Becoming Dance

July 10, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Of all the strange places my recent life has taken me, this has to be the strangest. I am sitting in lobby of a convalescent home, waiting for my father to wake from a nap. He’s only here for five days to get intravenous antibiotics to help treat a bout of pneumonia, but the few hours I’ve spent visiting him have made me realize how incredibly lucky I am.

I can walk with a straight back and easy gait. I can breathe unassisted. And oh! I feel so very young. I know this is a temporary condition. If I live long enough, I’ll be as old and decrepit as these folks, but for now, I’m thankful for what youth I dancehave left, for the joy that now comes at increasingly frequent intervals, for the capacity to taste what I eat and drink, for the ability to write and laugh and dance.

Strangely, not only do I feel good, people often mention that I look good, too. Some even say that stress becomes me. The wonder is that I can deal at all with the horrendous stresses of my life — an ailing, aging father and an insane and insanely drunk brother who has spent the past several hours bellowing at me. I am blessed to have wonderful and patient friends who will listen to my horror stories, sometimes for the second and third time, and who will offer hugs when I need them. I have this blog, of course. But mostly I have dancing.

We all need vacations from ourselves and our problems, but when we go on trips, we take ourselves with us. When we dance, especially choreographed dances, we leave ourselves at home. We become the music, the motion, and something else — part of a dancing whole. As the teacher keeps reminding us, we need to do everything in unison — one body, one mind, one soul. When it works, when we know the dance and are in perfect sync, it’s magic. For just one moment, we become more than we are. We become Dance.

Of course, after dance, we become just ourselves with all our attendant problems, but we still have the memory of that moment of freedom to sustain us, and hopefully we’ll still have it even when we’re too old to dance at all.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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The Science of Creating Creativity

June 28, 2014 — Pat Bertram

A friend sent me an article This Is Your Brain on Writing, thinking I might get a blog post out of it, and as you can see, I did.

The article explains about research into the neuroscience of creative writing. The experiment, led by Martin Lotze of the University of Greifswald in Germany, showed a broad network of regions in the brain working together as people produced their stories, but they found a big difference between novice and professional writers. According to Lotze, the inner workings of the professionally trained writers showed some similarities to people who are skilled at other complex actions, like music or sports. They also showed more activity in the regions involved with speech, while the novice writers seemed to activate more their visual centers.

Dr. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, wasn’t convinced that the experiments provided a clear picture of creativity, saying that “creativity is a perversely difficult thing to study.”

I don’t know who is right, but I don’t quite see how this experiment showed anything about how authors write a story.

According to the article, Dr. Lotze wanted to scan people while they were actually writing. But he couldn’t give his subjects a keyboard to write with, because the magnetic field generated by the scanner would have hurled it across the room. So Dr. Lotze ended up making a custom-built writing desk, clipping a piece of paper to a wedge-shaped block as his subjects reclined. They could rest their writing arm on the desk and scribble on the page. A system of mirrors let them see what they were writing while their head remained cocooned inside the scanner.

Um, yeah. That’s exactly how I write — lying on my back with my head wedged into a neuroscanner, my arm reaching up to scribble on papers clamped to a desk I can only see through mirrors.

How could that very process of the experiment not affect the ultimate creativity of a writer? Perhaps the professional writers were more used to working under diverse conditions. Maybe they couldn’t relax enough to visualize their story, and so told it to themselves as they wrote. Maybe the novice writers were able to visualize their stories because they found it harder to actually write under such conditions. Maybe the novice writers were novices because they were involved with a whole slew of other creative mechanisms — etching or sculpting, for example. Maybe professional writers might not have time to indulge in various art forms, so were more linear. Maybe . . . well, as you can see, there are a whole lot of possible maybes not touched on in the article.

The way I see the experiment is that the scientists didn’t learn anything about true creativity in the wild, but only in captivity. Most of us create our own milieus for writing — in perfect silence or with music in the background, writing by hand in bed or sitting at a desk clicking a keyboard, whenever life permits or within strict timeframes.

