Flowers from Brittle Earth
Photo/Ana Lorenza Jimenez.
By Ana Lorenza Jimenez
I was born here in Las Vegas, Nevada, and grew up walking with my grandfather on the dry brittle dirt. But some, like him, could pull sunflowers out of this desert. As a child, the small garden he grew outside his trailer seemed a magical forest whose miraculous plants towered over me, and whose fruit tasted of sweet fantasy. They were just strawberries. But, they were from the earth in front of my grandpa’s trailer. He understood that earth and those strawberries. Somehow my young self felt the magic of his understanding as the strawberry juice ran down my chin. There is comfort in the magical, if only a person is able to perceive it.
Despite the trials of this year, beauty, magic, and even the miraculous has persisted. My husband, my fiancé at the time, was involved in a severe car accident this past June. His vehicle had been totaled. He had to be air-lifted out of the wreck and arrived at the hospital unconscious. It left him unable to walk and with no feeling or movement in his left arm. I cared for him 24/7 after he came home from the hospital. I was preparing to take full financial responsibility for the both of us, indefinitely. Two months later he was walking on his own and starting a new job, four months later we were riding our bicycles together again, and now he has full use of all his appendages. Although my faith has evolved to something different from what it was at the beginning of this year, I still view his recovery and the fact that he even survived the accident as a genuine miracle with the potential to comfort me now as much as a desert garden strawberry delighted my child-self.
Of all things this world has to delight in, there is none more accessible and more overlooked than the act of eating. Perhaps it was this recollection that developed my new enthusiasm for cooking. Or maybe it was the hours and hours of cooking shows that I consumed this year when I decided to cut myself even further off from the world than the distance that COVID-19 had already established. But more on that decision later. Either way, I discovered yet another creative outlet to add to my ever-growing list of interests. I love how cooking involves all the senses; it is so bodily and physical. The act is both a science and an art, and the possibilities for creation are limitless.
Since I can remember, I have always felt the impulse to create, particularly in the physical dimension. I had forgotten the satisfaction that comes with shaping a thing into existence. Or, to be more precise, the satisfaction of understanding material and knowing it in a way so as to transform it into something beyond what it had been known to be. I had forgotten the satisfaction that understanding can bring. I had forgotten about this in regards to my art, but I had also forgotten this in regards to myself.
I found myself this past autumn, overwhelmed by problems in my marriage, problems with my mental health, problems in the world, and the problem I have inflicted upon myself multiple times: trying to do everything at once. This very problem is what instigated my increasingly severe reactions to stress during my third year of college in 2013 and led to a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder in 2015. Since 2013, I have been on at least 13 different medications, been treated by six different psychiatrists, and four different therapists, all the while trying to find a sense of stability as well as my place in the world. By September 2020, I was incredibly exhausted by a traditional treatment that was leading me in circles and keeping me in a perpetual state of dependency on others.
I decided to stop my treatment, and in October I chose to take a break from all my responsibilities including college and work. (Note: I am not saying traditional psychiatric treatment is a bad thing, it just hasn’t worked for me in all of the seven years that I have been undergoing it). During a bipolar episode around this time, I broke my phone and refused to get a new one for about a month. When I finally got a new phone, I slowly started to reach out to people again. My problems had not at all disappeared since I stopped my treatment and self-isolated. In fact, my marital problems were becoming much harder to bounce back from and the word “separation” was becoming ever-more frequent in our fights. Out of desperation one day I asked my old college roommate, Stevi, who knew me before my diagnosis, if I could come visit. In a matter of days, I was on a Greyhound bus heading to the Central Valley of California, mask on, with only my backpack and purse. I told my husband I was leaving just a few hours before I headed to the bus station. Luckily for me, at this time California had temporarily reopened.
I spent 10 days in California. It was during this time away from home that I began to get to know myself for maybe the first time. Or maybe it was more of a remembering of some of the things that were and are essentially me. Being around Stevi and her husband, both of whom are fellow artists, brought out a side of me I had long forgotten existed. The bold, carefree me who was full of joy and endless curiosity. The Ana who never turned down an adventure, no matter how many furrowed brows were turned her way. Not when she was asked to be a model for a full body painting performance, and not when she was invited to travel across the country alone to paint a nudist in New York City. I had not felt more myself than when I went to California this year. Of course, I had many distractions there from my problems at home. Eventually, I had to face them.
