creative non-fiction

Partial Truths

For a few weeks every summer, my mamaw walked us to the small white chapel on the other side of the open field behind her house, and we went to Vacation Bible School. We were ushered into the church basement where all twenty or so of us made name tags out of paper plates. We were spread across several folding tables filled with crafts in disarray, sitting, standing, or even dancing in our seats. Veggie Tales played on the tube TV plugged into the back wall. The leaders hole-punched the sides of the plates, helped us thread green string through the holes, and knot off the ends. The final product: a necklace with our names written in marker on the front, decorated with crayons, glitter glue, and puff balls. I decorated mine with drawings of flowers and glitter. I slung the string around my neck and wore my name tag necklace with pride. Later, we sat together in the wooden pews of the sanctuary. I learned “Father Abraham Has Many Sons,” “Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man,” and “I am in The Lord’s Army.” I stomped and marched and sang with a smile. Fully invested, I rejoiced in the music, the worship before I even knew what worship was, before I knew about The Spirit, and redemption.

This is my earliest memory of church. It feels warm and small, pocket-sized almost, kept safe in a wallet. It was church, it wasn’t The Church. I think about this a lot now, having not been to church in over a year, post-abortion, post-near-death, post-familial-shunning. I don’t really know exactly when it shifted from the church to The Church, from a place to an ideology.

I don’t really know exactly when it shifted from the church to The Church, from a place to an ideology.

My husband, Matthew, also grew up in The Church. His name even, representing the gospel, named for the apostle, meant to spread The Word. We met young, and married young, like most couples do in The Church. When he proposed, we already lived together. I was 21, post-near-death-accident, re-learning how to walk, bathe, and function again. He was finishing school and taking care of me. That’s how we justified it to members of the congregation with too much time and too little understanding: I needed to be taken care of, I needed help bathing; it wasn’t sexual, our living together was innocent, a product of circumstance not desire. That’s what we said, a mantra we chanted over and over, until it didn’t feel like a partial truth, until it felt like the whole truth, until I believed it.

Partial truths have always been something of a problem for me: I lived with Matt before marriage because I needed to be taken care of; I have only had sex with my husband; I almost died; I go to church; I can’t have children; I had an abortion. I don’t say the word. Not when talking about myself, not out loud at least. Abortion. It feels like it needs an explanation. The why. I had an abortion because. The because somehow makes it okay. Maybe if my because is good enough, I can still be a Christian?

***

Blood clots are a natural part of human survival. Without them, a small scrape of the knee, or nick of the razor would cause one to bleed to death. Life expectancy would be low, and the human species would surely cease to exist. The body is equipped from birth to regulate blood loss. It’s an automatic form of self-preservation. The mechanics of the body take over, regardless of conscious intent, to preserve the life within. Abnormal blood clots however, a deep vein thrombosis, or pulmonary embolism, do not know how to stop. Preservation turns into peril. The gelatinous glob of platelets and fibrin grows, blocking off the vessels and threatening the sanctity of the body.

A deep vein thrombosis, a DVT, is a blood clot of the major veins–the veins like rivers, the vital vessels–typically occurring in the legs. DVTs in and of themselves are dangerous. A DVT blocks the vessel, restricting normal blood flow, and damages the soft tissues. The leg swells as pools of blood have nowhere to go, and the surrounding muscles start to spasm uncontrollably. The leg becomes non-weight bearing, red, hot to the touch, sensitive, and occasionally rendered practically useless.

But death, death is birthed from the DVT in the form of a pulmonary embolism. An embolus, small and innocuous, millimeters or smaller breaks off of the DVT and travels through the body. The embolus lands in the lungs. Trapped initially in the microscopic tissues, it grows until the pulmonary arteries are blocked and the gas exchange is interrupted. The gas exchange occurs during respiration, when fresh oxygen is breathed in and carbon dioxide is breathed out.

Lungs unable to complete respirations are lungs that cannot breathe. Lungs that cannot breathe are housed in dead bodies. Unlike DVTs, pulmonary embolisms are hard to identify. The symptoms whisper. They are shy, found wearing the disguise of a common cold, a sore back, or a chest full of anxiety.

***

I was 20 the first time I almost died.

I was 20 the first time I almost died. A sports injury gone wrong in every conceivable way meant I was admitted to the hospital and in need of majorly invasive spinal surgery: a complete decompressive laminectomy from L3-S1. A laminectomy removes the spinal process and cuts the disc in half. The spinal process is a projection off of the back of each vertebrae, felt by running a finger down the center of the spine, the part that pushes up to the surface of the skin forming the peaks and valleys and the landscape of the body.

