Dodging Icebergs

Fear is a feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence of imminence of danger

Phobia is a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it

Snapple did my emotional state a huge injustice on the day I popped open a delicious bottle of diet peach tea and read Real Fact #95 “Squids can have eyeballs the size of volleyballs.” What? Think about your eye in relation to the size of your head; now imagine something swimming around the ocean with a head big enough to fit two volleyball size eyes on. As a frequent consumer of Snapple, I had learned to cope with the knowledge gifted me in Real Fact #31 “the average human will eat an average of eight spiders while sleeping”, but this squid nonsense was just a little too much. I can honestly say I will never return to the person I was before reading this fact. So, beneath that glistening lid one of my three, what I’ve been told are “unrealistic”, fears was discovered…the last being icebergs. Yes, I have seen Titanic one too many times, but not near enough to make me fear icebergs. No, like squids, icebergs can be far too robust for my comfort level. These colossal floating masses of ice that were once affixed to glaciers reveal only about ten percent of themselves above water while the rest remains neatly concealed below the ocean’s surface. That remaining ninety percent is so considerable it’s impossible to photograph the whole mass at once. Horrifyingly enough, “The Essence of Imagination” (above) by Ralph A. Clevenger is merely a composite of four different images since it is impossible to photograph such a large iceberg in reality. The essence of my imagination sees this thing sprouting legs and forcibly chasing me down the street. It’s not good.

Fortunately for me when it comes to water recreation if it doesn’t have a faux-blue tint, visible perimeter and chlorine I’m not interested, it’s that simple. Moreover given my transparent skin and humidifiable hair, I prefer being shaded and refrigerated to lazy days floating about the ocean, roasting in the sun with mystery sea life brushing past. Safe amidst the climate control, I can write and draw away the hours without a notion to aquatic happenings. I know this because it’s what I have done since my twelfth birthday in June of 1989. With my little allotment of birthday money I purchased all the essentials for a preteen self-made journalist: pastel yellow Mead spiral, Bic pens, neon markers and glitter glue. That year it took me an entire summer to finish just one journal comprised primarily of newspaper clippings, footnotes, and doodles, but by my sophomore year of high school I could easily clear twenty-five journals of straight writing. Eventually, I intermixed my 3-subject spirals with Beatlescentric artworks in pastel, pencil and marker sometimes working until my hand had retracted into a useless claw. I’d cradle my warped right hand for the thirty minutes to an hour it took to resuscitate thinking  if I were to ever lose the ability to use my dominate hand I’d be losing the one thing that matters to me. My concern grew so rapidly into fear that for a time I practiced writing with my left hand for page upon page hoping to will myself ambidextrous. In the end frustration and boredom prevailed over my one realistic fear leading me to drop the practice. I wish I hadn’t.

This custom, working until my hand buckled, rest, resume, was the way art was produced before the digital age. If you wanted something saved, you used pen instead of pencil; if you wanted to design, you used paper instead of programs. It’s a technique I’ve lived by and, despite my schooling, it’s still the only technique I’m completely comfortable with. As expected, the regrettable byproduct of having that level of comfort is that you start to exhaust your tools: scarce paper, arid markers, squatty pencils and shredded erasers…it’s all a write-off until the tools you’ve exhausted are your hands. Three weeks ago, following a two and half hour squabble with an overpriced piece of Davy board and a heavy-duty utility knife, half of my right hand went numb. At the time, this didn’t strike me as particularly odd; I’d had plenty of crammed hands and sedated fingers upon hours of writing or drawing. You wait, they come back, no big deal. Then ten days later, behind a reluctant trip to the doctor’s office I was told I have the beginnings of carpal tunnel and I should avoid using my right hand. Oh, really? That seems entirely possible given that I’m an art student. Even the doctor chuckled at that suggestion. The funny part? Turns out after years of throwing myself wholeheartedly into cherished projects, the nail in my artistic coffin came about while building a replica of a cemetery for a class I wasn’t even that enthusiastic about. Now, I’m relegated to a hand / wrist brace branded “Futuro” which just screams the irony of my “futuro” should I continue to overuse my hand. And I’ll have no one to blame but myself.

Over these never-ending few weeks, I’ve had my mopey moments, thirty minute stints of self-loathing mixed with tears that Michael has had to council me through, and I realize there are others who have it worse, of course there are, no one is going to win that contest. Who would want to anyway? But it’s the fact that there are also countless others who have it better that doesn’t stop part of me from thinking that I’ve accepted I’ll not ever be in league for America’s Next Top Model and as things stand there’s only a slim chance I’ll be honored with an Academy Award, but I can draw and I can write only now I can’t without risking I’ll never be able to again. This is a “real fact” I have to remind myself of even as I push through two and a half fingers of no feeling and intermittent tingling in my right hand just to type this blog. I’ve never had to be careful with my hand, quite the contrary, I’ve actually abused the sucker to the point it has the right to want this break. Such misguided neglect was simply a derivative of my enthusiasm over finally finding what I could do…what I was meant to do. In this respect, I finally understand the difference between my phobias and my fear. There are those phobias from which we know a getaway is evident. When it comes to icebergs and giant squids, the key is in staying on dry land. If ever they take to the shore, I’ll reassess my game plan. And then there are those fears from which we have no escape. Age happens, life happens, and sometimes the ways in which we live the fullest become the means by which we die the fastest.