Art Therapy -or- Stair Descent and Downhill Walking Addendum: Rough-Hewn Granite Stairs With No Bannister, Outdoors, On a Rainy Day (part two)

Okay, so where was I?  Oh, right.  These stairs, in the rain:

I know these don't really look like much from this perspective, especially if you're still thinking like a person with all her original parts, a very tough habit to break.  And honestly, going up them is not difficult for a strong, experienced transfemoral amputee.  Up or down would really not be any problem whatsoever for one with half a brain and a walking stick.

On this damp Sunday a month ago, I apparently was possessed of neither.  I had a very nice folding umbrella with a little button that popped it open or folded it shut at will, and the other half of a cup of still scaldingly hot Twinings "Irish Breakfast" tea I'd taken out of the museum café.  And two cameras.  And I want to say my Hello, Kitty backpack, but I can't remember now.  And all of it was very lovely and useful, but I wanted to go down the hill to see a favorite installation, and I forgot that between the back door of the museum and that installation was this set of stairs.  Why would I remember?  The last time I traversed them I had both my original legs still, and probably skipped down without a second thought wearing little flat white traction-free canvas tennies from the drugstore.

Oh, well.  Moving right along...

As you can see from the photo above and the fact that I got home and lived to post this, I did make it to the bottom of these stairs without dying or crippling myself.  I did it by jettisoning things.

First, I drank all my tea.  So it took me an extra ten minutes of milling about at the top of the steps looking stuck or suspicious or just weird.  Whatever.  The view was pretty, and there was other art around.  The real bummer of having to do that -- which I only had to do because the tea was in a paper cup with an unreliable sipping lid, not a travel mug with a spill-proof closing top, another situation I could have avoided with forethought -- was that it meant that I would have to limit my time in the park before having to head over to the gift shop, where there are restrooms.

Second, I threw my umbrella down the stairs ahead of me.  It was not a windy day, or I would not have done this.  I would have been worried that wind would have snatched it up and landed it in the delicate conservation area down the hill from this path.  I would instead have exercised that precious little folding button and stuck the magically compressed item in a pocket -- or in Hello, Kitty, if she was with me.  Wanting to be able to just pick it right back up again and keep using it once I reached the bottom was the only reason I didn't do that now.  Fortunately, it wasn't raining hard at this moment.

Third, I jettisoned my dignity.  Okay, truth?  I jettisoned that, for the most part, many years ago.  Dignity is a trap.  It can keep you from doing things, fun things and interesting things, because you are afraid of looking foolish.  Since I am as much a fool as anyone -- maybe more than some, hopefully but not necessarily less than others -- and there is no hiding it, I don't see the point in getting all het up over the possibility of being perceived as one.  Most of the time, that is.  Not anymore.

It's very liberating.  It may be the very definition of the word "liberating."

I really wanted to go down these steps, because I really wanted to walk down this path and experience one of my favorite installations, something which is just especially glorious at this time of year.  There was no way I was going to manage it gracefully, in spite of wearing shoes with good traction and discovering that these stairs, though wet stone, were not all that slippery after all.  Attempting grace on the off chance that someone might see me looking ridiculous might even get me injured, when practicality, flexibility, and creativity, though definitely ridiculous to behold, were very likely to get me where I wanted to go efficiently and in one piece.

I did what I advised in the hill-walking series.  I took it a step -- a step of mine, not a stair step -- at a time.  I looked at the ground immediately in front of me and adapted my strategy as I went to suit that.

First, I went down sideways, leading with my prosthetic foot.  And that worked out all right for the first step.

The only difficulty with this technique, which works quite well when you are going down a nice, evenly stepped indoor staircase which might just feel a little too steep for you to descend facing forward, is that these steps were not of the same height.  Some of them were very thick indeed, thicker than I can comfortably and controlledly one-legged press my own weight down to, if that makes sense.  I mean, look at those first three steps (above left).  The first one is okay, but the second one is a doozy.  And they're all hard and sharpish-cornered and look like they'd hurt very much to land on the wrong way.  Therefore, the only way to be sure to make it safely down was backward, on all fours.  Yes, like an animal.  Yes, like in the exhibit I'd just visited.  Kinda cool, right?

Therefore, once I was down one step, I turned around to face the direction from which I'd come, and then went down the next two steps backward, on all fours, leading downward with my prosthetic leg just like I demonstrated as one method for walking down steep hills, but this time leaning forward so that I distributed a large part of my balance onto my hands, which were on a higher step. This also brought a lot of my body closer to the ground, which meant if I did slip or stumble, I wouldn't fall as far or as hard.