The laminae is the vertebral arch, the place where the muscles attach the to spine. Like a mountainous cave system, the spinal process is at the apex, the visible part of the summit. The laminae forms the structure on each side, connecting the spinal process to the base of the spine and supporting the spinal process at the top, thus creating a hollow cave-like space for the spinal cord and discs to run through.

The surgery cut through the muscles, sawed through the structure of the lamina on both sides of the vertebrae, and removed the whole spinal process, exposing the cavernous space that housed my discs and nerves. I needed this surgery because my nerves were severely pinched. I had lost the ability to stand, lost the feeling in my legs, and permanently lost feeling on the entirety of my outer of my left calf. So the laminectomy alleviated the crushing of my nerves, gave back function to my legs, and took away the majority of the pain. Surgery was long, and it was invasive, but it worked.

I knew that I would have to re-learn how to walk again. I knew that the road to recovery was going to be painful and difficult. But what I did not know was that I had a blood-clotting disorder: protein S deficiency. Or that the hormonal birth control I was on was a risk factor for blood clots. Or that blood clots were triggered by trauma to the body. So when my leg started to spasm and swell, it was no cause for concern. I was told that it was only natural that my body was reacting in such a way, that the nerves in the body are fickle, they react in funny ways after trauma, that the body corrects itself in a matter of days.

A week later I started to regress. I could no longer put any weight on my leg, let alone stand. An ultrasound showed an occluding clot from hip to ankle in the left leg. I had an emergency filter placed just below the heart in an attempt to stop pieces from traveling to my lungs and brain. When my doctor realized I already had a pulmonary embolism, I was faced with the dilemma of life or paralysis. The clots would certainly kill me without blood thinners, but blood thinners meant I would probably bleed into my spinal canal and become paralyzed because internally. I was not yet healed from the surgery.

My sister was working at the church when I found out I might die from the pulmonary embolism. The elders and prominent members were promptly informed. I was added to the prayer lists, which called upon the web of prayer warriors to speak The Word of healing over me. An Elder and his wife came to visit me one afternoon. He asked me to share with him what I was willing, and he would pray for me, pray over me. I told him partial truths (maybe they were more lies than truths): that I was trusting in the Lord; that I was thankful for his prayers; that I believed the Lord would deliver me through this trying time. I told him lies, too: that I was grateful to be alive; that I was praying for no complications; that I had no risk factors for blood clots.

A few days later, when the entirety of my family was in the hospital with me, my heart rate would not drop below 180. It felt like a rubber band was wrapped tight around my lungs, constricting the flow of air. When I tried to sit up, my heart rate spiked above 200, lingering in the danger zone for heart attacks. I was drifting out of coherence, hospital alarms started chiming around me. Nurses rushed in swiftly and within 30 seconds my room was evacuated, medication was being pumped into IVs, my bed was lowered into position for a code. I remember looking around for someone I knew; I did not want to die alone.

***

Estrogen is directly related to lowering the protein S levels in the body, in turn directly related to the increased risk of developing an abnormal blood clot. Because of this, I was told that I could no longer take birth control as it increased my risks too much. So the year following my surgery, and the first year of my marriage, we did not use hormonal birth control.

My hematologist was old-fashioned, not up-to-date on the current medical publications in regards to women’s health and birth control. Studies have shown that progesterone-only IUDs did not have any contraindications in women with hypercoagulability due to blood clotting disorders. But when I asked him about getting an IUD, he said he was not comfortable with the idea because progesterone is still a hormone.

I got pregnant at 22. My husband had just graduated with his Masters, I was still finishing undergrad. It was my first year back to school after a year of medical leave. It was not part of the plan, we were careful.

I took the pregnancy test Sunday morning before church. The two blue lines showed up right away, indicating what I already knew. Matt and I missed church that morning. Instead we sat on our couch in the living room and panicked about how we could afford to take care of a baby. I cried happy and sad.

“At least we’re not sterile,” my husband said. I did not laugh.

I called my hematologist’s office immediately. The medication I was on, Xarelto, was not pregnancy-safe. It was associated with fetal malformations in mice, never tested on humans, but I knew this. I was transferred to the on-call physician and I was prescribed Lovenox shots every 12 hours.

Lovenox shots are given in the belly, an inch to the right or left of the belly button. They are the kind of shots that burn deep for several minutes after injection, the kind that are psychologically hard to give yourself. Lovenox though, is the only pregnancy-safe anticoagulant. I did not have other options.

When I called my parents to tell them I was pregnant, I could hear the concern in their voices through the phone.