Since being back, I have been getting to know myself increasingly more. I know what I need to be okay in regards to my mental condition. However, not all of this self-discovery has been pleasant. Unfortunately, there are people in my life that can only see me through the story they have created for me. This is a story in which I am sick. According to this story, all the choices I make and any display of emotion I might produce are the direct result of my mental illness and my refusal to be medicated any longer. I can’t deny that I haven’t had episodes since stopping my medication, but I have never been more aware of what I need and don’t need in order to be stable. I don’t need people calling me sick. I need people who seek to understand. I don’t need people assuming they know what I am feeling, why I am feeling it, and what I need to feel better. I need people like my grandfather, Donald Alanson Walker, who could pull sunflowers out of a dry brittle earth. He’s not with us anymore, but I’m sure there are other Nevadans with as much understanding or willingness to understand. Perhaps I only need myself and the magic of my hands to pull the joy out of the dry brittle anger that has consumed me for far too long.
Today, it has been over two weeks since I have had a Bipolar episode, which is a long time given my record. That does not mean that I have not cried, gotten angry, or had disagreements with my husband these past two weeks, but I have been able to control my emotions so that they don’t escalate into a crisis. Prior to disconnecting myself from the people who labeled me “sick,” I had been going into crisis about twice a week, with and without medication. You hear it all the time from self-help books, but the people who you surround yourself with do have an impact on you, whether you are aware of it or not.
Along the lines of the people around you, with this piece of writing I have included post-COVID-19 portraits of two Las Vegas poets who have encouraged, inspired, and provided me with meaningful opportunities to grow as a poet, as a creative and as a person. The poets I depicted in these charcoal and chalk pastel drawings are Heather Lang-Cassera and Frank Johnson. A few other artists and poets I would have liked to include in this portrait series are Jana Lynch, Jonathan Puls, John Calley, and Jarret Keene. There is no doubt that without creative communities, friends, and mentors I would have forgotten the power of the only certainty that has remained constant throughout my life: that I must create. These people have also taught me that to create meaningful work, an artist must surrender themselves and learn to listen, observe, and most importantly, pay attention.
With these directives in mind, I would like to end with a call to action, which is as much to myself as anyone else who is willing. As a new year approaches, perhaps to be filled with as much uncertainty, distress and dread as the year 2020 has proven to invoke, a change is necessary if we are to ever get through this. This is a call to active listening. To release all of your assumptions, and then seek to understand. This is a call to see a thorny weed and recognize that it too makes a contribution to the world. This is a call to raise sunflowers from the dry brittle earth. To eat strawberries and let the juice run down your chin. To make magic. To be a miracle. Even during a pandemic. Especially during a pandemic. 2021, here we come!
Frank, 2020: Chalk pastel and Charcoal on paper, 9 x 12 in. Art/Ana Lorenza Jimenez.
Heather, 2020 : Chalk pastel and Charcoal on paper, 9 x 12 in. Art/Ana Lorenza Jimenez.
A Prayer of 2020
By Ana Lorenza Jimenez
When it goes like
you miss the exit
spill the coffee
and forget the password
and the crescendo builds
and falls like the wave
that knocks you
Drowning
under the white noise
of the fan that is
also cooling us down
from the heat of
our climate change
a climate
Changed
from billows of
luxurious dark black smoke
millions of puffs of exhaust
we are Exhausted
from becoming that rat
we run the sewers of time
but what is down there
not crime fighting turtles
in bandanas
not the bandanas we use
to cover our germs from
our germs
from our
Germs
in that lab they
grew us in separate
petri dishes
for fear our union
would conquer them
when bodies were
celebrated and our
body was in the world
and the world was in us
and the world was us
find Me touching You
and be okay
when it goes like
you miss the exit
spill the coffee
and forget the password
Amen.
Ana Lorenza Jimenez is a multi-disciplinary creative who was born, raised, and currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. She creates through various mediums and techniques including, but not limited to: written word, oil painting, drawing, found objects, and metal work. She has served a few different roles for publications such as Helen: A Literary Magazine and Witness, literary journal. Her poetry has been published in The Royal Rose Magazine and Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest. She holds an Associates degree in Languages and is a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-200). Ana’s artwork has been shown at Biola University, The Arts Factory in Las Vegas, as well as First Friday and local pop-up art shows.
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