I lay in bed, reading Twitter and heard this noise in my head. Swoosh. I thought my brain moved. I sat up, but could only hope to propel myself in the direction of my pillows; I didn’t know up from down and I couldn’t make the room stop spinning. Moving slowly a couple minutes later, I pushed myself up, swung my legs over the side and held my breath. It took a few seconds, but the room aligned.  The dizzy felt like the worst hangover with no drink, and luckily with no vomit.

I had a chiropractor appt the next day and talked with him, went to my PCP the following day. (Turns out, he works on her and they did a consult, with my ok, on me during her office visit to him.) They determined no stroke, no heart condition, no Meniere’s… probably inner ear. They recommended taking a decongestant, forcing water, cleaning my ears, and became a rotisserie laying on my back, my side, and my stomach. I hung my head right, left, down, over the bed.

I'd never known about vertigo until I talked with you, other than through Cary Grant. I've not missed work. I can drive and don’t seem to have issues when I swing my head to change lanes. I can look forward at my computer and do my work. Then again there are times, like leaning over the side of the kitchen counter to check the status of the cat food bowl, when a wave of dizziness hits. Sometimes, it feels like I list to the right when I walk. I feel off balance, un-centered. It’s disconcerting with the icy sidewalks, I’m preoccupied with falling, yet don’t want to look down because it may reengage the whirling.

Most mornings I sit up slowly from my sleep position, wait for the room to align, stand up, wait once again for the kaleidoscope to stop, and put the picture back together.  I'm fine after that, until I bend over too far to shave my legs, pull on undies, or pick up ice spit from the fridge. Today, I woke up in a sweat that’s lasted longer than any hot flash I've experienced. It poured from my hairline. I finally went outside in my pajamas to cool off. It felt good, but the sweat continued for forty-five minutes. I pushed more water.  The sweat stopped. The spinning stopped, so I am moving around and feeling better.  

#####

Blah blah blah... I warned you writing about health is narcissistic, I did finish with something about him. My point is, you can see that the lexicon helped me describe the experience to him. Reading the accuracy, maybe not medical accuracy, helped me own it. Writing it down, helps me remember it and tell it accurately, if necessary later. Words Matter. 

Flare Path - The Back Stories I Wish I Knew

I think about aging all the time. My aging. How my body feels, how my body moves, what I should do to keep it from feeling or moving like an old person, why I don’t do what I should do, hair on my face, spots on my hands, my tattoo sagging, lack of sex and that it doesn’t concern me, my career and that it doesn’t concern me, and my money and that it does concern me. I’m sure there’s more, like... people I might’ve kept near, causes I wish I backed, places I should’ve been, musicians I could’ve heard, or back stories I wish I knew.

Last evening, after another long workday, I dragged myself to a Salon discussion of a Griffin Theater production of Flare Path I’m seeing on Saturday. Truly, I don’t mean it to sound like drudgery, the idea of going kept my day interesting; the effort came at the junction of mingling and wine or couch and wine. I took the people… without wine offered, the outcome might have been different.

Remembering the room, about thirtyfive people attended. The ages surprisingly spanned fifty years: people in their twenties and others in their seventies. Surprising, until the cast moved to the front of the room and the back part listed in its weight of metal grey hair, steel body parts and iron poor blood. It felt a little like us and them.

The producer interviewed director, Robin Witt who described the process of selecting the play and told about the author, a fragile gay man whose therapist suggested he join the RAF England headed to war, which he did and lived to write about it. She described the research, the integrity of costuming and the lighting and sound to set a mood much like the first audiences experienced.

The cast, sitting on chairs like a fourth grade class - tallest in the back, slightest… men and women in the front. Two men in the back row, who play older characters sported grey hair. Most of the rest appeared more likely to worry about pregnancy tests, beer pong, and carpal tunnel from video games than menopause, Viagra and carpal tunnel from weed whacking.  What I’m really trying to say is… I kept looking at the young actors who played people in the 1940s and wondered how they could embody someone from seventy years ago. Not one person on the stage was born in that era or immediately after. Until last night, I really never thought about what it takes for an ensemble to prepare a story for authenticity.

The cast gave kudos to the director for folders of You Tube films, training manuals, letters. They passed around biographies and each spoke of someone they knew or talked to who inspired them to look deeper into the lives they portrayed. Someone in the audience who'd seen the play commended the actor who played a tail gunner for helping him feel the -56 degrees he would have felt in the back of the fighter. 

Driving home, relaxed from the wine, energized by the discussion, I found myself wishing for the experience of learning something so deeply you become it. You act from it. You are it. 

I'm struck by a new understanding that actors offer us a memory... Offer us a way to experience something with more intensity, with more likelihood of getting beneath the skin. Last week, I saw Book of Mormon. I laughed till it hurt, and felt a bit embarrassed for doing so. I’m sure it explains the experience of the Mormon Church about as well as Black Patent Leather Shoes explained pre-Vatican Catholic Church, a few decades (so to speak) back. The funny thing is that my lasting impression isn’t the ridiculousness of the beliefs, but the earnestness of the believers. It gave me a memory of something I’d never forgotten… a back story for something I wish I knew.

Lexicons - Things Writers Can Do in a Tattoo Parlor

Originally published February 2, 2013. 

Readers return when they find treasures in postings. As writers, we rarely know what motivates a blog reader’s hunt, so we use categories and tags like sparkly bread crumbs to lead them to our idea mine. A one time visit is a tick on the stats, but mutual value is gained when a reader finds what they need and returns to find more. A consistent use of words and accurate use of terms creates trust in the content and loyalty in the reader.

When writing a blog, a lexicon is a simple tool to track and use consistent terms to engage the reader, keep the writer focused and to optimize searches.