“What about you? Is this safe for you?” My dad asked.

I wanted him to be excited. I wanted the reactions that I saw on Facebook and YouTube, the jumping-with-joy kind of reactions. I wanted to believe that I would have a normal pregnancy like the girls in those videos, that the idea of a high-risk pregnancy wasn’t looming over my head.

“We already talked with the hematologist and I made an appointment with the Ob/Gyn,” I said.

I did not feel ready to have a baby, but I wanted it. I was going to make the sacrifices, give myself the shots in the stomach, eat the pregnancy foods, put my life on hold for the life of the baby. I did all of those things. Without fail.

Every morning and every night at 8 o’clock, I wiped my stomach down with an alcohol swab, grabbed myself by the thick of my fat, and stuck the needle into my stomach. I thought that the shots would get easier over time. They did not. Instead, they left subcutaneous hematomas, deep purple and black bruises that lasted for weeks in the places where I would have to inject myself again. Injection over bruise, a cycle until the whole of my stomach was covered in black quarter-size circles, edges overlapping, forming Venn diagrams of the stages of healing.

***

Protein S deficiency and pregnancy do not mix well together.

Protein S deficiency and pregnancy do not mix well together. Women who are both pregnant and have Protein S deficiency are considered to have extremely high-risk pregnancies, even while clinically anti-coagulated. They are likely to develop a DVT or pulmonary embolism, more likely to miscarry. They are unlikely to carry to full term ^[1], and they are more likely to die from these complications ^[2].

***

I told my mom that I was sexually active and needed to go on birth control after my husband and I started dating. I was expecting a spiel about sex before marriage, but she didn’t say anything. She just gave me the name and number of her gynecologist and told me to make an appointment.

When I was in late middle school, probably 13, my mom told me that every time someone has sex, they get married to each other in God’s eyes. That’s why its a big deal to have sex outside of legal marriage. I wonder if she remembers telling me that? If she knows that I still think about it? I used to think about it a lot more.

I called the gynecologist that day on my way to work and made an appointment for the following week. It was my first time at the gynecologist’s. She did a full exam before prescribing me anything. She commented on the hickey I had tried to cover up with make-up. I told her I did not want a pill, that I was not reliable enough to take it on a strict schedule. She gave me the NuvaRing. I did not ever go back to her. I was embarrassed, I felt somehow caught by her, like I was doing something naughty.

Later my mom followed up with me. She wanted to make sure that I had gotten things taken care of. I did. She said something about my dad, and responsibility. It was about abortions, I know that for sure. I knew my dad’s stance on them. He was openly pro-life. He believed in taking ownership over one’s actions, that when someone decides to have sex, they consent to the risk of pregnancy. That abortions were simply not an option.

***

I was 10 weeks pregnant when I clotted. I was fully anti-coagulated, which meant I was in treatment failure: full-blown unregulated clotting. I knew that I had a high risk of clotting during my pregnancy, but no one anticipated it to happen at 10 weeks. I was admitted to the hospital, where they inserted another filter below the heart.

This time, I was awake. I did not take any pain medication or sedatives because I did not want to risk any further harm to the baby. The filter placement procedure involved the abdomen being exposed to continuous x-rays for several minutes. It could not be placed blind and, because of this, the baby was exposed to continuous x-rays for several minutes too. But because I was in treatment failure, the clotting would only continue to get worse as the estrogen levels rose throughout the duration of the pregnancy. The exposure was a necessary evil, something that had to be done in order to help save our lives. The filter would hopefully stop the clot from traveling to the lungs or brain, but it could not stop spontaneous clots from forming. And it could not stop the current clot I had from getting bigger.

I wanted to be a good mom. In those moments, I felt I had already failed. Regardless of conscious responsibility, it felt as though who I was was not good enough to protect my baby, that even in my womb I was failing. No matter how hard I tried, I could not change the coding of my body, I could not stop the logistics of it all. No routine of medication or prenatals could negate the fact my body was sabotaging me. I would never be like the women from church who have natural water births, or get to announce their pregnancy publicly. I did not have the luxury of carrying a child that was only a child and not a life sentence. But it was my baby. It felt like a baby, even then at 10 weeks.

By the time I was released from the hospital, I was 11 weeks and had three ultrasounds. Two from before, the six- and eight-week marks, one from after the procedure to make sure everything was okay. It seemed okay, but that only made the guilt worse. When I got home, I crawled into my bed and cried. I carried the guilt of my body’s sins in my chest.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I got a few things for the baby. I bought little white, knitted booties and tacked them to the wall above my bed. I wanted something tangible, something to hold onto when I prayed. I bought a burp blanket and a newbie onesie. I put the booties on my pillow and stared at them, wondering if I would live to see a baby wear them.

