Whirlwheel

Fallout from 9/11

spinning around

Indecision and fear go hand in hand.

Making big changes brings instability, even chaos. Some changes are sudden, unpredictable, and permanent. In 2001, the dot-com bubble popped, then 9/11 snuffed the last of our start-up sparks. Without warning, my father-in-law passed from cardiac arrest. Just like that, one phase ends and another begins.

Or does it?

Though our bodies moved from New York to Colorado, our lives were “up in the air.” I was stuck for ten years. Summer of 2002 was the hardest geographically and culturally.

Moving to Boulder meant trading ocean estuaries for the Land of Fire. I expected snow-capped peaks and forests of Lodgepole pine, cascades of spring run-off and columns of distant rain, Alpine wildflowers and cries of the meadowlark.

Instead, by mid-June, the land was scorched brown. The only “water” I saw was a Western racer “pouring” itself down the dirt. An SPF-bypassed ear raged from high-altitude sunburn. Though Flatirons stabbed the sky, the only “precipitation” was wildfire ash that left smudges on shorts and tees.

I could not have felt more alienated. More lost. More uncertain what the future held.

We might well have moved to Mars.

false starts

I kept envisioning our 9/11 experience as though we were fall-out debris: the quake from the crashing towers catapulted us cross-country.

Our relocation left me stunned. Slow to connect with Elysian sunshine and happy joggers with windsock ponytails. Slow to catch enough oxygen during High Country hikes. Slow to dress like the Croc-wearing natives with all-weather layers and frog-egg clusters of Chia-seeds in REI water flasks.

Until then, I’d believed the line from New York, New York, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” I’d made it in New York, but couldn’t get a toehold on Colorado. Nor had I factored in the Locals’ resentment of Coastal invaders with our four-syllable words and work-a-holic ways.

I tried one job after another: selling yoga-and-meditation cushions, teaching Flash to freshmen, designing sole-proprietor websites. My little, little life of forty-plus years was gone. Neighboring deer trails lead to cliffs I could not master. I learned what a snob I was of art and style and culture.

Between stints, my husband and I spent lots of time with my mother-in-law.

Fortunately, the West opened new forms of counsel: a Sangha spun-off from Naropa / Shambhala Center, mountain-folk who taught wild edible survival skills, shamanic schools with medicine-wheels for my re-orientation. Slowly I fell in love with this new land and its people—I just couldn’t find sustainable work.

After starting a graphic novel (still unfinished!!), my Bestie suggested I create an Angel card deck—an idea I resisted until the following day, when a “download” of forty-four words came through.

From the wreckage came the Transformation Oracle with its Direction card: totem of ambivalence.

the shoot

Olivia, who was seventeen at the time, is master of Irish dance. With trails of auburn hair and a hand-painted Mexican skirt, Olivia spun while I captured her from high atop a ladder.

How perfect a conveyor of uncertainty: the teenager.

what i thought as i created

Security and certainty are always an illusion. You can see birth coming months ahead, but the Grim Reaper strikes without warning.

I thought about my father-in-law’s abrupt departure and the languishing way my mother-in-law passed a few years later. I thought about the Phoenix rising from ruins and starting again. I thought about seismic changes like accidents, earthquakes, and war. The trauma of being laid off. Shock and anger at how the Universe slides us like pawns—despite our own ambitions to leave a job, a relationship, a place.

All the times when my wheels spun and I ended up nowhere, despite making every last effort. All the drafts I have written, the sketches I made, the shots on the cutting-room floor. Ninety-nine percent of my life’s work ends in the trash. And …

Photoshop is very forgiving. I try something; it’s a disaster. Then I see a way forward, a different series of steps, a mystery tool hidden behind others. I make a decision—or is it some kind of obsession?—to try again. And again. And again.

This time, in a different direction.