visual journal – joy murray art~stories~life

Twilight Memories

February 18, 2019Posted in journal, Uncategorized, visual journalTagged rivers, twilightLeave a comment

Last post, I wrote about my journal organizing project. I’m gleaning through a journal I wrote in January 2014.

20190218_133627 — The cover happens to match a color-your-own postcard from the Georgia O’Keefe that’s on my desk now.

I lived at Bridge Meadows in Portland, Oregon, from 2012 til 2017, an intergenerational community designed to support families adopting children out of the foster care system, and to provide people 55 and over with affordable housing. It was designed to provide a sense of place and purpose in life.

It made it easy for me to be a mentor for children and also participate in classes and events that I wouldn’t have transportation or energy to get to otherwise.

One thing I did was participate in writing workshops. The Joy of Writing was run by a patient and wonderful poet in her 90s.

This was written at the workshop on February 6, 2014. I found it while organizing my journals:

Prompt: A Twilight Memory

20190218_133218 — Doodling opens up my writing when I’m stuck. I get stuck often.

Twilight. Moonlight. Delight. Dream light. Dream right.

I love to go down to the river at sunset and watch the harsh sun soften and melt into layers of pink and gold and turquoise. The light blue sky darkens to indigo as the sun dips lower and lower behind the horizon. The water reflects all the color and then, as twilight comes, it darkens, too, rippling like a pool of indigo ink.

I was born in a river town — Memphis on the Mississippi. If I went too long without visiting the river, I would feel a strange sense of longing that could only be soothed by sitting on the bluff watching the river flow. As a girl, and young woman, I couldn’t always stay past sunset. Even sunset was a dangerous time for a female alone.

All the creatures of myth and story — man-eating gar, river rats the size of hound dogs; the giant catfish would come to the surface and breathe misfortune upon you, emerged in those moments when the sun was sinking low. Ghosts of men who drowned — the murdered disposed of in the deep dark water — they got their chance to wander at twilight.

But really, I would have been thrilled to be chosen by a ghost or colossal bullfrog. It was the living that I really had to fear. My brown mystic river bordered a city where many were desperate, wicked and mean. It was not a safe place for anyone.

One of the true pleasures of my life was when I was dating an agreeable man and we went down to watch the sunset together. I felt safer. My date probably felt that two of us made a less obvious target.

The sun set. Twilight arose. A million stars and a thousand fireflies lit up around us.

While reading this, it reminded me of another journal piece from 2012 when I felt torn between my two hometowns. Memphis eventually won out, but the rivers of Portland still flow through my heart.

map self portrait.jpg — River self portrait – 2012

We are all composed of rivers and longing, even those in land locked areas, feel the river of life flowing through their veins.