A week later I had an appointment with the Ob/Gyn. They did the ultrasound first. It was the most baby-like one I had seen yet. I took a picture and texted it to my husband. We talked back and forth about nose and toes while I waited for the doctor to call me back.

He was gentle in nature. He was not mean or even direct. We talked about the possibility of delivering a stillborn baby or the clots killing me first. He said he wanted me to get a second opinion, that he was sending me to Tampa General to see the high-risk Ob/Gyn specialist.

“This is an impossible situation,” he said.

I did not cry right away. It did not sink in, not really. I knew what I heard, I understood, but it was not until I was alone in my car, driving home to tell my husband about the gravity of the circumstance did it feel real. The appointment with the high-risk Ob/Gyn was brief. She echoed similar concerns. She referred me to her colleague with a plan of action.

“Next time, we will do this right. We will plan it, monitor the blood levels more closely. Make sure that before you even start trying to get pregnant the medication is working. This doesn’t mean you can never try again,” she said. “This doesn’t mean you can never have a baby.”

***

The last time I went to church was a Sunday in August of 2018. Before then, I had not been to church in months, if not a full year. I was freshly post-abortion. Friends from the church my husband and I grew up in moved to our city. We had to keep up appearances. We could not let them know that we were no longer involved like we used to be. We were still good Christians, I swear.

They asked us where we went to church, and we said we hadn’t found a place we liked yet. They invited us to the Sunday service they were going to try out. I remember this message. Vividly. It was about grief, about leaning onto God in moments of grief, pain, and loss. The church played a video of a family who were members of the congregation. The woman sat in a chair, in front of a beautiful white background, and spoke through tears about how she lost her baby. I cried too. I did not like the way her pain was made to feel like a spectacle, meant to tug on the emotions of loss in order to lean further into The Church and The Word. I was painfully aware that I was the only one crying around me, as if I was announcing to the whole church that I, too, lost a baby.

At some point I felt a hand on my back. A gesture in the Christian world that says, “I am here for you.” I did not look to see who it was. I like to imagine it was a woman who sat behind me, that she knew the pain I was feeling, that she was trying to tell me one day I won’t cry when I talk about it, but right now it’s okay to cry.

***

I did not call my parents after the appointment with the high-risk Ob/Gyn. My mom called me the next day to check in. She was concerned. My mom is perceptive. She knew something was not right the second I answered the phone. She did not pry much. The words came out of me like vomit. Guttural, visceral, acidic. I begged my mom not to tell Dad. I did not want him to think badly of me, to think I thought of abortion as a way out, that I wanted this.

The words came out of me like vomit. Guttural, visceral, acidic.

“Termination for medical reasons,” I said.

Minutes later my father called me, I could hear through the phone the scratch of near-tears.

“Maddy, you are the most important thing,” he said.

“You won’t think badly of me?”

“No, Maddy. I love you,” he said.

Days later, with the best of intentions, my father reached out to my husband’s parents. My dad and my mother-in-law worked at the same corporation. He told her something along the lines of needing to support us in whatever decision we made. Although good at its core, I wish that my father did not do what he did. I wanted to lie to my in-laws. I did not want to deal with their judgments and opinions. I did not want them to know the truth of the pregnancy.

According to my husband’s mother, my father cornered her at work, intimidated her, and threatened her.

According to my father, he told her, “If I find out anyone is not supporting whatever decision they make, I will have choice words with them.” I guess that is the same thing.

His mom called us that evening. She and my husband got into a heated argument. She believed that God had a plan for me and the baby. She told him that she knew someone who was told to have an abortion, and they didn’t.

“The baby turned out fine,” she said. She thought we were being pressured into making a decision by the doctors. Because they were probably not Christian, they did not have our best interests at heart.

“I won’t gamble with my wife’s life, mom,” he said. He hung up the phone on her.

***

I do not remember it. Maybe it was the sedatives, maybe its repression. Probably both. I kept the knitted booties tacked to the wall until I stopped bleeding. The booties, the burp cloth, the onesie, and the ultrasounds are tucked away in a small white box in the upper left corner of my closet.

I asked my parents to tell the family that I either had a miscarriage or that I lost the baby. I did not want to explain or defend myself. They agreed.

We asked my husband’s parents to do the same thing. They, on the other hand, did not agree.

“It is a hard line in our lives. If you cannot respect our wishes on this, the relationship is over.”

