Sidetracked Charley

  Yes, it is summer and temperatures are again breaking records. I is going to be cool in Tucson today: only 107 F. But going outside my comfort zone still gives me chills. And when a friend tells me of a trip they are taking my first response is not joy but, please be careful. Or be safe. Or are you sure you want to do that. I plan my essential trips (store, post office, pick up scripts) for the low traffic times. I have studied them for a year. I stay home within my comfort zone during high tourist traffic times. I cruise down the local town main street and take inventory of the cars in the parking lot. Too many white plates and I will reschedule my shopping. Yes, I am the one that spent eight days on a house boat on Lake Powell with my sister. And I am the one who in the middle of the night when the boat started to drift jumped into the black water to grab a mooring line and secure it once again the the shore. I drove my Astro van on a road that was wet Bentonite clay. The surfa...

I was an adult of middle age before I encountered the phrase argue for your limitations and they are yours . Until that point I had seen my limitations basically as those forced upon me by others. If you are female you are most likely familiar with most of those beginning with nice girls don't do that . And I usually responded with, Who wants to be a nice girl?  And in my youth I wasn't even sure I wanted to be a girl.  Who wants to be labelled a second class citizen at birth. I was raised in conflict on so many levels from a father who told me I could be anything I wanted to a mother who sent me away on my freshman year in college to earn my Mrs. degree. I was encouraged by society to go along to get along. And it wasn't until and it wasn't until I was teaching adaptive skiing to adults and children with perceived limitations I encountered the concept of arguing against your perceived limitations. I learned to not see them in my students and in my role of teach...

Entry to the Binford-Bell Studio Last night when I climbed the stairs to go to bed every muscle in my body was weary, my shoulder hurt, my back ached, and I was totally aware of everything which had not been done yet for the Angel Fire Studio Tour this weekend. Some things I knew I was going to do this morning at the last opportunity like make the Snickerdoodles. And some things I had decided just didn't need to be done. And too long of a list of I cannot do this also remained. I am not one to admit I cannot do things, but I was too exhausted and too wounded to do them.  I have made it this far after my ski accident in 2001 by adopting the Adaptive Skiing model of "Argue for your limitations and they are yours." And concentrating on progress and not perfection. Not easy for a perfectionist energizer bunny who was always rewarded for doing. While I focus most on the CBT of that accident I also compressed three discs in my neck, damaged my shoulder in a complex man...

Be Still I want there to be stillness Be calm even if there is no peace. Breathe silently Slowly in and out. Stop the wind Cease the shouting. Do not scream Or shout. Be still. J. Binford-Bell January 2017 I feel as if I have made a cosmic shift. I felt the same 16 years ago. Only then I was hit on the head. This time I feel as if I have been punched in the belly. Really hard. I am having trouble catching my breath. Post traumatic stress disorder my psychologist said then. CBT said my neurologist. Acceptance kept me in balance even when everything in my life was changing. Even friends because I was no longer who I used to be. I tried to act as if I was when I went out among strangers who knew me before. At home I noticed I no longer liked Stephen King. I could only watch action films at home so I could escape to the kitchen when it got too fast. I was far more comfortable with the small screen of my computer as opposed to the panoramic screens of t...

Castaneda Hotel awaiting renovation December 24, 2001 I was hit by a drunken skier while teaching a lesson at Angel Fire Resort. Prior to that day I was known for my memory. It took me a while to totally know the depths of the loss that day. I was thrilled at first that I had only lost three and a half hours of time. Later, when I passed the short term memory tests, I was elated. Except for not always knowing the right word at the right time my mind seemed fine. But recovery from a closed brain trauma is a very complicated thing. To stay sane I concentrated on the positive, and practiced what I did not want to lose. Unfortunately I was not really aware of what I had lost. Largely I do not miss what is not in my head any more. At least until I am confronted by friends or circumstances with the reality of what is gone. Last weekend I was in Las Vegas, New Mexico with an old friend. She was driving and we went to places in Las Vegas I did not remember. She talked of adventures th...

