Author: Judy Rintoul

Hemiplegia is a straightforward medical diagnosis. The verb that necessarily precedes it, is not. Hemiplegia is the term for someone like me who has little or no use of one side of her body. So when I talk about it do I say that I suffer from it? I’m disabled by it? Maybe it settled upon me like an act of God?

Over time, because I did not know the extent to which recovery would continue, I returned to my childhood and prefer to say I play with hemiplegia. Because of the unique sensations that any brain disruption sends out, there are many ways to experience changes between one side of the body and the other. My childhood was one blessed with wonderful play. My hemiplegiahood is too. In childhood we play with many things and in many ways, but always by play we mean a combination of inventiveness, freedom from other’s expectations, creativity, a carefree spirit and joyful indulgence in small and large passions. The play that I do within my body is difficult to share because there is no universal language, but the play that I do in my environment, which is necessitated by the changes in my body, is shareable. I don’t suffer from hemiplegia. I play with it by every definition of the word. I only suffer from it when there is no play.

I share here my hemiplegia play: one-handed phone photography of cactus on the Baja Peninsula, called landscape cactus emojis. If you’d like to play with me, see if you can rename them.

Social Distancing Practice:

Don’t fence me in!

That middle finger!

Out on a limb:

Choral of cactus singing Mexico the Beautiful from sea to shining sea:

Hard to stand out in a crowded field

May the vulture of happiness crown you with guano–an old cactus proverb

Changing course!

Perfect!

With child!

Isolation sucks

How do you play?

​Place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly. Now notice what happens when I say the word “surprise”! Some people love the unexpected and some loath and dread the unknown, or as Henry James said more poetically: “ There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.” Chances are, whichever camp you fall into, when you hear the word you’ll feel a quickening. Something will change physiologically.

One of the best ways to feel alive is to travel, whether literally, or via books, film, dance, art or music. Anything that takes us out of a patterned perception provides a chance to create new neural connections in the brain and to raise the heart rate enough to sense that we’re not in the same old place.

In my therapy room is a carpet with squares that are not quite regular. The edges are wavey and jagged. Some people have told me it makes them angry. Others feel fascination. In any case, I don’t have an agenda for the carpet. It’s just in the environment and the responses show us that someone is alive, and perceiving, with something to process. Mostly it takes them by surprise.

Surprise has some close cousins with whom we can enjoy hanging out. They are “risk” and gratitude. Surprises sometimes nudge us to take more risk and more risk-taking in turn rewards us with surprises–often new insights, opportunities, beauty, connections. These provoke a state of gratitude, if we are open to the gifts of newness, quirkiness, irregularity, sudden incongruities, concealed humor and more. I try to live my life not to expect surprise, which could be a form of addiction to adrenaline, but to be open to the freshness that the unforeseen brings to life.

I invite you, in this moment, to take inventory of your pulse, thoughts, heart rate, mood, body sensations. Then look at the pictures below. When you are done, repeat the inventory and appreciate any physiological changes, alterations of mood, new insights or overall state of being.

Are you still feeling the same way? Are you alive? What did you notice?

The sounds of Mexico are different in every city and village. In Todos Santos I sat on a stone patio the day after Christmas listening.

I took in the hammers ringing across the hillside, each one with its own echo, and the birds too, like squeaky children’s toys, hidden in the dense canopy, unconcerned they were missing the hammer’s rhythm.

Then there was the gentle to and fro of a palm-frond broom on a stone walkway, the sweeper as invisible as the birds and she too swishing to her own rhythm; somewhere a trickle of water, not from a fountain, but a dysfunctioning part of the plumbing, made its way into the mix.

In between all of these disparate sounds, I took in the accelerating cars, some with radios blaring bad Beetle music, some competing with the adjacent car to make it first to the corner. Hotel workers’ holas filled any left over moment of silence. I followed them, in my sound-sense world, floating through fleshy leaves to arrive–some pure—some muffled–in ears I cocked alternately to blue sky and the flagstone at my feet.

Sound meditation goes straight to the solar plexis. The hammer will ring there. The brush will sweep away other thoughts. Finger tips will tingle with the tinkle of the water and carry their vibrations to the bony carapass.

And when a dog barks, the heart will startle at the familiar as if it were unknown. The slack jaw will welcome it to the sound soup. The ribs will widen to receive each sound and allow them to shout and shove the stiff bones. The somatic sound temple is a rich place to be.

What do you hear when you sit with awareness to sound?

Did you ever fall for some version of the song “Stand by me!”, first sung by Ben E. King?

When the night has come, and the way is dark,
And that moon is the only light you see.
No I won’t be afraid, no I-I-I won’t be afraid
Just as long as the people come and stand by me.
Darlin’ darlin’ stand by me, ooh stand by me
Oh stand
Stand stand by me
C’mon stand by me stand by me.

Recently I sat in a town square in a small coastal Mexican village at night where, the local band, Herzon, was singing this song. Immediately I felt a surge of some strong emotion. I don’t know what it was though I’m usually pretty good at naming the blooms of neuro-electrical currents that we identify as combinations of sensations, thoughts/memories, neurochemical discharges etc. This time it seemed too complex.

