One more year has passed and the cancer is still there. But not much of it. It was found in my lungs this fall.
I was getting ready to start to work again.
I had been on Herceptin for a year and only been "free floating" over the summer.
I had no symptoms it was just a check up to make sure I was still fine.
So now I am on Herceptin and Navelbine.
I have to come in every week to get injected.
Two weeks both drugs and then the third is only Herceptin or my white cells will go too low.
My accupunturinst keeps me very ballanced
I have now gone to her for 3 years. Every week pretty much!
Therapy I go to also once a week to sort out and fine tune myself.
I look good and feel good.
I don't feel like I have cancer and don't feel tired from the chemo.
If anything got more energy now than before this whole mess started in 2001.
Just getting a bit irretated to still have to spend two whole days every week to heal myself.
Makes you wonder how many days I have spent not doing just that.
I have fine tuned my supplements to mainly these:
I got to keep those white cells up and running and shark liver oil really does the trick.
I take 10 capsules of Icelandic Shark liver oil.
A mushroom blend
one is
(Maitake Gold 404 MD Fraction)
I take lots of digestives enzimes with food (prescription pancratic enzyme ) and without food Wobenzim and Zymactive.
The food is organic and I make sure I get ample enough of Omega 3 each day.
I didn't do much work this spring. I had a mental fatique/ slight depression so I only forced myself to make some pieces ready for this outdoor show called garden art that I have been in for the last 2 years. The work is always in steel + something and is showed at Tinka Jordie's place.
Here is a link to those pieces
I did this piece for my accupunturist to keep in her office. A little thanks for all her help.
Feeler Seeker
Cast glass, ceramic and forged steel
~6" wide and ~7" deep
Then summer came.
Since I was a teeneger I have known that one day I needed to walk on top of Snaefellsjokull and when that time would come there would be a trancisison time in my life. Just a strong intuiton feeling I got once as I drove to school one morning seeing that mountain in the distance glowing in all its glory ( seen from Reykjavik the capital).
Well that time had finally come. I felt with all my body one day in late october 2004 that it was time to go.
I wanted to have some one with me that didn't know me too well as I didn't want any border bully to make little of this feeling/need and possibly convince me not go when I needed it the most. About a week after I had secretly wished for someone to come with me that fit that description. A long ago art school buddy e-mails me saying she wanted to come to Iceland, would I be there? I jumped right on this opportunity for a non judgmental friend and asked if she was willing to come with me to this place if I took her around. Sure she said and so we went. We had a great time looking at Iceland from the eyes of a painter.
A view on the east coast of Iceland that really hit the spot for the both of us. Taken about middnight.
Then it was time to go to the mountain. I had rented a snow move bile to go up as this mountain is actually a glacier. I found out a few days before I went on that trip in a video I got at the Kopavogur library that this mountain is thought to be the heart scakra point of the earth! and many people come there every year to get inspired and gather new energy. I had also learned that people call up on a being that is said to live in the mountain with the name Bardur. They ask him for help when they need it. When we came to the place late late on the 15th there was thick fog over everything and we were told that the day after was just as bad. but it might clear up on the day after to morrow. We were suppose to go up at one on the 16th of August but as there was no view. I felt bad that the lady that was with me wouldn't get much out of it if we went up so I asked her if we could stay an extra night there and go up the first trip on the 17th and then burn into town so she could catch her plane at 3. She was fine with that so we had this extra day to kill in the fog. As there wasn't much to see other then right up close I suggested a nice beach that has some great unusually round black rocks. Djupalonssandur is the name of the place. We spent some time gathering some interesting stones and then my friend had enough of the super fine rain and went back to the car. When I came back she was in the middle of a small water color painting. It had cleared up for a few minutes so she saw the root of the mountain so she had decided to caputre what she had seen and surrounding area. As I had nothing to do but wait for her to be done with the painting, I decided to go into a trance to ask my body to fine tune my back after driving for nearly a week non stop and as I finished up with that I decided to ask this Bardur for help. Well couldn't hurt right? To my surprise a beautiful deep red color started to form in front of my eyes as I had them there closed. It grew bigger and bigger every time I called: Bardur can you help me. Finally it covered the whole vision field and a line of white and blue under that formed at the bottom of my inner vision-field. I then felt a tear come out of my right eye and I quickly wiped that away as that eye faced my friend as I didn't want her to think I was crying. It was probably weird enough that I was in trance as she had never seen me do that. Another tear came and I wondered why as I didn't feel emotional at all. I decided to let that one go where ever it wanted to go. Maybe it had some answer for me. It sure did. As soon as it entered my mouths corner I had the answer: I was to get water from the spring. I said it up-loud as I have been tough by my therapist when vital information bubbles out of my subconscious. My friend thought I was talking to her and responded by taking out the map of the area so I let the trance go and looked with her for possible places.
