I love the word quiescent, meaning “being at rest; inactive or motionless”. I fell in love with the word the first time I read it on a box of Popsicles, the treat that is quiescently frozen. I imagined the brightly colored twinpops, dormant as winter flowers, resting peacefully in their box under the spell of the pale gray word quiescent. Who wouldn’t love a word so full of an almost sacred stillness?
I have been quiet on my blog over the last few months, but not at all quiescent. I have several creative projects in the works, and some publications and exhibition news to share. I’ve been working on my writing and my art and taking classes too, and of course, also working in my manual therapy clinic.
Last summer, I was accepted to the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University in New York. I am able to take most of my classes remotely, although I will need to be in New York this year and possibly next for in-person classes. I absolutely love my academic program and it’s been a joy to reconnect with my love of close reading and creative writing.
My poem Thirtieth Birthday appears in the Spring/Summer 2024 edition of Intima, a journal of narrative medicine. You can find Intima here: https://www.theintima.org/
I created a mixed media artwork titled Touched, which I exhibited in Belgium at the Convergence Symposium at the Conservatory of Antwerp. This artwork appears in the medical humanities journal The Human Touch, hosted by the Anshutz Scool of Medicine at the University of Colorado. You can read that journal here: https://www.cuanschutz.edu/centers/bioethicshumanities/arts-and-humanities/pubs/the-human-touch
My dreamworld is strange, wonderful, and often terrifying. Throughout my lifetime, I have experienced multiple parasomnias. I have sleep paralysis that feels as if some dense creature is perched on my chest, and central apnea that leaves me gasping for breath. I walk in my sleep and I talk in my sleep. But the strangest of my sleep phenomena are the hypnagogic hallucinations. When these visions arise, I feel as if I am floating above my bed where tentacled forms dangle before my eyes. My artwork Hypnagogic Dreamworld depicts my experience with the uncanny sensations of hypnagogia: the feeling that I am afloat, the swirling mutant starbursts, and the bardo between wakefulness and dreams. This work will be displayed in Kerkrade Netherlands at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference. You can find the conference info here: https://iasdconferences.org/2024/
Currently, I am working on a cellulose clay wearable sculpture of the human brain. This “brain hat” will also be a jewel box of sorts, and can be opened to reveal a host of mementos. The illustration is below; I can’t wait to share the finished project!