In 2009, at the University of New Mexico’s Taos Summer  Writer’s Conference, Pricilla Long, our creative and masterful seminar instructor proffered a simple, unpolished gem of an idea that generates returns – the build out of a lexicon of authentic, accurate terms on a subject. Using correct words makes meaning clear and tightly hooks a thought into the reader’s mind. Different from a thesaurus of words of similar meanings, a lexicon is a collection of words and phrases about a subject. Each subject in a blog may have its own lexicon, Reusing certain words from one posting to another unites the postings, using unique, more precise words as the quantity of blog postings grows, enhances the value of the blog to the reader.

While an Excel or Word doc could be used to hold a lexicon, Pricilla recommended that we keep a small book to list what we see and add the real names or precise words for what we observe. I use a small black spiral sketchbook from Blick, an art supply store, for my collection of lexicons. The book is easy to pull out when I am observing something new, or when I confirm the proper name for something I previously listed in vague or lay terms. The book I use is unlined. I found it not with journals, but in art supplies as a sketch book. I like the possibility of the open sheet and the thickness of the paper to keep hard pressed words from interrupting another page. While I am no artist, I permit myself to draw what I see when I don’t know the correct word. My primitive lines help me remember how to describe it later. I have sketches and scribblings along with a couple photos stuck in my lexicon book now, to keep for the same reason.

In a morning writing session before class in Taos,  accessorized  only by a steaming cup of coffee, I listed the word shrub in my lexicon. On a tour later that afternoon, our guide, a native New Mexican confirmed that I saw a Cholla Cactus. I wasn’t wrong in saying shrub, but naming it cactus, clues the reader that I saw prickly spines and not evergreens. Naming the cactus, Cholla Cactus further hooks readers who relate to the name. In my lexicon book, I start a new page for each topic. On the inside front cover, I run a list, like a table of contents, of the lexicons I have created.

I am not afraid to ask “experts,” to interpret what I am seeing. A couple years ago, I accompanied my niece to get a tattoo. Once she was settled and Chris, the tattoo artist was at work, I pulled out my lexicon journal to jot the items surrounding us. CD player; CDs (Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, Garth Brooks???); books on butterflies, history of tattoos, flowers, religious tattoos, how to draw people; inks in jewel tones, earth tones on a stair step display. With Chris chatting as he developed the design, I felt comfortable asking him to provide specific names of tools that he used without turning her sea horse into a unicorn. “So, what’s the correct name for the tattoo machine you’re using?” “Tattoo machine” he replied.

In the years, since originally writing this blog post, I've focused my time on becoming a visual artist and  I moved my lexicons completely online. It's faster for me to assemble a new list, it's easier to organize, reorganize categories, add to it, and search through. I continue to keep a sketchbook with me, but now more for, well, sketching. I sketch as studies for paintings. Sometimes, I write notes about the light in a scene or the emotion it evokes. Sometimes, I sketch to remember every element of the scene... that's where a lexicon comes in. 

Sometimes, a word is just a word. And, a list of words can be a gold mine.

Paul McCartney and the Cut Glass Tumbler of Trust

A few minutes ago, after I said to myself, "What the hell, there's only an inch of wine in that bottle", I discovered Paul McCartney singing songs of the generation that came before annoying. For me, he remains the voice of the baby boomers, not the bobby soxers. He was one over-thirty person that I thought I could trust.

  

This profound thought came to me as I washed dishes from a lunch I fixed for my son, but eventually consumed by my neighbor. The threat of a terrifying ice storm curtailed our mother-son bonding, and Nancy, walking her dog, became an easy invitation for helping me reduce the amount of chicken soup. You see, I don’t like leftovers. I find them tired and old and not a better dish after the flavors all meld together. I like fresh.

And yet, I dare to tell an old story. I will begin with a fresh-made lesson from today. Don’t place travel coffee mug tops, the rubber malleable ones that bend and slide on like condoms, in the silverware bin in the dish drainer. Very sharp, pointy knives may poke through them and create a joke coffee mug. Which by the way, in the morning is not funny.

I envisioned the horrors of a sweater or fresh shirt perfectly matched for the day, soiled by dribbles of coffee. I know this to be a real threat. My connect-the-dot brain vividly remembers a visit to Uncle Harry and Aunt Laura, who were sibling to my grandmother. As I write this, I side-step in memory to my father’s funeral and reading my Uncle Harry’s name, affixed in brass, as the benefactor of the oak throne used for the priest’s respite during his duties saying  Mass. Clearly, Uncle H. had money, pull and always, the highest esteem of my father.

Which brings me to Aunt Laura, who thought it hilarious to give an eight year old a cut glass tumbler etched with branches, each with many many minute leaves. I remember Aunt Laura chuckling as I examined the glass and liquid dribbled down my arm, then hooting uncontrollably, in a Julia Child-like laugh, when ginger ale splashed from the holes in the middle of some leaves and spotted my turquoise dress.

I remember the dress. I remember the chair, the end tables, the lamp, the drapes and her curly “done” hair back lit, a halo from the windows behind where she sat. I remember sitting between my parents, my father in a flowered chair my mother and me on a settee. I remember that my mother smiled looking first at Aunt Laura then turning her back to her and  snarling, her lips pursing as she frantically wiped my chest with her cocktail napkin before the soda spattered the Aunt’s floor.

ITunes moved beyond McCartney to Rodriguez and the dishes are dry like the bottle. When I put the them away, I will test the travel mug lid. It just isn’t worth trusting what once was safe. 

+++++

p.s., If you hit the McCartney link, you'll hear his new-old music. When I hear it mixed with more modern, it get diluted and more palatable. I still LOVE the Beatles.