Elephant or Dodo Bird?

As I reached the exit door of the Marquis fitness room, the person on the treadmill next to me and with whom I’d been chatting said, “I’m eighty-four years old, but when I exercise, I feel 70.”

During my neighborhood walk, this comment kept rattling around in my head. It resonated with my own sense of who I am. Whatever earlier generations have thought about people who crossed the 80-year mark, it is clear to me and others in the contemporary octogenarian class that we have energy, commitment, purpose, and staying power. In fact, we are an aspect of humanity’s evolution on planet earth. What do I mean? 

A recent TED hour on NPR radio set my mind swirling. For each TED Hour an NPR host collates three-to-four TED Talks that address a common theme and interviews the presenters. This one was on ‘Vacancies: What happens in spaces (or species) that have been diminished?’

 

One example was of elephants in a remote nature preserve in Africa. For decades poachers have been decimating their population for the purpose of selling their tusks on the black-market. Recently, however, these elephants have been making a comeback. How? The mama elephants have been birthing babies that do not grow tusks.

Elephants are extraordinarily empathetic, family oriented, and highly protective of their offspring. It seems that after years of watching humans 

kill their kin, brutally remove the tusks, leave dead carcasses bleeding on the ground, and drive off in a cloud of dust and raucous laughter, 

MAMA ELEPHANTS had had enough. 

Using their brain-body wisdom, 

they told their bodies to produce elephants without tusks.

Reflecting on this recent research of elephants adapting to a devastating change in their situation, put the contemporary turmoil around sexuality and human propagation in a bigger framework. Younger generations have made it clear that they are fed up with school shooter drills, static gender roles, and desecration of the environment. 

Likewise, older people are rebelling against being relegated to ‘retirement camps for the elderly.’ At either end of the age spectrum, humans are taking actions to assure the future existence of humanity and a healthy environment to sustain it.

If you or someone you know has or soon will reach eighty, know that you and they have a choice about whether to take the route of the Dodo bird or that of the innovative elephant. Be an elephant. Reimagine humanity, a healthy society, and our shared home. 

 

Breaking Rules

Crepemyrtle seriously blooming in spite of topping it off last year.

Needle-nosed pliers had come to my rescue numerous times when my shiny silver shredder jammed. But after twenty years of diligently chewing through hundreds of pages, the plastic around the metal grinding teeth inside the machine had become brittle. When bits of it began breaking off, intensifying the frequency and intensity of jamming, I acknowledged it had reached a stage of total stuck-ness. 

One to three year Maples from my tree nursery.

This was not unlike the personal stuck-ness that had forced me to sell my townhome and move to a 55+ community. Letting go of the intense stress leading up to and culminating in the sale and then moving turned out to be more challenging than I expected. So, I retreated; spending June unpacking boxes and moving into my rented one-bedroom cottage and July settling in – hanging pictures and setting up the garage studio/classroom. Focused on settling in and not knowing anyone in this community, I unconsciously went about making my rental cottage comfortable and exploring transportation options. Having chosen to avoid the community café to resist unhealthy temptations, I seldom ran into other residents.

Driveway Garden

By August it was time to shift gears from hiding in my home to meeting members of my community. I discovered that, like the worn-out shredder, I had become stuck in life patterns that had to be dispensed with. Enter Scott Thorpe’s How to Think Like Einstein, Simple Ways to Break the Rules and Discover Your Hidden Genius. What Thorpe helped me see was that the rules I need to break are ones I created and upon which I have depended. One old rule had to do with ‘hiding myself’ so as not to ‘stand out’ as being peculiar. 

Three-year and two-year Maples.

Meeting neighbors and making new friends is not unlike being a young adult going through the awkwardness of leaving home and finding oneself among strangers whose life experiences are different and whose patterns of relatedness are downright weird. I soon discovered that: Oops! Hiding isn’t working!