A dignified amputee might never want to try such a thing, even if her fear of looking foolish would allow her to imagine it.  A dignified amputee would not get to see what I saw, though, or have the fun I had both figuring out what to do and succeeding at solving the problem -- which, to be fair, was a problem I only faced in the first place because I hadn't thought to bring a more dignified and efficient prophylactic:  a walking stick.

For the next chunk, even though there was no bannister, there were big rocks off to one side which could be used as a sort of bannister.  The rocks next to the first three steps were too low and uneven to be as useful as the all-fours method, but these rocks lining the next part were just about hip height. 

I assessed them carefully, and then placed my hands.  I cannot show you a photograph of both hands placed, of course, because I was by myself, had no tripod (shoot, if I'd had my tripod, I could have used it as a walking stick and all this would have been unnecessary!), and one of these hands had to take each picture.  But here's my right hand...

...and here's my left:

In that last image it appears that I am ever so delicately pinching the rock between elegantly manicured thumb and forefinger.  I assure you, it's just a trick of the light on that dark, wet day.  In fact, the heel of my hand is positioned in a nice little depression in the rock, and it is bearing my weight through the wrist.  The fingers are merely bracing it in place by wrapping around the available rock shape.

So what did I do with my feet?  Facing this way, you'd think I'd have to step down leading with my organic leg, which would have been practically impossible since my prosthetic knee could not be ordered to bend at a controlled speed to accommodate the transfer or terribly uncomfortable as the top of my socket stabbed me in the groin while I rocked a significant distance downward only to land haphazardly and likely badly.  However, this would be an incorrect thought.  I led with my prosthetic foot after all.  I cross-stepped.

Regard:

Ha-HA!  Pretty clever, right?  You know, for a woman who can't remember to bring a walking stick when she goes to an outdoor sculpture park?

Do you see what I did there?  With my weight partially supported by the rock "bannister," I easily crossed my mechanical leg behind my living leg and, slowly and carefully, bent my living knee until my prosthetic foot was securely placed on the lower stair.  Then it was a simple matter to transfer my weight to the prosthetic leg and bring the living leg down to meet it, like so:

Do you see all the debris underfoot in that last shot?  That's another complication I faced on these stairs.  Not only were they wet, stone, roughly hewn and assorted heights with no real bannister, but there was also slippery, soft, wet, unevenly strewn, autumn plant matter at various locations along the way.  Whee!

So would you like to see what I was trying to reach?  Happy to oblige.

In comments to my previous post, I promised esteemed correspondent Ron a cliff to justify the cliffhanger.  Here ya go, Ron.  Click to enlarge.

As the caption says, this work is Little Red Riding Hood and Other Stories, by Carlos Dorrien (2000).  The last time I saw it before this funny little trip I took on October 1 of this year was five years ago this month, when I took the photograph above.  I wanted to write an article for a gardening magazine about the "enchanted landscape" you walk through when you set foot in this place, and this is one of the shots that I put into my query package.  Of course, I have no idea how to make a query package, so after I sent it to the outgoing editor of Gardens Illustrated after (unbeknownst to me) she had already left and it got rejected by her replacement's assistant, ultimately the project languished in a folder, in a box.  But I had had great passion for this project, a distillation of the passion I feel for this place.  I had shot several rolls of film over the course of several visits and made copious notes, which I then typed up to present with copies of the slides.  My notes on this slide read as follows:

Down from the rock garden and around the hill on which the museum is set, the Watershed area comprises the lawn and hillside which sweep down to Flint's Pond, a source of local drinking water.  The most dramatic sculpture here is a long stone sort of runway which intersects the path perpendicularly ending in a finely finished ledge/precipice.  There is an inscription along the farthest edge of this ledge, but the words face outward to the lake so that they might best be read by someone hovering in flight above the sheer drop and facing inward, back toward the hill.  The inscription reads "A mi madre que me enseño a volar sin aleombra."  (I believe this translates to "To my mother, who taught me to fly without wings" [or "without casting a shadow," but I still don't know.because I can't find that word "aleombra" anywhere"].)  This is the view outward.

Now, even though, as noted earlier, climbing on the sculptures is frowned upon, when I saw that there was an inscription, and since I was wearing the softest of sneakers, I couldn't resist tiptoeing out to see what it said.  I was so moved by the inscription, especially in that wonderful place that feels so much like a take-off point for flight, that my eyes teared over, my body literally wobbled, and I nearly fell off.  Art can be dangerous.

