Perpetual Novembers; Spring Eternal in my Mind; Late-Summer Labyrinths: Accumulative Childhood Misfortune, AMI and a letter to my mother...

Friday, March 20, 2015

Accumulative Childhood Misfortune, AMI and a letter to my mother...

the accumulation of childhood misfortune also presents a lasting threat to cardiovascular conditions. Additive measures of childhood misfortune that capture child maltreatment, family structure, and the psychosocial environment have displayed a doseresponse effect: as the number of adversities a child experiences increases, so does the risk of heart disease and CVD risk factors

You found it strange that I found myself thinking about Todd Golub... Don't you remember how he had the bullies and others call me "POOR BOY!" in 7th grade... When his mother Regina called to beg me to come to Todd's bar mitzvah (the 19th of June), he constantly got on the other phone and taunted me with his "POOR BOY" and the tone he used... How could his mother have the nerve to continue asking me to attend the bar mitzvah. Did she not have any idea how that chanting/taunting made me feel? Why would I want to be next to that horrible person? Do you not have any idea what it was like walking from one class to another hearing people call me poor boy? I knew I was a poor boy... He didn't have to say anything... For years I didn't want to bring friends to our house because we didn't have in the pantry what their parents had and I didn't have toys or games they had... our furniture and carpets were horrible... And, no, I didn't blame you for that. It was just a reality of the difference between how was our home and how was theirs. And I also was greatly aware of the difference of having a living father and not having a living father... Hank's parents were divorced. But, there was money from his father. He had his father visiting with him regularly... And I know that this doesn't make much a difference in the end... No matter what I do, I will find myself HERE as I am, regardless of my intensions... Yes, today is a bad day. And no one can change it. The damage was done. And I'm not angry with you. I don't believe you can escape the resentment... I think it's something you must live with... Everyone must take responsibility for why they receive certain slaps... I won't lie to you. I can't protect you from yourself. I get tired and frustrated and I go away in order to be able to live the little I've created that's good in my life... to protect that from the negativity connected with others who, truthfully, never adequately helped construct my healthy life. And then the heart attack... And here we are. communicating. But, truthfully, I don't know how far this will go... I don't know if I will return to the health I knew of the past year... I am almost certain I will be a certain form of geriatric at 46-years-old... if they cause my liver to stop producing cholesterol... That's what statins do; they destroy the liver enzymes responsible for producing cholesterol...

Did you go down the list of factors of childhood misfortune:

1) Death of Father

2) Female headed Family

3) Poor socio-economic Status

4)Childhood Abuse (uncle stan, Sheri, mother, peers)

5)Instable homelife

6)Insomnia

7)Disease (I was diagnosed at 12 and had my major surgery at 13)

Now, thinking about things you say the family believed or relatives said... What if this article was published in the 70s and you had Mary Beth and Henry read it... What if you read it? Wouldn't you all have approached me differently?

If these and other factors so greatly increase the risk of AMI, what other risks did they increase? And I wouldn't be in a battle with "YOU" since at least 2006 and I wouldn't have found myself dedicating my damn blog to explanations in the hope of everyone suddenly understanding...

But, now I had the heart attack (although healthy until Beth's birthday). And now I stumbled across this article... And now you and I are communicating. And I know you worry about that day when I stop talking with you again. Because it seems thats just the way I am. Although I've ALWAYS warned or tried to explain why things were happening, giving the option of a different response... But you are just a person... and you can only do so much or understand so much... and you have your own needs... AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PAST...

But, as you see, the past comes back to slap me in the face... to remind me that I can't escape it...

It's funny, I'm a bastard... I was that way this time when your sister died... since I continued to ignore you and then I wrote very insensitive criticisms of you on my blog... and I could hear everyone calling me a bastard... You called me that when I was a small child... And, later on, when I became aware of the true significance of words, that it's true, I'm A BASTARD... and the study shows that that's where the AMI problems began; with my bastardome... with the death of my father... and how that mother became when she became a young widow...

What was life like as a BASTARD and a POOR BOY?

I don't like going back there... But, we're trying so hard to understand the heart attack, since it makes so little sense within the circumstances... And now the article appeared

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Unfinished "Self-Portrait at 33"

Something I've dreamed of painting since just after my ultimate surgery in 2001. I post this now since I don't know if I will have the chance to work on it before going back on the road on Sunday... The problem is I've been sick for the past 5 days, painting this for the past week, a few hours per day. Whatever the sickness is, it isn't anything I've known and seemingly changes every day. In order to guarrantee my being well anough for the intense work for the following month, I may have to leave this hanging until I return at the end of August...

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile).