I had gotten a brocure about Snaefellsjokul the night we had arrived to the area from hotel Hellnar. I had bitten it in me I wanted to dine there if we could that night as I wanted to ask the lady that run the hotel more about the glazier to see if she knew anything more then her brocure said that could prepare me for the trip up. Thinking she might have some tips she had heard from people that had staid at her place. I had no idea that she was very well known for her interest in the supernatural in Iceland. I therefor asked her son who worked in the reception if he could ask her if she could talk to me and was told she would do so after our dinner. When she came I told her my time had come to mount the glazier. She got vorried right a way when she heard that. Said the mountain was a heart point so it might be too much for me at this point. Like she didn't think I needed to go up to get what I needed just jet. I had gotten the same feeling when I had gone in to trance earlier that day that the spring was all I needed right now and was a little confused about that. She asked me if I was sick. I suddenly had a clump in my throat and and managed to say cancer. She asked where and I could only point to my right breast. I then fell a part. Luckily the other dining people had gone was the only thing that entered my mind at that point : ) not used to showing my feelings in public. She hugged me and then said: you are too serious. You need to be able to see the happiness again in your life. You need water from the spring ( the same exact words again!!!). She then told me that the spring was the second spring from the road up the glazier. It had been used by Kjarval the great Icelandic painter ( called therefore Kjarvals spring). He said it was the best one around and called it the spring of joy and happyness. He painted around the glazier for years and was very connected to nature. He had always fetched water from that spring to give to friends that had become ill. She told me to take a sip every day while it lasted and think of things in my life that filled me with love and gratitude. Think of myself whole already. She told me that the water would form crystals that would enhance the power of the water if the word love and gratitude was written on the bottle. That makes sense as I know that the man Masaru Emoto in Japan has given out a photo-book with pictures of crystals of water that are drastically different depending on where they were taken and what types of thought were aimed at it or written on the bottle where it was kept. See this site for more info on this. I have also since then learned that this spring is probalby the spring coming from the glazier that has the natural lithium in it. One of the few places on earth.
I had picked up some viking cards similar to tarot cards in the waiting area and we had been asking them during the dinner. We noticed half way through the meal that on the back of the book that came with the cards was a picture of the author and again it was the same lady as owned the hotel! I decided to ask her about these card. I had placed the once I had drawn right next to me in the right order they were drawn. She read their meaning to me and then said. You need to draw one more card to complete the reading. All the info she gave me was so right on that it gave me and my friend the chills. The last card confirmed to me that I was on the right track in my search for a healing. She then though told me I needed to hurry up to loosen up negativ energy from my past. Time was at its essence. She said I was already starting to change inside and it would take about 6 more months for the full change to show outward. She sure has been right about that for I have changed. Thank you soooo much Gudrun Bergman for being there for me.
The day after I felt like I needed to armour myself against the mountain incase if it was too strong so I held in my hand up there a little stone with icelandic protective ruins on it. I was fine and experienced great peace. My vision field became compleatly blue in color the whole time I was in meditation trance up there. It didn't matter if I keept my eyes closed or open. Same color was there as I lay in the snow for the 20 min we were up there. There was so much fog that non of us could see more then a few feet away so there was no view from the mountain in any direction not even up in to the sky.
See picture of us up there
The lady that was with me had a vision on top of the glazier. So she got also something out of the trip up eventhought there was no view.
When we got down again we filled up more water bottles with the spring water and burned to the capital to get in time for my friends flight.
When we got back to my parents house, there was two hours delay so we managed to stop and eat an early supper with them.
After I had said goodbye to my art friend and was walking back to the car. I asked myself: am I suppose to believe all this really happened.
I got my answer back pretty fast.
I got into the drives seat and turned the engine on. I glances at the car clock as I was getting ready to back out. It said 17:17 and the temperature was 17 Celscius.
Remember! It was also the 17th of August. Being that my lucky number is 17th ( born on the 17 of June at 17:00) I have found it to be very useful as a guide through out my life.