What do you think?

~~~

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

You can now follow me on facebook here, Instagram@joymurrayart.

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray?asc=u

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

If you prefer to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal.com Please email me at joyzmailbox@gmail.com if you’d like details.

December Art Journal

December 19, 2018Posted in art journal, Uncategorized, visual journalLeave a comment

I finally got around to making my art journal for December. I’ve worked in the same journal for a few months now, sketching out ideas, not really doing work I show, so it hasn’t been a daily habit and one journal lasted through the fall.

I’ve been writing almost daily, processing the changes in my life — again nothing much to show. I’m more using the arts to reframe changes in my life, changing language, changing images, dealing with change in the ways that have always seemed to elevate me. Art can take the weight out of a lot of what seems too heavy to bear.

Not everything you create has to be for others, and a journal is a safe, secret place to grow and center yourself. I think a lot of what artists and writers create remains un-shown. A lot of creation is a psychological safety net, there to catch you when you fall.

But I have an opportunity to teach Visual Journaling to a group of kids through The Carpenter Art Garden in January, so I’ve gotten quite elevated by that. I am going to use a smaller size journal than I usually use, teach more collage and share everything I love about having my own book in which I can create whatever I’d like.

I don’t always get this elaborate for my title page, but I’ve seen some glorious sunsets lately (my apartment faces west and the sun sets behind two old oaks, now leafless.

I’ve been saving ticket stubs, bus passes and other collage material, but I haven’t had time until this week to “finish” journal entries. I’ve made a few sketches, some truly wretched, but I did this one of a friend listening to a lecture on genetics, biology and the way we are all interconnected. I took some time today to finish it. I’ve been experimenting using pencil sketches collaged into more colorful backgrounds, so that was what I tried working out with this sketch:

If you recall, I used this technique in a finished painting earlier in the year and have since started, but not finished others:

IMG_20180623_152910 — St. Foster, Keeper of Stolen Wisdom, Mixed media, Joy Murray

You can read about the evolution of St. Foster here.

Anyway, it feels good to be playing around in my visual journal, making one with a mind to teaching children how to elevate their own lives, and realize that they have unique and important stories to tell, and their are many ways of telling them.

Also, after two months off (and a new psychiatrist), I’m back on facebook. I was missing friends and sharing events and art. So you can find me there, if you’re a facebooker.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

You can now follow me on facebook here Instagram@joymurrayart and Twitter @joymurrayhere.

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray?asc=u

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

If you prefer to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal.com Please email me at joyzmailbox@gmail.com if you’d like details.

Chimney Swifts

September 17, 2018Posted in Daily Draw, Uncategorized, visual journalTagged Chimney swift1 Comment

A few days ago, I was in a restless and bad mood, so I went for a stroll in my chariot (that’s my new name for my power wheelchair). It was around 7:15, and I realized there was a beautiful sunset going on — lots of cumulonimbus clouds hanging in waves and swirls, making a prism of the sky. I went to the little schoolyard park across the street and watched this amazing show of nature and color.

As the sun set, I kept hearing the trilling of birds. I figured some were roosting in the trees, then I looked up and realized there was a flock circling the area. It took a while, but I saw they were circling the brick chimney of an apartment building next to the park. I’d never noticed the building had a chimney, but there it was, and I got to see the birds, chimney swifts, come to roost for the evening.

It’s such a delight, I don’t know why it amazes and lifts my heart so much to see these little birds join together in the evening and take turns making their was into the dark safety of a chimney.

When I lived in Portland, I loved to go in September to the Chapman school grounds (along with most of Portland), to watch the Vaux’s swifts come to roost in their chimney as they migrated to South America:

They can’t perch in trees. They can only perch sideways, like woodpeckers. They hang by their strong claws all night to rest.

I didn’t think I’d see anything as wonderous when I moved back to Memphis, but there has been so much to marvel at since I’ve been home. I think I had blinders on before. And now I’ve seen the swifts. They are common here, but I wasn’t aware of it.

That evening, there were hundreds of them, circling, diving, some going in, some and not able to quite make it into the chimney until a few more circles in the sky. Sometimes it looked like they’d flown away, but they’d swoop back in, and dive down. Then, as it became the darkest part of dusk, a first star appeared and the last birds fluttered in and the sky was still and a silence settled upon the night.

IMG_20180917_0001 — They don’t fly close enough to see in detail, I looked at several references for this bird sketch

Well, there was some urban sounds: the woosh of traffic and some cricket songs. But the birds had settled for the night.

And so had I. It took almost an hour for the birds to fill the chimney.

All traces of my bad mood were put to bed under a blanket of wonder.

In spite of all the difficulties of aging, I’ve found that I’ve also become more keenly aware of the beauty and intricacy of the natural world, of which I am a part.

Sometimes, a hawk will swoop into the flock and grab one of the small birds from the sky. Dinner for another hungry bird. Life in cycles, in beauty, in brutality, in a swirl, all around us. In the dwindling light, my own life seemed both more and less significant. I felt part of a bigger plan. I got caught up in a swirl of life, but then circled back home to a safe place to rest.

20180912_192351 — My photos of the sunset didn’t capture the oranges and pinks. Life is more colorful in person 🙂

If you’d like to learn more about chimney swifts you can read about them here:

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/chimney-swift

~~~

Thanks for reading my post. If you like it share it. If you find a typo, please let me know and I’ll send you a thank-you postcard.