We generally don’t let others to dictate how we write, and if we did allow such interference, for sure it would change our process in the same way that dancing on a miniscule stage in an informal setting is different from dancing on a vast stage with thousands of people watching, and both are different from dancing in a studio. (If it weren’t different, all dancers would be satisfied with simply dancing in their living rooms.) So obviously, one’s outer space helps determine one’s inner space, which pretty much negates the experiment since they didn’t take environmnet into consideration.

Besides, our brains are only a small part of the creative process. We write with our souls, our bodies, our very beings. And anyway, why do we need to know how our brains create creativity? It won’t make our writing better. Only writing (and living) can make our writing better.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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The Bees Of The Invisible

June 27, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Life and death are strange things. Or maybe it’s death that’s strange, at least to those of us who are still alive. A wise friend keeps saying we have to just accept the way things are, that we could go nuts trying to figure out the whys of it all, but since I seem to live on the edge of death (other people’s deaths, not mine), death and the process of getting there are often on my mind.

We start out as miniscule bits and pieces of two people, are born, grow from helpless infants to independent-minded children to independent and autonomous adults, finally ending up helpless again as our bodies deteriorate.

A few friends were talking the other day about all the nonagenarians in our lives, and someone asked what use they were. This is a question many of these aged folks themselves ask, so it’s not an insensitive question by any means. When there is nothing left to accomplish, when you can’t move about freely either mentally or physically, when you can no longer enjoy anything, not even your food because your taste buds have decamped, what use is there in living?

My 97-year-old father is “declining” as the doctors say, which is a cute euphemism for “slowly dying”. He could live a year or more, but still, everything is breaking down, even his normally sharp mind. He hates that he can’t think, hates that he can’t make instantaneous decisions, hates even more to have others make decisions for him. Even worse, he finds the situation embarrassing. I tell him, of course, that there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, that it’s part of the process, but my words don’t make him feel any better about himself.

I don’t want to live to such a great age, and especially I don’t want to wind up helpless and dependent on strangers (I won’t have the benefit my father has of a caregiving daughter). My wise friend reminds me we have no choice in the matter, which is true. The only real choice we have is to live as well as we can as long as we can.

For a long time I’ve thought that if God is Everything, then we are the sensory cells of the Everything, feeling, seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, tasting life. And the poet Rilke seems to agree. He wrote, “It is our task to imprint this temporary perishable earth into ourselves, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again ‘invisibly’ inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”

Maybe these nonagenarians are still gathering their invisible honey as best as they can, but even so, it doesn’t make it any easier watching the old get even older and feebler, gradually losing their touch on life.

Bee

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Turning My Ancient VW Bug Into a Drivable Piece of Art

June 26, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m thinking of turning my ancient VW bug into a drivable piece of art. I suppose if I got the thing repainted the original color, it could be considered “art” since such an old beetle is fairly rare, but it might be fun to drive something totally unique, something that screams, “Pat Bertram is here!”

I could, of course, literally paint “Pat Bertram is here” on the side of the car, or do something more productive like “Pat Bertram, author” and give my web address since more than anything I would like some unique way of selling my books. But if I step outside my “author” persona, the ideas are limitless. For example, I’ve seen photos of a bug completely covered with beadwork. I’ve seen one where the body was remade with white wrought iron, making it look like a lace car. The wrought iron body would be drafty, the beadwork would be so heavy the mileage would suffer, so neither would be practical. And besides, cleanboth of those ideas have been done.

I recently saw a photo of a bug that someone had rounded into a perfect sphere, but of course, such a stationary work of art would defeat the purpose of making sure the vehicle is drivable.

Perhaps I could decoupage the car with colored tissue paper, then spray it with clear enamel to make it look like stained glass. Or turn it into something resembling a patchwork quilt. Or even cut out tiny squares of various colors of fabric and arrange them into a mosaic-like design so that up close it doesn’t look like anything but from a distance you could see a floral arrangement, perhaps. Or get the car painted the original marine blue and paint a green ivy border around the bottom. Or paint the car to look like a little fairytale house, complete with window flower boxes and thatched roof. Or . . .