Mexico was once a vast land that stretched through Washington, Oregon, Idaho and parts of Montana and Wyoming south through Texas all the way to what is now Belize and Guatamala.

From a series of internal and external treacheries, territory and people were lost–grabbed, shot, sold, decieved, traded. I wander as the young millenial croons, does he implore salve for intergenerational betrayal?

How do we transmit solidarity intergenerationally, selecting for closeness instead of for detachment?

With old songs come old feelings. Nostalgia tells us this time has gone by and maybe we want some of it back. Usually not all of it. I hear the pleading in his voice. It is more than one generation old. Just as this song has already been sung by countless others. Longing is immortal and transnational. Yet in cities and villages on both sides of the current border people sing the same song, pleading for union of some sort. Not knowing what it should be, just wanting some feeling of connection.

If the sky that we look upon
Well should tumble and fall
And the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won’t cry, I won’t cry, no I won’t shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Mountains are crumbling all the time and borders shift like sand over time,

but one thing rises in the face of change: the human voice singing to gather those who are willing to press together in love. Stand by me, darling.

Leaves of Love art by Judy Rintoul and Jeffrey Muhr (see prior blog post)

I have to be honest that I start my Mexico journey with a level of grandiosity akin to that exhibited by the current president.
I don’t need to go into a political rant about the level of ego seated in the White House, but I do have to say something about how it impacted me positively.

In thinking about how I could match his grandiosity with some measure of strength, large vision and audacity of my own, I stumbled upon a project I hoped would counteract some of the human disconnection and inhumanity left in the wake of the debates about the wall with Mexico.

My impulse originally was to say to the Mexican people that the president’s view did not represent mine. How could I convey the sentiment? I decided to appoint myself to an ambassadorship position (hence the grandiosity). I would convey love between our nations and our hearts. I chose as my vehicle a somewhat sloppy medium. I called my tool the Leaves of Love. I enjoyed the double meaning on the literal and spiritual level. I could journey around Mexico leaving love.

I wrote a short message in English. I recruited my friend Cecile to translate it into Spanish. My partner, Jeff, made a few hundred copies of the Spanish text. I rounded up my artist child Em’s little discarded tiles and Jeff’s rejected watercolors and walked the streets like a bag lady scavenging leaves from the roadside trees and sidewalks. I included a few recycled dabbings of my own painted papers here and there. In the end, the materials came from everywhere. I set to work transforming small off cuts into little colorful tiles with one or more leaves on each one. I painted, glued and waxed for several weeks. The house had a smoky, waxy smell and was strewn with leaves. Love continued to grow amid the flotsam and jetsom of these newly-created, intentional pieces.

As I sarted assembling love, things got really interesting. I noticed my old perfectionist self, the one I thought had been exorcised to the basement many years ago. It made an unexpected reappearance and told me that the tiles looked unfinished, childish, not worthy of taking up other people’s time. I sent that chick back to the basement in a hurry. Then came my old friend Ms Hopeless. She questioned what good could I possibly hope to do when the forces around me are so much stronger and people may not even read the message: “What makes you think that your love will make a difference?” Ms Hopeless taunted me. I sent her packing also.

Then the police officer, Mister Interrogator of the Mixed Motives Department arrived and said: “Be honest you know that you’re just a pretentious old white lady taking a nice vacation. So don’t delude yourself that this is anything more than that. Aren’t you being just as egotistical as the president?”

I gave him a nod and agreed that things are never one dimensional. There are many ways to frame something. I certainly do hope that I have a nice vacation. I also hope that I will be one of many privileged people who chose to spend their tourist money in our much maligned neighbors’ country. Our neighbors deserve our support. I hope too that my little messages bring us closer together in some way.

Finally, I had done enough tiles to fill a suitcase. They would be left in gas stations, restaurants hotels, shops, perhaps even outdoors. And they would say in no uncertain terms that this ambassador wishes our friends to the south well and urges them not to view life through the lens of one hate-filled leader. He is an individual and we are many. I know I don’t carry my love alone. I carry the love of thousands and leave it for our friends who have been insulted and demeaned. I tell them they are loved.

When the tiles were ready to be packed, a magical thing happened. I laid them out all together. And finally I understood what was happening. The ugliness and imperfections that I saw in each individual tile had disappeared because there was a vast colorful array of them lying all together.

This, in the end, is how love happens. It emerges from criticism and doubt, and reminds us that the only goal is to be the ambassador of coming together and leaving love. The only colorful, enticing result is a collective one.

Individually nether I alone nor one card will bring healing. Just as one president cannot control the whole narrative or extinguish love. Side by side we can leave a lot of love on each other. There are many ambassador positions available. Leaving love is something everyone should be proudly grandiose about!

“To have and to hold,” alliterate the wedding vows. There is perhaps no more beautiful word than the verb hold. Movies show lovers swept into each other’s arms and holding a warm embrace. Cute mommy-baby pictures show the infant nestled in arms and holding the gaze of the nurturing mother. We hold loved ones in our hearts and tunes in our voices. The leaf holds the dew and the dune a million grains of sand, the water a constellation of sunbeams. Sparkly, delicate or windswept and rugged as a mountain peak layered in snow, we enjoy the beauty of holding.