“You are asking me to lie,” his mom said. “I love Jesus more than I love you. I will not sin for you, Matthew. If someone asks, I will tell them the truth.”

I think about the truth, and lies, and partial truths. What is the truth in this scenario? Are the facts the truth? I think about the facts. I come to the conclusion that facts are just partial truths, truths with no context. The facts: I was pregnant. I have a blood clotting disorder. I am angry with God. I do not forgive my husband’s family. I had an abortion.

^[1] Shinozaki, Nanae. “Protein S Deficiency Complicated Pregnancy in Women With Recurrent Pregnancy Loss.” Journal of Reproductive Immunology, vol. 112, 2015. pp. 137.

^[2] Horsager-Boehrer, Robyn. “What All Pregnant Women Should Know about Blood Clots: Your Pregnancy Matters: UT Southwestern Medical Center.” Your Pregnancy Matters | UT Southwestern Medical Center, 19 June 2019. Web.

Annals of the Healing Arts: Notes on Thirteen Paintings

by Luke Wallin

A Self Interview about Painting and Philosophy

JW: I’ll use my first initial to distinguish me, John, from you, the painter.

LW: Fine.

JW: Could you tell us a little about your painting process and how it relates to philosophy?

LW: There are philosophical problems everyone shares. Questions about the meaning of life, of death, and of free will, for instance. Questions about our solitude and our capacity for joining with others. Being interested in such things is a feature of being alive as a person.

Everybody has ideas and feelings about their own inner/outer experience. We have strong emotions tied with beliefs and doubts about how to describe ourselves and the world. In my approach to painting, everything happens at the crossroads of the inner and outer worlds of the painter.

JW: Examples?

LW: Think of medieval paintings of demons and angels; Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” is a late example of this theme in painting. In the medieval European world most people worried about actual demons and angels. They might appear in paintings commissioned or vetted by the church, but probably in dreams, too, and in the unconsciously created intensity of paintings.

Look at J.M.W. Turner’s “The Slave Ship” (1840). This is cited as an example of maritime Romanticism, and Turner as a precursor of Impressionism. The ship is tossing on a wild sea, and the image first seems dominated by the waves and the sky. Nature appears more august than puny human endeavors. Closer inspection reveals bodies of numerous slaves that have been thrown overboard. The painting seemed chaotic at the time, and formally experimental; later it came to seem beautiful in its dynamic composition and intense colors. It also expressed Turner’s activism against the horrors of slavery. It was meant to be exhibited at a conference of the British Anti-Slavery Society where Prince Albert was to speak. Turner wanted him to take a stronger role in opposing slavery worldwide.

These paintings express radically contrasting world views. They reveal cultural assumptions, but also express emotional fixations of painters and their audiences.

Nobody can escape having what philosophers call a “Phenomenological Ontology.” This means you think the world of your experience includes certain kinds of things and not others. Your world has structure, and furniture. How you feel about those things shows up in your paintings.

JW: Wait. Is a phenomenological ontology a set of claims about what does and does not exist? Or is it more like a practical guide to getting through your day?

LW: If only anyone knew. Philosophers often write as if they are fighting over the correct way to describe the world. Some favor “expansive” (or “bloated”) descriptions, while others insist on “parsimonious” (or “stingy”) accounts.

As for non-philosophers, think of a person whose world includes ghosts, devils, angels, unborn souls, dead souls, teleology (everything happens for a reason), on and on. At the other extreme, think of someone who says nothing exists except energy, or matter, or, in String Theory, strings.

To some extent these beliefs are knowledge claims, and to some extent they are provisional, pragmatic get-through-the-day notes. The situation is complicated by the fact that we begin in childhood with beliefs which are uncritical, e.g., “Santa exists,” or “the Earth is flat,” then gradually we adjust as we gain education.

In a sense though, regardless of how much we study and reflect, we end up with three sets of views: (1) we always work from beliefs that “feel right,” that we call “intuitions,” even though we may struggle against some of these; (2) we hold a more sophisticated set of beliefs, which we adjust “as needed;” and (3) we operate with rough guides to getting through our day which are neither our naive starting points nor our most considered perspectives.

JW: Could you give examples of this?

LW: Take free will and determinism. (1) As children we believe we have free will, but so do sticks and stones; sometimes objects attack us. I trip over a stick, and so I break it. That’s what it deserves. (2) Later, after studying science and philosophy, let’s say I come to believe that sticks don’t have intentions and that my own so-called “free will” is an illusion— we are part of a great chain of causality, and all our actions are determined before birth. Nevertheless, when I go through my day, (3) I hold myself and others morally accountable for our decisions and actions. I get mad if someone misses an appointment; I read about a crime, and a judge sentencing the guilty party, someone who had never experienced anything but cruelty and desperation; I might say “that sentence is too light, the perp needs more punishment.”

