Letter to Kathryn





Kathryn,

I'm so impressed by your new set of drawings. You've made tremendous progress. There is a quality of observation that you didn't possess one year ago. Whatever you're doing continue to do it.

It's been a challenging week for me. On Tuesday the Dr. looked at my fingers and for the first time mentioned the possibility of having to amputate the middle finger at the knuckle. The skin on the pad is quite black, and it's hard to tell if regrowth is occurring underneath. If that skin does not regenerate, the next alternative would be to attempt a kind of skin graft where they cut a flap from an adjoining finger and try to get it to grow. This would apparently disable the finger that the flap is from, so simply lopping off the top of the middle finger may be the most sensible thing to do.

So my ability to embrace acceptance is being challenged. When bad things happen nowadays I instantly begin to look for the lesson contained within. I'm concluding that the lesson in this accident is about taking care of myself. Most of my adult life I've been inconsistent about caring for my body. In the last few years, living on my own the disregard for my well-being in regard to eating well and being careful around power tools has been clear. At the same time my connection to higher power has grown tremendously. And what has struck me this week is that my body is an important part of this spiritual mechanism; it's an integral part of the creative work I do; it's what carries my speech; it's the part that people interact with. In other words, I'm coming to appreciate the belief some religions have that one's body is like a temple, there is a sacredness about it that one should recognize and treat accordingly.

I'd be curious to hear any reaction you might be having to this concept. With all this spiritual change in my life I often wonder if my children think I'm getting weird. I know for certain that the 25-year-old me would have been cynical hearing and reading the words I spout nowadays.

One thing that's kind of neat is using dictation software to write. That's how I'm creating this e-mail. It's about 95% accurate. Which reminds me, I posted a link on Facebook to a wonderful TED talk  http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html, a very optimistic view of the near future, a future of abundance, much of it coming from technological advancements that will allow humankind to put forth the best and the brightest people and ideas.

I love you Kate.

dad


Comments

AkanaWantaKnow said…
I don't believe things necessarily happen for a particular reason; but I do think that in whatever happens, we can choose to learn from it... or simply whine. I like your perspective Paul. I'm sorry about your hand.
11:59 PM
Anonymous said…
This past weekend I got together with a group of friends who once lived in L.A. and now live in Marin. We once were many, now are few. As we relived our lives, your name came up. I wondered what artistic path you had taken and what rewards might have come your way. So when a friend told me they googled you and said you had a blog, curiosity got the best of me. When I saw this picture of your hand I had this karmic feeling. Unlike the first comment, I do believe that things happen for a reason, we might not ever figure out why, or we might be able to see the reason sometime down the road. I understand the loss of use of a finger, for it was the beginning of my own personal struggle with physical changes and my current struggle with cancer. When in that life situation in which you decide that it's time to clean out closets and old boxes so that your children don't have to do so by themselves, I came across a box. Umm I said this is from some 30 years ago? There amoung many of life's momemtos was your hand. Yes your left one, exactly as it appears in your photo! My daughter said this is wonderful may I have it, and I said yes. We talked about how I danced with it in my living, it was my dance partner all those years ago. She now dances with it in her living room. If I can pry it from her hands, I feel it would be the right thing to do to send it off to you. I can't promise but I'll try. She does love it so! I however feel that it repreents so much of you, and your art, it needs to come home.
8:55 AM
Paul Babin said…
I am stunned by this. Please step out from behind the veil of "Anonymous", and let's compare notes on 30 years and our current challenges.
11:50 AM
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