Five years later, this is still one of my five or so favorite places in the whole park.  But five years later, my "wings" have been clipped.  A little.  On a rainy day, after finding the mere descent of a short flight of stairs a little bit threatening, you will not find me skipping out to the edge of this lovely runway in soft shoes, no.

The change in me brings its own gifts, though, even with its costs.  The change in me forces me to experience this piece of art, like everything else, anew.

Do you know that with all the love I felt for this piece, and with all the film I shot, that one slide above is the only picture I took of it five years ago?   I know I looked harder than that...didn't I?   I know I must have seen deeper than just the edge.

It doesn't matter.  Today I will.  Today, in this softer, greener fall, I will look at it like so (click to enlarge):

And I'll look back, too, back behind the monolithic slab that anchors the runway, back to where its name hides, back where it takes root and is swallowed up by the life of the place for which it was created. (Click to enlarge.)

 

And I will love it even more than ever.

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(I cannot believe I just stayed up all night to write this post, to finish the story I started in the previous post.  I began writing this piece on October 2, but never got farther than four paragraphs which I kept cutting and changing and rethinking and putting away for so many perfectly valid reasons.  And now I've finished the beast.  My goodness.  Behold the power of NaBloPoMo.)
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(Second note, twelve hours later:  Typepad does not like this post.  Every time I look at it online, it's missing another chunk and I have to go through the code and repair it.  Maybe, like happens naturally with an actual piece of art, this is some zen communication from the gremlins forcing visitors to each have their own unique experience of the post.  Maybe it's just Mercury in Retrograde.  Maybe I shouldn't write HTML in the middle of the night when Typepad's servers are on the fritz.  No matter why, though, I did promise you some kind of adventure.  I didn't think it was going to be an adventure in computer competency.)

Comments

[Stephanie A.]

Wow, it's all about finding a system, isn't it?

I think I've shared with you before about my club feet and how sometimes I limp and sometimes I cannot walk well. I also have ankle weakness and one thing I've always thought about is how, quite naturally, our bodies typically get worse as we age. I will hold this story with me as I'm climbing, walking and seeing during those tougher times when my feet are burning and giving out.

Sure, it may have been more hassle than one would like, but it looked like the benefits were 10-fold. They almost always are. Thank you for sharing this, Sara!

[Ron Sullivan]

What a beautiful place. I've been thinking this week about how differently rain touches the East and here, "west of the West." And dang but there's always some aspect of the same-old that twists into a surprise, to put it mildly -- like the dance you found yourself doing with tea, umbrella, and (modified by water and fall fallen leaves) stone stairs, and absence of walking stick.

"... and other stories" indeed!

[Sara]

Stephanie, yes, a system. And the system I've developed for myself, since I apparently can't be relied upon to take even my own most basic advice, is to try to keep my eyes and mind open to what's really in front of me at all times, and to where I really want to go from "here," wherever that might be in this moment. It helps not having anything to prove to anyone. It keeps things simple.

Also, you mentioned wanting to avoid losing physical choices as you age, and this is just one of many reasons you should be so proud of yourself for starting a gym program. Regular exercise is as important as nutrition in mitigating the effects of aging upon joint and bone health, and that's key to slowing the onset of further disability. This is one of the reasons I still make myself do yoga (well, I like it, too) and why I have the balance ball and the new tricycle and why I always take stairs even when there's an elevator. This is one reason my true love practices tai chi, which has been proven medically to have measurable benefits extending far into old age, especially when practiced regularly over decades.

It really is a use-it-or-lose-it deal we each have with our bodies. And even with the issues you already have with your feet, something else entirely could go wrong at any time, so the more you can do now, while you're young, to make and keep your whole self strong, the more choices you will always have, and the more fun adventures you can go on.

Of course, it is tough to keep all that in mind when you're in pain. You can put me on the list of people rooting for your every happy step.

Ron, your comment made me laugh. I hadn't realized it, but yes, even my trip down these stairs (fortunately without tripping) was a piece of art I created that day -- performance art. I shall call it, in retrospect, "Autumn Dance in Celebration of Hubris, with Tea, Umbrella, and Capacious Arse Pointed Skyward." hahahahahahaha

Naturally, ladies, should either of you wash up here, it will be my pleasure to show you this wonderful park. Let me know...