I really hadn’t planned to restore the car since I thought the poor thing was destined for the junk yard, but I found someone who can rebuild the engine and rework the suspension, so maybe I should keep it going one way or another. The trouble is, restored or not, such an old car is a responsibility for a non-car-buff because things are always breaking down, few mechanics know how to fix them, and parts are hard to come by, so I’m not sure I want to do it. Either way, I could do something arty to the body, to have fun with it as long as it lasts.

Feel free to offer suggestions!

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Sheep Peach by Any Other Name . . .

June 22, 2014 — Pat Bertram

Have you ever wondered about the origins or kiwifruit or where it got its name? I didn’t think so. Neither did I. But when I read that the plant was renamed with an eye on the American market, I had to look into the matter.

Kiwis — the fruits, not the slang word for New Zealanders or the name for the fuzzy bird — is a native of China where it was known as yang tao, roughly translated as “sheep peach.” It was also known as monkey peach, macaque pear, vine pear, sun peach and wood berry. (Wood berry makes most sense since the fruit is a berry of a woody vine genus that is widespread in Asia.) Recently, the Chinese name for “strange fruit,” a translation of kiwifruit, has become common in Taiwan and Hong Kong. (I’ve heard it said that what goes around comes around, and apparently this is true of cultivated fruit and fruit names as well as the rest of human activities.)

When yangsheep tao seeds were brought to New Zealand in the early part of the twentieth century, the new cultivators renamed the fruit “Chinese Gooseberries” or “melonettes.” At the beginning, it was mostly a novelty plant for gardens and small markets. Through cultivation, the fruit became bigger and sweeter, and its appeal grew. In the nineteen fifties, the growers wanted to expand their sales to the United States, but neither of these names were acceptable for the American market. They couldn’t call the fruit “Chinese Gooseberry” because the United States was in the midst of a cold war, and anything smacking of Communism was immediate death. Nor could they call it “melonette” because the United States had high tariffs for melons. Someone (several people claim the honor so there’s no point in naming names) came up with the label “kiwifruit” after the small brown fuzzy New Zealand bird, which distanced the fruit even further from its Chinese past. As I’m sure you’ve figured out, the ploy worked, and now kiwis are a staple of most people’s diet, but not mine. I don’t particularly like the fruit, no matter what its name. It seems to me the fruits are again becoming small and not very sweet, but most people still buy it.

Now that I think about it, the original appellation of “sheep peach” is a good name for the fruit. Like sheep, we were herded where the marketers wanted us to go.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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A Three-Letter Word for Freedom

June 20, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I don’t drive a lot — less than 150,000 miles in 42 years — but still, a car is important to me. Our society is set up where a vehicle is essential to go the long distances our daily lives seem to require. It’s a way of carrying all the food and equipment we need, a way to keep in touch with far-flung families and friends, a way of extending our reach and renewing the views forming the backdrop of our lives. But even more than that, a car spells freedom.

My car conked out the other night (actually, it was the fuel pump that conked out), and so I’ve been without transportation, having to rely on friends to get me and my father to his various appointments and to round up the medications he needs. I’ve been without a car before when it’s been in the shop, sometimes for several days, and I used to revel in the freedom of not having to care for such a large and needy object. Often I would go weeks without driving since I prefer traveling on foot when possible. But today, I’ve been antsy, waiting for the mechanics to call and tell me the car is fixed.

Even though I might not have driven today since my father needs me here, I feel trapped not having the car around in case I felt the urge to escape my life for just a few minutes. A car is a promise that we can go farther and faster than ever our feet could carry us. It’s a promise that life awaits beyond the confines of our responsibilities. It’s a promise of adventure, fun, freedom.

The irony of this situation is that I’ve been thinking about walking up the coast to Seattle, a trip that might take me a year, and the thought of not having to deal with a car and whatever mechanical and maintenance issues that might arise on a long trip has been refreshing. And here I am fretting over the absence of my car. (I know I’m overusing the word “car,” but it’s too old and bedraggled to merit the appellation of “vehicle.”)