If challenged I might say, “I don’t really think the guilty party had much choice. He should be locked up only to keep society safe, or in order to rehabilitate him.” I might not try to defend my intuitive desire for punishment. But as a practical matter I’m not going to say such things down at the cafe, where everyone is calling for blood.

So I start out as a kid believing in free will for people and sticks, move to a position that denies free will to anything or anybody, and use a third set of beliefs in my practical dealings. Each of these sets of beliefs embraces views, and emotions, about how my world is structured.

JW: What assumptions about ontology make their way into your paintings?

LW: I experience myself as a changing process, rather than a thing; I find myself to be full of stories, longings, and influences that come from various times in my life— from a moment ago as well as from my childhood. From my perspective, all of us are fluxes of conscious and unconscious feelings and narratives. One could say, “I am a mess.” Then one might think, “Nature and other people often seem to be calm, cool, and complete.” This is something like Jean-Paul Sartre’s metaphors for one’s experiencing self (a kind of nothingness) and everything outside oneself (kinds of being). I find his descriptions capture ways we often think of ourselves, but not how we always do. So I consider them a “working” phenomenological ontology, category (3) above, whereas I think he considered them the objective truth about the world, category (2).

In any case, this is an example of a kind of ontological preoccupation I have. It is widespread today, but somewhat different from the perspectives of the people portrayed in the paintings I mentioned earlier. Those in medieval Europe who would have seen paintings depicting demons and angels worried for their own immortal souls. People in 19^th century England who saw Turner’s paintings of storms at sea, turbulent skies, and blinding suns, juxtaposed with harsh technologies (railroads, slave ships), were concerned with what nature (which was both threatening and under siege) and the industrial revolution meant to them personally.

Despite the centuries and cultural difference between them, Michelangelo and Turner shared certain aspects of their painting processes, which allowed them to describe aspects of their worlds and at the same time to express their deepest feelings.

I paint within a post-Impressionist movement. This approach, like those mentioned above, includes some realism and some impressionism.

Within this approach, one begins with something outside oneself. There is humility in the desire to describe. This, one shares with scientists, and with writers. You honor the world in your wish to describe it in paint, or in words.

When you make the first mark, the motion of your hand will come out of your depths, and the way you begin to draw or paint the scene before you will be different from how anyone else would do it.

Take the first painting, “Baboon by the Sea.”

This pregnant baboon sitting on a rock wall by the sea in South Africa was so moving to me. Her posture and attitude, her tension and attention, called to me. My initial desire was to represent her as she was, or as I imagined she was. I saw her as an early Big Thinker.

As I began to paint I left behind anything like a desire to become a camera. As much as I wanted to depict something in her, I wanted to express something in myself.

JW: So your painting process brings together respecting the baboon and her world with expressing hidden feelings in yourself?

LW: Yes. Describing a subject, the painter receives the light and forgets herself; she is self-effacing. But expressing through paint she is exhibitionistic. This wonderful paradox has the potential to reconcile the feeling of separation between the Being of the World, solid and independent, and the chaotic and emotional Becoming within the painter.

The baboon is alone, high up in the wind, in bright midday sun, with the wide sea behind. She’s thinking hard, attempting to go beyond “I’m hungry,” toward something like “What am I?”

That question might be millions of years off, but maybe she’s having a “proto-question.” She’s flexing her claws on the rock. Her jaw is set and her body is relaxed yet full of energy.

JW: Are you telling a philosophical story about her?

LW: I’m thinking one—that she’s intelligent, and she’s reaching for more comprehension of her life. Unlike many painters in the past, I’m aware that humans and baboons had a common ancestor 30 million years ago. Her line didn’t evolve into humans, but I can imagine her reaching for understanding in a way that our ancient ancestors did.

I identified with her, and as I painted her, my own feelings about being thrust into a place and a time were expressed unconsciously by some motions of my hand.

With each touch of a brush we bring not only a conscious story to the image, but also emotions we don’t really understand well. We are making marks because of things that happened when we were 6 months old, and 11 years old, and before we were born. In the perspective of genomics, we are even influenced by things our ancestors did, what they ate or smoked, for example, which became encoded in the mechanisms which turn genes on and off.

JW: So, you start out to paint a flower, and a lot happens.

LW: Exactly!