Connected I confess. I will be 70 this summer. And one of the greatest things happened to me 13 years ago Christmas eve. I was involved in a ski accident which compressed three discs in my neck and knocked me into my right brain - literally. Witnesses to the accident said I was hit hard enough by a speeding skier to fly into the air and land on my head. The resultant closed brain trauma CBT or shaken baby head injury turned off my left brain control and let my right brain run completely free. It is why I paint, why I photo edit in such wild colors, and why I do not use manuals to learn technological devices. Hell, I confess, I cannot read manuals any more. Once when I was a technical writer I wrote them. I translated accountants to computer programmers and computer programmers to management. Boy, that wasn't easy. Since the head injury I have adapted to digital cameras, digital post processing programs, laptops, tablets, and my latest, the ipod. And all without cracking a ...

Cap Stones The Pope just said he believes in evolution and the big bang. Who would have thought such things would happen in my life time. And yet I am surrounded by people I personally know who believe the earth to be only 6000 years old. The cap stones in the opening photograph are older than that. And once they were on top of pillars of sandstone - the heads of goblins. And before that they were the top layer under a huge inland sea. All that we see is slip sliding away. It is true of people too. Friends come and go talking of Michelangelo. I once told a friend, who was upset I was moving on, that it would not matter if I was staying because friendships come and go even if you live next door. She didn't get it. In fact she chose to never speak to me again. Instead she became fast friends with another friend I left behind at the same time. And that ended. Neither of us know what became of her. The shared friend currently lives next door. She is moving soon. But our friend...

Wayfaring Stranger If I had to pick a theme for 2012 up to now it would be revisiting my youth. No, I did not go back to disco dancing in bars. But I have reconnected to a past forgot in a step by step and sometimes painful process. A funny thing happened December 24, 2001. I had a ski accident. Not one caused by skiing too fast or otherwise pushing the envelope of my abilities as a downhill skier. Another skier slammed into me while I was teaching a lesson. At least that is what the accident report says. I don't remember it. Except for one or two out of body flashes four hours of my life was instantly gone. A half hour before and 3 1/2 hours afterwards is not unusual in a closed brain trauma. Eleven years ago we didn't know as much about CBT's as we do now. The Iraq War has taught us a lot about them and their different manifestations. But then I was treated and streeted because it was Christmas Eve and I was walking and talking. Now we know about walk/talk/die CB...

The opening photo may lead you to believe this post really belongs in my Creative Journey blog but what I am discussing today is not the technique illustrated above but that I forgot about it. It went missing from my mind. One of my artistic transitions was from pen and ink with one color to water coloring in full color. And when I made that move it was because of a book on Chinese watercolor that told of how they often laid out the tones and line first with India Ink and then applied color on top. This of course requires waterproof inks and one day working on a particularly ambitious painting I discovered that not all India inks are waterproof. I am not sure why I threw out the baby with the bathwater on this technique but I quickly went to applying ink on top of a watercolor instead of the other way around. Today most of my work still utilizes inks that are largely applied with calligraphy pens or lining brushes, but after wards as a finishing touch. Yesterday when working on the pai...

The Three Fates Today is Word Thursday on Y!360 and my word is Predestination. Predestination is the Divine foreordaining or foreknowledge of all that will happen; with regard to the salvation of some and not others. And predestination was a particular favorite of John Calvin. And my mother when bad things happened to good people. But when good things happened to bad people it was just luck. I always felt it was a rather grim belief. It seemed to have no escape route. I like escape routes. Never burn a bridge if I can help it. But perhaps after all those years in close contact with Mother I have become a bit of a fatalist in my own way, and some events really bring that home. Yesterday it was the death of Natasha Richardson due to a funny little beginners fall in a ski lesson. On Christmas Eve 2001 I had a much more serious fall. I was hit by another skier and thrown into the air and landed on my head I am told. Both Natasha and I suffered a closed brain trauma or CBT landing on soft s...