So here I wait.

Is that the phone I hear? No, just my imagination calling me.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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My Polarized Life — The Profound and the Profane

June 18, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I’m sitting here trying to think of something uplifting to say. It’s not that today is a bad day, it’s just that like all my days, it’s too polarized — from the profound experience of learning to dance to the profane experience of life in my father’s house.

My father is 97 years old and is doing well — he gets up and can walk around by himself, can even take off the oxygen for a few minutes if he needs to go beyond the tether of the tubing. He mostly looks after himself, but the every day aspects of life are beginning to defeat him. He has a hard time concentrating and remembering, though these lacks are due to congestive heart failure and age, not Alzheimer’s. (He recently took and passed an Alzheimer’s test.) Still, there are always personal things that he needs me to take care of, such as shopping and cooking what few cooked foods he eats. There are frequent house matters for me to take care of such as bad television, phone, and computer reception. And there is my dysfunctional homeless brother who is currently camping out in the garage.

For some reason — perhaps because I am here — my brother delights in tormenting me, calling me childish names such as “Porky” and “Lard Ass” as well as more adult-rated names. He is obviously suffering, and I am trying to be kind to him, even when he graffities car and bangs on my windows for hours at a time, but I have no idea what he really wants. Even if I did know, I’m not sure I could do anything for him. His problems are way out of my ability to comprehend. His relationship with his problems is even harder to fathom. He likes his “evil” side. He thinks it’s the best part of him, and perhaps it is. His core personality seems to be humble and self-effacing, helpless, even, like a bewildered little boy stuck inside a grown man’s decaying body. For sure, he has no interest in getting help to balance himself out.

danceI sometimes think of moving on and leaving my father and brother to fend for themselves, but I’m not sure I want to be the sort of person who can walk out on her aged, increasingly confused father and leave him to care for himself. (My brother sure couldn’t do anything to help. He doesn’t seem to be able to recognize that anyone but himself needs help.)

Besides, if I moved on, I’d have to give up dancing. The irony is that by being here in this bizarre household, I have the freedom to indulge my newfound love of dancing. If I left, I’d have to get a job, which would leave me no time or energy for dance classes, and for now, dancing is important to me. It feels like a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey. It has lessons to teach me beyond the discipline of the basic steps and the joy of the choreographed dances I am learning, though I’m not sure what those lessons are. I might never know since much of dance is subliminal, needing the focus of both the body’s mind as well as the mind’s mind and perhaps even the soul.

As Shirley MacLaine said, “Dance is an art that impends on the soul. It is with you every moment, it expresses itself in everything you do.”

Whatever lessons I learn from dance will be with me long after the memories of this household have faded. Dance is that important. And so I continue this polarized existence, paying for the profound privilege of dancing with the profanity in the rest of my life.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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A Tale of Two Insects

June 16, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I watched an old CSI show the other day where Grissom told a story about a guy who found a spider swimming in his toilet. For a couple of mornings the guy watched the spider struggling to survive the maelstrom of flushing. One morning, the guy decided to rescue the spider. He took it out of the water and set it on the floor. The next day, he found thspidere spider dead. “Why,” Grissom asked, “did the spider die? Because one life impinged on another.”

In my case, it’s ants I find, and my tale is about ants in the microwave. At this time of year, ants are an epidemic, so it’s difficult to keep on top of the infestation. (I’m telling you this so you don’t think the microwave is filthy. It isn’t.) I don’t like killing anything, not even insects, but if you don’t keep on top of the little critters, they go home and tell all their friends about a great party house they found, and the next thing you know, you have ants boogieing all over the place, even on your body when you sleep. Not a pleasant way to be awakened, that creepy-crawly sensation. (Cinnamon sprinkled in corners, by doors, and under windows usually keeps ants away, but a few manage to find other ways into the house.)

The same day I watched CSI, I opened the microwave door after heating some food and found a couple of Pharoah ants scurrying around inside. (Pharoah ants are more commonly known as sugar ants because they are attracted to sweets and greasy foods. Sounds like most of us, doesn’t it?)