JW: Do you set out to engage all these things, a description of something, then a story about it, then somehow an unconscious story about it?

LW: I just love to paint. You should try it. After a few years, I began to see more clearly how painting integrates these elements of becoming and being.

JW: Do you enjoy painting more, with all this in mind?

LW: I do. The more you paint, the better you will get at whatever kind of realism you aim for, and at realizing the conscious stories you are working with. Eventually you glimpse what kind of unconscious stories you must be telling yourself.

JW: This seems complicated.

LW: It gives you self-knowledge and creative expression at the same time. That can be pretty good when you’re having a blue day.

JW: And it’s philosophical?

LW: It clarifies the kinds of things and situations and facts you imagine the world around you to contain, and how you see yourself and others dealing with those things.

This clarifying process is analogous to creative writing and to phenomenological ontology. In all three endeavors you begin with a mysterious desire to understand the world, and you end with a mysterious act of creating a world.

JW: What about the next painting?

“The Red Door,” Watercolor, 7.5” X 10.5”

LW: In “The Red Door,” the couple is feeling each other’s warmth and electricity as they walk in the chilly air. Nobody else around, the day fading down. The Roman Wall is a massive ancient thing built by slaves. The stains and the light give it a kind of terrible grandeur. But they are headed for that red door.

In the beginning is the world of nature and history, but as soon as you compose the scene, for example leaving out other walkers who were present, and adding the red door, you emerge from being a reporter into being a creator. The painting retains my sense of the quiet street, the day, and the couple. But it also suggests my story about meanings in this painted world, including juxtapositions of inner and outer experiences for the couple.

In the third painting, “Cypress Light,” I can smell the fresh cypress twigs and needles on the surface, and I can hear a woodpecker and a wading deer.

The light works its way. All is quiet. It’s a holy place, a sacred place. It’s a world where a person can be alone, listening, appreciating, and wondering. It’s also fragile. I wrote a poem about it after making the painting, and it ends with

—here a boy felt trees protecting forest life—

—water keep those loggers out—

—shade oh shade be blessed, and stay—

This part of the story came up out of my unconscious at the end. The reason this place still exists is that floods have protected it from logging. I do know such places.

This Cypress Swamp painting didn’t begin with standing before an actual place. There is no exact memory of this place, and no photograph, because I imagined it.

But it came from years in the woods as a boy, from standing in such places and listening to the splish of a prehistoric garfish who had been delivered by the river’s flood and now was living out his days as a swamper.

I gave the scene a story of the light, making its way from the back, and of the patch of fern living in a hole in the right foreground tree, and in the world of reflections down in the water.

There is a mystery in these trees, and somehow—to me, now—they exist, they are real. At the same time they are inside my unconscious mind.

JW: And the next one?

LW: Late one afternoon on a street in Ponta del Gato, on the Azorean island of Sao Miguel, I saw these young ones walking home. A teenage sister and younger brother, perhaps. The colors of buildings glowed in the dusk. A palm tree grew from a wall. The street tile geometry gave a touching order to the sea-blown dusk.

LW: Here a glacier-formed boulder rises in the edge of a New England pond. It’s strangely white, and in the foreground wild yellow irises bloom beside dark pools of water. Behind, we have the same primordial light that filtered down 12,000 years ago upon this rock.

This is a place I walk all the time, and yet it’s an enchanted fictional place, and its frame is a portal to a world I touch every time I see it. Somehow in this painting I’m living in the late Paleolithic, passing this rock with my spear.

I began with the light and dark masses, and the fine shifts of color. Soon I felt I was in a holy place of long ago.

These shapes, these darks and lights, this long history and these fresh blooms just held me there. In my story the dead branches on the right are reaching with the energy of their recent lives, and the light is finding or making a thousand greens.

The story is about deep time. The unchanging rock and the unchanging light.

JW: But the very much changing forest. And the changing consciousness of you, from stone age hunter to painter.

LW: Partly changing.

JW: Then comes the exploding galaxy.

LW: Exploding and recombining in a wild birth of stars. To think we live in the time of NASA, and we can see this moment as it was many, many light years ago. Ontology must make way for all this, and my feelings about the galaxy, and my drive to paint such a scene in watercolor on a 4” X 6” piece of paper.

This painting originated after viewing NASA photos of distant galaxies. Rather than the exact shapes of a place and time, I was moved by the feeling of immense explosions, gravitational warpings, and creative intensity surrounded by dark space. After developing the light/dark values to suggest depths, I built up color areas by tapping a toothbrush loaded with watercolor.

We came from this, you know?

JW: The next painting you discuss is of the firefighter at night, with the forest falling down next to him.