I feel alive just seeing the act of holding. There is energy and vibrancy, tenderness, warmth, and delight.

Holding is a form of stopping time and appreciating the timelessness. Holding is transformational since it brings one thing together with another and makes a new union from them. Sometimes when I’m feeling rushed or cranky I wonder if I’ve had enough holding in my life recently.

Holding is literal, physical and also metaphysical, spiritual and psychological. To hold is to expand the aesthetic of life.

Forming and holding an intention is an act of beauty. Almost magically I constellate my own new North Star. It blinks and sings. I am alive with the tension and intention of holding something with potential; something subjectively or universally lovely.

Intentions should not be like laundry lists scribbled on the backs of envelopes and scarred by the excuses that prevented their budding and fruition. Rather, they should be held as holy icons, formed and amplified; sacred embryos secured and ever growing in the womb. Holding my intentions, I look them over and love them for how they got here and where they will take me.

To be sure there can be some ugly, tragic or malevolent holdings as well: anger, resentment, grudges, victimhood. In those instances, the beauty lies in seeing imperfections without trying to enfold them further.

In these cases, I am looking for ways to let go or at least adjust the hold. Sometimes the holding is just enough to allow a new way of looking.

“To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at,” said Claude Monet, the French impressionist painter. Rather than naming, I will appreciate doing, seeing, being.

Holding can also take the form of a disquietening feeling; not necessarily dramatic pain, just uneasy or unsettled. Some place where indecision still teeters.

“Know when to hold them, and when to fold them,” the song goes. So holding is also about differentiating and making decisions. I want my decision-making to be efficient and painless. Yet often I don’t know what I truly want to hold and what or when I want to fold.

Yet this place of quivering, where the holding breaks open, is a beautiful place too. The leaf holds the dewdrop until it is too heavy. Then it lets go. I trust the gravity of the universe will cause me to let go at the tipping point.

I press out my chest with expanding joy. I blink my eyes at the fresh images ever arising before me. I hold in my awareness my intention to simply contain all that is good for as long as possible and then like the silver droplets to let go and allow the pieces to make a splash.

Holding is a verb. Healing is a verb. Expanding and growing are verbs. Living the verbs is the only way to live.

How many ways are there to hold?

We say the bloom is off the rose when we mean to designate a fading of something. This autumn I have been thinking a lot about death. Three deaths of people I know happened in one week. All of these people brought very different, yet beautiful things to this life. So it would not be possible to celebrate their lives and leaving in the same way. It would seem inappropriate, if not garish and disrespectful.

Since we don’t know much about any reality beyond this one, it is difficult for us to have universal conversations about endings. We have separate communities with grieving rituals and beliefs about what happens next. Some of those communities mourn elaborately and some very privately. Africans ulilate, stamp and wail to express grief. It pours out of them in vibrational torrents.

Some European cultures sit in stiff black clothes on wooden pews, with downcast eyes, not looking around and sing ethereal songs about heaven and dust.

What we do share universally is that the environment–our shared world of culture, geography and traditions, presents us with grief. We don’t get the choice to live a sorrow-free life. This brings me to wondering if we universally share difficult painful experiences, then is there universal experience of healing from them that we share also? Apart from our culturally created meanings about tragedy and loss that is. If there is anything, we find it again in the rose.

As the seasons change, the petals fall. Sometimes in big clouds and sometimes one by one like teardrops. We acknowledge that the bud and the fully opened bloom are both gone. They are transitioning. First the petals float to the ground and then the heart of the rose begins to make its fruit.

Sometimes a round green apple, like its culinary relative, and sometimes a shiny red one, but in either case something totally different from a rose flower.

I have learned, mostly by watching others heal, and then by testing myself in times of grief that true healing is not about forming theories about rose hips or heaven. It is about watching the process of change with wonder and appreciation.

This is the universal healing we share as all beings: the awareness that this moment is different from the last moment and will be different from the next moment. And that all moments contain within them the potential for amazement. The bud, the bloom, the fall and petals, the rose hip, and indeed the thorn, all present themselves to invite us to sing in the new reality, whatever it is.

How ever many petals fall, there will be something to celebrate in the next reality. Transition is continuous. Some cultures have a construct of what the next reality is, i.e. a named place of light and eternal happiness. This is a healthy construct to be sure, but it is not universally shared. What we share universally is the acknowledgement of change. And that sometimes the change is very painful. We also share universally the opportunity to watch the change with eyes open to possibility and beauty.

The cliche that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, reflects the universal acknowledgement that deep feeling is an important part of being human. And that includes grief. Those of us left behind, whether scattering ashes and droning requiems, or thrashing and wailing, are feeling deeply because reality has changed for us.

This depth of feeling is our gift from those who leave us. If we feel the natural urge to argue and say: I’d rather skip that feeling and keep the person, fair enough. What I’m really acknowledging then is that I’m not open to one aspect of beauty and feeling. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad person, but it does present me with yet another opportunity to deepen my experience of engaging with life. Through death.