Obviously, the ants were inside when I started the oven, so they should have been nuked, but they weren’t.

A bit of research explained why they survived. Microwave ovens don’t heat evenly, so ants can hide in the cool corners. Ants have a relatively small amount of water inside their bodies compared to their outside surface, and apparently it’s the water that heats up in a microwave. This large body surface compared to their volume helps cool them down, so if they make a mistake and end up in a hot spot, their heat dissipates quickly.

So here we have a tale of two insects, one whose life was impinged on by another, and one whose life remained unimpinged.

The moral is . . . I don’t know. Perhaps that we have to live our lives the best way we know how, and if we impinge on other lives, so be it. It could even be that impinging is what life is all about.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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Walking and Volkswalking

June 14, 2014 — Pat Bertram

No wonder I do so much alone. I don’t understand the point of many group activities that people seem to enjoy.

Someone suggested I look into volkswalking since I walk a lot, but it doesn’t really appeal to me. It seems to be organized walking in groups, and I get that with the three-nights-a-week conditioning walk with the Sierra Club and an occasional hike with one of the hiking groups in the area. Volkswalking also supposed to be non-competitive walking, but anyone who completes a walk or a certain amount of mileage gets a badge or a stamp in a book (which they pay for themselves) to show masseswhat they accomplished. To me, anytime you give people “achievement awards” for completing something, it’s competitive, even if there isn’t one so-called “winner.” Why else do you need a badge? You know you did it — a badge can’t give you that. Only you can.

The premiere purported purpose of the various volkswalking clubs is to promote regular physical fitness for overall good health. So if you’re already walking, half of what they have to offer is negated. I suppose if I were in a new area and wanted to meet people, I’d go on one of the walks, but otherwise, if I were interested in the area, I’d just . . . walk.

That’s always been the benefit of walking — if you have two working feet and legs or reasonable facsimiles, that’s all you need. You just put one foot in front of the other, and you’re walking. What can be simpler?

Still, over 400,000 people take part in American volkswalking activities every year, so the bewilderment over the phenomenon is obviously mine alone.

So, if you’re interested in walking and need more incentive than simply going outside and putting one foot in front of the other for as long as you want (or can), then perhaps volkswalking is for you.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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When Water isn’t Water

June 13, 2014 — Pat Bertram

I got a bottle of flavored water at the store the other day. At least, that’s what I thought I was buying. I’d occasionally pick up a simple sparkling mineral water with lime and cherry oils added, which I found to be a delightfully refreshing drink that offered the same bite as sodas without the junk ingredients, and I’d indulge myself from time to time.

This time, however, I didn’t notice a change in the label until I got it home. Instead of simply calling it “Sparking Mineral Water” they called it “Sparkling Water Beverage.” When I saw the word “beverage” alarms went off in my head. “Beverage” added to water is like “drink” added to juice. It means it’s not what it says it is. (A juice drink generally is short on juice and waterlong on sugar and artificial flavors.)

The “beverage” turned out to have many different ingredients other than plain old water: carbonated water, citric acid, natural flavor, potassium citrate, aspartame, potassium benzoate, and acesulfame potassium.

If this particular beverage is water, then so is Coca Cola. The ingredients in Coke Zero are carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, aspartame, potassium benzoate, natural flavors, potassium citrate, potassium benzoate, and acesulfame potassium and caffeine.

The main difference between Coke Zero and “my” Sparkling Water Beverage seems to be the coloring and caffeine. Otherwise, they are basically the same sort of product.

I would never have bought the “water” if I had paid attention to the ingredients since I stay away from aspartame and rarely drink sodas.

I guess this will teach me to read all labels, especially the labels for something as innocuous as water.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of the suspense novels Light Bringer, More Deaths Than One, A Spark of Heavenly Fire, and Daughter Am I. Bertram is also the author of Grief: The Great Yearning, “an exquisite book, wrenching to read, and at the same time full of profound truths.” Connect with Pat on Google+. Like Pat on Facebook.

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