 

Porch Buddha

No one else has a three-foot Buddha on their front porch or takes the bus for grocery shopping. There aren’t other ceramic-planter gardens on driveways, other tree nurseries, or other women dragging a seven-foot-tall Japanese maple from one side of their property to the other. I have met no one else exploring surrounding streets on foot to get a bigger picture of the neighborhood.

 

There is no doubt that I am exposed and I am peculiar. My ‘hiding’ rule was broken by happen-chance. Now I am trying to recognize other self-created rules that I need to break.

 

Three-year Maple hosting a three-month Maple.

 

Mysterious Unopened Box

A narrow three-foot-long box packed in Victoria B.C. during spring of 1997, accompanied me for 26 years but was never opened. 

In 1991, a Victoria art student taught a community class on basic
techniques. For the painting session, we used house paint and brushes
on cheap paper. I was 51 years old. Another student asked,
"How could you not know you had this talent?"

The box and I went first to Meadville, PA where I had a housesitting gig but ended up requiring a modified radical mastectomy. Four months later UPS shipped my Victoria boxes to Eugene, OR where some friends were putting me up while I underwent chemotherapy. Six months later the Victoria boxes went into an apartment storage closet while I set up an art related business. 

My daughter’s January 2000 death precipitated my taking a job as a university administrator - a job that allowed me to purchase a townhome four years later where the unopened box moved to another storage compartment at my first home ever! There it stayed as I worked to develop a financial base, wrote three books, taught creativity classes, and created multimedia artworks.

On Sept 29, 1994 I made a collage on a file folder to represent
"What it will feel like to have my first book published."
It took until 2011 for that to happen.

Nineteen years later I sold my townhome and on June 2, 2023, the mysterious unopened box joined fifty or more others being moved to my newly rented cottage. It ended up in the garage (studio to be), completely ignored while boxes containing the essentials of living received priority. A month later a commitment was coming due; I had promised my grand-daughter that I would create a memento of her mother that she could carry during her August wedding ceremony.

Lorne Loomer, my seminal art teacher,
 taught me to make a bark brush and to use it
 to express energy - internal and external.

Was it needing to fulfill that promise or anticipation of my deceased daughter’s birthday on July 11, that finally nudged me, after 26 years, to slide a knife along one end of this narrow three-foot-long container still wrapped in the once-white paper used for all boxes packed in Victoria, with markings to and from Meadville?

After a year of figure drawing classes, when we switched 
from charcoal and pencil to paint, it was my love of energy
calligraphies that expressed itself.

Inside was a tightly rolled sheaf of papers. I had to slit one side of the box to remove its contents: my fledgling art making and several of my daughter’s masterful figure sketches. Suddenly I was transported to Vancouver Island where I dropped 30 years of social activism, changed my name, and began a tenuous creative journey. I was stunned. 

Moonlit Barn LiDoña Wagner 1993.
Alan Bruce was my first watercolor teacher.

Unfurling curled papers revealed seeds that were planted during six years on an island where 60% of Canadian artists lived. In the process of supporting myself as a Shiatsu therapist, I had ... 

• lived alone and loved being independent, 
• discovered that I could create a successful business, 
• reconnected with nature and took up gardening,
• launched dream groups that matured my dream inquiry skills,
• developed women’s personal growth workshops,
• conducted my first artful play creativity class,
• enhanced writing skills by completing an autobiography, and
• discovered methods for reinventing one’s life.

At some point I recognized myself as having become
FIRE WOMAN, embracing the loss of previous identities.

Everything in REINVENT YOURSELF with Dreaming & Artful Play 2022 came directly from living six years in the creative cauldron of Victoria, B.C. during the early nineties. Now in a new home, new seeds are bing planted for a future me that I do not know.

Temple Bells, LiDoña Wagner 1997

What new seeds are you planting during this time of radical global change?