LW: This painting is from a photo taken in 1957, in Montana. It was given to me by the smokejumper who took it. I was drawn to the young man in silhouette, to his fierceness and dignity, to his fighting the fire so close to its explosions.

Friends of mine have worked as smokejumpers in Montana and Alaska, and I have worked on fire-prevention forestry crews in Idaho. One summer I was a fire watcher in a tower, high in the Rockies. The obvious story of this painting is about danger and courage. As I painted, I gained clues to less obvious elements. I knew I could not have stood my ground so close to this hell. The hot wind and burning smells were frightening. How could he do it?

The dark shadows and the red-orange fire are of course strong visual contrasts, but I think the darkness represents (unconsciously) an underworld of agony, fear, and struggle for courage. I don’t know everything that this picture means to me. Every time I look at it I measure myself against the firefighter. I come up short, and the painting stirs insecurities. But there they are, chased up and exposed to light.

JW: The next four paintings are rather peaceful landscapes.

LW: This is where I fished as a boy. I spent endless days alone in my boat under that open sky. The borderline between water and swampy land was a lively place of frogs and snakes and birds. The cypress trees were stark and, to me, beautiful. Reflections down in the water came alive. Above all, the stillness of the place was strong, almost shockingly peaceful.

As I painted, I sought the colors and values of the cold sky, and the warm grasses, the dead-looking trees juxtaposed with the rich life in the water. There were always pops of air, a turtle head appearing on the surface, the dorsal fin of a largemouth bass twisting, and shadowy fish shooting by. A kingfisher would fly in scoops. Late in the afternoon, near the time my father would meet me, great horned owls would ring across the surface. This painting brings those memories, and a sense that this lake—with its silence and cypress smells and long thin swimming snakes—lives inside me.

JW: The next one, “Holly and Cedar” is more intense.

LW: I hunted here, enjoyed great friendships here, and a share of landline enemies. A defining landscape for me, which has filled my life, my books, and even now my dreams.

The light in the distance suggests a trail on which deer approach.

Painting this scene, using a pallet knife on the tree trunk edges, helping them emerge, brought me happiness. It also brings time’s sorrow.

Making this painting was an act of love beyond any rational understanding I have about it.

JW: Then comes the prehistoric one.

LW: It originated as I watched a slow December sunset at Bluff Lake, in Mississippi. As I painted, detail dropped away and I imagined the life forms of a few hundred million years ago. Even before flowers emerged on earth there were beautiful dawns and sunsets. But there’s a feeling of unknown danger. I’m a visitor to this ancient world.

JW: And with the following painting we’re back in our present.

LW: This place is near my house. I felt the sky of an approaching storm as a cold place, emotionally. No company for humans. But the wildflowers —they aren’t exactly wild in that they were planted by humans— and the barn are cozy. Yet the sky could do anything to them.

JW: And number twelve takes us back to the woods.

“Once More to the Cat,” Watercolor on Aquabord, 5” X 7.”

LW: I’ve painted this place, the Cat Slough, quite a few times. Once I was high in a tree here, when a mother bobcat with two almost-grown young ones slipped through the wet leaves beneath me. The mother and one of the offspring glanced up and took off. But the other bobcat froze and stared, displaying an aggressive, potentially fatal, curiosity. Then he bolted as well.

The story is of a pathway, for light and for birds, contrasting with the underworld of reflections, and the dark, wet trunks which speak of floods, high water for days, and rot causing weird beautiful forms in the cypress and tupelo trunks.

I find this irresistible on a visual level. But it’s filled with meanings only partly available to my waking mind.

JW: And number thirteen?

“Guarding the Nuns,” Sketch with Watercolor, 4” X 6.”

LW: This was a very old Cattle Dog, as they are called, guarding the nuns on a hilltop in Sao Miguel, Azores. He barked incessantly, loudly, and hoarsely.

He was fierce, and dedicated to his task.

I felt badly for him. I was initially taken by his shape and colors, and the faded green of the metal gate which closed his prison. I wanted to catch his military tension, and his desperate eyes. Unlike the baboon of the first painting, who seemed inspired by her freedom to attempt big thoughts, this dog was bound into a life of rage. These feelings I had about the animals came to the surface as I worked. Partly, they expressed our cultural moment— in the perspectives of evolution and of animal rights. But the unconscious stories I discovered involved empathy for these beings, and made me realize that I was thinking of them as I think of myself— a series of inner stories juxtaposed with an outer world that seems strange.

JW: Well, I hope you’ll keep painting.

LW: Me too.