On Dying and Living

I just found out a dear friend from my time in Illinois recently died. I thought it was a bad-taste joke posted on Facebook about someone of the same name in Northern Illinois dying but it turns out it was her. She was someone I really loved and admired but we were rarely able to do anything together because she was determined to finish her dissertation, which had to be the greatest dissertation ever. Her husband was also frustrated by this but of course we all respected her wishes. And now she's dead. I'm not saying her dissertation killed her, tho I doubt that the stress and pressure helped (she died of a fast acting breast-cancer relapse). I looked up Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief and I seem to be somewhere between stages 1 and 2 - denial and anger (am not in the sadness yet, perhaps because of the distance and my continuing sadness over the loss of Guido). I have lost a ridiculous amount of people and loved ones in a relatively short time beginning with most of my relatives killed in the Holocaust before I was born, and caring for many wonderful men who died of AIDS. I have done many living and dying workshops including some fantastic ones with Steven and Ondrea Levine. For anyone dealing with loss, dying, or grieving, they have written some extremely helpful books including these -  Who Dies?  A Year to Live, and A Gradual Awakening and then there is Kubler-Ross's seminal text and Ram Dass's wonderful work (the original Be Here Now and the updated Remember, Be Here Now, and Still Here, Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying.  These folks helped change how we deal with death and dying and helped found the hospice movement which has helped many folks die consciously and with dignity. They have also helped me deal with death in a more present way. When my father-in-law and different friends were dying, I read guided meditations from Who Dies? and some of the other books mentioned here and I truly believe it helped both them and me in the process of letting go.


All this has me thinking about a meeting I had with 2 friends last week called a "Pressure Relief Group" where they help you create a roadmap to deal with your hopes and dreams and goals and relieve pressure from whatever is causing stress. I came all prepared with my little folder about the different exciting projects I am working on including the school for Transformative Arts Practice that I am creating, 14 different e-course ideas, my beginning business plan, and the what needs to be done to complete the 2 books that I am currently creating list. They looked at me and said "Mira you are doing too much." I knew this and told them about doing my PhD in a record 3 years while teaching a full load, publishing 3 articles, winning a teaching award, and graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA. I also mentioned that it nearly killed me. They asked me "What is the common definition of success in America?" To which I replied - "How much you do, earn, and have." They pointed out what a quantitative rather than qualitative criteria that was and asked me to redefine this definition for myself and of course the answer was having peace of mind and a high quality of life that included creativity, community, love, friendship, art, service, relaxation, exercise and so on. In other words - how to have more relational quality and do less. So have decided that my first e-course offering will be about "Self-portraits, self-knowledge, self-care." Will let you all know how it goes.

The image at the top is a portrait I did of Maya Gonzalez, one of the 18 pieces of original art that I created as part of my dissertation. I find it very calming. You can see more of my dissertation art on my website at http://mirareisberg.com/academic_art

A day with Helene

Helene visited me today. Our visit was so wonderful. Here we are two working class immigrants made good (sort of). Helene is laughing at this. Well at least creatively navigating life anyway. We've known each other going on nearly 22 years from the early years in San Francisco during the punk heyday. After we quit smoking a lot of anger came up and Helene taught a women's wrestling class (she had 5 brothers) but San Francisco style where we "processed" how we were feeling before and after we wrestled. It was in a qonset hut in the Mission. At one point we went to a professional women's wrestling competition where most of the women were on steroids and we were um "processing our feelings." One of us would go out to wrestle and the rest of us were yelling to the other wrestler "don't hurt her." Everyone looked at us as if we were from another planet. I wasn't a very good wrestler, too flyweight and wimpy. But I was good at monkey moves, jumping on and hanging on, but I never had the gravitas to actually pin anyone. Over the years we've worked on many wonderful projects together - mostly art (Helene did the ants in Baby Rattlesnake and some of the lizards in Uncle Nacho's Hat)(see http://www.childrensbookpress.org/our-books/native-american/baby-rattlesnake or Amazon)among other projects.

Here are some of the things we talked about:
Aging and how difficult it is without positive public models thanks to cosmetic surgery and the media fixation with youth. We talked about mourning our youthful good looks and how even Meryl Streep had her wrinkles Photoshopped out to the point of looking unreal. I confessed that I sometimes Photoshop myself to look better. Interesting article on botched cosmetic surgeries http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/12/15/hearstmagbeauty603638.DTL&type=living#ixzz0aZn7HXUn The author writes that the reason women go to shady plastic surgeons is because they are cheap but she misses the important step before that the reason women who don't have the money to go to expensive reputable plastic surgeons go to shady plastic surgeons is because of the incredible pressure to look young and how difficult it is for this generation of older women to age gracefully with practically no media models. Aargh.

We talked about a time ago when Helene gave me $150. I was broke at the time and she just said "Mira sometimes accepting is a gift. I want you to have this because I can give it right now and I want you to not give it back or do anything in return but just accept it." Evidently some time later when her dad was visiting I told him this story and unbeknown to me it had a powerful impact on him because it showed him a side of her that he didn't know about and he repeated the story years later. I know that at one point I was in a position to do a friend the same service and I basically repeated Helene's words and it felt wonderful.

We talked about the creative process and being artists and Helene's passion for performance art. I shared my dissertation text and the art I created for it and told her how when it came time to defend the dissertation I was very nervous and decided at the last minute that I wanted to have a good time, that this was the culmination of an insane amount of effort and that I wanted this to be more about me than about the institution so I dressed up as a pirate and had an 11 year old friend who wore a pirate eye patch and a hello kitty T-shirt that said "it's all about the booty!" as my assistant. The dissertation referenced pirates in that I wrote about crossing and transgressing boundaries and going in search of academic treasure and freedom. I made a self-portrait as a pirate steering with a color wheel and a spyglass with one eye looking to the future and the other to the past and a treasure chest of academic books and art supplies. I had a wonderful time as did the people at my defense. It was great talking with Helene about this and about her own PHD path which I know will be spectacular. I'd love to share more about it but will wait till she starts her own blog which I'll link to here so she can share her own stories.

I could write a book about Helene and perhaps one day I will. I feel very fortunate to know her. In one of my next posts I'll share some of the places we visited and sites we saw playing tourists in Sacramento