"La Sonrisa de Amarillo" (Amarillo's smile). José and Nicolas were commenting that I should sell the shirt I use for painting, since it is covered with paint. And then José said, "better yet, I'll give you one of my shirts to paint..." It was a joke. But I took it seriously. He has shirt he bought 4 years ago in Zacatecas with a copy of a painting of a bull in a bull fight. However, the print was erased from the shirt years ago. So, I decided to use the space that had the bull. "Amarillo" (Yellow) was the dog at my in-laws ranch when Margarita and I met. Due to a bad fight, he was left with one side of his mouth and one of his ears mangled, which gave him a permanent half snarl with one fang sticking out. He died years ago. But we often mention him...

New House/Studio Guadalajara

Over 20 years ago our friend José "Montaña" bought a parcel of land in the center of Guadalajara. His uncle who was a constructor/mason helped José build the brick house that has 6 bedrooms. Not long afterward, José entered into his older brother's Indian crafts importation business and decided to sell the crafts in fairs around Mexico. His brothers were one of the first people in Mexico City to enter into the Krishna movement that gave them certain perks. While José became vegetarian 4 years ago, sells the Indian furniture and crafts etc, has a giant shrine to Ganesh in his house and hosts the Mahareshi at least two times a year, José doesn't consider himself a Krishna. For at least 15 years José experienced extreme success in the fairs and was able to send his children to private English Language schools (his oldest son went to University in Texas and Married there),was able to visit with his children the U.S. and India and even bought the "castillo" (castle---an insider joke) next door. For years he used it as a store house and for a shop where Mary had workers fabricating crafts and Mexican/asian Indian style clothing. Then, about 4 years ago, Mexico entered into the international economic crises and José began losing money in the fairs. (I, on the other hand, have managed the situation and the coffee business well enough to be able to improve our economy over the past 2+ years, although this year we lost half our fairs (my decision not to enter into suddenly horribly violent zones where the people are fleeing and have fair to go out to the streets.) Out of desperation, José put the house he built on the market and moved his family into the "castillo"; his children were not happy. The "castillo" was built in the 19th century and has very high ceilings and wonderful giant windows and a terrace surrounding the second story kitchen. After a year on the market, One of José's Asian Indian suppliers bought the house and decided to put it on the market. A year ago, dreaming of having an artist studio/house in the center of Guadalajara with it's majestic tree-lined streets, I asked José to contact the Indian suppliers to see if they would sell the "guest house". José replied that he couldn't locate the Indians' representative in Guadalajara. And that ended that fantasy. However, a year later, upon returning to Guadalajara, Margarita called Mary who asked Margarita if we were in need of a house. We had just rented a house for 3 months (a house infested with cockaroaches). However, I had to see the house. The moment we set foot in the empty guest house without kitchen, bathroom, closets, I was hit with the return of the dream I left behind when we left Guadalajara last November. This time I could see all the projects we would begin over the next 10 years. So, we decided to rent the house and hoped that the 32 day fair in Guadalajara would be good for us; and it was. So, now we are "building" the kitchen, we bought a new refrigerator, are having a stainless steel restaurant sink fabricated for us, are looking for good furniture, looking into nice tiling and thinking about the future one more time.

"Hummingbird Goddess of the Mountain"/"Diosa Colibrí de la Montaña"

Crucified Pregnant Woman

(Unfinished Painting November/December 2010). This was the last painting I worked on before putting aside the painting and drawing for 6 months. I don't have any artist training. I haven't ever taken a painting or a drawing class. I don't know anything about anatomy and I have NEVER seen naked pregnant woman, let alone a naked pregnant woman on a cross. That created a hell of a headache working on perspective and shadowing... How does a head hang with the arms spread outwards to the side? My dilemma. After the fair of Tepic, I asked my friend José "Montaña" to take it with him to Guadalajara. Truthfully, it created so much stress that I really didn't want to see it. The problem is that we don't have a house of our own. I don't have a studio for storing my work and supplies...

Stream of Consciousness Drawing "Your Turned Back/The Cold Shoulder" July 11, 2011

In La Isla de Mexcaltitan, Nayarit

The story goes that the group of Mexica indians had a dream one night of the great city of Tenochtitlan they would construct 200 years later in the Valley of Mexico, now known as Mexico City that later on became known as the Aztec Empire. The dream was had on the Island of Mexcaltitan, Nayarit. Upon leaving his "home" on the edge of the river Antigua in Veracruz, Cortez journeyed to the center of what is now known as the Republic of Mexico and conquered the Aztecs, with the help of the Totonoco indians of the region known as Veracruz. Cortez destroy the Grand Tenochtitlan, probably the largest pre-hispanic city in the Americas and constructed churches and cathedrals where the ancient temples and pyramids had been...

Pico de Orizaba in the Morning

I took this photo during our Sunday morning walk. We found a wonderful route that circles Margarita's parents' house; great for a jogging route. When I've run in Mexico, Margarita was my running partner. Back in 2005, when we were running in the Lakes, there were many times when Margarita ran faster than I ran. But, I always passed her on the hills... The wonderful thing about this route is that it passes through the woods, coffee plantations and sugar cane fields; a lot of hills as you can see... So, we've decided that, if we have a strong finish of 2011, we'll buy land here and build a house.