 UNWINDING THE SHRINK WRAP

A vaulted window brings light into a one-story cottage at Marquis Eugene

A decision to sell my home of 20 years and move into a rental cottage in a 55+ community, something that I had never considered for my future, was prompted by ongoing stress fram an alcoholic MAGA neighbor creating constant chaos and disruption. 

Front Porch

Stress manifested as a sense that my life was shrinking: fewer human contacts, less reading, limited gardening, sporadic art creation, fewer calories absorbed, reduced steps taken. Plus, every nook and cranny of my home was stuffed with paintings, unsorted files, unsold books - nooks that were separated by a staircase, a storage unit off the back patio, and another at the front. And my excitement over helping create a community garden, a ten-year dream, had waned as the strain of maintaining it ensued. 

Buddha Welcomes All Visitors

Although I had begun downsizing my library, reducing my wardrobe, and giving away art materials, once my home went on the market with a plan to sell within 30 days, serious packing revealed that I would be moving not only a home, but an office, a studio, a gallery, and a garden that included my tree nursery. Like Psyche with a mountain of seeds to sort, my heart sank before such a challenge. 

Buddha's view includes the North Star rising each night. 

Had not a covey of friends lifted me up with their generous energy, I would still be at 1586 Fetters Loop. But from June 1 to 5 the move to 435 Sahalie Way was accomplished and the title of my former home transferred to a young family of two teachers and two small children. 

Studio Entrance Garage)

 

Once at 435 Sahalie Way, the shrink-wrap protecting my life began to unfurl. I met the couple with whom I share one wall - a Thai couple from Pennsylvania. He’s a former pediatrician. How refreshing! People here at Marquis have come from California, Mexico, Arizona, places in Oregon, and more. An energetic 93-year-old woman leads a water aerobics class and a physical assessment by a personal trainer laid out a path to adding strength to my resilient agility.  

Tree Nursery & Garden Outside Bedroom Window

 

A months-long process of unpacking and divestment lies ahead, but having all the art in one place and boxes of files in a different space but on the same floor makes the task doable. An uninsulated garage-studio presents challenges but also new opportunities for teaching. As I feel the shrink-wrap lessening, I find myself opening to new possibilities. 

 

Quiet Victory LiDoña Wagner Watercolor pens

 6 Secrets of Living Fully and Long by 102-year-old Dr. Gladys McCarey

1. Know your purpose. And if you don’t know it, seek it. “We have to always keep reaching for our sense of purpose, our unique contribution to the world around us that brings us joy, meaning, and what I call ‘the juice,’” she says.
2. Be fluid. “Life is always moving, and we have to be sure to focus on the ways we’re moving with it,” she says.
3. Love deeply. That old saying that love makes the world go round? According to Dr. McGarey, there’s truth in it. “It’s crucial to remember that love is life, and that putting our attention on love brings us health and well-being,” she says.
4. Build community. At the end of the day, the world is so much bigger than ourselves. “We can’t forget the role that community plays in amplifying our life force,” Dr. McGarey says.
5. There are always lessons to be learned. Some people will say that once they reach a certain age, they’re set in their ways, or there’s nothing left to learn. Dr. McGarey disagrees. “Everything that happens in our life is here to teach us something, to show us the way forward,” she says.
6. Prioritize people, places, and things that make you feel your best. “When we invest our energy in the things that give us energy back,” says Dr. McGarey, “life force courses through us, quite literally keeping us alive.”

SPRING ART SALE

 SPRING ART SALE

APRIL 16 - 23

Big & Small, Recent & Retrospective

Each painting offered on a sliding scale

Schedule your online Show Visit at

lidonaw@gmail.com 

First tulip to bloom is also first to fade.

It really is tulip time now!

LOOKING FORWARD TO HEARING FROM YOU!

 

Peach Blossom

“…the long work

of turning their lives

into a celebration

is not easy. Come 

and let us talk.” 

The Sunflowers. Mary Oliver

Peach Blossom Jim Wiegle