You can get prints and cards of some of my work on Redbubble. They also print my work on lots of other items, including phone skins, tote bags, shirts and journals:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/JoyMurray?asc=u

If you’d like to support my art and writing, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon. If I get enough supporters, I can make this blog ad-free! Here’s a link to my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=8001665

If you prefer to make a one time donation, you can do so at paypal.com Please email me at joyzmailbox@gmail.com if you’d like details.

Birthdays and other reasons for pause

September 8, 2018Posted in aging, chronic illness, Daily Draw, degenerative disease, Uncategorized, visual journal11 Comments

September is always like the beginning of the year for me. I guess I got into that feeling when I was in school and it seemed I was older, a younger self left behind, often with disdain.

It’s also the month of my birthday — and most years that’s a cause for celebration. But I always slightly resented September weather — it’s “supposed” to be cooler, but here in Memphis we usually have summer heat until October. After living in the cool wet Northwest for about a decade, though, I made my peace with September heat. The wet weather there was exacerbating arthritis pain, so now I just enjoy an extra month of baking but hurting less.

September is my daughter’s birthday, too.

This year I didn’t get the birthday buoyancy I usually feel for just surviving and outliving an early prediction about my lifespan.

When I first got sick, back when I was 16, with seizures and weakening muscles, I was told I might have any number of degenerative diseases that could end my life by the time I was 30. It was 1976, before there were MRIs and the kinds of tests that can diagnose disorders better. I stopped having seizures in my mid-20s. But my legs continued to weaken. I had “possible multiple sclerosis,” or more often, the diagnosis was “abnormal.” Then in my late 40s, they found a lesion on my spinal cord, and gave me the diagnosis of Transverse Myelitis, a rarish disease, but one that should be stable.

Only it wasn’t stable. I lived for about a decade in denial of increasing weakness and body changes. I blamed instability on my osteoarthritis. I sometimes gave myself a hard time about not exercising, or eating poorly. But when I did those things, I didn’t improve.

This last year, I got a full MRI work up and it was discovered my spinal cord was thinning and I have an even rarer disorder called “Hereditary Spastic Paraparalysis.”

Through it all, I’ve always imagined I’d be a partial user of a wheelchair, but would still be able walk some, around the house, get in and out of bathtubs, have some balance. I would still get in and out of friends houses and restaurants with just a walker and a helping hand upstairs. But that’s all fading a bit. I keep falling. The reality of my own delicacy has been as hard as the floor on which I contemplate the loss of independence. I am an advocate of interdependence, we all need each other in many ways we take for granted, but still….

I know I’ve talked about this on my blog before, but the upcoming birthday has made me melancholy. I have bi-polar and feared a depression was settling in. Then I feared it wasn’t, that I’d become a melancholy and anxious old woman.

I didn’t plan a party or an art show. In fact, I’ve been a little blocked about everything.

But I’ve got great friends and family. I’ve spent the last week being taken out for meals, given presents, and given support. I allowed myself to talk about my fears, my disappointment, my delusions. And my friends, they listened and they gave me the best gift — their understanding. Nobody has tried to undermine my mourning of my strength, they just subtly and emphatically proved that they’d be there for me. There is a hand on my elbow when I’m in dangerous terrain.

I had felt like an abandoned scarecrow, like the crows had pecked me apart. But sort of like in the Wizard of Oz, my friends put me back together, and got me back on that yellow brick road — even though we all know the Wizard is just a guy improvising his way through life like the rest of us.

It’s a lesson I learn over and over — that in spite of my fears, I have love in my life, and that kind of assistive device will carry me through anything. I am rich beyond belief. Each day there is some jewel out there shining for me, if only I keep my eyes focused outward. I know that it’s impossible to do on my own, so learning to rely on others has been the biggest gift of it all. To trust. To love.

I am thankful for another year of being in this world with my friends and family. And to all of my internet readers and supporters who listen and provide insight and share their own struggles.

Thank you.

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