BUT
Gudrun's words of the need to hurry troubled me. So early morning on the 18th I had an urge to go back into trance and see if Bardur was still interested in helping me. This time around the connection was instant. I got a clear image of my chest area. It was a flat black and white image like a chest x-ray that showed a white spot about the size of tangarine covering the left part of my right breast area. There was a message to go with the image. The stone will melt the stone. I had brought with me a book about healing stones ( Chystal Enlightmenment by Katrina Raphaell ) for a friend of mine that I thought would be interested in it but she had returned it back to me saying it was not for her. I had read half way through it before I had given it to her and not found much of interest. I decided to see if that book could answer what stone to use. I grabbed the book, asked it and then opened it on a page I hadn't read before that explained what use we can have of Rhodochrosite and Malachite stones. Specially good stones to drag out old memories and buried down feelings that will then help losen up the block that has happened in this area. Even said ground up Rhodochrosite stones are being used in cancer treatmetnts and liver purifications. Haven't found any more info on how to use or make powers since reading about it there but instaed had suggestions of putting these stones in water to charge the water with them and drink it then.
After reading the information for these two stones there was no question in my mind I had hit on the right answer again when I looked at the page number. It was 117 !
That same day I went to the only store I knew had little tumbled stones as I had gone earlier to buy a very good book (highly recomend it: The Initiation by Elisabeth Haich) and got myself some stones to place on my body in a horizontal line between the solarplexus and the heart center as had been decribed in the book. As I was in there I noticed an icelandic book called: Let the stones talk ( Latum Steinana tala) and guess who was the author of the book. Gudrun G. Bergman again!
I also found out that day, that she was the orginal owner of this store before she desided to live closer to Snaefellsjokull.
Gudrun had mentioned to me that she would have suggested to me to visit Djupalonsandur if I hadn't been there earlier that day.
She said the stones there have good grounding/ meditation power as they have come from under the glazer.
After I got back in town
I worked on creating some small stone people to have on my bedroom window sill in Iceland to express my feelings as a patient for the last couple of years. I had keept seeing faces in stones, feet, bodies and legs as I drove around the country with my friend. The car had gotten pretty heavy by the end of the trip.
I might show you them later on as I think I am not through with these figures.
I also had this strange big urge to paint what had happened to me on this trip to the glazer and guess what. A friend of mine called me out of the blue shorly after I got back and asked me to paint for her a big painting for her house. Me paint? I haven't painted since 1989!
Well what the heck why not. I wanted to paint anyway right?. Just didn't think this would be this soon and this way. I told her I would paint my little yourney first on the canvas. Then take pictures of it and each step there after until all would be covered over and then paint the picture she wanted on top using the colors and set up of what ever I had painted first. She wanted something that lookeds something like: of mix of the painters: Tolly, Kristjan Davidsson's older work and Hafsteinn Austmann! ( strange how few pictures these painters have on the web as known they are in Iceland!) If you find any good links for me let me know.
Well here is what I made. Took me two half days to complete not half bad for a non painter if I say myself. It sure was super duper faster then to create a sculpture but working flat is not my cup of tea. That much did it teach me. But to get the image out of my system this fast was great.
In the fall when I went back to the States I began working full force on my new body of work.
It is all wheel thrown. A skill I had been briefly introduced to in 1987 in a class taught by the ceramist Kolbrun Kjarval and felt at that point in my life highly unappealing but was now interested in using to make my next body of work. So why not learn it the hard way or by myself and just practice over and over the shape I wanted. I borrowed and later bought a throwing wheel from a friend nearly now two years ago and worked on it on and off as I didn't have the energy or spirit to use it much until this fall. Can't be that hard I told myself again and again. If only I can master to center the clay. Something I hadn't in the class at all. I wasn't looking for perfection as the slick mass produced look is not my thing incase you haven't noticed by now. I was looking for a tool that could give me a similar shape every time that wouldn't take me that long each time and I could make a lot of. Well I have used 98% ( minus the 2% blobs I manged to make) of the pots that I made from day one. Crooked or not they all seem to look usable to me and so they seem to look too to others.
The oldest work in this new series is the work
Spirited done about two years ago and just sat in a box waiting for all the others to show up. You can easily see the progress of my skills if you compare that piece to Sluggish. Last made in the series.
This body of work came about because
I had bitten it in me I wanted to make a big wall piece. It would hold two hundred bowls with a glass cone sticking out of each one. One hundred white and one hundred dark red. The opposite color of glass would sit in each bowl. Then one morning nearly two years later I knew how I would display them all.
Take a LO
K
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