Life without endorphins

Stallion

I'm a pacer.  Usually, I pace when I'm thinking, I pace when I'm talking on the phone.  Being in motion seems to be my natural state.  I walk three miles every morning to wake up - I jump out of bed, throw some clothes on and walk. By the time I get home, I'm ready to start my day; my brain is clear; I know what I'm doing.

But I've been sick*.  Too sick to walk every day.  Too sick to pace.  Climbing a flight of stairs leaves me out of breath, weak and shaky.  My rule of thumb is that if I'm out of breath going up the stairs once, I'd better not do my three miles.  Conservation of energy.  As long as I'm still falling asleep on the couch for three hours during the day, I'm not in good health, and shouldn't be trudging back to the studio, trying to work.

This is a problem for getting any sculpture done.  By its nature, sculpture takes a lot more physical energy than, say, painting or drawing.  Clay is heavy.  Moving it around takes energy.  This is also true of converting clay sculpture into a permanent medium.  Both firing in a kiln and making molds for casting take a huge amount of energy for a sick person.  I can't do it right now.

But one good and amazing thing happened.  Just before I got sick, it had been beastly hot and horribly humid.  And even though my studio has air conditioning, I hate to run it for more than four or five hours.  So, somewhat miraculously, I prepared a clay surface for a relief sculpture I could work on in my house in the afternoons when it was just too hot to go on in the studio.  I also brought clay, clay tools, water spritzer, etc., and started the relief right away.  Two days later, I got sick.  And while there were a few days when I couldn't sit upright, for the rest of the summer, I was able to work on the relief sculpture, "Stallion," for a few hours every day in my house, getting in my two solid Hemingway hours (see previous post "Two Hemingway Hours," 5/5/15), and also, saving my sanity.

Being couch-ridden for part of every day, I've read even more than usual, and watched an almost incredible amount of movies.  Incidentally, I also found that alternating Downton Abbey with Game of Thrones counteracts the soupy qualities of one with the blood curdling aspects of the other.  (Although I did start to hope that somebody in rags would barge into Downton Abbey and go after Lady Mary with battle axe and direwolfe.)

Life without endorphins is difficult, but it is still life.


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*Boring medical details:  tumors in my liver and lungs.  Phooey.